January Wrap Up

My January

January has been an interesting month both personally and on a global scale. The start of 2021 was marked by a national UK lockdown, the attack on the US Capitol, the Ugandan elections and Biden’s inauguration. Personally, I got rejected from Oxford, celebrated family birthdays in lockdown and went back to online school. It’s been a mixed month for sure! Hopefully you have also had some positives amongst the negatives in January.

For more details of my January, I have weekly updates:

• 04/01-10/01
• 11/01-17/01
• 18/01-24/01

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Reading Stats

I read 9 books and 3624 pages, but by the end of today I should have read 10 books!

♡ my average rating was 3.9

♡ 3 physical books, 5 ebooks, 2 audiobooks

♡ 3 fantasy, 1 sci-fi, 1 classic, 1 contemporary, 1 horror, 1 historical fiction and 2 dystopian!

♡ all adult

I’m shocked by how many genres I read this month! No YA sadly but I have a few I could read in February instead. There’s lots of range in the book format too, and I’m glad I’ve tried some more audiobooks. Overall, I’m really pleased with my reading month.

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The Books

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Burning God: A heart-breaking ending to an amazing series! My full thoughts are in my spoiler-free review because I don’t know if I can talk about it again without getting emotional! I’m so ready for anything R F Kuang writes next.

The Fifth Season: This book blew my mind, it’s just genius. The world is very confusing at the start but so interesting to explore and I loved the characters and their relationships. There’s so much depth to it too, with the social commentary on race and climate change. I can’t wait to continue the series!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Piranesi: This book was so fun and intriguing. I love Piranesi’s character – he’s analytical but innocent at the same time. There was a small mystery too which was fun to see unravel. It’s a quiet book with little action but the world was what made it for me!

The Vanishing Half: I gave this 4.5 stars. I love a good character-driven novel and the characters in here were so developed and interesting. The themes were also strong, like colourism, family and identity. I think it’s also a great book if you want to get into historical fiction, because it explores issues we face today and captures the time really well.

Into the Drowning Deep: I gave this 4.5 stars too! I have a review coming soon, but for now all I’m going to say is that it was a tense horror book with killer mermaids and science and great representation.

Passing: I came across the spotify audiobook a few days ago and since it was already on my TBR I decided to squeeze it into the end of January. It was a very accessible classic (does it count as a classic if it was written in 1929?) and explores a range of issues like race, gender and sexuality. It’s definitely a book I would love to read again and pick apart with analysis.

⭐⭐⭐

Tender is the Flesh: The idea of this book – a society where certain humans are factory produced for consumption – is promising, but it lacked depth and a lot of the book just felt like it was written for shock value. I did not see that ending coming though.

⭐⭐

Space Hopper: This was an ARC that took me 2 weeks to read, by audiobook as well. It only got interesting at around 80% and unfortunately it still wasn’t worth the wait. I didn’t care for the characters or the plot, but I can appreciate that it probably wasn’t aimed at me.

Never Let Me Go: Another ARC that didn’t work for me (don’t ask me why it was an ARC when it was published in 2010, I don’t know either!). The characters were bland and the way we move through the MC’s random memories didn’t work for me. I was expecting a much bigger and more impactful ending but sadly I was disappointed!

Finishing

I’m currently 80% of the way through my ARC of Winter’s Orbit, so I’m determined to finish it by the end of today! I’m loving it so far – the romance is brilliant but I like how we focus on both characters individually, and it’s not the only plot point. There’s a lot of intrigue and mystery and I’m excited to see how it’ll finish! The publish date is 2nd February so I’m going to try and write a review on Goodreads before then!

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Thanks for reading! How was your January?

—ella♥

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