Drama-Lovers Book Club

Almost end of May and I am back to reading again.  I finished The New Kid.  I'm also reading Renascence in Chinese.  I'm at Chapter 190, but there's 620 chapters.  I had to rewatch the drama so I could remember who all the characters were.

This month I read Afterlife by Julia Alvarez.  I like her writing and I like her style of writing but this story felt incomplete. I picked up other books but this was the only book I finished this month. I hope to do better next month.

Hello book lovers fam, hope you had a good month. i had summer vacation and read 17 books just this month!! this post is going to be quite long lol. happy reading for June <3

Off campus series (4/5)

Out of the 3 books i read (total of 5 books in the series), i liked The Score more than the rest. the series in general is about hockey team players and their relationships. even tho it was far from perfect, i found myself enjoying throughout. definitely will be reading rest of the series. 

Mindf*ck series (3.5/5)

where do I even start. this series definitely lived up to its name and left me totally mindf*cked. serial killer and FBI agent romance was something i never thought I'd read. I don't romanticize serial killers or mafias and that was mainly the reason i rated it low despite it being a thrill read. sure there was some reasoning why the killer was killing but idk it just didn't sit well with me even tho i kinda supported the killer? see i don't make any sense to myself either and hence this rating. 

The Narrows (2/5)

lmao this is a sequel to a book i never read lol. i just randomly picked it on my school library and tbh i didn't like it much. not because i missed part 1 (i heard it was good book tho) i could follow the book without any difficulties but it felt like reading newspaper (?) instead of a supposedly crime thriller.

After (book 4) (1/5)

nope. no idea why i did not drop this after book 1. it was a pain to finish this but on the bright side, atleast i finished a series. too much happening in a single book. like the author decided to totally change the dynamics from the previous 3 books. inconsistent.

The song of Achilles (3/5)

I'm aware this is a very very very popular and loved book but it just wasn't for me. i liked starting and the ending few chaps tho. i was mostly zoning out in the middle, going in with high expectations ruins the experience ig. the star crossed historical gay romance was very beautifully written.

The inheritance games series (4.5/5)

ooh i loved this series. the 1st book in particular was so interesting and full of mind blowing twists. second book felt like a book version of kdrama Penthouse with all those family revelation stuffs lol. i didn't know there was a 3rd book that's unpublished and after 2nd book cliffhanger I'm not so patiently waiting for it.

Dance of thieves duology (3/5)

it was my fault to expect this to be smth like Six Of Crows. disappointed :]. the second book sounds promising tho. hope I'll read in June.

Bellinger sisters duology (2/5)

this was the last book i read this month. it was short and a one day read but that was all about it. i finished it yesterday but i can't remember anything about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. i heard the second book was better so I'll be reading it. and tbh the second book characters were my fav so let's see how it goes.

These violent delights duology (5/5)

I'm not emotionally ready to talk about this duology without shedding some tears. i think i read it a week ago but my emotions are still raw about this. as a fan of cdramas, i loved the Shanghai concept and could follow the little Chinese phrases and references with ease. it's a Romeo and Juliet retelling in 1920s with two rival gang heirs Roma and Juliette from Russia and Shanghai. everything about this screamed "tragedy" and i still read it. but ladies and gentlemen i do not regret it at all. i would trade my memory to read it for the first time all over again and get my heart broken by this masterpiece.

Hello fam, here is my May update. For some reason all the books/series I picked up this month were reverse harems. I don't even like reverse harems. xD But I figured 'Why not? Let's try to build a tolerance to this genre through more exposure.' I can't say it worked that well, but I'm less likely to immediately avoid something if it's reverse harem.

★★★☆☆	★★★☆☆
★★★★☆	★★★★☆

Seeker and Heir by Tate James  - These two books are the last two books of the Royal Trials trilogy.  I didn't like them as much as the first book in the series.  There was less badassery and I felt like the actual trials stuff took a backseat to focus more on the romance. As a result, things took a hit plotwise.

Variant Lost and Vital Found by Kaydence Snow - These are the first two books of the Evelyn Maynard Trilogy.  I really like the build up and set up of this world and the concept of variants. It's sort of like X-men, except there's two categories of people with powers.  I can't say more without giving away spoilers.  Like I mentioned earlier, this is another reverse harem, which normally isn't my cup of tea, but the Paranormal part of this Paranormal Romance had me hooked.

Hi y'all, how is everyone doing? I'm here for my May wrap-up, which is not all that exciting. I had one of my health-not-so-good months, so it was, overwhelmingly, a month of audiobooks. I finished off the Daisy Dalrymple series, 17 books in all (along with 2 short stories I found online).  I loved the series and I feel sad that it's over. The mysteries were not particularly complex and most times it was easy to figure out the perpetrator. But I loved the characters and the places visited, and the history behind the stories. I will miss Daisy and Alec, and all the other recurring characters. 

My ratings for those 17 books ranged from 2.5 to 4 stars. I gave 2.5 stars to The Case of the Murdered Muckraker for a few reasons: the story was all over the place, the pacing was slow, there was too much denigration of American police, and the accents for the American characters were awful and cringey. The narrator for 15 of the 23 books (Lucy Rayner) was not good with non-British accents; one of the stories included Jamaican and Trinidadian characters, and this islander over here was not impressed at all.

Carola Dunn, the author of the Daisy series, has another series called Cornish Mystery, and I completed the first book yesterday, Manna from Hades (3.5/5 stars). She does her characters so well! I'm liking the series so far, though it is certainly nowhere near as fun as Daisy and company. This is a short series, with only four books, so I'll probably complete it in June.

Aside from the Carola Dunn books, I completed two other books. Dead Man's Mirror is a Hercule Poirot short story; I thought I had completed all the Poirot novels and stories several years ago, but I had absolutely no recollection of this one (and I'm too lazy to look through my records to check). I don't know if this lack of memory is a symptom of age or because of the story itself - it is perfunctory to the point of boring. While reading, I kept wondering how can a Poirot story be so lifeless?? (3/5 stars)

The other book was The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves (2nd book in the Two Rivers series), which I enjoyed a lot! Characterization was on point and the story is so layered, I never once guessed the perpetrator would turn out to be that person. It was wonderful! I'm hoping she continues with the series. There is a short story (The Girls on the Shore) but I read enough reviews which resonated and convinced me that the story will leave me disappointed and unsatisfied, so I'll pass for now. (4/5 stars)

And that's a wrap for May. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy June month and lots of reading :-)

Book Update for May-June:

This month, due to work (too many work-related reading to do) and family related issues, I only managed to finish a book I started during April, "Red Bones", the third investigation case of Detective Jimmy Perez, from one of my fave crime authors, Ann Cleeves.

                        5/5 stars

During June, my work schedule is less demanding and I won't be reading much work-related stuff, but there are also a lot of tempting upcoming dramas, so I won't make any promises XD

Have a great reading month, dear Book Club family <3

In May I read two books of contemporary French literature, I am still trying to get back up to date after several years without reading. I really liked these novels and I even think that these writers are among the most talented French authors of the moment.

In "La Conjuration" ( the conspiracy) of Philippe Vasset, the unemployed and idle hero meets an old friend who plans to found a sect to comfortably ensure his future retirement, he will then take the narrator as a collaborator. The latter will then move away from the initial project and try to find in the big city of Paris, blank spaces. I really liked the poetic and non-commercial aspect of the story and the temptation of the margin. In addition to me who loves Paris so much, I really liked to discover its aspects so called unattractive.

"Des éclairs" (lightning) by Jean Echenoz tells the story of Gregor, an engineering scientist with a solitary destined, during the late 19th and early 20th. The story is loosely based on the story of Nikola Tesla (whose life I was particularly interested in), the great electrical genius who filed hundreds of patents and wanted to provide the world with free electricity. I think this character inspired the author very well, with a story that was both burlesque and melancholic.

I just finished a book called Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick. I will affectionately refer to it as historical lady smut, as I discovered, after the fact, that the author works in both historical and romantic fiction. It was the story of Empress Mathilda, daughter of King Henry I of England. I don't feel better for having read it. I'm going to jump out of the 1100's and in to a different part of history next.