Yes, here’s more books I couldn’t get myself to read! Once again, please remember that just because I didn’t enjoy the books doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to enjoy them. Maybe you did read them and loved them, and that’s great because that’s how tastes work.
Disclaimer: I received these e-arcs through Netgalley or Edelweiss and the publishers in exchange for free and honest reviews. The featured image is my own. The summaries are taken from Goodreads. All opinions expressed are my own.
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Title: You’ve Reached Sam
Author: Dustin Thao
Year Published: 2021
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Cover Art/Designer: Illustrator – Zipcy. Designer – Kerri Resnick
Genre: Young Adult ~ Contemporary ~ Romance ~ Fantasy
Stars: did not finish at 18%
Links: Goodreads || The Storygraph
Copy: E-Arc via Netgalley
CW/TW: (Taken from The Storygraph) Grief, Death, Car Accident, and more
Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes.
Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his things, and tries everything to forget him and the tragic way he died. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces back memories. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail.
And Sam picks up the phone.
In a miraculous turn of events, Julie’s been given a second chance at goodbye. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam’s voice makes her fall for him all over again, and with each call it becomes harder to let him go. However, keeping her otherworldly calls with Sam a secret isn’t easy, especially when Julie witnesses the suffering Sam’s family is going through. Unable to stand by the sidelines and watch their shared loved ones in pain, Julie is torn between spilling the truth about her calls with Sam and risking their connection and losing him forever.
I was really hoping I’d love this and read it as quickly as everyone else is loving and reading it. Unfortunately, I could quickly tell that this was definitely not the case. Straight from the beginning I didn’t like the writing style. It’s too awkward and Julie uses too many uncontracted sentences (it is on the table instead of it’s on the table).
In my opinion, if you do not contract, you tend to be more formal and uncontracted sentences are more often seen in fantasy novels and less so in young adult novels. I tend to sometimes not contract my sentences, but that’s because I tend to write a bit more formal at times. So therefore, even though I use uncontracted sentences and often did when I was younger, most teenagers do not. It felt weird reading them.
I wanted to be sad and feel the same way Julie did but I couldn’t get past the writing style and feel the same way as everyone else. The transitions from flashbacks to normal was also not written well, in my opinion.
Title: The Lost City
Author: Amanda Hocking
Series: #1 in The Omte Origins
Year Published: 2020
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Cover Art/Designer: Couldn’t find anything.
Genre: Young Adult ~ Fantasy ~ Romance ~ Paranormal
Stars: did not finish at 4%
Links: Goodreads || The Storygraph
Copy: E-Arc
New York Times bestselling author Amanda Hocking returns to the magical world of the Trylle with The Lost City, the first book in the final Trylle arc.
Nestled along the bluffs of the forested coast lays the secret kingdom of the Omte—a realm filled with wonder…and as many secrets.Ulla Tulin was left abandoned in an isolated Kanin city as a baby, taken in by strangers and raised hidden away like many of the trolls of mixed blood. Even knowing this truth, she’s never stopped wondering about her family.
When Ulla is offered an internship working alongside the handsome Pan Soriano at the Mimirin, a prestigious institution, she jumps at the chance to use this opportunity to hopefully find her parents. All she wants is to focus on her job and the search for her parents, but all of her attempts to find them are blocked when she learns her mother may be connected to the Omte royal family.
With little progress made, Ulla and Pan soon find themselves wrapped up in helping Eliana, an amnestic girl with abilities unlike any they have ever seen before—a girl who seems to be running from something. To figure out who she is they must leave the city, and possibly, along the way, they may learn more about Ulla’s parents.
This was a very quick dnf – I chose to mark it as dnf at four percent… that’s a very quick choice. I didn’t realise this was a spin-off sequel/prequel series to the original Trylle trilogy. It wasn’t really marketed properly.
I’ve only read the first book like years ago, I can’t remember if I liked it or not. The very very little I read of this didn’t really impress me much?
The formatting was a bit off as well. Several times if a book started with the letters f and i (five, first etc) it would disappear. So it wouldn’t say five but ve, not first but rst. I was able to get what the sentence was, but it kept taking me out of the story, which also led to me wanting to dnf.
Title: Faking Reality
Author: Sara Fujimura
Year Published: 2021
Publisher: Tor Teen
Cover Art/Designer: Unable to find
Genre: Young Adult ~ Contemporary ~ Romance
Stars: dnf at 12%
Links: Goodreads || The Storygraph
Copy: E-Arc
My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Some Kind of Wonderful meets Kara McDowell’s Just for Clicks with diverse characters in Sara Fujimura’s Faking Reality, perfect for readers looking for feel-good YA romance and those who like “clean teen” reads
Dakota McDonald swore after “The Great Homecoming Disaster” that she’d never allow her romantic life to be a plot line in her parents’ HGTV show again. But when the restaurant run by the family of her best friend (and secret crush), Leo, is on the line, Dakota might end up eating her own words.
Leo Matsuda dreams of escaping the suffocating demands of working in his family’s restaurant, but the closer he gets to his goal–thanks to the help of his best friend (and secret crush) Dakota–the more reasons there are for him to stay.
A Harry Potter reference. In a 2021 release. Maybe there’s more. I wouldn’t know. I wanted to like this book. It just, I don’t know, didn’t feel real to me? The characters and plus the tv show factor? Like it’s apparently very popular but… she’s not popular at school? And I know it’s because she doesn’t want to be, but I don’t know. I kind of expected something like when Mia was revealed to be the Princess of Genovia (in The Princess Diaries) and everyone was suddenly claiming to be her friend to the cameras.
It also features the friends to lovers trope, which is not a favourite trope of mine. I rarely read and enjoy these ones. I think I really need to check to see if the trope is friends to lovers, because I rarely enjoy those.
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There you go! Hopefully this year I won’t have that many dnfs and I enjoy reading my books! Or at least a good chunk of them 😢.
DB's Guide to the Galaxy 