By Ava Shaffer
Oh, the joys of being on winter break and getting to actually read for fun! Without the guilt from feeling like you should be working on school assignments! This December I read a total of 5 books. Most of these aren’t the most “literary” or highly acclaimed books, but that’s ok! I was in the mood to just turn my brain off and read mindless fun romances and nostalgic throwbacks, so that’s what I did.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling
I started off my month by rereading my ultimate comfort series, Harry Potter. Every winter I just long to reread Harry Potter because it just evokes the coziest holiday memories for me. I would sit on the couch next to my Christmas tree, play my holiday playlist, and really immerse myself in the magical world. I don’t have a ton of new things to say about this book since I have reviewed it so many times, but I will mention that I especially noticed the random moments of magic in my latest read. There are just certain lines and scenes that warm my heart and make me remember why this was the series that helped me fall in love with reading (“Alas, Earwax!” gets me every time). The one thing I didn’t absolutely love about this book (besides the transphobic author but that’s a story for another time) was the pacing, which felt a bit rushed, thrown together, and sort of lazy. But it’s also a children’s book at this point in the series so I can’t fault it too much I suppose.
Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Okay, so there is a little story behind my acquirement of this book. At the beginning of December, as soon as I got home from college, my best friend and I had a sleepover and decided to make the amazing decision to watch Dash & Lily on Netflix. It looked cheesy and festive, and we both had a huge crush on the actor who played Dash (who we recognized from our high school days binge-watching The Walking Dead). Needless to say, we both adored the show and watched it start to finish in one sitting. It had the ultimate cozy Christmas vibes with the right amounts of trope-y miscommunication and cheesy teenage romance. Right when we finished the show, at the ripe hour of 9 pm, we googled Barnes and Noble’s opening hours and noticed we had one hour to drive there and search the store for the book Dash and Lily was based on. One nighttime car ride with Taylor Swift blasting out of the radio later, we had Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares in our hands.
I then read the book in a day and was wildly underwhelmed. Although there were some good quotes peppered throughout this story, I thoroughly disliked the rest of the book. Dash was so painfully pretentious and pompous (and not even in a charming or endearing way!) So many lines of dialogue made me cringe, reminding me that this was indeed a teenage romance book written by two middle-aged people. Also, and perhaps most upsetting, this book seemed to focus more on Dash being a super cool artsy charming man and Lily being a dumb girl who makes mistake after mistake. As a registered angry reading feminist who constantly seeks women actually being portrayed well in teenage romance books, I really did not enjoy those tropes. Anyway, watch the Netflix show, don’t read this book.
Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon
Remember how I just said I am an angry reading feminist who cares about proper female representation? Yeah well, that sentiment doesn’t extend to this book because it gave me exactly what I expected it to. And that was a fun yet stupid plot, with steamy scenes and the ability to just have some mindless fun. For those of you who don’t know, Ice Planet Barbarians started off as an online e-reader series that Ruby Dixon just wrote for fun, and also as a middle finger to pretentious science fiction boys who worship at the feet of Frank Herbert. The story follows our main character, Georgie (which is an infuriatingly childish name for an infuriatingly childish main character) as she is kidnapped by aliens and deposited on an icy tundra, galaxies away from her own. She searches for help and finds a giant blue alien named Vektal who she proceeds to have weird alien sex with for the next 350 pages. Sure it sounds dumb on the surface, and it kind of is, but I find so much joy in reading something that you can just tell the author had tons of fun writing.
Even though I rated this book low because objectively it is a bad book, it was still fun to read! Sometimes it’s nice to turn your brain off and read about sexy blue alien men and that’s all I have to say.
The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox
I thought this book was going to check all the boxes for me, but sadly the only satisfying thing for me after finishing this book was seeing the pretty spine on my shelf. This book was just so cheesy. I mean usually I enjoy cheesy but this one was exceedingly so. Maybe it’s because I am a twin so hearing the fictional twins’ conversations with each other was very unnatural and not at all realistic.
I really disliked the ending of The Holiday Swap as well. Everything just wrapped up so easily in a big bow and the final chapter had way too much going on, it’s like the authors just squeezed everything they wanted into a couple of paragraphs. In efforts to make a “no-loose ends” happily ever after, this book had a very overwhelming and unenjoyable ending for me.
I think this book achieved what it wanted to, which is to say it mainly was just a cute little Christmas story. It accomplished that just fine but didn’t impress me much further.
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C Ford
Typically I read my Book of the Month picks the day I receive them, but I knew this one had a heavier topic so I held off for a little bit until I felt ready to take it on. And I am very glad I did, because I found a perfect day this December to sit down and engulf myself in this memoir, finishing it in one sitting. This memoir is about Ashley C Ford, as she depicts her life growing up with a complex family dynamic and a father in jail. I felt so attached to the narration of this story, and I cared so much about the experiences Ford described (which I feel is the key aspect to how a memoir really succeeds). I don’t really like to rate memoirs in certain ways, because it kind of feels like rating someone’s life which isn’t something I feel the desire or right to do. So my star rating really doesn’t mean anything here, because I enjoyed the book and was very glad I got the opportunity to read it.
My December Reading Stats
Books Finished: 5
Pages Read: 2,027 pages
Book images courtesy of GoodReads
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