 I hear that bun, other glasses. Let's do this, my foot is falling asleep. This is wonderful. Yes, I am aware that that has changed. No! I had my phone died, now it died. Hello, hello everyone, my name is Laura and this is my channel Laura's Little Library and today I have a what is most likely going to be a very long video for you. My March wrap up and I read 17 books this March. Yes, 17, which is quite a lot for me. That was insane that I read that many books. So many of them were audiobooks, but it's been absolutely wonderful. And there has only been, oh my word, it's only been three months. I read more in January, but that's because I read some younger books for a different thing, but like I'm up to 46 books according to Goodreads, 46 books. My goal is 100. We're a quarter of the way through the year and I'm almost halfway through my goal. So let's talk about those books and let's dive right into it because there are a lot. I'm going to start with the books that I physically have because like I said a lot of these books were audiobooks so I do not own them or have the physical version of them. I'm going to go through the stack of what I actually have and then we'll get to all the other books. The first thing I will say is I did actually have one reread this month, which I don't reread books, so that was pretty good for me. I reread Blood and Honey by Shelby McCurran. It's the second book in the trilogy. I own the first two, Serpent and Dove, Blood and Honey. I reread Blood and Honey because I couldn't remember anything except for one scene near the beginning that didn't mean much. And I really wanted to finish the trilogy and read Gods and Monsters as we are currently in my Continu-a-thon read-a-thon, which is all about finishing our continuing series. So I kind of got into that pretty early so I actually read both Blood and Honey and Gods and Monsters in March before the read-a-thon even started. Blood and Honey still is my least favorite of the trilogy, but I gotta say Gods and Monsters picked up the slack a little bit. Like the first one is still my favorite, as is the case with many series and trilogies. I still think Serpent and Dove was the best, but I would say Gods and Monsters was the next best. It was a big one, and it had a lot to make up for it. It felt like one of those classic fantasy books where you have your characters, you have an objective, and then the author just sits there and throws every obstacle that they can come up with to try and make these characters lose their objective. But we still get a happy ending, and I loved that. It felt like, oh my word, they finally got to this thing, and oh, now this is how it happens because that's kind of how life goes sometimes, you know, you just sit there and you're like, okay, I just need to do this one simple thing on my computer, and the next thing you know is like, your computer needs an update, oh, the Wi-Fi's not connecting, and then oh, you run out of time, and just all these obstacles. So it was really fun to read a fantasy book where that was happening, and it was like relatable except for the fact that, you know, there are witches and magic and life-threatening things, but who really cares about that, right, right. Yeah, Got some Monsters, I actually gave 4 out of 5 stars. The first one was like 5 out of 5, but yeah, because I really, I loved, I had an easier time loving the characters like I did. I think the second book brought my expectations down, so in the third book, I could actually sit there and enjoy the characters. The Bander was getting better, the relationship between Lou and Rhee, like, when it started off the book, it started off how they were in the second book, a little bit of miscommunication-y, but then they got so much better, and then things happened, and I was in full support of their relationship. Again, it was really nice and refreshing. I love that we got to dive more into the magic system, so, and the first book were introduced to the world, and the second book were expanding that world, and the third book were learning the more specifics of what we already know, and I appreciate that. And I understand why it took so long to get an explanation of the specifics of the magic system, like there was a reasoning for it, and I understand it. I don't know if I would have wanted it earlier, or if I was just okay with how it was, that didn't make a lot of sense, but whatever. I liked that in the third book. And this is also, like, a book where I actually liked the epilogue. Normally, I roll my eyes, I'm not a fan, or I always think endings last too long, so then when there's an epilogue tacked on the end of it, it's just not my thing. I don't need it. I always read it, but I don't ever need it. But in this book, I loved it. The epilogue to the third book, it made me so happy. So my spheres were lifted definitely by that read. Moving on, I also read How We Fall Apart by Katie Chao. This was when I started last September in preparation for spooky season. It's a dark academia. And I finally picked it back up again and finished it. I had gotten 80 pages into it last year, picked it up right where I left off, and finished it. Finally, it took me so long to read this. I feel like I don't know if it was just slow or the writing seemed slow or just wasn't super interested in the past versus the present. I just I didn't care about what was going on. I just wanted the answers and then to be done rather than to enjoy the journey, which was kind of a bummer. So this follows a friend group in high school, and they go to this top dog academy, whatever. And one of their friends dies. And then the other and one person is online. I think they're called the proctor. And they're like spilling the secrets of the other friend group members to try and figure out which one of them killed their friend. And the concept sounds so interesting, but I think it could have been executed just a little bit better. I didn't like pretty much any of the characters and not in a like, oh, they're supposed to be unlikable. But like, they just the chemistry was not there. They didn't feel like a friend group. They didn't feel like they cared for each other or for themselves. They just kind of went through this plot rather than actually have relationships or have feelings. They just kind of they were very 2D characters. They weren't well rounded and therefore their relationships just weren't believable. So I just didn't care for the characters. The only thing keeping me keeping me there was the plot and I am a plot driven reader. So that's why I probably finished the book. If I was a plot driven reader, I probably would have put this down and like DNF'd it. Plus, I wasn't a big fan of the writing. It just felt pretty rant-y, like the writing style and I just did not match. So I gave this one a 2.5 out of five stars. Just it wasn't for me. I love dark academia, but this just I think it was because it's similar to Ace of Spades, but I liked Ace of Spades a lot more. So not even, it's not even that similar to Ace of Spades, but like, yeah, just wasn't my thing. All right, and then recently I went to the library and I just found Anya's Ghost and this is by their but I was cool and I had saw this, like one person recommended it years ago. And so when I saw it I was like, oh it's this short graphic novel, I'll just pick it up, right? It's just a little graphic novel. And I liked it. I gave it like 3 out of 5 stars. Like it was average. It didn't really seem that special. There were elements of it that I appreciated. I liked the ghost character and I liked our other characters, but the main character and her friend. I just kind of was like eh, not much to, like a little bit of the Russian cultural aspects were really cool to see. And like I love the ghost thing, but other than that I just wasn't super impressed. I just felt like it was kind of average. You know, glad I read it, done for. I didn't need to read it for spooky season, although it is a good spooky season book. It is a good fast ghost read. Yeah, it was good, it was good. Next up I have a book where similar to Serpent and Dove, it was a book in a series that I picked up in preparation for the Continuathon, but then ended up reading before the Continuathon started. And that was The School for Good and Evil Book II, A World Without Princes by Somen Cianani. I really wanna get the series finished before the summer when the movie adaptation is coming out. I believe the movie adaptation really is only the first book, but I want to have the series finished, I just do. I liked it, I think it wasn't my favorite. I rated this four out of five stars, maybe 3.5, four out of five. I still very much like the writing, I still like the storytelling, the relationship between our main characters is great. So the first book follows the idea of this fantasy world, and it's middle grade, this fantasy world where there is a school for good and school for evil, and when you graduate, you kinda live out your fairy tale and there's this magic pen that writes down your story and it turns into the fairy tales we know and love, you know, like Cinderella and Snow White, Pinocchio, Rumpelstiltskin, et cetera and so forth. And so two girls are kidnapped from this town full of readers where there aren't really people who are in fairy tales and you would think that one girl goes to one school and the other goes to the other school, like you think that's obvious, but the next thing you know, they're actually switched. And the girl you think should go to the school for good is actually going to the school for evil. And the girl you think goes to the school for evil is actually going to the school for good. So that's kinda the premise of the first book. This book takes place pretty much immediately after. It's so interesting the complexity of these characters and how that affects their relationships. It got not quite repetitive, but almost there on certain character traits and trusting people and whatnot. Like it wasn't my favorite, you know, I read it and I was satisfied. I do very much enjoy this series, I love the premise. It's so interesting how it all plays out. And then the last of the physical books that I have is actually a duology. So I read the first book, it was on my spring TBR, The Crown's Game by Evelyn Sky, and I wanted to read this in the month of spring because it takes place in an alternate imperial Russia, kind of historic, and you have these enchanters. Well, each country is supposed to have just one enchanter and they're the imperial chanter, they're to help the royal family, but there actually are two imperial chanters in Russia and so they have to go through a competition to the death of who's going to be the imperial chanter and it's a multiple POV book. So I picked this one up because, like I said, it was on my spring TBR, I really wanted to get to it before winter was over and it was too springy because I wasn't sure if because Russia, it would be cold or not. It wasn't particularly wintery, so. But then I ended up also then picking up The Crown's Fate, which is the second book in the duology, so I, like, I read this book and I was like, oh, I can read this one for the continuous on. And then I read it before the continuous on, just look at me go, y'all. If you liked The Night Circus or An Unkind to Some Magicians, you'll probably like this, it's a very similar premise, you've got two enchanters who are fighting to the death. I liked this book, it was a four out of five stars. I loved through a creativity and the magic and like the moves that each person did because you have one character who's very elemental and one character who's a little bit more mechanical and to see them both create beauty in their own way. I very much enjoy this, there's a love triangle which is not my thing and I think it's kind of unnecessary. I feel like the author just threw it in there to up the stakes, even though the stakes are high enough. The only thing, other thing is that this has six POVs. Six. I think we would have been just fine with two, maybe three. There were six different POVs and it was just, it was a lot. And then this book I read at 3.5 out of five stars. The love triangle continued in this one which I wasn't a super big fan of. I felt like it was super slow, it took a while for the first event to happen and then nothing happened until like the end of the book I felt like it was just not a lot going on but I am glad I finished it and I would still very much like recommend this duology. Like I had a lot of fun reading it. So those are all the physical books that I own that I read, minus one, but we'll get there. So I read then 10 books on audio which is so much. But the first book that I read was Isn't It Bromantic by Alyssa K. Adams. This is the fourth installment in the Bromance Book Club companion novel series. I gave this five out of five stars. I loved it. Honestly, the first one and the fourth one are my favorites. This was my favorite. So we're following our main character Vlad who is known as the Russian in the other books and it follows how he, his story is like a friends to lovers except they never admitted the lovers part but they're married. Like it's more of a marriage of convenience with your best friend rather than actually admitting to each other that they love each other and actually want to be a normal couple like a normal husband and wife. It melted my heart. I loved everything about this. The complex relationships, the complex character development. It was all amazing. A fresh take on the book club itself. It was all there. You don't really have to read them in order but the first and the fourth one were definitely my favorites. So I would still read one, two, three and four just so you can have a nice little book ends there. I am so excited for the next one coming out a very merry bromance. I think it's called, I don't know, it's coming out in November. I am super excited. And then I read Caravall by Stephanie Garber and that's the book that I own but it's like back there and I don't want to ruin my setup to get it. So sorry, not sorry. But I rated it five out of five stars. I loved it. I have been meaning to pick this up for so long. Everyone's told me it's so good. I would love it and they were right. I did love it. It's a perfect balance between dark and magical and mystical. So like you've got this big event Caravall and there's this game and our two sisters run away to the game only for one of them to be captured and the game is to find her. Everyone is looking for her. Not just, not just a sister. Everyone is looking for this human being and it was so good, so twisty, so turny. Check for triggers of like abuse and a little, it was a little gory but I didn't mind it. Well, I won, the only other thing that I didn't like though is I felt like the clues were kind of wishy-washy, hard to follow, not super concrete. They weren't like my favorite and then I read the second book, Legendary and I liked that one as well, a lot. It dove so much more into the world. The clues were a lot better. The magic was interesting, like yeah. And I also rated it five out of five stars. I rated all three books in the series five out of five stars but I have yet to change them because I don't think they were all five out of five stars, you know, they fluctuate a little bit. One thing though that did really, really bother me about Legendary is that our main character was told many times, straightforward, delayingly, this is real. And yet the entire time the main character's like, oh, this isn't real, it's just a game. And I was like, no, the game happened in the last book. You are repeatedly being told by many people, this is real. Why can't you believe it? Why can't you listen to yourself? Like in the first one, when it felt so real but they were being told, you know, it's just a game, it's just a game. Fine, I get it because it's startling, whatever, but by the second book don't you learn your lesson? Anyway, I liked the clues. I think this one was my favorite of the series. That's what it was. The first one was more of 4.5. This one's a five out of five stars and then I think the third one was like a 4.5 as well. Like they were all very highly rated. I love this trilogy. So speaking of the third one, it's finale. And yeah, 4.5 out of five stars, it just was a lot. You know, I felt like going through this, there were so many elements added, but at the same time it was trying to wrap up the trilogy as a whole. And there is just so much to it. Like I finished reading and I just went, that was a lot. But I really liked the direction that it took, how it dove into the fates and the world and like kind of almost the mythology in a way of it. I love how it dived into that. And it just made me want to read more from the world. Like I want to continue reading for that world. And that's what the thought I had immediately after finishing third one. So you know what I did? You know what I did? I downloaded the audiobook for Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garver. So if you don't know, Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garver is her new series, the trilogy, trilogy series. That is set in the same world, but we're following a different character. So character that we meet in the trilogy, we're following their story, but from a new character's point of view. Like we have our new female main character. It follows her, but also the Prince of Hearts from the trilogy. This one I felt like there were so many twists and turns. It was a four out of five stars. I still loved it. I still love the world and the magic in the mythology and all the twists and turns behind it. And I liked the main character. She was different from the sister. It was really fun to read from. I'm so intrigued because the premise of this one is that she asks him to break up the wedding between the boy she loves and her step sister. And he does that, but in exchange she owes him three kisses to be determined completely by him. And when I finished the book, I sat there and I realized, there's another one coming out. And there's a cliffhanger. So I really want the next one to come out. Yeah, like it just had me hooked and I kept reading and I kept wanting to consume the story. I didn't want it to end. You know, I wanted to know the ending. I didn't want it to end. So I very much enjoyed it. And I'm looking forward to the next one that has not come out yet. Speaking of another series that I read more of in the month of March, I also read, finally, Ruin and Rising by Lee Vardugo. It took me so long to get into this book because like I had such a hard time with the second one. I didn't like the second one at all. It was just way too slow. The characters made me mad. I had such a hard time but I knew I wanted to finish the trilogy. I was worried that the Ruin and Rising was about to put me into a slump because when I started it, you know, it started where it left off. Slow and with annoying characters. But I finally, after a while, forced myself to sit down and read the rest of the book. I did so in my 12 hour reading blog, which I will have linked up here. I finally sat down and read it so you can hear about my thoughts there. But it was a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I think it was better than the second one because things actually happened. Conclusions were made. Man, it took me way too long. Like I had started it probably before March but it took me a while. I felt like the dialogue in it was good. Like the casual dialogue was good but anytime they talked about like war or strategizing, it just felt unnatural and weird and kind of basic. Took a whole new turn than what I was expecting. I wish we had just a little bit more of an explanation of the magic system. I just felt like they tried and I didn't really get it but they didn't try enough. As in they're like, oh, this is how it is and then they didn't explain anything about it so there was a few things I felt like we're lacking but now I finally feel ready to... No, that's why I don't feel ready to watch Shadow and Bone because I still gotta read Six of Crows. But now that I finished the trilogy, I can finally read Six of Crows. Yay! Taking a bit of a turn over to Contemporary Romance, I read One True Loves by Elise Bryant. This is the companion novel to Happily Ever Afters, which I own but One True Loves came out in January and I was really excited. It follows the best friend of the main character. Well, one of the good friends from the main character in Happily Ever Afters but I rated this one four out of five stars. This was a very good rating month for me, you know? Like I had a few lower rated ones but a lot of them were like solid four out of five stars. I'm being so much more liberal with my five stars this year, it's great. It wasn't as much of a hate to love as I would have liked. It was more like a strong annoyance to love but as long as it's not like friends to lovers, I'm okay most of the time. So, just have that. If you're interested in reading it, so it follows our main character, Lenore, who is getting ready to go to college after graduating from an art school but she doesn't feel like she has a clear direction of what she wants to do with her life. So, her family goes on a cruise and her parents basically say by the end of the cruise you need to be decided on a major and you need to know what you're doing with your life and kind of get all your whole thing together and that only gives her two weeks. She meets this boy in the boat. He makes a terrible first impression and then they go annoyance to love, as I said before. So, I liked the romance. I really liked the relationship. It was kind of, it was very interesting because it was annoyance to friends to love, which I didn't mind so much because it was more contemporary. I feel like enemies to lovers in contemporary. Well, no, I even enjoy that. But yeah, like, I don't know. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't my favorite, but I did enjoy it, especially since it was only two weeks long of a story. Yeah, like it had some good important themes and I really liked the characters. I thought every character was interesting and fascinating and characters I wanted to read more about. So, hopefully this author releases more companion novels and I will read them. We are almost there. We have three more books to go. This next one is not one I ever thought I would read. Ever. So, I have a co-worker who I found out likes to read, but what they like to read is spy espionage novels and so they gave me a recommendation and I thought I'd try it. So, I read the Nemesis Manifesto. I don't even remember who's spy. It's like Eric Van Something. I'm so sorry. I know I should know, but I don't. I'm not giving this one a rating because I feel the rating I would give is probably not fair to the book. This is my first book of the genre and this isn't even the book my co-worker recommended. They recommended the second book, but I wanted to read the first book first. But like, there were just so many characters and so much going on. So much switching of point of views. Everyone in different situations and then either I didn't know what was going on or it was too info-numpy. There just kind of wasn't an in-between. But I don't know if that's just like the style of spy espionage books or if that like actually is a valid critique. Like, I, there was just a lot going on back and forth between all these characters with like, you kind of dropped into the middle and you're supposed to pick up on it as you go along except I just never picked up on it as we went along. I just failed kind of the whole way through. By the ending, it was kind of fun because you know, you get into the big adventure and you're like, oh, okay, I somewhat understand what's going on, kind of how most of the pieces fit together. But I want, I'm gonna read the next one because that's the one that my co-worker recommended and I want to give it a fair chance. But yeah, I had a bit of a difficult time so I don't think spy espionage novels are for me. I will very much enjoy the movies but maybe not the books. I think I need to be a little more visual. I can't just do an auditory with complex books like these. Moving on, we have The Forest of Souls. This was by Lori M. Lee. I had such high expectations going to this book. I was so excited to read it and on my TBR, it was one of those books that I was like, oh my word, that sounds like an amazing fantasy. I'm gonna put it on my TBR, I'm gonna buy it and then I'm gonna read it because I'm gonna love it so then I want to already own it. I gave it 2.5 stars. I did not love it. I don't know if it was partially my high expectations or I just, it's just not what I was hoping, I guess. Our main character tried so hard to be a badass main character that there was nothing about them that seemed human and the part that was badass was just kind of average. You know, like this main character did not stand out to me at all. It felt a little flat, could have been a little more well-rounded, could have been a little more human. So I had issues with the main character and I had really issues with all the characters because everybody seemed just way too young for what was going on and not like in a, oh my word, they're 15 and they're doing all this like a, you're done, you're at that place as like a kid? Huh? It just didn't make sense. So much of this book just didn't feel natural, even though it's a fantasy, most fantasies set the tone so that you know what's natural and what isn't. They just never have that with this one. It kept, it also kept losing my attention. That was the thing, I kept zoning out, I wasn't interested, I would have to rewind or go back because I just couldn't focus on it. I wasn't interested. I wasn't a big fan of the writing, there were no twists. Well, there were twists and turns. There was like a twist that I appreciated. Like I said, I wasn't attached to the characters so then when things happened to them, I didn't care. And I think the book really relied mostly on the reader's emotional reaction to events happening to the characters but if you're not attached to the characters then it doesn't matter. And it just spoils the whole book. It really does. I also felt like there was no description of the world itself. I had no visual imagery of what I'm supposed to be imagining as I'm reading. It just, like, I had no idea what a character just looked like, I had no idea what the world looked like, what the buildings looked like, what the magic looked like. Just, there just wasn't any description. It was just event, event, event dialogue through it and that was it. So yeah, suffice to say, this was a two, two and a half star read for me. It's not one that I would recommend. If you love your fantasy and you take pride in being a fantasy reader, don't read Forrest Dessaults. All right, last book, I'm pretty sure. Last book that I read in March was a 4.5 out of five stars and that was The Shadows Between Us. So this is a dark fantasy romance and I follow some TikTokers, some Instagrammers who read a lot of dark romance and I really wanna give it a try. I think it's something that I would love to read and I kept seeing this from pop-up and I'm like, yeah, maybe I should read it. I guess I should read it. I mean, it's a little political but I think I can get by that. Oh, so worth it. Very much enjoyed The Shadows Between Us. Goodreads tells me that there is another one by Trisha Levinseller. Coming out following the sister of the main character and I want to read that. It doesn't have a cover or anything but it's on my TBR, I'm gonna read it. And this book, one thing that I appreciate about this book is just how straightforward the plot and the characters are. For example, within the first couple pages you know the plot of the book because our character has a plan. She's like, I'm gonna woo the Shadow King, get him to fall in love with me, marry him, murder him and take over the kingdom. And I'm like, yes, you go girl, I am rooting for you all the way. I'm rooting for your romance that you don't know you're gonna have but either way, I'm rooting for you. So there's this mystical Shadow King, literally covered in shadows, cannot be touched, like really hard to kill this guy but believe me, people are trying. And she is just not happy with her life as like some countess or like she is, she's somewhere within the court but not super high up in the court, like her father is a duke or something. And they're in debt and she is very much like a modern woman, like this is a older, kind of like historical almost but not given a certain timeframe but it's like women don't wear pants and women don't have their own independent sex lives and women follow the old traditional ideals of stuff. And she's like, nope, I'm gonna make my own clothes and they're gonna include pants. They're gonna be tight clothes that I enjoy wearing. I don't care if you think it's scandalous, I'm gonna sleep with as many men as I want. Like she is just her own independent woman fighting for what she believes in. And that was just so fun to read, I loved her. And like I said, because all this was discussed at the very beginning, it was a very fast paced book. Well, it was fast in the beginning which got me hooked. It kind of slowed in the middle when it got really political and she started focusing on like a side quest of side characters romances which I like the idea of but I think we spent too much time on and it took a little too long but by the ending it sped back up again and I was happy. The ending was a little predictable that was another reason why I took, so the half a star I took off because it was slow and because the ending I think could have been better, it could have been a little more creative, less predictable but still very much loved it. I just felt like it was a good balance of a good plot, good main characters, good side characters, good world building. I just was overall very satisfied with this book and so if you're looking for a dark fantasy romance and you haven't tried this one out, I would recommend it. I would very much recommend it. But yes, I believe those are the 17 books that I read in March. Again, crazy. Hopefully I have another reading month like that in April but we'll see, it's not quite there yet. I've got some chunky books planned for April. If you're curious what I'm reading with April, then you can go ahead and check out my Continuathon TBR because I am hosting a readathon for the first two weeks of April called the Continuathon. I've mentioned it multiple times in this video and my Continuathon TBR is kind of serving as my April TBR because there are so many books that I'm not gonna be able to read in just these two weeks so I'm hoping that maybe I can do them throughout the entire month of April. Even though the readathon's only two weeks, I might just do it all month long. So feel free to check that video out but if you're interested in watching more videos by me, I post on Sundays and Wednesdays and so you can subscribe and hit the bell to be notified for when I do upload those. Otherwise I have bookish social media linked down below. You can follow me there and get more updates on what I'm reading and what I am thinking about it. Otherwise give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and comment down below what your March has been like now that we're recorded the way through the year are you on top of your reading goal? Are you behind? Are you like miles ahead like me, apparently? I would love to hear from you but until I see you all in the next video, I wish you happy reading.