Welcome to my monthly wrap up, where I share what I’ve been watching, listening to and of course reading! I’ve read more than I thought I would which I’m happy about, although I haven’t made much time for blogging. Unfortunately, it’s looking like that might be a trend as I’ve been at university but not had lectures yet, so when they actually happen I’ll have even less time! Hopefully I can get a few posts out, but here is what I wrote in September:
Music and Media
So for the movies, one I watched was Do Revenge. It really wasn’t the best, mostly due to the script and plot, but I love Maya Hawke and Camilla Mendez was good in it. I also watched Don’t Worry Darling a few days ago. Florence Pugh was amazing and saved the movie for me. I liked the shots and the weirder experimental side but overall it didn’t really work or have that much depth– nothing was explored and explained well to me. So the films were a little disappointing but the shows haven’t been. I’ve been rewatching Inside No. 9, watching the new episodes of Ghosts and started the new season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK, all of which have been great!
Reading Stats
I read 5 books and 2059 pages with an average of 69 pages a day!
♡ my average rating was 3.90
♡ 4 digital books, 1 physical book (2 ARCs)
♡ 1 thriller, 1 fantasy, 1 horror, 2 historical
♡ 5 adult
I’ve had a pretty good month! I’ve been reading more and I want to try and keep that up but we’ll see with uni. My rating has been a bit all over the place, some amazing and some meh, but a decent average.
The Books
For the second month in a row, the Daevabad series is my only five star read of the month! I’m so happy that I loved the sequel because I was nervous on the direction it was going to take, but thankfully it doesn’t have second book syndrome. It is slow paced but the focus on the characters and politics made sure I never got bored, and allowed me to understand the world better. The conclusion is not slow at all, with loads of actions and heartbreak! I can’t wait to read the last book, which should be in October or November.
Two brilliant historical books, both marketed as dark academia though I wouldn’t quite agree with Plain Bad Heroines. They’re both incredibly long but so captivating. The prose in Plain Bad Heroines was haunting, and although some of the present timeline was not my thing with Hollywood and pop culture references, overall I loved it, The only thing was the ending skipped over a bit and kind of fizzled out which was a little disappointing. With Babel, I loved the discussions of colonialism, translation and empire. For the themes alone it would be 5 stars, however as a story some of the characters didn’t have that much depth and I would’ve loved if they’d been explored more.
The Mad Women’s Ball was an atmospheric historical fiction with interesting themes of asylums and how mental health was perceived, however it just lacked a little depth and nuance for me. The feminist themes were quite basic and repeated a lot, when I would have loved a little something more such as exploring class and gender. The ending felt pretty rushed but I liked the epilogue, and it was easy to read too.
Last and least is The Things We Do To Our Friends. The setting was atmospheric but the characters weren’t compelling and the plot wasn’t exciting either, especially for what’s marketed as a dark academia thriller. The last half picked up a bit with some interesting twists, but the ending felt anticlimactic and I finished it not caring about the characters or story unfortunately.
Thanks for reading! How was your September?
—ella♥
♦ goodreads ♦
ella isn’t writing 
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