Book Reviews, Uncategorized

Book Review: Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo

Happy Easter Monday bookish people! I hope everyone is having a great day. Today I’m bringing you another book review. I think by now I have every book by Leigh Bardugo because I very much enjoy her writing and her characters, so of course when Lives of Saints came out I had to buy it.

In this book review I will give star ratings for four categories and I will write a little about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Plot:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

This book being a collection of short stories about each of the different saints in the world of the Grisha there isn’t a particular plot to give a star rating to. So for this category I’ve given it an average three stars because some of the stories I enjoyed more than others, as is normal with short story collections.

Characters:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

The same with this category, each story has different characters so I couldn’t give it more than three stars because some of them I liked better than others. However, every story had clearly defined and interesting characters that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about.

Writing and Dialogue:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I can’t comment much on the dialogue other than it fit the stories it was included in very well. The writing style was excellent, and I expected it to be because of how much I always enjoy Leigh Bardugo’s writing.

Overall:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I gave this book four stars overall because of the enjoyment I had reading it. As a collection of short stories that are a companion to the Grisha Trilogy and the Six of Crows duology it is well written and gives useful background to the stories. I was glad that it lived up to my expectations that I have for anything Leigh Bardugo. It is not essential reading for the series but if you enjoy the world Leigh Bardugo has created then this may be a great read for you.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Enter the world of the Grishaverse and Shadow and Bone, soon to be a Netflix original series!

Dive into the epic world of international bestselling author Leigh Bardugo with this beautifully illustrated replica of The Lives of Saints, the Istorii Sankt’ya, featuring tales of saints drawn from the beloved novels and beyond. Out of the pages of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, from the hands of Alina Starkov to yours, the Istorii Sankt’ya is a magical keepsake from the Grishaverse.

These tales include miracles and martyrdoms from familiar saints like Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses and Sankt Ilya in Chains, to the strange and obscure stories of Sankta Ursula, Sankta Maradi, and the Starless Saint.

This beautiful collection includes stunning full-color illustrations of each story.

That’s it for today’s book review, I hope you enjoyed it!

Monthly Wrap Ups

March Wrap-Up

Happy Wednesday bookish people! It is the last day of March and today I’m bringing you my March wrap up! This was such a good reading month for me. February put me in a big reading slump and for the first half of March I was still feeling it a bit but I did manage to read some books and then there was the Becca and the Books 48 hour Bookopoly reading challenge where I read eight books in one weekend!

Also this month I had more appointments, I got a new teacher for my dramatic writing University module and he’s not much better than the previous one, I completed my first case study for my new job and I’ve started my second one so that’s going well and I still haven’t heard back about my PhD application so that’s a bit worrying but hopefully I’ll hear soon.

It was my birthday in March! I’m now 22 and I keep forgetting and telling people I’m 21… I got a couple of books as presents so I’m happy with that, my sister got me an art set and my boyfriend got me an Alice in Wonderland teapot which I love! I didn’t do any reading on my actual birthday but I’ve read one or two books since – I actually skipped ahead and read one of the books of my April tbr already…

Anyway, I didn’t finish my March tbr but it has been my best reading month so far this year so I’m still pretty happy with how I did. This was my tbr:

  • What A Way To Go by Julia Forster – I did read
  • Uprooted by Niami Novik – I did not read
  • The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige – I did read
  • The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman – I did read
  • Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson – I did read
  • The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – I did read
  • The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow – I did not read
  • Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty – I did not read
  • Map of Days by Ransom Riggs – I did not read
  • Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo – I did read
  • The Library of the Unwritten by A J Hackwith – I did not read
  • Ever Cursed by Corey Ann Haydu – I did read
  • Chain of gold by Cassandra Clare – I did not read
  • A Curse So Dark and Lonely – I did read

What I read: so from my TBR I managed to read eight books which is much better than February but I also read four books that were not from my March TBR which were: The Cousins by Karen M McManus, The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh, Bridge of Souls by Victoria Schwab and Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I have put up the book reviews for all the books I read this month except for the Cousins and Lives of Saints so check those out if you’re interested in what I thought of them.

There were also two five star reads this month! Those were Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell which I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did and A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. They were my favourite reads this month.

Most disappointing reads: It’s actually been a really great month, there’s only one book I didn’t enjoy which was What A Way to go by Julia Forster. It just wasn’t for me.

Current reads: well I read the Cousins off my April tbr last night so today I’ll be choosing a new book off my April tbr to start reading and I’m very excited about it.

That’s it for my March wrap up I hope you enjoyed it!