**My Experience with "Offense"**

Everything down for the reader as they go as their training it was so freaking cool to read that but also to see this prestigious academy and all of the fencing team and all of them competing for like that one spot it was all like such an immersive journey to go through and i cannot wait to read more offense I gave this 5 out of 5 stars I don't think there's much else to say about this graphic novel I just need to know how this will continue because in this one we kind of ended a cliffhanger and then the last book I read in January was intercepted by Alexa Martin and what a freaking romance book let me tell you if you are looking for a romance just pick intercepted up right now because I was feeling so slumpy this was mid 24 hour readathon I picked intercepted up and it got me out of that freaking slump and it made me into a killing machine of reading because now I have finished three books in February I don't know what this book did to me but it pumped life into me that's what it did it pumped life into me and in this one we follow Marley who believes she scored the man of her dreams she feels very much settled in life like she has got everything she needs and her boyfriend is actually a football player for the Denver Mustangs except when she figures out that he has been betraying her obviously behind her back she vows to never date an athlete ever again except there is one Gavin Pope to enter this mix Gavin is the new quarterback that the Mustangs have hired he has a newly signed contract and he is fighting to prove to Marley that he is nothing like her cheating lying ex except there's a lot of other components as well fighting against them like the team's wives who have their own little club like the NFL wives situation and they are fighting against Marley they do not want her back because they feel like she is a groupie and there is also a bunch of more drama in here with tabloids and news and robbery and cheating and lying and just this book was so much fun to read it is also kind of steamy I wouldn't say it's like overly steamy I would say there's some level of steam in here but nothing too crazy I thought there would be more I kind of want it more the sports romance aspect of the book was something that I really enjoyed I always find myself intrigued by these stories and I just loved reading about Marley she is such a strong character she definitely has a backbone she is not afraid to fight back to talk back to defend herself she fights her own battles and that is something that I feel we need to see more of in general in literature so that was also a breath of fresh air Gavin also 10 out of 10 love interest until we got to like the mid-portion end of the book there was something there with Gavin that wasn't really it wasn't really giving it to me because he was overstepping his boundaries especially with the things that Marley had told him she's like I want to fight my own battles do not step in do not speak for me and he tends to do that a lot in the book as well there was certainly a boundary breach with Gavin that I did not appreciate but overall the romance aspect of it to me was just really really cool there were other things that I thoroughly enjoyed like the drama of it it was definitely like I was living for it and then Marley's friends were also just a joy to read about and I know one of them actually has a book uh she is actually the main character of book three so I definitely want to see her story and how that comes about all in all I gave the book four stars I think it was a very enjoyable romance it definitely got me out of my slump which was exactly what I needed at the time and now those are all the books that I have for you guys today I hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it a thumbs up comment down below what books you read in January if you found a new favorite book also let me know down below in the comments but if you reach the end of the video let's leave some bird emojis down below whatever bird you want in honor of me re-reading akuma like always you guys know I freaking love that book so let's leave some bird emojis down below in honor of that subscribe down below for more bookish content if you haven't already I am constantly uploading videos that I'm sure you do not want to miss as well as live streaming throughout the week doing my weekly reading sprints and you can also follow me on all my social medias they are always linked down below

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat the hell did i read in january i feel like january is like a blur in my mind hello greeting friends welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new my name is melanie and today i am here with all the books i read in january also known as my january wrap-up now this one is coming after my tbr so it feels kind of weird to be filming it now and i've already read three books in february i feel like it's probably not the best timing to film this but hopefully we'll get it right as i go along the list of books that i read in january it was a great start of the year i read 12 books which is probably one of my best reading months as of today i think overall i only had one like low rated book and it was still not bad i think my lowest rated book i believe it was a three star so overall a great reading month tons of books and overall very very positive and if you have yet to subscribe to my channel don't forget to do so down below for more bookish content i am constantly uploading videos that i am sure you do not want to miss i'm also live streaming throughout the week doing my weekly reading sprints and you can also follow me on all my social medias which are always linked down below i have a twitter instagram goodreads and an amazon wishlist you guys know the drill and yeah without further ado let's get right into it it feels so long ago that i've read this book but it was actually a month ago and the first book that i actually read in january is kingdom of ash by sarah j maas this is the final installment in the throne of glass series as you can see this book is heavily annotated i freaking loved it and i don't think this book needs any introduction everybody knows what throne of glass is by now i was so freaking scared after empire of storms i was so scared after tower of dawn i was so scared after all of these books that were definitely setting up for this big climax there was plot twist after plot twist after plot twist in all of the previous books but i definitely did not know how this one was going to end i don't think there was any other way that this book could have ended and although it did wrap up in a nice pretty bow as some people would call it i really do think that ending was earned you see the suffering of these characters and all of the horrible things they've gone through for six books that this ending they earned it and i will never say this enough but all of the action scenes in throne of glass all the battle scenes the war everything was so descriptive it was just phenomenal writing after finishing throne of glass i am now so torn with what i like best whether that's throne of glass or aquitar because i've always said that aquitar is my favorite series but now throne of glass is making me question whether it actually is or isn't or if it was because i hadn't read throne of glass yet because i just fell in love with these characters and with their journeys and the way that not everything is exactly what it seems my heart breaks and it remakes itself for aelin and her arc and her journey it's so heartbreaking to see a character literally carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and have to go through everything that she went through it's fantastic five out of five stars just a perfect ending and the next book i read was actually an audiobook and this was the month where i really started getting into audiobooks especially when i started journaling i found myself really reaching for audiobooks as i journaled as i filled everything in my journal and it was quite honestly a breath of fresh air to actually get into audio books properly and be able to listen to them and be immersed in these stories and it is the black flamingo by dean ada this is a book that is written in verse i personally adore the narration of this book because it is actually narrated by the author and that is one of my favorite things and i did not know that this was narrated by dean otta so i was definitely shocked when i went into it i was like oh okay i'm vibing with this i like it and in this one we follow michael who is a teen boy coming to serms with his identity as a mixed race boy he is also coming to terms with his sexuality as he is in high school and then he transitions into university and he finds the power of drag so a lot of his discovery is made through drag and through personal experiences by himself and with boys and narrating all of those pivotal moments that he had throughout his childhood and again into his adulthood i personally think this book was equal parts heartbreaking as it was hopeful as it was empowering because following michael from a very young age we see him more interested in barbies than he is in hot wheels and he is more interested in the clothes and the makeup and things that aren't necessarily considered boyish by societal standards and we see him trying to come to terms with that and what exactly it means to him and what it means for the people around him and if you've read the book you know the whole conversation about the barbie doll and all of those scenes where he just really yearned to have one himself and he was jealous of his friend for having one because that is everything he yearn for and then when he goes to college and he discovers drag and how empowered he feels by it and how liberated and accepted and fierce it was just a beautiful story and the writing gets you so freaking hard just listening to it and to all of his experiences and him questioning his sexuality and seeing michael compare all of those experiences that he's heard about versus what he's experienced when he was younger it was just a fantastic journey to go through with this character i gave it a 4 out of 5 stars i really do think if you're looking for a short book you're looking for a good audiobook the black flamingo is definitely the route to go there are so many quotes that i remember with this book but let me pull this particular one because it's just men or sand castles made out of pebbles and the bucket is patriarchy if you remove it we fear we won't be able to hold ourselves together we pour cement to fill the gaps to make ourselves concrete constructions there were just so many beautiful moments in that book so if you haven't read the black flamingo i definitely recommend it this next one is my only three star of the month and it was actually one by one by ruth ware now this book i was just confused with this book if i'm being honest maybe and this is my personal opinion audiobook is not the way to read this book for a second there i thought this book had nine different povs and that just tells you how confused i was with the story because this story only has two points of view not nine i don't know why i ever thought it was nine people so in this one we follow eight workers from a company called snoop and this company is almost like a spotify where you can see what everyone is listening to real time and you can listen to them as they are listening so the name's pretty fittings nope you're snooping onto other people's playlists and the story truly kicks off once all of these workers go into a snowy retreat in the alps where they want to go skiing and they just want to take some time off from work but once they get to their retreats and one of them actually suffers from a very big accident they all start dying or disappearing one by one i think the story was certainly interesting it was very techy every single chapter started with the snoop id from the person who was narrating said chapter and i think that's where it got a little bit confusing to me because it said snoop id one two three four five six seven eight nine listening to positions by ariana grande it literally like every single chapter started like that so i was just confused as to who was who and who was talking and because i was so confused it was hard for me to keep up with the story itself and when we got to that point of the reveal of the book i will say it was very thrilling it was very exciting it was just stressful i think that part of the book a later third was definitely great on audio because you could feel the stress from the characters and i also love there is one chase scene in the book towards the end where you get two povs from the person who's running away and from the person who's doing the chasing and hearing that on audio was just so freaking intense and it was just so insidious and so devious just the way that this person was out to get the main character and out to kill the main character it was so wild to listen to that on audio i will say that was probably my favorite part of the book but everything else kind of like just fell apart for me and i didn't rate this lower because i didn't think it was fair i think it was on me listening to this audiobook i also think with the audiobook all of these voices started sounding very similar to me to the point where i could not differentiate who was talking except for their boss i feel like their boss was probably the only person who had such a distinctive tone of voice and it was only because he was a douchebag besides that everything else just meshed together for me i was like who's who the next book i read is home before dark by riley sager and this is my first riley sager ever and after reading this i do want to get into more of his work i thought i was going to have nightmares after reading this definitely did not happen like public announcement service i did not have nightmare so that was great it was still very much spooky so 7 out of 10 for the scare tactics i definitely was spooked at some points of this book and in this one we follow maggie who is a skeptic she does not believe in ghosts she does not believe in anything paranormal or supernatural especially after the events that happened when she was younger when she was younger she used to live in this manner with her parents and her dad ended up writing an entire memoir of supernatural and paranormal things that wound up happening in this manner so closets opening themselves to kids being dragged on ceilings to record machines starting and stopping by themselves to snakes falling out of the ceiling everything that you could think of anything crazy probably had happened in this manner and now many years later once her father passes away she needs to go back to this manner because he left her this manner on his will and she will go there to flip the house to hopefully sell it and she will start experiencing things that may or may not reaffirm what happened in the memoir that her father wrote many years in the past i think he definitely nailed down that female voice and it was really nice to read about it was really nice to see maggie have such a strong backbone where she didn't depend on people she didn't want to depend on anyone rather and she never succumbed to anything that would seem out of character so for that alone i definitely enjoyed this book i also think the horror aspect of the book was very much there it was very spooky it was very creepy it was just horrifying at times too like i was sitting there and i was like i i'm not gonna read this book at night there was this whole scene with snakes that i was just disgusted by if you guys don't know i have the biggest fear of snakes if there is a name for that please let me know in the comments but i just i see a snake and i start crying just remembering it like there was snakes everywhere there was snakes in the coffee snakes just falling out of the ceiling and just chasing people around the house i don't think i can speak in any more detail about that scene because i was reading it and i was reading it like this so it's a testament to the writing it was described really really well the description in here was fantastic the atmosphere of the book definitely set the tone for that creepiness aspect of it i think what fell a little bit apart for me was the ending because when you have horror books there's always the question of is this actually going to be paranormal or is this going to be more psychological and at the end this book turned more into a who done it plus the paranormal aspect that part to me was just a little bit too all over the place although it tied in nicely although it did make a lot of sense i did give the book four stars because i loved the writing i definitely want to read more riley sager i loved maggie as a main character i really do think she was a perfect conduit for this story just because she is a skeptic so you don't go into the book expecting someone who's just gonna be scared because they're scared at everything so it's definitely gonna be paranormal in here you actually are questioning the entire time whether it's psychological or not the next one is a book that i actually read for a reading vlog and this reading vlog is going up next week i believe it'll be going up midweek i still need to finish editing but it's actually grown by tiffany d jackson and oh boy oh boy what a book in this one we follow enchanted jones who is a teenager and she's wanted to make it big in the music industry for the longest time and it's her biggest dream in aspiration she wants to be a singer she wants to do this professionally and once she meets corey fields was one of the biggest names in the music industry and she starts befriending him and forming a very friendly or what it seems like friendly relationship she believes she has everything at the palm of her hand because with his connections with his contacts she believes she can truly make it and he makes her all of those promises and more until she starts seeing the darker side of the music industry and that everything is not exactly what it seems it was such an infuriating read it was so just heartbreaking to see enchanted go through all of these emotions to go through all of these scenes to go through all of this emotional and physical abuse with a person who clearly is after his own agenda and who's clearly after whatever he's doing for his own sick and twisted motivation and it was so heartbreaking to see a person who's genuinely passionate about what they're doing who genuinely wants to make it and who has the best intention at heart be subjected to this type of lifestyle when that is not what she signed up for picture that tiffany d jackson painted with this book was so perfectly done and well crafted i just will never get over this book i was just mad throughout the entirety of it there was not a single page that i was turning where i was not feeling something and that is just what tiffany jackson does to you with her writing there are trigger warnings for it i will read them to you and what i do love about this book which is something that i also talked about in my reading vlog it actually has the content warnings at the beginning of the book mentions of sexual abuse rape assault child abuse kidnapping and addiction to opioids i think what's more heartbreaking to me is the fact that this actually happens in real life and there's people who've had to go through these experiences and deal with the situations that nobody deserves to go through i'll go more into detail once i actually put up my reading vlog i did give the book 5 out of 5 stars and there's just a lot to unpack here this is just such a complex book to talk about but i feel it's hard to not talk about it in detail so if you want to see more again my reading vlog will be up next week i do believe it should go up on wednesday that's my goal the next book i read in january was long way down by jason reynolds and this was actually a completely accidental read i was boujoin i was doing my thing and i wanted to listen to an audiobook while i was doing that i started browsing on script i was like alright let's see what they have i also wanted to finish a book that day to feel for dog boo and i found long way down which i know a lot of people have read and loved and the craziest thing about this book it's that it's internal it's contemplation this book takes place in the span of 60 seconds and in this one we follow will and he literally has a gun on the waistband of his fans and he is ready to call justice for the injustice of what happened to his brother and once he gets into an elevator a man on a mission people start getting into the elevator and he starts contemplating on whether or not this is the right call to make from dead characters hopping on this elevator and contemplating with will to another strange girl getting on the elevator will starts going through this roller coaster of emotions in the span of 60 seconds from that elevator ride there are so many fantastic quotes on this book from pretended like yellow tape with some kind of neighborhood flag that don't nobody wave but always be flapping in the wind how do you tell water ain't nothing funny about drowning it was such an emotional read because you can sense that desperation that will has because nobody is doing anything about it and he feels the need to call for justice himself and this definitely tells the heartbreaking story of a kid who's just trying to live by the rules that he's been taught his entire life also in a way being reluctant to follow them because he doesn't know if they're necessarily right by the way that those events have played out in the past and almost break out of that cycle that he's continuously seen for his family members and the people surrounding him i was just continuously amazed by jason reynolds power with words and how he weaves everything together into such a quick string of words the story was so fast-paced is that cheating if i read this book again like a month later i don't know if i said the rating already but you probably could guess 5 out of 5 stars absolutely the next book i read in january was actually 9000 by leigh bardugo i do have a whole dedicated review to this book i will leave it linked down below 9th house is a dark academia and dark academia is almost like a subgenre of gothic literature so you kind of know what to expect heavy in description probably less dialogue very atmospheric that is what you get with gothic literature and in this one we follow alex stern who is the sole survivor of this very big accident that happened to her and her friends and while she is on her deathbed essentially on the hospital she receives an opportunity from one of the higher people in yale who's actually part of a secret society called leafy to come to yale full-ride scholarship because she has the power to see grace who are ghosts essentially and they could really use her power in the nine secret societies of yale she does not embody the typical person who would be in there not high class doesn't come from money and once she gets to yale and she starts learning the ropes of all of these secret societies she will learn a lot more than she probably wanted to about how the world works and how these secret societies work and there's also a disappearance in here and a murder mystery one of my favorite aspects of this book was definitely the social commentary that it provided on class money power race just a ton of different things were unpacked in this book and although a lot of them were not done in the most outright way it was still done in a very subtle way that were definitely jabs to those powerful people who think they can get away with anything and it was very interesting to see how all of that fit together with this particular setting the description was also something that i personally really enjoyed it so this book was a 5 out of 5 stars for me i definitely enjoyed it i won't really over talk about it because again i do have an entire review for it so if you want to know all of my thoughts on pack i will leave that linked down below in january i also obviously read a court of mist and fury by sarah dumas as you know i am hosting the thorns and roses along which is a read-along for the call of the aquatar series up until the release of a court of silver flames and this month we're actually reading the third book and the novella january was the month for the second book which is aquamob if you know this is one of my favorite books of all time i definitely do think i read this at the right time i read this four years ago now and i fell in love with the story with the characters so going into aquamoff is always a breath of fresh air because we do get to see a lot of character development particularly from pharah where in book one after the events of under the mountain she definitely is dealing with a lot of ptsd and depression and her own trauma and i always love the way that sarah j maas incorporates mental health into her books it's always been a big component of her stories as we know tamlin is not a character that i particularly love but i think there's also such a beauty to his characters there's such a level of complexity there a lot of insecurity and toxicity also a lot of trauma even after under the mountain and although their levels of trauma are not comparable they're both still there they experience things very differently and i always love to see feyre's journey overcoming all of that that she had to go through but also meeting a new set of characters that she fits a lot more with and exploring a lot of different places in pristian is also a breath of fresh air in acumaf we get to see the summer court we get to see the spring court we get to see the night court the court of nightmares we get to see velaris there's just a ton of different places that we get to see we also get to see highburn so there's just a lot of different elements to this book that i particularly enjoy there's also the talk of soulmates of acceptance again if you want to know all my thoughts as i go as we discussed it i will also link our live show for akuma down in the description box if you're interested to check that out and want to catch up before we discuss the third book and the novella did i even say the rating for akimov i don't think i need to but anyway it's a 5 out of 5 stars if we didn't already know that i always read that book a 5 out of 5 stars next up i have you should see me in a crown by leah johnson and i adored this book this book was so just heartwarming and like happy and like hopeful and in this one we follow liz lighty who definitely wants to get out of her small town in indiana she wants to break out of rochelle she wants to get out of there because she feels as a black woman she does not fit in that place and she has the perfect plan she wants to go to her dream college get a scholarship that can cover all of her costs and just leave except her entire plan falls apart once she does not get that scholarship and her only hope is now the scholarship that her school offers for those who win prom king and prom queen so she becomes a contender in the race and in the midst of that she actually ends up meeting mac who is the new girl at school and also another contender for prom queen the thing that i definitely adored about this book is the fact that it was so wholesome it is sapphic it does have lgbtq plus representation and i just loved liz's relationship with mac and the way that they came to terms with their relationship and the way that they want to appear to the world despite what everyone is saying but we also see a lot of talk in this book about societal standards and oppression and how even to this day in some places in some schools being yourself is still not enough they ask you to hide they ask you to not be present only to appease everybody else and it was insane in this book to read about in this particular school that liz attends that women can only go to prom wearing a dress and men can only go to prom wearing a tux and women cannot go with women and men cannot go with men and the conversation was just established and developed beautifully about a broken system or a system that perhaps was established that way and is working out perfectly that the standard is literally to be cisgender heterosexual and white and if you don't fit that mole then you don't belong and again there's also the conversation of if there's not a space for me i will make that space i will make them make that space and it was such a beautiful ride to go on with liz and mac and at first i was loving liz's friends and at the end i was infuriated by liz's friends and i actually one of my favorite quotes that i wrote down for january is actually from you should see me in a crown and i just remember listening to this because i did do the audiobook and by the way the audiobook for this is freaking incredible the quilt that i wrote down as one of my favorites for the month was the crown nestled into my tight black curls my hair all defiant while hers is tradition this book is just fantastic i really need to own this book physically it's definitely a book that i want to reread physically and annotate and love because it deserves all the love and i know leah johnson is coming out with another book this year i think it's called rice to the sun i cannot wait for that one too and i did give this book a 4 star although the more i think about this book it probably does feel like a 4.5 or a 5. but i do remember at the point of reading this book i felt like some parts of it were too fast-paced or they felt kind of unrealistic or the conflict felt easy or the conflict felt a little bit apart from me there were certain things about the book that to me at least it could have been executed a little bit better but overall chef's kiss stunning book the next book i read was monday's not coming by tiffany d jackson and this book let me unpack this book quite quickly because again i won't be going too in depth about it i do have a whole reading vlog on it it's again the tiffany jackson reading vlog that's going up next week in this book we follow claudia who's been best friends with monday since they were very very young and one day when she comes back to school monday is not there monday has mysteriously disappeared and nobody's making a big deal out of it in fact when she asks the grown-ups they don't make a fuss out of it nobody can give her a straight answer much less monday's family her mom her sister april they're all being super standoffish about the situation and claudia does not understand why and so she takes it upon herself to find out exactly what happened to her best friend since nobody around her seems to give a crap that she literally disappeared i just need to preface this by saying that i gave the book four stars i thought i would love this book more than grown and for a while i do believe i was kind of enjoying it a little bit more but the ending made this book fall apart for me i was so confused by the end of this book i had to facetime my friend to say out loud why i was confused and to see if i was crazy or if i was actually getting stuff right and the point of the matter is i was confused i'm still confused there were several things that at the end of the book were inconsistent with what had been said before don't get me wrong the writing was incredible the story itself the mystery aspect of the book was so well crafted like i was literally playing detective for the majority of the book and the fact that this book has several different timelines it has the now it has the before it has the before the before i found those so interesting because you get to see a lot of different facets of claudia and monday's relationship how they interacted with each other and how other people perceived them and all of the things that they had gone through together to make them so close and so that part of the book i totally look i will say though because the characters are so young the book reads young the characters are 14 for a lot of the book and the main character will probably infuriate you at times she will probably get annoying at times and it obviously comes from a place of trauma and the fact that she's very young and the fact that she has become so dependent on her friend in a lot of different aspects because of the way that they grew up together so tight-knit again i will unpack a lot of this book once i put up my reading vlog i read a graphic novel in january during our 24 hour readathon because mel was feeling slumpy and i i'm not afraid to admit it and i had to pull out a graphic novel and so i ended up reading fence volume one and when i tell you that this is one of my favorite graphic novels that i've ever read and i say that very loosely because i've only read two i freaking love fence in fence we follow our main character who is the bastard child of a very famous spencer and he has a half sibling who goes to this very prestigious academy and nicholas our main character also wants to make it big in the fencing community he wants to prove himself to his father he wants to prove himself to himself and to the people around him because nobody seems to believe that he can actually make it in this industry and so he applies to this other prestigious academy to hopefully make the cut for the fencing team receive a scholarship and properly train because he's never received proper training for fencing before such a page turner starting from there such a quick read as well like i feel if i had all of the graphic novels with me i probably could have read them all back to back because that's how easily these read i definitely want to buy myself the rest of the fence saga situation because i want to keep reading fence not only do we get lgbtq plus representation in here we also get a lot of explanation into fencing which i found super intriguing it explains to you all of the positions the strike moves things that you wouldn't ignorantly understand from fencing because of course if you're not in the industry what would you know and the fact that it breaks everything down for the reader as they go as their training it was so freaking cool to read that but also to see this prestigious academy and all of the fencing team and all of them competing for like that one spot it was all like such an immersive journey to go through and i cannot wait to read more offense i gave this 5 out of 5 stars i don't think there's much else to say about this graphic novel i just need to know how this will continue because in this one we kind of ended a cliffhanger and then the last book i read in january was intercepted by alexa martin and what a freaking romance book let me tell you if you are looking for a romance just pick intercepted up right now because i was feeling so slumpy this was mid 24 hour readathon i picked intercepted up and it got me out of that freaking slump and it made me into a killing machine of reading because now i have finished three books in february i don't know what this book did to me but it pumped life into me that's what it did it pumped life into me and in this one we follow marley who believes she scored the man of her dreams she feels very much settled in life like she has got everything she needs and her boyfriend is actually a football player for the denver mustangs except when she figures out that he has been betraying her obviously behind her back she vows to never date an athlete ever again except there is one gavin pope to enter to this mix gavin is the new quarterback that the mustangs have hired he has a newly signed contract and he is fighting to prove to marley that he is nothing like her cheating lying ex except there's a lot of other components as well fighting against them like the team's wives who have their own little club like the nfl wives situation and they are fighting against marley they do not want her back because they feel like she is a groupie and there is also a bunch of more drama in here with tabloids and news and robbery and cheating and lying and just this book was so much fun to read it is also kind of steamy i wouldn't say it's like overly steamy i would say there's some level of steam in here but nothing too crazy i thought there would be more i kind of want it more the sports romance aspect of the book was something that i really enjoyed i always find myself intrigued by these stories and i just loved reading about marley she is such a strong character she definitely has a backbone she is not afraid to fight back to talk back to defend herself she fights her own battles and that is something that i feel we need to see more of in general in literature so that was also a breath of fresh air gavin also 10 out of 10 love interest until we got to like the mid-portion end of the book there was something there with gavin that wasn't really it wasn't really giving it to me because he was overstepping his boundaries especially with the things that marley had told him she's like i want to fight my own battles do not step in do not speak for me and he tends to do that a lot in the book as well there was certainly a boundary breach with gavin that i did not appreciate but overall the romance aspect of it to me was just really really cool there were other things that i thoroughly enjoyed like the drama of it it was definitely like i was living for it and then marley's friends were also just a joy to read about and i know one of them actually has a book uh she is actually the main character of book three so i definitely want to see her story and how that comes about all in all i gave the book four stars i think it was a very enjoyable romance it definitely got me out of my slump which was exactly what i needed at the time and now those are all the books that i have for you guys today i hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it a thumbs up comment down below what books you read in january if you found a new favorite book also let me know down below in the comments but if you reach the end of the video let's leave some bird emojis down below whatever bird you want in honor of me re-reading akuma like always you guys know i freaking love that book so let's leave some bird emojis down below in honor of that subscribe down below for more bookish content if you haven't already i am constantly uploading videos that i'm sure you do not want to miss as well as live streaming throughout the week doing my weekly reading sprints and you can also follow me on all my social medias they are always linked down below and yeah that is it for today i love you guys so so much and i will see you on the next one bye guyswhat the hell did i read in january i feel like january is like a blur in my mind hello greeting friends welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new my name is melanie and today i am here with all the books i read in january also known as my january wrap-up now this one is coming after my tbr so it feels kind of weird to be filming it now and i've already read three books in february i feel like it's probably not the best timing to film this but hopefully we'll get it right as i go along the list of books that i read in january it was a great start of the year i read 12 books which is probably one of my best reading months as of today i think overall i only had one like low rated book and it was still not bad i think my lowest rated book i believe it was a three star so overall a great reading month tons of books and overall very very positive and if you have yet to subscribe to my channel don't forget to do so down below for more bookish content i am constantly uploading videos that i am sure you do not want to miss i'm also live streaming throughout the week doing my weekly reading sprints and you can also follow me on all my social medias which are always linked down below i have a twitter instagram goodreads and an amazon wishlist you guys know the drill and yeah without further ado let's get right into it it feels so long ago that i've read this book but it was actually a month ago and the first book that i actually read in january is kingdom of ash by sarah j maas this is the final installment in the throne of glass series as you can see this book is heavily annotated i freaking loved it and i don't think this book needs any introduction everybody knows what throne of glass is by now i was so freaking scared after empire of storms i was so scared after tower of dawn i was so scared after all of these books that were definitely setting up for this big climax there was plot twist after plot twist after plot twist in all of the previous books but i definitely did not know how this one was going to end i don't think there was any other way that this book could have ended and although it did wrap up in a nice pretty bow as some people would call it i really do think that ending was earned you see the suffering of these characters and all of the horrible things they've gone through for six books that this ending they earned it and i will never say this enough but all of the action scenes in throne of glass all the battle scenes the war everything was so descriptive it was just phenomenal writing after finishing throne of glass i am now so torn with what i like best whether that's throne of glass or aquitar because i've always said that aquitar is my favorite series but now throne of glass is making me question whether it actually is or isn't or if it was because i hadn't read throne of glass yet because i just fell in love with these characters and with their journeys and the way that not everything is exactly what it seems my heart breaks and it remakes itself for aelin and her arc and her journey it's so heartbreaking to see a character literally carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and have to go through everything that she went through it's fantastic five out of five stars just a perfect ending and the next book i read was actually an audiobook and this was the month where i really started getting into audiobooks especially when i started journaling i found myself really reaching for audiobooks as i journaled as i filled everything in my journal and it was quite honestly a breath of fresh air to actually get into audio books properly and be able to listen to them and be immersed in these stories and it is the black flamingo by dean ada this is a book that is written in verse i personally adore the narration of this book because it is actually narrated by the author and that is one of my favorite things and i did not know that this was narrated by dean otta so i was definitely shocked when i went into it i was like oh okay i'm vibing with this i like it and in this one we follow michael who is a teen boy coming to serms with his identity as a mixed race boy he is also coming to terms with his sexuality as he is in high school and then he transitions into university and he finds the power of drag so a lot of his discovery is made through drag and through personal experiences by himself and with boys and narrating all of those pivotal moments that he had throughout his childhood and again into his adulthood i personally think this book was equal parts heartbreaking as it was hopeful as it was empowering because following michael from a very young age we see him more interested in barbies than he is in hot wheels and he is more interested in the clothes and the makeup and things that aren't necessarily considered boyish by societal standards and we see him trying to come to terms with that and what exactly it means to him and what it means for the people around him and if you've read the book you know the whole conversation about the barbie doll and all of those scenes where he just really yearned to have one himself and he was jealous of his friend for having one because that is everything he yearn for and then when he goes to college and he discovers drag and how empowered he feels by it and how liberated and accepted and fierce it was just a beautiful story and the writing gets you so freaking hard just listening to it and to all of his experiences and him questioning his sexuality and seeing michael compare all of those experiences that he's heard about versus what he's experienced when he was younger it was just a fantastic journey to go through with this character i gave it a 4 out of 5 stars i really do think if you're looking for a short book you're looking for a good audiobook the black flamingo is definitely the route to go there are so many quotes that i remember with this book but let me pull this particular one because it's just men or sand castles made out of pebbles and the bucket is patriarchy if you remove it we fear we won't be able to hold ourselves together we pour cement to fill the gaps to make ourselves concrete constructions there were just so many beautiful moments in that book so if you haven't read the black flamingo i definitely recommend it this next one is my only three star of the month and it was actually one by one by ruth ware now this book i was just confused with this book if i'm being honest maybe and this is my personal opinion audiobook is not the way to read this book for a second there i thought this book had nine different povs and that just tells you how confused i was with the story because this story only has two points of view not nine i don't know why i ever thought it was nine people so in this one we follow eight workers from a company called snoop and this company is almost like a spotify where you can see what everyone is listening to real time and you can listen to them as they are listening so the name's pretty fittings nope you're snooping onto other people's playlists and the story truly kicks off once all of these workers go into a snowy retreat in the alps where they want to go skiing and they just want to take some time off from work but once they get to their retreats and one of them actually suffers from a very big accident they all start dying or disappearing one by one i think the story was certainly interesting it was very techy every single chapter started with the snoop id from the person who was narrating said chapter and i think that's where it got a little bit confusing to me because it said snoop id one two three four five six seven eight nine listening to positions by ariana grande it literally like every single chapter started like that so i was just confused as to who was who and who was talking and because i was so confused it was hard for me to keep up with the story itself and when we got to that point of the reveal of the book i will say it was very thrilling it was very exciting it was just stressful i think that part of the book a later third was definitely great on audio because you could feel the stress from the characters and i also love there is one chase scene in the book towards the end where you get two povs from the person who's running away and from the person who's doing the chasing and hearing that on audio was just so freaking intense and it was just so insidious and so devious just the way that this person was out to get the main character and out to kill the main character it was so wild to listen to that on audio i will say that was probably my favorite part of the book but everything else kind of like just fell apart for me and i didn't rate this lower because i didn't think it was fair i think it was on me listening to this audiobook i also think with the audiobook all of these voices started sounding very similar to me to the point where i could not differentiate who was talking except for their boss i feel like their boss was probably the only person who had such a distinctive tone of voice and it was only because he was a douchebag besides that everything else just meshed together for me i was like who's who the next book i read is home before dark by riley sager and this is my first riley sager ever and after reading this i do want to get into more of his work i thought i was going to have nightmares after reading this definitely did not happen like public announcement service i did not have nightmare so that was great it was still very much spooky so 7 out of 10 for the scare tactics i definitely was spooked at some points of this book and in this one we follow maggie who is a skeptic she does not believe in ghosts she does not believe in anything paranormal or supernatural especially after the events that happened when she was younger when she was younger she used to live in this manner with her parents and her dad ended up writing an entire memoir of supernatural and paranormal things that wound up happening in this manner so closets opening themselves to kids being dragged on ceilings to record machines starting and stopping by themselves to snakes falling out of the ceiling everything that you could think of anything crazy probably had happened in this manner and now many years later once her father passes away she needs to go back to this manner because he left her this manner on his will and she will go there to flip the house to hopefully sell it and she will start experiencing things that may or may not reaffirm what happened in the memoir that her father wrote many years in the past i think he definitely nailed down that female voice and it was really nice to read about it was really nice to see maggie have such a strong backbone where she didn't depend on people she didn't want to depend on anyone rather and she never succumbed to anything that would seem out of character so for that alone i definitely enjoyed this book i also think the horror aspect of the book was very much there it was very spooky it was very creepy it was just horrifying at times too like i was sitting there and i was like i i'm not gonna read this book at night there was this whole scene with snakes that i was just disgusted by if you guys don't know i have the biggest fear of snakes if there is a name for that please let me know in the comments but i just i see a snake and i start crying just remembering it like there was snakes everywhere there was snakes in the coffee snakes just falling out of the ceiling and just chasing people around the house i don't think i can speak in any more detail about that scene because i was reading it and i was reading it like this so it's a testament to the writing it was described really really well the description in here was fantastic the atmosphere of the book definitely set the tone for that creepiness aspect of it i think what fell a little bit apart for me was the ending because when you have horror books there's always the question of is this actually going to be paranormal or is this going to be more psychological and at the end this book turned more into a who done it plus the paranormal aspect that part to me was just a little bit too all over the place although it tied in nicely although it did make a lot of sense i did give the book four stars because i loved the writing i definitely want to read more riley sager i loved maggie as a main character i really do think she was a perfect conduit for this story just because she is a skeptic so you don't go into the book expecting someone who's just gonna be scared because they're scared at everything so it's definitely gonna be paranormal in here you actually are questioning the entire time whether it's psychological or not the next one is a book that i actually read for a reading vlog and this reading vlog is going up next week i believe it'll be going up midweek i still need to finish editing but it's actually grown by tiffany d jackson and oh boy oh boy what a book in this one we follow enchanted jones who is a teenager and she's wanted to make it big in the music industry for the longest time and it's her biggest dream in aspiration she wants to be a singer she wants to do this professionally and once she meets corey fields was one of the biggest names in the music industry and she starts befriending him and forming a very friendly or what it seems like friendly relationship she believes she has everything at the palm of her hand because with his connections with his contacts she believes she can truly make it and he makes her all of those promises and more until she starts seeing the darker side of the music industry and that everything is not exactly what it seems it was such an infuriating read it was so just heartbreaking to see enchanted go through all of these emotions to go through all of these scenes to go through all of this emotional and physical abuse with a person who clearly is after his own agenda and who's clearly after whatever he's doing for his own sick and twisted motivation and it was so heartbreaking to see a person who's genuinely passionate about what they're doing who genuinely wants to make it and who has the best intention at heart be subjected to this type of lifestyle when that is not what she signed up for picture that tiffany d jackson painted with this book was so perfectly done and well crafted i just will never get over this book i was just mad throughout the entirety of it there was not a single page that i was turning where i was not feeling something and that is just what tiffany jackson does to you with her writing there are trigger warnings for it i will read them to you and what i do love about this book which is something that i also talked about in my reading vlog it actually has the content warnings at the beginning of the book mentions of sexual abuse rape assault child abuse kidnapping and addiction to opioids i think what's more heartbreaking to me is the fact that this actually happens in real life and there's people who've had to go through these experiences and deal with the situations that nobody deserves to go through i'll go more into detail once i actually put up my reading vlog i did give the book 5 out of 5 stars and there's just a lot to unpack here this is just such a complex book to talk about but i feel it's hard to not talk about it in detail so if you want to see more again my reading vlog will be up next week i do believe it should go up on wednesday that's my goal the next book i read in january was long way down by jason reynolds and this was actually a completely accidental read i was boujoin i was doing my thing and i wanted to listen to an audiobook while i was doing that i started browsing on script i was like alright let's see what they have i also wanted to finish a book that day to feel for dog boo and i found long way down which i know a lot of people have read and loved and the craziest thing about this book it's that it's internal it's contemplation this book takes place in the span of 60 seconds and in this one we follow will and he literally has a gun on the waistband of his fans and he is ready to call justice for the injustice of what happened to his brother and once he gets into an elevator a man on a mission people start getting into the elevator and he starts contemplating on whether or not this is the right call to make from dead characters hopping on this elevator and contemplating with will to another strange girl getting on the elevator will starts going through this roller coaster of emotions in the span of 60 seconds from that elevator ride there are so many fantastic quotes on this book from pretended like yellow tape with some kind of neighborhood flag that don't nobody wave but always be flapping in the wind how do you tell water ain't nothing funny about drowning it was such an emotional read because you can sense that desperation that will has because nobody is doing anything about it and he feels the need to call for justice himself and this definitely tells the heartbreaking story of a kid who's just trying to live by the rules that he's been taught his entire life also in a way being reluctant to follow them because he doesn't know if they're necessarily right by the way that those events have played out in the past and almost break out of that cycle that he's continuously seen for his family members and the people surrounding him i was just continuously amazed by jason reynolds power with words and how he weaves everything together into such a quick string of words the story was so fast-paced is that cheating if i read this book again like a month later i don't know if i said the rating already but you probably could guess 5 out of 5 stars absolutely the next book i read in january was actually 9000 by leigh bardugo i do have a whole dedicated review to this book i will leave it linked down below 9th house is a dark academia and dark academia is almost like a subgenre of gothic literature so you kind of know what to expect heavy in description probably less dialogue very atmospheric that is what you get with gothic literature and in this one we follow alex stern who is the sole survivor of this very big accident that happened to her and her friends and while she is on her deathbed essentially on the hospital she receives an opportunity from one of the higher people in yale who's actually part of a secret society called leafy to come to yale full-ride scholarship because she has the power to see grace who are ghosts essentially and they could really use her power in the nine secret societies of yale she does not embody the typical person who would be in there not high class doesn't come from money and once she gets to yale and she starts learning the ropes of all of these secret societies she will learn a lot more than she probably wanted to about how the world works and how these secret societies work and there's also a disappearance in here and a murder mystery one of my favorite aspects of this book was definitely the social commentary that it provided on class money power race just a ton of different things were unpacked in this book and although a lot of them were not done in the most outright way it was still done in a very subtle way that were definitely jabs to those powerful people who think they can get away with anything and it was very interesting to see how all of that fit together with this particular setting the description was also something that i personally really enjoyed it so this book was a 5 out of 5 stars for me i definitely enjoyed it i won't really over talk about it because again i do have an entire review for it so if you want to know all of my thoughts on pack i will leave that linked down below in january i also obviously read a court of mist and fury by sarah dumas as you know i am hosting the thorns and roses along which is a read-along for the call of the aquatar series up until the release of a court of silver flames and this month we're actually reading the third book and the novella january was the month for the second book which is aquamob if you know this is one of my favorite books of all time i definitely do think i read this at the right time i read this four years ago now and i fell in love with the story with the characters so going into aquamoff is always a breath of fresh air because we do get to see a lot of character development particularly from pharah where in book one after the events of under the mountain she definitely is dealing with a lot of ptsd and depression and her own trauma and i always love the way that sarah j maas incorporates mental health into her books it's always been a big component of her stories as we know tamlin is not a character that i particularly love but i think there's also such a beauty to his characters there's such a level of complexity there a lot of insecurity and toxicity also a lot of trauma even after under the mountain and although their levels of trauma are not comparable they're both still there they experience things very differently and i always love to see feyre's journey overcoming all of that that she had to go through but also meeting a new set of characters that she fits a lot more with and exploring a lot of different places in pristian is also a breath of fresh air in acumaf we get to see the summer court we get to see the spring court we get to see the night court the court of nightmares we get to see velaris there's just a ton of different places that we get to see we also get to see highburn so there's just a lot of different elements to this book that i particularly enjoy there's also the talk of soulmates of acceptance again if you want to know all my thoughts as i go as we discussed it i will also link our live show for akuma down in the description box if you're interested to check that out and want to catch up before we discuss the third book and the novella did i even say the rating for akimov i don't think i need to but anyway it's a 5 out of 5 stars if we didn't already know that i always read that book a 5 out of 5 stars next up i have you should see me in a crown by leah johnson and i adored this book this book was so just heartwarming and like happy and like hopeful and in this one we follow liz lighty who definitely wants to get out of her small town in indiana she wants to break out of rochelle she wants to get out of there because she feels as a black woman she does not fit in that place and she has the perfect plan she wants to go to her dream college get a scholarship that can cover all of her costs and just leave except her entire plan falls apart once she does not get that scholarship and her only hope is now the scholarship that her school offers for those who win prom king and prom queen so she becomes a contender in the race and in the midst of that she actually ends up meeting mac who is the new girl at school and also another contender for prom queen the thing that i definitely adored about this book is the fact that it was so wholesome it is sapphic it does have lgbtq plus representation and i just loved liz's relationship with mac and the way that they came to terms with their relationship and the way that they want to appear to the world despite what everyone is saying but we also see a lot of talk in this book about societal standards and oppression and how even to this day in some places in some schools being yourself is still not enough they ask you to hide they ask you to not be present only to appease everybody else and it was insane in this book to read about in this particular school that liz attends that women can only go to prom wearing a dress and men can only go to prom wearing a tux and women cannot go with women and men cannot go with men and the conversation was just established and developed beautifully about a broken system or a system that perhaps was established that way and is working out perfectly that the standard is literally to be cisgender heterosexual and white and if you don't fit that mole then you don't belong and again there's also the conversation of if there's not a space for me i will make that space i will make them make that space and it was such a beautiful ride to go on with liz and mac and at first i was loving liz's friends and at the end i was infuriated by liz's friends and i actually one of my favorite quotes that i wrote down for january is actually from you should see me in a crown and i just remember listening to this because i did do the audiobook and by the way the audiobook for this is freaking incredible the quilt that i wrote down as one of my favorites for the month was the crown nestled into my tight black curls my hair all defiant while hers is tradition this book is just fantastic i really need to own this book physically it's definitely a book that i want to reread physically and annotate and love because it deserves all the love and i know leah johnson is coming out with another book this year i think it's called rice to the sun i cannot wait for that one too and i did give this book a 4 star although the more i think about this book it probably does feel like a 4.5 or a 5. but i do remember at the point of reading this book i felt like some parts of it were too fast-paced or they felt kind of unrealistic or the conflict felt easy or the conflict felt a little bit apart from me there were certain things about the book that to me at least it could have been executed a little bit better but overall chef's kiss stunning book the next book i read was monday's not coming by tiffany d jackson and this book let me unpack this book quite quickly because again i won't be going too in depth about it i do have a whole reading vlog on it it's again the tiffany jackson reading vlog that's going up next week in this book we follow claudia who's been best friends with monday since they were very very young and one day when she comes back to school monday is not there monday has mysteriously disappeared and nobody's making a big deal out of it in fact when she asks the grown-ups they don't make a fuss out of it nobody can give her a straight answer much less monday's family her mom her sister april they're all being super standoffish about the situation and claudia does not understand why and so she takes it upon herself to find out exactly what happened to her best friend since nobody around her seems to give a crap that she literally disappeared i just need to preface this by saying that i gave the book four stars i thought i would love this book more than grown and for a while i do believe i was kind of enjoying it a little bit more but the ending made this book fall apart for me i was so confused by the end of this book i had to facetime my friend to say out loud why i was confused and to see if i was crazy or if i was actually getting stuff right and the point of the matter is i was confused i'm still confused there were several things that at the end of the book were inconsistent with what had been said before don't get me wrong the writing was incredible the story itself the mystery aspect of the book was so well crafted like i was literally playing detective for the majority of the book and the fact that this book has several different timelines it has the now it has the before it has the before the before i found those so interesting because you get to see a lot of different facets of claudia and monday's relationship how they interacted with each other and how other people perceived them and all of the things that they had gone through together to make them so close and so that part of the book i totally look i will say though because the characters are so young the book reads young the characters are 14 for a lot of the book and the main character will probably infuriate you at times she will probably get annoying at times and it obviously comes from a place of trauma and the fact that she's very young and the fact that she has become so dependent on her friend in a lot of different aspects because of the way that they grew up together so tight-knit again i will unpack a lot of this book once i put up my reading vlog i read a graphic novel in january during our 24 hour readathon because mel was feeling slumpy and i i'm not afraid to admit it and i had to pull out a graphic novel and so i ended up reading fence volume one and when i tell you that this is one of my favorite graphic novels that i've ever read and i say that very loosely because i've only read two i freaking love fence in fence we follow our main character who is the bastard child of a very famous spencer and he has a half sibling who goes to this very prestigious academy and nicholas our main character also wants to make it big in the fencing community he wants to prove himself to his father he wants to prove himself to himself and to the people around him because nobody seems to believe that he can actually make it in this industry and so he applies to this other prestigious academy to hopefully make the cut for the fencing team receive a scholarship and properly train because he's never received proper training for fencing before such a page turner starting from there such a quick read as well like i feel if i had all of the graphic novels with me i probably could have read them all back to back because that's how easily these read i definitely want to buy myself the rest of the fence saga situation because i want to keep reading fence not only do we get lgbtq plus representation in here we also get a lot of explanation into fencing which i found super intriguing it explains to you all of the positions the strike moves things that you wouldn't ignorantly understand from fencing because of course if you're not in the industry what would you know and the fact that it breaks everything down for the reader as they go as their training it was so freaking cool to read that but also to see this prestigious academy and all of the fencing team and all of them competing for like that one spot it was all like such an immersive journey to go through and i cannot wait to read more offense i gave this 5 out of 5 stars i don't think there's much else to say about this graphic novel i just need to know how this will continue because in this one we kind of ended a cliffhanger and then the last book i read in january was intercepted by alexa martin and what a freaking romance book let me tell you if you are looking for a romance just pick intercepted up right now because i was feeling so slumpy this was mid 24 hour readathon i picked intercepted up and it got me out of that freaking slump and it made me into a killing machine of reading because now i have finished three books in february i don't know what this book did to me but it pumped life into me that's what it did it pumped life into me and in this one we follow marley who believes she scored the man of her dreams she feels very much settled in life like she has got everything she needs and her boyfriend is actually a football player for the denver mustangs except when she figures out that he has been betraying her obviously behind her back she vows to never date an athlete ever again except there is one gavin pope to enter to this mix gavin is the new quarterback that the mustangs have hired he has a newly signed contract and he is fighting to prove to marley that he is nothing like her cheating lying ex except there's a lot of other components as well fighting against them like the team's wives who have their own little club like the nfl wives situation and they are fighting against marley they do not want her back because they feel like she is a groupie and there is also a bunch of more drama in here with tabloids and news and robbery and cheating and lying and just this book was so much fun to read it is also kind of steamy i wouldn't say it's like overly steamy i would say there's some level of steam in here but nothing too crazy i thought there would be more i kind of want it more the sports romance aspect of the book was something that i really enjoyed i always find myself intrigued by these stories and i just loved reading about marley she is such a strong character she definitely has a backbone she is not afraid to fight back to talk back to defend herself she fights her own battles and that is something that i feel we need to see more of in general in literature so that was also a breath of fresh air gavin also 10 out of 10 love interest until we got to like the mid-portion end of the book there was something there with gavin that wasn't really it wasn't really giving it to me because he was overstepping his boundaries especially with the things that marley had told him she's like i want to fight my own battles do not step in do not speak for me and he tends to do that a lot in the book as well there was certainly a boundary breach with gavin that i did not appreciate but overall the romance aspect of it to me was just really really cool there were other things that i thoroughly enjoyed like the drama of it it was definitely like i was living for it and then marley's friends were also just a joy to read about and i know one of them actually has a book uh she is actually the main character of book three so i definitely want to see her story and how that comes about all in all i gave the book four stars i think it was a very enjoyable romance it definitely got me out of my slump which was exactly what i needed at the time and now those are all the books that i have for you guys today i hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it a thumbs up comment down below what books you read in january if you found a new favorite book also let me know down below in the comments but if you reach the end of the video let's leave some bird emojis down below whatever bird you want in honor of me re-reading akuma like always you guys know i freaking love that book so let's leave some bird emojis down below in honor of that subscribe down below for more bookish content if you haven't already i am constantly uploading videos that i'm sure you do not want to miss as well as live streaming throughout the week doing my weekly reading sprints and you can also follow me on all my social medias they are always linked down below and yeah that is it for today i love you guys so so much and i will see you on the next one bye guys\n"