Hello Readers! I had fun participating in the Trope-ical Readathon in March. I managed to read 8 books, 1 novella, and 3 short stories, crossing off 5 ARCs and 3 backlist books, as well. And while I didn’t complete all the challenges, it definitely motivated me to read more, which is why I love to participate! You can see my original post, My Trope-ical Readathon TBR, here.

Let’s see what I read!

All the rules and information for this challenge can be found @ JenJenReviews. There are a lot of details but they also have a YouTube video that helped me understand how each challenge works. Basically, you choose your team and each team gets points for challenges completed. But you don’t have to stick to the challenges, you can also get points just for pages read on any book you choose.

Point System

Common Challenges: 50 POINTS EACH
Team Challenges: 100 POINTS EACH
Team Books: 150 POINTS EACH
Pages Read: 1 POINT PER PAGE

Common Challenges

There were two options for the Common Challenges: read a book with the given trope OR one that satisfies the alternate prompt. I managed to complete 9 out of 13 challenges, squeezing in a couple of short stories on the final day.

✅ Absent/Dead Parent(s) – Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood – 4.5/5 stars
❌ Love Triangle – Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (alternate – Heartburn by Nora Ephron)
❌ Boarding School – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

✅ A Borrowed Book – Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (on Libby) – 4/5 stars
✅ Takes Place in Another Country – Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (My Review) – 5/5 stars
❌ A Book Published Before 2000 – Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
✅ An Audiobook or Ebook – Romantic Comedy by Curits Sittenfeld (Review to come) – 5/5 stars
✅ Apocalyptic/Dystopia – Emergency Skin by N.K. Jesiminthe – 4/5 stars

✅ A book in a series – The Deal (Off-Campus, #1) by Elle Kennedy – 4/5 stars
✅ Coming-of-Age – You Wouldn’t Dare by Samantha Markum (My Review) – 4/5 stars
✅ Multiple POC characters – Lone Women by Victor Lavalle (My Review) – 4/5 stars
✅ Bookish Themes – The Bookstore Sisters by Alice Hoffman – 4/5 stars
❌ A book with a TV or movie adaptation – Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (alternate – Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers)

Team Challenge

❌ Team Book: I’d chosen Team Romance since that’s the genre I read the most from, but I also didn’t own any of the books chosen for any of the categories. Both of the ones chosen for Team Romance were on my TBR, however. If I would have completed all the other challenges (and still had time), I would have picked up Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert.

Team Challenges

✅ Read a book with the “competition” trope – Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood (My Review) – 5/5 stars
✅ Read a historical romance novel – An Offer From a Gentleman (Bridgertons, #3) by Julia Quinn – 3/5 stars

Pages Read

Just to get a few more last minute pages, I also read Randomize by Andy Weir, a short story that’s available to read for free for Amazon Prime members. But it didn’t work for any challenges.
3/5 stars