Monthly wrap up // March 2021

Hello, lovely people of the blogosphere! I can’t really believe March is already over. Not a lot of things happened this month but maybe they did, and I only hadn’t noticed it. School started, but I don’t notice the difference much because I live only a kilometer away from school. I also challenged myself to walk that kilometer as I go to and from school as fast as I can, and I’m rather proud to say that I reduced the time from fifteen minutes to ten to finally six!! (Of course, it had to rain on the day I decided to try to cover the distance in five minutes)

What I read

I read five books this month, which I honestly think is OK, because you don’t have to stress yourself over how much books others are reading. I think I’ll be restricting myself to reading four or five books per month because I seriously need to study harder.

Mythil’s Secret by Prashani Rambukwella

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

This is like the…only good fiction book set in Sri Lanka and written in English I’ve read??? Those stuff are so rare I’ll treasure them forever. This is a reread, and the book is about a boy named Mythil, who befriends a tree-demon ‘yaka’ named Asiri. At first he freaks out but then gets caught up in a bigger fight. The yakas are super scary except Asiri, who’s half the time the most frightened person on the page. He’s also my favourite character. The plot is pretty simple and predictable but the villain is very good (in a bad, hiding in plain sight way). Honestly, it was the characters that made this book for me.

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Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

This book broke me,okay? Every sentence seemed to send shivers down my back. It’s a memoir of a mother who lost her entire family, sons, husband, parents, friends to the tsunami and her journey of coping with her grief, and moving on. It’s so powerful and poignant.

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Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Yup, I read the Grisha Trilogy (which autocorrect unhelpfully translates into Geisha every. single. time.) And I’m here to tell you all I think about it!! If you haven’t read this series, and are planning to, please skip over this because there’ll inevitably be some spoilers. I rated Shadow and Bone three stars because, while I liked the story, I was bored most of the time while reading it and it was also a teensy bit predictable. Alina was a little bit of a whiner and where the hell does Mal gets his amaaazing tracking skills from? He can make rabbits out of rocks? I’m pretty sure that’s not the way tracking works. (I’m not talking about the metaphor here. I’m talking about the the tracking in general)

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Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Siege and Storm, aka the book where Alina flirts with her dark side. And also the book which introduces us to Nikolai Lantsov, who I may or may not have a huge crush on. I learnt to wisely suspend my disbelief on Mal’s tracking stills (this is a fantasy book after all) It’s fast paced with many twists and turns that I absolutely did not expect. And I had so much fun hating the Darkling, to the point that I did not get why so many people love him. Tragic past yada yada. Also, being a geography geek, it’s kinda hilarious to see where Bardugo gets her place names from – Ravka for Russia, Ketterdem for Amsterdam, Novyi Zem for Novaya Zemlya.

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Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

SPOILERS AND SPOILERS AND SPOILERS DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK

Wow I did not expect stuff to get this dark. And also spoilers* I did not realise how much I'd grown to love Baghra until she died. Why did so many people have to die??? The only person I am not sad for is the Darkling. He is a horrible person and a *tragic unloved past* will not redeem him ever. Genya showing down the king is so badass. You go, girl. And what happened to Nikolai...shivers

Spoilers aside, this was a thrilling final book that was a bit slow at the beginning. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it a great deal! It was a bit slow in the first chapters and I still do not understand the Apparat’s deal (who the heck is he anyway) and I saw one of the twists coming from a mile away. Also, the twists were so YA-book like (is that even a thing?) that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. And we finally have a plausible explanation as to why Mal became such a great tracker. Thanks for explaining that, book.

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Writing

I didn’t write as much as I’d have liked to, and I think I’m suffering from a bad case of writer’s block. In any case, it would be a good idea to leave my WIPs alone to make more time for schoolwork.

I did make a mood board for one of my story ideas😀

Blogging

I’ll start this with a big thank you to my older sister who drew me a very pretty profile picture (not quite the way I’d imagined it in my head, but still)

I posted five blog posts this month. Feel free to click on the header if you want to read these!

Around the blogosphere

Here’re some posts I really enjoyed reading!

Shermaine posted about what it means to be a woman on her blog and it was just so profound and thoughtful I think everyone should go read it

Cherry @ Letters to the Lost reviewed one of her most favourite books We Hunt The Flame

Ashmita did a post of Characters Most Likely to Pick their noses in Public and it was hilarious to the extreme just go read it right now

Susana discusses what makes her rate a book five stars. She’s a new book blogger so please visit her blog and give her a follow and show her some love!

Ritz posted a review of Strange the Dreamer on her blog,so go check it out! (She’s also a new blogger I discovered recently)

Life

Aargh, I have nothing much to say here except that March went by so fast! Blogging took up so much of life in a way that was quite exhaustive – wow there’s a lot of things addictive about blogging I hadn’t considered when starting this. I’ve got loads of tags to participate in. I’ll be coming in next with a post about what movies I watched in March.

How did March go by for you? Have you read the Grisha trilogy? What are your thoughts about it? Are you excited about the Netflix show?

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