May Wrap-Up: I’m just a girl trying her best

WHAT AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER.

I mean. I feel like I say things like that a lot. But when you had a month that started out like my May did and then you have a month that continued/ended like my May did and also they were the SAME MONTH…

There’s just no term for that except “emotional rollercoaster.”

Honestly check out my April wrap-up if you need a reminder of the weird ass turmoil I was going through and putting everyone reading it through by default. It was weird and bad. And compare that to the even-more-irritating happy version of me you’ll be getting for the rest of this post???

I am way worse at blogging when I feel content @ life. (Discussion post idea: tucked away.)

Anyway. Let’s talk about May! (I am barely resisting the urge to make May @ Forever and Everly and May @ My 1st Chapter jokes. They wouldn’t even be good. But I am barely resisting.)

(Doesn’t bode well for how unfunny the rest of this post will be.)

I have a feeling this did not go so well.

MAY GOALS

READ ARCS ✓

REDUCE NUMBER OF UNPOSTED REVIEWS ✓

POST ON BOOKSTAGRAM AT LEAST 5 TIMES ✗

POST ON BLOG AT LEAST 6 TIMES ✗

READ AT LEAST ONE CLASSIC ✓

READ AT LEAST 15 BOOKS ✓

STOP HAVING A PERSONAL CRISIS ✓✓✓

Okay wait! So maybe not fantastic but not the worst either. Go me!

Goals for June

Read ARCs

Write reviews

Post on Bookstagram more

Post on blog more than in May (+ improve stats!)

Read at least one classic

Get a job, ya hippie

Stay ahead of reading challenge

Focus on school

What I forgot to mention in my last post: I actually still have school.

Just one online class. But it’s reaaaalllyyyy haaaaaaard. And stressful. And I don’t have three other classes to distract me from stressing over it. So. Yikes.

Plus my final is 40% of my grade!!!! What kind of YA contemporary bullsh*t……..

Also I have an interview for a job on Monday morning (i.e., probably right around when I’m scheduling this post) that I reallyreallyreally want. So. Like. Send good vibes, I guess? (Yikes x2.)

I also raised my reading challenge from 150 books to 200. I’d been 20+ books ahead for months and it seemed like an okay thing??? But now I am merely 3 books ahead and like wow why did I do this ahhhh.

So we’ll see if I can keep that up. (By which I mean, “how long I can pretend everything is fine before I melt into a puddle of stress and failure.”)

But other than that, summer! Best season! Fun! Friends! Good things! I am very happy.

1. The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Read: May 3 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 1.5 stars

I’m just going to write only a teeny little bit for all these books because there’s actually a lot of them this month!! Which yay but I don’t have the time or the energy to write three-paragraph mini-essays anymore!!!

This was so boring and John Green-y. Ooooh let’s objectify women so a boring teenage guy can come of age. I hate.

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2. Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

Read: May 3-4 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

Pretty boring story but the cutest best art in the history of time. Anya’s Ghost was better but Vera Brosgol’s artistic talent can still murder me.

Thanks to First Second/Macmillan for the ARC!!

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3. The Calculus of Change by Jessie Hilb

Read: May 3-4 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 1.5 stars

This was basically The Upside of Unrequited, hold the happy ending, keep the mangled social issues. Remember how I felt about The Upside of Unrequited? So yeah.

Thanks 2 the author for the review copy.

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4. First & Then by Emma Mills

Read: May 4-5 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3.5 stars

It’s contemporary szn (when I only ever wanna read contemporaries because it’s warm out, or whatever?) but I didn’t prepare. I don’t have so many unread owned contemporaries. So: rereads.

The best part of this book is definitely the exterior aesthetic, but everything else is pretty okay too.

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5. Alternative Remedies for Loss by Joanna Cantor

Read: May 6-7 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

This was a really cool mix of chick lit and literary fiction. It was kind of a slog to read at times but I still liked it??? I don’t really understand myself even.

Thanks to Bloomsbury for the review copy!

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6. This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills

Read: May 7 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

Another meh Emma Mills book with a GORGEOUS COVER OH MY GOD. AND GORGEOUS UNDER-THE-DUST-JACKET. I love.

Honestly have to buy Foolish Hearts (how have I still not read Foolish Hearts?) just to look under that dust jacket because daaaaaamn. (This sounds inappropriate.)

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7. The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

Read: May 8 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 5 stars

HEY I LOVE THIS SERIES. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

THIS IS A GOOD INSTALLMENT IN A GOOD SERIES. That’s all I have to say.

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8. Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

Read: May 8 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 1 star

Not all rereads can be good or fun or even tolerable!! Sometimes you reread a contemporary you remember as being fine and then find out it’s actually a glimmering monument to girl hate!!

Which I guess shouldn’t be surprising, considering the other Julie Buxbaum book I read was a catastrophe.

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9. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Read: May 9-10 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4.5 stars

But sometimes you reread a book and it’s perfect and fun and magical!! And then you reread it AGAIN and it’s, guess what, still perfect and fun and magical!!

I love this book! It’s one of my favorite contemporaries! I’ve read it thrice! I need Sally Thorne’s next book!

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10. Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee

Read: May 9-10 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3.25 stars

This was super super diverse and contained a lot of really good representation for a lot of groups that don’t get a lot of good representation……

But that was just about the only thing I liked about it.

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11. Together at Midnight by Jennifer Castle

Read: May 10-11 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

Catch me reading Christmas-themed books out of desperation because they’re YA contemporary and neither I nor my local library have extensive applicable collections.

This was fine. Lots of ups and downs.

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12. Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys

Read: May 11-13 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

And then I was like, why not break up all these contemporaries with a sledgehammer to the heart??? Why not reread a book that promises to encapsulate pain itself???

This is pretty good historical fiction for people who don’t like historical fiction. (But who do like: sadness!)

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13. Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

Read: May 19-20 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 2.5 stars

The Sarah Dessen reread extravaganza continues!! And it doesn’t go awesome-ly. But folks, you simply cannot win them all.

This was still a quick read. The reread continues……….

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14. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Read: May 20-21 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3.5 stars

Immediately! It continues immediately!

Nailed that formatting.

This was funner Sarah Dessen! The reread will continue more excitedly!

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15. Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

Read: May 21 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

AND THEN I FOUND A PRETTY CONTEMPORARY WITH PRETTY INSIDES THAT I LIKED AND SOMEHOW HAD NEVER HEARD OF OR READ???

Like, guys. I don’t want to cast blame, but this is a contemporary with a beaut cover about a bookstore. Someone should’ve told me.

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16. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Read: May 22 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 4 stars

The compulsory classic of the month! This was so good and emotional and wow. If the text of a play was that good, I’ve gotta see an adaptation.

Also obsessed with this teeny synopsis: “The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance.”

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17. The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman

Read: May 30 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 3 stars

The illustrations of this are so so so beautiful and the cover is so beautiful and literally everything else is completely, totally meh.

Neil Gaiman, you are an emotional rollercoaster.

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18. A Million Junes by Emily Henry

Read: May 29-31 🌷🌿🌷 Rating: 5 stars

YEAHHHHH BOIIIIII.

Closed out the month with a reread of a fantastic book by one of my favorite authors and changed my rating to a 5 star!!! Because it was perfect and I loved it!!! Hurray!

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And so……….all of this makes for an overall rating of…………

(dramatic pause to build tension + excitement)

…

3.2917!

Okay so worse than last month, which was worse than the month before, but I read a lot of contemporaries and truly that’s a genre of garbage so. To be expected.

I only posted four times in May (not awesome, Emma) but the fun thing about that is only one post gets excluded from the top-three-of-the-month lineup! And I just linked that post so it’s like it’s not excluded at all. Cute.

1. Books everyone liked and I…did not: More unpopular opinions

2. April Wrap-Up: I break out of my reading slump + some great reads + 500 followers???

3. The Book Blogger Award Nominations: Please validate me

But once again, amongst my top posts of the month were posts I didn’t even make this month. This time:

1. Thirteen Reasons Why I Hate Thirteen Reasons Why: A Thirteen Reasons Why Review

2. The Light We Lost Review

Shoutout to those two books for being garbage fires, allowing me to write rants that would bring me heaps of stats long into the future.

And that’s May! The emotional rollercoaster to end all rollercoasters (and truly, f*ck you rollercoasters) but it ended on a happy note. (Unlike real rollercoasters, which never end on a happy note, because they are bad and I hate them. Heights are bad! Nausea is bad! Why would we combine the two!)

I read a good number of books, even if I didn’t read soOoOoOo many and even if they weren’t awesome. Maybe June will be even better! Or maybe I will collapse due to my own failures and inadequacies!

Guess we’ll find out next time!

How was your May? What was the best book you read? What was the worst? Have you read anything I read in May?

How’s your June so far? Do you (correctly) believe summer to be the best season?