Now that we are over halfway through 2023, it’s time for a mid-year reading update! I’m going to share with you a few of my highlight reads from the first half of the year, and some updates on challenges I’ve been doing. Overall I’ve had a really good reading year so far. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten to know my reading tastes quite well. This translates to generally higher ratings for books, as I do better at picking books to read that I’m pretty confident I will like.

As soon as I heard the announcement for this book, I knew I needed it more than anything. Necromancy!! Fighting to prove yourself after betrayal!! Hints of enemies/rivals to lovers!! By an author I love!! I mean come on, it sounds incredible just from that right? AND THEN!! The cover reveal happened and omggg it’s epic and beautiful, and by my favorite cover artist (Tommy Arnold). And the fact that he also did the covers for the Locked Tomb series? Yes. I’m 10000% in.

A friend was kind enough to send me an ARC of it, and the publisher actually sent me one as well! So thank you friend, and thank you Simon & Schuster! Now let’s get into the actual review part haha. Just so you know, this will be a lot of me gushing about all the different things I loved. This book really hit the spot for me, and it is definitely a new favorite.

*ahem* Hello? Is this thing on? Apologies for my total lack of posting for the past two months haha. I know exactly the cause of this – the new Legend of Zelda game. Are any of you playing it?? Because it is INCREDIBLE. But anyway, instead of doing a wrap up for each of the months I missed, I’ll just talk about my highlights from April, May, and June. So let’s get to it!

Soooo I guess I never shared my March wrap up huh? To be fair, during March I got sucked into a hole of reading the InCryptid books and when I looked up, it was suddenly like a week into April. And then it took me the rest of April to finish writing this post lol. But anyway, I consumed a lot of media in March so let’s get into it!

This was an absolute gem of a book.

After 5 years of living in China with her grandmother, 10 year old Lina is finally able to move to the US to join her parents and her younger sister. As soon as she steps off of the plane in Los Angeles, she soon learns that her family’s life is not as wonderful as they had made it sound in their letters.

I was 13 when my family moved to Canada and I related so much to Lina’s experiences of immigrating. School was so different and while I understood English, I didn’t understand a lot of the slang and I was afraid of mispronouncing words so I opted to talk as little as possible. Reading about Lina’s struggles brought me to that time in my childhood and while I never had a book like this growing up where I could see my experiences in a book, I’m glad it exists now and more kids (and adults!) like me can read it.