This week’s That Artsy Reader Girl topic is so my speed given how much I’ve been struggling with literally everything book-related right now, whether that’s reading, writing, or blogging. It’s all up in the air currently, and I hate it, but I’m also not having a panic about it, so growth! I think we should go in reverse order because that’s what’s most recently in my mind, and because I hate the idea of just an entire post of pictures, I am going to have more than one word for each book, but I will actually give it a one word review, too.

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings by Various took me actually eight hundred years to read, and I’m not sure why because I really enjoyed it, but I just don’t think a short story collection was the thing to read at the time. That said, my one word review is: journey.

All hail A Ferry of Bones & Gold by Hailey Turner! This series is digging me out of a reading slump, and I’m so grateful for it. It reads exactly like fanfiction, and it’s fantastic, and I wanted to just write PWP as my one word review, but I can never remember if that’s porn with or without plot, so instead: everything.

Persuasion by Jane Austen was the last book for me to read in order to complete my three-year Austen party, and I’m so excited to have finally read it because it’s definitely hanging out in the number two slot for me–Emma will always be first–despite the fact that it was incredibly slow.

Seafire by Natalie C. Parker is pitched as Mad Max: Fury Road meets Wonder Woman, and I thought there was NO WAY in hell that it could actually live up to that comparison, and yet, here we are, with one of my favorite reads of April. In one word, it was epic.

I kept telling people that I thought Gallant by VE Schwab looked like it was going to have some Secret Garden vibes, but that I really had no idea why I had that thought, and this makes sense because I actively don’t read summaries for auto-buy authors, so I had no clue that it was legitimately something of a Secret Garden retelling, and y’all, I was shook, this was so damn good. It reminded me of Madeleine Roux’s House of Furies trilogy, which is one of my faves, and it had the exact same haunted house vibes. This was unsettling.

Circe by Madeline Miller was such a different book than The Song of Achilles, and while I can definitely see why some people might not like Circe after TSOA, I really think it stands on its own and should be loved as something entirely separate. It had the same kind of poetic language as TSOA, but this one read much more like a legend.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million times more, but Anna-Marie McLemore is always going to knock it out of the park, and Lakelore was no exception. You would think that I’d go in with appropriate expectations, but they always manage to raise the bar, and this book left me with a deep sense of longing.

I meant to finish this trilogy in March, but it hasn’t happened yet, and that is no shade on A Sprinkle of Spirts by Anna Meriano because it’s truly adorable, and it’s definitely cliche to pick this word as my one-word review, but it was so sweet.

Catch me still screaming about This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron and 100000% putting it on my top ten reads for this year because it was freaking phenomenal, and I am so hyped for the sequel, and I already bought Cinderella is Dead, and I just want to gobble up everything Bayron ever touches. This book was stunning.

There’s no way to properly prepare for the journey that is Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it even after finishing it. This was an one of a kind book that I’ll never forget, and it left me awed.