The Grace Year - Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have been interested in reading this since I started seeing mention of it on Twitter, in the writer-verse. As soon as I found out NetGalley had it up for grabs, I was so there. And I don't regret being hyper about it at all.

**NO SPOILERS**

The story follows Tierney, a tomboy in a world of girls who are basically expected to be primed to be walking incubators, more or less. Very much heeds back to Handmaid's Tale, eh?

All girls in her world need to be sent away for a year, to rid themselves of a magic that brings men to their knees, can make them control the men. Which is where our story begins, essentially.

The book follows the girls in her year who are sent away, and the things they discover about themselves, each other, and the world around them. Horrifying though it may be.

There's loads of surprises, twists and turns, all of which I loved, and all of which actually worked well for the story. The ending wasn't what I was expecting either, but I really enjoyed it, instead of being disappointed for not getting what I wanted!

Definitely something to look forward to!

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(Coming out in October, 2019!)

Review: Enchant

Enchant by Micalea Smeltzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fun book, and while I kind of want to see the sequel(s), it'll be a hard time for me to actively seek them out.

Mara is a regular teenager, living a regular life. Then as it goes, everything gets twisted upside down, her friend's crush gets murdered, and her dad's been kidnapped.

Then she gets kidnapped by a guy who keeps flinging sexual innuendo at her, while telling her that he literally can't sleep with her, or else.

It's a cliched romance novel, with some magic thrown in. The characters don't behave very naturally, in fact they seem to be trying too hard to sound like regular people.

A lot of things were out of place, or unexplained for.

If you just want a sappy romance though, this is the book for you!! Despite the dates listed, I read this in two days, easy.

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2018 Reading Challenges

So generally, I only do the Goodreads Reading Challenge (the link takes you to my 2017 attempt) each year. For 2017, I failed pretty badly. I wasn't up to reading, everything was kind of "blah", and it just did not happen. I read about half of my aimed goal of 24 books, two a month. Ah, but I tried.

Reading is my whole world though, books always have been there for me. And I really feel the need to get back into reading. I'm trying to write (and not just when NaNoWriMo rolls around...) a novel and a screenplay this year. Two entirely different projects, each with very different plots. I think they'll be fun. But I've heard the old adage that a writer should read. And it's true, if you don't read ever, how can you know what is good writing?

So this year I'm going to be trying two (at least! If I find more, I might join them too!) reading challenges. One put out by POPSUGAR and one put out by Book Riot (both those links take you to the official pages) which should get me to read well over 70 books this year. Not including ones that I read that aren't part of any of their categories. I am tempted to put my Goodreads challenge for this year at 100, but I think 75 is a good start. Then if I manage to go over, it'll look great, eh? I'll be tracking my progress on this blog, here and here, as well as on Goodreads and my Instagram account, because it's more fun when you're doing something with a group.

I just bought a bunch of books from Book Outlet since in store, they were having a 50% off everything Boxing week sale, and how can I say no to that? So I think I'll have a good head start. Not to mention, I'm doing book reviews and have a few in the wings from Net Galley, ready to go.

Good luck to anyone else taking part in the challenges, and hopefully I manage to complete at least one of them this year!!