I started this post at the beginning of last week, thinking that I’d do amazing and update it whenever I finished a book so my thoughts were fresh. Yeahhhhhh. That didn’t happen. I ended up deleting everything I wrote and starting over. Which is totally fine since I didn’t have a lot, but still kind of sad.
This last week was a rough one in general, though. I was sick all week and trying to take care of three sick kids (an almost 9 year old, a 2 year old, and an almost 9 month old). Needless to say, I’m still mentally and physically exhausted.
But that’s neither here nor there. I had a decent reading week and finishing off May pretty strong. So, let’s just get into all that.
Books I Finished Last Week
Content Warnings: Eating Disorder, Mental Illness, Self Harm, hom*ophobia, Bullying, Transphobia, Outing, and more
Heartstopper Vol 4 by Alice Oseman
This is the 4th volume (obviously) of the Heartstopper series and I absolutely LOVED it. If you haven’t read this or don’t know what it’s about, please go check it out. BUT make sure to check content warnings on each volume before going in. This is very much a kind of slice of life romance story between two boys as they navigate their relationship, who they are, and other stuff they’re dealing with.
I gave this volume 5 stars, of course. I truly love these characters with my whole heart and just want them to be the happiest they can possibly be.
Daemon Uprising by Mariah Ankenman
This is the first book in the Daemon series which consists of 3 books that each follow a different couple. Though based on this book, it will be a continued series so you will want to read them in order.
This one follows a woman who fights daemons for a living alongside other daemons and she has to team up with her opposite to fight these daemons.
Overall, I gave this one 3.5 stars. I absolutely adore Mariah Ankenman and I’ve seen so much growth in her writing from this book to her more recent works. This one does have a lot of problematic content, though, so I want to make that known as well. This was published in 2017 and it definitely shows. But I did love the main couple a lot and I’m really interested to read the next book in this series.
Content Warnings: There aren’t any listed on Storygraph, but I do know that there was fatphobia, medical content, possibly sexual content but I can’t remember if it was on page. I believe it was, but don’t quote me.
Content Warnings: Death of Parent, Grief, Abandonment, Drug Abuse, hom*ophobia, Addiction, Toxic Relationship, Religious Bigotry, Drug Use, and more
Everything Leads to You by Nina Lacour
This book is one that I’ve been putting off for SO LONG without any reason really. I wanted to read it, I just never got to it until now.
This book follows Emi, who just graduated high school and is doing very well toward her career already. But things aren’t looking like they’ll be the same as she expected. On top of that, she stumbles across a mysterious letter from a movie icon in an estate sale. Now her and her friend are trying to uncover the truth behind this actor’s life and the people involved in the letter while Emi is also trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life.
I ended up giving this book 4 stars. It was super interesting to see another side of the film industry other than the main parts like the director and actors and such. While I didn’t love Emi or how she was acting toward, well everything, I also understand that she’s still a teenager and these choices do fit how a teenager would act. Overall I think this was a good read and I’m glad I finally got to it.
Currently Reading
As of right now, I’m working on a couple books. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is the physical book that I’m trying to focus on right now. I started it a couple years ago and just never ended up finishing it. I didn’t pick it up at all last week, but I still want to count it as my currently reading because it is the physical book I’m working on.
As for my ebook, I’m reading Role Playing by Cathy Yardley. This one is super interesting to me because it’s following love interests that are around fifty years old. I can’t think of any romances that I’ve read with people around that age, so I’m having a good time. I’m not too far into it, but I definitely hope to finish it this week.
And lastly, the audiobook that I’m reading is an ARC from Macmillan and that’s Curvy Girl Summer by Danielle Allen. Being transparent, I’m not loving this one. So many of the problems that are carrying the story are just… problems. They could easily be solved if the main characters talked for 2 seconds. And then the FMC gets told something and she just seems to refuse to accept that it’s the truth. I’ll be honest, as of writing this post, I have finished this. But you’ll get my full review in next week’s update.
Books I Hope to Read This Week
- You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
- The Borrow a Boyfriend Club by Page Powars
- Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu
- Icon and Inferno by Marie Lu
- Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Webcomics (All on Webtoons)
Caught up on
- Degree of Love by Eu-Aeng
- Winter Before Spring by Moonbun00 and Rinucomics
- For the Third Time by Got W and NARA
- Hiding in the Moon by Puik
- Love 4 a Walk by Nuria Sanguino
- Love Online by Yurui
- Midnight Poppy Land by Lilydusk
- Boyfriends. by Refrainbow
- The Mafia Nanny by Sh00 and Violet Matter
- Chasing Red by SilentMaru and Isabelle Ronin
Hope to Read
- Float by Cj Joaquin, Kate Merchant, and WmW
- What Melvin Left Behind by Team Happy Gery, SC13, and Ryu Heon
- Swolemates by LummyPix
- Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
- Fallen to Paradise by BY, YoonJu, Wonderdream
- Iseop’s Romance by 248 and Anna Kim
I fell out of reading Webtoons for a bit there, but I finally am getting back into it again. So I caught up on a few that I was only a bit behind on and slowly going through and catching up again on others. I’ve also been trying to mix in some newer ones too to mix things up a bit.
I was going to discuss new releases in here, but I think I’ll try to keep those to either my Instagram stories or (if you all are interested), I can do a separate weekly post for them!
But that said, I didn’t really watch anything last week so I don’t have anything to talk about there. I may try to catch up on NCIS this week, but we’ll see. I have a lot of reading I need to get done.
Anyway, thank you for joining me today. Hopefully next week’s update won’t take me so long into the day before posting. Let me know what you read last week, what you hope to read this week, or if you read Webtoons, what some of your favorites are!
I’ll see you all in the next post!
Author: Manda the Biblio
Hey everyone! I'm Manda! I run the blog, Twitch, and Instagram @MandaTheBiblio. I talk about a bunch of stuff from books to games to just life! As a mom of two, life is chaotic so I'm not promising the best content you'll ever see, but I am promising my best at the time! I don't know exactly what this blog will be, but I know that it'll be fun either way!View all posts by Manda the Biblio
