Hello readers! It’s time to wrap up what I read in January. I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted, but I still managed to finish 7 books. I managed to actively read for 10 days of the month, which wasn’t where I wanted to be. But I can’t complain too much.
How did you guys do? I am very happy with my reading for January.
The first few books I finished this month were from my Dr. Seuss post. This was the first in my series of problematic authors posts. I thoroughly enjoyed writing and revisiting these books. It’s just interesting to see the difference in my perspective and what I would notice then vs now.
I gave them all 3 stars because I really didn’t know what to rate them. If you’d like to see my thoughts, please go check out the post!
Crumble is a middle-grade graphic novel I randomly grabbed at the library. I saw food on the cover and grabbed it. I did NOT expect this book to be what it was.
Crumble follows a girl named Emily whose family has a magical ability where they can bake feelings into desserts. There’s a family rule that when you are not in a good mood or going through something negative, you are to never bake anything.
Emily’s aunt, Gina, with whom she lives, dies. Emily’s mom comes home to take care of her, and she breaks the biggest rule of the family. She starts to bake through her feelings. It makes her feel a lot better, but then bad things start to happen.
I just did not expect this book to be about grief. It was honestly really heartbreaking, and it was even more so because her mother was not really supporting her. She was baking all these things when the family rule was to not do that, but the mom didn’t even notice.
Her mom was too concerned with everything else to realize that her child was going through something so difficult. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in the mother’s position, but you can’t just let your kid go through grief like that alone.
I’m really happy I randomly picked this up. It only took me about an hour to read the entire book, and I highly recommend everyone read it. I’m going to check out more from this author in the future to see what else she has in store.
I was reading Amari and the Great Game all month. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was not working that was in book one.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was that this book has too much going on. I mentioned it in my WWW Wednesday this past week.
I decided to read reviews for book three, and they convinced me I won’t be continuing. This is really devastating because I loved Amari and the Night Brothers. I loved it when I read it in 2021. I even was telling everyone how much I loved it, even stating it was my favorite book I read that year.
Then, I reread it in December 2025. I still loved it! But then this second book just wasn’t up to par. Maybe if BB Alston writes something else down the line, I will check it out. He clearly has a lot of potential in the fantasy genre. But I am not going to continue with Amari’s story.
Half His Age was one I was so excited to read, and was so disappointed once I did.
Half His Age follows 17-year-old Waldo, who is struggling in every aspect of her life. She isn’t being supported emotionally or otherwise by her mom, she has shopping and sugar addictions, and for some reason, is attracted to her much older teacher.
I just don’t understand what she was trying to do with this book or with these characters. I really disliked that the entire relationship was initiated by Waldo. She kind of pressures the teacher into things and even does sexual things with him while he is saying no, and other times when he is drunk. It genuinely made me feel bad for the man, which I didn’t like.
I also don’t understand why, eventually, when there are like full-on sex scenes, they’re so explicit.
I think that the audiobook narrator needed to be someone other than the author. She was talking way too fast, and Waldo is very similar to Jennette. It made me confused when I was listening to the book because I was wondering if these were real events.
It would have been so much more interesting if the student-teacher thing were completely not in it. Then we could have focused a lot more on this void that she has, which she is filling with all these different addictions. It would also have been more interesting to delve more into her relationship with her mother.
I don’t want to spoil the ending or anything, but I don’t think that it really symbolized empowerment like a lot of people are saying that it did. She was represented as being in charge the whole time.
That really bothers me so much. It doesn’t matter if a 17-year-old comes onto an older person. The adult in the situation has a responsibility to stop it. But he just allows it to happen. The dynamic is so off putting an uncomfortable. I expected it to be uncomfortable, but in the way that My Dark Vanessa was uncomfortable.
I just have a feeling this book is going to be one of those that the weirdos of the world will be taking completely out of context, just like Lolita. The genres listed the most are below.
Whatever her idea was for us to take from this book, there is a clear group of people who think this is a romance book.
Happy blogging and bookish adventures! 📚🦒✨
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