April Wrap-Up: Books, K-Dramas, and Films
So, this month has been a bit different...
Some of you who follow me may recognize that last week's post was an anniversary post where I shared a bit more of why I started my blog. I didn't post any original essays or original book content because I wanted to focus on celebrating the six-month anniversary. I'm so happy with how I’ve connected with some of you, and I hope that the anniversary post inspired you to celebrate the little victories God's given you and take time to recognize how far God's taken you from where you started.
Just like how this past month has looked a little bit different, this upcoming month will look even more different. Currently, I am taking a compressed summer course for university (the first university course I'm taking), so my schedule is going to be a bit tighter. Therefore, I'm going to be writing and sharing book review posts, as well as on book topics. If you're curious to see what I mean by this, stay tuned! I will also be dropping a very interesting essay that I will be posting on my Medium page. Please consider supporting me on Medium and reading my free public essays; your support would mean so much.
Because summer is right around the corner, would you guys like for me to compile a list of books that I tend to read in the summer, or that remind me of summer? I'd love to hear your opinion and what you'd like to see from my blog in the future.
As always, I’ll be ranking my film and book recommendations from least recommended to most. And before we get into the list, I just want to say again: thank you to all of my readers and supporters. Your kindness means so very much.
Monthly Wrap-Up
Table of Contents
Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett — DNF
Agnes Aubert has a problem.
When careless magicians meet a 1920s city in
Montreal, Quebec, Agnes Aubert's rented apartment, which she uses as her cat shelter, is damaged beyond repair. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't the middle of winter, or if she weren't broke, or if she could find landlords who were reasonable about rent and amenable to having a cat shelter on their property, but unfortunately, this is not the case.
Instead, she is stuck between the fire and the frying pan, having no options but a suspicious-looking, elegant building that has a view of an old chapel that seems to be watching over the city. But seeing that she has no other options, she takes the suspicious deal to live in a grand old building with creaky pipes that sound like the house breathing and the cheap rent, overlooking why strange visitors keep filling in and out of her shop to traverse to the bowels of the mysterious and odd building through a trap door she’s not allowed to go into.
I appreciate and admire how ambitious the author was by taking on a book set in the 1960s, and I feel like my experience with the book would have been a lot different if I had known. Going into the book completely blind made it a very confusing read that I found extremely difficult to get through, and I ended up DNFing at around page 395, almost near the very end, but I couldn’t stand the feeling of wasting my time by completing it, even though I was so close.
I really wanted to say that I loved this book because I loved Heather Fawcett’s previous book series, but I can't, unfortunately.
Read my full review of Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
K-Drama Review: Bloodhounds — 3 stars
The K-drama Bloodhounds is a bloody and gritty revenge story that centers around two close friends who meet while boxing during COVID, leading up to the Olympics. Through a meal over pork belly, they discover their similarities, and their friendship begins. Even though these two young men come from vastly different backgrounds and their personalities are like night and day, that contrast somehow makes their brotherhood all the more compelling.
This is turned on its head when one of the friends, Kim Gun-woo, runs home to find his mother’s café being destroyed by a group of gangsters. He fights valiantly through a crowd of hardened criminals to save his mother, but he is ultimately stopped by a humongous and terrifying foe. He is forced by the gangsters, who are essentially loan sharks, to pay a massive amount of money he doesn’t have. This situation causes him and his new friend, Hong Woo-jin, to search for ways to get the money.
They come across a compassionate loan shark who gives money interest-free to people with health concerns for their treatments. He hires both friends to look after his adopted granddaughter, and this is where the journey begins.
There are specific scenes that are incredibly disturbing, and there were many moments I felt compelled to skip. Overall, the message of courage and friendship is overshadowed by an overwhelming amount of grit, gore, and violence. While nothing extremely graphic is shown directly on screen, enough is implied to be unsettling for sensitive viewers.
By skipping certain fighting and torture scenes, I was able to finish the drama, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone. It is highly violent, and other K-dramas explore justice, courage, and friendship with far less brutality. The strongest element of this drama was the friendship between the two main characters and the selfless brotherhood they upheld. My overall rating of this drama is three stars out of five.
Read my full review of Bloodhounds
I Hope This Doesn't Find You by Ann Liang — 4 stars
If there's one thing Sadie hates more than being unprepared, it must be Julius Gong.
By writing passive-aggressive emails that, of course, Sadie never intends to send, she can maintain the illusion of being good — the A+ student. But what happens when all of her emails are somehow sent out?
Sadie’s the type of student who has everything prepared a week in advance when an assignment is due or does school projects over the holidays. She considers any grade below ninety a failure and keeps a score in her mind of her rivalry with her nemesis, Julius Gong, assessed in points.
Sadie is the type of person whose idea of fun is to collect badges and run five miles every night. Sadie’s idea of relaxing is to be productive, and Sadie’s version of being the best... is being loved. So when her classmates ask her to help them with a project or send her entire set of notes for a semester course, she says yes. She thinks, even to herself, that she could even give her arm to her classmates if they asked nicely enough and gave enough appreciative comments, making her think maybe everybody loves her after all.
But when her secret emails, most of them concerning her academic rival and all-around life nemesis, Julius Gong, are sent out to the entire school, she begins to experience resentment from half of the student body and staff who feel the impact of her rants.
I absolutely loved I Hope This Doesn't Find You, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read a romance novel that touches upon meaningful subjects of identity, especially identity formation. Overall, I rate this book four out of five stars.
Read my full review of I Hope This Doesn't Find You By Ann Liang
That's all folks! If you’re planning to read or watch anything from my April wrap-up list, feel free to comment below!❤❤❤
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