Hi hello and welcome to my 2019 wrap-up! 2019 was quite a year for me, in my personal life and my reading life, so I wasn't as active here on my blog as I wanted to be. But I surpassed my reading goal of 24 books, accidentally discovered a new genre that I fell in love with, had my first buddy read, and so much more! I got these questions from BooksandLala and I figured they would be a great way to wrap up my reading year and share it with everyone. Let's get started with my bookish wrap-up of 2019!
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1. How many books did you read this year?

According to Goodreads, I read 43 books which is almost double my initial goal of 24 books. I'm so incredibly proud of myself for reading so much this year! I was reading fairly slow for most of the year, but I really picked up with my reading in December when I picked up a book and just could not put it down until I finished the entire series.

2. Most read genre?

I believe my most read genre was Reverse Harem! This is a genre that I discovered by accident at the start of the year but have just fallen absolutely in love with. So much so that I read 18 books in the RH genre in 2019. And if you were curious, the Haret Chronicles series by Laurel Chase is my all-time favorite RH series! I never thought that this would be a genre that I'd be interested in because I've never been a fan of romance books in general, but there's just something about it that I love reading. I read three RH series this year (Power of Five by Alex Lidell, Her Elemental Dragons by Elizabeth Briggs, and Haret Chronicles by Laurel Chase) and I started a fourth (To Tame a Shifter by A.K. Koonce) and I'm so excited to read all of the new ones that I've discovered in 2020!

3. What was your favorite book of the year?

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. This was my first buddy read ever and I had the best time reading with my group chat! Shoutout to all of those wonderful humans and our shenanigans while reading this book #evanescenceforthesoundtrack #bringmetolife #darlingtondeservedbetter. I loved the book, of course, but I think that reading it with a group and getting to read everyone's reactions as we all progressed throughout the book just made it so much better. 

4. What was your least favorite book of the year?

A Court of Blood and Void by Meg Xumei X. I started this right after I finished another RH trilogy that I really enjoyed and I was looking for another RH series to start. Unfortunately, this one just did not do it for me. The writing was alright, but the main character was incredibly immature and crass. I just didn't enjoy reading from her perspective and while I do think that it has the potential to be a decent read, I don't think I will be continuing with the series.

5. Most disappointing book of the year?
See above answer, because that was definitely the most disappointing book that I read in 2019, unfortunately.

6. Longest and shortest books

Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff was my longest book at 659 pages and Warm Up by V.E. Schwab was the shortest at 15 pages!

7. Biggest accomplishment

Finally starting the Shades of Magic trilogy! Vicious is my favorite book of all-time and V.E. Schwab is my favorite author so it only made sense that I finally start this series. I absolutely devoured A Darker Shade of Magic and am about halfway through the sequel, A Gathering of Shadows. I'm just so proud of myself for finally starting this series in 2019 and I can't wait to finish it in 2020!

8. Favorite characters

Hands down, the characters in the Haret Chronicles by Laurel Chase. I flew through this series in 13 days and I loved all of the books and the main characters! If you were wondering, Piece of Vampire (book 6) is my favorite and the one I was dying to get to the most for reasons.

9. A book that made you cry

It's a tie between Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Heroine by Mindy McGinnis. Maybe in Another Life was my first experience with TJR and it utterly destroyed me. I laughed, I cried...okay I mostly cried. It was so beautiful and I loved it so much despite it making me bawl my eyes out. It was more so "Oh my god this book is beautiful" crying combined with "Oh wow this is hitting me hard" crying. But it was amazing and I highly recommend it. With Heroine, it made me cry for some seriously personal reasons that I don't necessarily want to get into. I actually never ended up rating this book because by the end I was just so...numb and couldn't process my thoughts on it. But it was an incredibly intense book and I would only recommend it if you feel like you're in a good headspace to read something heavy.

10. A book that made you laugh

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff! I had heard so many good things about this book before I finally picked it up in 2019 and oh my god I am so glad I did. I loved Kady and her sass, and Ezra and his cheesiness, and if you don't stan AIDAN then what are you doing with your life. We love murderous emotional robots around here. I should also include the sequel Gemina because that one had me dying laughing as well. I was so impressed by the formatting of these books and found that I adapted to it very quickly and had no issues following the story, thankfully! Now I just need to read Obsido and honestly, I'm not sure I'm prepared for the ending.

11. A book that you think is underhyped

Comeback by Lyn Ashwood and Rachel Rose. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of kpop (wait did I already say that?) so it should be no surprise that I loved Comeback. But I definitely haven't seen enough people talking about this book! You've got kpop, a cute as heck romance, kpop group friendship and growth as a team, the main characters working through emotional trauma and growing as people. Like, seriously, this book is incredible! If you're a kpop fan, I highly recommend reading Comeback and keeping an eye out for another book by this amazing author duo!

12. An author you discovered this year that you fell in love with

It might be obvious but...Laurel Chase. Hilariously, while adding the tags for this post, I realized I did a post in 2018 for Piece of Shifter and just...forgot. I blame chemo brain on this one, y'all. But I'm so happy to have "officially" discovered Laurel Chase and the Haret Chronicles and one of my new favorite series in 2019!
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 And that's it for my wrap up of 2019/first post of 2020! I've officially been blogging for 6 years now and I'm so grateful to everyone who has supported me over the years. I'm ready for a new year of blogging and I can't wait to share what I have in store! Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you in the next chapter.

Hi hello and welcome to day 7 of #Project14Lists! Today, I am going to be talking about some of the series that I really want to read in 2019! Some of these (okay, probably most of these) are going to be older/backlist titles because honestly, I'm behind on some really popular series and I need to catch up. As a book blogger/reviewer, there's a lot of pressure (at least I feel there is) to always be on top of all of the newest releases and most popular series, but the reality of it is that not everyone can read every book as soon as it's released and you're probably going to fall behind while reading a series every so often. So here's a list of some series that I need to hop on the bandwagon for! Let's get started!
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1. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

This is a series that I hear SO MUCH about from the book community, especially now that the final book in the series, Kingdom of Ash, has been released. I have been interested in reading this series for a while (I believe I first heard about it a bit before Empire of Storms was released) but just haven't had the time to commit to reading the whole thing. I feel like this is a series that I'll want to have all of the books ready to go so that I can binge read it so hopefully 2019 will be the year I can do that!

2. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Okay so I feel like it's blasphemy to admit I haven't read either of SJM's series but I haven't. Everyone and their mother has read at the very least the first book in this trilogy and that includes my mother. I'm serious, my mom read this book. And I've heard this gets, ahem, steamy, so that's great to know. But I mean it, 2019 is the year of SJM for me!

3. The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

I read Six of Crows earlier this year and absolutely loved it! I'm so glad that the hype around that book was real. Now as for Crooked Kingdom...I'll get to that next year, promise. But I feel like I should read this first trilogy to sort of get some of the references that were apparently in Six of Crows. Also, King of Scars comes out next year so what better time to hop on it! Oh, and supposedly this character called The Darkling is super...hot? I don't know but I need to find out for science, obviously.

4. The Lotus Wars by Jay Kristoff

If you've read probably any post on my blog this year, you know that Jay Kristoff is a big deal to me. So obviously I want to read this trilogy if nothing else just to say that I have. I've seen some...mixed (not sure if that's a strong enough word for it) reviews on the series, but I'd still like to give it a shot and see what I think of it!

5. The Shadowhunters Series (TDA/TMI) by Cassandra Clare
So, this is a complicated one for me. I told myself I wouldn't read these long ago for some unknown reason (even though I have the first three books in The Mortal Instruments series...trilogy...thing?) but now I kind of want to. Hilariously, I remember back in the day when The Mortal Instruments was only a trilogy. Oh boy, that makes me feel old. But I kind of want to just read The Dark Artifices trilogy and just skip the thousands of other books that are in this world. Either way, I'd like to attempt to get into this series at some point next year. Also, I know there are several other series besides TMI and TDA that are stuffed into this world, I just like the covers for TDA and know the first book in the TMI series so, here they are.

6. The Diviners by Libba Bray

All I have to say about this is that it sounds like the perfect series for me to read and for some reason, I haven't read it yet.

7. The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

I read The Raven Boys in 2017 and just never continued with the series. I had kind of meh feelings about the book, which seem to contradict everyone else's feelings on the series so I was kind of concerned that I wouldn't like the rest of the series if I were to continue on. But honestly, I probably just wasn't in the right head space while I was reading, so I'd like to give it another shot next year.

8. A Darker Shade of Magic Trilogy by V.E. Schwab

Surprisingly, I haven't read this incredibly popular series by my favorite author, and I feel like that's a big problem. I've been meaning to get to this series for years but just...haven't for some reason. I read Vicious this year and it became my favorite book of all-time, so obviously I now need to read every book by V.E./Victoria Schwab, right? I'm making my way through them and this one is next!
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And that's it for day 7 of #Project14Lists! I'd love to know some of the book series that you would like to get to in the new year! As you know, I'm always looking to expand my TBR so feel free to let me know in the comments some series that I should check out in 2019 or ones that you're planning to read. Are you wanting to read any of these? If you've read any of the ones I listed, I'd love to know your thoughts on them (spoiler free please!). Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you tomorrow for another day of #Project14Lists!