Happy Monday! I hope that you had a great weekend. For the past week I've been participating in my third readathon of the year, BorrowAThon. Started by Riley of FivEleveNinety, BorrowAThon is a reading challenge in which you have to read books that have been borrowed. The books can be borrowed from the library, a friend, a family member, etc. This readathon/reading challenge started on Monday, November 7th and is ending tonight Monday, November 14th.
This was the perfect readathon for me since I'm currently on a self-imposed book buying ban. Over this last year, my library card has gotten so much usage. My librarians see me and my kids a minimum of twice a week during the school year and up to four or more times a week during the summer. What can I say, we love books! Anyways, back to BorrowAThon.
My Original BorrowAThon TBR List
Stealing Snow | After months of seeing everybody and their mama on BookTube rave about this Snow White retelling by Danielle Paige, I was super excited to finally get my hands on a copy of this book from my local library. I adore Danielle Paige and I love fairy tale retellings. Plus, Snow White was the first book I learned how to read by myself when I was three. My mom would read it to me every night until I could read back to her word for word.
Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight | Ever since reading A Court of Thorns & (Beauty & and the Beast retelling) and A Court of Mist & Fury, I've been obsessed with Sarah J. Maas. She has the way of writing a story that will just suck in and make you want to weep or scream once the story is over. When I discovered she had another and much longer series, I knew I had to get all of the books and read them. These books are part of her Throne of Glass series that follows a kick-ass female assassin named Celaena Sardothien and her journey as the King of Adarlan's Champion/personal hit woman. I really appreciated the fact that the female lead in this series wasn't going to be some helpless maiden in distress.
Nevernight | I have never read anything by Jay Kristoff, but after hearing some many raving reviews about this book, I had to check it out. Plus, this book was also about an assassin, Mia Corvere, and the cover was totally giving me a V for Vendetta meets The Crow vibe. Again the female lead being strong, determined and able to take care of herself was a strong selling point for me. I'm a thriller
What I Actually Read
Make Way For Dyamonde Daniel | I'm almost certain that I stumbled across this book on a book roundup post over at Here Wee Read. Growing Nikki Grimes was one of my favorite authors. She wrote some of the few books that actually featured main characters of color during my childhood. Now that I'm an adult, I've discovered that I'm still a fan of her work. I enjoyed reading about Dyamonde (pronounced like Diamond) Daniel and how she helped her new neighbor Free to get a fresh perspective on life.
Like many kids in today's society, Dyamonde's parents are divorced and Free's parents are struggling with unemployment issues. When Free's family has to move in with his grandma, who lives in Dyamonde's neighborhood, he's mad at the world. Of course, nobody knows at the time why he's so mad, but Dyamonde decides to find out what his problem is and a friendship starts to blossom. This book was a really quick read and I loved the overall theme of turning lemons into lemonade and looking on the bright side during difficult life seasons. I can't wait to read the rest of the books in this series.
The Assassin's Blade and Throne of Glass | I had originally stopped reading The Assassin's Blade which a bind-up of all the Throne of Glass novellas because I was more sucked into reading Throne of Glass. My mission was to read all of the main books first and then go back to read the novellas, but then I started wondering about what happened to Sam and how Celaena ended up in Endovier and decided to shelf Crown of Midnight. While I did finish Throne of Glass first, I'm glad I went back and finished reading the novellas.
Both books lived up to the hype and my Sarah J Maas expectations. After reading the novellas, I really wanted to strangle Arobynn and kill Farran. My heart hurt for Celaena once I found out what happened to Sam. However, if I'm being honest, a part of me was a little glad that Sam was out of the way because of the relationships that form in Throne of Glass wouldn't have happened if he was still in the picture. Speaking of TOG, I really wanted to kill Cane, the King of Adarlan and all of Celaena's other haters. Put these on your TBR if you haven't read them.
The Maple Festival and Winter's No Time to Sleep | I'm completely obsessed with middle grade fiction. They have the cutest book series. I can't remember books series being this cute when I was my daughter's age. So, I'm enjoying reading them now. The Maple Festival was the perfect short fall read. Sophie steps up to the plate to help her mom make treats for the Maple Festival after her assistant goes out of town and it proves to be a great mother-daughter bonding experience and a lesson in responsibility for Sophie.
Winter's No Time to Sleep is all about making new friends and the joy of watching/helping them experience new things. I can't wait to finish reading the rest of the books in The Adventures of Sophie Mouse series. Poppy Green and her illustrator, Jennifer Bell make a great combo.
Despite NOT sticking to my original TBR list 100%, I'm happy with the books that I did read for BorrowAThon. It was nice to read every evening after a day of homeschooling, homework, cleaning and other mom/house duties. I can't wait until the next BorrowAThon. I'm hoping Sarah J Maas will have a new book series out by then. If you want to stay updated on the next round of BorrowAThon follow the official BorrowAThon Twitter account.
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