 So today we're going to be going through my March wrap up, checking about all the books I read, well not all the books, because now how I format these is we go through my reading statistics, which I think is the most important thing, I love statistics. And then we talk about my disappointments, my surprises and my hits. So I don't talk about every book, because typically almost every book that I have read I vlog. So this is kind of just a recap of what I've read in a month and kind of thinking back on the books. So let's just get straight into the statistics and check out how my month went. Okay, so in March I read 13 books, which I'm really happy with. You guys know I struggled at the start of this year with reading a lot, and I feel like 13 is a good number. I'm pretty happy with that. I'm going to try and make April like loads because I'm still eight books behind my Goodreads goal for the year. That's not happening. But I feel like we've made good progress. We've cut down the lag a little bit, but a lot of them were short books as you'll see in a second. I read a total of 3,569 pages, which makes an average pages per day 115, which again is pretty good. I always say it has to be over 100, bare minimum has to be over 100. This makes my average book length 274. So although I read a few, well like one really long book this month, I also read like quite a few that were like novellas essentially. That's why it's evened out. And I did want to read more short books, more novellas this year. So I do want actually my average book length to be a bit on the shorter side. I really am liking actually, we'll get into this when I talk about some of the books I read, but I'm really enjoying the art of shorter books on novellas or short stories and how to make them good and emotional and connect with you. I'm finding that really interesting this year. So actually I'm hoping to read a lot more shorter books throughout the year. I had an average rating of 3.5, which isn't like amazing. Feel a bit down actually. That is I think on the lower side for me. I think my like average ever is like a 3.7 or something around that. As you'll see again, we had some really higher books this month and some really low books this month, like really, really low books this month. And a new thing that I'm tracking is the average time on my TBR, which this month was only two months. I had quite a few books that actually hadn't been on my TBR, so I marked them as zero or literally just come onto my TBR, which I'm really happy with. I'm glad that. Oh, my God. Why is it snowing? Well, today is going to be the best day ever. It's snowing outside, whereas five days ago it was like 20 degrees. I do want to like in the next couple of months get some of the books open on my TBR for like forever off. But this month I pretty much read a lot of books that I only recently just come onto my TBR. Okay, we're going to get the spreadsheet out. So in terms of my star ratings, I had five stars. One of them was a reread, though. One four star, three three stars, one 2.5, two two stars, and one one star. So it's not typical for me to have like so many 2.5 to one stars, which is why my average rating is lower. That is the sign of like, you know, being a bit disappointed for me. Usually I have a lot of four stars, so the fact that we only had one this month shows me that my reading was kind of like at polar opposites, essentially. In terms of genre, I read one contemporary, one fantasy, one humor, three mystery, three nonfiction, two sci-fi and two thriller. I read so many nonfiction because of like the drag race video that I did. I also read one on my own. Listen, celebrities love nonfiction. They love self-help nonfiction. Can't relate. I just don't get it. Why aren't any of you reading fiction? Pick up a good thriller. Pick up a good fantasy book. I mean, come on, girlies. Anyway, oh, something. I've changed two different things, which you'll see. I've added two new categories to the tracking. So in terms of format, I read one audio book, three e-books, two physical books, and seven mixed media. So this is the new thing. This is the new thing. I read a lot of the physical book and the audio book together. I do that all the time, but I would always just, like, class that as physical on my spreadsheet. But I just like to add a new category, and it shows you just how reliant I have become on having both the physical book and the audio book. I was avoiding this issue, and I stopped myself and I said, don't avoid it. Go look at it and go be with it. I think because I've been struggling to read this year, my attention span hasn't been very good. This has been really helping me actually fucking read, like, actually get through the books. Before that, it was a myth. It wasn't happening. But it's actually been really helping me. Like, the book I'm reading at the moment, I'm loving. I know I just want to read it physically myself. Like, I don't want an audio book. It's like a real fantastical book. You'll see it this weekend. And so I just want it in my own brain. Like, I want to imagine it. But I know I would read it a lot quicker if I had the audio book, but I'm like trying to hold strong and not get the audio book. But I use Scribd a lot to get audio books. I do have Audible as well, but I predominantly use Scribd a lot. If they have stuff on there, that's where I go to. But yes, you can tell. I love reading the two together. In terms of the audience, oh my God, I read 12 adult books and one children's book. I didn't read any... This is... Oh my God. I think this is the first month ever. I haven't read any YA. I think that's just because of the videos I had. I've got quite a few YA lined up for April, actually. So that's okay. But I read no YA? Who am I? Oh my God, that's so weird. I feel for me too. In terms of where the books were from that I read, one was from Audible, one was from Book of the Month, three were GIFs, one was in Kindle Unlimited, six were books I had bought myself, and one book was from Scribd. In terms of author status, three were debuts, six were authors I'd read from before and four were new to me. And then another really exciting statistic, I have added partway through series or first in series. Because I think this is fun to distinguish because obviously my goal is to not start many series, but to continue a lot of series. Now in the previous months, for the year, I have not started any series. I started one series this month. So I had one book that was the first in series, two books that were partway through series, and 10 books that were standalone. I read a lot more partway through series books in January and February. It wasn't as much of a goal this month. But yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. So that is our statistics. I really love that I've added that partway versus first through series. I think that will help us when I am reading more series throughout the year, because I've got to start like three series, I think, in April, which like... So before we actually get into the disappointments, surprises, and hits, I've just got two things I want to talk about really quickly. I did finish another series, but I didn't vlog it. So I thought I'd just let you know. I finished the Binti series. I read the Nightmasquerade. I ended up only giving us two stars. I don't want to talk about too much because I don't really have any thoughts about it. But I loved the first one, Binti. And then the second and third ones, like I almost didn't read the third one, but I didn't want a DNF because it was like, it's only like a 200 page novella. And I didn't want a DNF because I had got that far in a series. And I thought, listen, you might as well just finish it, but it took me ages to read it. I didn't really have like much desire to read it, but I am glad I finished the series. I just didn't really like the route that the second and third books went down. Like fun things happen, but I was just kind of bored. Overall, I feel like this world, this like sci-fi world in these series is so amazing that it needed to be like Jade City-length books, essentially by Fonderly. Like it needed to be like 500, 600 page books to really understand the world. Cause I just didn't really understand any of the world building or the political maneuverings that were going on or like the social context. Like I feel like we really could have gone so much more in depth. I think the first book worked really well as a novella. Like that was a perfect novella. But then in the second and third books, the world is, you know, it's attempted to be expanded. But for me, it didn't really work. My disappointment is immeasurable. And my day is ruined. And then I just realized it's not in either of my, any of my categories for this month. But I did say I would talk a bit more about The Maid by Nita Pros. I think I gave this four stars, but maybe on the section now it's maybe more of a 3.5. I read this and I enjoyed it, but I think we do need to talk about it. I talked about this in the comments of the video a little bit. I actually talked about it when filming for the video, but I didn't feel like I'd done a good enough job of like giving my thoughts. I'm a bit nervous about doing that because I feel like I'm not very good at giving my thoughts on this subject. So I cut it out of the original video, but I feel like we do need to talk about it in that Molly, the main character in this, is like coded as neurodivergent, right? That she's spoken about in a way, has traits that kind of make you think she's neurodivergent in some way, but it's never actually explicitly stated. And I think that really is a drawback of this book. I think if you're gonna give that kind of representation, you need to actually give it. I'm not kind of skirt around it. And like, I feel like a lot of books do this, like use neurodivergency as a kind of like, oh my God, quirky, like also different rather than actually getting into the actual real life consequences and factors and like what neurodivergent people have to experience. It does touch this a bit, but it does do it through a cosy mystery lens. And I think the cosy mystery is like, sometimes this can happen where real world issues like are kind of skirted around, but not explicitly examined. That can kind of happen within the genre. But I feel like for a book that has been so mainstream and marketed as not really a cosy mystery, like as a, you know, cosy mystery is kind of like a more like subgenre. This is like, you know, in the front and center. I feel like it is a flaw of the book and it needs to be discussed and that people should be aware of going into it. So yeah, that is a drawback for me. And it was a big reason why I was thinking giving it 3.5 and I think now probably I do need to change it to a 3.5. And the ending of this isn't great. The more I think about the ending of this book, it's annoying. I didn't like it. Disappointments is I have to expect it something. So as many of you know, if you read my drag queen pick what I read video, I rated 10 and the art of it. So I can rate it as one star, but I don't view that as a disappointment because I expected nothing going into that. One disappointment I have is Not A Happy Family by Sharon Lapina. This was the book club pick for February for my patron book club. All of my Sharon Lapina's before this have been four stars and this was a three. This is a story where we have this really rich family. All the siblings go around to their parents' house and like before for dinner. And the next morning, their parents all found dead murdered, bitch. They're murdered. And this book for such an exciting premise was fucking boring. What I'm about to say could hurt some people, but I don't give a shit. It was like one of the most boring things I ever read. Like it was so obvious to me throughout who the killer was. The way this is pitched, you're like, oh, it's a horrible family. They're so horrible to another. Oh, they're so mean, but like where? Like they're all a bit messed up. Yeah, they are messed up. I won't tell you why, but like they're messed up. But like if you're gonna promise me that, give me flavor. Like give me real like horrible caricature people, like cutthroat people. And that's not what I got. This really was just such a disappointment to me in terms of Sharon Lapina. I usually view her as like a solid, really enjoyable thriller, four star. But I've noticed a problem with some of her books is that it's rich people sitting around in their living rooms waiting for something to happen or rather than like actually being involved in what's happening. It's like them like twiddling their thumbs and be like, well something's gonna happen. Like just waiting, just like sitting there chatting. Like what the hell? It's like kind of boring. But this one especially just wasn't plotted well. The characters weren't convincing. And not a lot of us really liked this one. A semi-disappointment. I didn't expect this to be like five stars, but a semi-disappointment was Suckless by Willem. I read this for the drag queen video. And I didn't expect this to be like a work of literature, but I did expect to go into it enjoying it. And I spoke about in the video how there is like, I would say like a 20 page section of it, joking about eating disorders. And I think I minimized my reaction to it a little bit in the video. I did find it very triggering, especially because this book does go into like methodology and like half jokingly encouraging you to do that. And I just found that as someone who's trying to like repair my relationship with disorder eating throughout my life, I found it very triggering. And I was like unable to enjoy the book after that. Now it won't bother some people. You go into this book knowing Willem's gonna make like controversial jokes or like, you know, we know if you watch Willem, you know his humor, but I just personally switched off from the book at that point and it was a disappointment because if that hadn't been there, if that section just had been cut out, I probably could have enjoyed it a lot more. And then finally, I'm not gonna tell you even what I rate at this book because the vlog for it is coming out this weekend. I don't wanna spoil it, but I will just tell you, I'll flush it up quickly, a disappointment this month, a real disappointment, shiver by Addy Reynolds. Now. I'm sad about it. You'll see all my thoughts on the vlog that's coming this weekend. Okay, surprises I have too. These can actually be classed as hits because they are both five stars, but they're both actually very short stories. So I've classed them as surprises because I really wasn't expecting anything. First, we have the giving tree, which again, I wrote in that vlog and this was like the sixth sense of that vlog. It's only 50 pages, this is by Shel Silverstein. This is a children's book about a tree and a boy who love each other and the tree like gives to him. And it made me cry. It was like just so gorgeous and poignant and something I think everyone should read. Some of you commented like, oh, I went and read it and I cried. Like I shouldn't trust you. Like it will make you cry. Like it's like so emotional. And this is what I was saying earlier and I'll talk about it actually in our next book as well. I'm really admiring like short stories, novellas, short children's books, picture books that can elicit such a strong emotion from me in like 50 pages. I think that's a real skill. I've really been appreciating that lately. I just think it's something I'm really enjoying. I think it's, you know, one thing to read like, we're getting to say it about a 700 page book and cry when something happens. But it's another thing to read a 50 page book and become so invested in the story in such a short space of time that I think that's really special. So the other surprise this month was Ark by Veronica Roth. So this is the series I've started. It's the forward collection over on Kindle Unlimited an audible collection of sci-fi authors who have written these short stories. Again, this is like 50 pages long. All of these, I think are kind of like end of world situation, I'm not quite sure. But this one, an asteroid is gonna hit the earth in like a couple of days. And our protagonist is kind of one of the last scientists. She's actually a horticulturalist. If I don't know if that's right. Kind of examining flowers and trying to get examples and like specimens of flowers before they fly off in a couple of days. And I cried at this one as well. Have some fun. You will not get one tear out of me tonight. I finished it yesterday. And this was such a surprise to me because I'd only really been interested originally in N.K. Jemisin and Andy Weir's short stories in this collection. But then I decided, this is a good way to get your goal up. Like let's just read them all. And Veronica Roth, I knew wrote Divergent, which I DNFed when I was like 11. I was like, not, not for me, not for me. So I really didn't expect anything. But this book is so, it's such an interesting sci-fi, like end of the world book. Cause instead of being chaotic, it's melanchonic. It's deep, it's emotional. And I just loved it. I really, really loved it. I, it hasn't even got very good reviews. I think it's like one of the lowest rated in the collection. But it's so like, melancholic is the right word, like emotional and deep. I'm like really getting to the root of human, the human brain and human psyche. And I just found it so, so interesting. So I would really recommend if you have like Kindle Unlimited or I'm using a free trial at the moment. I haven't bought it, but you know, they're on audible, I think as well. Although I'm not sure if you can get them without having Kindle Unlimited. I'm not sure, but I just absolutely loved this. I was so surprised. And then let's talk about my two hits of the month. I have two hits. These are my top books that have like contenders, you know, contenders to be in my top books of the year, essentially. First we have Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee. I loved it. I gave it five stars. It's amazing. It's amazing. Jade Legacy is absolutely amazing. Just reading this, oh my back really hurts. Just reading this book and like having that the ending and this culmination of this long story was amazing. It makes me wanna read series more. I feel like I've been cheating myself out of like this connection to the characters you get as this goes on. So this is the last book in the Greenbone Saga. This takes place over about 15 years, this book, I would say, maybe even more. It's like a very long time span that goes on throughout this book. And obviously I can't talk much about the plot because it will spoil the first two, but we're still following the kind of the family that we followed in the first book, The Calls. I just absolutely loved it. I think Fonderly is masterful at how she builds this story from book one. Everything is perfectly plotted. The characters, the journeys that the character goes on, how I can hate Hilo one minute with like, you know, the depth of me hate him and then have forgiven him like a hundred pages later, which I never do. I never do. I just think it's so, so wonderful. I just absolutely loved it. One of the best kind of fantasy, you know, conclusions to a series I've ever read. It just really felt so satisfying and I read this so far. I think I've read it in like three days for like a 700 page book that is absolutely crazy. I just can't believe a human brain came up with this. Genuinely, I can't believe someone is clever enough to build this world. And then finally we have The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. I gave this five stars and listen, I know this book hasn't been super popular, but I will defend it to the death. In this, we're following our character Jess. Yes. He goes to Paris to stay with her brother, but when she gets there, he's not there and he lives this in this like apartment building with a few other apartments and Jess is trying to get their help to find out what happened to her brother and everyone's being very secretive. And it was just so good. Lucy Foley just gets what I want. A simple mystery. Do I think this is like the perfect five stars? No. If I didn't love Lucy Foley's writing and her characters so much, it might be like a 4.5 because there are a few flaws in the plot, but I just loved it. Like I don't care, I don't care what anyone says. I love Lucy Foley. I love the way she writes. I love her characters, how she manages to make shitty people who don't believe they're shitty and are so convincing. I love the way the plot twists go in this story. Sometimes you read a thriller and there's like three plot twists and it's like, well, I can barely remember the dynamics at the start of this book because by the end, everything has been shifted and like moved around so much that you can't remember how it began. And that's how like a thriller or mystery with twists should be, in my opinion. Like it should be so twisty and everything has changed. Like it should have so many reveals and changes in it that you can't remember how it began. I think that's really, really important and she does it so, so well. I loved the parasetting. It is a bit over the top. It is a bit cheesy, but like what, you know, whatever. Like I loved it. I love a bit of cheese. I love a bit of over the top. I loved it. I loved the setting. I just absolutely loved it. I think Lucy Foley is like one of my favorite authors. Yes, I gave the Hunting Party two stars. So like I am capable of it. I am capable of it, but I just really liked this. I think it just gave me what I wanted and I wasn't disappointed. I was really, really happy. And yeah, not as great as the guest list for me, but still a very solid atmospheric. The setting is amazing. Mystery. So there we have it everyone. That is my March Rep Up. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please let me know what you read in March down below, what your disappointment, surprises and hits were. I would absolutely love to know. Thank you so much for watching. I love you so much and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye.