Summer has come early this year, and while I’m sweating over here, I might just sit down with some ice-cold tea and write about every book I read in May.

Wrap-Up

I was expecting to finish A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin in the first week, but no. I left it there on my nightstand, judging me, while I was happily doing a puzzle and listening to The Final Six by Alexandra Monir. Although the audiobook wasn’t long enough so I could finish the puzzle, and ended up listening to the sequel The Life Below as well. By then, I had completed the puzzle, and I could go back and finish GoT before doing anything else.

The Final Six is a sci-fi dystopian story about a group of teenagers selected to go to space training camp. Earth is dying and Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, might be the last hope for humanity to survive. The teenagers will have to compete against each other to land a spot in the spaceship. And The Life Below is the conclusion to this space adventure.

Both of Alexandra Monir’s books were great! Fun, interesting, captivating, full of sciency stuff, and the typical YA romance. I was not particularly interested in the romance part (and it was kind of cringy), but it didn’t overtake the plot. Although The Life Below wasn’t as enjoyable as the first one. The ending was too strange and out of the blue. I feel that it’s missing some justice for everything that went down in both books, and I was also expecting it to be partially like The 100 focusing more about living on Europa.

And finally, I finished A Game of Thrones. It was about time to put that book back on the shelf. Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading it, but it was taking me so long. Until this day, I still think that I have more to read, that I haven’t finished the book. Maybe because it took me so long or because I enjoyed it more than I realize. One thing is for sure, I already don’t remember more than half of the episodes I’ve watched, so it’s like seeing everything for the first time.

Of all the ARCs I had to read, I completed one – not bad. The Truants by Kate Weinberg was hypnotic. From the very first sentence, I was sucked into the story. I wanted to know every secret the characters were hiding, learn about their past, their lies, everything! It was an amazing book with a sprinkle of Agatha Christie perfect to read this summer.

I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to read The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak because I’m a nerd, and I want to read every book about video games even if they are set in the 80s. But this book was strange. First of all, the story centres on a 14 years-old boy that loves programming and wants to design video games. His friends are more interested in coming up with a plan to get an issue of Playboy, and that leads him to meet a nerdy girl like him. She tells him about a video game design competition, and they team up to participate. Although both the Playboy plan and the competition are resolved in the middle of the book, so everything left is the relationships between the characters.

I felt slightly mislead because the game isn’t the central point of the story, and I wished it dragged for longer and interlocked with everything else that was happening. The story was still very enjoyable, but completely away from what I could expect. For a book in the younger age range of the YA genre, it was kind of violent and mature. The characters were flawed, there weren’t any good or bad characters, each of them did something wrong at some point. I think it went so much away from the typical YA that it felt strange. Although it’s still a good book.

And for the second consecutive month, the disappointment of the year, The Rule of One by Ashley and Leslie Saunders. I just want to state that I love dystopian, it’s one of my favourite sub-genres. And when I started to listen to the audiobook I didn’t have many expectations. I only knew it was about twins in a society ruled by the one-child policy. But as soon as the story started to develop I realized something really bad. I couldn’t distinguish both characters.

The book is told from the perspective of the two sisters, but they were the same. They didn’t have a personality. There wasn’t any rebellion against the lack of liberty to be themselves since they were sharing one identity. And then the whole book is about them on the run to flee from the government and to find a safe place to live. Although the worst part is I kept listening to know how it ends, and I discover that this is a series, and the first book doesn’t have much of a conclusion.

What I took from the whole book is a glimpse of their parents’ past and how society became more and more restricted until it got to the one-child rule. That’s it. They walked around from a place to another and discover a little more about the society around them.

Plans for June

I’ve read five books for each of the first three months of the year and read six books in April and in May. As much as I’m enjoying reading so much I want to slow down a bit. I usually only read at night for about an hour or two, but sometimes I want to watch a movie and don’t feel bad about it. I’m also going to do a course on entrepreneurship this summer, and I still don’t know where I’m going to fit my reading time since I also have Animal Crossing New Horizons to play now. *happy dance*

With my plans for the summer altered, I also might not post here on the blog as much as I want/would to. I still don’t know how much extra work I’ll need to do for the course, but my schedule is already packed. Hopefully, I’ll have time to read at least one book and also play as much as my heart desires.