PIGLET BY LOTTIE HAZELL

This has been sitting in my drafts since I finished this book in June. I won't format this review like my usual ones. Heavy spoilers ahead, but reading this review/other equally scathing ones will save you the pain of reading this unsatisfactory novel. 

My adult takeaway from this novel is managing expectations. We cannot be our perfect, idealized self, and others cannot expect us to be anything but ourselves. We cannot control how others behave, but we can control how we react to stimuli. Not ground-breaking lessons, but it's good to have reminders because I haven't learned this lesson and continue to have unrealistic expectations (bouts of delusion of grandeur) that impede my happiness. 

ROMANTASY WAS FOR ME, UNTIL IT WASN'T

From: Hemingway Bookstore

I haven't read YA or Fantasy in a while because I am in my pretentious literati era—I say this as my compendium of Clarice Lispector stories, Pablo Neruda poems, and Anna Karenina lay unfinished on the side. I had just finished Beware of Pity before reading Fourth Wing. The sudden change is definitely whiplash-inducing, but Fourth Wing was necessary to reawaken me after being put to sleep. 

YA, Fantasy, and Romantasy are fun. It's indulgent and nostalgic. It makes me giddy reading the same tropes and lusting over the cookie-cutter male lead with the female protagonist. It brings me back, and it's a great escape from life and the "serious" books I try to read.