Books I read on my hiatus (Part 2)

Hello everybody! Hope you’ve all had lovely sunny Sundays. Last weekend I posted some mini reviews of books I read whilst I was on a blogging break. As there were lots of books I wanted to talk about, I decided to split my wrap-up into two parts. You can find Part 1 here. And now for Part 2…

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The Girls by Emma Cline

Rating: 2.5 stars

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I read it compulsively, and found the writing beautiful, evocative, dark, and seductive. One the other hand, some of the content was VERY uncomfortable to read, and as such, I can’t bring myself to say I ‘enjoyed’ it. I guess I should have expected this, given that the book tells the story of a 14 year old girl who becomes involved with a Manson Family type cult. Drugs, sex, brutal murder. I knew this book would be dark, but I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so sexually explicit. I’m not saying this prudishly, but rather because these scenes involve an actual child, and I couldn’t help but feel nauseous the whole time I was reading them. I guess that was the point though. This book is meant to unsettle you deeply, and it certainly achieves that. It left me feeling queasy, depressed, a little bit dirty. It’s a good book, but I didn’t like it, if that makes sense.

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Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Rating: 5 stars

I ADORED THIS BOOK! I think I am just destined to love anything that Becky Albertalli writes. Her writing is so accessible, funny, down to earth, and relatable. I can’t say loads about the plot of the book, because I feel it might spoil Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which you definitely need to read first. I LOVED being back with all of those characters. Leah wasn’t my favourite in Simon – I found her negative and snarky – but having been inside her head in this book, I now feel I understand her completely and love her just as much as the others. In a lot of ways she reminded me of myself as a teenager, acting in certain ways, but regretting them instantly inside my head. She was so much more relatable than I originally imagined her to be. My favourite thing about this book was the adorable and utterly shippable LGBT romance between Leah and a certain character; I can’t say who because it’s not something you know from the beginning of the book (although I kind of guessed/hoped and ended up being right). Becky Albertalli writes romance so perfectly, and it always leaves me with the warm fuzzies. My only small complaint about this book is that the ending felt a bit rushed. I thought there was going to be some fallout or at least some kind of reaction scene to something that happens, but instead of showing that, the book jumps straight to an epilogue. Nevertheless, it didn’t bother me enough to prevent me from rating this book 5 stars. In a nutshell, Becky’s books just make me ridiculously happy, and I love her. I can’t wait to read her next book!

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Big Bones by Laura Dockrill

Rating: 4 stars

This book was so much fun! It follows a plus-size, body positive 16 year old girl named Bluebelle, who is asked by her doctor to keep a food diary after being informed she is overweight. I loved that Bluebelle had such a positive attitude to her body, a healthy love for herself we almost never see in teenage characters. I like that she didn’t care that she was fat, that other things were far more important to her. And I loved the way she cared so much about food. For her, eating wasn’t about greed, but about respect for amazing ingredients and flavours. Every chapter of this book was centred around a particular type of food, and Bluebelle’s descriptions of the things she cooked and ate made my mouth water and my stomach rumble. The reason I didn’t give this book a full five stars is that I didn’t always feel like Bluebelle was a real person; she had such positive views I couldn’t help but nod along with, but sometimes it felt like she was just a vehicle for the author to express those views. Sometimes it felt like there wasn’t much to her character outside of those opinions, that she wasn’t fully developed. I really loved the friendships in this book, the relationship between Bluebelle and her younger sister Pearl, and her banter with her best friend Camille, who stars in some HILARIOUS scenes. I didn’t feel like the love interest was very fleshed out though; I think the book would have been wonderful enough without him. Overall, I really enjoyed the book, and I definitely want to check out more of Laura Dockrill’s work.

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The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight

Rating: 3.5 stars

This is a self-help book all about learning not to care so much about things that stress you out and make you unhappy. It’s light-hearted, and wonderfully sweary. If you are at all offended by expletives, I’d suggest you don’t read this book, because basically every other word is ‘f**k’. I really liked the concept of this book, because I am somebody who cares way too much about what other people think of me. Since reading this book, I think I am getting better at not giving a f**k, although it’s not as easy as this author makes it sound. Knight talks about the idea of giving less f**ks to things that annoy you, and more f**ks to the things that bring you joy. I really appreciated this! Giving up giving a f**k about things you don’t enjoy leaves more time, energy and money for you to spend on the things you do. However, I didn’t agree with all of the examples the author used. She talks about saying no to something your friend asks you to come to (for example their art exhibition) if it doesn’t interest you, but I’m not the sort of person who would chose not to support someone I love in something they care about simply because it’s not *my* thing. The other example that didn’t sit well with me was when the author said that if you don’t give a f**k about recycling, you don’t have to do it. To me, this is just irresponsible and immature. Nevertheless, I liked the message of this book, even if I didn’t like the silly examples (which were probably just there for comedic value, but still…); I will definitely try to apply it to the areas of my life I stress too much over.

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The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Rating: 3 stars

I had mixed feelings about this book. I feel like I both enjoyed and was let down by it. I loved the concept; the book is set in a town where everybody is aware of the existence of faeries. In the woods outside of town there is a sleeping boy trapped in a glass coffin, and the story follows what happens when somebody frees him. The writing in this book was atmospheric and delicious. I would like to perhaps re-read it again in Autumn, as it gave me lots of Autumnal vibes. All the bits of this book about the Fey and the folklore surrounding them were also fascinating to me. What let this book down for me was the pacing and the plot. I felt there was too much focus on backstory and flashbacks, which meant that the forward action was slow to unfold, then all of a sudden rushed to its conclusion. The plot was interesting to me, but I felt that more time needed to be spent on the exciting bits. There’s a lot of talking between the characters, and planning, and not enough action. I feel like maybe this would work better as a series, rather than a standalone; the plot could have been richer, the romances more believable, and the faerie world expanded upon.

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Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? I’d love to hear from you! (And please, do feel free to stop by and fangirl about Leah on the Offbeat with me!) ❤