May Wrap-Up

Hello, there! 

I thought I'd write a post telling you a little bit about what I've read during the month of May. I don't know if this'll be interesting to any reader I may have, but if it is and you wish to see these become a monthly thing, pray tell. Your feedback is ever welcome.

I'm fairly proud of myself for May: I managed to read a fair bit, and read quite a few good books.

1. The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater

I read this on a plane back from London at the very beginning of the month and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ive already written a review of this book and rated it a 8.5/10.

2. Pushing The Limits - Kathy McGarry

This is the first book in a trilogy and I quite enjoyed it. It had an unusual story, and though the main part of the plot you could see coming from the beginning, the rest of the story was very unpredictable. I'll give it 8.5/10.

3. Dare You To - Kathy McGarry

This is the second book in the trilogy previously mentioned. Again, I quite enjoyed it. I liked it a bit better than the first book, though it was a much more predictable and typical story. I'll give it a 9/10.

4. A Midsummer's Nightmare - Kody Keplinger

I've read most of Kody Keplinger's books and though they can be very enjoyable reads they can be fairly annoying, for they are all very similar and are all set in the same town, which grows kind of old, seeing as the town is quite boring. Therefore, I'll give this book a 6.5/10.

5. Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater

I really liked this book. It was sweet and some of the characters were easy to get attached to. I'd rate this book 9/10.

6. Linger - Maggie Stiefvater 

I appreciated this book much less than its prequel. The story just wasn't as enjoyable as Shiver. That being said, it wasn't bad, so I'll give it 7.5/10.

7. Two-Way Street - Lauren Barnholdt 

Though this book wasn't a work of art, it wasn't horrible either. It was fairly average: the story wasn't anything special, neither were the characters. It wasn't really bad, though, so I'll give it 7/10.

8. The Selection - Kiera Cass

I liked this book much more than I expected to. The story was quite interesting and it had been a while since I'd read a dystopian-ish story. I liked Maxon a lot and appreciated America's POV. I'd give it a 9/10. I might be writing a review of this book later, if that's interesting to any of you guys. 

9. The Prince - Kiera Cass

This was a companion novella to The Selection. It was from Maxon's POV, which I really liked. I'd rate it 9/10.

10. Unspoken - Sarah Rees Brennan

I've been wanting to read this book for the longest time and am really glad I did. It was really good and I can't wait for Untold to come out in September. I'll rate it 9.5/10.

11. Let It Snow - Lauren Myracle, John Green and Maureen Johnson

This collab book was very sweet. It followed three different stories told during a really big snow storm. It was very well written, as is to be expected from these three authors. I'll rate it 8/10.

12. Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles

Though this book was terribly cliché and predictable, it was a fun read. My only problem with it, is that, being half-Latino myself, the exaggeration of all the Spanish expressions used by the members of the Latino Blood was quite aggravating. Nobody talks like that, and it got quite annoying at times. That being said, 8.5/10 for this book.

13. Paper Towns - John Green

I wrote a full review for this book already, so just go check it out if you want a more detailed idea of my thoughts on this book. I really liked it and therefore rated it 10/10.

So that's it for the month of May. Please tell me if you'd like me to make monthly wrap-up posts.

Have a nice day,

Toodlepip,

x Clara

Paper Towns - John Green

It is a truth universally acknowledged that John Green is one of the best authors in the world. He has written some pretty marvelous pieces of litterature, amongst which stands one of my favourite books ever, The Fault in Our Stars, and Paper Towns was just further proof that he can write beautifully, thoughtfully and that he can create some breathtaking characters. Now, don't go believing that I prefer it to TFiOS, because TFiOS just can't be surpassed, but Paper Towns was a truly wonderful book and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone out there. It was a great, interesting read.
I'll give a short summary and then discuss some of the characters.
So, the book is told through Q's (Quentin Jacobsen) perspective. He likes his next door neighbour, Margo Roth Spiegelman, but they stopped being close after they found the body of a man who had killed himself in the park near their home. Q is the type of person who doesn't have too many friends but isn't lonely and is slightly geeky without being bullied about it: he's a very normal person. One night, Margo comes into his room and makes him play pranks on a bunch of people -if they can really be called pranks. The next day, she's gone. The rest of the book follows Q's search for Margo.
I really liked Q and the way he kind of overanalyzed everything and everyone around him. His interaction with this idea he has of Margo is truly charming and I liked getting to be in his head for the length of the book: his thought process is really different from mine, and he's really smart, so it's refreshing to read from his POV.
Then we have Margo, who only truly appears in the book for a short period of time: most of the book is spent simply following her trail and thus interacting with her, but she's not there in physical form, so to speak. We do get to know a lot about her, though. Margo is a really interesting character: she is unlike anyone I've ever known, and her interactions with all of the other characters are very peculiar, and fun to read about. I really liked the first part of the book, the night when she and Q just go around Orlando, all of the pranks. We kind of got an idea of what Margo is like, but it was really hard to form a coherent idea of her personnality. She is a very puzzling character in that sense, and I really appreciated reading about her and finding out things about her through the clues she left for Q.
Finally we have Ben and Radar, who are simply awesome. They're both so funny and John Green did perfectly with these two, because they added humor to the story, balancing with all of the slightly dramatic things that are going on around them. Once again, he proved that he has the best sense of humor and I found some of the things that Ben and Radar said, or even things that happened to them, or were a part of their storyline, their background, to be truly hilarious (like the whole black santa collection thing with Radar's parents).
Overall, I really loved this book, the storyline, the progression. It was a very fun, interesting and unusual book, and I greatly appreciated reading it. I'd rate it a 10/10 and would recommend to everyone, but mostly to people who read and loved TFiOS.
That's it for today,
Toodlepip,
x Clara