When All is Read and Done: March 2020 Wrap-Up

The weather’s getting warmer, the sun’s rising earlier, and the cherry blossoms are popping up everywhere like cotton-candy-colored kettle corn. (Mhhhhmmm kettle corn…I’m already making myself hungry, and we’re only on the first sentence of this post. That must be a new record or something haha.) Add all these things up, and you can only come to one conclusion: SPRINGTIME IS FINALLY HERE! ✨🌱🌸🍃🌺✨🐇🌷🐤💐✨

With that in mind, I’ve got a question for you: are you feeling twitterpated? Because, as that crazy old owl in Disney’s Bambi once said, “Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime.” Well, I guess I’m one of those rare souls who fall into the “nearly” category, because I’m not exactly feeling overjoyed with the world situation right now. BUT, let’s choose to focus on the positive, shall we? And one of those positive things is this: I read a couple of excellent books in March that put my head in a total whirl!

What I Read in March

📱House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig: Reading this dark Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling was like ordering a large Ultra Cheese Dominos pizza and then proceeding to consume the whole thing by yourself. In one sitting. In under fifteen minutes. Basically, it sounded like a wonderful idea in theory, but was decidedly less so in actual execution.

📱To Best the Boys by Mary Weber: I would describe this as The Maze Runner meets The Hunger Games and that’s not even the best part. What’s the best part then, you might ask? Well, it’s the fact that this book sends one big FLYING KICK-A-POW to the patriarchy’s tender parts.

🎧A Kingdom for A Stage by Heidi Heilig: In Japanese, there’s this word まあまあ (maa maa), which when roughly translated, means something along the lines of “so-so,” “passable,” or “meh.” That basically sums up my feelings for this book; there was nothing I particularly disliked about it, but there was nothing I particularly liked about it, either. It was まあまあ.

📱Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda and Valynne E. Maetani: As Dorothy Gale would say: “Yokai and shinigami and kitsune, oh my!” (Wait, you don’t remember her saying that? Okay okay okay, so I might’ve taken a few creative liberties…Please don’t sue me, MGM Studios 💦). But all slightly-altered Wizard of Oz quotes aside, this book presents a wonderful snapshot of Japanese culture and for that alone, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

🎧Frankly in Love by David Yoon: This book’s writing style is very…unique. It tries so hard to be funny and endearingly sarcastic, but like beauty, humor is in the eye of the beholder. And for some reason, the jokes fell as flat for me as this sad, gravity-KO’d balloon.

📱Tweet Cute by Emma Lord: I think Emma Lord now lords over my heart because this cute, cheesy debut of hers has completely capitalized all of my love. It has a haters-to-lovers romance, a strong You’ve Got Mail vibe, and lots of tantalizing food descriptions that sound so good, it should be illegal. I mean honestly, what more could I possibly want from a book? Nothing, my friends. Nothing.

📱The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary: As somebody whose rambunctious three-year-old routinely wakes her up at the butt-crack of dawn, it’s easy to understand why I highly value my sleep. So the fact that this addictively fun rom-com left me bleary-eyed and running on way too few hours of shut-eye should tell you something. And it should definitely be a good something.

#YARC Reading Challenge Update

What I Watched in March

Anne with an E {Season 2 Rewatch}: The first time I watched Season 2 of this show I was…caught off guard? Disappointed? Maybe a bit of both? The plot veered away from the source material so drastically that I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. But this time around, I was completely and totally charmed. CHARMED, I SAY! slams fist down on desk emphatically to drive point home and then regrets it, because ow Amybeth McNulty’s performance is an utter delight to watch and don’t even get me started on Gilbert’s artful mastery of the Look of Longing™ because mmmhhhm it be good.

Iron Man 2: So confession time – my husband and I decided to start a chronological MCU movie marathon last year. LAST FREAKIN’ YEAR, FOLKS. And we are only now making it to Iron Man 2, which is like…the third movie on a list of over twenty. Oof. Talk about embarrassing. Also, *in my best Gandalf voice * I have no memory of this movie. Like, at all.

Little Women (2020): As a diehard fan of the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope, I’ve always secretly thought it a perfect travesty that Jo and Laurie didn’t end up together. But this rendition of Little Women showed me that NOPE NOPE NOPE I was wrong to ever doubt the genius of Louisa May Alcott’s vision. I have corrected my ways and at last I see the light. *spontaneously breaks into a Tangled sing-a-long*

Jumanji (The Next Level): If films were rated solely based on the amount of stitch-splitting laughter that they manage to wrangle out of me, then this one should’ve won an Oscar. I haven’t laughed so hard since…I don’t know when (and let’s face it, right now we could all benefit from a good, old-fashioned giggle fit). But although this movie was highly entertaining, the plot itself was pretty subpar, especially when compared to the previous franchise installments.

This Month on the Blog

I think we can all agree that March lasted for an eternity. How are you all handling this craziness?

Let’s share some positivity! What’s something good that’s happened to you this month?