I read 14 books in November... let's talk about it | READING WRAP UP | bookmas day 3📚❄️

You guys know I have been obsessed with A Song to Drown Rivers since I read it like two years ago.

So, it wasn't the perfect read for me, but I am still very, very excited to continue in the series. Again, I do love her characters, I love the overall story, and I've heard the third and fourth book get real intense.

There are some fun twists that catch you off guard as you continue to read. It's really a format that has been done over and over and over again, but sort of reimagined, so it doesn't feel exactly copy and paste compared to other books in the same genre.

It was light because we're following this childlike character. We have a little bit more whimsy in the perspective. I really enjoy some of the quirky parts of her character.

But you guys convinced me to continue on in the series, and Golden Son and Morning Star were definitely both worth it.

Definitely something different to what I normally read, something that is more gory, something that is more just general horror, but I really, really loved this read. I thought it was really, really good.

Like, we didn't get into the meat of things, but it was cute. It was fun to read. It was a nice, lovely half an hour of my life.

I've been finding Katherine Center third act conflicts to be really absurd lately with this and with The Love Haters, but in a good way because the worst thing in a romance book for me is a third act conflict that doesn't make sense and is based truly just on miscommunication, on not talking to each other.

And with books like Mistborn, it didn't really work with me because I feel like those stories were trying to be a little bit more mature, but written in a younger way.

But this was another five-star read this month. It was perfect. It was so good.

I love complex characters. I love morally gray characters. And that was done so well in Red City.

But I am overall just so glad that I continued to read this series past the first book because like Red Rising was just okay for me. Like, it was just average.

I also think The Academy setting was done so well. We really nailed light academia I think. It felt very intimate.

But yeah, throughout the story like outside of the romance which I think was done wonderfully, the romance really I think to me portrayed an actual believable case of fake dating.

This was beautiful. It is so rich in culture. The writing is beautiful.

I really loved this story for the whimsical feeling magical world and also for the unique pace of storytelling.

My one major thing about this book, why it wasn't a five-star, was some of the pacing felt a little clunky. Our three different POVs went on such different trajectories at such different paces that at points, flipping from one POV to the other felt very clunky to me.

I would still recommend because yeah, I think the themes of this book are very important to read about, but it didn't like hit me hard in the gut the way I thought it would.

I thought the atmosphere in this book to be wonderful. The banter was wonderful. But I will say my one major reason why this book wasn't like a four or five-star to me is that outside of the fun silly banter, I honestly did not feel a lot of romantic build-up in this book.