My May Wrap-Up

So, it is the last day in the month of May and I decided to share my thoughts and opinions on the books I have read during these past few weeks. :)

I have read a total of seven books and I´m quite proud of that to be honest because I think I have never read that many books in such a short period of time. But without further ado, let´s get started:

1: "Hyperbole and a Half" by Allie Brosh

This autobiographical book tells about the life of Allie Brosh, who is also running the name-giving blog “Hyperbole and a Half”.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.de/

Using funny cartoons and a really good writing style Allie Brosh tells the funniest stories of her life. The reader will be crying while laughing about the simple dog, letters to her past selves and the attack of a goose. She combines hilarious and serious stories and I can only recommend this book to anyone who likes to have a good laugh. 

One of my two favourite books of this month! I give it 5 out of 5 stars. ***** 

2: "A Gathering of Shadows" by V.E. Schwab

In the second book in the "Shades of Magic" trilogy Kell, Rhy and Lila have to deal with the consequences of their actions from the first book. 
The bond between Kell and Rhy is slowly driving them both mad. To distract themselves from this burden Rhy is organising the element games, the Essen Tasch, in which great wizards from different countries compete against eachother and for which he enters Kell as the anonymous magician Kamerov. Meanwhile Lila is travelling across the sea with Captain Alucard Emery and his crew, who teaches her how to use magic. When she hears about the Essen Tasch she is determined to compete as well although her powers are not fully developed yet. Next to all the fuzz about the games no one notices how White London once cold and... well... white, is slowly rising under black magic from another London which was long thought to be destroyed. 

The sequel to one of my all time favourite books, "A Darker Shade of Magic", does not disappoint. It is a tense, thrilling story with the great characters we got to know and love in the first book. I really enjoyed reading from Rhy´s perspective and about his and Kells interactions and conversations. As in the first book, the writing style is beautiful and very descriptive so you could easily see yourself in Red London during the Essen Tasch or on sea with Emery´s crew. 
The only thing I sadly didn´t enjoy that much was Lila´s character. During the book it was hard for me to empathize with Lila. Her thoughts and actions didn´t get to me as I couldn´t understand how one could be this selfish and foolish which was sad because I really liked her in the first book.  
About the ending *no spoilers*: It´s the biggest cliffhanger I have read in the past months and I highly recommend reading this book just before the third one comes out because then you don´t have to wait another year to find out how it´s going to end... like I do now. I need this third book now!! :)

A good sequel to the first book! I give it 4 out of 5 stars. **** 

3: "The Raven Boys" by Maggie Stiefvater 

I konw  I´m quite late on the train but I finally picked up "The Raven Boys" and I loved it!!! As everyone was talking about the fourth and last book in the series ("The Raven King") which was just published I got curious and started reading the series. 

Blue Sargent lives in a family of psychics who have told her that if she kissed her true love he would die. On a special night she and her aunt visit the graveyard to look at all the ghosts of people who are about to die in the next twelve months. As she herself isn´t psychic she is not supposed to see anyone but suddenly a boy appears in front of her, which can only mean that she is his true love or that she will kill him. Blue is determined to find out who Gansey, the boy from the graveyard, is and becomes friends with him and his flatmates and friends, Ronan, Adam and Noah, who are all looking for the welsh king Glendower because legend says that if one finds the king they shall be granted a favour.

A story in which I was completely in the dark for about half of the book. I had (and still have) no idea where the story might go because there are so many twists and turns, which is something I really like. It´s not predictable at all. Another thing I enjoyed was Stiefvaters writing style. Although the story is about magical and supernatural things her writing is down to earth and realistic. It´s easy to read and I loved this world she created. And of course a great story is nothing without its characters: I absolutely loved all the characters, from the Raven boys to Blue to Blues family members. Their conversations were absolutely hilarious.

All in all I really enjoyed this book and I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.***** 

4: "Solo für Clara" by Claudia Schreiber

This book was an arc from our reading club which is only available in German at the moment. It´s about Clara who always wanted to be a professional pianist ever since she was little. Her parents do anything to help her achieve her goals and work hard to earn money for her expensive piano lessons as well as an even more expensive piano and special courses. Everyone around her thinks that her parents are forcing her do play the piano although she really is the only one who drives herself to the limits.  

A really interesting but sometimes also a bit annoying story about how to become a pianist. Clara´s character acts selfish and even rude at times but the author also manages to balance out these rather annoying moments whith moments where you can understand how Clara thinks. The best thing in my opinion about this book was that there were QR codes every few pages which took you to YouTube videos of the songs Clara played in the book. It was nice to listen to some classic music once in a while and it made me want to stand up and play the piano again.  

I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. **** 

5: "Sommer unter Schwarzen Flügeln" by Peer Martin 

One of the nominees for this years "German Youth Literature Prize" is a love story between a Neo-Nazi and a fugitive who live in the same city. Calvin and his "friends" are determined to scare all the fugitives, who came from Syria and now have access to a newly renovated house with new washing machines, away. They want the government to help their own poor people, like Calvin and his family, but because they won´t do so, Calvin and his gang decide to build a new Germany for which the "Old Germany" has to be destroyed.
When he meets Nuri while collecting his brothers from school, the girl from the foreign country starts to talk to him out if nowhere and tells him her story of how she fled with her family from her home country. 

During the novel you can clearly see the character development of both the main characters. Calvin changes from angry Neo-Nazi to someone who tries to understand what happened to these people who had to flee from their own country. He even starts to learn Nuri´s mother language and dissociates himself from his former so called "friends". I also liked that the reader gets to know more about the situation in Syria and about what happened there. 
Although I really enjoyed the character development and these information about Syria I didn´t know before there were also quite a few things I didnt enjoy that much. For once the book had too many pages. It´s not that I get scared away by many pages and I like descriptive writing styles when it´s done right. But with this book I had the feeling it was too descriptive for me and it easily could have been a few hundred pages shorter.  
Besides that I wasn´t a fan of the ending. I´m more the cheesy person who likes a good old Happy Ending and that is definitely not what happened in this book. I´m not saying I don´t like when bad things happen to the characters of a story. I just like it when there is like a sliver of hope at the end of a book and it´s not all depressing and sad. But that´s just my personal opinion. Let me know what endings you prefer in a book! :) I would love to know! 

Because of the ending I had to delete a few stars, so I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. *** (For me an ending can change my entire few of a book. If something ends bad I always have that bad feeling when I think about the book and it definitely affects my raing in the end.)

6: "The Dream Thieves" by Maggie Stiefvater

The second book of "The Raven Cycle" is also my second favourite book of this month. I can´t tell you too much about the story without spoiling anything but here´s a quick spoiler free summary:
Blue and the Raven Boys are still looking for the welsh king which got a lot harder since the magical place Cabeswater vanished into thin air. Adam is dealing with changes that occured in the first book of the series, Noah also vanishes from time to time, Blue and Gansey slowly realise they are falling in love with eachother and Ronan is trying to understand what happened to his father and is now happening  to him. Meanwhile a mysterious Mr. Gray is looking for the Greywaren which seems to be an object that allows the owner to take things from his dreams. 

Again I was blown away by the beautiful style of writing and the plot twists in this book. The character development is on point and I loved to get to know more about my favourite character, Ronan, and about the different friendships (Gansey-Adam, Gansey-Ronan, Ronan-Noah, Noah-Blue,...). A tense story with amazing characters, nice twists, hilarious conversations and an ending that makes you want to read more.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. *****

7: "Smart" by Kim Slater

Kieran finds the corpse of the homeless guy, Colin, in a river and is determined to solve the case because the police decides to drop their investigations. Kieran still thinks someone has murdered Colin and tries to find out who and why they did it. The story reminds one of Mark Haddon´s "The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime" as Kieran also shows authistic behaviour and overcomes these in order to find the murderer besides dealing with his abusive step-father and -brother.

A story that had a lot of potential in my opinion but sadly didn´t make any of it. I felt like the novel could have easily been a few hundred pages longer which would have given it more depth. It all seemed a bit rushed and I think the characters also had a lot more to show than what was in the book. Sadly, the solution of it neither surprised nor impressed me and I think the author could have spent a lot more time on introducing different suspects rather than only having one who obviously had to be the murderer in the end. 

I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. **


So, that was it for this months wrap-up. I hope you enjoyed reading about my thoughts and opinions! Let me know in the comments if you have read any of the books that I have read this month and if you agree or disagree with me. :) I would love to discuss these books with you. 

Also, check out my Goodreads page which I update regularly:

www.goodreads.com/Lifeofafangirl46

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xoxo Sarah