Wrapping up the Awakening Challenge

Truly, I understand that I am probably the only one amused by reading challenges based on titles. But I get a strange sense of accomplishment whenever I set one for myself and then subsequently work my way through it. This Awakening Challenge was no different. I even got a few extra thrills out of it. I completed it significantly faster than I expected I would (yay me), I completed it 1.5 times over, and some of the books have been rattling around in my Kindle Cloud for a long time (2 of them since 2013, which has to be about the time I got my first Kindle). So, it was a plus to get to mark them off of the TBR list.

I wasn’t going to do a wrap-up post for this challenge, since I went back and linked all the reviews to the initial post. However, I find that I need it. I keeping seeing Awakening books and thinking, “Well, I could just add that one in real quick.” So, I find that I need this concluding post to tell myself, “No, Sadie, we’re done with that challenge. No need to read another book with that title.” I already ended up reading 12 books called Awakening or The Awakening (with one Fury: The Awakening, which I admit is a bit of a stretch. But it’s close enough that I’m calling it ‘on theme’ and including it) instead of the original 8. (I called the extra 4 book bonus Awakenings and joked I actually did an Awakening challenge and a half.) Here they are:

Here, look at all the pretty Awakenings I read.

And here are links to the reviews themselves, along with the star rating I used when I cross posted them to Goodreads. I don’t usually bother with stars here on the blog. (I think people pay too much attention to the numerical scale and not enough to what the reviewer actually has to say.) But for comparison’s sake I’ll give the stars.

☆    Awakening (The Luriel Cycle, #1), by Melanie Nilles
☆    The Awakening (Guardian of Spirits, #1), by Kaylee Johnston
☆    Fury: The Awakening (The Scorned, #1), by R.E. Sargent
☆☆ Awakening (Covenant College, #1), by Amanda M. Lee
☆☆ Awakening (Demon Gate Chronicles, #1), by S.C. Mitchell
☆☆         Awakening (Promiscus Guardians, #1), by Brianna West
☆☆☆    Awakening (The Shard Cycle, #)1, by Ono Northey
☆☆☆     Awakening, by Jennifer Leigh Pezzano
☆☆☆     The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
☆☆☆    Awakening (Talentborn, #1) by C.S. Churton
☆☆☆ The Awakening (Leopard People, #.5), by Christine Feehan
☆☆☆☆ Awakening (Triorion, #1), by L.J. Hachmeister

As you can see, not a lot of them were real winners for me. The overall challenge average star rating was a 2.33333. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not reader who gives a lot of 5-stars, but I don’t give that many 1-stars either. I feel like most books are pretty middle of the road, neither hated nor loved. And I think this list shows that.

But I also have a theory about books with the same common title, which I’ve shared before but will again. I’ve done this a couple times—found I accidentally have multiple books with the same title and read them all together. And the results usually look a bit like this (though I can think of one particular Blood Lust challenge that was even worse, I mean spectacularly bad).

I anecdotally find that if a book has a title that is so common that I can accidentally collect multiple of them, then the lack of creativity in the title is a precursor to the lack of creativity of the writing. Obviously, there are exceptions. I quite enjoyed Hachmeister’s Awakening, for example, and Chopin’s predates the others by a 100 years. So it can hardly be counted as among the masses of books subsequently called The Awakening. But it has so far held true that if I have multiple books with the same title, most of them aren’t very good. I don’t think this will surprise anyone, honestly, but it’s also why all the other ways I enjoy such reading challenges come into play and are important.

Either way, that’s it folks. The March 2021 Awakening Challenge has officially come to it’s close. I am free to read a book by any other title, preferably a paperback. That was my second goal for March, to chip away at my physical book stack.

Edit Nov. 4: I somehow ended up with two more books called Awakening after I closed this challenge out. So, of course, I had to read them as what my husband called my Second Awakening. The first was by G. Clatworthy and the second by Poppy Williams. I also finally gave in and borrowed The Awakening, by Nora Roberts from the library.

Book Review: Awakening, by Brianna West

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I’ll admit that I picked up a freebie copy of Brianna West’s Awakening (Promiscus Guardians #1) in order to cheat on a reading challenge a little bit…kind of. I set out to read eight books titled Awakening. I called it the Awakening Challenge. (I know, not overly creative). But as time went on, I picked up an extra Awakening or two, until I was at the end and had read eleven books. But that bothered me. Eleven just felt like such an odd, awkward number. So, I went in deliberate search of a free book named Awakening, so that I could finish the challenge on an even number. It’s kind of cheating because the point of the challenge was to read all the books called Awakening that I owned.

Izzy is on the fast track to nowhere. Being ordinary really blew sometimes. That’s until she meets Lucas–a man that’s unlike anyone she’s ever met. Mostly because he isn’t actually a man. He is a supernatural creature that proclaims to police the Light and Dark in order to protect humans.

And Izzy–well–she isn’t the human she thought she was. She is actually a supernatural being as well. And now Lucas is going to do everything in his power to find out what she is and protect her from the Dark lurking around the corner.

Awakening follows Izzy as she navigates this new world of demons, vampires, angels, and many other supernatural creatures. Recruited by the Promiscus Guardians and partnering with the most brooding and devilishly handsome man she’s every met, Lucas, Izzy is suddenly knee-deep up crap creek. Discover the secret behind her power and why it’s such a commodity in her Awakening.

Warning: there’s a pretty big spoiler in here.

Man, this was a serious disappointment. I’ll state for the record that the writing is readable and the editing, while not without errors, is passable. But the characters and plot… no, thank you. I thought Izzy was an unpleasant, judgmental cow. All the gay jokes were bad enough (and they were noticeably frequent and gross). But the fact that the sole gay person in the book also turned out to be the villain was just beyond the pale when paired with them. The romance doesn’t really develop; it just kind of appears. And the hero is toxically jealous and not even particularly romance-worthy.

But worst of all, there’s a whole good versus evil war going on IN THE BACKGROUND, while the book focuses on Izzy’s navel gazing, how hot the men around her are, and how neglected her ‘lady parts’ remain. For half the book, I was just annoyed by this. But as it went on for almost 400 pages (far too long) and the plot spiraled out ridiculously, I just wanted it to end and put me out of my misery. And that’s if I overlook the giant plot hole of why the villain didn’t just take Izzy when she lived with him.