Hello lovelies! It’s March Favorites time! March is always a bit of a weird month—Winter has one foot out the door, life picks up the pace and gets busy, and the days start stretching just enough to trick me into thinking I’m getting your life together (spoiler alert: I’m not). Buuuut, I DID consume some excellent stuff this month!

I Read…

FOR SHE IS WRATH by the amazing Emily Varga: a dark romantic fantasy retelling of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, in which one girl seeks revenge against those who betrayed her—including the boy she used to love.

The protagonist is a badass force of nature—complex, powerful, and not here to play nice. Think morally gray, emotionally layered, and the kind of girl who can set the world on fire. The worldbuilding is lush (with beautiful Pakistani influences), the magic system has bite, and the pacing is *chef’s kiss!* Plus, there’s that simmering, high-chemistry tension in the relationships—enough to keep you flipping pages waaay past your bedtime.

Also: I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Emily during the WWTS Storyteller’s Retreat in Scotland last fall (which still feels like a dream, honestly). She’s as fierce and splendid as her writing! If you’re a sucker for YA fantasy with strong female leads (hi, same), please give this one a read!

I Watched…

YELLOWSTONE, in which Kevin Costner (ohhhh, YES) stars as John Dutton, the patriarch of a Montana ranching family. He is forced to defend a vanishing way of life as business interests and (questionable) politicians plot and scheme to force him out.

OH MY HEART! This show is something else! It’s gritty, dramatic, unapologetically intense, and completely addictive. Beyond the WILD family dynamics, cowboy chaos, and sweeping Montana backdrops, this series is a masterclass in character development: every person on the Dutton ranch has a complex backstory and a distinct fatal flaw that makes them do wildly questionable things—and yet we completely understand where they’re coming from and why they’re doing it! As a writer, it’s such a good reminder that compelling characters don’t have to be likable—they just have to be real. Watching this series with my writer-brain turned on was mindboggling and humbling and AWESOME.

Also: the dialogue? Gahhh, so good!

I Listened to…

THE RITE OF SPRING, a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. He wrote it in 1913, about a ritualistic dance in which one girl is chosen to dance herself to death to celebrate the start of spring. It’s a wild, dissonant, kind of aggressive piece, and feels like the musical equivalent of the earth cracking open.

What’s so inspiring is how fearlessly it broke the mold of what people believed music should be. Stravinsky leaned into the strange, the primal, the unpredictable, and in doing so, he completely redefined what music could be. Apparently, it caused a riot at its premiere (iconic).