 Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, which is my March wrap up. So this past month, I read 10 books, which is a little under what I've been averaging this past year. But you know what? That's okay. Ten is still a really good number. And I had a very busy month. You know, I've had a lot going on. So the fact that I was still able to read 10 books is pretty good. And nine of them are books that I have. And the one that I don't have was my book club pick. Eight of them were fantasy. And then I had one romance and one historical fiction. So the historical fiction was also my book club book. And that was the Davenport's. This is about a rich black family in 1910s in Chicago. So it's just a historical fiction. It follows three siblings and family friend and one of the maids. Yeah. So it has a lot of POVs. You're kind of going back and forth. You're really following all of their romances, really, but it's not like a romance historical fiction. It was not my favorite. It was like a 2.5 out of five stars for me. My book club wasn't the biggest fan of it either. We found the writing to be very simple, very predictable, not interesting. The characters didn't seem to have too much to them. Like it was really hard to differentiate one character from another unless there was an actual name mentioned. And I thought a lot of the love interests were just kind of cookie cutter again. Didn't really care for them as independent human beings, which made the romance harder, but it's not a romance book, but there was a lot of romance in it. It was not my personal favorite. I really liked that we got a 1910s historical fiction featuring a black family and how it's really hard to like marry someone in your status when there are very few rich black families and things like that. So I admire what the book tried to do, but it was the author's debut novel and it was very clear that it was a debut novel and there's a lot of areas where this author could grow. I like it as a standalone. It has an open ending. I won't spoil it, but there are going to be more books in the series and I probably won't pick them up unless I hear that the next one is significantly better. And then the other non fantasy book that I read this month was The Fine Print by Lauren Asher. I've been hearing a lot about this and I thought, oh, it just sounds like fun. You've got this like theme park franchise thing kind of a lot like Disney where there are lots of different branches of this like huge thing. But you're following the theme park and you've got the grandson of the man who's kind of in charge of it and he the grandfather just died and now the grandson in order to get his inheritance has to work at the park and you know he used to be an artist. He was very creative, but now he's all grumpy and he runs into one of the other creative people working at the theme park and she's all sunshine, grumpy sunshine, and they have a workplace romance. It is an adult book. It was so good. I did not expect it to be this good. I didn't expect it to be as romance heavy as it was, but that's because I didn't realize that it was like an adult romance, but I loved it. So grumpy sunshine in the workplace. I thought it was really good. I gave it what like 4.5 out of five stars almost five out of five stars. Like I really, really enjoyed this a surprising amount. Like it as I kept reading it just seemed to get better and better and I got more and more excited about it. So there are two other books kind of in this companion trilogy and I cannot wait to pick up the next one. All right, starting off the fantasy. I did read Crown of Midnight. I am currently filming a vlog of reading Throne of Glass for the first time. So I'm not going to talk too much about my thoughts here because there will be a huge in depth blog that you can just follow along with me if you want. So but I did read this in March. So it's coming. Then I read Sorcery of Thorns and this is by Margaret Rodgerson. This is the author that wrote an enchantment of ravens and I really loved an enchantment of ravens. I think I gave it five out of five stars. I thought the atmosphere was there, the vibes, it's great. So when I heard that she had written a book about like magical libraries and you're basically like this warrior that has to protect the grimoires or like the books which come alive and they're sneaky and fun, I thought I was really going to enjoy it. However, this was more of like a three star for me. I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped or expected to based off of reading her other book. I just felt the romance didn't hit the same. The love interest had all the makings to be an amazing love interest but I feel like there wasn't enough interaction between our main character and love interest to build the chemistry that I was looking for. So I wasn't super attached to them being a couple. Honestly, I was more attached to the third person that was there who was not a love interest but like they both liked the third person so much as a friend and there was more in that relationship than I would say the romance which wouldn't be a problem if I had known that going in but I was going in excited for like a longer romance than what an enchantment of ravens had but set in a magical library. But I mean the plot of it was really cool. There were a couple of things where I was like that didn't quite make sense or kind of felt disjointed a little bit. Yeah, so I was kind of let down a little bit by it but I still enjoyed it and I still think it's a very fun read and I mean it's a standalone fantasy. There is like a companion novella or something but yeah you just don't get a lot of standalone fantasy so I really appreciated that about this. Moving on I finally finally finished my favorite book of all time, Babel by RFQAM. I cannot tell you how much I love this book. I really can't like honestly when people ask me what your favorite book of all time was you know I always used to say oh I don't have one that's really hard to choose it depends on the day but this honestly might just be it because really what I like about this book so much is that it takes my dream career like what I want to do with my life and it romanticizes it and it fantasizes it and puts it in a historical context with a lot more serious issues around it. So this has to do a lot with translation. I want to be a literary translator that is like my life goal it's what I want to do um so this gives magic to translation literally magic to translation and I found a lot of the lectures and topics at the beginning of the book when they're learning about it was very in line with what I've been learning in my classes and what I found really fascinating and so I just enjoyed like reading that in a book and kind of seeing their discussions and their interpretations of it like way back in the 1800s and I mean there are also a lot of issues because they are taking kids from foreign countries and bringing them to England to work as translators for England. So like there's a lot of issues there and I thought that was handled really well and it had such an ending so this is this it just hit home it made me cry tears of like just pure joy and emotion so much which is something I've never done for books. I I barely cry for books and movies when it's sad but I never cry when I'm like excited or happy but this book made me cry multiple times. So I think this book has earned the pedestal of my favorite book of all time just because of the personal like connections and feelings I have. Is it perfect? Probably not. Do I care? Not at all. So then to follow that up I read Spice Road by Maya Ibrahim and this is a Middle Eastern inspired fantasy. We have our main character who is like a magical shield for her kingdom in the sands. One day her brother goes missing and he took the misire tea that they drink to like enhance their powers and our main character ends up illegally teaming up with a jinn, her enemy and his group of friends to go and bring back her brother. And so there was a lot of really strong themes of family in here and loyalty to your country and like where you come from and things like that. What's right versus what needs to be done and things like that. There is twists and turns and portrayals and it's wonderful and like the enemies to lovers romance. It's a very slow burn. I will say the romance does take quite a while and then it like starts no start like it's not consistent but it had me just enough wanting more and I there were some elements of the world building that I wish we could have gone more in depth with like for example the tea and a lot of the magic like it was there and it was useful but I just I wish we had gotten more out of it. However this is the first book in a series probably a trilogy so I'm hoping that we dive more into the world building and the magic systems in coming books. So yeah this was like a 3.5 probably four out of five stars like it was still a really good book and I mean this cover is gorgeous too I mean look at that. So I'm very happy I read it and I cannot wait for the next one. Now another great book that I read this was a five out of five stars Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Ferries by Heather Fawcett. Yeah this book got a lot of hype so I had to buy it and I mean look at this cover. So I had to buy it and I read it immediately and I loved it. You have Emily Wilde who is a professor at a university she is very young this is also kind of historical like 1800s I think like Victorian times I believe and so she goes to a Scandinavian-esque country to study the fey there because she is creating the world's first encyclopedia of theories and this is everything from brownies and sprites all the way up to like the courtly fey like the ceiling court and everything like that like all types of fey that you have ever heard of or could possibly imagine she's collecting information on so she goes to a Scandinavian country to learn as much as she can about their hidden ones which is another like courtly humanoid-esque fey only to then be surprised joined by her academic rival he just goes and crashes her party and it was just a magical ride you know it isn't like super high stakes it's it's really cozy it's it's great for like melting the snow weather and I just I could not put it down I absolutely loved it I can't I almost can't even tell you what because I loved our main character I loved the romance it's just again it's a very slow romance but again it's also the first in the series so I really look forward to seeing it grow and get better and everything oh it's just so sweet I think this book lives up to the hype so you've seen it hyped up and you're kind of on the edge just pick it up read it the writing amazing just give it a try please continuing on with a spring theme I then read this poison heart by Kaylin Bayron this is a secret garden retelling with a black bisexual main character who was adopted and her birth mom left her her huge estate in her will so all of a sudden our main character and her two moms are kind of like oh my word now we have this huge house with a giant yard another thing to note our main character has plant magic but she can't always control so they go up to this estate to try and figure out like who her birth mom was what is going on with these powers of hers can she control them is she supposed to stay in this estate like she kind of finds this apothecary looking thing in the house and so she's like what exactly was my family into um there's lots of mystery and intrigue and I definitely had a much happier time reading this than I did the secret garden itself and I gave this four out of five stars and there is a second book I believe it's a duology so hopefully I can get my hands on that one soon but this is definitely a great spring read I believe yeah it was on my spring tbr so yeah another book that was on my spring tbr that I read in March was beat the prey by Ayanna gray this is the first book in a duology I am currently reading the second book so I liked this it was you know 3.5 4 out of 5 stars um it was it was pretty good I was really excited about the like magical zoo aspect and then that wasn't as big of a part in the book than I thought it was it was more uh background of where our character is coming from rather than the whole book being about that but you know you've got this adventure and she teams up with this boy and they were initially on opposite sides but then push comes to shove and now they're all trying to do the same thing so they decide to team up to hunt this creature in the jungle which nobody goes into the jungle because um it's dangerous and very few people survive so still fun like classic adventure story with magic and magical creatures so yeah it was a solid read I am excited to read the second one and see where it goes then the final book that I read in March was the dragons promise by elizabeth limb this is the second book in the six crimson cranes duology I finally read this I was just waiting to get my hands on a copy and I just never took the initiative then I finally got it so I finally read it I love this duology I have loved all of elizabeth limb's uh Chinese mythology inspired fantasies I've talked about this quite a bit on my channel already but now I can finally say that I've read it and I finished the duology and I like how it ended there was so much going on it just it kept building on itself which was great the characters were wonderful and the romance you know I'm happy with how that turned out I'm quite happy with it so definitely recommend this amount of recommendations video but I definitely recommend this series so yeah those were all 10 books even though it wasn't as much as I normally read there were a lot of really good reads this month I had like two that were like two star which is kind of extreme like I don't I generally have a three and four star reading month but this was like a two and five star reading month so I'm pretty happy I'm pretty satisfied with that and hopefully the trend of five stars and really good books continue into the month of April but if you liked this video thank you so much for watching feel free to give it a thumbs up also feel free to click the subscribe button down below and hit the bell to be notified I post videos twice a week generally on Sundays and Wednesdays but hit the bell to be notified when I do post I also have bookish social media linked down below where you can see what I'm reading and what I'm thinking of it and get other updates outside of my youtube videos also feel free to comment down below would you rather read fewer books but better books or read more books but have them be like a mid like three four star like they're good books but they don't blow you away like a five star would so which would you rather do I'm I'm quite curious so until I see you all in the next video I wish you happy reading