Bibliophile Gathering

I’m bound and determined to get back on track with my reading this year and I feel like I’m already doing a really great job. It’s the first week of February and I’ve already read 13 books and have reviewed almost all of them. Way better than last year. So to continue my endeavor of reading like a boss in 2020, I’ve realized there’s so many books I want to reread. It’s been ages since I’ve read most of these books and I know how much I loved them when I first read them, I’m ready to revisit that love and excitement. So, in no particular order, here are the top six books I want to reread this year.

I know it hasn’t been THAT long since I read this book, I read it in March of 2019, but I loved it so much and it might even have been my favorite book I read in 2019. I read Where the Crawdads Sing cover to cover during a flight and as soon as I finished, I wanted to start reading it again. I had seen some hype around this book but I didn’t think it would actually live up to the hype but it totally did. The plot, writing, and characters are stunning. I’m amazed by the writing especially. This is one of the best written books I’ve read in years and I recommend it to everyone.

According to GoodReads, I read The Winner’s Curse in early 2014. I don’t remember a lot about it but I do know I loved it so much and even though I never got around to reading the sequels, I still pre-ordered them and kept the whole series in my massive unhaul of over 1,000 books in 2018. I’m really looking forward to revisit this story and rediscover the characters.

Y’all know there had to be at least one CoHo book on this list. I’ve actually already read Ugly Love twice, once in 2015 and once in 2016. That being said, I honesty don’t remember a lot of details about this book. I obviously loved it and I still stay it’s one of my top favorite CoHo books but I 100% need to reread Ugly Love asap and refresh my memory.

I read Verity in 2018 and it was honestly a highlight of my year. I wasn’t reading much that year, I was having a hard time in life, but I preordered this book, as I do all CoHo books, and halfheartedly started it, not really feeling like reading. I loved it right away and is to this day, the one book I’ve binge read and stayed up all night to read in the last two or three years. This book pulled me out of my funk for a night and it was such a fantastic feeling. I’m sure it won’t be the exact same experience the second time around, knowing how the plot goes, but I look forward to picking this book up again and hopefully feeling as excited about it as I did the first time.

I read this book a long time ago, in 2014, but it remains one of my all time favorites and I still recommend it to people. It’s a well loved and familiar favorite among the Young Adult book crowd but Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is so beautiful, it transcends genres. I loved it so much when I read it but I have a feeling it’ll mean even more to me now than it did back in 2014.

I know there’s so many CoHo books on this short list but I can’t help it, she’s my favorite author! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve read Too Late. I read it in 2016 and it was insane, wild, and an incredible ride while reading. It’s without a doubt one of my favorite books and I’m surprised I haven’t reread it yet. I’m expecting to see more of the problematic side of this characters, fully realize how complex this story is, than I did when I first read it but I’m ready to write a whole new review for this book and get back on the wild ride that is Too Late.

Even though this is a prequel, I haven’t yet OCDaniel. But after reading Sara and the Search for Normal, I’m picking it up right away.
This book was so well written, had fantastic characters, and wonderful mental health representation. I could tell that the author wrote this book with care and thoughtfulness. I appreciated, what I felt as, accurate mental health representation and I was able to relate to the main character a lot.
I really don’t have much to say critically about this book because I enjoyed it so much and even read it in two sittings.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of poetry lately and even though I did enjoy Nineteen, it didn’t provoke much emotion from me. I thought the poems were really good for the most part but they seemed more like slam poetry and it didn’t translate to the page and to me like they probably would have it they were read aloud, slam poetry style.
Overall, I appreciate the personal story told within Nineteen and enjoyed most of the poems, however, I think they would translate verbally much better than on paper.

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I don’t even know where to begin with this one. After a month of trying to get through this book, I’m torn on how I feel. I wasn’t super invested in the characters but the overall plot was intriguing enough to me that it made me want to finish it even though the the first half is pretty slow.

This is the first Tarryn Fisher book that I’ve picked up and I’m feeling a little underwhelmed. I did really enjoy the writing style so I’ll most likely be picking up another book of hers.

In the first half of this book, I didn’t have much of an opinion on it. It was pretty slow, I wasn’t emotionally invested in the characters and the main character seemed a little bland. I wasn’t a fan of her husband so it was unfortunate he was such a large part of the main character’s personality.
Once I was about half way into the book, the action slowly started but all the excitement and plot twists felt fabricated from nothing and there was so many plot holes. Nothing really made sense and felt made up along the way.
I didn’t really enjoy that miscarriage and infertility were used as… tokens. I personally wasn’t triggered by it but if that is something that you don’t want to read about, you’ll want to skip this book. I also feel conflicted on using mental illness as a plot twist. I don’t think it was needed and, because the details of the plot are pretty messy, I think there was many different approaches that could have made this book a million times better.

Overall, this book is kind of a hot mess and even though the last half of the book was a wild ride, it wasn’t very well done and could have used some improvements. I did enjoy most of the book but if I’m critical of it and honestly reviewing it, it was pretty dumb at times and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you’re looking for a thriller and aren’t a critical reader, you might really enjoy this one.

I read Pillow Thoughts when it was first released and I really loved it. It was one of my favorite poetry books I’d read in a long time. I was really excited to pick up another book from Courtney Peppernell and while I really enjoyed this book as well, I didn’t love it as much as I expected. There’s so many beautiful poems in I Hope You Stay and I especially love the overall story it tells, but I felt like there was quite a few poems that didn’t match the quality of others, which was a little disappointing. I did really enjoy the otter illustrations throughout the book and I absolutely love the cover. Even though I didn’t love this as much as the author’s other work, I do plan on purchasing a physical copy for my poetry shelf.

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I’ve been really enjoying reading modern poetry books lately and while A Fire Like You isn’t my most favorite, I still really enjoyed it.
I thought the writing was beautiful and meaningful, and relatable many times, but I felt like there was quite a few filler poems that didn’t seem to hold as much meaning as others and maybe were written in haste.
Overall, I did enjoy it and would probably pick a physical copy for my poetry book shelf, but it wasn’t my favorite.

I loved this book so much. It was everything I hoped it would be and more.
The pacing is perfect, I never lost interest, even if I had to put the book down for a couple days. I constantly wanted to keep reading and find out what happened next and get to the bottom of the mystery. I had my suspicions of what happened and where the plot was going but I was never 100% sure and in the end, I was completely wrong and didn’t see the plot twist coming at all.
The ending was a little bit rushed but it wasn’t a big deal to me.
Overall, I have really nothing critical to say about Have You Seen Me. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in awhile and I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a good suspenseful mystery to pick up.

I really enjoyed the themes throughout this book but I did find some of the poems hard to understand. I couldn’t decipher what some of them meant and they seemed pretty abstract to me. I’m not super well versed in poetry and I only casually read poetry so maybe someone with more knowledge than me would understand them. Other than that, I thought this collection was beautiful and creative and I really enjoyed reading it.

I was so excited to start The Girls Weekend. The plot sounded really great and I’ve been super into suspense books lately. However, I felt extremely disappointed with this book. I still really liked the overall plot but there was multiple times that the writing was tone deaf.
The first thing that hit me really wrong was the main character, June, and her careless comparison of hate stalking someone’s Instagram to a person who self harms. June was also incredibly immature and spent so much of her time complaining about her life and how Sadie seemed to have it all, just based on her social media. Not an uncommon way of thinking in today’s culture but also not a compelling story line in a book with full grown adult characters.
I didn’t mind the pace of the plot. It was a little slow, the action didn’t start until 30% into the book, but I didn’t feel like it was being dragged out. I do wish there was more background on the characters, I was especially interested in knowing more about Kimi but we knew very little about her or Amy or Em.
The second tone deaf issue I noticed was when the only person of color in the book brings up how cops make her uncomfortable and another character says “Really? You’re going there?”. It was convenient that the author has a POC token character, because that’s all she seemed to be, but also, very poor choice on the author’s part to include a white character disregarding a real and legitimate concern for POC in the real world. Shortly after that, there was a brief degradation of #MeToo, which was completely unnecessary and did nothing for the plot or characters.
I also hated how mental illness was consistently downplayed and was used as a reason that someone might be a murderer. One of the worst lines in this book was, “Amy went through a cutter phase in college.” Again, so tone deaf. Self harm isn’t a phase. It’s serious and not something to dismiss as a phase. And of course, mental health issues always equal being a murderer in all the character’s eyes. That was a consistent theme throughout the book and I found it to be a disgusting, outdated, tone deaf stereotype.
The plot twist was decent but I wasn’t shocked and it didn’t spur any emotion out of me.
Overall, the potential of the plot was ruined for me by all the tone deaf stereotypes and careless disregard for serious issues in the real world.