Reviewing EVERYTHING I Read in Spring

hi everyone welcome back to my channel for what i predict to be a rather long video for i am here today to review for you every single book that i read in spring so you may have noticed that i haven't done a reading wrap up since the very beginning of march when i wrapped up february i've just had a little bit less time to film so i've had to prioritize what i'm going to film and i thought rather than filming three separate wrap-ups for march april and may i would bring them all together and review all the books we hear in my spring wrap up so there are 14 books and that is why i suspect this is going to be a long one but i will try to spend more time on the books that i haven't talked about in other videos than the ones that perhaps have featured in vlogs and any relevant vlogs where i read the books will be linked down below so without further ado let's get into the 14 books i read across march april and may so if we travel right back to the beginning of march i do believe that these first few books were books that i read in my finish-a-thon vlog so my vlog for the finish-a-thon read-a-thon which is all about finishing books you've already started however it feels like such a long time ago i can't remember what i said in that video the first book that i have to talk about is bloodlust and bonnets by emily mcgovern this is actually a graphic novel comic book comical historical queer story it's all of those things we have some recognizable historical figures like lord byron but then an entirely fictional protagonist named lucy who is good friends with byron and is also potentially interested in joining up with a league of vampires so byron thinks they're off to slay the vampires lucy however thinks she might want to join the vampires because it will allow her all this freedom as a woman in society that she's not typically allowed and they then end up banding together with another adventurer who is pretty gruff and disinterested and perhaps has a lot of secrets and lucy develops feelings for her so like i said we've got queer elements it's very very funny i love the illustrations emily mcgovern has a very very unique striking style and it works really well for the tone of this novel i love what she did with references to sort of goth not gothic but romantic literature of the era like with lord byron and playing on the tropes of of that kind of literature in that time period that was such good fun and i did find myself laughing out loud although i think maybe overall the graphic novel could have been a little bit shorter it's quite chunky there's a lot of text and that can definitely be a good thing but just in terms of the narratives some of it seemed maybe a little bit unnecessary so like for me it could have been condensed a little bit and that might have been what pushed it to be that five star but overall i still really very much enjoyed it and would read more by emily mcgovern in the future we then have an absolute five-star read however and that is pain and prejudice a call to arms for women and their bodies by gabrielle jackson so this is a non-fiction title and it is a non-fiction title that specifically deals with um the sort of ingrained sexism within uh the medical community and medical studies that affects women's health up until today so we have a little bit of history in this book we have a little bit of discussion around things like hysteria and the way that women's mental health conditions women's physical pain was all treated very differently to men's and separate diagnoses were always sort of looked for in order to sort of explain the way that women felt and then also the way that women's symptoms were often overlooked because we are so used to um attributing the symptoms are more prominent in um men to certain conditions so one of the things i learned from this book is that although we quite often associate things like heart conditions and heart attacks with men in society it's actually something that is just as much a danger to women but the symptoms um and the repercussions of that are often quite different then of course there is the topic of how women often have a longer lifespan typically than men but they also are more likely to live with chronic pain and that chronic pain is often overlooked and dismissed and that dates all the way back to the idea of hysteria and women sort of making it up so it looks about so it very much looks at the practical aspects of how women's pain has been dealt with differently by the medical profession and how that still um trickles down till today i'm sure a lot of you are aware of how difficult for example it is to get an endometrosis diagnosis um and that is because of the lack of studies concerning a lot of conditions are common among women now now do you think it's important to mention though that the book does acknowledge when it discusses women it is predominantly talking about cis women because it's talking about very specific aspects of certain body types um and that there is obviously lots of issues within the treatment of like trans women's health because in no way implying that there is a certain like biological prerequisite to being women it's just looking at the way that the association between um certain conditions and certain body types with women has led them to be lesser um examined and i felt like i learned a lot from this book it's one that i listen to an audio book but i really want to get in physical copy because i think i'd love to look back on those large swathes of the book that deal with um periods um and like i said endometriosis and the menopause and these are all things i want to continue to interact with and i know will still be relevant to me and i also found it very encouraging in terms of um speaking up myself about my own conditions and not letting my voice be sort of dismissed and by medical professionals as sometimes it has been i um struggle with cervical ectropia which is something that it took such a long time to um have diagnosed and and there was just like a lot of struggles surrounding and i still feel like i'm learning a lot about and i think it's really good to talk about these things and this is a book that really encourages discussion of these things and but also to sort of make sure that you are not um being overlooked because you're women that your pain is not being dismissed because you're women it was really really interesting i would highly recommend it lastly i believe for that vlog i finished when no one is watching by alyssa cole this is a thriller slash horror novel there's definite horror tones within the novel a lot of people have compared it to get out which i haven't seen but i really really need to and i did love us so i'm sure i'm going to love get out and i really enjoyed when no one is watching so again probably will really really enjoy it i think it's also been compared to rear window is that what the film's called and i think the actual rear window element of this book is very very minor that sort of observing people from across the street through your window is kind of tiny in comparison to a lot of the other elements in this book but it is a thriller horror that very much explores um gentrification and racism in the modern world particularly in a um subsection of the us but it is an issue that i think applies to um a lot of states and a lot of countries so very very relevant and touches on very important themes in our real world but it's also just a very compelling thriller narrative with a hint of romance now alyssa cole is best known as a romance writer this is her first thriller novel and um she adds a little bit of that romance that she is um known for writing to the book but it still feels as though it's focused on the thriller elements and i actually don't mind quite like even a little bit of romance or a relationship that builds up during the process of a thriller i think that's quite a fun um sort of side narrative to follow as it goes on so i really enjoyed this book and i would highly recommend it i don't know if it's one where you necessarily can't predict the ending but it's one that has you questioning yourself and it's one that has you looking at the world around you and it's one that's full of lots of like jumps and small surprises as you follow on the narrative so you really turn those pages we then have the book which was the first book club read that my patreon supporters and i am picked to read and discussed over on my patreon which is jane steele by lindsay faye this is a historical novel inspired by jane eyre so it's not a direct retelling of jane eyre jane eyre is a book that exists within this novel and it's actually a book that our protagonist jane steele reads but draws a lot of parallels to in her own life she can identify where she has had a lot of overlap in her experiences with jane eyre but how she's handled them very differently because unlike jane eyre there's a lot of murder in this book jane steele may end up committing a few murders of men that put her or her friends in danger men who exploit young women and it's interesting because i feel like this book is often sold as a bit of a serial killer narrative but i don't think it is um every sort of death in this book is explained by circumstances and yes it's an interesting way for jane steele to handle her situation but she doesn't go around seeking people to kill um and that's probably what makes it also a more sympathetic novel for readers and i really enjoyed that i really enjoyed those parallels to jane eyre looking um at perhaps some of the more sexist um overtones of jane eyre that aren't as explored in detail in the original novel and as much as i enjoyed the sort of uh replacement mr rochester i also really enjoyed that it retained what i feel is jane eyre's agency in the character of jane steele so it's a really fun book that interacts really interestingly with jane eyre i wasn't like 100 sold on some of the revelations at the end but overall i thought it was a fantastic book and i loved the way it was written i felt like the writing was perfect for the era it was set in we then have blanche on the lam by barbara neely so this book i did actually review in much more detail in my reading kindle unlimited vlog so i won't spend much time on it here and i'll have that vlog linked down below if you want to see the unfolding of my reactions but it was a good fun sort of mystery novel it's about women blanche who in the early 90s has been convicted of like not paying some charges that she's behind on paying and it's sort of the last strike so she's about to be incarcerated for a period of time although i don't think it's very long but she's also aware of the sort of racial injustices within the prison system so in a panic flees runs away and decides to go on the lamb as it were she was already scheduled to take up a job as a maid in a household for like a sort of week getaway this rich family have this other house and they needed somebody to come and help them for the weekend so she decides to do that in order to get her money and sort of set about making a plan for herself and she knows that um it's far enough away from the courthouse that she won't be found but when she gets to this house it appears like there is something amiss and something going on that isn't quite as it should be so she ends up pulled in to solving the mystery like this plotline isn't always that believable in this book i really like the character of bland i think she is such a strong fully rounded and fully realized character and she is what holds the book together but the plot and the mystery is sort of middling if that makes sense so the book as a whole is fun to read in terms of blanche's story but it's not necessarily a book that i would recommend to go and read because you want a really compelling mystery if that makes sense then we have hollow pox which is book three in the trials of morrigan cruel by jessica townsend this is a middle grade series that you've probably heard everyone wax lyrical about at this point because it's had tons of hype both from younger and older readers and i very much agree with the hype i adore this series it's like a five star series for me it's one of the middle grade cities i've enjoyed the most as an adult i think it still has tons to offer adult readers although it is obviously excellent for children as well there is just so much world building to this series so many characters so many sort of fun layers to sink your teeth into that it all really comes together and you get completely absorbed in the mystery in terms of the plot this one i can't say too much without spoiling the previous two books but what i loved is that i feel like at the beginning in particular the author really picked up on some of those darker themes that she hinted at in book two one of the things that surprised me about book two compared to book one was there was a lot of dark moments like there was some serious and dark moments in book two and i felt like there was some really serious and dark moments in book three and also some very creepy imagery i swear if jessica townsend chose to write adult horror i would be the first to pre-order that book because there is so much potential in her writing to create a really creepy atmosphere and she does it in a very child appropriate way in her children's books but like i said i can see the potential for her to write adult horror if she ever chose to these books are tons of fun they're about morrigan crow um a young girl who is cursed uh to die on her 11th birthday but is instead whisked away to the magical world of never mirror where she has to take part in these trials in order to become part of the wondrous society and you have to have a special skill to become part of this wondrous society but she doesn't understand why she's being chosen or what her special skill is and how much later in the book so i won't give that away however great great fun we then have trick by natalia jaster this is the first in the foolish kingdom series which isn't is not a historical fantasy series i expected this to be fantasy but it doesn't actually have any magic it feels like a fantasy world of four kingdoms we have the spring court the summer court the autumn court in the winter court we have this medieval-esque sort of world building we have this interesting political system but no magic so i just think that's worth bearing in mind however i don't think it takes away from the book at all i think it gives you a lot of those fantasy vibes if you like reading that kind of fantasy but without there being any magic just it's sort of set in another world uh it is also a romance novel and we have two protagonists in this book we have poet who is the court jester at the spring court and then we have our princess from the autumn court who is currently visiting the supreme court with her mother at first their relationship is a bit of an antagonistic one they um definitely rub each other up the wrong way but they're also very curious about the other one and they end up learning more about each other than either of them ever expected to and being drawn into one another's lives and poet has secrets that he doesn't want anyone to know about but ends up having to share them with our princess and through that they bond and they find in one another a kindred soul and i really enjoy the development of their relationship and their romance and through their relationship they also become embroiled in trying to right the wrongs of their kingdoms because this is set in a world where there is very very heavy discrimination and forced servitude of people and with learning difficulties and specific types of disabilities so i do want to set so i do want to let you know that ahead of time that there are sort of slurs used in this book and it can be very difficult to read about the treatment of people who are different in this world but the overarching plot of the series as i believe it's going to carry on is that the author is setting out to overturn these injustices and that this is very much painted as terrible and it is something that needs to be opposed so just to let you know that that is in there if you don't want to read it because it's a very strong part of the story but myself i'm really interested to read the future books in the series and um see how everything unfolds both for our characters but also for the rest of the world we're halfway there that's seven out of 14 so book number eight is katherine house by elizabeth thomas this is a dark academia book with very mixed ratings but i actually really enjoyed this one it very very much reminded me of only ever yours by louise o'neill and i feel like it's a combination of the secret history and only every years with a little bit of the stepford wives and madame by phoebe wynn a lot going on there but really really compelling and beautifully written but very dark at the same time it is set at this schools it's set at this college this university in the us for the elite of the elite you have to be very special to get in to this college and our protagonist is a young woman who's just started her first year there she has had something happened to her recently which we know happened but don't know what happened so we know something's happened to her but we don't know exactly what it is but he has led her to sort of flee her life to run away from her life and start afresh and a new at this university but she's also very much in as a spiral of depression at the beginning of this book and that affects um her experiences and the way that she interacts with this university but as things slowly unfold for her during her time there we follow her entire three years at this university we also learn more and more about the secrets of this university and there's like a slight sci-fi element there this university has a reputation for conducting experiments that should have been banned but perhaps they're still going on again i won't say anymore because this is a mystery you don't want to know more than uh the book sets you up for at the beginning but it's a really really interesting one really dark and i actually found it um quite a compelling page turner now there is three sections in this book year one year two and year three i definitely think here's one and your three are much more compelling and it has a little bit of a lag in the middle which reminds me somewhat of the secret history because that for me was a book that slumped somewhat um in the middle but picked back up again at the end so i definitely think it is one that's worth persevering with we then have the drowning eyes by emily foster which i read for my reading the lowest rated books on my tbr video and i enjoyed this one again it's not like the best tour novella as this is part of the tour sff novella series but it's not a bad book it's definitely well written and had to be interested enough in the author's writing to check out more by her in the future it does perhaps try to fit too much in to a short narrative though and have too many perspectives i think with novellas it's very hard to maintain multiple perspectives and this book perhaps could have done with just being one sole perspective and that's i think what would have made the big difference in it it is about this uh young woman however that is a weather maid she can control the weather and she is on a mission she is sort of on a secret mission that ends her up on this ship with this group of sailors who need money so end up taking her money in order to transport her up the river but that also ends up embroiling them in her secret mission it's a short fantasy novella so i don't want to say more than that because it would pretty much give away everything that happens especially interesting and i loved the magic system in particular in this book i loved the magic system and i thought it had a really excellent sort of balance between light and dark and the way that it could be a little bit gritty and dangerous so that was very very fun i just kind of wish it had been one perspective solely i then read another novella which was a historical romance set in the early 1900s and that was how to talk to nice english girls by gretchen evans this one pretty much delivers exactly what it says it's going to on the 10. it is an early 1900s romantic is an early 1900s romance novel but it's also a queer romance novel about two women so it's an ff romance which is something that i'm always looking for more of because there just seems to be far fewer of them than compared to fm romances and even mm romances this one was just a lot of fun it was light and fluffy and cheerful about these two women that come together that match well together that start a new life together and it's not particularly dramatic nothing particularly dire happens i was kind of waiting for something dramatic to happen but it's not really that kind of novel it's just a nice romance novel about two women in the early 1900s and therefore i don't think i can say anything more about it it will probably put a smile on your face because i just had to take a little break and go get a glass of water because we've been doing this for a while um so feel free to also pause and take a break but i am now going to review for you madam by phoebe wayne so i have talked about this book i think in some recent videos i really really enjoyed this book it is another dark academia book but it's a little bit different because this one follows a teacher so it's set in a high school in again the early 90s i feel like i've mentioned a few books or set in the early 90s in this video already um but it's set in a boarding school high school in rural scotland in the early 90s for the richest of the rich of british society the elite of the elite the daughters of the most important men of british society who have destinies set out before them by their parents and the school prepares them for that so we follow a classics teacher who has just gotten a job at this school it seems perfect they have an incredible reputation the pay is phenomenal but of course nothing is ever as it seems and it turns out that the school's purpose is much more nefarious than she might have first predicted and it's a book that very much interacts with both issues of sexism and classism it's really really interesting it plays on the tropes of the original sort of gothic novels but in a 90s setting at this elite boarding school where we have this teacher from the outside brought in to be completely taken aback by what's going on and also uncover the secrets of this school she's a classic teacher so there is lots of references to mythology and ancient history which i of course absolutely adore but i think the novel just as a whole is an absolute page turner with a really interesting narrative and writing style that i couldn't put down i'm super excited to read whatever phoebe win does next then i did read two books for a vlog in which i read books that had popular netflix adaptations so again i'm gonna try not dwell on them for too long but what i really enjoyed much to my surprise and what i enjoyed less than i expected to which was interesting the one that i enjoyed less than i was expecting to was the duke and i but julia quinn this is a historical regency romance this is a historical regency romance novel and the first in the bridgerton series so of course the inspiration for the bridgerton tv netflix series as well as the books and i love historical regency romances so as this is one of the few that's had a very well funded big popular tv adaptation i was really hoping for great things and i know it's a favorite for a lot of people because it's a little bit older so it's been around for a little bit longer but i really don't think it compares to a lot of the more recent regency romance novels like i think there is far better in this genre and i have a major reason for that and that is because of the tonal shift in the novel so this book feels like it comes in two parts the first half is light and fun and full of banter and witty repartee between our male and female lead whereas the second novel tries to become this very serious storyline and i don't mind serious in my regency romances but i want a consistent tone i don't want something to start off almost purely light and fluffy and funny to then attempt in the second half to become this much more serious novel because i think it's very jarring and then on top of that partly because i think that the tone is so different in the first half the serious stuff just doesn't work as well it's not done as well there's a really really poorly handled issue of consent and bad sex education of the time but that just results in a really horrible scene and a really massive betrayal of trust that i couldn't really get past and that was very disappointing i did like julia quinn's writing so particularly in the first half of the book however so i've not necessarily ruled out never reading anything by her again but the more i've sat with it the more i just feel like there are authors i far prefer particularly because of the way things was handled in the second half of the book but if you have read the duke and i and have read other books by julia quinn that you would rate more highly and recommend to me even if i didn't love the duke and i then do let me know because like i said i would be interested in trying her again i then read shadow and bone by leigh bardugo which is the one that surprised me because i tried to read this book a few years ago and could not get into it i found it very stereotypically catty female girl hate at the beginning but that is something that i feel but that is something i felt as the book progressed very much disappeared i feel like the book grew out of that and it was actually part of the protagonist's character growth so after i gave it the second shot and persevered by it so after i gave it the second shot and persevered with the story i was really impressed i thought it was great fun it very much reminded me of the hunger games in sort of characterization and uh pacing it's obviously not the same it's fantasy the hunger games is sci-fi but it it felt like that era of why and a good example of that era of ye i really like hunger games so i'm now planning on continuing on with this series after having dnf'd it the first time around which is super interesting and i do think all the hype are in the books and the tv series are what pushed me to try it again and i'm glad that i did i also think the book itself does such an incredible job of depicting abusive relationships um the manipulation within an abusive relationship the way that you can get um dragged down into sort of seeking out the best in someone who is actually treating you quite abusively and all that is done so well it's such a great analogy so given that that was something i thought was so well done in this book i do find it a little bit sad how much that abusive relationship is then romanticized online but i also kind of understand why because of the fact that we so often allow abusive relationships to continue in reality so is it any surprise that people have almost romanticized it in this book but that's something i definitely talk about in more detail in the video i filmed where i read these books and i don't think i have time to talk about in detail here however definitely much much better than i expected enjoyed it much much more than i was expecting to and definitely plan on continuing with the series the last book for this video however yes we have reached the final book is rules for an unmarried lady by wilma counts this is the first book i've ever read by wimbledon counts but i absolutely fell in love and definitely plan on reading more by her she's a regency romance author and i love when i uncover new favorite regency romance author is because i'm always on the hunt for more good ones this is book three in a series called once upon a bride but each book follows a different friend in a friendship group and because of the setting of this book it didn't actually in any way feel like i'd needed to have read books one and two because we're very much set away from the protagonist's friends and that part of her life because her sister and her brother-in-law have very recently died leaving their children parentless and she is their godmother so she goes to stay in their house to help take care of them along with her brother-in-law's brother so her sister has passed away as is her brother-in-law and she has gone to take care of the children as their aunt and their uncle has also come to take care of them and of course they fall in love it is super cute i love the development of their relationship but more than that i think this book beautifully explored grief and caring for loved ones in times of grief and supporting one another and um family and making up your family in um sort of unforeseen circumstances and again just like caring for one another and listening to one another and growing and learning with one another and i thought that was all so beautifully done i just found all the characters so endearing all the main characters both our male and female lead and all of the children as a group i just loved their dynamic and i felt like they just came together so perfectly loved this romance felt so involved in it so wrapped up in it so endeared to it i am so excited to read more about this author and i feel like i found a new favorite regency romance author so yes i'll definitely be reading more by wilma count in the future but those are all the books i read in march april and may all three months all 14 books i hope you have enjoyed listening to me talk more about them like i said there will be a bunch of vlogs linked down below if you want to see me read some of these books in real time and get my feedback that way but i'm also happy to talk more about them in the comments so feel free to ask any questions or leave any thoughts that you have down there even if you read and didn't like be excited like i still want to talk to you about them because i think these are all books that i would be very very much up for discussing in more depth so thank you in the meantime for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it happy reading and i'll see you again in the next one bye everyone

Channel: Jean Bookishthoughts

Views: 4,781

Rating: 4.9876924 out of 5

Keywords: booktube

Id: ycgNbCAo87U

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021