My goal for 2022 was to allow myself to love; to allow myself to fall properly in love with reading again. For whatever reasons, I never allowed myself the time, I never allowed myself the joy of reading, the joy of the greatest thing in this world, quite as much as I wanted to. I read so much for my degree and it never put me off but reading for fun was never how it used to be – until 2022. I wanted 2022 to be the year I fell truly back in love with reading and allowed myself the time to bathe in the beauty of it… so here we are!
My goodreads reading goal is 35 books and right now I am one short of being on time but I’m hoping it’s because I’ve been extra poorly and that I can catch up, but if not, eh! A goal is a loose boundary anyway, not a set in stone must! I think my mental goal is truly 25 but I need 35 for the motivation.
Now, what’s this post actually about?
It’s about my 2022 first quarter reads! I’m going to give you a quick summary/review/lowdown on the beautiful books I read in the first quarter of this year!
These are my 2022, part one reads:
Afterlove by Tanya Byrne (5⭐️)
Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (5⭐️)
Toffee by Sarah Crossan (4⭐️)
The Boy in the Snow by C. Fletcher (5⭐️)
Mending the Broken by Anna Grey (5⭐️)
Proud (collated by Juno Dawson) (4⭐️)
Helicopter Honey by Katie Proctor (5⭐️)
Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt by John Cooper-Clarke (2⭐️)
A Love Story for Bewildered Girls by Emma Morgan (still reading) (so far: 4⭐️)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (still reading) (so far: 4⭐️)
My first – and favourite – read of the year was Tanya Byrne’s Afterlove and it’s safe to say that with a novel like that you’re going to fall in love with reading again immediately. I gave the book a 5 ⭐️ rating but it’d sure be higher if you could go higher! It’s a stunning YA read with fabulous wlw representation, so perfect for queer youth. It was interesting to have a brief peek into the cultural aspect of a LGBTQ+ non-white teen, having her as the main character, especially with her love interest being white and of money (though we didn’t get to see an awful lot of it (I can’t say why without spoiling things), it was still there!!!). The character interactions throughout gave me so much joy and somehow, every personality seemed to blend perfectly, even the ones you wouldn’t have expected. The characters remained loyal to one another and it was heartwarming to see. Ash is a character you will love and you won’t be able to dislike Poppy and her big personality. As a pairing they are beautiful and it would be hard to dislike their relationship. It gave me so much joy to read about and visualise and remains as one of my top “OTPs” (‘One True Pairings’). I actually went to Brighton, where the novel is set, the other day, and seeing certain locations prominent in the book (such as the off-shore wind farm) made myself and my sister both (as she was the one who loaned me the book; she got it for Christmas and read it first) very excited! Honestly, I would read it again in a heart beat and probably will. It was incredible and I think about the characters a lot (I keep thinking, at the moment, about what if Ash and Poppy met the characters from Heartstopper, another current hyperfixation of mine…) and I would highly recommend you read this book!
A shock I had was when reading Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt by John Cooper-Clarke. I gave that only 2 ⭐️ in the end. I absolutely love John Cooper-Clarke so was very excited to borrow my Dad’s copy of his anthology and read it but it was nearly a DNF (did not finish) so many times! I powered through but I really didn’t appreciate the anthology at all. I absolutely love JCC as I said, as a spoken word poet, and would love to see him live, as a performance poet, but it turns out I just can’t read his poetry – I’m into his spoken word (and I’m sure there’s some crossovers in the poems I’ve read and heard but I just could not get into reading his work). All in all I say with sadness that Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt is a 2 ⭐️ which is a massive shame and doesn’t make him an inherently bad poet at all but had to be mentioned as my low score of the quarter.
I have to hand out two honourable mentions, one to a novel and the other to a poetry anthology; ‘The Boy in the Snow’ by C Fletcher; ‘Helicopter Honey’ by Katie Proctor. ‘The Boy in the Snow’ is C Fletcher’s first published novel, released in February, which is a short piece of LGBTQ+ literature. It’s a lighthearted and heartwarming short novel that I’d recommend reading on any rainy day. I wrote a review on the book back in feb that you can find here. ‘Helicopter Honey’ came out in March 2022 and is Katie Proctor’s second poetry anthology, following ‘Seasons’. They also have another anthology being published soon called ‘A Desire for Disaster’. ‘Helicopter Honey’ is an anthology that centres love and romance. I wrote a review for the anthology back in much that you can find here. I gave both of these 5 ⭐️ because they were absolutely brilliant!
I can’t wait to read more this next quarter (and beyond) and share my adventures with you all following that! I hope you enjoyed following my 2022 part one’s reading journey and gain some reading inspiration from this post!
Love always, Lauren x
@holaurgraphic 
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