September 2019 Bookish Wrap Up

September always feels like a transition month. It’s the end of summer, but the beginning of fall. It’s the end of summer vacation and the start of the new school year. I always consider September as the beginning of a new year because of my old school days. It makes me excited and also makes me so impatient for fall.

This September, I read nine books. While not many of the books I read really spoke to me or brought me to a new level of fandom, I did run a small experiment with my reading this month.

Here’s basically what I did. I put together a TBR, but not your average monthly TBR where I designate 30 days to read X number of books. No, I just put some intention into my next few reads and read from the pile of books I created. It’s a TBR stack because they are the books I will be reading in the order I’ll be reading it, but I refused to let this dictate only my month and gave myself the room to approach each book within my own time. And funnily, I kept to it!

The diversity of genre and style also really helped to read these books without feeling too bored. I didn’t lose track of the upcoming releases so that I had reviews of books prior to their publishing date. I don’t know what happened specifically, but I feel like I freaking owned TBRs!

I switched off my genres and I removed the stress of having to read all these books within a month. Whatever I didn’t read is going to roll over to next month and I’ll just keep adding to that pile. It finally feels like I can read my books, not get backtracked by my mood, and own this TBR issue I have!

While I read nine books this month, they weren’t the greatest. Most of the books I picked up were 3-star books for me. It’s not a bad review, but it’s also not so amazing that I will be pushing these on my friends. But there were a couple of good ones including some new authors that I can’t wait to check out in the future or share with you here.

The Darkest Star by Jennifer L Armentrout

I devoured this book and can now safely say I’m a fan of JLA. The Darkest Star is a spin-off series of the Lux series. However, you don’t need to read the Lux series before you can read this book because the world building is pretty good in this book and it doesn’t miss a beat. This book has adventure, mystery, aliens, and a little love. Some of the plot was pretty predictable, but it’s never the predictability of a novel that makes me cringe. I don’t mind if I can figure out the ending, but I expect it to take charge afterwards and this book delivered. I will say that I found some of the teen stuff a little annoying because they’re teenagers, but as long as it works with the plot I’m not going to fault a teenager for being a bit angsty.

Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane

I read this womens fiction novel because it was described as the next Bridget Jones’s Diary and it totally delivered. I love how close the friends were to the MC. I loved how the book has a complicated past, which is then revealed as the story unfolds and you end up really loving these characters. Also, the growth level on the main character was exponential. It’s most definitely a book for folks who love to see a character redeem themselves, find themselves, or discover a whole side of themselves that they didn’t expect. Definitely recommend if you need a little break from the heavy reads, but be warned that there is some cringe-y stuff in here for those who may be easily triggered.

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

While this book wasn’t my favorite of the month, I’m always excited to read a new (to me) author. Also, if I wasn’t doing my TBR thing I would have left this book on my shelf and read it three years from now. The magic of my TBR system is working because now I’m reading books I wouldn’t normally read right away and discovering new authors! Annalee Newitz definitely brought that time travel vibe in their newest book The Future of Another Timeline where they explored a world where time travel has existed since pretty much the dawn of time. While the book was flawed in its execution, I fell in love with Annalee Newitz’s writing style. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more from them in the future especially if they’re bringing some highly diverse speculative fiction to the table.

What did you read this month? How did you fair?