The Feminist Bookworm

The end of year reading survey is a really fun way to reflect on your reading year and the books you read, as well as the books you are looking forward to in the new year! I love doing this survey every year, so here is the 2018 edition! I worked really hard to make sure I answered each question with only one book. All of these questions were created by Jame from the Perpetual Page Turner, so definitely check out her blog and original post here ! Number Of Books You Read: 89 Number of Re-Reads: 8 Genre You Read The Most From: YA  1. Best Book You Read In 2018? Without a doubt, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.   2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? The Towering Sky by Katharine McGee. I absolutely love this series, and I love Katie, but I didn't love this conclusion as much as I was expecting to. This third book ended up being my least favorite in the series.  3. Most surprising...

You guys, I did it! I finally read Strange the Dreamer . And not only that, I read the sequel, Muse of Nightmares . I can't believe I waited so long to read these because I loved them so much! With Strange the Dreamer , it's best to go in knowing simply the bare bones of the story. It's a dual perspective novel, but the second perspective will come as a bit of a surprise. Anyways, Strange the Dreamer follows Lazlo Strange, an orphan who is now a librarian. Lazlo is obsessed with a mythical city called Weep. However, Weep was not always known as Weep. When Lazlo was a little boy, the true name of the city was literally ripped from his memory, and everyone else's for that matter, and replaced with the name Weep. Lazlo is obsessed with uncovering the truth about Weep, and what kind of magic could rip a name from memory and history. Strange the Dreamer is phenomenal! It is so whimsical and atmospheric and rich in detail. What really sets these books apart from a...

I honestly can't give this book a rating. I just can't. It has so many triggers that there is no way I can label them all, but sexual assault, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and animal cruelty are among some of the triggers. This is a VERY graphic book and quite controversial for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's marketed to the YA community. This book is a very dark, very graphic, very feminist take on the ORIGINAL (not the Disney story, the original tale, the one with rape) tale of Sleeping Beauty. In this very patriarchal fantasy world, a prince, in this case, Prince Emory, must travel to a faraway land upon the death of a king, slay a dragon, rescue a damsel, and marry the damsel, who he names Ama (for a disgusting reason, I might add) and who has no memory of her prior life before being rescued by the prince. Ama is supposed to accept that she is a damsel, going to marry a queen, and going to give birth to a son who will repeat the cycle. But Ama asks...

It's time for another read-a-thon! And hopefully one that is more successful than the previous one I participated in... Anyways, I will be participating in the Tis the Seasonathon, which is a holiday read-a-thon hosted by two of my favorite booktubers, Heather from Bookables (who created this read-a-thon) and Kristin from Super Space Chick . This is a holiday themed read-a-thon (you can really read whatever you want though, which is what I will be doing, as only one of the challenges is holiday specific) that will take place from December 3rd-9th .  And here are the challenges! 1. Read a book with red or green on the cover For this challenge, I will be reading The Lying Woods by Ashley Elston, which has a very green cover. This book is about a boy names Owen who is a very wealthy due to his father's company. But one day his mother shows up at his fancy boarding school to pull him out because, not only has his father gone missing, his father made his fortune on...

Yeah, so the goal was to read 4 books and complete 8 challenges, and I read 1.75 books and only completed 3 of the challenges. Yikes. I'm posting this Wednesday, and I did finish the second book I was reading during the readathon yesterday, but of course it doesn't count. On the plus size, the one book I did manage to complete was over 500 pages and I loved it. And that book was Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow , which is the sequel to Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow , which is a middle grade series. This book completed 3 challenges: Read a sequel, read a new fantasy, and read a book that is BookTube recommended. I gave Nevermoor 5/5 stars when I read it earlier this year, and I also gave Wundersmith 5/5 stars, though I can't say if I liked it more than Nevermoor . Nevermoor is a very whimsical novel that follow our main character Morrigan Crow, who was born on the unluckiest day of the year and is therefore "cursed". She is blame...

You all know I love reading about high society. And you know how much I hated the last book about high society that I read, When We Caught Fire by Anna Godberson. But Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynn Barnes? I LOVED it. Little White Lies follows an 18-year-old girl named Sawyer who works as a mechanic. Out of the blue, her maternal grandmother shows up, offering her a six figure contract to participate in debutante season. Sawyer surprises herself by saying yes, because going to live with her grandmother will give her the opportunity to discover the biggest mystery of her life: who her father is. Sawyer is surprised to discover friendship among the South's high society, and she is surprised to be welcomed with open arms into her grandmother's uber-rich family. But sawyer discovers that many of the debutantes and their families have twisted secrets, and they are not too happy to find Sawyer digging into their pasts. I loved everything about this book! The setting, the...

I was so excited for this book. It has everything I love... it's a historical fiction novel that takes place in Chicago (my home "town") high society before and during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It follows a girl named Emmeline and her best friend and lady's maid, Fiona. Emmeline is engaged to marry the most eligible bachelor in Chicago, but she starts to have doubts when she remembers the life she had planned with a boy named Anders, who is now a hotshot boxer, before she and her father became rich. The only issue is, Fiona is also in love with Anders. This book was terrible. There's really no other way to put it. The only thing I liked about this book was the historical high society setting, and the little newspaper and book excerpts at the beginning of each chapter. But I HATED the characters, especially Emmeline. I hated the romance; it was so bad. I hated how Anders went back and forth between Emmeline and Fiona; one moment he was in love with one g...