Reviews of the books I read for the 52 Book Club challenge in March 2024.
52 Book Club February 2024 Wrap-up
Reviews of the books I read for the 52 Book Club challenge in February.
52 Book Club January 2024 Wrap-up
These are the books I read for the 52 Book Club challenge in January. For each book, I'll tell you what the prompt was and how it fits it. I also decided this year that I wanted to try doing a reading journal just for the 52 Book Club books. I tried doing a reading journal another year and I didn't keep up with it, so I thought limiting it to just the books for the challenge would make it more manageable. The journal I'm using is the Clever Fox reading journal so the reviews are structured with the prompts the journal provides. I did leave out some of the prompts that were like the 'stats' of the book, because I don't think they're that useful for a review. They're useful for a reader, but not that much for someone reading a review.
Fiction About True Crime: Penance by Eliza Clark
Penance by Eliza Clark is a metafiction true crime novel. It follows a struggling true crime writer/tabloid journalist who has decided to start writing a book about a salacious crime. The crime involves three teenage girls who brutally tortured and murdered another teenage girl because either they were jealous of her or they thought she was trying to steal one of their girlfriends. It got little attention at the time it happened, but has now gained new infamy due to podcasts and other true crime media covering it, which has also caused our author to pounce on it.
Year End Wrap-up 2023: Favorites, Least Favorites, and DNFs
This is a continuation of my mid-year wrap up that was posted on June 25th. The favorites and least favorites will be for the second half of this year, so only things after that was posted, but I will say what my overall favorite/least favorite book was at the end.
Reading Three Junji Ito Books to Close Out the Year: Deserter, Sensor, and The Liminal Zone
I haven't read any new Junji Ito books in a while and I had several on my TBR, so I decided to pick up a few of them at the end of the year. This was mainly because Target was having a Black Friday sale where it was buy two get one free.
Reading Jennifer McMahon for the First Time: My Darling Girl, The Winter People, Promise Not to Tell, and (sort of) The Children on the Hill
I've heard a lot of people praise Jennifer McMahon's books for a long time, but I've never actually read her up until now. She seems to primarily write horror and thriller books, which are my preferred genre, so I mostly just picked her books at random.
One of Us is Lying: Series Review
The One of Us is Lying series by Karen M. McManus is a very popular series, and with the final book having come out this year, I decided it was a good time to read it.
Reading R.F. Kuang for the First Time: Yellowface, Babel, and The Poppy War
R.F Kuang is a very popular author, but I haven't read anything from her despite owning several of her books. I've heard mostly good things, but also a few bad things that made me hesitant to read her books. She also mostly wrote in a genre I don't read much of anymore, fantasy. This year though, she came out with a non-fantasy book, so I figured this was a good time to give her a shot.
Reviews of the Books I Read for ‘Spooky Season’
This October, I decided I wanted to read primarily horror and thriller books. I also wanted to try to read as many as possible, so most of the books I read were fairly short, the longest was only around 300 pages. Because of that, if you're looking for a book to read to close out the month or celebrate Halloween, you could easily read one of these in the few days we have left.
A Book in Three Acts 