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Hey guys, it's Trina and this is my
reading wrap up for the month of March.
Let's check in with what my March TBR
was. So I had five books on my TBR this
month and I really thought I was going
to do it, but I only read three of these
this month. I haven't even picked up The
Handmaid's Tale yet, and as for
Or Fire and Stars, I have started it. I'm like
this far through it, which is about
two-thirds of the way through. I just
waited too long in the month to pick
this one up but I will be finishing it
soon. I did read a total of nine books
this month so let's get into those. In
the description I will put links to all
the books I talk about today in case
you want to find them very easily, and
there are also timestamps in the
description in case you want to jump
straight to one of my reviews. I kind of
rated almost across the board this month.
I had some 2 star reads, 3 star reads,
4 star reads and just one 5 star book.
I will be doing this like usual where I
start at the lower end of my ratings and
then work my way up to my favorite book
of the month. So my 2 star books, the
first of those was Wayfarer by Alexandra
Bracken. This is the sequel to Passenger
and it is the finale of this duology.
This is a YA science fiction series about
time travelers and our main character,
Etta, she's a musical prodigy and she
finds out that her mother passed on the
ability to travel through time to her
and so in this series you travel to a
ton of different places around the globe
and you also travel to a bunch of
different times and there is a pretty
prominent romance in it. If you guys
remember how I reviewed Passenger when I
read it last year, I said that I had a
lot of trouble getting into that book. I
had the same trouble getting into
Wayfarer and now that I have read
Passenger and Wayfarer and I've also
read The Darkest Minds by Alexandra
Bracken, this is something that I have
encountered in all of her books. This is
a very plot-driven story. There's a lot
happening here and I love it when heavy
plot books give you a lot of fast pace
and a lot of action, and I feel like the
pacing of these books just keeps getting
slowed down because Bracken's writing is
really bogged down with a lot of
descriptions. So I got about halfway
through Wayfarer and then I decided
to put it down and once I put it down it
was a chore to pick this book back up. I
just was dreading it. I was not looking
forward to it. I would pick it up and get
really invested again. I'd be like, 'yeah!
This is really fun!' And then after like
a chapter it would lose my interest
again. So this was kind of like an up and
down ride for me. I actually really
enjoyed the side characters in Wayfarer
more than the main characters.
Sophia is a character from the first
book. I loved her character arc! And
there's a new side character introduced
in Wayfarer, Li Min, who I really loved
her. She is, I believe she's lesbian and
she is Chinese. This story was very
interesting. It's something that I should
have liked but I just think I don't get
along with Bracken's writing. Overall, the
feeling that I have when I think of this
book was boredom, so that's why this one
got 2 stars, because by the time I
finished it I was just kind of over it. And
since this one was the finale I will be
posting a full series review of the
Passenger duology on my channel soon, so
keep an eye out for that. The other book
that I gave a two-star rating to this
month was American Street by Ibi Zoboi.
This is a YA contemporary story about
a girl who has been living in Haiti her
entire life and she and her mother
travel to the US to visit some family
but at the airport her mother is
detained by U.S. immigration and the
main character, Fabiola, ends up going to
live with her aunt and her cousins by
herself. I enjoyed the main character in
this book. I enjoyed her voice, she was a
very engaging main character. And I did
enjoy the Haitian culture and
spirituality elements. But I did not
enjoy that the main conflict and the
characters felt kind of underdeveloped. I
also really hated that this book seems
to normalize girl hate and violently
abusive relationships. I have done a full
video review on American Street so if
you want to hear more of my thoughts in
depth with like examples then you can
check out that video. This is an #ownvoices
book so of course it does have
value. Of course I want to see more own
voices books and debuts being published,
but I don't want to see more books that
normalize abusive relationships and
perpetuate the stereotype that girls are
mean and catty to each other, so that is
why I rated this one so low. Now we are
into the books that I gave 3 stars
this month and the first one I'm going to
talk about is one that's kind of odd, it's
not a book that I would normally read
but it is How To Win Friends And
Influence People In The Digital Age by
Dale Carnegie and associates. The
original was just How To Win Friends And
Influence People, which was published in the 1930s
and more recently they did the updated In
The Digital Age (version), so this book talks a lot
about how to connect with people online
with social media. It's basic stuff like
nobody likes to be told that they're
wrong, nobody likes to be attacked. I do
think that this book has useful
knowledge and information but it is kind
of just common sense stuff. Nonetheless,
it was kind of good just to have that
reiterated that this is how you should
deal with people. But this book was not
engaging to read. It was very dry, very
boring. It took me a long time to get
through it. And my biggest gripe with it
is that although this book tells you a
lot of here's what you should do and
here's WHY. Here's all of these studies
and all these anecdotes and personal stories
about WHY this one thing doesn't work.
You should not do that, you should do
this instead, but I did not feel like it
gave you a lot of practical information
on HOW to implement those things. It's
good information, it was a good reminder,
but I didn't really enjoy reading it and
I feel like you can really just read the
table of contents in this book and
that's basically all you need to know.
Next up is A World Without You by Beth
Revis. This is a YA novel about a
young boy who thinks that he has the
ability to travel through time but his
parents think that he is delusional and
they have sent him to a school that is
for kids with mental illness but he
thinks it's a school for kids with super
powers. I really struggled with this book
because there's such an emphasis from
page one the last page on that question
of does he really have a superpower or
is it all in his head? And the thing is,
is that the book tells you the answer in
the first couple of chapters. So the
reader knows the answer but the
character doesn't and if you enjoy books
where you know information that the
character doesn't and then you watch
them figure it out and put it together, I
think that you would enjoy this one, but
for me, I ended up just kind of finding
myself bored while reading most of the
story because I already knew the answer.
My favorite part of this book is that we
have a couple of chapters that are told
from the main character's sister's point
of view. She's only got like six or seven
chapters in the book and I wish we had
more from her. That was what I found the
most interesting, like the whole family
side of it and how the whole family unit
was affected, but overall I just kind of
felt very middle of the road about this book.
Next I read City Of Saints And Thieves by Natalie
C. Anderson. This is a 2017 debut novel
and it is a mystery set in Kenya and
it's about our main character whose
mother was killed five years ago and she
believes she knows who the killer is.
Since her mother's death she's been
living on the streets, she's a homeless
teen and she works with a street gang
and she has this really incredible
reputation for being the best thief in
the city. So at the beginning of the book
she and her group are pulling off a
heist, they're breaking into a house and
in this house she finds some information
about her mother so she sets out to
discover what the truth really was. I
have a whole video book review up of
this book already so if you want to hear
more of my thoughts you can definitely
check that out, but overall I really
enjoyed the setting and I enjoyed the
characters but this one just really fell
flat for me as a mystery. I didn't think
a lot of suspense and intrigue was built
in the writing, and just a heads up to
any readers who may not want to read
about this, rape is a pretty heavy
prevalent theme in the book. I hear this
one compared to Oceans Eleven and The Girl
With The Dragon Tattoo. I did not get either
one of those vibes from it personally.
But if you're looking for a book that is
set in Africa then this one definitely
will evoke that setting. Now on to my
four star reads. First up is A Darker
Shade Of Magic by V. E. Schwab. This is the
first book in an adult fantasy series
and this is about a world where there
are four different Londons. They are
parallel worlds. There are only certain
people that are able to travel between
these worlds and our main character that
we follow is Kell, who is one of these
travelers and he likes to smuggle items
between each London and that is
something that is very forbidden. And because of
his smuggling he finds himself in
possession of a very very dangerous and
dark artifact. This was a reread for me. I
first read this book like when it first
came out, so it's been a couple years. I
reread this one because I'm hoping to
continue to series soon. I really hope
that happens because I own the other two
books in this trilogy and I just need to
finally continue it. I don't have a ton
of thoughts to say about this one
because it's one of those worlds and
stuff where I feel like this is all just
set up and I want to see where things go
from here, but I do really enjoy the main
character Kell and our other main
character Lila and rereading this made
me remember how much I do actually love
Schwab's writing. Next is The Sun Is Also A Star
by Nicola Yoon, also a four-star read.
This is a YA contemporary romance story
about two characters and just the day
that they meet and all the time that
they spend together on this day. This is
a really important day because our main
character Daniel, who is a Korean
American character, is on his way to
interview to go to a prestigious college
that he doesn't actually want to go to
and so he is just trying to find things
to do in the city to distract himself
from this interview. And our other main
character is Natasha. She is a Jamaican
character and this is actually the day
that she and her family are being
deported and she's also trying to
distract herself on this day because she
doesn't want to pack and leave the
country that she considers home. This is
an #ownvoices story. The author and the
main character Natasha are both Jamaican.
I really really loved these characters.
I felt like they were really well
developed and that I really got to know
them. I particularly loved how much of
opposites that they were because Daniel
is like this poetic, hopeless romantic
character and then Natasha is this very
scientific minded girl who doesn't think
she believes in love. Instalove is a huge
trope used in this book and I do want to
say though, this is one of the best cases
of instalove that I have ever read
because you're spending so much time
with them you can actually see a reason
for why they are developing feelings for
each other. In comparison to Nicola Yoon's
first book, Everything Everything, I
definitely prefer this one. This one was
not as problematic as Everything
Everything. I like Nicola Yoon's writing. I
definitely want to read more from her.
Also at four stars was Their Fractured
Light by Amie Kaufman and Megan Spooner.
This is the third and final book in the
Starbound trilogy, which is a young
adult science fiction romance series. The
three books in this series are companion
novels so each of them do follow two new
characters but the overall plot of this
is that there is this mega space
corporation and the business owner of it
has been doing some really shady things
and has ripped a rift in the universe
and discovered alien beings. The
characters that we follow in this book
are a hacker and a con artist and both
of these characters are wanting to
infiltrate this business and take it
down from the inside and these two
characters are working separately but
they end up thrust together to get out
of a sticky situation. I do already have
a full series non-spoiler review posted
for the Starbound trilogy if you want to hear
more of my thoughts on this series
overall, but I did really enjoy this one
as a finale and what I really loved
about it was that we got to see all the
characters from books 1 and 2 make
kind of a reappearance in this one. You
got to see all of them interact together
and work together so I really did love
this one as an ending and how everything
wrapped up. And the last book that I read
this month, which I gave 5 stars to, is my
favorite book of the month and honestly
this book is my favorite of the year
that I have read so far. It is The Hate
U Give by Angie Thomas. This is an
#ownvoices book about a young black
teenager. One night after a party Starr
is riding in the car with one of her
childhood friends and he gets pulled
over for having a busted taillight. He's
also a black teenager and the white
police officer that pulls him over ends up
shooting and killing him, claiming that
this guy was threatening his life, that
he's a basic thug, and that he had a gun.
But Starr knew that there was no gun
involved, her friend was unarmed. So the
book is exploring police brutality and the
#BlackLivesMatter movement, and although
it does tackle a lot of really
important issues there is so much more
to it than that. I loved the family and
the community aspects of this book. I
love the way this book handled
friendships because you see Starr having
some very supportive friendships and
some very toxic friendships. It's such a
raw, and refreshing, and realistic, and
relatable story and just I love this
book so much. If you want to hear
more of my thoughts on it I did do a
video recently on six reasons why I
think you would enjoy this book. There's
nothing that I disliked about this book
and I feel like everyone could get
something out of it. So that's it! Those
are the nine books that I read in
March. There are links to all the reviews
that I mentioned in the description. If you
have any other questions about these
books that I talked about today please
ask me that down below. Thank you guys so
much for watching and I will see you in the comments. Bye!
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