 Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. Today, we're doing my March Wrap Up. Now, if you've been watching my other wrap ups, the question you'll be asking is, has her reading slump ended? And if you follow me on anything, you know, watch my other videos, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, you'll know the answer to that is no. I'm sorry. Like, here's the thing. It was shaping up to be my worst reading month of the year because I really struggled to read at the start of this month. In the last week, I pulled it back a bit and I read three books. I could have easily not read three books that week and continue not reading, so we're like, we pulled it back a bit. We like, grasped it from the jaws of defeat a little bit, but it still wasn't great. I read seven books, which, you know, I get comments where people say, oh, that's a lot for me. And like, two years ago, that would have been like, a crazy amount for me. But it's subjective, right? Like, how much do we like, there's people a good month for me of like 12 books. There's some people who read like 30 books usually in a month and they would say they're in a slump. So it is all subjective. But seven books for me currently isn't great. Isn't great. It's not great. So I read seven books in the month of March. And basically, we're going to chat about each of them. But first we're going to go through my reading statistics for the month. So yeah, I read a total of seven books, like we said. I read 2282 pages, which I think is like slightly more like 30 more pages than February. But considering March has like three extra days, like, it's not that impressive. That averages out to 74 pages a day, or a book average of 336 pages. Before my 2021 reading slump happened, I used to say that like an average of 100 pages a day was good for me. That is ideally what I want to be back on as an average of 100 pages per day. Here's hoping, but like, looking at the books I have to read this month, I'm not sure what is going to happen. In terms of my star ratings, I gave two five stars, two four stars, one 3.5 star, one two star, and one 1.5 star. And that 1.5 is actually something I originally rated two and then lowered down. This gives me an average rating of 3.57, which is my lowest so far. But I had like two five stars, which I hadn't been getting like any five stars. I think I'd had like a lot of four stars so far this year. So I view it as like a pretty okay reading month because I've got two more favorites, which I hadn't had yet really this year that much. I've maybe had like one or two in genuine February in total. In terms of genre, I read one anthology, one contemporary, two fantasy, and three mystery. Now mystery is definitely my favorite genre. And I typically don't read the most of it. I typically read more fantasy. So I'm glad that this month I actually was able to read more mystery. I read two adult, one middle grade and four YA. So definitely very heavy on the YA this month. In terms of where the books came from that I read, three were gifted to me. One was a book I previously owned. One was a book sent to me by the publisher and two were from script. If you've watched a lot of these wrap ups, you'll know that I have a goal to read at least 50% non-white authors. I often say that I don't think monthly wrap ups are a good indication of this, especially when I'm only reading seven books. But I read for one black author, one Asian author, one mixed race author, and four white authors. So the white author percentage that I read this month is 57%. But in terms of like my percentage for the year so far, it's still less than 50% white authors. So I'm not particularly worried about that. Like seven books, it's not, with seven books, you're never going to get a fully accurate representation. Oh, interestingly, five I read were part of a series and only two were standalone. I was looking at my list. I'll see if I can put it in here where you can see the ones that I have listed what series the book is from, from the books I've read the whole year, and so many are from series. I've read so many series this year. There are a couple of series I need to finish off. I'm notoriously bad at reading the last book in a series. I'm good at starting series and terrible at finishing them. It's a problem. I can recognize it's a problem. I can recognize I'm struggling. I can recognize all that stuff you need to tell me. I love starting a series. I hate finishing them. And finally, four books. Four books. Four books I read were the author's debut. They're not necessarily like that's the only book they have out in terms of like a debut author. Some of them are. But four were like that author's first book. Two were authors I'd read from before and one author was new to me. So I think that is all the statistics that we need. So now let's talk about the seven books I read and why. I thought of them. The first couple I'm struggling to remember my thoughts. I'm not gonna lie. I'm like wondering why I'm thinking that. I don't remember love. I don't remember at all. I really don't because I know for a long time ago. Like it feels very long ago at the start of March. But the first book I read was Black Enough by Ibiza Boy. She like is the collator of the anthology but it is a collection of short stories by many black authors talking about the young black experience. I gave this 3.5 stars. I think the anthology is like there's some in that that were five stars. There's some that were like two stars for me in terms of the short stories. They kind of balance each other out. It did actually cause me to put some new authors like on my wish list and on my want to read. One has already been very, oh no two have been very kindly gifted to me but I don't know where the second one is. But one example is Jay Coles. I really loved his short story and I'm really excited to pick up one of his novels so I now have Tyler Johnson was here. That was very kindly gifted to me. What I think worked so well about this anthology was it was structured really well in terms of how the stories flowed into one another. You felt that all were tackling different difficult topics and different topics but they weren't kind of like merging into one another. You had one of my favourite stories. I believe was it Donia Clayton's one? I can't remember which one was by who but one was about a girl whose twin sister had died and kind of like the grief and the experience of that. But yeah it was a fun read. I listened to the audiobook and I really enjoyed that. I'd really recommend the audiobook and I think it's a great way to discover more black authors that maybe you would like to read. You get so many in such a short space of time and you can figure out whose writing style appeals to you most. So I really recommend it. I enjoyed it. 3.5 stars. It was like a good read but with any anthology I think you're unlikely to be writing it at 5 stars because of that mix of authors. Both this first and second book I read in a vlog where the last word of the book I read previously picks the book I read next. I'll link that below if you wanted to go check it out. But the second book I read this month is Me My Dad and the End of the Rainbow by Benjamin Dean. This was a joyous, beautiful, amazing, happy story. I gave this 4 stars just because the pacing at the ending felt a little bit off for me but it was an amazing debut. It's a debut. It's an amazing middle grade if you're wanting to get more into middle grade. And basically this is about a boy called Archie who finds out that his dad is gay and that's the reason that his parents are split up. One day he sees a leaflet for something called Pride fall out of his dad's pocket and he and his friends decide to go to Pride to travel there on their own in secret to try and understand his dad better and to understand the way in which he feels that their relationship has changed. And it was just so beautiful and heartwarming and just a really joyous story that I think is a book that like to my knowledge, nothing like exists. And I think it's really important for kids to read about how if something like this happens to them, their love for their parent isn't going to change. It was just like so happy, so fun. I really loved reading it. I'm really excited to read anything that Benjamin Dean puts out in the future. I know that he's just announced that he's going to be part of like this murder mystery middle grade anthology, which I'm so excited for. I think it's coming out on October of this year, so that's definitely going to be one of my most anticipated releases because I just think that's going to be so much fun. I just love Archie. I just love his family. I just love him so much. Just love him so much. Pretty legendary if you ask me. I thought I'd check out his mother's feelings really well as well without invalidating his dad's experiences, like how difficult it must be for her to find that out. And she's kind of in denial for some of the book and is very angry and is very upset. And it validated her feelings without invalidating how it was like the right thing to happen for the whole family, but especially for his dad. So I thought that was tackled really, really well. And yeah, definitely one I would recommend picking up next. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. So I do a series called Wrapped Up. You can see like one of them there. I have wrapped up some of my books and I unwrap one and then I vlog reading that book. And this month it didn't go that well. So I read an Embrun the Ashes by Sabrita here and I rated this two stars. This is like a booktube favorite. This is such a well-loved series and I don't understand why. Ah, you guys go drag me for this, huh? Okay. Let's talk about what it's about first. The Cliff Notes version, you have Leia, who is a slave, you have Elias, he's a soldier, neither is free. That's from the back. And I can't even, I actually can't somewhere else just pluck you because A, there isn't really one and B, my brain is like, don't want to think about that. Don't want to think about it. Don't want to think about it. Like my brain is like, no thank you. No. But it's basically them each fighting the societal things in place. Elias wants to desert as a soldier, but he gets wrapped up in this contest kind of thing. And Leia's brother is kidnapped by the kind of army, not kidnapped, like put in prison, by the army and she wants to try and get him released. The characters are annoying. The characters are so annoying, but also not just Leia, like Leia's shit. Leia, but she recognizes she's shit. She's shit. She's trying to be a spy and she's shit of being a spy and she knows this, right? And she like says to everyone, like, I ain't going to be good at this. And then when the people she's spying for, like when she's like, oh, I got injured, I got this, I got that, they're like, I'm just like, we all saw this coming. I think that's my problem is that it was very predictable. It was very one note. It didn't read particularly well. Did I read? Absolutely. Did I talk? Absolutely. I can't even remember my other criticisms of this book. Like, that's how forgettable it is. It's just forgettable. It's just forgettable YA fantasy. If it's your fave, I'm sorry. I am in the minority here. So like, don't take my opinion as Bible, but it was just hella boring. It was just super duper boring. And Aaron from Bookton Busy just read the whole series and she gave them all like two stars, I think as well, maybe one or two stars. So like, I feel validated. I feel validated by Aaron. A lot of you in the comments were saying that you didn't like it either, but it definitely is a well loved book. And I'm sad I didn't like it because it was one of my most anticipated books to read this year. I'm not fuming. I'm like, I'm a little bit but yeah, no, I'm bothered. I'm bothered. Next, I actually read a book I haven't spoken about anywhere yet. I read a book called A Quiet Life in the Country by T Kinsey. So this series, I believe it's like a Kindle Unlimited murder mystery series. I listened to the audio book on script and I liked it. I gave it four stars. It's like a very simple, classic murder mystery. These kind of books where it's like historical setting, murder mystery, a very simple murder, pretty short. They're my comfort read. They're a palette cleanser. They're an easy book for me to pick up when I'm in a slump. Like when I look on script and I need an audio book and like all the rest are books I'm so excited for. And are some of my most anticipated books, I don't want to read them. Like I'm not in the right circumstance to be reading that book. But this is just something easy to pick up that doesn't require much thought. And it's a fun read. It was good for what it was. And I'm definitely going to continue on in this series. So this series is basically about a lady and her servant, essentially, but they kind of like friends, servant, companion, sidekick kind of vibe. And they've had previously like this life of excitement and getting kidnapped and like solving these mysteries all over the world. And they've come to this quiet town and they've settled down and there's a murder, a couple murders actually. Yeah, yeah, a couple murders throughout this book. And it's basically them just like in this small quaint village trying to figure out who the murderer is. And it's just a bit of fun. I really liked their relationship with one another. They have a really nice friendship. And it's just like historical quaint village murder. It's just a bit of fun. Do you know what I mean? It's just like a comfort read for me. It's something that's easy for me to read. Like, I don't know, I just enjoy reading books like these, but I recognize they're not going to be everyone's cup of tea and no one really cares probably about this book. But if you like that kind of thing, the audiobooks on script, I think the whole series audio books are on script. And I'm definitely going to be making my way through them. So you will see more of these in future app apps because they're just something easy for me to listen to. And then the last three books were all in my mood reading vlog where I mood read for a week. So I will link that if you want to see more in depth thoughts of these. But next I read A Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson. I gave this five stars. Rightfully so. It was so good. It was so good. So this is about a girl named Pip who's taking her A levels in England. And she's doing a project about this murder the body was never found. But murder that happened in her town where a girl went missing and her boyfriend a couple of days later sent a text saying I did it and committed suicide in the woods with her blood on him. And Pip doesn't believe that's actually what happened. So thus begins this project that she's doing where she starts interviewing a lot of people close to the pair. She starts working with the accused brother. They have a really great relationship with the two of them. And it is just a really well done murder mystery. It is probably the best YA murder mystery I have ever read. It was so good. The ending had like without spoiling anything multiple stages to it. And I kept thinking okay that's it. That's it. We know. Fishbash gosh we're done. And we weren't done. I was not expecting that. So I thought that was brilliant. Like the way it kept you thinking okay I know what's going on. I'm so kind of out. I know what's happening. I got it. And then that is revealed. And then it's like oh bitch no it's not what you thought it is. Like that's done so well. I really loved the mixed media element of this with interviews, police logs, maps that she drew, plant like pictures of people's diaries. And it was just so good. Like I have so many thoughts on this so go check out the vlog if you're interested. I'm trying to contain myself. I loved it. So if you're looking for why I made a mystery you need to go read this. It was so good. And then I read Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire and I also gave this five stars. This is the Wayward Children series. And it's about children who go through these doors to these worlds that are perfect for their own. But then they come back and they find it super difficult to adjust to life. And so there's this school called Eleanor West Home for Wayward Children where they go. And some of the books are at the school and some of the books are like back when they found their world, the story of them in their world essentially. And in this one our character Jack who has been in a few of the other books comes back to the school because her sister has stolen her body and recruits the rest of the kids to kind of help get her body back and save her world. And I don't want to say much more than that because it can spoil some of the things in books one and two. But this was so good. And the key reason for me in that this was the first book in the series I gave five stars is because I read it actually physically. And I've recommended the audiobooks before and I still think they're great. But something about this portal magical world I think is actually better read physically. So I want to go back and read the rest of them physically one day when I can, like I said in the vlog, when I can justify buying them which isn't now, isn't now. But one day a girl can dream I can justify buying them and I'll read the rest physically again. Because there's something about the way the characters speak and the magicalness of the world and the uniqueness of a lot of the characters that I just think is better up here I think for me actually. And this one, the way it explored relationships, family relationships and particularly the way there was this whole theme of becoming a monster throughout it, like how someone becomes a monster. I thought that was really great and I thought Jack Sean as a character in this. So if you've maybe read the first couple books and you're excited to read this, I would definitely recommend getting around to it soon. I think beforehand number two which is the story of Jack and Jill in the world was probably my least favorite of the series. But then this one, the Moors just came alive for me and it felt like being back with an old friend. So there was something about the story and this one that improved the thing as a whole for me. And then finally I read The Big Four by Agatha Christie. And in my vlog I said I was gonna give this two stars. I've actually lowered it even more to 1.5 stars. This wasn't great. So don't get me started. The context behind this is that it was during a really difficult time in Agatha Christie's life just after she disappeared and she had a deadline. And so she collated the short stories that she'd written before in magazines about the Big Four into one novel. And it definitely reads like that. You basically have this this Big Four who are supervillains from all over the world in really influential positions of power and Porro and his friend Hastings are trying to uncover who it is and take them down. The pacing wasn't good. It wasn't good. The pacing was not good. It read, well particularly because my copy was the original 12 short stories. It wasn't the version that was initially published where a few bits have been added in and some of the chapters have been moved around to kind of make more sense. This is just the 12 short stories which may have impeded my enjoyment a bit perhaps. It was very racist as well. It was very of its time in certain attitudes that it had. And I don't think it was just that the characters in it were racist. I think it has like deep down very racist attitudes in it which I'm not here for. There were some parts of the stories that were okay. But also I hate Hastings as a character. He's annoying. He's a wet wipe. He's pathetic. Get rid. Porro is so much better without him. I only rate the stories without him high. The next one is without him though in the series. So like hopefully it'll be a bit better. But Hastings is so annoying so like please get rid. And it was just a bit far fetched. It was like a bit ridiculous where Porro is usually solving these murders and then all of a sudden he's like up against the biggest powers in the world and it's very dramatic. It just didn't fit the tone of what we know. So for many reasons 1.5. So that is all of the books I read this month along with my reading statistics. I'm hoping for better things in April but if I'm realistic it'll probably be around seven books again if I'm if I'm honest with myself. I'm gonna try and be honest with myself. Let me know how March went for you, what your April reading plans are. And yeah thank you very much for watching to the end of this video. If you've gotten to the end comment a sunshine emoji because it's very sunny today. And I feel like we need a bit of sunny positivity in our lives. So comment a sunshine emoji if you've gotten to the end and I will see you very soon in another video. Bye!