November 2021 Reading Wrap Up

oh hello today we are going to wrap up my reading for the month of november 2021. uh it was a pretty good reading month i think i've been struggling to finish things so i'm still in progress on a number of things that i didn't end up actually finishing but it's okay i'll do that in december uh and i definitely have a few hits surprises disappointments etc to talk to you about but not not as many as i normally do so i think i i read a lot of sort of just ephemeral fun things that are not super memorable but hit the spot for what i was in the mood for so you know good i read books that did what i was hoping they would do so that's that's fine uh but not necessarily super memorable or things i'm especially like dying to talk to you guys about so i do have a few things i want to talk to you about beyond what we already discussed in my mid-month check-in uh but without further ado let's just get into it okay so i did finish 18 books in the month of november several of those were very very short speculative romance uh kindle unlimited type things but 18 in total for a total of 4 958 pages and an average book length of 275 pages the average amount of time a book had been on my tbr was six months and the average age of book was four years old i paid for 22 of the books that i read and the average cost of book was 2.78 most of the books that i read i got from publishers but then i also bunched from kindle unlimited so those were kind of my two biggest categories and uh in terms of genre very heavily weighted towards speculative romance and mystery which makes sense because i was sort of in like a little bit of a comfort reading mode those are two of my like go-to comfort reading genres couple of fantasies and one sci-fi so not as varied in my reading as i normally am genre wise and then in terms of rating my average rating was 3.3333 stars in terms of distribution more heavily weighted towards three and three and a half stars which is like a b to a b plus kind of book oh and actually i just realized i wasn't counting in my total one of my notable dnfs which we will talk about so also i guess in the chart i will show you i will go ahead and add a dnf in into the mix anyway i didn't count that in my 18 total books i guess if i had i would have read 19 side note so that covers overall stats sorry got a call don't totally remember what i was talking about but i think i was transitioning into talking about uh different challenges that i addressed in the month of november so beyond things that we have already talked about in the mid-month check-in there are three things i wanted to mention which are three arcs that i read so first i did read a flicker in the dark by stacy willingham this is an interesting one because um it's not as splashy as i was expecting so this is a thriller that is coming out in january and it's been very buzzy like it's getting a big push um it's already had its movie rights purchased so i was kind of expecting it to have maybe i could have put this as a surprise but i was kind of expecting it to have more of like you know crazy plot twist or something like really kind of unique about it and honestly what i think is unique or special about it is just the writing itself for especially for a debut it is very well written like i think the actual prose is very nice but i don't know that it's a very innovative thriller it's just like a really it's a solid like really well done version of a thriller and i do think people are really going to enjoy it basically the setup is we are with our protagonist who is a therapist who is using substances to cope with her anxiety she's doing that illegally she's doing that she's planning her wedding she's engaged and really the reason she has so much anxiety stems from the fact that her father was a very notorious serial killer in her hometown in louisiana and he you know is in jail etc for that but now there's either a copycat killer killing serial killing people in the same way her dad did or you know did they get the wrong guy the first time so that's a trope i really like i again i just don't think that this was very surprising like i think pretty clear pretty early on what was going on so if that's what you value in a thriller i think this one probably isn't going to be super exciting to you if you've read much in the genre but i will say that i think the writing itself was really really good so like to me that made it kind of a little bit more special than it would be otherwise but anyway it does surprise me that this is getting so much like adaptation buzz uh but if you are interested in that trope combo i think that this is a really solidly told version of that trope then i read immortal rising by lindsay sands and this is i think like the 34th book in the arjuna vampire series which is one of my favorite vampire paranormal romance type series ever look don't start with this book if you have not read the series because it will not make very much sense to you i feel like but i was excited for this one because we get stephanie who we have seen in earlier books and she has this like unusual gifting slash curse of being able to hear everybody's thoughts all the time within like a six mile radius and so everybody's been kind of worried that she's gonna go mad and it's her happily ever after with thorne who we met in the whole like dressler debacle like that whole macro plot item that we had for in my opinion far too many books but i really liked him and he is not an immortal but his dad is dressler and he basically like genetically mutated him with animals so he has like these big ass wings look it's a whole thing it's pretty wacky so like you're gonna you're gonna kind of have to like go with the plot i will say i thought that the romance in this one was not the strongest i liked the individual characters they were good they were fine i don't know that i felt like they had a ton of like chemistry between them so that piece of the book i thought was less successful it was also very slow slowly paced in the beginning but where the macro plot ended up going to i thought was fun and i was frankly just happy to see stephanie get some relief to the situation that she has been in for however many books so not i think the best in the series but if you are a longtime reader this was like a notable one in terms of the characters and kind of like a conclusion to a very long running macro plot within the series and then the other arc i wanted to mention is the perfect escape by leah conan this is an interesting book because i actually really liked the plot the setup for this one is that there are three friends who are all going through different stages of like heartbreak or like divorce basically from their husband partners for different reasons some you know there's infidelity one of them their husband's kind of just a screw up uh and the other one is abusive but they've all they're all kind of like going through that and they're going on a girls weekend to the cat schools on the way there they pull over for gas and they lose their car keys so they're stuck in this town things progress from there one of them goes missing what happens somebody dies it's a thriller so i really liked the plot i thought the plot was very fun and just like really fast-paced a good version of this kind of a story like secrets from the past and missing person all of that i thought was actually pretty fun this was not an isolated closed circle mystery which is kind of what i had been hoping for that is not what this is at all but if you like the sort of like habit in the woods element if you i mean this has a lot to like in terms of the trope the writing itself i struggled with i felt like it was very i guess it's the writing and then the way characterization worked via the pros it felt very much telling rather than showing and kind of like stilted i don't know i i was really sad that i didn't like the writing more the really didn't sit well on my reading ear so sadly i don't know that i would read more from this author because that is something that i really value in a story but the plot itself is super fun so if you're looking for a fun mystery thriller this definitely fits the bill like i would still recommend this to people but for my personal prose taste it wasn't my favorite and then challenge wise the only thing i wanted to mention is i did read shield of winter by nalini singh and this is probably actually the favorite thing i read this month even though it was a reread i have the podcast out about it already but reread so it's not included in the stats but i did i do have a challenge going rereading all the side changeling books okay and then let's talk about disappointments so first of all we'll talk briefly again about ninth house by leigh bardugo this is my notable dnf for the month i mentioned this in my mid-month check-in this was really disappointing because i was hoping i was really gonna love this pre-ordered it i was hoping this was gonna be great but i have tried three different times to read this and i have struck out every time it is the writing itself that i'm just not loving so i know this is a very polarizing book i think people either really love or really don't love this book and for me i just couldn't deal with the prose and actually when i mentioned that in my minimum tech in the comments made me feel better about this decision because even people who really loved it were like yeah it's like a distinctive flavor or a distinctive vibe so i can see why if you didn't like that you wouldn't like the book uh and people who pressed forward even having not loved the writing all seemed to have regretted finishing it so i'm glad that i'm dnfing but i am obviously disappointed cause i was really hoping i was gonna like this and then another disappointment and i feel like a controversial opinion is that neon gods by katie robert pretty disappointed in this i gave this two and a half stars i think is where i landed because there are things about this that i do like but this is a 400 page book that should have generously been 200 pages really more like 150 it should have just been a nice chunky novella and it would have been so much better because in my opinion there is not nearly enough plot or character development to sustain this for a full 400 pages now so i should say the setup for this is like we're in the city called olympus this is going to be a whole series of like greek mythology retellings and this is a hades and persephone retelling sort of i think that i don't know i'm gonna tell you that i don't think that this is a great reimagining of that particular story but i did like our individual characters i liked hades i liked persephone i thought that it was an interesting idea that basically persephone's mom is demeter and she is wanting to marry her off to creeper gross yucco zeus in this and i like that he's a creeper because if you are familiar with greek mythology he truly is like that seems like an accurate characterization so i liked i like the setup i think it's a cool idea for the world i thought that the actual like dynamic between the characters was pretty good and the sex scenes this is like very erotic the steamy stuff gave what it was supposed to give so like i can see why people like that bit of this but i don't i don't get i really don't get why this is so hyped i gotta be honest with you i'm not gonna read any more in this series because i just felt like this was way too long and uh i just felt like this was super overhyped this is like on my most over hyped list for the year i mean again if this this had been half the length i think i would have been into it but nothing happens in this book until the last like 10 in my opinion or not much i guess i should say happens but steamy scenes gave what they were supposed to give so if that's what you're reading for i guess i could see it yeah this is a no-go for me i will tell you jill miles who's one of her pen names is ruby dixon who you know i love has a short story and i think it's in her once upon another time collection that is an actual hades and persephone retelling in the greek mythological world that is erotic and i think is far better so like if that's what you're wanting it's also it's a novella short story so like she knows that it shouldn't be a full book if you're looking for that and it would what is in my opinion a better version than this i would point people towards that just fyi and then two surprises i wanted to talk about first of all the maid by neeta pros now this one comes out at the beginning of january and it is basically what i would describe as a cozy mystery that is not twee which is usually my problem with contemporary cozy mysteries but is very voicey and i just really was into this i i'd seen it mentioned a couple of times and like anticipated 2022 mystery releases so i wanted to give it a shot and i'm really glad i did like this was not really what i was i guess i didn't know what to expect but whatever it was i wasn't expecting this and i really liked it like this is probably this is probably my second favorite thing i read in the month in terms of like new releases so basically the setup is that molly the maid has some sort of you know neurological difference she's not great at reading social cues and she's a little bit i guess awkward but she is very very good at her job of being a maid at this very fancy hotel and she has her grandma who she really loves who had recently passed away so she's still grieving and kind of dealing with that and her grandma was kind of integral to her sort of coping mechanisms for her sort of social awkwardness or anxiety or difference however you want to put that so she's also sort of readjusting to life without her grandma and at the hotel there is this guest that is very well known and he turns up dead and molly is the one who finds him and things ensue from there she becomes the lead suspect so all of her friends at the hotel and kind of in her life she i think basically part of what's charming is she doesn't realize how many people really do love her um or who you know want to help her and so they're all kind of working together to figure out who done it and like get her out from under the thumb of the suspicion of the law and some of the other things that are going on at the hotel basically i thought that this was the voice of this was really really good like if we're talking in contrast to some of the things i was talking about earlier that were disappointments i loved the writing voice of this and i would definitely look for more from this author molly is just such an endearing character i tend to be a very character-driven reader and she really was a character i was invested in and rooting for i will say that it's one of those stories where it has twists and i liked all of the twists except for the very last one was not executed as well as i had hoped and i wish that it hadn't been there i think this book would have been a four and a half if the very very last whatever hadn't been there because it took the themes of the story it basically re-contextualized some of the meaning or themes behind the story i guess is the way to say it without getting spoilery it's not about that because i actually liked kind of the direction or sort of the authorial posture towards some of the things that were happening before that so anyway all that to say i really like this book but it really surprised me because it is it does read pretty cozily but it's kind of a interesting mishmash of genre trope in tone within mystery thriller and it's pretty unique i don't know that i've read a lot of mysteries quite like it before so that was just exciting and surprising to read something unique in the genre and then sacred sins by norah roberts was the other surprise i wanted to talk about because so the two levels of surprisingness here i like i ended up really liking this book i started off weak for me but like the ending really sold me i really liked how things came together in the ending so it bumped it from like a three and a half to a four for me what surprised me about this was two things one that this is this was written in 1987 and it's a serial killer romantic suspense and just because i had recently been doing some research on the history of the serial killer genre this is a super early serial killer thriller of this kind so it just kind of surprises me that norah roberts was writing something like this and was sort of like on the ground floor and it makes me wonder if maybe this helped like popularize her and like set her a cut above of telling this kind of story in the 80s and this at this point like this came out before the silence of the lambs the book came out just to give context it's like an early example so that was kind of cool i really liked the serial killer plot and how that resolved the other thing that surprised me is that i feel like that this is an early precursor to the eve dynamic that we will see later on in her work in the in-depth series but it's like gender swapped and i the romance in this did not work that well for me because it's gender swapped in terms of sort of who's playing what kind of role but i was really interested in seeing kind of like a proto it's interesting to me when i see in an author's work echoes of what you then see later kind of come more fully to fruition and i felt like that's what i saw in this particular book and that was exciting to me so that one just it surprised me a little bit it wasn't quite what i was expecting from lenora but i was excited to get it and then three hits that i want to talk about so first i will talk about where the drowned girls go by seanan mcguire which again is the seventh i think in a series so it's kind of hard to get into too many specifics but i feel like that this is a really strong entry in the series i really liked thematically what this one was about and it also these books tend to sort of be like issue books they usually have sort of like a topic they're talking about and one of the things that this talks about is fat phobia and discrimination against fat people and i really like the way that that was handled i had cora as sort of our main character in this one and i really like her so i was excited to see that and i was also excited to see the sort of macro plot direction of this one we have a different wayward children's type school that we're seeing and i just thought that was a really cool idea basically it's like a bad version of the wayward children's home that eleanor is running it's like the mean version of it and i just thought that was a really smart direction to take the macro plot in so all around if you like this series i think you're going to really like this entry in it probably my favorite sense i'd say that this is like my third or fourth favorite in the series i would say this and across the green grass fields are probably third and fourth for me behind the first two books in the series so i really like this one another hit for me was the long way to the small ink to a small angry planet by becky chambers uh and this was just delightful and i am not surprised that this has been so hyped up to me because i often say that i really enjoy character-driven stories in general but particularly in speculative genres like sci-fi or fantasy i really enjoy stories that are quite character-driven and this definitely is now i will say this is the beginning of a series and i don't think i'm going to keep going in the series because i actually really i found this satisfying as is like i don't really want to know more i i kind of just i don't know it's a weird feeling i just randomly sometimes even if i really enjoy a book don't necessarily feel like in i need more in that world and that's how i feel with this one basically this is sold as sort of like a kind of firefly s space adventure story which i think is fair we have our main character rosemary who is a new clerk on a ship where their job is basically like punching holes through the fabric of the galaxy to create new sort of like shipping routes or travel routes and they're taking on a particularly dangerous mission that will pay a lot of money so she is new on the crew she has her own secrets from the past and uh we're kind of just learning about all the different crew members and their stories and kind of like where they're going where they're coming from there's so many endearing characters in this i can totally see why people love this i think for me pacing wise this was a little off but i did really enjoy this and uh yeah i'm really glad that i finally got around to reading it i can definitely see why so many people love it and why so many people thought that i would love it it's definitely like my kind of book if i was gonna pick my two favorite characters i would say would be lovey and kissy but there's really no wrong answer i feel like because there's so many great characters in this and so much representation i should say that's the other thing that's pretty cool about it is i think it's taking seriously the fact that if we were to survey the vast reaches of space there would be a lot of different kinds of cultures different kinds of beings just different ways of looking at the world so i think that's also pretty cool and then i would say probably my biggest hit for the month of new reads for me was amari and the knight brothers by bb alston because this is another one that was on the cusp of being a four and a half for me only thing that i'm gonna say is that i think that the pacing in this you can tell it's his first book there's just moments where the way the plot is unfolded felt a little clunky to me a little bit so like i could feel that but aside from that in terms of like characters that i love also characters i hate there are some 12 year olds in this book who i hate emily can choke laura can choke some characters in here that i strongly dislike as a 34 year old woman that's a little weird that i dislike these 11 and 12 year olds so much but that being said i totally see why this has been such a breakout hit this year this got so much buzz and this definitely lived up to the buzz for me basically our setup is that our main character amari her older brother went missing and she's basically finding out that he went missing because he's like a secret agent in this like magical cia type society and she is getting an offer to be an apprentice basically in that society and her real goal is she wants to find out what happened to her brother i think the world building in this is super fun i really liked the themes of this this is actually a lot about class in a way that i thought was really age-appropriate and digestible for a middle-grade audience like i really liked the way he incorporated those themes intellectually this is something i really just enjoyed and admired but also i just felt like emotionally he really hit the plot beats i wanted him to hit i think the magic was pretty cool or like the speculative elements were pretty cool and the way that this ends i am so excited for the sequel because i think that this this series could go some really interesting places i would say i like this better than i like nevermoor which i feel like was buzzier but i think that this is a very similar kind of story and i think that this is better or at least i liked it better yeah i just i really i really really like this it's also had like some humorous moments in it like it had a nice kind of overall vibe and tone like the sort of world the presence of the author and like kind of how he's telling the story in this really worked for me yeah i just really i really did enjoy this a lot this is making me think maybe i should go ahead and bump this up to a four and a half because i did really like this uh i'll leave it as a four for now but this was really really good and i'm very excited for the sequel so i think that that will do it for me on what i read in november definitely let me know how your reading went for the month of november what you liked what you didn't like et cetera et cetera let me know that in the comments below let me know if you read any of the books i talked about and what you thought about them you can also let me know that and yeah i think that that will do it for this video so if you enjoyed it please like subscribe follow me on the social medias if you are so inclined i have all that information listed in the description box below and i think that that will do it i hope you're having an absolutely lovely day today and i will just talk to you soon bye you

Channel: bookslikewhoa

Views: 4,316

Keywords: books, reading, booktube, literature

Id: 5Nki708YlJY

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021