The beginning of August was definitely where I excelled this month. Then my vacation started, and I picked up a horrible book that put me in a slump… I’m still trying to recover from that one, which is why I’m afraid September is going to be the shortest wrap up this year. Maybe the fear of that will keep me reading… But enough about that, here are the seven books I read in August!

HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

J.K. Rowling / 1997

My Harry Potter re-read happened, and this time around I’m enjoying them in English for the first time. Now, my rating for the first two books have always been a little lower than the rest of them. This is just the habit of viewing the first two more like children’s books, and the rest more grown up. And since I first read the Harry Potter series, I started with the third book! (I was a child, I had my reasons.) So the first two,  when I read them after I had read the third, never lived up to the expectations. You’ll know why soon.

And now I haven’t even talked about this book but hey, we all know what the deal is! If not, where the hell have you been living these past 10 years!!??

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

J.K. Rowling / 1998

Though the second book already has a little darker edge to it, since we learn Harry can speak to snakes, the overall tone is still lighter. We get to know the three main characters better, we get to realize what makes them them, and we learn to hate Draco even more. There is also a new and very annoying character, and this, well, this starts a trend, because J.K. Rowling has a knack for annoying characters (Lockheart, Skeeter and Umbridge). Overall, I always like the second book a bit more than the first book, but reading it in English, I think both are equally great.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

J.K. Rowling / 1999

Even after all these years, the third book is still one of the most special ones. It introduces us Sirius Black and he is my favorite supportive character in the series. Alright, favorite grown up supportive character next to Lupin. Yes, I’m going to stick to that one. And the reason the third book changed it all for me is also in terms of the movie series, because the third one is my favorite movie out of all of them! The third book changed the whole vibe of the series, and we discover so much about Harry and his family, and well, it’s a perfect set up for what is to come next for Harry.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

J.K. Rowling / 2000

By far, my favorite book in the series!  I just love everything about it, the conflicts, the deception, the competition and of course Cedric Diggory. And then there is the underlining jealousy of Ron’s towards Krum, and there is dragons and it’s just perfect from start to finish! So much about this book amazing and I love it all, there is just so much to grab onto and just love! I can’t, I’m out of words, and I’m out of energy to gush about Harry Potter. The forth one also is currently the last one I’ve read in my Harry Potter re-read, because the fifth one is next and well, we know what happens there and I’m emotionally not ready for that yet.

THE UNEXPECTED EVERYTHING

Morgan Matson / 2016

This is the second book of hers I have read, and since everyone was talking about this one, I was like, sure, I’ll read this, even though I didn’t like the first one. Well, honestly, I didn’t really like The Unexpected Everything either, but it was a bit better than Since You’ve Been Gone. Andie has her life pretty much all planned out but when her Summer plans fail due to her father and his work, so she gets a job as a dog walker. And then she meets a guy. And stuff happens. What I didn’t like about the book was the way it progressed to a very happy ending. Everyone got what they wanted, nothing really troubled anyone, and such endings for me are just boring.

DFR

THE NEW GUY

Amy Spalding / 2016

Don’t really know what I was expecting but to be honest, I wasn’t ready for a book to kill my reading vibe completely. Amy Spalding’s writing is just so bland and boring that I wanted to throw this book out the window. The story progressed alright in the beginning,  like, I would have kept reading that book but then this unnecessary drama happened and nothing had any meaning behind it, and insta-love is just the worst! I regret picking this one up, I don’t regret putting it down before finishing it.

THE RAVEN BOYS

Maggie Stiefvater / 2012

I did it! I picked up The Raven Boys, finally, and I did it in Estonian, which is a big surprise to me! Since then I’ve read the second and almost finished the third one, and to be honest, the second one is my favorite! The Raven Boys is a YA supernatrual story that has great characters, characters who have depth and aren’t understandable from the first page. Everyone has their quirks and I loved the introduction to the boys in this book. Story wise, the progression of the plot was a little bit slow in the beginning, and it’s also sort of its plus. It doesn’t hurry the biggest mystery and that’s admirable. But the best part of The Raven Boys is its ending that sucks you right in and you can’t help to pick up the second book right away because you want to know everything!

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