July 2022 wrap up | yet another month bites the dust

Hey hi hello! It was as if I blinked and July was gone. Seriously, this month went by so fast I didn’t have time to even catch my breath. I have read more books than I thought I did, and discovered some gems of movies and TV shows. Read on!

what I read

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake

As it is always with me and romance novels, my interest in the romance part of the story subsided greatly after the couple got together. Before, though? It was cute and steamy and angsty all at the same time, and I was invested. What I cared about most was the back story and the emotional baggage between the two sisters, Delilah and Astrid. My rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed

This novelization was the movie almost word for word, and with more character perspectives added, more back story, more context and perhaps a bit more heartbreak. (Why would you add the POV of that little girl Jyn saved when Jedha is getting destroyed. Why.) A lot of thanks to Madeline @ The Bookish Mutant for recommending this! My rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)

Kings, Queens and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju

This is probably the second queer Sri Lankan diaspora author I’ve read from, and the first YA book, so I was pretty excited to read this. Unfortunately, it didn’t meet all my expectations. The writing style really bugged me from the beginning, by I kept going because the protagonist Nima was really awkward and relatable. But the story kept going around in circles and even when the story ended I had a vague huh…? moment. I’m adding a star for all the casual queerness of the story. My rating: ★★★✩✩ (2.5 stars)

Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Finally a women-led epic fantasy series! This book is HUGE. By that I don’t just mean the length of the book, but everything from the world building, lore, and back story behind the characters were fully realised. I immediately liked all of our main characters, Sabran, Ead, Tané and Loth. (Even though he’s sometimes a piece of shit, even Niclays grew on me as the story went on.) The story was engaging and I loved it in the beginning, pretty sure it was going to be my next five star read. But the story was never ending. Every time I that I thought it was coming to a resolution, there seemed so be a few hundred pages left to go. My rating: ★★★★✩ (3.5 stars)

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim

If a Studio Ghibli movie was a book it would look something like this. Apart from a few confusing moments, this book was excellent, from the word building, prose and main character. The lack of character development for anyone other than Shiori might be where this book stumbled. I reviewed it over here! My rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)

What I watched

Bend it like Beckham: truly can’t believe it took me until I was twenty to watch this iconic showstopping utterly chaotic film. It was made 20 years ago so there are some ??? moments, but beyond that it’s a true comedy. If you haven’t watched this yet what are you doing with your life.

The Prince of Egypt: this movie is a freaking masterpiece cause WOW. The animation is amazingly beautiful and creative, the songs are pure brilliance and the story…just everything about this movie is perfect.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo: this is the kdrama I’m watching these days (currently on episode 05). It’s about an autistic attorney called Woo Young Woo and I find the show delightful.

On blogging

In July I published two blog posts, finally breaking my streak of one post a month. Click on the featured images to visit the post.

POSTS I ENJOYED FROM OTHER BLOGS

➼ Cherry @ Letters to the Lost celebrated her second blogiversary!!

➼ Romi shares new book releases in August by Asian authors

➼ Sumedha writes about her SEO strategy as a book blogger

➼ Read Anoushka’s rage review for The Summer I Turned Pretty series for clear skin

➼ Min gives book recommendations based on kdramas!

➼ Sophie muses whether we would still keep posting if no one was reading our blogs

Life update

I’m still kind of stumped at how fast the month of July went by because I got nothing done. With everything happening in my country it seems like they’ve forgotten about our A/L results (unless they drop it randomly on me like a bombshell). The only exciting thing that happened was that I went to a wedding wearing a suit(!!) and feeling like a boss. One third of the month was me having night shifts at work so I was mostly asleep during the daytime.

So, did I reach all the goals I set for last month?

• Drink more water ❌ (I’m so bad at this)
• Deep clean my room ❌
• Reach at least 10k words on my WIP ✔
• Get back into blogging/ blog hopping regularly ❌✔ (kind of?)

I decided not to keep a monthly TBR because I have a bad track record of following through with them. I read none of the books I promised myself I will read last month. My goals for next month:

• Read 6+ books
• Blog consistently
• Drink more and eat more
• Write until my WIP hits at least 1.5k words
• LEARN TO DRIVE

Also, my second blogiversary is days away and I’m thinking of doing a Q & A post. If you’ve got any any questions, now is the time to ask me!

Hope you all have a great month ahead!