two friends and too many books
**Disclaimer: I received a free advanced readers copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this opportunity.
How To Build a Heart is a YA contemporary novel about a girl named Izzy. She is struggling to walk the fine line between her Catholic private school and her home life where she lives in a mobile home with her single mother and little brother. It comes out on January 28th, 2020. I gave it 4.5 stars on Goodreads.
One of my favourite box discoveries this year has been the LitJoy Crate Magical Editions. Harry Potter is one of the great loves of my lives and I will always love items related to the books. I’ve tried a few different Harry Potter subscription boxes and this is one of the best I’ve found despite it not being a monthly subscription.
As I said on my Worst Reads of 2019 post, I’m a pretty easy to please reader. I tend to get swept away in the story and for the most part I enjoy almost everything I read. So when it comes to choosing the best books I read this year, I have to admit that I had a really hard time. There are so, so many good books that I read over this year that it was hard to choose the best, and even harder to narrow it down to the top 5. So in order to do this, I gave myself some criteria. In order to end up on my Top 5 Reads of 2019 list, the book couldn’t be a re-read. It also couldn’t be a sequel, and so I will admit that I cheated a little bit and made a list of the best sequels I read in 2019 just to make narrowing this down a little easier. With those criteria in mind, I was still left with a fair bit of a list, so I had to narrow it down some more. That was the hard part, but I was able to do it. Below the cut, in no particular order, you will find my five best reads of 2019.
One of my favourite series of this year was The Cruel Prince series. I loved and hated the characters. I loved the books. I was SO excited when I heard that Queen of Nothing was being published earlier than anticipated because the ending of The Wicked King had me angsting for the next book.
I am someone who is rather easy to please when it comes to books. I often fall in love with the books that I read, and it’s not very often that I find a book that I don’t like or even a book that I rate lower than a three stars. I always try to find something redeeming, and maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s just the kind of reader that I am. I tend to fall deeply into whatever book I’m reading. However, I can’t say that every book I read in 2019 was a positive experience for me. Below the cut, you will find the five worst books I read in 2019.
Another year and another year of reading! There’s something about a fresh start and a new year that just makes me really excited! So because 2020 is here, I decided to set a new batch of reading resolutions. Well, they are somewhat similar to last years, but personally I don’t mind that so much.
OwlCrate has been by my side for a most of the time that I’ve been really active in the bookish online community. It’s the subscription service that I get every month and I’m always so excited about it. To be clear, I purchase this every month and this is not an ad.
In 2019, I tried to do too much when it came to my resolutions. I had too many because I was trying to fill up a page in my bullet journal. This year I fine tuned and narrowed it down. I didn’t want to overwhelm myself to the point where I didn’t have any motivation to do anything. This year I set seven resolutions and you’ll find them below the cut
How is it the end of the year already? I can’t believe we’re about to start a brand new decade. This past month I read 18 books, which is pretty exciting because I officially beat my record of books read this year by reading 235! I also participated in the winter session of the Magical Readathon, which was definitely fun. I have a few books at the beginning of January to finish it up. You’ll find everything I read this month below the cut.
As I read so much, it makes sense for me to set some specific resolutions for my reading. I think I set just about as many reading resolutions as personal ones. Was I more successful in the reading ones? Well, you’ll have to see for yourself below the cut.