fantasy books – Paws & Paperbacks

Hello Everyone! I think we were all relieved to see 2020 end. This is the first year I’ll be doing a survey of my reading stats and I’m really excited to look back at all the reading I did. I read significantly less than I have in the past years but I noticed I focused a lot more of reading what I wanted to read, instead of what I felt like I had to.

TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS READ: 97 / 100

PAGES READ: 39,368

LONGEST BOOK: 766 pages

SHORTEST BOOK: 267 pages

AVERAGE RATING: 3.8 stars

MOST READ GENRE:
I’m really not surprised my most popular genre is fantasy. However, my goal was to read more diversely across the genres so in that aspect I’m actually pretty happy that it was less than 50%. Contemporary romance is my next most read genre which makes total sense considering I’ve really gotten into reading those books in the past few years.

MOST READ AGE GROUP:
I’m so happy with my stats for this! In past years, I would bet the majority of my reading was Young Adult books. In the last year I’ve not only felt that I’ve begun to grow out of YA, but I really wanted to explore more adult books in genres I love. I’m hoping to continue this trend into 2021 as well!

MOST READ FORMATS:
Unsurprisingly, I read mostly e-books on my Kindle. Although, I do believe I read more physical books this year than previously and I made a more of a conscious effort to read the hard copies of books I already owned. My goal for this year is to increase that number to 25%!

I will say that I’m really impressed with the amount of backlisted titles I was able to read this year. And I cannot believe half of all the books I read last year were ARCs. That seems like such an absurdly large number!

I’m looking forward to another year of reading some wonderful books and I can’t wait to see how my stats compare at the end of 2021!

Title: Blood & Honey (Serpent & Dove #2)
Author: Shelby Mahurin
Rating: ★★★½

Serpent & Dove was one of my favorite reads in 2019 and an absolute spectacular debut novel. I loved everything about it and so Blood & Honey quickly became one of the most anticipated releases for this year. I began to check my expectations when reviews started coming in and readers were finding the sequel disappointing. And while I didn’t seem to dislike Blood & Honey as much as other people, I’m sad to share that it did not live up to my hype and expectation.

Let’s start with everything I did enjoy and all the good aspects the book had going for it. First of all, Shelby Mahurin is a very talented writer and there is no disputing that. Despite not much going on throughout the story, I was still enchanted by the writing and easily transported in the world. The heartwarming friendships and relationships between the characters I loved from the first book remain, and new characters and friendships/relationships were formed that I really loved. One of the most important parts of Blood & Honey is Lou’s “descent” into darkness and becoming more and more like her mother as the story went on. This is super important for her character arc and I really liked how Mahurin handled it.

Now on to what didn’t work with this book. You cannot call Blood & Honey anything other than a filler. This series went from a planned duology to a trilogy and it shows. A whole lot of nothing happens for the majority of the book. And because nothing really ever happens, I found myself struggling to figure out what the point of most of what happens here is. There are many smaller subplots that I honestly believe could have just been nixed altogether and would not have changed the course of the story in any way.

Did I enjoy this as much as I had been hoping? No. Did I dislike this as much as many other people did? Also no. Blood & Honey was mediocre. I still really loved the writing, the world, the overarching plot, and the characters. It was just a disappointment. I remain hopeful, however, that the third book will blow us all away again!