Hello!

Another month has come and gone and whilst I didn’t finish the most number of books, I think it was arguably one of my best reading months this year – I haven’t added up the stats yet, but I reckon I read more pages this month than any other month because I finally started reading the behemoth that is House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas, the first book in the Crescent City series.

(update: I listened to it as an audiobook so it had no update on the number of pages I read this month 😂)

I didn’t manage to finish it, but I did get over halfway which is the same number of pages as about 2 average books so the fact I managed to finish 7 books alongside listening to so much of House of Earth and Blood feels like a real achievement!

Powerless – Lauren Roberts – 4.5 ⭐️

In all honesty, I had no expectations going into this book – I’d seen all the hype, I’d seen a lot of criticism and I was expecting below average writing, a ‘pick me’ ‘not like other girls’ protagonist and a really stereotypical brooding love interest and to be honest, the character’s kind of were like that but the writing was better than I expected. It had a lot of strong correlation with The Hunger Games and that made me feel almost nostalgic for something I’ve never read before, which was interesting.

The audiobook was really good, the ending was a fascinating set up for a series without feeling inconclusive as an individual story and I’m intrigued to see where it goes next. Now I just need to try and set aside all the very mid responses to book 2, Reckless, before I listen to that audiobook!

A Pirate’s Life For Tea – Rebecca Thorne – 3.5 ⭐️

This book didn’t live up to the cosy and cohesive vibes of book 1 for me – my biggest issue with Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea was that going into the end game, the characters were super confident in their plan but it felt like I as a reader had been left out and what I can say is this very much wasn’t the case for A Pirate’s Life – the ending was much more cohesive, there were things happening in different locations and there was a real development in some of the characters.

But my main ick with this book was the protagonist characters – the couple from the first book are still the main characters, but they felt like much flatter versions of themselves and barely recognisable, especially considering I read these books back to back. Then the new main/secondary characters just didn’t have a personality at all – the entire thing was built on miscommunication and their ‘slow burn’ was obvious in a really boring way. I found I didn’t actually care about either of them.

The overarching plot from book 1 was well developed and the animals were my favourite characters. I will read book 3, but I wouldn’t say ‘I can’t wait’.

One of Us is Back – Karen M McManus – 5 ⭐️

These books make me grateful for my library – this is the third book in the Bayview trilogy that starts with ‘One of Us is Lying’ which I read in July for Summerween and I have borrowed all of the audiobooks from my library since.

I thought this book was a culmination of everything that was good in the series – the characters were facing a ‘final battle’ (for want of a better word), it really furthered the development of characters from the first two books and this is the first one in the trilogy where I couldn’t predict the ending. I was desperate to listen to as much of this book as I could and there was no hesitation in giving this 5 stars.

Thanks be to the libraries!

Famous Five: Five On A Hike Together – Enid Blyton – 3 ⭐️

It’s been one of my goals to finish the box set of Famous Five books that my mum gave my husband and I as a wedding gift and this was the 10th book in the box set. Once I realised the audiobooks were on Spotify and I could listen to them on 2x speed, it made the series significantly less tedious. I did enjoy this one – the pacing was good, the situation was actually somewhat high risk and the children were appropriately intimidated by this (as opposed to other books where they essentially said ‘It wasn’t scary, we had fun!’ despite having guns pointed at them). It’s a lovely series, but I am very glad it’s over!

The Worst of Me – Kate Le Vann – 3 ⭐️

This is a book that I reckon has been in my collection for over a decade and it made it onto my 24 in 2024 list because after choosing 20 books I was really interested in, I let my TBR Jar choose my final four books and this was one of them. I definitely wouldn’t have picked it of my own accord, but I’m glad I had a reason to read it.

For most of the story, I was planning to go with a solid 3.5 rating – I thought the narrative really well conveyed how messy it is to be a teenager and being so self-aware but so overwhelmed by all the feelings and societal expectations that they’re just learning to comprehend. It was very stereotypically teenage and I am pretty sure I would have enjoyed it more if I’d read it when I bought it, but my biggest issue is that the story had a third act conflict and then ended without any real kind of resolution. It was less than 200 pages anyway and could have done with at least 30-50 more just to give the character a proper development and the plot a real conclusion.

I probably won’t be keeping this in my collection, but glad to have ticked another book off my 24 in 2024 list.

DallerGut Dream Department Store – Miye Lee – 3 ⭐️

When my husband and I got married we asked our guests to gift us a copy of their favourite book, so we’d have a little library of our favourite people’s favourite books. In an endeavour to read them all, we started a monthly book club where we take it in turns to choose a book each month and I read it and he doesn’t. But as November is our anniversary month, we’ve now made it a tradition to add a new book to the collection and this year we chose DallerGut Dream Department Store!

I enjoyed this book but I don’t think I felt particularly attached to any part of it. It was very much ‘all vibes no plot’ and the writing style felt very middle-grade to me. The character of DallerGut really made me think of the character Big Weld from Robots, the 2005 animated film, and the department store very strongly gave me ‘Inside Out’ vibes. It was fine, but I don’t think I understood enough about what was going on to really enjoy it and that’s generally the issue I find with literary fiction.

An interesting read, but not the most engaging one.

The Fine Print – Lauren Asher – 4 ⭐️

Last but by no means least! I really didn’t expect to like this – I thought it would be overwritten, too cheesy and the characters wouldn’t feel like real people and, I won’t lie, it was a little bit of all of those things, but I also really felt the heart of both characters.

The Disney lover in me had a real soft spot from Dreamland, Rowan’s willingness to learn (though he desperately needed therapy) was sweet to read about and Zhara was lovely. It was absolutely the palette cleanser I needed alongside listening to A House of Earth and Blood and I would quite like to read the other books in this series too!

And that was everything in November! I’ve got some pretty lofty goals for December and it’s already looking unlikely that I’ll meet them, but generally I’m really pleased with how my reading has gone in 2024 and I’m looking forward to starting again in 2025.

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx