**I stack my recent reads on the table by the shelves, flipping through each one, before stacking them on the shelves. The light from the window hits them at just the right angle, giving my books a luminescent glow, shining as they should. I dust off the knickknacks that adorn the shelves and continue reading my current book.**

We have come to our May wrap-up! I actually read 6 books in May, which is pretty good for me. I started to fly through some of my books towards the end which helped. We have one reread in this list and one DNF. I feel like I have been a lot more comfortable with DNFing this year which is something I’m actually really proud of. I hope I can keep up with that so I don’t waste my time on books I don’t like. But here are all the books that I did finish in the month of May.

• Beach Read by Emily Henry

This is actually a reread for me, something that doesn’t happen often. I feel like this year is the year I’ve been branching out: rereads, nonfiction, etc. This is an adult romance following two writers who decide to swap genres and see who can sell their book first. There is a lot more to it, with out fmc dealing with family issues and our love interest going through a few things of his own, but they develop a bond over the weeks they work together. Rereading both this and Book Lovers has made it hard to determine my Emily Henry ranking, but I did enjoy this one still. I like getting to see January try out a new genre and really challenge herself as well as come to terms with the things in her life that she has been struggling with. I like the bond she builds with Gus and how they can create “field trips” for each other so they can learn more about the other person’s genre. While I know that January is writing in this new genre the whole time, I feel like we kind of lose the bet aspect throughout the book. Gus doesn’t seem to even try and participate most of the time and I don’t think it’s brought up much. My other complaint is the drinking aspect. This is such a minor complaint, but it kind of annoys me that the characters in this book are constantly drinking. I just feel like it’s overdone. Other than a few minor complaints, I would still say I enjoyed the book.

• The Reckoning of Roku by Randy Ribay

I love Avatar: the Last Airbender. It’s such a good show and when I saw that there was a book about Roku, I wanted to read it since he’s my favorite of the previous avatars. However, I was not a fan of this. First off, I feel like this kind of taints the friendship between Sozin and Roku. They have such a strong friendship, but this book gives Sozin ulterior motives even at the time when their bond is still strong which I didn’t like. I just couldn’t really find myself invested in this story either and don’t think it added anything to the original story that we see in the show.

• Perfect Cover by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

This is the start of a duology that was published very early on in Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s career. There were recently new covers released so I bought them around April or May since I love her books. This is a series about high school cheerleaders who actually work as government ops. I think the idea is really interesting, but the execution wasn’t the best. I think we needed the story a bit more fleshed out since it felt like nothing was really coming together. The writing wasn’t my favorite either, but this series was originally published back in 2008, so it is an older series and one of her first after she started publishing around 2006, so I can completely understand not liking this one as much.

• We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida

This was actually a really surprising one for me. I picked this up for my book club and thought I was really going to dislike it. It follows a clinic that many people are going to for help even though that’s not exactly their specialty. But the prescription that everyone is getting to solve their problems? Cats. Each cat is chosen for a specific reason and has instructions just like a normal medication. We follow several different people as they go to this clinic for help and read about what led them there and how their cat has solved their problems in unexpected ways. I actually didn’t mind this book. I’m usually not a fan of Japanese translated works, but I found each story interesting and liked seeing how each one played out.

• A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

My next read was A Tempest of Tea, which follows a girl who runs a teahouse which turns into an illegal blood-bank at night for the vampires in the city. When the teahouse is threatened, our main character Arthie, has to get a crew together to steal a document to use it as leverage to save her teahouse. I think this one sounded more interesting than it was. The first half of the book was just getting the crew together and planning for the heist, so it felt slow. It started to pick up a bit once we got to the actual heist, but I don’t think it really made it much better for me. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters and some of the twists were partly predictable for me. It does leave off on a cliffhanger, but I don’t think I have any interest in reading the sequel.

• Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken

Last but not least, we get to our final book, one that I actually started in April. I started this one April 11, read about 50 pages, and put it down. I didn’t really like it and went into it with low expectations. It’s a fantasy book that involves Arthurian legends, magic relics, and curses, with a girl named Tamsin as our protagonist. I think the story was interesting but I couldn’t find myself invested. I don’t know if it’s because of my low expectations or because I continued from where I left off so it threw me off or what, but I just wasn’t a huge fan. There were interesting scenes and the myths were interesting, but I just didn’t feel invested in the story. It also left off on a cliffhanger, but it’s another one I don’t think I’d read. It just took me so long to read this one that I don’t think I can read an almost 500 page sequel out of slim curiosity.

I also DNF’d Good to Great by Jim Collins. It’s a nonfiction book about how business have turned from good to great, but I just felt like it was facts and stories about the companies used in the analysis. I just couldn’t find myself caring about this and didn’t think we were given a reason to care either.

Those are all the books I read in May. I’m really hoping for some good summer reads coming up, so stay tuned for the summer wrap-ups.

xoxo,

Just another reader