This month HAS to be my most disappointing reading month to date. I only read 3 books (senior year is ROUGH), and all 3 of them were much lower than my expectations.

Stats:

• Read: 3 books
• One 2 star, one 3 star, one 4 star
• 1 reread
• Favorite book of September: Caraval

Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi

Look. At some point in this series, the melodramatics were going to start getting on my nerves. I was willing to overlook them during Ignite Me just because they led to some juicy drama, but in this book I was just tired. The plot just consisted of Juliette being an absolutely incompotent and clueless leader, Juliette and Warner having a totally unnecessary breakup and dissolving into matching blobs of despair, and some completely meaningless filler dialogue. The plot? Nonexistent until the last page. I had to double-check that this wasn’t a novella because of how little happened in the story. Rating: 2 stars

The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I genuinely feel bad for rating this book 3 stars. However, TFG finally made me realize that I don’t like family saga type mysteries. There are too many characters, extremely confusing family trees, and they’re just not the most interesting types of mysteries for me. In the case of this book, I think that the mystery was objectively poorly executed and not very exciting. Half of the plot twists came out of the blue and had no logical clues associated with them. Also, I hate correctly predicting plot points, and in the case of TFG I had guessed the outcome of the love triangle relationship very early on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the lack of any shock-factor was disappointing. However, I’m still rating this book averagely because I really did enjoy the intricacies of the main characters and their relationships with one another. Even though there may have been too many characters, I loved that they were each crafted with detail and dimension. (Except Max. Max can leave for all I care.) Rating: 3 stars

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

My third and final disappointing book of September! This one hurt me the most, because I have considered Caraval to be one of my favorite fantasy books ever since I read it in 2020. I was so excited to reread it and fall back in love with this magical world. Don’t get me wrong– this book is still one of the most enchanting and magical books I’ve read. However, I just didn’t experience the same giddiness that I experienced the first time I read Caraval. It might have just been because school has been kicking my butt, but my reading experience was definitely not as fun this time around. The romance between Julian and Scarlett wasn’t as swoon worthy as I had thought it was, and they didn’t even have that many interactions. It pains me to take Caraval off my all-time-favorites list, but I have to be honest about my thoughts. Still such a romantic, captivating, thrilling book! Rating: 4 stars