did I read my BIG BOOK May TBR?

In this episode, I go over my May wrap. Did I read my BIG May book TBR? Listen to find out!

Listen to My Ambitious Reading For May on my podcast
Watch Episode on YouTube: HERE

Transcript

Charity (00:00.398)
So no, I did not finish my TBR for the month of May. But, I was close.

people read is kind of a thing, so I'm trying to do it, but I'm going to talk about my big TBR that I attempted to try and I slightly failed, but I think I was so close to finishing that I'm actually gonna say I successfully did my TBR for the month of May. So.

So I'll put the link in the description in the video below above. I did talk about some of the big books that I anticipate on reading for the month of May and I...

These were huge. Yes, they were huge and I did successfully read a lot. It's probably one of my better reading, you know, months that I've had in a while this year. I have a lot of favorites in this, so I'm so glad I did it. I'm a little bit burned out with all those big books. Back to back to back to back. I am...

going to go over them and tell you which ones I completed and which one unfortunately I did not. So the first one I did was When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker. I did an amazing interview with her and Avon Books gifted me with this copy and to be honest with you, I did not have this on my Goodreads list to read. I had no interest in it. I've seen people talk about it. I've seen... I got as a free copy. Sadly enough, I had to read this because this was given to me.

Charity (01:52.24)
I enjoyed it. I really loved it. This is about This is about 688 pages long. So it was a pretty thick book What I love about it is that it's not a lot of words on a page So it does go relatively fast for as big as a book that it is there is this big glossary in the very beginning and Personally, I feel that if you got if you get any kind of intimidation from the very beginning I would highly recommend just skipping over it and only

to things that makes no sense to you. So like names, people, places, the magic systems is all explained in here. I will say that sometimes it does feel like some of the things get a little bit spoiled when you're reading the glossary, but it's not too bad. And then the author does have a very good way of explaining certain concepts at times, but then there's some times where they mention a certain thing and you do have to refer to the glossary to figure out what is going on.

I was told by Sarah A. Parker and I definitely agree after I finished the book that you don't read the family tree at the very end. It will spoil basically the book. I can see why. This has such an interesting magic system. It is an elemental based magic system but it's unique in the form of how they show who has which element and how they operate through it. Like for example, they do have earth, wind, fire, and water but they don't call it

call it those names, she does have unique names that I'm not going to pronounce because I butchered it on the interview and I was like, nope, no. But it's all in this book and it shows by a certain earring in their earlobe shows that hey, they have certain magic, this magic, and it's considered a good form to have more than one element that you can control. And the best way I can describe this book is this book can be broken down into two parts.

One is more of the epic fantasy, the high fantasy. And then the second part is like more of the fantasy romance aspect. A lot of it, it does like based on her being an assassin and kind of having this kind of memory loss and she's trying to figure out what's going on and she's in deep with the assassins. Of course she gets herself into a lot of trouble that lands her in prison and sentenced to die. And you know, and the plot develops from there and it does develop.

Charity (04:21.839)
into fantasy romance. I mean it's like I love it but there's certain aspects I wish there was more of the assassin aspect of it because I noticed that's a trend in some fantasy books is that they sell you on the concept of a being in the main character being an assassin and they do one thing in the beginning to consider them to being an assassin and then it completely we completely forget it. I'm just interested to see how it develops because obviously there's a lot of loose ends that hasn't been tied up there's a lot of things mentioned in the beginning.

that was kind of dropped off in the beginning or in the middle of the book and then the end of the book so we'll see how the second book develops into those plot lines because it's a lot of plot holes that hasn't been filled yet and I do have hope that it will be eventually. So the next book is Glow of the Everflame by Pen Cole. This is the second book in the series and I cannot talk about enough. Some people still say like why is this not talked about enough and I'm like no it's it is and I still

do feel like there's more to be said on this series. A lot of people fall in love with this series. Thankfully, the fourth book is going to be published this year in 2024, hopefully in July, and I'm about to hopefully start on the third book, but that third book is a lot thicker than this one. And this one is about 594 pages, so it wasn't bad. I will say this was a slower pace than the first book of the series. This is not to give too much away if you haven't read

this book. I'm sorry if I spoil anything, but I'm warning you fairly. This second book is primarily about her gaining the crown and navigating the royal intrigue and dealing with the politics and everything. And I think as crazy as is that her character is not very likeable in this one. And, you know, normally I would kind of write these people off and get really annoyed, but I liked how it was handled.

this book because it actually shows her character development into this one. It shows her really struggling with the emotion of holding on to her past and embracing her future and what was holding her back and embracing her magic and really like that but it like I said it was a slower pace than the first one. The first one was spent with her trying to figure things out what happened to her mother and things like that and this one it was just like navigating the the politics and the court life and human versus

Charity (06:51.375)
ended and all that crud and dealing with the other houses that are in this book. But as true to form, the pancol, it was left on a massive cliffhanger and I cannot wait to get to the third book for that reason. But yeah, definitely a series worth looking into and picking up to read for sure. I know this one isn't technically a big book, but I read it as a tandem and which resulted in them being

like over 600 pages together. So this one is A Touch of Darkness and a Game of Fate by Scarlett St. Clair. This is a Hades Imperf - my gosh, not again.

Persephone, that video if you want to watch it. I struggled with that, with her name, Persephone. Struggled. I'm getting better, but I struggled. This is set in kind of an urban fantasy setting, and I would say more of it's like more of a dark romance than a fantasy, but it's still good. The only thing I just didn't care for was a touch of darkness, which is Persephone's point of view. I just didn't care for it. I just felt like it was a, it was a,

Side nugget information kind of a story in the real plot line the real things that were really happening was in a game of fate was just Hades point of view and I won't stop talking about it just because of that fact that I really like the game of fate a little more gruesome in this one I would say because you really get to know the god of the underworld and who he is and how Evil he technically is well I wouldn't say evil, but he he presented himself evil like this persona, but in reality he is led by a

His good nature and his justice for mankind and things like that even though he's like considered God of the dead of the underworld, you know Yeah, I just I think it was very fun to do it as a tandem read I would recommend doing it as a tandem read just because you know, you would read certain things and then you'll get context of it in the other book and the only thing I This is more of my personal, you know personal

Charity (09:05.231)
that level but it seemed like that once they were together it seems like that what I loved about the plot of Game of Fate just went out the window it just it was gone and I just didn't care for it it just they would be arguing they would hammer it out and then go back to just not dealing with the problem and walk away from each other and it just to me it was like

I was skipping quite a bit. I was just not interested in the level of smut that was in the book, but if that's something that you like in your fantasy or in your dark romances, obviously, I would highly recommend these series and I might not continue on buying the series as a tandem read. Or I might get it on Kindle Unlimited or something, but I don't know yet. But yeah, definitely. The last book. I did not finish in time. I did finish it today, which is at the time of recording. It was

June 2nd.

Two days after, I think on May 31st, I had like 200 pages left and I just could not do it. It was just like, it was a hectic week for me and I was working quite a bit and just did not have time to read as much as I would love to and it just fell by the wayside. What did help me read it is that when I downloaded it from this book from Kendall Unlimited, it helped me read it a little bit faster. I think I probably would have took another to read this book.

if I read it in the physical format. So with the combined effort of the physical format and the digital format of an ebook, I was able to get through it a lot faster. So helpful tip if you want to read books faster. It is Mother of Death and Dawn by Carissa Broadbent. This is the third and final book of this trilogy and holy crap, it was kind of a whirlwind. It wrapped it up pretty nicely and quickly at the very end of the book. What I

Charity (11:01.295)
felt like what was happening in this book is that there was a lot of highs and then there was a lot of lows and it was just an like a wave and it just wasn't very It was a little hard to read through just because it felt like there was a lot of Storylines that were wrapping up and things like that and characters obviously that was kind of don't like them But you do like them because of their character development and you kind of understand where they're coming from But you still just don't like them. It just felt

I felt like it was just, I don't know if it was because it was like big book burnout. I did not enjoy it as much as I was hoping I would. Yeah, but I was glad the series ended because it took me about a year and a half to actually finish these series and I was glad I was done with it and then I can't wait to continue on her other series that she has. But yeah, it was a whirlwind. I'm glad that I was able to finish the series. Like most of my books for this, I really pushed myself and I really wanted to

to read a lot of these big books, especially since a lot of them are continuation series and a lot of them to finish, or one of them at least was finishing a series. So yeah, definitely. I enjoyed all books. I think I'm gonna do something different going for the month of June just because I feel a little burned. I'm a little burned out. These big books, I keep picking up one big book after another and I'm just...

I want to do something different. I am excited for that project and I hope you will too and we'll see what happens. So I'll catch you later readers. Bye.