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Reading Wrap Up // May 2013

Posted on Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The last few months have been horrible reading months for me. Although May started out pretty good, and I felt optimistic after buying some new books that I really want to read soon, I got sick and lost all interest in doing anything but sleeping and watching Arrested Development. I ended up reading three books, and starting two more.

The first book I finished was Wonder by RJ Palacio. I did a full review of it for my English final that you can check out here and a video review that you can check out here, but if you want something a little more general I'll sum it up for you. The book is about August Pullman, a ten year old boy with an abnormal looking face. His eyes are placed halfway down his cheeks, his lower eyelids are pulled down, he has a big gap in his upper lip and so on. The book is about him starting public school for the first time, and it was really heartbreaking. I gave the book 4/5 stars on GoodReads because I felt like some parts were a bit unnecessary, but I definitely recommend it!


The second book I read was Wither by Lauren DeStefano, the first book in the Chemical Garden trilogy . Wither is a dystopian book about a world were all women die when they turn 20 and all men when they turn 25. It follows 16-year old Rhine who is kidnapped and together with two other girls she is forced to marry House Governor Linden, the son of a rich geneticist. I really liked this book although the world building was horrible and the characters were also pretty bad. Rhine came across as a strong character, willing to fight her way out to be reunited with her twin brother and I liked her for that, but I still didn't connect with her, and I didn't care what happened to her. Linden came across as very naïve wich annoyed me, but I was still charmed by him.
The people in this book were very thoroughly described, but the world was not. We got to know that South America was the only remaining continent in the world, wich i didn't really understand, and it seemed way too unlikely, but I hope that Rhine turns out to be wrong about that later in the trilogy. Overall though, I really enjoyed this book. I definitely had some issues with it, but it kept me up all night and I'm probably going to pick up the next book in this trilogy very soon. I also found the book very similar to The Selection by Kiera Cass, although Linden cannot compare to prince Maxon and The Selection was overall a better book.

And then, last minute, I finished Light by Michael Grant, the last book in the Gone-series. It's been a year since everyone over the age of fourteen disappeared and now the kids have to fight one last challenge, the gaiaphage, before the end. I am not going to spoil the book for those of you who have yet to read it, but I think it was a great ending to the series. I gave it 4/5 stars on GoodReads, mainly because I wasn't a huge fan of the plot and I had some problems with the timing. In the previous books we get the impression that it takes a while to walk from Perdido Beach to the lake to Clifftop, but in this book it seemed like it took people five minutes to walk that distance. I may have misunderstood something, but that annoyed me a bit. I had a similar problem with the last chapter before the aftermath, the one where the countdown is at eleven minutes. To me, that chapter felt like three minute at most. Those were just some small things that annoyed me, and they pulled down my rating a bit, but I still really enjoyed the book and I thing everyone should read the Gone-series.

What books did you read in May?

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