4 Star Reading Month ⭐ Next Month reading Hopefuls

Summary

In this podcast episode, Charity reviews her January reads and shares her hopefuls for February. She discusses her thoughts on various fantasy books, including 'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare, 'Charm' by Tracy Wolf, 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' by Sarah J. Maas, 'The House of Sky and Breath' by Sarah J. Maas, and 'Ruthless Vows' by Rebecca Ross. Charity also shares her plans for February and invites listeners to engage with her content.

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Takeaways

• Charity experienced a reading funk in January and struggled to find books she truly enjoyed.
• She reviews 'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare and expresses her disappointment with the story and characters.
• Charity shares her mixed opinions on 'Charm' by Tracy Wolf, appreciating the romance but finding the book unnecessarily long.
• She discusses her attempt to reread 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' by Sarah J. Maas and her excitement for 'The House of Sky and Breath' by the same author.
• Charity shares her conflicted feelings about 'Ruthless Vows' by Rebecca Ross and her hopefuls for February.

Purchase Books on Amazon:
Powerless by Lauren Roberts: https://amzn.to/4251JbT
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem: https://amzn.to/3vI1sQ8
Spark of the Everflame by Penn Cole: https://amzn.to/42cxlg0

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Transcript

Charity (00:00.302)
So this is the second time I'm recording this video, just because the first time I recorded this, I forgot to turn my mic on.

Charity (00:13.582)
Yeah, that was me. So with that said, I'm wanting to go over my January reads and I want to go over my February hopefuls.

Charity (00:28.654)
Hello readers, my name is Charity, the host of Book Trovert Reader podcast. I'm introverted, but willing to talk about fantasy books. On this podcast, I will do book reviews, author interviews, and fantasy book discussions. Come join me every week as I explore new realms and talk to amazing people. Hi, I'm Charity, Book Trovert Reader. I like to introvert and read at the same time. And I am coming with you today with my four star reads.

No five star reads. I didn't think I had a really good month. I think I was just kinda in a reading funk that finding books I truly enjoyed was a little hard for me. It happens, whatever. But yeah, so all these books that I'm going to talk about, definitely like, comment.

about what books that you want to hear more about or the books that you read as well and let me know what you think. I love hearing people's opinions about books, whether good or bad, and I like to hear them. Definitely let me know below. And my goal is a thousand subscribers, so definitely like and subscribe. It would definitely help my channel and definitely get my content in front of more people. And I would love for you to join the BooktubeR community because I think it's awesome. So nobody said all. So.

That said, I'm gonna do my best to make sure I don't do any spoilers because a lot of these books are a continuation of series that I started last year and I'm working hard when I say I'm working hard. I'm working hard to try to finish a lot of series that I started about two years ago. And I just realized I almost forgot a book. Yeah, I didn't, like I said, I was in a funk. Really totally loving every book I picked up.

but didn't really have like a big issue with the books I read. I read quite a good decent popular books that are trending right now or trended in the past and they were okay. But let me get into it first.

Charity (02:36.654)
City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare. Now.

I took me three years to get to this to this last book in the series and I got halfway through and I wanted to read a house of sky and breath so I decided to put this one down and finish house of sky and breath. That was my first mistake. So when I went back to this did not want.

to read it. I was not in the mood. I didn't care for it. But I was so committed to finishing this series because it's taken me three freaking years to read the series. And I wanted to finish it. And I heard some people say that the Clockwork Princess or the Dark Artifice, I don't know, there's two other series that connect with the Mortal Instruments. And I wanted to start those series. But I had to finish this.

And I even got to a point where I was actually looking up the ending because I was just like, I'm done. I don't want to read it. I don't care for Clary or Jace anymore. It seems like it's the same story, but just a different tune. The bad guy didn't seem like a bad guy. He just seemed like a crazy lunatic that had no real reason to why he was doing the things that he was doing. Valentine, the original bad guy, the first

I don't know, three books or something like that. Felt like a bad guy. But then Sebastian came along and it just seemed like another version, like a copycat version of Valentine and it just didn't have the same feel to it. It just seems so stupid. And I just didn't care for the story. It just seems like another reason why our power couple wasn't going to be together. Jace was like, oh, I got another reason why I shouldn't be with you and we should never be together. And it was so annoying.

Charity (04:37.902)
I was annoyed beyond belief about it. And then of course, Clary sacrificing herself for whatever reason and whatever the case may be. The only reason I enjoyed it as much as I did, I didn't give it like a bad start rating was because Simon felt like a good, great character to me with him being a daywalker vampire. So I really enjoyed his perspective and the ending, which I'm not gonna tell you about, the ending felt...

like it was giving us the characters from the other series. And to me, that made it worth my time and my read for the book. That said, this book almost made me want to DNF, who cares, about taking three years to finish the series and sell all the books. I don't care. I don't know why. I just didn't like it that much. It it was long and it just felt like,

It was a repeat. So that's how I feel about it. I might have to like come back to it in a year and see if I want to keep the series or unhaul it because I just didn't care for it. The next one is I gave a four star is charm. And this is by Tracy Wolf. This is the fifth book in the Crave series. I have mixed opinions about this book. Reason being is because this is a book that was between.

that technically takes place between book one and book two. It's when Grace becomes a gargoyle and Hudson gets stuck in her brain, her mind, dreams, whatever you want to call it. And so they go on this whole quest to figure out how they're going to get out. The reason why I liked it was because I felt like I was falling in love with Grace's and Hudson's love story all over again. And

I personally enjoyed seeing that all over more in detail compared to book two and three where we kind of go along the road and figure out if they're going to be together. But here it's like they slowly fall in love and you find out why what happened in the shadow realm. But the problem I had with this book was because this was between one and two, it could have been like a 300 page novella instead of a five to six hundred page book.

Charity (06:59.502)
There was a lot of filler content that just didn't feel like it was necessary in the book. And I felt like it could have been done just as well in a shorter version of the book compared to doing this big one. So that was annoying. I like the story and I liked how Tracy Wolf's writing style is, but I just felt like it was just long and unnecessary. And then another one that I felt like was so different than the.

the four books and even when I'm reading Cherish, that the excessive cursing. Now, I know this is a personal court for me. I don't mind cursing, okay? I don't mind cursing. Don't get me wrong. But it felt juvenile how the cursing was done in this book. And it was so different than her previous four books and even in the six books. It's just some reason it was so excessive that...

there was cursing every other sentence and it was so unnecessary to the dialogue. It's whatever. I don't have to reread this book again. Yeah, it was good and it was bad because of my quirks that I don't like about reading. So that said, I am looking forward to finishing Cherish in February. We could have wrapped this up in book four and she's just continuing on in book six. It's still good. I like her writing style and I like how she tells a story. So...

We'll see. Let's see how it goes and hopefully I'll love it and not want to wish it didn't exist. Something I typically don't do is rereads. Now, I tried rereading A Thorn and a Court of Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I did try rereading back in 2023, but Elena Nesta annoyed me so much I stopped reading it the first five pages of the book because it was so annoying.

Now, rereading for me is hard enough as it is. I'm very impatient. I don't like diving into stories I've heard before, and it's such a struggle. I probably have like maybe two or three books that I would say confidently that I can reread and never get tired of it. But this one was a little hard for me to do. So I finally did it again because I think the graphic audiobook really got me into this book again. And I felt like after 200 pages,

Charity (09:17.742)
of just this nonsense of Tamlin and Lucian and stuff like that, I finally got into the story. I wanted to reread it because of course the Crescent City hype right now, there's a lot of connections between other books in her series and I wanted to start picking them out. I only picked up two. There could have been more, but I picked out two particular ones that I feel like it's going to be connected to the House of Sky and Breath. So yay me! Testa and Elaine really did annoy me.

in this book. They just were horrible people to Farah and I just don't know how Farah loves them so much. They did turn around a little bit at the end there but still it was like almost unredeemable to me but I'm hoping with the you know the next book that Sarah J Maas is going to do kind of redeems that character for me but the last I would say 100 pages really reminded me why I love this book that I did.

Now I only read this as well because I wanted to reread The Court of Mist and Fury because I wanted to understand like how it all started and all that stuff. Kind of bringing back my roots, you know. But we'll see if I like the second one just as much as I liked I read it the first time. So let's hope for the best. So the next book I read was The House of Sky and Breath by Sarah G. Maas. I'll definitely be leaking that review.

I did a mini review on it just going in detail with spoilers about my thoughts and how it was going. Now I can honestly say I loved this book more than the House of Earth and Blood. Now the House of Earth and Blood definitely did a lot of world building trying to keep up as to how the system worked and everything. And it was all partially a lot in Bryce's point of view. This one, it was actually going into several other people's point of view that made the storyline more

interesting to me. We weren't stuck in Bryce's head all the time. Anyways, so we go into different people's point of views and to me it made the story more interesting and it wasn't about Bryce and you know sometimes she can as a point of view get tiring so I enjoyed everyone else's. It actually made me more invested in the Mass First universe. It made me more interested in rereading books and it made me want to invest more time into what is happening. What are the theories? What are the rabbit holes I can go down?

Charity (11:43.854)
and everything. So highly recommend. Definitely take your time with reading this. The next one is Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross. Now this one I'm very conflicted. I just finished this today and I felt like like it was heartbreaking read for me, but at the same time it left me wanting more and not in a very good way.

This book really focuses on the conflict of the first book, which is Divine Rivals. The Dacra and Inva war is happening. Obviously, that's how Roman and Iris got together and all that fun stuff. But now we're exploring the conclusion of that storyline and wrapping it up to find a happy ending in a way.

What you loved about the first book, Divine Rivals, is the romance and the slow burn of Roman and Iris slowly getting together, falling in love with the typewriter and things like that. And the second one, you didn't get as much of that. Yes, there's letter writing, but it wasn't the same per se. And a lot of it was that you loved was missing.

from the first one in the second one. It really explored the war and you just, it wasn't as drawing as before. I wasn't saying it was terrible, but it just wasn't the, what I was looking for in this book, in this conclusion. My heartstrings was pulled a little bit in this book. It was heartbreaking. It was hard the way it was ended. So that's why I was like, I'm one of those weird people that sometimes that I'm okay with the ending not being ex -

Exactly a happy ending it there are some heartbreak because that's the realities of life, you know like yeah anyway, so this one I'm still conflicted of how I'm going to Write my review and I'm still thinking about it and I just I wanted a little bit more I didn't care for the whole God's aspect of it and I was hoping for more of the Irish and Roman which there there wasn't a lot of them in it so I

Charity (14:03.086)
I'm still thinking about how I feel about that one. February hopefuls. Now, don't hold me to my February hopefuls because hopefuls means that I will hope to get to it. But the thing about me is that I can plan my hopefuls and I don't read them, but I'm hoping I will stick to it this year or at least this month for February. So the first one is The Lord of the Fading Lands by C .L. Wilson.

From what I understand, this was written some time ago. I wouldn't say it's like old old, but I don't want to ever call a book old. But this was a - this is a revision of the book cover. I'm excited to read this. This - from what I was reading, this is kind of like the OG of fantasy romance almost. So, a lot of people are excited that the cover was revised. So.

I'm excited. This was a gifted copy to me, so I'm hoping to be able to dive that this month since it's like February, which is like a romance month and romanticy, you know what I mean? So another copy that was gifted to me is Draw the Moon. Draw Down the Moon by P .C. Cast and Kristin Cast. I'm super glad that they came out with another book and it's a new series, so I'm hoping I'll love it. Now, I did kind of snoop around a little bit and the reviews are not the best, but let's not judge a book by its reviews, but.

was hope for the best. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas. Like I said, this is probably one of my few rereads that I'm doing because it's been such a long time since I read the series. I've been seeing a lot of people on Book Talk about rereading this and it's tearing their hearts out, so I'm excited to dive into this even though it might tear me apart.

Next one is The Just Said Hare by Sarah Hassem. I've been in a The Mummy mood, so with this bean having Egyptian mythology, I am looking forward to tackling this one. I will link my video below that I had a FOMO book haul not too long ago, so this is a part of it in the next two books, so definitely take a look at that if you want kind of more of a detail about this book. Spark of the Everflame by Pen Cole. I make

Charity (16:10.062)
Actually looking forward to reading this one. I keep seeing it. The people that are picking this up is really enjoying this series and I believe the fourth book in the series is being released this year, I think, or in March even. So I don't know if this is a completed, considered completed series yet, but I'm looking forward to this. This kind of reminds me the description, like a Red Queen, that just that kind of feel to it.

and like the Hunger Games, but I could be wrong, but the Hunger Games don't hold me to it. So, Powerless by Laura L. Lauren Roberts. So this is obviously one of those another booktop trending books and I've been following her so I'm excited about picking this one up. I haven't heard a bad thing about it yet. A lot of people that I have recommended this book to, that even though I haven't read it, says that they love it. So, I have great hopes for this book.

And I cannot wait to dive in it because I think this another book is being released soon this year and I got to get to this so I can confidently recommend this book and not just say it's good because I heard everyone else say that's good. So, yes, that's my hopefuls in February. I'm hoping that I will least read all of these. Maybe I'll do a video at the end of the month making fun of myself or something. I don't know yet. But yeah, definitely like and subscribe. Let me know in the comments below.

any of these books that you have read and liked or don't like and let me know. I love to hear about it and I can't wait to see you in the next video. Catch you later, readers. Bye!

Charity (18:05.294)
Thank you readers for listening to my podcast on fantasy books. I hope you're enjoying the content and finding it helpful in discovering new books to read. If you have a moment, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Also, don't forget to follow me on Instagram at BooktravertReader to stay updated on new episodes and other book related content. Thank you again for your support and happy reading.