Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be posting my January wrap up. I read 10 books in January, which might be a lot less than I read in December, but I’m still pretty happy with.
I’m hoping to read 100 books this year, and I finished January ahead of schedule, which I’m happy about.
If you’d like to see me discuss the books I read in January in video format, you can watch the video below.
Most days, Ellie Pillai is somewhere between invisible, and not very cool – and usually she’s okay with that. But suddenly, Ellie feels different. Maybe it’s the new boy at school who makes her brain explode into rainbows every time she sees him (and also happens to be going out with her best friend), or maybe it’s her new drama teacher, the one who seems to have noticed she exists. Suddenly, her misfit style, her skin colour, her songwriting and all that getting lost in the music in her head seem to be okay too. Because maybe standing out isn’t a bad thing after all.
★★★★
3.5 out of 5 stars
Jamie Rambeau is a happy 11-year-old non-binary kid who likes nothing better than hanging out with their two best friends Daisy and Ash. But when the trio find out that in Year Seven they will be separated into one school for boys and another for girls, their friendship suddenly seems at risk. And when Jamie realises no one has thought about where they are going to go, they decide to take matters into their own hands, and sort it all out once and for all.
As the friends’ efforts to raise awareness eventually become a rooftop protest against the binary rules for the local schools, Jamie realises that if they don’t figure out a way forwards, they might be at risk of losing both their friends forever.
★★★★★
5 out of 5 stars
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
★★★
3 out of 5 stars
★★★
3 out of 5 stars
★★★
3 out of 5 stars
Ajay is a Mumbai railway kid, a newspaper seller, but his great dream is to be a journalist. His dream comes true when he and a gang of friends create their own newspaper – but what is the cost of uncovering the truth?
★★★★
4 out of 5 stars
Jamie and Andrew are strangers, and two of the last people left alive.
After a catastrophic event wipes out most of the population, Jamie finds himself alone in a cabin in the woods.
He’s learned to fear other desperate survivors, but when he meets the injured Andrew, Jamie is compelled to help. As they step out into this strange new world together, their friendship begins to feel like something more…
Jamie and Andrew are hoping for safety, for shelter, for community. But ahead of them is a perilous journey through a world torn apart.
They don’t know what they’ll find on their perilous journey … but they may just find each other.
★★★★
4 out of 5 stars
Murder is a very simple crime. But at the hands of a maniac, a serial killer, it becomes a very complicated business.
With the whole country in a state of panic, the killer is growing more confident with each successive execution – Mrs Ascher in Andover, Betty Barnard in Bexhill, Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston… But laying a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just be his first mistake…
★★★★
4 out of 5 stars
Seventeen-year-old Aisha hasn’t seen her sister June for two years. And now that a calamity is about to end the world in nine months’ time, she and her mother decide that it’s time to track her down and mend the hurts of the past. Along with Aisha’s Chinese boyfriend, Walter and his parents (and Fleabag the stray cat), the group take a roadtrip through Malaysia in a wildly decorated campervan – to put the past to rest, to come to terms with the present, and to hope for the future.
★★★★★
5 out of 5 stars
Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her – what to call it? – depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can’t be normal.
But if she’s so hopeless, why can she always summon a desire for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?
Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions and harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.
★★★★★
4.5 out of 5 stars
I’m really proud of myself for buddy reading the whole of the Deadly Education series in January with Alex, but sadly they turned out to be my least favourite books of the month. My favourite read of the month was tied with Jamie and The Cats We Meet Along the Way.
-Beth
May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽
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