Recent Reads!!

 I have been slacking HARD on my reviews. I have also been reading very slowly. I am only reading 5 books a month because I have so much work and also school work with my kids. I homeschool and I have two high schoolers and a middle schooler. 

I am going to be combining some recent reads in one post because I do not have the time to make separate posts, but with it being summer and having some free days, I am hoping to get back into blogging because I really miss it.

First review: ASAP by Axie Oh

I finished a series this year, even though it is a duology. I had to complete this series because I am obsessed with Kpop thanks to my teenage daughters. The cover screams V from BTS and Jennie from Blackpink. I also really enjoyed the mention of my number one favorite BTS song on page freaking three. Anpanman was playing in the restaurant/ cafe that Sori is going to meet Jenny in.

I really liked this installment more than the first book. This follows Sori who was the roommate of Jenny in the first and the mean girl/best friend. We follow Sori as she is trying to figure out if she really wants to become an idol and she is also navigating alot of family drama. Her mom is trying to keep the company afloat and her dad is screwing other women.

Sori is also trying to keep her feelings for Nathaniel in check because she can't go through another heartbreak and does not want to ruin his career. This book made me cry because the character growth and the intimate and close mother daughter relationship that thrives at the end. 

NEXT REVIEW: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I am Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming

I really enjoyed the Mead Mishaps series by Kimberly Lemming and I have to read everything that she gets published because they are good fun reads. This one was out there and honestly it was grand. I did give it a 4 star because the sex scenes were very unbelievable and the knotting was not it. I am not into that kind of kink in smut. 

We follow our main girl Dorothy who is a scientist studying meercats ans she is in Africa and she is trying to get her mom to get off her case about marrying rich and being taken care of. Suddenly, she gets beamed up into a space ship with a lion and other women who have been abducted. Sshe escapes with the lion and the lion starts talking. Dory names the lion Toto because the wizard of oz and honestly Toto is my absolute favorite character.

We meet the aliens who were also abducted from their home planet and was dumped on this planet that is meant to look similar to Earth. The funny thing is that the Owl creatures who abducted Dory, only studied Earth for three days and they got shit messed up. They put a freaking pink t-rex and other dinosaurs and stores and houses together. 

The whole time Dory is trying to survive, she is trying to gather evidence to take back to the real Earth so she can be credited with a discovery and get her mom off her back. This book definitely had more plot and suspense than the Mead Mishap series, but I don't think this will be a series. 

REVIEW 3: Hum If You Don't Know The Words by Bianca Marais

I have had this book on my TBR shelf for years and I have tried to make it priority for the last three or four years. I finally picked it up and I was so disappointed. I liked it but it did not leave a lasting impression and I felt that my time was wasted because it just ended so abruptly and nothing changed. There was hardly any character growth. 

This is set during apartheid in South Africa and we have two points of view. A yound white girl named Robin, whose parents are brutally murdered by angry black miners that worked under her father and then we follow a black lady named Beauty who is on the search for her daughter who has joined the revolution. The whole plot of this book is Beauty trying to find her daughter and her being told that her daughter has run off to be a soldier when in fact, she has been working as a serving girl for a crime lord who started the revolution. 

Beauty ends up taking care of Robin to be able to stay in Johanesburg and Robin's aunt is just awful. We have Jewish characters and Gay characters who help teach Robin that the world is bigger than the conflict of the white and black races. That the black people are more than just what she has been told and not all of them are horrible or savage or brutal murderers. 

The ending like I said was just underwhelming. It was abrupt and it was just concluded too quickly. I know that there is another book that Bianca Marais has written that is not a sequel but it has a couple characters from this book, and I am not interested. I also feel that this didn't give enough details of the apartheid. The reader is kind of expected to know what it was, and I know bits and pieces but I was confused.