I wanted to expand my blog, more than reviews, and do a lot of fun bookish activities as well. And I thought I'd try out this new trend going around in the book community: painting your book edges.

Sprayed edges is a new thing going around with publishers, (I believe) starting with Six of Crows' beautiful black sprayed edges. And I'm guessing this trend started because of that.

I really liked the idea of painting book edges yourself, because I feel like you can add your own little twists to your book. I mean, Six of Crows is beautiful, but because it's a publishers choice that the edges are black, everyone owns the same style. Painting it yourself gives your book it's own little twist.

When this trend first started going around, I thought it'd be fun but I'm not that artistic. I always say I am, but let's be honest, I'm not that artsy. So I decided to put it on the back burner and just admire people's photos from afar. 

That was until I saw littlewolfreads on Instagram's copy of IT that she painting red and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Me being IT obsessed, grabbed paint right away and decided to paint not one, but eight of my books.

Today, I wanted to share a bit of my experience with you guys and how it ended up turning out.

I ended up going to the dollar store with my mom and picked up 6 paints and a pack of paint brushes for about $10, which is incredibly inexpensive for those who want to give this DIY yourself.

I picked up a pack of 5 paint brushes for $1.25 but I only ended up using the two biggest brushes just to save the painting process. But, obviously, I did have to wash them repeatedly throughout painting the 8 books. Thankfully, my dad already had painters tape in the garage so I didn't have to buy any, but I did use a fair amount of tape. I think I finished at least half of the roll above.

I picked up 6 different colours of acrylic paint: red, blue, yellow, black, purple and pink. If you're wondering why didn't I just get the primary colours, alongside white and black and just mixed colours; I didn't think of that until after I made my purchase. It was a last minute thing, and I honestly didn't think it through.

I used the painters tape to tape around the edges of the book and around the edges of the spine as well so the book itself wouldn't get paint on it. I also used a couple of heavy books to keep the book shut and the paged intact, so the paint wouldn't seep through.

I then started to paint around the edges of each of the books, and after the paint was dry, took apart each page individually - because they were stuck together from the paint.

My advice when painting is edges is to take your time as use little paint as possible. It's such a pain to take the pages apart if theres too much paint on the book.

Like I said earlier, I painted 8 of my books and I do love how well they turned out, even though there were some flaws. I wanted to show you guys how they turned out, and talk a little bit about my experience.



So the main reason why I wanted to paint my pages was because I saw littlewolfreads on Instagram do this to her copy of IT, and me being IT obsessed, I was 10000000% on board. This was the first book that I painted the edges for and I think it turned out the best. There are a little bit of missed edges, but honestly, you can't really tell unless you really look at the book. In person, it looks just as amazing and the colour is so vibrant.

Based on Miles Morales from the Marvel comics, this book follows Miles as he notices his spidey-senses are "fading" which leads to his suspension at school. Miles then begins to question his abilities and whether he deserves to posses them; after all, he's the son/nephew of the well-known Brooklyn criminals.

Shatter Me follows our main character Juliette who has an extraordinary gift -- or superpower: she has has a lethal touch. Her parents gave her away, and she's been locked up for almost a year. The world is crumbling and The Reestablishment believes Juliette's touch will be perfect for the awaited war. But does Juliette want to use her powers for good, or bad?

I don't even know where to start with this review.

I guess I want to start off by saying how amazing this plot is! I know this book has been around for a while and so many people have been a fan of the series way before I even decided to join the book community, but wow, I'm hooked! 

The whole storyline of Juliette having this lethal touch has always been quite interesting to me. And I love how it portrays how her powers affect other humans throughout the novel as well.

One of my favourite aspects of Shatter Me is Tahereh Mafi's ability to distribute information consistently throughout the novel. I know, with dystopian and fantasy especially, it's really hard not to info dump things like world building and character structure, but Tahereh Mafi did an amazing job with leaving the reader wanting more.

To this day, we don't really know why Juliette has these powers anyways and I really like that, for some reason. It really made it difficult for me to put the book down. 

I had originally started this book at the end of February, but put it down for a little while, not because it was bad or anything, but because I wanted to read other books in the meantime. But once I picked the book back up, it was so hard for me to put it back down. I also noticed that this book is really fast paced and grips you, hard.

(I also started annotating this book, but decided not to continue somewhere at the beginning because the book was getting so good and I didn't want to continue putting in the effort. Maybe next time when I re-read this, I'll finish annotating it!)

I had so many instances where I forgot I was even reading the novel. It felt like I was with Juliette through this journey of her leaving The Reestablishment, meeting James for the first time, trying to flea Adam's apartment. It all felt so realistic and vivid.

Speaking of Juliette, I loved her character. I know a lot of people didn't and at the beginning, especially, I can see that. But the more you get to know Juliette and realize what she's been through, you understand her lack of trust for people, let alone her inability to communicate at the beginning.

I also really liked Adam's character and really ship Juliette and Adam hard. I know so many OG Shatter Me fans are shaking their heads right now, but come on, I'm only on book one! I think Adam and his little brother, James' relationship is really cute as well. I loved reading scenes with James in it; his innocents and enthusiasm towards life made me so happy. 

Kenji is another character you all said I would love and look at that, I do! He brought so much comic relief and literally had me laughing out loud. If you've read the Percy Jackson books, he reminds me of Rover. (Is that good grammar? Who knows lol) They have very similar personalities and I loved that.

Warner was a really creepy character to me. How he wanted Juliette to automatically fall in love with him and everything. (I know everyone who already loves Shatter Me is laughing because I'm pretty sure the whole fandom ships him and Juliette so hard, but again, I'm only on book one.) The scene that especially creeped me out was when Kenji, James, Adam and Juliette are trying to flee Adam's old apartment and Warner tries to seduce Juliette as Adam is bleeding out on the floor somewhere. Whenever he whispers anything, I find it really creepy and cringy. If I'm going to ship them, I hope he gets better as a character -- just saying.

The ending is definitely what tops the cake for me. Not only do we actually get a suspenseful climax, but the ending was great. I loved the whole idea of Omega Point and the fact that Juliette has a place to be safe (alongside Adam and James) where there are kids who also have superpowers like her, makes me incredibly happy. At first, it reminded me a lot like Camp Half-Blood, until I really thought about it. The whole idea of Omega Point reminds me of X-Men and I love it. I love X-Men, it's probably my favourite Marvel comic so I'm down for this.

I cannot wait to dive into the next coming books soon!

If you were to have any superpower, what would it be? Let me know in the comments or on my Instagram! 

Happy Wednesday!

Welcome to my very late but also on time wrap up!

I never ended up writing my wrap up for February and by the time I had time to, it was too late, so I decided to write them both in one blog post!

Between the two months, I read 20 books so this is going to be a long wrap up!

I'm going to keep my intro short so we can get into all the books I read.

Supermarket follows our main character Flynn, who is depressed, recently dumped and currently living with his mom. Trying to get his life together, Flynn applies for a job at the Supermarket. A Supermarket that changes his life when he arrives to work at a crime scene and the secrets of his tortured mind are revealed. 

Welp, where do I start? 

Bobby Hall is actually the rapper Logic for those who aren't aware. My boyfriend is a huge fan of Logic and his music, and one day a couple of years back, he had me watch a couple of Logic's interviews. His mind and intelligence really intrigued me so when I found out he was publishing a book, I knew it was going to be amazing. 

That was until I actually sat down and read the book..

The first 20 pages we're really good in my opinion. There were a lot of humorous parts that I actually loved and they actually made me laugh out loud. And at first, certain writing styles that Bobby included, I really enjoyed.

There's an element at the beginning of the novel where the writer relates to the reader almost, and I thought it was going to be a little comedic element until this instance kept occurring and that's when I started to lose interest in it.

At first, I pictured it as those scenes in The Office, where they'll look at the camera whenever someone says something dumb and you just laugh.

But the more the main character, Flynn talks to the reader in this informal writing style, it becomes a little cringy-almost for me and it isn't really something I wanted to read throughout the novel.

I also thought the lack of dialogue was kind of weird, especially at the beginning of the book and I think this is because Flynn was relating to the reader more than actually going out and talking to people! (lol) 

When I did notice quotations in the novel, I felt like they weren't correctly placed. It bugged me how there were a lot of instances where Flynn would think something but it was written in quotations, although the whole book was written in first person, so I thought this wasn't really necessary. 

I noticed the whole dialogue element gets better throughout the book though, so I'm glad about that.

I also think the writing is a little too intricate. More intricate than you'd hope for in a novel. For example, there's moments where Bobby gets into what certain characters are wearing, or exactly what certain locations looked like and I don't really care about that aspect.

I know it's supposed to be an element of world building, but I feel like it isn't executed as well as I would've hoped. For example, it'll say something along the lines of: "The supermarket is 10ft by 13ft. The cash registers are at the front, right besides the freezer, and the deli section and bakery are at the back. The walls are red but the floors are yellow. There are nine isles and they run about 6ft down the store." 

That isn't an exact quote, but it's something similar. It's also something I don't really care about. I feel like world building should gradually occur, not all at once.

Getting into the juicy spoiler segment, I knew Frank wasn't real since day one. No one has personally talked to Frank and when you assume someone is talking to him, he's always around of group of people or Flynn, so it's obvious Frank isn't real. 

I knew this element right off the bat because one of my favourite books ever: Every Last Word has this same element. 

I predicted everything that occurred with Frank because it's basically the same exact thing that happens in Every Last Word, so I guess this didn't blow my mind as much as it would've for someone else who hasn't read a book with this element.

I'll admit that the ending was my favourite part though, mainly because of how it twists the novel back to the beginning. 

If you ever get a chance to listen to the audiobook though, I highly recommend it because Logic actually narrates it and I feel like his voice is great for this novel. There's also added music before every chapter and I quite enjoyed that.

My boyfriend repeatedly reminds me that this is Logic's debut novel, so I shouldn't be so hard on him, but let's be realistic. My whole job on the blog is to be critical and rapper or not, a debut novel is a debut novel and I've read so many that are phenomenal and greatly executed. But with that being said, I do believe that if Logic decides to publish another book, there is so much room for him and his writing to grow. 

What do you guys think? Have you read Supermarket? If you have, what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments below or on my Instagram! I'd love to know your thoughts!