Read in December

Hi guys, I'm so sorry I just disappeared from the "best of 2018" thing I was doing. I came down with a very unpleasant stomach bug yesterday and needless to say, I wasn't feeling too hot so I didn't want to spend any time on the computer. But that's life, I guess! As I am feeling slightly better, I'm back on here with my summary of the books I read in December (sadly without a photograph, I read mainly ebooks or listened to audio books so I don't really have anything to accompany this post with, I'm afraid).

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# of books read: 8

- Mercury and Me by Jim Hutton
- Roam by CH Armstrong~
- And The Band Played On: Politics, People, And The AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts*^
- Murder on Christmas Eve: Classic Mysteries for the Festive Season by Cecily Gayford
- If The Fates Allow by [several authors] 
- Boy Erased: A Memoir Garrard Conley
- This is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
- The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton*

~ denotes an ARC
* denotes an audio book

^ denotes a reread

Best book of the month: This was easily The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. A proper review is coming but I have to say it's a super original and cleaver and complicated read that leaves you hanging onto the page, waiting for what's to come. I felt like a part of it was slightly dragged out but that could be because I listened to it as an audio book and that version was like 17 hours.

Worst book of the month: Muder on Christmas Eve. I know it's partly my own fault because I rarely like mysteries but I still felt like not one of these stories caught my attention or made me want more, or to find out who did it, which I guess sort of the main thing in mysteries. 

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Happy new year! I hope 2018 was filled with lots of good things for you guys, and that 2019 will be even better for all of us! ❤ 

2018 in books: reading stats

Okay, who else is a sucker for stats? I love stats, all kinds of them. This is my attempt at looking back on my year in books and giving you the numbers of what I've read.

# of books read: 76

# of YA books: 39 (this is...definitely not as high as I thought it was going to be! Which to me is a good thing)

# of adult books: 35 (this really surprised me!)

# of nonfiction books: 5

# of comic books/graphic novels: 2

# of series I started: 12

# of series I finished: 3 (believe me, I know this is bad)

# of books I reread: 5

# of books written by a female author: 44 (definitely not too bad! This is so not an area I need to worry about, clearly) (also they would have been even more, had I decided to include books written by more than one author, which I did not).


Tomorrow I shall be posting a written post about my year in books where I try to summarize how I think 2018 was, so stay tuned!

2018 in books: 2018 releases that I've read

So, every year I sort of try to challenge myself to read more recently released books. I have a tendency to look a ton of books up on Goodreads and add all of them to my TBR, and then never reading them.

This year, I think I did okay when it comes to actually reading the books I added to my TBR. I read a total of 16 books that were released this year, and here's a list of them if you want to check any of these ones out.

1. Darius The Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
2. Meet Cute by [several authors]
3. I'll Be Gone In The Dark by Michelle McNamara
4. Girl Made of Stars by Ashely Herring Blake 
5. Perfect Harmony by Emily Albright 
6. The Law of Inertia by S Gonzales 
7. The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis
8. The Boys Who Danced With The Moon by Mark Paul Oleksiw
9. Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh 
10. The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson 
11. A Position in Paris by Megan Reddaway 
12. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli 
13. Paper Girls, vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan
14. What If It's Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli 
15. The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding 
16. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

2018 in books: the top five worst books I read

So, sometimes you're unlucky enough to come across books that you don't end up liking. Sadly, this was the case for me on some occasions this year. I shall be listing the top five worst offenders down below, and as per usual, in no particular order.

Also, before I get started, please note that just because I disliked something, doesn't mean it's bad. These are just my opinions.

Enjoy!

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1. Jerkbait by Mia Siegert.

This might just be one of the worst books I've ever read. I wanted to like it because finally a YA book that deals with homophobia in sport, but then it turned out to be a hot mess so yeah, I'm not about that life. There's so many things wrong with this book, I can't be bothered listing all of them here. However, if you want to read my full review of this book, you can find it here.

2. Coins in the Coffee Cup by Ambriehl Khalil.
I sadly never wrote a more in depth review of this book when I first read it, but I remember this being a homophobic hot mess that also totally failed at handling the topic of mental illness, and mental illness was like, the whole point of this book. 

3. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

This read like a badly written knock off Harry Potter fanfic, and there was literally nothing about this book that caught my attention at all. I know this book is very popular among book bloggers, but I honestly just didn't feel this one at all.

4. Nattsagor för sömnlösa by Johanna Wester

Everyone acted like an idiot and I felt like this book tried too hard at being edgy. Also it contained no real plot.


5. A Position in Paris by Megan Reddaway.

The first ARC I ever received, but sadly this one bored me a lot and I didn't feel the romance at all. 

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Stay tuned for the next installment, where we'll talk about something more happy than we did today!

❤

2018 in books: best adult lit of the year

Hi guys, it's time for the second installment in my series where I wrap up my 2018 in books and today I'm going to talk about the best adult literature I've read during the year. As per last time, this list isn't in any stort of order. Okay anyway, here we go!

* Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Okay, who doesn't know this book? I'm pretty sure everyone knows it so I won't go into detail about the plot or anything, but sometimes I'm just a sucker for classic romances.

* The Girls by Emma Cline

This book might annoy lots of readers half to death; however, I really did like it. It features female friendship, a cult, and the 1960s, plus a beautiful, flowery language. Again, right up my alley. However, this definitely isn't for everyone. 

* The Secret History by Donna Tarrt

This is another really famous book and it'd surprise me if there's anyone out there who hasn't read this book. This is a classic....not a whodunit, but rather a whydunit. Set in a circle of upper class people at a small liberal arts college in New England, this book follows a charismatic professor, his students and the events leading up to a murder. This book was perfection and I devoured it so quickly.

* Christodora by Tim Murphy

This is another novel that's set in New York City where the East Village is as much a character as the actual characters. Spanning between the 1980s and the 2020s, this is a beautifully written tale of both a city and its people. It has a lot of LGBT elements to it, of course, hence why I ended up reading it. It's not a very well known book but it's definitely worth the read.


* Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

Do you like London, scary stuff and/or fantasy elements? Then this book is a book for you. This book starts off with someone being decapitated by Covent Garden and it goes from there. What I really liked about this book was how flat out scary it was, and also how the city of London literally was a part of this book. I'm going to continue this series in 2019!

* Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh

This book is the fifth installment in the Trainspotting series; if you liked the other parts you will like this one. It delivers exactly what it promised and I really enjoyed revisiting this series.


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That's it for today, guys! Stay tuned for the post tomorrow, I bet you're going to love it.

❤

2018 in books: best YA lit of the year

Hi guys! I'm here with the first installment of my reviews of 2018, this time with a list of the best YA books I read in 2018. I picked my top 7, because I basically chose every YA book I've read this year and that I've given a rating of 4 or higher (which is basically a sign that I've liked a novel).

Without further ado, here goes my list (not in order though, don't make me choose between my babies!).

* Darius The Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

In this novel by debute author Adib Khorram, you're following gay American-Iranian teenager Darius, who travels to Iran to visit is dying grandfather. This poignant tale is a coming-of-age book, but it's also about coming to term with your identity, finding your place and realizing who you are. I really enjoyed this, mainly because Darius was the most wholesome character ever who made me laugh a lot. Bonus points go to the dancing fan!


* Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

What do you get if you mix equal parts girl power, Dolly Parton and body positivity? You get this book! In this novel, you're following Dolly Parton-crazy teenager Willowdean, who, as a fat teenager enters a beauty pageant in her small Texas town. This is a tale of family, of identity. This was such a positive, light story that put a smile on my face and I really, really enjoyed this! It might not be the most deeply moving book of all time, but I really, really liked it for what it was.


* The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock 

In this novel, which is set in small town Alaska in the 1970s, you're following a group of teenagers. You're following a mix of white and Native teens. This is a very slow, character driven tale of a disadvantaged small town and is more a slize of life than anything else, really. I rememeber it being very beautiful and I read it really slowly, hanging onto every single word because I didn't want this book to end.


* Lean on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli 

Leah Burke is bisexual, fat and snarky, which I too am. I'd been looking forward to this book for a really long time because I really loved Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, and this did not disappoint in the slightest. I really liked how we got a completely different image of Leah in this book; I also really, REALLY enjoyed this romance.


* Spellbook Of The Lost And Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Set against the backdrop of smallown Ireland, in this novel you're following a group of teenagers living in said small town.  People start losing small things, and soon it's apparent something bigger is involved in this than just bad luck. I read this book very early in the year which unfortunately means I don't really remember too much of it, other than that I remember liking the magic system a lot and also the writing was gorgeous.


* The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

In this dark tale of mental illness, you follow two boys. Are they friends? More than friends? Who knows. At points in this book you lose track of what's real and what's a delusion, and that is really scary. You're falling headfirst into madness, and while this book is very claustrophobic it's very beautiful too and very worth the read.


* The Sidekicks by Will Kostakis

In this novel by an Australian author, you're following the lives of three boys after the only thing they had in common - their best friend - disappeared. Their best friend died in an accident on a boat and all that's left for them now is trying to move on with their lives and trying to find out who they are without his. As is often the case with Aussie YA lit, this book deals with grief and death in a very complex way and I found this novel to be a hidden gem.


So here's my top YA novels I've read this year! Stay tuned for the second installment tomorrow....❤

PSA

Here's a public service announcement to you all: starting tomorrow, December 25 (i.e. Christmas day), I'll start summarizing my year in books! What were the best books I read during the year? What 2018 releases ended up on my bookshelf?  These stats will be announced through daily blog posts, lasting between December 25 - December 31. Stay tuned to find out more!

Until then: HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Review: If The Fates Allow

TITLE: If The Fates Allow

AUTHOR: [several]

RELEASE DATE: December 1st 2017

RATING: ★★★½

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As ever, I'm struggling with rating something that's a collection of short stories. I rarely rate these books higher than a three star because there's always that one story that brings the rating down and sadly, that was the case with this book too. Still, this is a wholesome collection of LGBT themed romance holiday shorts, which I really enjoyed.

1. Gracious Living Magazine Says It Has To Be a Live Tree - ★★

This story very much requires you to have read a certain book before you read the short story; I hadn't read it, which really showed because the story felt fragmented and I honestly didn't really understand what was going on. I sort of question the decision to include a story such as this in a collection of short stories, but oh well. I guess I would have enjoyed this had I read that book before I read this story.

2. True North - ★★★★½

God, this one hit me hard. Black lesbians? In a small town for Christmas? There's sports involved, and beautiful love too? Second chance romance and rekindling an old crush? Just ship me off to the morgue, please. I LOVED this, the only complaint I had was that I wish this would have been turned into a full legth story.

3. Last Call At The Casa Blanca Bar and Grill - ★★

Honestly, this bored me slightly and I still don't get the ending fully. However, the writing was pretty and it did work well as a short story.

4. Halfway Home - ★★★★

Lesbians, and dogs? Right up my alley in every possible way! This was very cute and Aubrey is honesly me whenever I see a pretty girl. Honestly, this was so cute!

5. Shelved - ★★★
I reconize myself in Katarina's uslessness upon seeing pretty girls (are you seeing a pattern here?) and I really related to her; however, while I definitely am all for seeing older LGBT characters find love, I'd appreciated it if this story would have focused on Katarina and Hailey because their romance never got to grow into its full potential in my opinion. 

'Tis the season to be jolly!

Season's greetings to you all! 

With Christmas approaching fast, I thought it high time to recommend some Christmas novels to you all. Maybe this isn't as much a "Ida recommending books I personally enjoyed reading" as a "Ida recommending all Christmas related books I've ever read" type of post, but oh well. There aren't many Christmas related novels that sound interesting to me, hence my lack of reading them. The ones I've read, I shall summarize for you below. Happy reading!

Almost Midnight by Rainbow Rowell

This one features two cute short holiday stories that also appear in other anthologies, so please be aware of that if you want to read it. 

I'll Be Home For Christmas by several authors

In this collection of Christmassy shorts, you're reading about British teens, many of them dealing with hardships of some kind. While I personally really liked this one, if you're looking for something cute and fluffy, this isn't it!

Sock It To Me, Santa! by Madison Parker 

This is a cute, fluffy novella featuring two gay characters which I rememer aaaaw-ing over, a lot.

My True Love Gave To Me by Stephanie Perkins

Another collection of cute, fluffy stories that I remember really liking!

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green

I didn't really like this one, I remember finding the stories irritating, but if you're a fan of John Green, you're going to love this one!

This year I'm reading two collections of short stories for Christmas; Murder on Christmas Eve and If Fates Allow. I decided not to include them on this list since I technically haven't read them yet. I'll be reading and reviewing them this season though, meaning the reviews will be up on here soon.

Merry Christmas! xoxo

Review: Roam [ARC]

TITLE: Roam

AUTHOR: C.H. Armstrong

RELEASE DATE: February 5th 2019

RATING: ★★★

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E-ARC kindly provided by the publisher.

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When it comes to contemporary YA lit, the books that deal with more difficult topics tend to be my favorite ones. When I saw this novel on Netgalley, I couldn't not ask for it because the topic sounded very interesting to me.

The main topic in this book is homelessness and how it can happen to everyone. Abby Lunde used to be your average teenage girl until her mom and her stepdad lost their jobs and their stepdad relocated the whole family to Rochester, MN. Abby is enrolled in a new high school, her litttle sister starts a new elementary school and in many ways, it's like your average family relocating to a new city. Except, in the case of the Lunde family, Abby's family splits their time between homeless shelters and sleeping in their van. Their meals are eaten at soup kitchens and they shower and brush their teeth at the local Wallmart. Meanwhile, Abby tries to and desperately wants to be your average teen. Being a teenager means trying to fit into your school, finding friends, finding love, dealing with drama, all kinds of different things that get a billion times more trying when at the same time, you have to try to hide every single aspect of your life outside of school.

I'm going to start this review off by saying that this book is badly needed; I've read quite a lot of YA in my days but I've never encountered a novel that deals with homelessness in this way. I think a novel like this is needed because there are a lot of teens dealing with similar situations out there in real life, and I believe it's important to see your life situation reflected in books and on TV. I really liked how this author let Abby be a normal teenager, coming from a family just like everybody else's, just to show that this can happen to anyone. In many ways, Abby's family doesn't really have any social problems, there's no abuse in their family, and their homelessness is largely due to bad luck and misfortune, which shows just how this can happen to everybody. While I am glad that this book deals with such a heavy topic, I wish the balance between Abby dealing with her homelessness and Abby dealing with her life at school would have been more even. Abby's life at school takes up the majority of this novel, and I definitely think that her homelessness could have been dealt with more.

I found this book very pleasant to read, the writing flowed nicely and I teared up at the last chapter; seeing everything come together in this novel was very moving, God knows this family deserved that. There were passages in this book that made me all smoochy, I especially loved Abby and her friend's dynamics and their jokes. I also loved Josh.

While I did enjoy this book, there were aspects of this book that I felt very slightly simplified or over the top. For one, some characters seemed a bit one dimensional. Yes, Trish, I'm looking at you. I get the point of her character and I feel like she could have been less straight up mean and have more to her character while achieving the same things still. I also felt like the fact that everyone at her last school up and left her because her mom was having an affair was a bit too...simple. It didn't seem entirely believable to me. I know Abby's a teenager and living in a hard situation, but parts of her behavior made me not care for her all that much, always. She too was straight up rude to people - her mom in particular, and while I get her reasons for doing that, I still felt like she was way out of line on several different occasions. Lastly, her romance with Zach felt like it lacked something. I think my problem with this is that Zach and Abby pretty much had feelings for each other the second or third time they met, and they were an item after having known each other for only three weeks. I like my romance to have a long build up, but I know not everyone will be bothered by this. 

All in all, this was a good book. I felt for Abby and her family throughout this book. I think this book would make a good book for required reading at high schools because it deals with a difficult topic that's seldomly touched upon in YA, while also being light and easy enough to attract teenaged readers!

Review: What If It's Us

TITLE: What If It's Us

AUTHOR: Adam Silvera & Becky Albertalli

RELEASE DATE: October 9th 2018

RATING: ★★½

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Now, it's been a long time since I last was super excited about the release of a book and even longer still since I followed the process leading up to the release of a book as closely as I did this book. The reason why I was so hyped is because: BECKY and ADAM. They're both two of my fave authors of all time (Adam's books being more hit or miss with me than Becky's, I got to admit) and a book featuring both these authors? HECK YES.

Unfortunately for me, this book was somewhat of a let down. In this book, which is written in the way that every second chapter features the perspective of one of these characters, you're following the love story of Arthur and Ben as it blooms. Ben (written by Adam Silvera), is a native to New York; he's Puerto Rican, openly gay and having just broken up with his ex boyfriend, he's in a bit of a state at the moment. He's in summer school this summer in order for him not to have to repeat his junior year. One day at the post office, where he's gone to mail some stuff he got from his ex to his ex, he runs into Arthur, a boy from Georgia who's doing a summer internship with his mother's law firm. Onwards from here, we begin the main plot of this novel, which is the love that naturally grows between Ben and Arthur from there.

I have several things I want to say about why I didn't particularly enjoy this novel. However, this is not a bad book; it just happened to contain a lot of things I didn't and don't enjoy in my books. I'm going to try and list these things; however, I have a feeling I've forgotten about some of the reasons.

1. The ridiculousness of this whole novel; I know it's basically a novel form of a romantic comedy but everything is just too much for me. Everything's so very dramatic and over the top and this book suffers from something I've noticed a lot in novels (and movies) lately, namely that it's so over the top, it makes their love story and New York seem like a dreamland and not like reality. For example, the whole search for each other was just a bit too much as was the "lets sing songs from musicals in public!".

2. The ridiculousness of the drama. I won't go into details about how over the top it was, but the characters had huge falling outs and ended up breaking up over something that wasn't very major at all, I literally rolled my eyes so many times because a lot of these issues could have been salved, had the characters known how to talk to each other. And that's is probably my least favorite angsty trope of all time.

3. This book was too long and could easily have been cut down by at least 100 pages.

4. The ridiculous way books have their characters tell their parents everything. Literally everything! Which might be heatlhy, who knows, but it makes me cringe so hard.

5. These authors usually manage to get teenagers very well in their books but somehow this novel sounded like two adults trying to get down with the kids (or like someone on tumblr trying to and failing at being funny, which is prettty much sounding the same as adults trying to be down with the kids).

So, it pains me to say I didn't particularly enjoy this book; however, this is nearly 100% due to the fact that this book is packed with my bookish pet peeves (I guess this is a reminder to myself to make a blog post listing those?) which made it difficult for me to thoroughly enjoy it. However, this book is definitely enjoyable for a certain type of reader and I know a lot of people are going to love this!

To be read in December

oh crap I just realized I forgot to actually take a picture of my TBR and now I can't bother getting up doing it, so now you'll just have to deal~

Hi guys! I know I'm technically a day late with this TBR, I usually post it on the 1st. I guess my excuse is that yesterday was crazy busy and so was the day before that so while that is a recurring theme on this blog, at least I managed to be here now!

Okay, time to get serious. This month is December. December hopefully means some time off work, which in turn would mean time off. Which is a serious yes! Because that also means I'll have time to read more than usual. Therefor my TBR this month will be a bit more optimistic than it usually is; I won't be mad if I don't succeed in reading all these books but one can dream, right?

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# of adult lit books: 4(5)
# of YA lit books: 1(2)
# of books I own: 6
# of library books: 0



- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

For me, the holidays equals reading classics. I've been meaning to read more of Jane Austen's novels, so this is what I'll (hopefully) be doing during this holiday season!


- Mercury and Me by Jim Hutton

This is a biography on Freddie Mercury by his boyfriend that I started last month but never got around to finish (I'm 20% into it according to my Kindle) and I hope to finish it this month.


- And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts

This is a non-fiction about the AIDS epidemic in the US; I've read it before but I decided to get it as an audio book because it was cheap. I have something like 20 hours left (it is a huge book...!) of it, but I'm hoping to finish it this month.

- Roam by C.H. Armstrong [E-ARC]

I 'asked' to be granted this ARC on Netgalley (as opposed to requested it, since it wasn't available in Sweden) and I got approved for it! I'm actually really looking forward to reading this. All I know about it is that I remember really liking the premise and that it's about a girl who's made homeless until her stepfather takes her and her family in? I don't really know that much about it; however, the existing reviews of it sound good.

- Murder On Christmas Eve by [several authors]

This is a collection of mystery short stories that I got given for Christmas last year and figured I shall be reading it this year. I'm personally not much for mysteries but I hope to be pleasantly surprised by this because I love everything Christmas!

- Any Christmas novel

I have a long list of Christmas themed novels that I want to read on Goodreads and I figured I might just splurge and get one the week before Christmas or something because I love me a nice Christmas story.