👩🏿‍💻 JANUARY WRAP UP AND HAUL 🍷

     January is my birthday month so of course, I went and bought myself some books to celebrate the occasion! I'm really excited about what I bought and I'm even more happy about that fact that I didn't break the banks getting all these books. Out of the 22 books that I bought and two TV series (not pictured) I bought, I only paid full price for two of the books. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor and Josephine Baker, a graphic novel by Catel & Bocquet. All the rest of these books I had gotten from two places: Thriftbooks.com and McKay's Used Bookstore, located in Nashville, TN. I picked up some great books, for example, Vicious by V. E. Schwab was one of my favorite books of 2016, but finding it in hardback was proved to be costly, but I went to McKay's and there it was, for less than 10 bucks and it was SIGNED! I mean really! Who can beat that? I also picked out some great mystery and sci-fi books to read in the upcoming months (mainly I'm thinking about #MarchMysteryMadness). But enough about that, let us get into what I read this month and at the end, I'll let you know where I stalled out in reading this month. Enjoy!

Clay's Ark-⭐⭐⭐ (on TBR)

     The third book in the Seed to Harvest series and it starts off with this crazy highjacking on an Arizona highway with a man and his two daughters. One sick with Leukemia and the other not, I believe this takes place in the year 2021. There is another storyline going on concurrently where it takes place in the past, how far in the past, we aren't sure yet. But we are reading it from a man, whose name is unknown to us and he is traveling through some kind of desert and his looking for water and comes across a house where he can smell the women inside and his drawn to them. This is a story about a man and his daughters trying to stop this deadly virus from spreading from this small farm to the rest of the world. All it takes is one small scratch and you are theirs forever. I'm not gonna to lie, as a standalone, this would be a really great sci-fi book, but as part of the series, I'm totally lost.    There is a small connection to the previous book. But this one is not my favorite so far in the series. And probably my least favorite Butler book. I'm not sure what is to come from Patternmaster, book 4, but I'm still looking forward to it. 

Gem Of The Ocean-⭐⭐⭐ (on TBR)
     For the first play that in Mr. Wilson's Century Cycle, this was bad. I could really feel the characters coming to life in my mind, and yes I did read some of the parts of this play out loud in my house. It starts off in 1904 in Pittsburg and Aunt Ester is the woman to see if you want your soul to be washed. Now some people might only believe that God is the only one who can wash souls, but there are those who believe Aunt Ester is the woman for the job and one night a visitor comes to her house wanting a visit with this almost 300-year-old woman. At this same time, a man has committed suicide after being accused of stealing a bucket of nails from the local mill. I liked this one, I liked the characters. The ending wasn't as strong as I would have liked it, but I'm happy.
The Sinner-⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 
     After reading I Have a Secret last month, I was just in an R&I mood. So I went to see what my library had available and I was happy that they had The Sinner, which is book 3 available to read and they had the audio version. It still felt good to read this book. This one starts off with the murder of a nun and with that some really crazy things to come life that she was hiding, then there is another murder that leaves a woman with no hands, no feet, and 1/2 her face missing. These two cases seem to not have much in common but when the clues start adding up these murders lead to a crazy cover-up which I thought it was an interesting mystery and kinda gruesome. Being straight with myself, it had been such a long time since I had read this book, the twist at the end really took me by surprise. And has gotten me hooked back on this series.

Midnight Robber-⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (on TBR)
     I wasn't too sure what was going to happen when I picked up this book. To be straight with the reader in me, after I read Brown Girl in the Ring and loved it, I knew I probably couldn't go wrong with her next book in publication. What I think I loved the most about this one was the language. I loved the Jamaican patois used in this futuristic world. We follow Tan-Tan and her power corrupted father on their adventures in New Half-Way Tree, an upside-down world if you will (that was a Stranger Things reference if you aren't hip.) And in this New Half-Way Tree, those things that were once myths, falsehoods, and fairy tales are now real. This has become a new favorite of mines and I'm so happy that I kept this book with me for so long.
Body Double-⭐⭐⭐ book 4 in the R&I series had A LOT  going on. Like for real, you had, what felt like, two different storylines going on all at the same time and just when you think to yourself what do these storylines have to do with each other than BAM! It all comes to a head and you can't wait to get to the next chapter to see what is going to happen next. Here is a summary of the storylines: 1. A woman is found dead outside Dr. Isles house, the crazy thing is, she looks EXACTLY like her and everyone including Maura is confused. Which leads to this crazy Alice and Wonderland spiral of new information that we get about Maura and the life she never lived. 2. A pregnant woman goes missing and is held captive by an unknown assailant. I felt at the moment when you realize that Rizzoli and Frost know of the missing pregnant woman was kind of flatlined, it was just matter-of-fact like that this tidbit of information they already had and was just waiting for the right moment in the story where it can be most useful to the reader. This book has some serious twist and turns with each new chapter and I always enjoy them, but this one didn't really grab me like the previous one did.

Wife Of The Gods- ⭐⭐⭐.75 

     I bought this one back from the dead. I had previously started and DNF'd this book a long time ago, thinking it was boring, but after having read it, I realize it's a slow burn of a mystery that is really character based. It's the story of DI Darko Dawson and the murder of a young medical student named Gladys. What I liked about this book was that it takes place in Ghana. I have never read a book, let alone a murder mystery that takes place in Ghana, glad to see it. This is the first in a now 5 book series following DI Dawson as he solves crimes in and around Accra. This wasn't in my original TBR list, but I'm glad that I read it. It's was good and I'm curious about the rest of the series. 

Binti-⭐⭐⭐.5
     This was a re-read for me so that I can get ready for the release of the third book Binti: Night of the Masquerade. I really like this story it's so full of tech and character. I love just love the infusions of the Himba people and the technology of the future. My review from 2016 still stands. You can read it here. It's a great book and I really love a lot about it and I love the direction this whole series is going.
The Gunslinger- ⭐⭐
     Yeah, I re-read it and I still didn't like it. Here is my review from when I read it in 2016. It still holds the same. I like the concept of the books, but I don't like the first book. But I have spoken to a few people whom I trust said that it gets way better in the next one. So yeah. I didn't like it, but I have the second one on audio from the library.
Under The Dome-⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    I don't normally read two books by the same author at the same time, but when my library told me that the audio for this one was available to me, I pressed play, cracked open my huge 1000+ book and literally went to town. Every time I stepped away from this book to do something else, like eat, I just kept wanting to go back and see WTF was happening over in Chesters Mill. Before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you this, there is a town, called Chesters Mill and on one beautiful day in October an enclosure happens upon the town, dome-like in structure, and nothing and no one can get through it.  And the townspeople and the rest of the world have no idea what is happening to this small town in Maine, where the dome came from, who sent it, how can it be destroyed and all that, but they do know that their supplies are dwindling and they need to figure out something fast before the town destroys itself from the inside. This book has a huge cast of characters, that Mr. King was so kind to give us a list of all the characters we would come across in this book, as well as a map of the town. This book is very character run and it's the people that I read in the book and just felt very interested in their lives. Big Jim Rennie has to be one of the best "villains" that King has come up with.
     From the moment I started this book, I couldn't put it down. And every time I did, all I could think of was, "What is happening in Chesters Mill?" I'm not from a small town and I might not always know my neighbors from one month to another, but the mob mentality, small town hero-worship syndrome that happened in this book was flipping crazy. Big Jm Rennie is one of the best "villain" characters you'll ever read about. And the sick people in this town, whew, boy. Crazy. You would think a book this large would get a little slow, but there was not ONE moment during all of this that was slow. Even down to the last 100 or so pages I was clutching my chest and closing my eyes tight because I didn't want a character to die. It's the characters that really bring this book to life and while the Dome is definitely a puzzle that needs to be solved, it's the characters that put it all together. Very happy with this book.

HP and The Prisoner of Azkaban: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
     I catch myself trying to participate in the #24in48readathon where your goal is to read for 24 hours in a 48-hour span. And I only got one book in, and I loved it, it's a classic in my mind. I've read this book three times now and I'm just as happy and pleased by it as I was the first time I read it, as well as the second time I read it.
     After reading Under the Dome, I was burnt out a bit when it came to reading and I couldn't pick up a book, read it for more than 50 pages, and actually enjoy what I was reading. I'm not sure what it was but I felt like I was suffering from that illness of I just read a 5-star book and nothing will come close to being as good and the whole, I just read a thousand page book what else do you want from me? lol So I had to take a step back and while I really wanted to read more at the end of the month, I had like two more weeks to read (or at least a week and a half) the readathon did nothing for me and I just BARELY read the Harry Potter book. BARELY! If I hadn't already known what was going to happen or how it ended, I probably wouldn't have finished it real talk.
     Let me know if you have read any of these books, what were your thoughts on them? What did you read this month? Did you participate in any of the readathons that they had going on this month? Let us chop it up. Be sure to follow me on my social media pages for more up to date thoughts and see what I'm reading!

PEACE✌

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