December wrap up.

The start of December was incredibly slow and disappointing for me. The books I read weren’t great and I really didn’t feel that they even merited a real response in terms of a longer review. Still, there was a couple of really good reads thrown in there towards the end.

A Shadow Bright and Burning – Jessica Cluess

A Shadow Bright and Burning had an amazing amount of potential as a novel. I was really eager to read this when I purchased it, and when the YA bookclub chose this for the December read I was really happy about this. Unfortunately, I was completley wrong. This book is really just ‘ugh’. It’s not awful, it is just not very good. The pacing is randomly off, sometimes going too fast, sometimes not fast enough. The magic system and history is underdeveloped and under utilised. The characterisation is rather annoying and the romantic aspects of this novel are just frustrating. In all, I was really disappointed with this read.

Genuine Fraud – E Lockhart

I ended up having to DNF this. The way it constantly skips time is really irritating. Some of my favourite books follow multiple characters or timelines, so it’s not that I can’t follow it, it is just that the writing, character and story were not interesting enough to make the time skips anything more than just frustratingly annoying.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Saenz

This is another book that I was eager to read and I feel kind of disappointed about it. I have suggested that other people read it, because i’m sure they will love it, but ultimately, this was not the right book for me. I thought Aristotle wasn’t the most interesting character in the partnership, I didn’t like the repetition, and I’m not the biggest fan of a mass amount of dialogue. It is a real pity, and I appreciate this book for the topic, the story and the way in which it is handled so excellently, but it just is not for me.

When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon

I really enjoyed this novel. I want to do a longer review of it, because there are some fantastic aspects of this to talk about. Ultimately, it is a cute, light read that definitely  made me smile, but there are some cultural undertones and some really important messages in this book that are so inherent you barely notice it, and I feel that these warrant further investigation!

The Deaths of December – Susi Holliday

Hmm. Wayne and I really wanted to read a christmas mystery, so I picked up this novel which has a killer who taunts the police with a handmade advent calendar… However, Wayne didn’t end up reading his and I felt cheated by mine. It skips between four different perspectives, which meant that no character was given enough time and the narrative jumped a lot, and suspense was not adequately built, so it seemed to take forever to get to the end. Not really one I would suggest.

Stalking Jack the Ripper – Kerri Maniscalco

Luckily my final read of 2018 was so much better! A full review of this will be posted in January and I really cannot wait to write it. I adored this book, and I have genuinely been gushing about it for the last 5 days. I do have Hunting Prince Dracula, and I’m torn between immediately picking it up to read, and wanting to save it for my next long break so I can just savour it. We’ll see.