Earl Grey Books

I was looking through my Goodreads ‘read’ shelf lately and realised that there were a whole ton of books I’d never written anything about. I generally try to write a few sentences about everything I finish, but that’s a pretty new idea of mine. So lately I’ve been rereading a few so I could share my thoughts.

The idea is to do this every few months or so to give myself the chance to actually reread some books without stressing myself out too much. I’ll be talking about 3 or 4 books per post. But without further ado, here it is.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

What I Remember: I have such strong memories of finishing this one that I don’t know why I didn’t write something down on Goodreads. I finished halfway through a lunch break and instantly started messaging the only poetry-reading friend I have and telling her about how much I’d loved it. I thought this would be a good one to start off with for a few reasons—one, I was pretty sure I would still love it, and two, it’s a short one and with everything I was trying to do in November, it seemed like a good enough reason.

My Review This Time: I had really forgotten how incredible this really is. Without a doubt, it’s one of the best poetry books I’ve ever read. Every single word feels like a sharp jab to the gut and it is completely brilliant. I feel like this is such a hard book to talk about because it is so incredibly powerful. I don’t know what else to say than you should definitely read this.

The Blood Countess by Tara Moss

What I Remember: I read this book back in 2013 after a friend gave me a copy of book two for Christmas the previous year. I absolutely loved it at the time—it’s very much in 2013 Ely’s realm, it’s a YA paranormal which I was reading a lot of back then. I don’t know why, but I remembered this as being more of a crime book? Anyway, I never continued the series because why would I do that?

My Review This Time: Reread everything I just said and then be prepared to be completely unsurprised when I say I didn’t like it this time around. I’m not a paranormal reader anymore, and within the first pages of this, I was already feeling uncomfortable by this? It very much feels like a book of its time, which was 2010.

Soulless by Gail Carriger

What I Remember: I read this way back in 2017 before I even really knew of the historical romance genre, let alone consider it one of my favourites. I did enjoy this one enough to give it four stars the first time around, so hopefully, that’s a good sign. This is another series I never continued after this first book.

My Review This Time: I managed to read this one in a single sitting today and I did really enjoy it. I’m kind of torn about this because I do love Alexia and Lord Maccon and it’s a really fun book to read. It does read very much like a normal historical romance apart from the steampunk aspects and I really like that. I’m not much of a steampunk or paranormal reader though I do enjoy those bits in here, even without them, I think I’d still really enjoy this story. I did buy an eBook bind-up of this series so I’ll be continuing it once I finish off some others.

Have you read any of these? Let me know below. And if you’re not already, please consider following me on here, Twitter and my booktube channel!