Wow, so, my reading really sucked this month. I kind of wish that there was an explanation for it, but February overall has felt like a massive pile of average with a side of mediocre. I’ve felt off and unbalanced all month and it absolutely affected my reading time and focus. I read four strong novels this month, but I spent most of February feeling overwhelmed about my growing pile of books and my decreasing time to read them. For some reason, this sort of panic causes me to stop reading altogether. (It’s the same reason why I won’t be doing a March TBR post.) You may have also noticed my blogging slowed down in February. Sorry! Let’s hope March will be better. Here’s my (much shorter than last month) February 2017 reading review.
February 2017 Reading Review
The Shifting Light by Alice Campion
I really enjoyed The Painted Sky, Alice Campion’s first book, so when I heard there was a sequel coming I was very keen to pick it up. The amazing thing about Alice Campion is that Alice isn’t an author; Alice is the pseudonym for a writing group made of four women living in NSW. I was lucky enough to sit down and chat with all four women this month, and hearing about their writing process definitely changed how I felt about the book. I guess it made me appreciate it more, knowing how much time and effort went into it. I feel like you need to have read the first book to fully understand this sequel as it’s a continuation of the stories set up in the first book, but if you’re feeling bold then there’s no harm in jumping right in here as some background is provided to give context. 3.5★
The Golden Child by Wendy James
I find myself completely fascinated with books that touch on how teenagers use social media these days. I’m not old by any stretch of the imagination, but things have certainly changed since I went through high school. It was hard enough navigating the murky world of MSN Messenger and text messages with a character limit, so with things like Snapchat and Instagram now I don’t have a clue how teenagers survive. Social media use by today’s teenagers is a central theme in Wendy James’s novel about cyber bullying and keeping up appearances online when your real life is falling apart. It’s a well-written and intriguing story but I didn’t really like any of the characters, so it was hard to feel any sympathy for them. Why must women in fiction always have issues with their mothers-in-law? 3.5★
The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy
When I first heard the premise behind Sara Flannery Murphy’s debut novels I was very excited to read it, and after a couple of average books in February I was ready for this to pull me out of a small reading slump but unfortunately it really missed the mark for me and made my reading slump feel much worse. Eurydice works for the mysterious Elysian Society, a company that allows grieving customers to reconnect with loved ones as Eurydice and her colleagues swallow pills called lotuses to summon and be possessed by the deceased spirits for a short period of time. Super interesting plot, for sure, but I couldn’t get into the writing style and again found myself not caring about what happened to any of the characters. Eurydice becomes obsessed with one of her clients and begins to unravel the mystery surrounding his wife’s untimely death, and I bloody love mysterious so I was really disappointed when all I cared about was that the book needed another vigorous edit. Reading is meant to be fun, not arduous and by the end I felt like I’d drowned in overblown prose and way too many similes. 3★
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins (available May 2017)
If you know me well, you know I didn’t care much for The Girl on the Train. When we first heard about Paula Hawkins’s second thriller coming in 2017 I was beyond excited; I’ve met Paula and genuinely really liked her so I was always going to read whatever she wrote next. Happily Into the Water was, for me, a huge step up from TGOTT. In this novel, we follow Jules Abbott returns to her hometown after the death of her sister Nel to learn that Nel drowned in the same section of the town river, aptly named The Drowning Pool, that she had been obsessed with all her life. What seems like suicide is eventually revealed to be murder, and the secrets of the small town are revealed as the hunt for Nel’s killer progresses. If you can get through the vast array of characters that are introduced in quick succession at the beginning of the novel, I think you’ll really enjoy this — I sure did! 4★
That’s my very brief February 2017 reading review. Leave me a comment and let me know what you read this month, and also let me know if you’re excited to read any of the books I read!
