March Wrap Up ☘️ 11 Books!!! (and some crappy thrillers)

well hello everyone today i'm going through all of the books that i read in march and there were quite a lot there was like 11 i think so i've got a lot to say about a lot of books let's get into it [Music] i had a very good reading month in terms of volume at the very least i read 11 books in march and i am going to go from my most recently read to the oldest book i read in march so let's start with a five star we're starting off on a high this is the screaming staircase by jonathan stroud this is the first book in the lockwood and co series this oh my gosh it was so much fun this is why a and i liked it i'm so thrilled i have a whole series to get through so the lockwood and co series follows lockwood and co which is a ghost hunting company we follow lockwood who owns the company as well as lucy and george and they entail lockwood and co in the first book you meet lucy joining the group we live in a world where for some reason it's slightly unexplained ghosts are taking over the world and really only teenagers and children are able to see them and address them and so there are a bunch of teenagers out there in the world fighting ghosts and you can die doing this work it is not easy work so this little group of three uh join together to solve mysteries ghostly mysteries and the screaming staircase is their first and it's so much fun what i loved about this book is like it feels like if sherlock holmes and harry potter had a baby it would be lockwood and co lockwood has a very sherlock vibe to him as a character which i enjoy and then this little band the way that they are witty with one another uh they remind me a lot of like harry hermione and ron there's just that vibe to them you know in harry potter when they're going off on an adventure and they're trying to solve a mystery and those portions of the books are so exciting and fast-paced and you can't stop flipping the pages that is what lockwood and co feels like all the time and i'm so happy that i've read it i have been listening to them on audio i'm already on the second one because i'm just completely hooked thank you to leanne from literarydiversions for uh talking about this so much that i finally picked it up now the second book i have to talk to you about is unfortunately a two-star read and unfortunately it's a part of a series that i'm getting through this is the nightmare by lars kepler so this is the june alina series it's a detective series i loved the first one so much i think i gave it four or five stars loved it this unfortunately had a bit more of a political slant to it that i just didn't care about um this uh has two mysteries to it there is a woman on a boat found drowned but she was never in the actual water she's found on the boat still drowned so it's clearly a murder and then there's also a man found hanging in his home and these two mysteries are tied together and junolina needs to find out why and it's so political so highly political there wasn't like what i loved about the first one in the series was there was a bad guy and there was a lot of mysteries going on at the same time there were a lot of mysteries going along in here but it felt more like an action like a political action film and i didn't care and i actually found myself like actually just flipping the pages and not fully reading all of it because i just i didn't like it i wasn't scared and also i'm starting to realize you don't have to read this in order this spoiled nothing from the first book so i could just continue on and i i i hope that this is the end of the political stuff in this series because i really didn't like it okay the third book i want to talk to you about is yellow wife this has been all the rage like one of my best friends was imploring me to read this book uh the yellow wife follows a black woman living in the south during slavery and she is a slave her mother has a relationship with the slave owner that has allowed her to have some privileges i suppose you could say and it's supposed to be that when she turns 18 she's meant to go free that doesn't happen instead she actually ends up being uh sold off by a terrible woman and she ends up at a prison it's a it's an incredibly sad story and one of the things that i did really appreciate about this story was that you know our main character phoebe she is born to an enslaved black woman and she's also the daughter of the the owner of this this plantation and because of her lighter skin she is desired by some white men and it it follows the interesting and very unfortunate events of um you know how many black enslaved women were raped at this time and forced into relationships that they did not want to be a part of um because of horrible white men basically i did enjoy this book i gave it three stars and i'll tell you why i ended up giving it three stars instead of like five or something um i found well first of all the storyline itself was very linear the characters were very uh were pretty flat i didn't feel like there was a lot of depth to them there wasn't a lot of history to them it was like there are good characters and bad characters and there wasn't enough um intricacy in how people are just people a lot of the time and i didn't feel like there was enough of an intricacy there for me to give it higher than three i also there are several scenes of childbirth in here and i actually checked online and sadika does i think she does have children oh yeah it even says on the back the author has three children uh but you wouldn't know it because of the way that she writes the childbirth scenes it's like she has uh some cramping and then she has a child and they just slips out of them out of her and that does happen to some women i'm not saying that every child birth is long long long but this was really fast and i just found that was kind of silly and i think it could have used a little bit more work i can see that this is a good start i think this is her debut and i'll definitely read more by her but i wasn't blown away so that's yellow wife i never do this where you buy a book and then read it the next day but i did that with the loneliest girl in the universe again uh a leanne thing uh leanne totally made me do this the loneliest girl in the universe is about a girl who is on a spaceship completely alone there's no one else on the spaceship she was actually born on the spaceship her parents they are no longer with her and she's alone headed to another planet where they're hoping uh people are going to be able to live on because you know earth isn't doing so well so they need earth too so she's on her way and she loses contact with earth all of this time she's been writing emails back and forth this one woman and it's kind of like thank good for thank goodness for this woman because she otherwise she'd be completely and utterly alone she loses contact with them there is however another ship headed to the same place the technology has really advanced in the past few years and so it's going at a faster speed and it will catch up to her ship and she starts chatting with this guy who's like a similar age and she's surviving with him and there's a bit of a romance so i ended up giving this four stars i really enjoyed it it was so fast-paced i couldn't put it down this is why a hello i basically i've decided i'm just going to turn to leanne for y a recommendation that's i trust her i like them so there's hope for me um this was so fast-paced there was so many um twists and turns lots of suspense i loved the setting again if anyone has any recommendations for like stories on a spaceship i am here for that i really enjoy it so i really liked it the only thing that i didn't like was the romancy bits i mean she is a teenager so it's not surprising that there would be romantic bits i was definitely as a teenager really into boys i'm like oh my gosh a little bit too much but i i now i don't like that stuff but still enjoyed it so i gave that four stars next is my patreon book club pick for march and that was the pull of the stars by emma donoghue oh my goodness this was wonderful um originally i gave this four stars but i have since bumped it up to five because the more i've sat with it the more i've loved it and actually there's a couple of women in the medical field in my patreon group and the things that i took issue with this book they were able to kybosh and prove me wrong and so i bumped it up to five so the pull of the stars is about a nurse nurse powers and it follows three days in a dublin maternity ward during the great flu of 1918. so in three days she's taking care of all of these pregnant women who are you know very close to giving birth as you can imagine it's really hard to read at times because this flu really affected pregnant women not all of them survived not all of their babies survived that is reflected here while i was reading this i it was hard for me at times i've had a miscarriage and it was hard to read sometimes because it brought up a lot of stuff and i honestly worried a lot of the time about my patrons reading this because i was like i hope everybody's okay reading this it's hard however the challenge that emma put for herself to have this all contained within a three-day period was so smart and so hard uh this really showcased how much research she did about the medical field during this time about the flu of this time she did so much research and yet you care so much about the characters you care so much about nurse power she ends up having a girl named bridie come on to help her out thank goodness because she's got all of these women to take care of who are you know very pregnant and very much close to giving birth and like she's alone so she needs bridie you care so much about those characters i cared a lot about the women being treated i just thought this was an incredible it was incredible five stars i can't recommend it enough next is a four star read this is the exiles by christina baker klein this follows several characters our main character is a woman who becomes pregnant and she's pregnant working at a house her employer's son is the one who impregnates her and he's away for a bit and has given her a ring and she is accused of having stolen the ring and she's sent to prison and the ultimate price that she needs to pay is being sent to australia sent on a ship to australia to live out her something like 16-year prison sentence and so we follow her we follow several of the women on the ship we also follow an indigenous girl from australia who is an orphan and these white horrible white people decide to keep her as like it honestly felt like they were keeping her as a pet like as a little showcase it was disgusting it was really upsetting because she is a human being and she's not being treated as a human being i actually would be very curious to hear from indigenous people and their perspective on a white woman writing about them from like writing a character an indigenous character from the indigenous person's perspective i don't know i i didn't mind it i'm a white woman so i i thought the way that it was done was fairly tasteful there is nothing about these white people that is glorified or you know put in any good light because they're horrible people and rightfully so so i thought that was good but i am curious about that that said this had so many twists and turns in here there are two deaths in here that i was so shocked and upset about the first death i literally was reading and going oh but now and now they'll survive and now you know when you're a kid and you play that game like prison you're like i know i break free you know i felt like that repeatedly for this character's death i was like and now they'll survive and now they'll wake up and now they're gonna come back into the book and then they just didn't and so there were a lot of devastating deaths in here but i thought it was very good really enjoyed it gave it four stars oh boy okay next up is a two star read this is the house next door by anne riversidens this is a haunted house story it's about if your house the house next door was haunted basically that's the whole premise of the story there's a plot of land we follow the people who live next to this plot of land and a an architect comes in and builds a house there and there are several people who end up living at the house and most of them have to leave it because it's haunted and doing terrible things to the people inside first of all i didn't find this scary at all like not in any way shape or form i found it very frustrating that the horrifying moments in this book were almost always sexual in nature and i know that there's a lot of like sexuality in horror movies you know that's just a thing in this genre and that's fine but i found this kind of homophobic if i'm being honest one of the sexual acts that is supposed to be horrifying is essentially two men having sex and i was not here for it i was mad reading this book um i will say that it is very atmospheric and so that was kind of its saving grace and i gave it two stars so you can understand like not much of a saving grace to me but i wasn't scared at all i found it homophobic not a fan so i'll be giving that away unfortunately next is another two star read i haven't even hauled this yet this is the sanatorium by sarah pierce and this is about a woman who goes to her brother's engagement party and this party is at a hotel and they've refurbished an old sanatorium when they get there the bride to be goes missing and our main character is a cop who is on leave for some anxiety reasons uh i felt like this was a very very very novice introduction to thrillers i found it kind of annoying um i didn't care for the main character at all i didn't feel like she was a believable character in any way shape or form i didn't believe that she was a cop in any way shape or form based on how she approached things and how like if she was a cop on a case of a missing person for someone in my life i'd be looking for a new i'd be like hiring a private investigator or something because it was so horrible i also felt like how she described anxiety and presented anxiety in here just wasn't really believable and wasn't very good as someone who has anxiety as someone who knows a lot of people who have anxiety i just i didn't believe it and it wasn't scary and i was bored i just found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit reading this book so i don't recommend that at all i gave that two stars i also i did a vlog reading the sanatorium as well as the burning girls i'll link that in the description below in case you want to read it or you want to watch it i should say but i also read the burning girls and thank goodness because i gave this four stars and thank goodness i decided to start picking up ct tutor again because this was wonderful guys this follows a vicar who goes to a little sleepy town named chapel croft but there's a lot of history to chapel croft i think 400 500 years ago people were burned at the stake there a couple of decades ago two girls went missing without a trace no one really seemed to try to find them but in any case and now um this vicar has come into the situation because the local parish actually hanged himself in the church so she's there to take over and she's there with her teenage daughter i loved their dynamic that was a wonderful uh relationship to me a mother-daughter relationship that wasn't filled with angst was kind of refreshing maybe just like hopeful for me that like nora and i will always love one another and always get along i'm sure that will not always be the case and she'll hate me at some point but i really liked their relationship together it was very supernatural i will say that this is definitely a more paranormal thriller if you're there for this kind of vibe i'd highly recommend this i was hooked on this book and i cared so much about all of the mysteries and it was wonderful it was really smart too that it was a vicar because the vicar is new and needs to get to know all of the people in this little village and she has an excuse because she's the vicar so i thought that was really smart and you don't read a lot of thrillers with vickers as main characters so i really appreciated it loved it a book i didn't love so much that i gave two stars is the escape room i unfortunately just wasn't here for it i found it very frustrating so the escape room is about a woman who goes to work at like a wall street kind of company and she goes in and you're following her storyline and you're also following the storyline of several people being stuck in an elevator that are from that company they're stuck in an elevator and shots ring out and you don't know exactly what's happening and it kind of goes backwards and forwards in time i found it kind of silly if i'm being honest i didn't care about any of the characters they are all deplorable characters and you don't really care about any of them but what i didn't believe was the main character's story of of uh you know she goes from being like a normal person with some morals to just in the training itself it's like everyone who goes through training at this particular company loses all their morals and and you know wealth becomes everything i just actually didn't believe it i didn't believe that you could go through training for like whatever even if it was a year period of time that you would suddenly lose all of your morals i didn't believe it i didn't buy that she was the only person who kept her morals i thought it was stupid if i'm being honest so i gave it two stars and then a book i gave three stars is the one i also did a solitary review so i won't talk too much here i'll link that in the description box below um so the one is about a world in which you don't need to go dating anymore because you can just do a dna test and find your perfect match and so this follows several several people who have decided to do this test and have found their one some of the stories are really just straight up romance and it didn't feel like thrillers at all like a thrillery at all and then others um one person is a serial killer and he's still interested in finding love and so i found that kind of fun um it was a good book i started watching the series on netflix it's remarkably different like entirely different i think like i stopped watching that because it just was a little frustrating for me so um i think i prefer the book over the series but you know the book was okay for me i did enjoy it but i wasn't blown away the way i had hoped i would be i picked it up because i thought it was going to be a fast-paced thriller and it ended up having just a few thriller elements more of a what would you do in this kind of situation ah i know it was okay let me know in the comments below what was the best book that you read in march i would love to know i hope that you had a wonderful reading month and i will chat with you soon bye guys

Channel: Getting Hygge With It

Views: 4,246

Rating: 4.9027357 out of 5

Keywords: March reading wrap up

Id: nghAcTFYJt8

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021