Hey, guys! I am super excited to talk about all of the books I read in March because I had a really fantastic reading month. I actually ended up reading a total of eight books this month, which is amazing by my standards, so I am super proud of myself for that. A lot of these were for my classes, which helped a lot, and I did enjoy the majority of the books I read this month. But let’s go ahead and jump right into it!

The first book I read in the month of March was Dire by Alyssa Rose Ivy.

This is the first book in a new adult paranormal romance series featuring werewolves, but surprisingly I actually hated the shifters. This is a first for me. Our main character is held captive by these wolves with a guy she actually has known her whole life and whom she has had passionate sex with and also is kind of in love with, so I am currently rooting for him to win out in the rest of the series because I really don’t like the premise of the alpha of the wolf pack keeping her captive trying to force a relationship on her by limiting any and all contact with this boy she actually loves. I found this book incredibly frustrating and it kind of made me feel all gross at times because of the alpha and I just wasn’t the biggest fan of it, but I also didn’t outright hate it. There were some good parts, and there were some bad parts. I went into all of it in my review of the book, but I did end up giving it 3/5 stars.

The next book I read was Kiss of a Dragon by Alisa Woods.

This is the first book in an adult paranormal romance series featuring dragon shifters, and I actually absolutely fell in love with this book. It is sexy as hell, fun, dangerous, and actually quite deep. There are some heavy trigger warnings in this book for domestic violence, rape, attempted rape, spousal abuse, PTSD, and sexual assault, so keep all of that in mind before you read this book, but if you can handle those kinds of topics, I definitely recommend this book because it is so good. I think you really should jump into this knowing practically nothing, so just know its sexy, heartbreaking, compelling, dangerous, and just so freaking good. My review of this is a little bit more coherent, but I did absolutely love this book, and I gave it 5/5 stars.

The next book I read was Heart of a Dragon by Alisa Woods.

This is the second book in the Fallen Immortals series, and unfortunately, I did not like this nearly as much as I loved the first book. It just was not up to par with Kiss of a Dragon. It kind of lost the charm that the first book had, there wasn’t much of a romance until the last fifty or so pages, and I kind of wanted to stab our love interest, Lucian, in the balls, to be honest. Like he needed to get his shit together. However, there were still some good parts to this book, like the shining of some minor characters and the resilience and backbone we see in Arabella’s character. Overall, I had some issues with it, but I also liked some other things, and I ended up giving this 3.5/5 stars.

The next book I read was Othello by William Shakespeare.

This is a play I read for my Shakespeare class that deals with a variety of different topics, one of the more prominent ones being race as Othello is black. There are quite a bit of derogatory racial remarks made about Othello, often comparing him to an animal because of his race. However, moving beyond that, this book was just annoying. Othello was just way too gullible for my tastes. One asshole tells him that his wife is sleeping with another man and he doesn’t even question it. It was just frustrating and annoying, but it was still a really good story, even if I found some elements quite frustrating. Overall, I did like the play even if it isn’t necessarily one of my favorites. I gave it 4/5 stars.

The next book I read was The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare.

To me, this play was kind of all over the place. This play just did not make sense whatsoever. I imagine that if you were to do acid in the 1600s and were to describe that acid trip you were on, putting it into the form of a play, this would be the result. I feel like Shakespeare was just very bored and decided he wanted to make the most confusing and illogical play ever. I can’t even describe the plot because it was just all over the place. I can confidently say this is my least favorite Shakespeare play to date, and I gave it 2/5 stars.

The next book I read was The Mermaid’s Voice Returns In This One by Amanda Lovelace.

This is the third and final poetry collection in the Women Are Some Kind of Magic series, and this has a massive trigger warning for rape, sexual assault, domestic and partner violence, gun control, and other serious topics. I was so excited about this since I knew she was coming out with a new collection. While I didn’t connect with the poetry in this one nearly as much as I connected to the second one, I think it is very important, and the narrative across all three books is extremely powerful. This particular collection is about taking your voice, your power, and essentially yourself back from those who have harmed you. This is specifically speaking to Amanda’s sexual assault and essentially taking her body, her mind, her voice, and her soul back. The collection as a whole is about healing, and I think it is an extremely powerful message and narrative that she is sending, so this series as a whole is one of my favorites of all time. I did review this, and I ended up giving this book 3.5/5 stars.

The next book I read was When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head.

This is a book I read for my World Literatures course, and I actually liked this. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it, but it surprised me. This has the backdrop of the Apartheid period in their history. Apartheid, in a nutshell, was a point when the minority group, the Caucasians, actually held the most power and used that to institute policies on the basis of racial discrimination and segregation. It was a really bad time in history for black South Africans. However, this book actually follows a black South African fugitive who escapes to Botswana and ends up becoming a part of this small village as they are moving away from tribalism and trying to introduce new innovative farming techniques. This is a great analysis of the human condition and criticism of Panafricanism and tribalism. I think it was super interesting, and I really enjoyed it! I gave it 4/5 stars.

The last book I read in the month of March was An Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

This is a collection of short stories by the same author that are all centered around Indian Americans and Indian culture. This is yet another book I read for my World Literatures course, and it was actually really good! They were really easy to read most of the time, and I thought it was great that I got to learn so much about Indian culture through this book. Overall, I think it was really interesting and enlightening, and I gave it 4/5 stars.

And there you have it! Those were all of the books I read in the month of March. What was your favorite book you read this month? Comment down below! I would love to know. And this is going to be it for this wrap up today. Thank you all so much for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it, and I will see you next time!