I read eight books in April. Three were for Kid Lit Exchange, and let's knock those out now, because they were pretty irrelevant. Actually everything I read this month was irrelevant compared to Chaos Walking. But I digress...

1

I thought this would be stereotyped, but it wasn't. It was pretty good. NEXT.

2.

I liked this one. NEXT.

3.

This was literal torture and I only read it because I had to.

4.

This was something of a panic read. The libraries had just closed indefinitely and I was like WHAT DO I DO? Because my city card had expired and that's the only way I get Libby books, and I couldn't get physical books from my county library if they were closed, and I thought I'd have nothing to read for a long time. So I immediately borrowed Peter Pan from the bedroom of the kid I nanny. I'd never read Peter Pan before, and it was both hilarious and bizarre. The parts with the dog as the nanny, especially, was just peak humor. Like that was amazingly funny. So dry and self-aware. And other parts were weird.

5.

This was on my TBR for months and it took forever to acquire because it isn't printed in America. I ordered it from an overseas place, but they said the copy ended up being very damaged and they refunded me. I tried a second place and apparently second time's the charm. Shipping took forever but finally it was mine. Most of the books mentioned in this I'd never heard of, because they aren't American books. But it was even more enjoyable than I expected because the author is freaking hilarious.

And within this book, she mentioned something called Chaos Walking, which I'd heard of plenty of times, but her gushing description finally whet my appetite....

6, 7, and 8

First of all, thank God for the city library. They made all expired cards valid again for the duration of quarantine, so we can use Libby. And I couldn't have read my current favorite books of 2020 without it.

Let me state, I don't hardly like YA. At all. These books are not YA. I mean, they are, but they're not. They're masterpieces in literature. Like I was blown away. I read the series in a week and a half which was fast for me because with working full-time and school I can really only read deeply on the weekends. But THESE BOOKS.

I honestly can't say anything. I don't know what to say. I was CRYING MY EYES OUT over book one. Like tears coming out of my eyes and I couldn't shake it. That has never happened to me with fiction before. And I really need to talk about the ending of book three with someone. I NEED TO TALK ABOUT THOSE ENDING WORDS.

For some reason book three seemed slower and least interesting to me. But that was probably because I'd ADHD burned myself out. My attention span is shooort and I usually struggle with series. But still I TORE THROUGH IT. I haven't read anything the way I read this series since The Hunger Games 500 years ago.

And that was THE BEST SET OF VILLAINS I ever read in my life...

These books are what all YA dystopias want to be when they grow up. Calling them a YA dystopia is doing them a disservice. Patrick Ness is my hero.