Welcome to 2017, y’all! If you can believe this, three years ago yesterday was the first day of my adventure in blogging every day for a whole year. Yeah, that was three years ago already! I don’t even know where the time went. But here we are!
I’m going to do something a little different with Amanda Reads this year. Since I write in-depth book reviews on other sites now, I’m going to write only mini-reviews here, more like what I put on Goodreads. I’ll includes a rating with a new rating system, as follows:
The rating system is going to be the equivalency of how many dogs you get to pet in each day, starting at zero:
- 0 dogs petted: DNF. I couldn’t get through the book. It’s not a good day.
- 1 dog petted: It was an okay day. I mean, I got to pet a dog. But it could have been better.
- 2 dogs petted: A solid effort. May recommend.
- 3 dogs petted: A really good day, tbh. Would recommend willingly to friends and family.
- 4 or more dogs petted: Best day. Will be recommending to all the people. Pet all the dogs.
It’s a pretty basic system, really. 😀
Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
If you’re looking for a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat, with significantly more action than character development, this is a good option for you. Robert Langdon stories are so fun, and the history comes off as well-researched and pieced together (although I’ve heard it’s not super accurate). A good adventure story. I haven’t seen the movie, but now I definitely want to.
Rating: 3 dogs petted. I already gave my copy to my dad to read.
Glass Sword, by Victoria Aveyard
Do you remember when I read the first book in this series, Red Queen? I was pretty meh about it then, and the second book is a lot of the same. There was so much promise in the world, and it didn’t deliver on those promises at all. In the second book, Mare is even worse, if you can believe that – she’s so whiny and always talking about how special she is. Yawn. Cal is still swoony (at least to me), but the rest of the book is forgettable and I have no idea what he sees in Mare at all. And yet… I’ll be reading the next one because of the stinking ending that blew my mind. So you’ll be hearing about this one again!
Rating: 2 dogs petted. I’d never recommend this one without some caveats.
Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas
This was recommended to me by a bunch of different people and websites throughout the last year, so I waited until the end of the year and then dove in. The rest of the books on this list are in the same series. I was so pleasantly surprised by this, actually, especially after reading Red Queen and Glass Sword. Celaena is fun and sassy and she made me laugh sometimes, and the plot itself was interesting. It had its problems, as most books do, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Rating: 3 dogs petted.
Crown of Midnight, by Sarah J. Maas
Crown of Midnight was WAY better than Throne of Glass! Way better! Even though I predicted a key part of the ending really early on, I was still happy with how it was all wrapped up. Not only were all of the plots better, but the love story was better and made more sense, and the fierce friendship made me love it even more. Everything was amazing (aside from the same problems as the last book, mostly in the lack of diversity, but that’s a tale for an actual, full-length review) and Chaol was the best.
Rating: 4+ dogs petted. You should start the series just so you can read this one.
Heir of Fire, by Sarah J. Maas
As you could have probably guessed, I had high expectations for Heir of Fire after Crown of Midnight. And they were not met! Not even close! Heir of Fire was boring, man. There were too many new characters that I didn’t really care about for a long time, too many additional plots to keep track of, and some of the wrapping up of the plots was a little sloppy (or nonexistent, in the case of the witches). I’m hoping that some of that is remedied in Queen of Shadows, but I’m going to have to wait a while to find out.
Rating: 1 dog petted. Queen of Shadows better rock.
December was a busy month for reading, but I’m even more excited for what 2017 brings – the start of my Diverse/Lady Book Project! You’ll see echoes throughout this blog too, so you can go over to Tumblr and follow along if you’d like. Even better, you can read along with me. I’m starting with You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson.
Until next month, happy reading!
-A.
Snark & Squee 