All the books I read in September

I read a total of thirteen books in September, some of which I loved, some of which, uhh, I didn’t love. I did the maths and according to Goodreads, my average rating from those thirteen books was 3.61, which I know, can seem a little picky to some, and in fact, it is below my overall average of 3.72, so I guess I read a fair few books I didn’t like all that much this month.

Now, onto the books…

I started this month with Scarlet, which is the second book of the Lunar Chronicles, of which the first book is Cinder, which I read last month and the third and fourth books are Cress and Winter respectively(I read both of these after Scarlet). Going into this series, I was a tad bit weary, but the books, writing, world and characters eventually all grew on me and Winter I have added onto my ‘favourites’ shelf on Goodreads. Each book is based on a fairytale retelling starting with Cinderella and going through the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White set in a Sci-fi world. If you are a sucker for fairytale retellings, then I would certainly recommend this four books series.

Cinder(read last month) – 3.5/5

Scarlet – 3.75/5

Cress – 4/5

Winter – 4.75/5

Oh, also I finally picked up a short story collection called Stars Above and happened to be the last book that I actually read in September. It follows the main characters in stories either before or after the main series and fills in our gaps of knowledge about the world.

Stars Above – 4/5

Next up, I read The Wicked King which is book 2 in Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air trilogy of which, book 1, The Cruel Prince won the Silver Inky Award this year. It continues from book 1 and I loved it just as much and found it wicked, funny and gloriously told

The Wicked King – 4.5/5

Now, I technically did not finish the next book and only read about half of it(Page 224 to be exact). It was Lynette Noni’s Arkarnae which is the the author that won this year’s Gold Inky Award. It is here debut novel but I found myself not loving the characters and also found the dialogue to be a bit juvenile. I would definitely give a recommendation to Whisper though, which was the book that won the Gold Inky since I did enjoy that.

Arkarnae – DNF(2/5)

After Arkarnae which was a real unfortunate letdown, I picked up Uglies, which is a sci-fi/dystopian novel by author Scott Westerfeld which is actually a fairly popular novel I think(?) but I ended up finding it to be fairly average unfortunately and was not exactly excited, ecstatic nor energised from reading the novel but found myself a bit bored to be honest. I liked the world building but found it to be too slow for my liking and ended up really dragging the plot down.

Uglies – 3/5

I then proceeded to read the first book in Jim Henson’s the Dark Crystal: The Age of Resistance which I believe more or less ties in with the Netflix Original series that was realised this year. I finished three of the four books in September taking a one book break in between. The books in order are titled as: Shadows of the Dark Crystal, Song of the Dark Crystal and Tides of the Dark Crystal. It’s a creative little middle-grade fantasy series with each book clocking from around 260 to 280 pages and there is also some beautiful little illustrations in it. It is quite repetitive however and each novel almost has a similar sort of plot with each book being told in the point of view from a character introduced from the previous book.

Shadows – 3/5

Song – 3.5/5

Tides – 2/5

After book 1 of the Dark Crystal I read Eldest, finally with is the second book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. It has been a few term since I read Eragon(book 1) based on the promise that it gets better. Well yes, but no. Paolini was really young when he wrote this and this book is full of info dumps about every little detail, really unrealistic dialogue and also, copies the plot of The Empire Strikes Back, where book 1 followed the plot of A New Hope, where the world is has loads of similarities to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Eldest – 3/5

Oh, I finally read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas which was surprising a book that I found truly lived up to the hype. It was great in every way and I absolutely loved the way it dealt with modern day issues. It follows some brilliant characters and has some incredibly well done character arcs that it is hard to not recommend this book if you have yet to read it.

THUG – 4.75/5

The final book that I ended to talk about is Rogue, which is the sequel to Hive(shortlisted for the Gold Inky for 2019) which I borrowed my school library. I found Hive to be enjoyable, though not overly amazing, but I definitely this one more. It is set in a dystopian setting that follows Hayley who is a curious fifteen year old(I think?) that asks too many questions. It’s by an Australian author so #LoveOzYa and go read it.

Rogue – 4/5

There you have it, the books I read in September 2019. If anyone is not bored already from reading so many mini reviews of mine, I also have proper full length reviews of all these books on Goodreads