Thoughts While Watching Heartstopper // my brain is a chaotic place

Hi hi!

With the graphic novels already having amassed a huge number of fans, the Heartstopper show on Netflix is THE craze at the moment. Maintaining my identity as a reader-before-watcher, I dutifully read the comics just after the teaser was released. And now I’m reprimanding myself for not reading them sooner because the cuteness overload!! Dessert in book form tbh.

Not that the show was any less adorable, no sir. I shall forever be in debt to the person who made all the casting choices because each actor seemed born to play their role (i was reduced to a puddle in the ground whenever Joe Locke smiled, it’s just- it’s a Charlie smile all right).

Soo let’s move on to my more detailed thoughts while watching the show, documented live in my notes app. *bows with flourish*

1. the casting is so perfect oh my lord
2. i have a colourful variety of names i’d like to call ben
3. not me drawing scene parallels from the comics
4. dude no why would you go to the library
5. charlie ignoring the autofill and typing the same thing anyway is just so charlie
6. “older sister magic”
7. aww “charlie situation”
8. would wishing that I had a friend circle like this be a step too far from my current non existent one?
9. Charlie’s room is GOALS
10. the almost hand holding thing gets me every time
11. oh my lord its the first kiss *dies*
12. oh my lord it’s the second kiss *resurrects*
13. sooo we’re back to the super cute hi *raises eyebrows suggestively*
14. like she said, “gay people can be good at sports”
15. ok wow this game is intense
16. NOBODY gets to hurt charlie that’s the rule
17. oh nick you can never just say no can you?
18. ok but the question is why didnt i know about tao’s exquisite dancing skills??
19. i know most people hate imogen for some reason but i mostly just feel sorry for her
20. ha exactly what I’ve been saying. thank you, charlie’s mom.
21. oof yeah that pinballing night, i remember
22. tao nick face off!!
23. aaand he’s told tara and darcy!!
24. idk why but tara and darcy are like 100 times cooler to me onscreen than in the comics, and they were already pretty cool in the comics soo
25. i’m pretty sure sipping has become a personality trait for tori at this point
26. ohmygod nick charlie tara darcy texting parallels!!
27. the way tao and elle suddenly became so much more interested in their milkshakes—
28. tori’s deadpan “called it”…she’s my idol
29. punching harry in the face must be so satisfying
30. omg tao’s a leftie like me! so true of us
31. aw did tao literally have to cry and break my heart like that
32. charlie and tao making up might just be the best thing that has happened to me today
33. oh don’t mind the noise its just me yelling BEACH BEACH BEACH
34. i wish i could yell truths at the universe like nick
35. nick’s coming out scene shall forever be embedded in my heart (the part that is not already occupied by all the heartstopper adorableness)

With that we’re done and waiting on Season 2! With Netflix’s previous record, I’ll be surprised if all the seasons get released in my lifetime so there’s that,,, but no harm staying optimistic, is there?

Have you seen the Heartstopper show yet? Have you read the graphic novels?? Which are your favourite scenes??

~Rachel

Advertisement

April Wrap-Up // a fantastic reading month!! (ft. me gushing about Shadow and Bone)

So another month gone by! Let’s take a look at my reading, blogging, blog-hopping and other highlights of the month.

April has been, by far, the best reading month this year! I read a total of 7 books, which is pretty impressive considering that I have been trying to level up from my boring 5 books per month since the beginning of this year.

Archenemies by Marissa Meyer [4 stars] Eh, this was one of those books where I was totally lost after the end. I had no idea whether to rate it 3 stars or 4 stars or 5 stars. But finally I settled with 4. At this point of time, I am like – Just tell everyone who Nightmare and Sentinel is!! And if you wanted to keep it secret forever, maybe it could have been unknown to the readers as well? Because it is getting kinda annoying now, to be honest.

The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury [3 stars] My first audiobook! But what a disappointment the story was. It was too repetitive, to the point that so many things got downright irritating. And the beginning was nice enough, I don’t know what happened after that.

Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception [4 stars] Actually I don’t remember much about this, but I do enjoy a good heist, so that was one of the reasons I gave this 4 stars.

A Wilder Magic by Juliana Brandt [4 stars] This was my first ever ARC!! I got this as a part of a book promo tour I did this month. It was such a beautiful middle grade with amazing platonic relationships. Read my full review HERE.

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman [4.5 stars] This was easily my favourite book of April. It definitely deserves a lot more hype, I have rarely heard bloggers mention this. There were equal parts mystery, friendship and adventure in Book Scavenger. To read my full review, see my journal spread and play a small bookish game inspired by Book Scavenger, click HERE.

The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn Bowman [1.5 stars] Well. I am still debating whether to put up a review for this on my blog or not, since I haven’t really posted a negative review here before, and this is also a very new release. But I did post a review on Goodreads, you can read it HERE.

Misfit (Asura Chronicles #1) by Jo Zaida [3 stars] Another ARC!! So I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had expected to, but it was worth reading anyways. Review to come!

I am proud to report that I carefully followed the posting schedule I had set up for myself last month (except for last week, when I had a blog tour post out of schedule, on a Sunday) throughout the month of April! When I started, I didn’t think I would be able to follow it throughout, to be honest, but turns out I was wrong!

I am not going to link all my posts from this month here, only specific ones. If you would like to see all my posts in April, click HERE.

I have included the links to my posts in their featured images below, so all you have to do is click on the ones that catch your attention!

A discussion post all about book titles! I am quite proud of this one actually, so do check it out if you missed it earlier!

I do love writing 5 star reviews!!

I created a quiz for you to find some great recs!!

I tried to be really active on all of your posts this month, and I think I succeeded to a great extent. I interacted with your blogs wherever I could, and came across some interesting posts in the process.

Amy @A Fangirl’s Opinion wrote about some funny books and characters on April Fools day!

April @Booked Till Midnight shared her recipe for a 5 star read!

Alice @Love For Words related Pride and Prejudice quotes to her everyday life! I have not read Pride and Prejudice completely (I’ve read only short excerpts) but this humorous post had me chuckling out aloud!

Ritz @Living, Loving and Reading Netflix’s Shadow And Bone and her thoughts are SO similar to mine!!

Ashmita @the fictional journal made a list of characters who are likely to jump-scare people!

Ritz @Living, Loving and Reading gives us some great sci-fi recs and also shares her sci-fi tbr!

---

Other updates and highlights of the month

• We hit 100 followers in early April!! This is my first big blogging milestone, so thank you so much for that guys🥰 It means a lot to have you enjoy and appreciate my content.
• The Home page of my blog now has a brand new look! I have changed the header image, put in a sidebar and stuff like that.
• My blog now has a Review Policy page.
• I received my first ARCs and took part in my first blog tour this month!
• April was Shadow and Bone month!!!! (oops sorry for all the exclamations, this just shows how much I loved the show) By now, you all know how much the Six Of Crows duology means to me. If you don’t, IT’S MY FAVOURITE BOOK OF ALL TIME!! So naturally I was excited for the S&B show on Netflix. Though I started watching it only for the Crows, the Alina-Darkling storyline also got me hooked and made me wonder why I didn’t read the Shadow and bone trilogy earlier (I am not going to read it now, I want to know the story only from the show). I finished watching all 8 episodes of S&B in four days, and wow I loved seeing my favourite characters brought to life. The casting was just perfect. Freddy Carter is going to be stuck in my mind’s eye as Kaz forever, and same with the others. I didn’t think it was possible to love and admire Kaz more than I did after reading the books, but this show proved me wrong…my heart went out for him even more!! The ‘No mourners, no funerals’ line was also so perfect when it happened. Jesper and Milo were absolute showstealers!! Okay, not gonna ramble any more, but seriously, go watch it!!

---

How was your April? Did you watch Shadow And Bone? Have you read any of the books that I read in April? Chat with me in the comments!!

Julie and the Phantoms Book Tag

Four months into 2021, and I am doing my first tag of the year! Yeah, I know apologies are due. All of you amazing people have tagged me for so many amazing tags, and I love you for that, but I am really sorry that I wasn’t able to do them. I stopped doing tags and awards completely in December last year, as I felt that my blog was becoming flooded with them. But I have decided to start posting tags once in a while from now on. So I found this tag at Living, Loving and Reading, and I have had Julie and the Phantoms on my Netflix watchlist since ages (I really should watch it soon), so I thought, why not?

Rules

•  Link back to the original post (and also Sarah’s booktube account)!!
•  Thank whoever tagged you!!
•  Answer the prompts!!
•  Tag some friends to share the awesomeness!!
•  Go watch Julie and the Phantoms on Netflix (and sing every song like it’s your last performance on stage)!!

I just got this as part of my birthday book haul, and I have also recently discovered my love for novels set in space (thanks to the Aurora cycle) so Skyward by Brandon Sanderson is pretty high up on my TBR.

This was my first Christie book, and also my first crime novel. My father, who was a big Christie fan at the time, kept recommending this to me, but I was a little reluctant because this was something completely new to me. But it turned out to be so good, and it still remains one of my favourite crime novels.

Yeah, I was completely in the KOTLC zone then, and I think I read all the books by September, and then Unlocked got released in November, but I got to read it in January.

Yeah, I don’t speak about this a lot nowadays, but there was a time when I was totally fascinated by the HUGE twists in Jefferey Archer books, and Nothing Ventured is quite a favourite of mine.

Ha! You didn’t think I would write an entire post without mentioning SoC, did you? Anyway, I have always said that one of the major reasons I love the Six Of Crows duology is because it is really fast-paced and full of action. I mean, there aren’t many of the classic ‘combat’ scenes as such, but aren’t Kaz’s schemes a full-fledged war by themselves?😉 I will leave you to ponder on that.

Another KOTLC book! The entire series basically has pretty much the same characters, so my answer for this one would be the entire Keeper Of the Lost Cities series.

We love you Dex! You are the best friend there ever is!

I think I fell into a slump in the beginning of March, but somewhere in the middle I started reading Aurora Rising, and it got me out of my reading slump!

The Aurora Cycle is once again my answer! I have always said that the major reason this duology has me impressed is because of its amazing characters.

*spends half an hour staring into the book shelf before going with the one she had already thought of*

This was a very tough decision, believe me. (I am so sorry Kal, I know your face looks gorgeous on the cover, but I didn’t want all these people thinking I have become obsessed with the Aurora Cycle, which I actually have, but anyway I love the Burning cover, and I am so sorry not for choosing you).

I know there is this weird golden circle, some medal or something, in the image, but that is not there in the paperback copy that I have, and yeah, the book looks so much better without it. Also, I still haven’t read this, and I need to read it soon.

Uhh…I really can’t decide as such. There’s Kaz-Inej from SoC, Laia-Keenan from An Ember In the Ashes (Yeah, they seem a better fit than Laia-Elias), oh and Nova-Adrian from Renegades.

Nah, I really don’t have an answer to this, sorry!

Look, I am not the kind of person who cries after the end of most books. It takes a LOT for a book to affect me so much, as to make me cry. So I am not blaming the books, I am blaming myself. I might have been close to tears in a couple of books, but that has not happened recently, so I don’t really remember.

Marcus from AEITA. That guy disgusts me so much that I love hating him.

I had got goosebumps while reading this. I am not a big fan of the horror genre in general, and even the smallest think spooks me out, so its no big deal actually.

---

Since I have not seen many people do this tag, I am going to tag some of my friends :

Ahaana @Windows To Worlds

Ashmita @the fictional journal

April @ booked till midnight

Nehal @Books and Words

Madeline @ The bookish mutant

---

Have you seen Julie And The Phantoms? Or have you listened to these songs? What about the books I mentioned…have you read any? Let me know in the comments!