hi welcome back to my channel. my name is kat and today i'm going to talk about
my march wrap up. i know that i've taken some time off but i was reading like a few books and
i don't want them to get left out. so today i have six books to talk about and a few of them were
unexpectedly amazing and a few of them i thought would be amazing and they were kind of like
meh. so let's get into it. so the first book i read in march is called the savage instinct
by marjorie deluca. so this one was a netgalley arc that i read and it was brutal.
okay we're following clara who was put into an insane asylum after she had basically had ptsd
after having a stillbirth. and her husband puts her in there and they do all sorts of
things. like i hadn't heard about 1800s england's cures for "womb madness" or "womb hysteria." some of
the things are absolutely shocking, like using ice cold water to douche a woman's insides.
they're basically trying to shock you into like "getting over yourself." so yeah, needless
to say, the husband is absolute trash. but when she is released, she is determined never to go back
there again. and she decides to take on a hobby of sitting with some of the prisoners of the female
prison. and one of these people is mary ann cotton, who is england's first female serial
killer accused of poisoning multiple people. and there is just so much in this book where
the author did a really good job of while she did research mary anne cotton who is a real
historical person, she left a lot of the debate surrounding whether cotton was guilty or innocent
open for interpretation. and really we're seeing clara battle with what she thinks of the situation
and trying to formulate her own way to live in society or escape her husband's clutches.
i thought this was excellent and i gave it four stars. i could not put it down but also
please do check my goodreads review if you have a lot of triggers because this has
so many triggers and like just ancient ways to torture women... which like not it. really glad
we don't live in those times anymore. but this was really dark so if you do like dark and you do like
historical focused on two female narratives this would be for you. the next book i read
is currently my favorite of the whole year. so this is #1 out of like 44/45 books currently.
this is fragile remedy by maria ingrande mora. this again was a netgalley arc i got and i like
freaked out when i got this because i had been anticipating it for years. due to covid last year
they pushed the release date back and then when i got it i was like oh my god i cannot believe it!!!
so this is following nate who is a gem, a genetically engineered medi-tissue. basically, he's
created in this kind of utopian city where when other people's bodies break down he's supposed to
be harvested for parts. but he is smuggled out of the city when he is young so that he can live
kind of on the outskirts which is the slums but at least he isn't being harvested for parts, right?
however, kind of an insurance policy the city had was that the gems need a certain medicine in order
to not break down. so he has to learn to find his own way and pay for that very expensive medicine,
which is obviously illegal in the slums. so he becomes a tinker and he
has a found family with reed who has a gang of kind of scavengers. and the gang is actually
really diverse. so there's a trans woman, one of the main characters is a person of color,
and then there's also an m/m slow burn romance in here as well.
this is really amazing. i don't want to talk anymore about like the plot but there is
such amazing development and just you really feel for all of the characters and like reed and
nate... just my heart could not take it anymore. when i finished this book i was devastated and
i needed the next one immediately. it's not out right now (i'm really mad about it). but if you
like dystopian novels, if you like queer elements, if you like a kind of utopian/dystopian premise,
this would be for you. if you like found family there is so much in here. the only thing
i will say is that this gets unexpectedly very dark and there are a lot of scenes where
drugs and needle use is prevalent. i only am noting this because i have a fear of needles
so some of the scenes were really hard to read (i was going to say to watch) but for me
they were just like devastating and horrifying, which they're supposed to be but, i'm just saying
please do check out my goodreads review for all of the triggers as
there are quite a few. and also this book just... READ IT. i love this book it is so
so good and i will absolutely be reading the next one. i cannot stress highly enough
how much i loved it. okay let's move on to a book that i didn't love as much
which is when i was ten by fiona cummins. so this one is dealing with
two sisters and you know that many many years ago there was a gruesome murder where their
neighbors were slaughtered and one of the girls was sent to prison for it and one of the girls
kind of changed her name and tried to live an alternative life. and we're set in modern day
when the one who went to prison is being released and it says like the truth will come out and
we'll find out if the guilty sister was really the one that went to jail. so not gonna lie,
the beginning of this was so confusing because there are multiple points of view and you're not
sure who is who, it's not made clear. so like maybe the first half of this i was a bit like oh i don't
really know if i like this, i'm really kind of confused, but then you get to the halfway point and
you can't look away because you're like okay this person is really dangerous and psychopathic
and you cannot predict what's going to happen or the twists. so for me, it was a
straight up 3.5 stars because this does have the evil child trope and it went there.
there are some gruesome scenes so if you can't do gore like look away. but i couldn't stop
reading once i got to the 50% mark so it kind of does work as a thriller once you get halfway through.
but the beginning was a bit confusing and also the antagonist i thought was a bit obvious
so it's not really who is the bad guy it's more like holy crap what are they gonna do? so this was
a 3.5 for me, like take it or leave it depending on if what i said appeals to you.
next up is a reread that i did. so i was granted fugitive telemetry which is i
think #6 in the murderbot series but i wanted to re-read or re-listen to
the earlier murder bots. so i did listen to all systems red with my husband in the car when we
were doing some like errands and whatnot. so this is following murderbot who is a bot which is for
self-defense or killing but they have programmed themselves to not follow like directives so
they just want to like watch their tv shows and protect the humans that ~i guess~ like they
need to protect. one of my favorite things is that murderbot has a really like sassy
blase lazy attitude which is obviously very human but then murderbot is a machine so it's like
that great intersection of human/machine that i just love. but this was a reread so
i'm not going to get into it and also i think a lot of people know murderbot.
but yeah i gave it 4 stars. it was an excellent reread or like re-listen i suppose.
and then my second to last book this month was confessions which is a japanese translation
and it's by kanae minato. so this is a teacher revenge story where some of her pupils
killed her daughter and she is out for revenge. now the premise sounds amazing and i will say from the
very beginning you know that revenge is very much on the table and the teacher has just decided like
she's all in, like she's GOING FOR IT. however, i found this book really over-hyped okay because
there are multiple points of view and every point of view is a tell not show so you're kind of being
relayed the information that has already happened so it really distanced me from the action. and
i thought that a few of the points of views were redundant and also the points of views are from
different people but they're focusing on the same like shitty one or two students that are suspected
of killing the daughter so you hear about these students and like what they're doing over and over
again and some of it is very repetitive. but i will say that if you like a good comeuppance
where the people that deserve punishment actually get punished, this book is very good. so
i did really like the comeuppance that was doled out to the a**hole children in the end.
the teacher definitely went there and she like gave no f*cks about it. however, for me, this is
a 3 star because it's a perfect balance of things that i thought were really strong and
things i thought were really weak. so for me personally it's just a middle of the road
thriller i guess. if you are looking for a japanese thriller which has a female
protagonist i would recommend out by natsuo kirino over confessions. and the last book
that i want to talk about that i read in march is the route of ice and salt by jose
luis zarate. and he is a mexican writer and this was translated from the spanish.
this is just such an odd weird little book and i'm so glad that i bought it and read it.
so we are following the ship demeter which is on a journey across the ocean
to transfer transylvanian soil. so as you may guess (if that's pinging anything for you)
transylvanian soil equals dracula. so this is basically a dracula origin story
and we're following it from the point of view of the captain who has a lot of queer gay longing
where he is visualizing like having sex with and having relations with men in his life and also
the sailors that he is captaining. but a lot of it is like dream imagery which is overlaid
with things that are getting progressively darker on the ship. so for me i gave this 4 stars.
i was very mixed about this because you slip into it and it's such a like gothic atmosphere and
it's the high seas and there's a lot of queer longing but oddly there's not a lot of dracula?
there's a lot of rats... okay there's a lot of rats! but not enough dracula. i needed more dracula.
so overall it's like a very weird gem. i'm super glad i read it. i gave it 4 stars.
it's definitely sticking with me, which is good and i do recommend it, but go into it knowing that
things are different than maybe they've been blurbed. and another thing i really loved about
this is that it has an essay in here by poppy z brite who is billy martin (poppy z brite is
his pen name). but i love poppy z brite's horror so i was like it's really intriguing to know that
this is also beloved by a horror writer [I love]. and poppy z brite's writing is very the same like
erotic, lyrical, but more dark and gruesome. this i don't think is as dark and gruesome as anything
brite has written. so if you're looking for gore, if you're looking for dracula to f*** s*** up
that's not what this is. i mean dracula does f*** s*** up in here but it's not like
super gory and really dark. but i don't know? it's just this queer odd gem.
yeah so do with that what you will. the cover is also stunning and i do recommend
it and i think i will be recommending it on further like weird books i've read list because
it's definitely definitely weird. so that finishes up the six books i read and listened to
in march. i am so glad. if you stuck around till the end, thank you so much. i know that march was
a while ago but i don't want to just not tell you about the books i read because some of them like
fragile remedy and route of ice and salt deserve some attention. i really think that those two
are just gems and you should read them. okay i'll see you in another video soon. lots of love, bye~