I *tried* to Read ALL of the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards Winners (January Wrap Up & February TBR)

i think a book like this which is quite short quite digestible it is written in such a way that you don't have to be a scientist to understand it but it lays out in very plain terms how bad it's going to get if we don't do something and then it helps us to feel empowered to be able to take those steps to do something to change the outcome and i think that's really powerful

despite the fact that i don't think i'm really the audience for this necessarily i did enjoy it i learned a lot it gave me some insight into how the american political system works in many different ways

it seemed pretty straightforward and concise but again i'm not a parent of a young child so i do not know if this would be appropriate for the age range it's targeting if it would be helpful or not

if you want more of that i would recommend michelle obama's memoir becoming which was incredible and i read that earlier in 2020

i really enjoyed both the invisible life of addy larue and black sun but i did enjoy the invisible life of eddie luru just a little bit more

one of the nominations on this list is probably my favorite romance i've ever read which is boyfriend material by alexis hall so that would have been my pick it is the one that i voted for and i would highly recommend it if you haven't read it

this book is very well written and well organized it is chock full of information it's really shifted my perspective on how the american system functions and developed over time

on the one hand i think this was so beautifully written the prose is gorgeous i think the message is really beautiful and there are moments that were incredibly touching but on the other hand it just felt like it was lacking something and i'm not sure what that is

there were a handful of poems in this collection that i liked but none blew me away and the vast majority i either didn't get or just made me feel nothing

all of those i enjoyed more than mexican gothic unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it

the only other book i've read of the nominees was felix ever after by case and calendar which i gave four stars i definitely was more impacted emotionally by felix ever after so that would be my vote in this category

i just found it predictable i found the characters very off-putting and not in a particularly interesting way it just didn't really grab me definitely not my favorite

what i really liked about this was that creepy gothic house tension i was looking over my shoulder constantly while listening to the audiobook of this one especially in those book within a book sections

when you combine that with the atrocious dialogue and awful pacing and bloated descriptions that don't actually tell you anything about the world the one-dimensional characters the weird forced romance the slut-shaming and objectification this book was a total mess and i wish i'd never read it

for me specifically the third in the trilogy keep going was the most relevant and the one that i found myself writing the most notes about it was definitely the most impactful for me out of the three

it's coming from a real person a real victim and there's no sensationalizing there's no exploitation of the assault it's done in a respectful way because it's written by the victim herself and she is being respectful to her own needs

lakewood and ring shout both got five stars they are definitely my two favorites from this list

the only other nominee i read in this category was me and white supremacy by laila f sod which i would also highly recommend i gave that one five stars as well

overall i just felt it was super disappointing it was not particularly scary there is some gruesome body horror which i would caution you about definitely not particularly scary but there are moments that are gross for sure but it just didn't do anything for me

migrations by charlotte mcconaughey which was not my favorite i gave it three stars i believe it was it was okay but not for me

of those i did not like the night swim or one by one

i tried to read oryx and crake back in 2020 and had to dnf it was not working for me

all of those i enjoyed more than mexican gothic unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it

you all know ray bearer was one of my favorite books of 2020 fantastic read

lakewood and ring shout both got five stars they are definitely my two favorites from this list ring shout by p jelly clark would be my pick for the horror category

i have read riot baby by toshi anyabushi and i also read hench by natalie zena walshotz and out of those two i preferred riot baby

i thought that this book was incredibly well done it is so informative and because it's a simplified version of a much more in-depth text it has so much information packed into such a small package and it is written in such a way that it is very approachable

i enjoyed this as an artist as a creative human being they're basically framed as a bunch of little anecdotes little pithy pieces of advice some of them i found helpful and interesting and you know worth writing down a lot of them were things that i've heard and you know nothing particularly new or exciting

i just found amira our main character was too flat and one-dimensional to really get to know her and root for her and all of the other characters were so extreme and unlikable that i just kind of felt lost and couldn't find a reason to keep reading and was constantly cringing by what was happening

the extraordinaries i liked as well but ray bear incredible

i read the handmaid's tale back in high school and very much disliked it

i know eddie lures hit or miss for people some people hate it some people love it i loved it i gave it five stars

so i loved this one and i gave it five stars as someone who's suffered from depression myself and loved people whose lives have been repeatedly touched by suicide this book really hit close to home and i felt very moved by it to tears many times

on the one hand i enjoyed the courtroom drama aspect of it i enjoyed the podcast element especially listening to it as an audiobook i felt that was pretty effective

all of those i enjoyed more than mexican gothic unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it

i really enjoyed the sequel as well i thought it was very interesting there's a lot of body horror and gore it's pretty gross but there's a really interesting exploration of identity and the definition of self and what makes one human

i gave the vanishing half five stars i thought it was absolutely fantastic it was so well done the use of the identical twins choosing such different paths is just such a clever way to identify the differences between how we're treated not even based on our actual race but just others perceptions of our race

i still gave it three stars as i said i love grgorovich and then the other two stars are because i found the premise really interesting i was really hooked at the beginning and i just enjoyed getting to be in space for the duration of this

this is one that i love this is a collection of essays and i gave it five stars i thought it was so beautifully done

when no one was watching i enjoyed but i did have some issues with it primarily pacing and then the twist at the end so that one got three stars