Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

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Oh hello there! Somehow we’ve made it halfway through 2021. Nobody talk to me right now, I need to process this. Join me, as I give you an update on how my reading year has gone so far and do the Mid Year Book Freakout Tag!

A Little Reading Update

I’ve been terrible at updating both a handy spreadsheet I have and both Storygraph and Goodreads, so these statistics aren’t fully accurate. However, I’ll make sure to fix that for a more in-depth mid-year check-in post sometime soon! (Sometime soon means “as soon as I have time and am not stressed about my biochem exam or in the midst of a depressive phase” lol). For now, here are my super pretty Storygraph graphs!

By the way, you should totally follow me on Storygraph!👀

I always set my reading goal to 33 books! It’s an achievable number for me and it looks fun. That’s literally the only reason behind this number. My “maybe” goal for the year is 75 and I can definitely hit that at my current pace!

This is honestly one of my favourite Storygraph graphs to look at. It’s not fully accurate because I haven’t reviewed and tagged all books I’ve read this year, but I think it still gives a nice sense of the moods I gravitate towards. What can I say, I like me some adventure and I also like to cry, apparently.

I like fast-paced books and huge bricks terrify me. I’m glad to see this graph reflects that! I do have some longer books on my TBR but considering what I’ve been gravitating towards this year, I don’t think they’ll be read anytime soon.

I need to do my death lady title justice and read more nonfiction! Honestly, I have so many cool nonfiction books, but they usually require more brain cells and energy than I’ve had recently. Maybe the second half of 2021 will see this change, I hope so for the sake of my death book TBR!

Funny, how I wouldn’t have considered myself a fantasy reader until I started tracking it on Storygraph. But here we are with Young Adult Fantasy being my most read genre! I’d quite like to up the Sci-Fi in this graph over the rest of the year and I’d also love to read more Middle Grade! It’s an age range I’ve been neglecting for way too long and the Morrigan Crow series has shown me that I’m missing out.

The Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

The Mid Year Book Freakout Tag was created by Read Like Wildfire and Earl Grey Books.

1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2021.

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Can’t pick favourites, you know me! But in no particular order, Legendborn, We Could Be Heroes and The Other Side of Perfect have all been books I’ve read this year that I love with all my heart!

2. Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021.

I had to think quite a while if I even read any sequels but I did in fact! Wundersmith, the second book in the Morrigan Crow series by Jessica Townsend was absolutely delightful. It expanded the world of Nevermoor, introduced interesting new characters and was just as funny and slightly darker than the first one.

3. New release you haven’t read yet, but want to.

The Things We Don’t See by Savannah Brown! The Truth About Keeping Secrets, Savannah’s debut novel, is so special to me. It was somewhat falsely marketed as a thriller, I think, so I am absolutely hyped to see what she does with an actual YA thriller!

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year.

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao! It’s a YA dark academia thriller set at an elite prep school and you already know that that is my kind of book. I’m also a part of the street team for this book (whoop whoop) and you can expect some more How We Fall Apart related content coming soon! 👀

5. Biggest disappointment.

How to Solve a Murder, probably. I was genuinely excited but it was boring and consisted mostly of personal anecdotes I did not care about. Unfortunately, it also contained a big dose of casual sexism that made me deeply uncomfortable. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve DNFed a book this quickly before.

6. Biggest surprise.

This is a bit of a cheat because none of the books I read this year truly surprised me. But I really enjoyed You and Me on Vacation which surprised me, purely because I usually don’t super like romance novels!

7. Favourite new author. (Debut or new to you)

As per usual, I couldn’t just choose one! But both Tracy Deonn and Mike Chen have become absolute auto-buy authors for me and I’m so excited to read all of their books!

8. Newest fictional crush.

I don’t really get crushes on characters so I never have an answer for this question!

9. Newest favourite character.

This was a surprisingly hard question for me to answer but once I started really considering it, I suddenly had way too many characters in mind! For purposes of brevity, however, I chose just one. And that is Japha from In the Ravenous Dark! They’re “just” a side character but added so much to the story and honestly, if there were to ever be a story centred solely on them, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

10. Book that made you cry.

Legendborn also made me cry a lot but for this, I’ll pick The Anthropocene Reviewed. I don’t know what it is about John Green’s writing but it sure does hit me in a way that few other things do.

11. Book that made you happy.

Definitely Project Hail Mary. I was just so excited to finally read it and while it’s no match for The Martian for me, I had so much fun with it! It’s a fun space adventure with an unexpected and unlikely friendship at its core and lots of interesting science problems with the classic Weir-brand wild solutions.

12. Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received)

This definitely goes to the US edition of Ace of Spades, I am obsessed with it and keep looking at it on my shelf! I’m so glad I bought the hardcover in addition to the UK paperback, it’s a true beauty.

13. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

Literally all of them. I have so many unread books and it’s getting ridiculous. Also, do you think I’ve made a dent in my handy “21 books to read in 2021 list”? Ha, nope! I like to defy expectations, apparently. Please someone comfort me as my TBR threatens to crush me. Or scream at me to finally read all these books. Whatever floats your boat.

Some Closing Words

And that’s it for my Mid Year Book Freakout Tag! I’ve loved reading these on other blogs and watching my favourite booktubers do it, so I thought I’d join in. Should I find the time and energy to update all my reading tracking stuff and anyone would be interested, I might try writing a more in-depth post as a mid-year reading check-in! So if that is something you would find interesting, please let me know so I can add it to my list!

Let’s Chat!

✨ Who is your newest favourite author you discovered this year?
✨ Which book made you cry (if any)?

I hope you have a lovely day!

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