These are the 9 books that I rated 2 stars this year. I didn’t really outwardly hate any these books, I was mostly either ambivalent, bored, underwhelmed or just didn’t really like..
The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi
Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron
The Kiss Thief by L.J. Shen
Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
The Havoc We Wreak by Becca Steele
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is books with colours in the titles. I went through all the books I’ve read over the last year or so and these were the ones that I found!
The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
Red Rising & Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Red Sister & Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence
The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
I’ve had a great reading month in terms of getting through my TBR. I managed to complete a series I have been reading for over a year now and completed a couple of books from my physical TBR that I’ve owned now for over 2 years. I feel like I’ve definitely got my reading groove back and I am excited to continue and hopefully read some great books!
Fire by Kristin Cashore – ⭐️3/5 stars
Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey – ⭐️3/5 stars
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertali & Aisha Sayeed – ⭐️3/5 stars
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi – ⭐️2/5 stars
Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan – ⭐️4/5 stars
Frozen Tides by Morgan Rhodes – ⭐️5/5 stars
Crystal Storm by Morgan Rhodes – ⭐️5/5 stars
Immortal Reign by Morgan Rhodes – ⭐️5/5 stars
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb – ⭐️2/5 stars
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore – ⭐️2/5 stars
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan – ⭐️4/5 stars
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz – ⭐️4/5 stars
When Queen Bitterblue took the throne of Monsea, she was a child, and her advisers ran the kngdom for her. Now she is beginning to question their decisions, especially how they handle the legacy of her father Leck, who who ruled through his Grace–a special talent for mind-altering–and his taste for darkness and violence.
I found Bitterblue to be way too cavalier as Queen of Monsea for the first half of the book. She was unaware of anything that was happening in her kingdom and feasted control over to her advisors who were able to manipulate her. The way she handled herself at the start of the book was almost infuriating. She ran off in the middle of the night to listen to stories and ignored the concerns of her kingdom hiding in paperwork for the rest of the day in her tower. She doesn’t assert her control enough for me and let everyone walk all over her. She isn’t relatable at all, she didn’t even realize how privileged she was until three quarters of the way through the book when she seen how so many of her countrymen were struggling. She does strive to better herself and her kingdom though which I think is honourable, I just feel like it should of happened a lot sooner.
I just didn’t feel like there was enough Saf in the story for me. For the first 100 or so pages we don’t really learn much about him and what his purpose in the story is. He and Bitterblue continue to keep secrets from each other and don’t communicate well at all so the fact that they fall in love boggled my mind a little bit. I just didn’t think the romance aspect needed to happen at all. He was an interesting character though and I liked that we delved a little deeper into his backstory as the plot progressed.
It was nice having Katsa and Po come in and out of the story. It had been quite a few years since I read Graceling so it was nice to reacquaint myself with those characters.
I found the entire plot to be a little boring to be totally honest. There wasn’t really any stakes that kept me engaged in the storyline. It was basically just Bitterblue walking around her castle deciphering codes and reading books, trying to figure out who was lying to her and scheming against her, which I think was pretty obvious from the start…
⭐️2/5 I’m glad I read it, didn’t really enjoy though…
Amy Leigh Reads 