The Poet X follows our main character, Xiomara, a teen who has recently found a new love of poetry, which she puts all her frustration and passion into pages. Growing up in a super religious household, she starts to question her faith and as she's invited to join a poetry group, she realizes it's during the same time as her confirmation classes. Hoping her mom doesn't find out, Xiomara would rather not stay silent than face a world that doesn't want to hear her.

I actually don't think this review will be as long as my usual reviews because there isn't much to say. But because I really did love this novel, I really wanted to write a review because I know there are a handful of people who read my reviews and pick the book up after, almost like you guys actually trust my recommendations.

I honestly read this because my good friend on bookstagram, Johely is obsessed with this novel. And I'm sure if you follow her as well, you'd know the extent of obsessed I mean when I say Johely is obsessed with this novel.

Whenever I bring up needing a recommendations, Johely always replies with The Poet X and I now understand why.

The Poet X isn't actually written like a "normal" book in which it has long paragraphs and what not. This book is written in mostly poems. This is something completely new to me because I haven't really read much poetry other than Poe and Shakespeare.. besides the modern poetry that I'm not a huge fan of.

But unlike the modern poetry books that go around, this book follows a plot line that continues throughout the whole book. That means, although there are multiple poems in this novel, they all connect to each other to create one whole story. Through this element, we learn about different aspects of Xiomara's life including her relationship with her parents, her views on religion, how she feels about herself, etc.

This book is so raw and honestly speaks about certain topics without romanticizing it (which is also so freaking hard to find.)

The poems are flow so well with the whole book itself and it made me feel ways that I never thought I would've when reading a book in this style. There would be moments when I'd read certain poems and tear up or get emotional because they are so genuine and real and very nicely displayed. Not necessarily just relatable, but you can genuinely feel the emotions.

The thing I noticed the most about modern poetry opposed to this novel is that modern poetry is basically relatable quotes. I hate to say it, but I'm being honest. This is completely different. It's raw and genuine. (And the only reason why I'm not comparing it to "authentic" poetry is because although it's vastly different, it's also not that far from it either.) I've read parts of The Poet X in which I loved the quotes, but I've also read parts that actually made me feel and I think and wonder. And I loved that.

Even though it's written in poems, you get so attached to these characters anyways. The poems and emails, all the dialogue really shows you the personalities of each of the characters in The Poet X, especially Xiomara and I loved that. It expands so much detail that you ever thought could be portrayed in a book like this, during an era like this, much more than you could ever imagine.

When I saw how each page was written, I didn't think about how much this book would portray things that certain novels still can't portray very well.

I also absolutely loved the diversity included in this novel. I haven't read very many Dominican-based novels just yet but I'm really happy I've read this. This representation is so important and I'm so happy about that.

I know some people aren't really huge poetry fans or they don't really understand the concept of poetry per se, but it's not just how this book is written that will affect the reader. Honestly, if you aren't a huge fan of poetry, I highly recommend at least listening to the audiobook. The content is so important and I think everyone should definitely, at least, give it a shot.

With that being said, there isn't much else I could say about The Poet X. It's absolutely amazing and I think it needs to be heard more than it is. There isn't enough people talking about it and I think there definitely should be.

What's a book you love that you wish more people read? Let me know in the comments section below or on my Instagram!

Hi lovelies!

So I mentioned a little bit ago on my blog that I wanted to expand with more than just reviews this year, and from here on end.

I asked you guys what you wanted to see first; this or my review of my Novel Companion and majority said a bookmark collection, so here we are!

I wanted to make a disclaimer that I'm not here to brag or show off my collection in a negative way. I thought this idea would be really fun and I've seen them all over booktube and book blogs!

I do own a handful of them from different places and thought it'd be really fun to show you what I own in hopes that maybe, you guys will do the same!

So with that being said, let's get into my bookmark collection!

I keep all of my bookmarks in this white mug that says "Baby Got Books" that I got from my Godson one year and I love it too much to use. The bookmark-filled mug sits on top of my little, two shelved bookcase that I also use as a desk. The only bookmark that doesn't sit in this mug is my Pennywise bookmark, which you'll see later. It sits in my heat changing IT much that sits on my IT shelf.

Lady Liberty

The first set of bookmarks I wanted to show you guys are from one of my favourite bookmark shops AStrangerDream who is known for her horror bookmarks! The first one I have is of Lady Liberty from the movie The Purge: Election Year. I'm a huuuuge horror fan if you didn't know, so when I discovered this shop, I automatically had to make a purchase. I believe this was a freebie with my order, since I order, possibly around the 4th of July? But either way, I do love it and the shop owner's drawings of each of these horror icons are phenomenal!

Hi lovelies!

Today I wanted to dive into the whole concept of annotating and writing in novels. 

I've gotten a lot of requests and messages from people who ask me how I write in my books and what tools I use for a while now and I've kind of put this whole blog post on the back burner, mainly because I was also trying out different ways to annotate and see what fit me best. 

I know I did a post on how I annotated my copy of IT by Stephen King, which will be linked here if you're curious on reading it, but in the last year, the way I annotate my books have completely changed.

 For starters, I get a lot of questions asking why I annotate. Writing in your books is almost like a sin in the book community, most people are very much so against it. I covered the basis of why I decided to annotate in my IT annotating post, but basically, when I first started reading avidly, I was also against writing in my books and wanted to keep them in pristine condition. That was until I read an essay basically saying, everyone can own a copy of a book, but no one can own the copy of your book with all your thoughts and ideas written into it.

I thought this was absolutely brilliant and decided to try it on my fourth (second at the time) copy of IT.

I love the idea of looking back in the future and reading all your thoughts and memories when you first read the book. I also really want to build my own Home Library (yes, I know I've already started) but I want to build a room full for my future kids and have them read all my thoughts while reading and see what differs my opinions to theirs. 

After doing a little testing on my copy of IT, I decided I wanted to do it more frequently. I'm still trying to get in the hang of writing and highlighting when I can but some books I forget to do so, and will probably end up doing it during a re-read in the future. 

The only books I do not write in are my "collectables" which are mainly Stephen King first editions. Otherwise, I want to write in them as much as I can!

With that little backstory, I really want to get into what I use and how I do it!

I've gone through a lot of trials and experiments with annotating, which is why if you pull certain books from my library, the annotating is a little over the top, but I think I've found a pretty good way that fits my laziness but also helps me. 

When I annotated IT, I used so many different coloured highlighters with different meanings and that really did confuse me when I was reading. I know a lot of people can still stick to this concept, but I cannot.

The way I annotate is really simple: a pen and a highlighter. Both usually corresponds with the cover. No meaning at all, if the cover is blue, I'll use a blue highlighter. If the cover is yellow, I'll use a yellow highlighter. If the cover is rainbow, I get to pick what I use. 

This was really fun for me because not only to I love corresponding colours, but it's nice to see that not every book is the same highlighter, same colour. 

Typically, I'd use the highlighter to highlight anything I find really important; quotes mainly but if theres also something I really want to remember, like a cute moment between characters, I'll highlight that as well.

Otherwise, I'll use a pen and underline the sentences. I also use a pen to write in the margins.

Whenever I decide to write the the margins (which is often) I write whatever I feel. If I'm mad at a character, I'll yell at them in the margins, whenever I have a little giddy "fangirl moment", I have a suspicion on something that could possibly be foreshadowing, or anything like that, I write in the margins.

This colour pen usually is the same colour as the highlighter, unless I'm highlighting with yellow; then I'll use a black pen to write. Because writing with a yellow pen isn't very affective -- I also don't own a yellow pen, and I definitely don't own a black highlighter, they go hand-in-hand well.

I have very specific brands I use for writing utensils.

I am a huge retractable writing item gal because I hate pulling the cap off and putting it back on when I'm finished. (I also hate when my highlighters dry out easily, so open cap isn't an option for me.)

Most of the time I read, I follow along with the audiobook. I learn best with my ears, so when something is told to me, it's easier for me to remember than me reading off the page. I'm a slow reader originally, and this has helped me pick up the speed with my reading. (I plan to get more in depth with this in a future blog post.)

But because I listen to an audiobook, I don't like to pause my book every couple of minutes, and I think the app wouldn't like it either.

When I first started annotating, I used the Staples Hype Pocket Highlighter and the Sharpie ACCENT Highlighter but they both had the biggest problem I disliked -- they both came with caps.

I really wanted to put no effort in fiddling with caps, so I now use the Sharpie Retractable Highlighters and I love them so much!

They don't bleed through pages, they don't smear, and they come with a small door (Sharpie calls it a Safety Shield) that's pushed out when you retract the highlighter to use it. When you're done highlighting, click the end of the highlighter again and the door shuts -- that way, your highlighter won't dry out.

As for pens, I use two kinds. I use the uni-ball Signo Retractable Pens  and the Bic Velocity Gel Pens which are both retractable. (I've only tried the Bic pens in black, but I absolutely love them. I'll definitely look into the coloured ones in the future!)

Both brands of pens are absolutely amazing, they work great and write very smoothly.

I know some people prefer to write in their books with pencil because it can be erased, so I highly suggest if you are debating on writing, or you're just starting out but have a gut feeling you''ll regret it, I definitely think you should write in pencil first. Because if you change your mind, it can be erased!

Now I know a lot of people who annotate, tab their books, or people who annotate, right now, are saying, "Jessica, why don't you tab your books?! You write reviews for them all the time!" and I've tried.

I've tried to tab my books -- which by the way, tabbing means adding book flags to pages to keep a spot, and it just never stuck with me. Mainly because I wasn't a huge fan of them sticking out of my books. I use them often as models for bookstagram and I'm personally not a huge fan of the flags sticking out of my books.

With that being said, if you're into tabbing your books, feel free to do so!

There really isn't a right way or a wrong way to annotate a book. If you want to use the "Multiple highlighter mean multiple meanings" method, go ahead and do so! If you don't want to highlight, and you only want to underline, go ahead! It's what works for you, the reader. It's essentially your book, and you should annotate it as you please.

I want to hear from you lovelies, do you write in your books? And if you do, how do you do it? Let me know in the comments or on my Instagram!

King of Scars is a new duology by Leigh Bardugo that is based in the infamous "Grishaverse" and follows the events of her previous series/duology The Grisha Trilogy (Shadow and Bone, Seige and Storm, & Ruin and Rising) and Six of Crows (Six of Crows, & Crooked Kingdom). The book follows King Nikolai, who was previously given a demon inside of him and his journey through that. It also follows Nina, a Grisha given the task to save other Grisha - who are illegal, to safety.


I am so shook.

I binged read The Grisha Trilogy prior to reading this and I'm so happy I did because whoa, spoilers. For those who don't know, King of Scars takes place in the same world as Bardugo's other books and are a follow up to those series.

The only book from the Grisha world I didn't read was Crooked Kingdom and I regret it because this book spoils the events very harshly. (I'll get more into it later.)

Prior to reading King of Scars, I've read a lot of posts from people asking if they can read this book without reading the previous trilogy and duology and I would have to say no. Mainly because there's a lot of spoilers, but also because you might find it difficult to understand somethings that occur in this series; for example the ending of King of Scars and how that pertains to Nikolai and the demon that has been in his body for this long now.

One of the biggest spoilers, and I mean spoilers - so if you've read the title and are continuing to read, I've warned you, that has hit me was the death of Matthias. I loved Six of Crows so much, it's one of my favourite books of all time, heck, I even have a pillow of all the characters in Six of Crows. But I never ended up reading Crooked Kingdom, I don't know why, but I really wish I would've because Nina's grief isn't how I wanted to find out about Matthias' death..

Which, getting into that, Nina is one of my favourite characters that Leigh Bardugo has ever written. I was so excited about King of Scars, mainly because of Nina and Nikolai, and it was so heartbreaking to read Nina's grief and how difficult it was to let go of Matthias. Hell, it took her, what, days - maybe even weeks to bury Matthias because she not only wanted a perfect spot to bury him, but because she didn't want to let him go and have his voice stop in her head.

Nina's first couple of chapters seriously broke my heart and I wanted to give Nina the biggest hug ever.

I feel like Nina should have her own book because whenever I read Nina's chapters, I felt like I was reading a completely different novel - but in a good way, if that makes sense. Nina's plot in this book is a little different from everyone else's, and I loved reading her chapters. I looked forward to Nina's chapters, to be honest. I think they were the best written and the most intriguing and gripped me from page one.

I also love how she mentions not only Matthias, but the rest of the Six of Crows crew a lot! Especially when she talks about how much she misses Inej's guidance and what not. I was so happy with this addition to the novel. Like nothing has really changed in Nina's heart, besides the heartbreak.

As much as this series is called the "Nikolai Duology," it feels like it surrounded Zoya the most in this book. It's understandable how we're following Nikolai through this whole demon adventure and what not, but it felt more like Zoya helping Nikolai overcome this situation than Nikolai, himself overcoming this situation.

I also mentioned this on GoodReads while I was reading, but it seems like Zoya has the most chapters in this book and they all seemed pretty boring to me. Maybe because I'm not a huge fan of Zoya, but whenever I'd see a chapter was based on Zoya, I'd sigh and it would be really difficult for me to get through it. I did like her more near the end (still not my favourite character though, just saying) but I wish we had more chapters by Nikolai. I think the Zoya parts were what made some parts of this book a little slow for me.

I absolutely loved the little Nikolai backstory through this book though; how he adored his older brother and wanted to be like him, but realized he wasn't worth as much as his brother, so he tried to do other things to stand out. I loved this addition to getting to know Nikolai better and in a way, what shaped Nikolai to be himself now.

Like I said earlier, there were a lot of parts in this book where it was really slow and at the beginning, I really debated on DNFing (Did Not Finish) but I'm really happy I pulled through.

I noticed that by the time there were only 60 pages left, I was panicking because I had a lot of unanswered questions, and this area was a little foggy to me because although the beginning of the book was slow, the end all happened so fast and I kind of wish everything was distributed well, but I also kind of liked the way it played out because I forgot about the questions that weren't answered yet.

If I had DNF'd this book, it would have been an easy, 2-3 stars for me. But since I pulled through, it's definitely a solid 4, especially because of that ending!

I can't wait to read what Leigh Bardugo does with Nikolai and the rest of the group in the next book!

If you could have a side novel based on your favourite character, who would it be? Let me know in the comments or on my Instagram! I'd love to know!

I'll Be Gone In The Dark is a true crime novel about a former journalist's obsession with the Golden State Killer. The Golden State Killer was known to be behind multiple rape and murder cases.

**Trigger Warning for Sexual Assault, and Rape***

Okay, wow!

I've never actually read True Crime before. My boyfriend is currently in school for forensic and all that good stuff and he really got me into True Crime, and investigating serial killers. He bought me this book as a late Christmas gift and I'm so happy he did because I devoured it!

I wasn't too familiar to the Golden State Killer prior to this. So reading this book was technically introducing me to not only this horrible human, but also the horrible crimes he's done in 70s and 80s.

I was at a loss for words reading this book.

Michelle McNamara has amazing writing, might I mention. Her writing is so interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat. At most points, I had goosebumps chilling down my spine because it was written so well and in depth.

I listened to most of this book on audiobook while I was running errands and I remember feeling so uncomfortable hearing everything this GSK was doing to people in California. It freaked me out while I was getting groceries, I was starting to get paranoid.

I wanted to add that for a while after reading this book, I was terrified of my home at night.

For those who don't know, the Golden State Killer was responsible for about 13 murders, more than 50 rapes and and over 100 burglaries in the 70s and 80s in California.

The GSK would break locks of homes at night, and roam around homes, steal what he wanted, then proceed to rape females and in some cases, kill them and their families.

I was drawn aback by this whole book and this whole case. Mainly because he wasn't caught for over 40 years, and thanks to this book, the man is now in custody.

I saw a lot of reviews from people saying it was sometimes hard to follow, but I thought it flowed quite well.

The book went in order by events, adding a bit of the author's life here and there.

At first, I wasn't a huge fan of the additional chapters about the author's life, mainly because I thought she didn't play a part in this case at all. But after a while, you start to appreciate those chapters. You see her personal relationships and her real obsession to this case. And it's even more heartbreaking she had died before the GSK was even caught.

The author goes quite in depth with these cases, she tells you as much detail as you'd like to hear. If you are triggered to these situations, I definitely do not recommend reading this book because McNamara really doesn't hold back.

My whole thought process whilst reading this book is, how in the world did this guy get away with so many cases of assault and rape and murder for over four decades and no one had no idea who he was until recently.

There were so many moments when reading this book where I was like, "Couldn't they have found this person because of this" and it irritated me. The Golden State Killer wore a mask while I did these crimes, so no one has actually seen his face while I was going from home to home.

But still, I was so angered that he hasn't be caught until 2018.

Like I said earlier, this was my first true crime book and I loved it. It brought high standards for this genre to me. Ever since, I've been searching for new True Crime books to read that could potentially be better than this.

Joseph James DeAngelo was caught as the Golden State Killer in 2018 and from what I learned from this novel is how evil this man is. Disturbing and evil. And I'm so happy they caught him and he's now in custody.