Wrap-Up| May 2019

Due to the nature of my insistent need to play catch-up, I am going to jump straight into the wrap-up for the month of May. 

Damsel 

Elana K. Arnold

⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads

My thoughts:

Trigger warnings, as this book contains: graphic sexual assault, rape, abuse, animal mutilation, and self-harm.
I can't make up my mind as to whether I thought the message it was delivering was cleverly done, or if it was way too on the nose... or both...or neither. I'm not entirely sure I would label this in the YA category either. 
As you can see, some months after reading, I am still wishy-washy about my final thoughts on this book. I will write and post a full review in due course as I think there is a lot to delve into as to why this book fell flat for me.

   Good Omens

   Dir. Douglas Mackinnon

   The first time I read Good Omens, I was fourteen and had never read a book by Terry Pratchett, or Neil Gaiman, but I found myself in fits of giggle and completely obsessed with an angel called Aziraphale and a demon who had adopted the name of Crowley. 

"You go to fast for me, Crowley."

   At the point of writing this, I am on my fourth rewatch. I don't think there is any TV show that could take over the title of 'Lauren's most-watched' (which is strongly held by RTD's era of Doctor Who), however, this is a strong contender. Funny, stupid, daft and so very, very British, this show - book - holds such a close personal meaning to me. The cast was incredible (see, everyone I said this too at age fourteen, I told you David Tennant should play Crowley) and I have never seen a book so well adapted to screen and probably won't live to see another. You just have to compare the prologue to the opening scene on the wall of Eden to see the tender loving care Neil Gaiman has for this story to bring this book to life in the way it was. 

Avengers: Endgame

Dir. Anthony and Joseph Russo

Listen, I wasn't impressed with Infinity War, at all. I found it long, boring and felt myself watching it for the sake of watching it because it was a MCU film. So with Endgame, I just went with it - a lot of my excitement was due to how much my flatmate was excited about it. 
Well... I loved it. I've never sobbed so hard in a cinema before, so there's that. 

Don't get me wrong, the film was flawed and totally too long. Like are you telling me they couldn't have cut this down and still have a cohesive and strong plot? But I'm not mad at it for being that long, either. 

May was the month of forcing myself to concentrate long enough to finish my last ever essay and then saying goodbye and moving, sort of, back home to gnaw at my fingernails in stress whilst I waited for the grades to come back for my final assignments. They were mostly good news, with one coming back as 2/100, which resulted in mass panic by everyone involved. After some manic emails, I found out that my lecturer was marking them like she would our weekly task to save time as she was overdue to mark them (I actually got a solid 2:1 for that module). 

So, why didn't I stay in Bangor for longer? Well, I got an exciting invitation for the MCM Blogger Brunch hosted by Jamie-Lee over at Tor and Quirk books. I could not miss going, especially when I found out that Susan Dennard was going to be doing a mini-tour. I could not miss the chance to say hello and a thank you for her Witchland books, as well as meeting some other fantastic authors that when my book buying ban is over, I will be getting copies of. 

Keep an eye out for my post on that soon, or better yet, sign up to my blogger mailing list to get notifications as to when I post.