April Wrap-Up, Hiatus Announcement and RANT.

Hello, lovely book dragons! Can you believe April is already over? Time sure does fly. As you all know, I participated in the O.W.L’s Readathon this month and I am proud to announce that I’m now a Curse Breaker (in my imagination of course). Here is my April Warp-up!

I really loved doing the readathon and I’m so glad I managed to finish it. I’m usually not good with readathons, I never stick to them. But this one stuck. I read 8 books that met the requirements for the O.W.L’s.

April Wrap-up & O.W.L’s Completed

Ancient Runes – A Curse so Dark and Lonely (5 Stars)

Arithmancy – The Blacksmith and the Dragonfly (5 Stars)

Defence Against the Dark Arts – The Raven Boys (5 Stars)

Charms – Ruined Plans (2.5 Stars)

Transfiguration – Ace of Shades (5 Stars)

Potions – The Sleeping Prince (5 Stars)

These fulfilled my requirements for a Curse Breaker, and then I read two extra books that fit into the prompts as well.

Muggle Studies – Always and Forever, Lara Jean (4 Stars)

Astronomy – Starflight (4 Stars)

And I managed to finish King of Scars before the end of the month. You can read my post on that here.

RANT – My thoughts on the Exclusive Books Sale

Now as some of you know, I’m not usually a ranty person. I have my moments though, and this is one of them.

Last weekend I went to the Exclusive Books Warehouse sale. I was very excited about this for two reasons. 1) I was going to meet up with some awesome bookstagrammers from Joburg and I was super excited to meet them. 2) Bargain Books has many warehouse sales during the year in Cape Town and I have been green with envy at all the Cape Town bookstagrammers who get AMAZING YA books for R60 on almost every public holiday. So the Exclusive Books sale finally gave us Joburg bookstagrammers something to look forward to.

Books were priced at R35. This is ridiculously cheap, and I could overlook some damaged books. The day started early. We got up at 5 am to make the hour drive to Joburg to get in line at 6 am for a sale that started at 8 am.

Meeting the other bookstagrammers was the highlight of the day. We exchanged gifts, had so much fun at Starbucks and Reader’s Warehouse and just ran around like the bookaholics we are.

The Sale

The low point of the day was the actual sale. Disorganised is the word I would use. Books of all genres were just everywhere. They had no specific tables for YA, Children, Non-fiction, Cooking, etc. It was SO crowded, they had to stop letting people in at some point. I only managed to find 6 books I wanted, and only 4 of them were YA. And I had budgeted to buy 28 books that day! None of the books I found was even on my book list!

I was very disappointed, as were the rest of the bloggers. That’s why we decided to go to Reader’s Warehouse after to spend the rest of the money we would have spent at Exclusive Books.

NOT ONLY am I pissed at the sale, I’m pissed at EB in general. Don’t get me wrong, I know the South African book market doesn’t cater to YA books. BUT Exclusive Books rips off everyone, not just YA readers. Their books are ridiculously overpriced compared to Bargain Books and Reader’s Warehouse. I bought a copy of a Curse So Dark and Lonely at EB for R300. The same book at Readers Warehouse cost half the price.

It feels like EB just doesn’t care about their readers, and I would happily drive to Joburg to go to Readers Warehouse from now on.

Hiatus Announcement

So I’m going on a little blog hiatus until mid-June. May is a super busy month for me at university and I intend on doing some travelling at the end of May. I also want to read some books I don’t have to review. I did that for most of April and it was wonderful. So I will be back mid-June with a review for War Storm and Enchantée, plus maybe some collaborations.

I’ll still be active on Instagram, so I’ll see you guys there!

Have a good month!

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