are my old favourite books still good?

hello friends it's kayla welcome to another reading vlog first let me catch you up really quick every single year i put out a favorites video at the end of the year where i talk about between 10 and 20 books that were my all-time favorites of the year i have many of them because i've been here for many years a year ago i did a tier ranking video where i pit all of these books against one another to see which ones i think hold up which ones i need to re-read before i decide if they hold up and which ones i don't stand by at all i think like 40 of the 60 books i talked about completely hold up either i still consider them favorites or i respect their position in the year in which i read them and then like 10 of them i completely rejected and then 10 remained in the category that i called need to reread but i'm now calling questionable these are my questionable favorites and here they all are a selection of books that i have never reread that i don't know how i would feel about on my second read and i want to discover are these books that i consider all-time favorites or were they circumstantial did i love these books because of the time that i read them maybe i've read so many better things since then maybe i didn't know how questionable problematic or not actually good they were in the moment and we need to do a revisit of them so what this is is part one of two vlogs where i read through them all so this week we're gonna read five of them and i had my members pick some so i think i said i'm gonna pick the top three whichever ones got voted on the most and then i'll pick the other two myself i can already tell you the book that has the most votes because i saw the votes as they were rolling in and there's no way that ugly love has not come out the champion i think what i'll do is i'll read the top three highest votes and then i'm also going to read the one with the lowest amount of votes and then i'm just going to pick one for fun that i just i just want to read and i already think i know which one it's going to be it's just like if i read the top five with the most votes right away who's going to tune in for part two okay so let's search the word ugly it got a hundred votes the thing is people could vote as many times as they wanted because it's just based on comments so you could have included as many books as you wanted in your comment so ugly love with exactly a hundred then we have black iris which got 62 votes this guy is everywhere with 69 votes far from the tree with 55 votes the duff with 106 votes oh my gosh i can't believe this one okay i'm so sorry ugly love was in the lead for weeks but the duff has taken the number one spot this is the one that i was gonna pick that i just wanted to read my gosh okay did anything else get over a hundred if i completely misguessed i can't imagine anything getting more than those ones this is where i leave you with 52 hopeless with 25 how are there two colleen hoovers on the list and one got the most and one got the least okay forbidden 90 votes for that one the loveless with the world with 56 and the kind worth killing with 87. okay so the top three with the most votes are right here you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna make the duff the members only like slumber party movie night so we have the three with the most votes and the one with the least votes you know what i'm realizing all four of these i read before starting my channel which actually might explain well no because these are like kind of controversial picks too but might explain why you want me to talk about them because i've never actually reviewed them properly on my channel same goes with this one so the one that i just get to pick for me i think i'm gonna go with the other one in this stack that i read before my channel and that's this is where i leave you i can also watch this for this vlog so that'll make it interesting okay those are the five books that i'm reading this week i don't know what i want to start with we've got two kind of funner ones and three more intense reads so we should probably organize it in a certain way i'll come back to you perhaps you can tell by the state of my braids or that i'm in my pajamas um that it's now bedtime and many hours later and i have been avoiding for many hours selecting the first book that i want to read but i have to go ahead and make a decision so i can start reading and i think that it's tough for me to choose because i keep thinking i want to start with one and then i'm like oh but the expectation that comes along with this book is going to be a certain amount of discourse and i don't know if i have the mental capacity to go there right now but like that is part of the point of rereading some of these um they are questionable and i have to be honest there's a part of me that already wants to defend them especially these pigs because there are some certain things that i want to say that i don't know will be perceived well okay i took a clip last night that ended up being 17 minutes long and it i don't think i even made sense in it so i'm just gonna cut out the conversation that i was trying to have and rephrase it here um while i tell you what i'm reading so i decided on hopeless and i'm 60 pages in it is pretty much what i remember there's a lot of instances of things ideas that i don't agree with so a lot of like discussions about feeling like a [ __ ] by the main character and like what a [ __ ] is the story revolves around skye um falling for this guy named dean holder and part of their relationship involves the fact that skye has never like felt anything for a guy before so she'll like make out with guys she'll do whatever but she's never felt anything and so this is the first time she's feeling like sexual attraction to a guy and her best friend is like oh well it's good to know you're not broken and like that kind of sucks um especially from an ace perspective to think that there are people who think that not feeling attraction means you're broken so those are just a couple examples there have been many instances of things that just like make me uncomfortable or things that i don't agree with and i think that's going to be a thing throughout like all of her books colleen hoover is known to be an author who has like problematic content people talk about it all the time i did like a guide to colleen hoover like five years ago and in that video talked about the fact that she has a lot of content that people will not like so even in talking about those things in the video there are people who will say like you shouldn't be endorsing this author you shouldn't be supporting this author etc etc and here are two things that i believe and they might be like conflicting um well i don't know i don't believe in placing people's reading like me personally i don't believe in pleasing people's reading i don't think that anyone is wrong for reading a book or picking up a book or owning a book or reviewing a book you do you period but i also believe in curating your feed so like if you are somebody who feels strongly about certain things about books and you're following someone who doesn't align with your values it's perfectly okay to not consume that person's content and you are completely in your right to choose like the type of person that you like want to follow something i don't believe is that if a book contains content that like from a character a character saying something you don't agree with that doesn't make the book bad it doesn't inherently make the book problematic and it doesn't necessarily reflect the author's views or the reader's views if they end up liking said book i constantly talk about things that i like and don't like in books um and something that if i ever get asked like what's something you don't like about booktube or what's something you don't like about book reviewing this always comes to mind but i don't know how to phrase it properly but it's when i give a book a rating and then also talk about things in the book that those things are related in some people like people who are viewing their perspective is that i'm saying those things to justify this which isn't true i mean sure sometimes it is true but like there are times when i will say i didn't i don't think i don't agree with this i don't agree with the seventh grade this and i give it five stars because a book containing thoughts from a character that don't align with my views doesn't make me dislike the book moving on from that topic on to the next topic which is how these ended up on my favorites list to begin with and i think i can explain that easily um when i started my channel i was reading things i've talked about this in the video before i was reading a lot of things that i thought i was supposed to be reading and at my age and what people around me were reading and what the first couple booktubers i found were reading it was new adult romance so i picked up a lot i feel like 20 or 30 in the first couple months on booktube or right before booktube and colleen hoover with all of the problems that i acknowledged at the moment as well colleen hoover stood out like just beyond anything that i had picked up and it's because of her plot twists um i wasn't getting that from anywhere else and i don't seek out that in romance anymore because like i don't really like romance that much to begin with but the thrill that i was getting from these plot twists is what i have now found in mysteries and thrillers so i already know that on the second read of these it's not gonna be as good because i'm not gonna have that same reaction but entertainment is still the number one thing that i'm looking for so they give me that then i'm happy i actually think that i only gave this four stars originally but i had read so little and so little that was really amazing in that year before i actually started my channel that like a four star ended up on my favorites list all that to say this is exactly what i remember it's silly and it's like this stalker guy and they're really weird together and they have like weird little sayings and it's all ridiculous but i'm still having fun so wish me luck i'm still slowly making my way through hopeless but i haven't talked to you in a couple days so i thought i should film a clip i'm at the 150 page mark now um i'm not feeling very well so i've been spending a lot of time in the bath soothing my body parts that don't feel well so my book is um quite damp now and i'm having a fine time i mean i already know at this point this doesn't hold up but it's an easy read it's a fine read i think i forgot like what the really um difficult subject matter is in here and i'm pretty sure like sexual assault pedophilia is kind of a plot twist in here we're getting little hints and um memories from sky and uh i feel like i probably read this in a time in the bookish community where a lot of people considered trigger warnings like unimportant or content warnings as being spoilers so i can't recall anybody like fully talking about this stuff and i'm assuming i didn't either so that's tough um there are post-its in here i tucked them all in earlier because i want to take a picture of this and i find my post it's very ugly but i already know that this isn't going to hold up because i don't understand my post-its like i have no idea why i put this here i remember what my post-its were for my pink post-its were for a shocking moment so clearly um one of those is coming up soon and this was for like an impactful moment blue was for crying orange was for funny and green neon green yellow was for like a moment i wanted to remember or a moment that i thought was really well written or something and i've come across three so far and i have no idea why i would have posted them so i'm a little bit confused by what would it have been 23 year old me oh i also see a blue post-it near the end so good luck to me hi what a terrible book what a terrible terrible that was this is not good i knew it was gonna not be good but i still thought that i could recognize what i saw in it in the moment and appreciate like that that version of me no oh no i can't even talk about it i need to first i think with all of these books look up if i wrote a review filmed a review or find some place that i spoke about this book when i was reading it so i'm checking goodreads i gave it a four oh my gosh and i did write a review and updates as i read okay i read this in november of 2014. i'm worried about what i said okay i know this book is flawed i know that if i re-read it now at a year later i would give it a significantly lower rating i guess i just didn't write a review until a year later however i'm gonna chalk this up to reading it at the right time before i really dove into new adult before i discovered the cliches of the genre before i got offended by [ __ ] shaming and stalker boyfriends i'm not a perfect reader and this is not a perfect book but i just read it at the right time in my life to enjoy it okay let's see how i was feeling while i was reading so at page eight i wrote uh that started intensely at page 160 i wrote i'm dying at 50 of the way through i said how is there still half a book to go i'm pretty sure i already know where the book is leading and what the reveals will turn out to be but then 100 pages later i said oh [ __ ] 20 pages later i said no no no no no no and at the end i said that was such a ride loved it so the thing the book has going for it is i didn't predict what was going on and i don't know if i should spoil all of these books like maybe i should i guess i will so basically skye was kidnapped when i was reading this i was also i feel like watching finding carter and i related them to really close together and i was like oh i hope this becomes a movie and um that girl would play her so well but like i don't want this to be a movie i uh the relationship between the two of them was beyond cringy like and i think i knew that it was cringy the first time like i know that i hated when they said i live you instead of i like you or i love you but i guess i thought it was like swoon worthy the way that holder was constantly stalking her but beyond that controlling her manipulating her um i mean it's a relationship between two consenting almost adults but still like there were so many moments where like skye seemed iffy about something and holder was like please just do it like please and then she would give in and i think it was meant to be seen as romantic he still did respect her boundaries in a lot of ways and like he did have good intentions and a lot of times you didn't really know that until like the reveal when you find out that he is felt kind of responsible for her getting kidnapped as a kid because he was there and they knew each other when they were children but she has all these repressed memories because of the assault that went on in her childhood which i don't want to comment on how that was written or handled because i don't know the author's history i don't know how um people feel about that she left hotlines in the end um related to suicide and sexual abuse i think that this book was meant to shed light on something really horrific but i know some things that i didn't like the first time i continue to not like because i have just had a memory of ranting about romance books in a video and i talked about this thing that i hate i think it stemmed from this and it's when a traumatic experience happens and immediately after characters have sex for like the first time and i know that's like a trope in general when there's like a big action adventure moment in a book and it's like oh my god we're alive like let's whatever but especially regarding this type of trauma i just like it felt super super uncomfortable but at the same time if these characters are real people and that is your avenue for recovery i'm not a therapist i can't tell you anything my god so many of my friends have read this this was before we were ever friends ellie escaped this five stars gabby gave this five stars there's also a lot of one and two stars i remain in the opinion that a book doesn't have to have characters who act in a way that you deem respectable inspiring relatable etc so i don't really know how to properly review or rate this book um i think it's like a two star let's see what i said about it in my favorites video i read all of colleen hoover's books this year and these were my two favorites so this one got a four out of five and it's a little more y a and this one got five out of five it's one more n a she has some of the traditional n a things that i can't stand stalker boys and [ __ ] shaming but i just i don't know her books just make me feel it all just builds up to the most intense finale of a book it is intense it oh it's just so good okay i will not be reading ugly love next um i need i need to read anything else i think i'm gonna move on to this is where i leave you because for the longest time i said it was one of the funniest books i've ever read but also i don't really read funny books i don't seek out funny books so i'll grab that and hope that this video was on like a positive trajectory and the books just keep getting better like wouldn't that be that'd be great that would be great i'm on to my next book this is where i leave you by jonathan dropper this is a book that seems weird to have on my favorites list or even a book that i was reading in 2014 i had no idea what i liked to read i was really picking up just the most random things and this one was one of those books that i thought i was supposed to like because like it's geared towards my demographic i guess but i had also read a lot of other books um that were just like adult general fiction that i hated and i was like i don't understand why i'm supposed to be liking these books about just like marital conflicts and whatever else so i think this one was actually more of an expectation thing because i had read a few books in this vein i solely picked this one up because it was becoming a movie and i have always loved reading and then watching adaptations so 2014 and 2015 i think like an abundance of my reading was because things were being adapted this had a couple like actors attached to it that i was interested in but also a couple actors who i hated and i don't remember what i thought of the movie i'm sure i did a book to movie comparison video that has been privated for many many years but i know that this is the movie that i fell in love with adam driver so it has that going for it i'm halfway through at this point and um while i still agree with what i said before that it was funny um it's not like a humor book by any means it's about um these children no well they're grown children but the children of a man who has died this sentence is poor grammar and we're gonna keep going with it they are now sitting shiva for their father which means seven days where they sit and mourn they're all in very different positions in life and going through changes in like relationships but then there are little humorous moments that are a nice reprieve and it's all fun and interesting compared to a lot of other adult general fiction i've read but then also a lot of the humor i don't find very funny i'm drinking my iced coffee out of a whiskey glass today so that's just where i'm at in life first time around definitely did not recognize all of the misogynistic um moments i've tapped a couple things that i just don't love um for example our main character who just had his wife cheat on him with his boss and so he's just like generally angry at the world and it's mostly his story um he's talking about um this couple who lives next to him from china and doesn't know why they bothered immigrating when they don't do much besides like sweep in front of their house and the husband does acupuncture and it's just like why why do you need to be an [ __ ] the way that he paints all of the women is interesting um so we have a woman in this book named alice who can't get pregnant and the main character actually used to like kind of be involved with her and that becomes part of the story um and but now she's married to his brother and they can't get pregnant and he really paints her as just this like crazy woman um who is always crying about how fat she is and blames her fertility drugs and her hormones and then there are regular references to the women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant he just judges all of them including every other woman basically so phillip who's my favorite character who is adam driver in the movie um he brings this older woman to sit shiva with them and there's a lot that he has to say about her um and also about the women that philip used to date so he says the woman philip usually dates aren't the sort to correct him because she's like an older woman and is like guiding him a little bit she's actually like his life coach but he says they are strippers actresses waitresses hair stylists bridesmaids who hike up their crinoline for him in the parking lot during the reception blah blah blah like why are you pairing those two things together like why do you see strippers actresses waitress and hair stylists as not the type of woman who's going to correct her fiance's behavior oh and then also compares a three-year-old's um learning of the english language compares it and references it as immigrant english that all happened at the very beginning um we're halfway through now and i feel like fine about it again i don't have to agree with the character's perspective you know what i mean like he is being painted as a certain type of guy right now but i don't know if his behavior is really like being challenged enough or is meant to be seen as negative to sum up i don't really know how to feel about it i don't find it as funny as i remember i much like his stale failing marriage with his wife has gotten boring and complacent and lacks sense of humor so sorry okay i don't really want to be on camera right now but um i just wanted to note how much i'm disliking this book or i'm disliking the main character's um way of speaking about everything i'm trying to decide if i'm more disgusted by the fact that he just referred to two teenage girls as sex kittens and like talking with their body parts um or the fact that they're literally his family members like which part is worse that they're teens or that they're literally related to him i'm sorry i'm not wow i look like am i okay this is a potato angle if i've ever seen one um i can't put in any more effort than this at this moment in time but i suppose i need to update you there's two parts to these rereading favorites i think one part is do i think of it as a favorite now and the other part is do i see why i thought of it as a favorite back then um the answer to both of those inquiries are no i don't really get it um i'm so sorry for anybody i've recommended this to like the fact that some of you have trusted my recommendations since this time in my life it's just not that great of a book like i think stories about grief will always be kind of my favorite and they can be done in such different ways like i've never really read anything like this but it definitely didn't do anything for me um this time around so let's see what i said in my review i think that i would have reviewed this on my old channel so i read six books this month i also started a couple i got halfway through one and didn't finish it and i don't think i'm going to oh my god why do i still own that account i do the reviews day tuesday which if you don't know what that is why don't you watch the vlogbrothers hank green wanted everyone to do like a reviews day tuesday and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me because you can just click on it and see everyone's reviews day tuesday and find new books to read and i am reading a book a week and i'm reviewing it on my instagram okay so this was far before my discovery of booktube and goodreads and anything that's so strange i'm making a purposeful effort to read every single book before it comes into comes out as a movie this year which is challenging because there's a lot it's really good it was an enjoyable read it was really funny it was like heartfelt there was some twists and it was it was pretty exciting i liked it i'm sure the movie is actually better and probably um doesn't do as many annoying things as the book from what i remember but i actually have absolutely no motivation to watch it so i just don't think i'm going to it's just so wild to me how this character just blames everyone for everything like um i remembered one scene that i like hated the original time i read it and it's when i'm gonna give spoilers i've already said that there's gonna be spoilers for every book i'm sure um his sister-in-law can't get pregnant and um tries to coerce him into sleeping with her because you know she's an unhinged woman on fertility drugs and like every woman in the book is crazy or obsessive or whatever else but i definitely forgot that it actually happens like they do sleep together and the way he explains it in the book is like he's completely not a willing participant um like in his mind but his actions do not portray that it's a bit of a confusing like thing to grapple with like what really went on in that scene that's the only reason i think i would re-watch the movie is to see how they made that go down and i'm starting to think that i mean the ultimate assumption with all of these is that they won't be favorites that's why i called them questionable so i shouldn't be surprised when they end up getting like two stars but i want to enjoy some of my reads this week so like i just don't know where to go next and i'm i'm uh floundering this vlog's been a bit of a mess i decided to start the duff because i'm worried that i wouldn't finish it before um my movie night i'm not feeling super motivated to read right now there's just like so much going on in my brain and in the world and in my life i thought that this would be a good time to reread books because then i don't have to like think as hard but i still get to enjoy my hobby but i think i was wrong like re-reading isn't the more relaxing experience i guess it's hard to find the motivation to read when i've already read it and i already know the story but i think this will be fun because then i can like compare this to the movie i remember originally when i watched the movie a lot of things were changed from the book and i didn't like that and i thought the book was a lot moodier so i'm like 20 pages in at this point and i feel like it's pretty similar to what i remember of the movie but her best friends jess and casey i think are is the biggest difference to me because in the book they're kind of depicted as like ditzy hot girls who like only care about shopping and homecoming but in the movie i feel like they were more well-rounded characters so the daf stands for designated ugly fat friend and it's not about like it doesn't mean you're necessarily fat and ugly it's that like compared to your friends you are like the ugly duckling and the person that like if somebody wants to date your hot friends like they have to put in the work to impress you and be nice to you because then your hot friends will know that the person trying to pursue you is like genuinely a good person because they're nice to everyone including like the most unfortunate in the friend group it's stupid it's problematic in nature the whole idea of it but yeah the only thing that's annoying is she uses the phrase like ocd more casually than she probably should because i don't think she actually has ocd but she talks about having ocd this that's just a thing especially in like mid 2000s books like it was rampant so i really don't recommend rereading your questionable favorites not just because it will confirm for you but they that they aren't what you remember but it'll make you also question the favorites that you're sure are still favorites not questionable at all it's gonna make you second guess if they're even good i am not having a good time reading this and now i just keep thinking about all my other favorites and i'm like are they are they favorites it's everything that i remember the thing is i relate to it less being a 30 year old woman which like obviously is the case when you're reading books for teens but the relatability even though it's still something that i relate to as in like reflecting on my teenage years it's harder to like justify characters choices when you are a grown adult also i'm in a bad mood today because i can't find my mail key i think i officially lost it which is impressive that i've gone five years living here and not lost my mail key because that's something that i have done no matter where i've lived in my life and it sucks even more i'm prepping stuff for camping um and it sucks that i can't find a male key because i have a bunch of mail this is like day five of it being missing and we're leaving for camping tonight or tomorrow morning and i had all of these plans today to prep everything to pack everything and also to film a couple videos that i can post while we're camping but um a book haul cannot happen when the books are sitting in the mailbox and i can't get them so now i have to go through the steps of getting a new mail key which is fine but like i can't do it it's not going to get done today so now my whole kind of weekend video plan is all thrown off oh well at least i'm succeeding at my meal prep this looks like nothing but i'm marinating something so i can make these wraps and i guess you're gonna come camping with me there wasn't a plan for this vlog because i hoped to have all of my reads done but obviously everything is just not working out as intended but it's fun you get to come camping with me although i don't know how much it's literally just gonna be like sitting around i just need to be outside every time i get into like a grumpy mood or i recognize liam is in a grumpy mood it always occurs to me that it happens at a time when we haven't spent much time outside and then as soon as we go outside and we sleep outside it just like completely switches everything around so that's what we're up to hopefully i'll finish this before we leave and i can give you a little wrap up okay i'm back in bed my favorite place but i've actually been out all day getting stuff ready for camping and buying some new stuff the vehicle's all packed up so we can leave super early tomorrow morning and i finished the death but i don't want to do a full review or talk about it at length until i do the movie night on sunday because maybe i'll have some more to talk about regarding the adaptation because i have some feelings but i need to rewatch it to know for sure like what i like about what was changed but overall it's like a maybe three out of five i'm not ready to reflect on what i said back in the day but it's definitely um not a favorite that holds up and i think my favorite thing about it was the chemistry between the two characters and i didn't feel that at all this time around so i just like i don't know what it is i don't know if i've read better relationships or i don't know if there was something i was specifically looking for perhaps i had never read a fake hating book before which i have discovered is something that i love but like something i haven't read enough of anyway like kind of how you're secretly dating but you have to pretend to hate each other in real life i'm bummed but i'm bringing my last two books with me i don't think i'm gonna touch forbidden while camping and i have a feeling that's gonna put me in a reading slump which i really don't need right now anyway but i'm gonna do ugly love i also downloaded the audiobook i don't think i'd even really discovered audiobooks in like 2014-20 not all these were 2014. so if they had books like i didn't know that they existed and i want to try out one so i think ugly love could be an interesting experience and we're driving like between one and two hours tomorrow we're actually taking separate vehicles so i'm just gonna be alone and i might as well listen to the audiobook and i hope it goes well i don't have very high expectations but i think it happened [Music] i'm halfway through the book and it's really great so far relationship i think is going to get more unhealthy but so far i really like it okay i'm home from camping i look a mess but um my landlords had an extra mail key so i'm very excited to open this with you i'm almost done with ugly love by the way and i came home a little bit earlier from camping so i could do my live show for the duff so i will wrap all that up and update you on everything but look i mean as ugly as i think it is the cover itself like oh my god what a beautiful book like i'm so excited i don't know when i'm gonna get around to this i've put it on my summer tbr i have heard there are some things that happen in here that like are huge spoilers that like people can't wait to talk to with everyone so i'm very excited i also got a package from simon schuster and i have no idea what it is um it came with chips oh i have no idea what this is also came with candy i've never heard of this author louise candelish but apparently she has come out with 14 novels and is a best-selling author and this sounds like an insular domestic thriller where a bunch of passengers on a boat are suspected of something if you guys want to say hi to the vlog you can do that and yeah i'm making this into a drinking game the watching of the duff and i thought the two things that would be the most fun is drink anytime something is really different from the book because i just finished the book i can definitely reference those things and drinks when something important is really similar to the book or like is the same those are two of the things we'll definitely do and then i got a lot of your suggestions that i'll read through now and we'll decide together oh also tell me what you guys are drinking i'm drinking a vodka and sprite or no it's 7up i didn't have spray and i got sad about it okay we just wrapped up the movie um i think just like the book it was not not that i even liked move for some round but definitely not as good as i remember anyway and i'm actually having a hard time figuring out if i like the book or movie more uh the first time it was very clear that it was the book that i liked better but this time i just uh none of it i don't like it okay i'm rested i'm clean i thought i got a bit of a tan hanging out of the beach all weekend um but then it washed off in the shower so let's back up to the death which i'm now giving i don't know i don't think it's bad so i want to give it like a three star like i can appreciate a lot of things about it um bianca is still not a great enjoyable character to read from but she does like learn lessons throughout the book and the whole idea that like everyone is a deaf and everyone's insecure and everyone has their issues and we shouldn't judge each other like i can respect that but i definitely did not feel the same chemistry like wesley was still a good love interest the second read through but as far as them as a couple i didn't really see it in the book and i didn't see it in the movie either but we're gonna look back and see what i said about this back in 2014. my other four out of five was the duff it stands for the designated ugly fat friend and it was so good it was so good kind of like their love story but their enemies it's very very strange and it's very intense and i love it it deals with like dramatic things and hard things but it's just it's a really nice read okay i'm never gonna call myself bad at book reviewing again because like that girl whoever that girl was was bad at book reviewing so this like kind of holds up but not i don't consider this a favorite read anymore and it shouldn't have even been a favorite read at that point because i only gave it four stars but since i hadn't read enough books it ended up in there um switching over to ugly love i should have started this video by ranking what i thought was going to happen in this video i would have said that it goes like this the ones that like are the most questionable and that i was gonna completely take back would be these ones and then this is where i leave you and then the duff and then forbidden at the top is the one that i still haven't read yet but i just already feel like i'm gonna defend the most but at this point ugly love ugly love is so good i remain that ugly love is a good book last night i was crying over the ending the second time around this is the only book that i've read so far that i wasn't struggling to get through that i was like excited to pick back up and like i wanted to finish it and last night when i was almost done i wanted to tell you all of my feelings but i had to finish the book to make sure that i was right and i was right i don't think i even gave this a full five star when i read it there's probably a four or four and a half okay my only update was at page 90 and i said holy hell this is hot i'm blushing i want to stop reading before it gets ugly i'm basically squealing on the inside that's that's great with this one it also has an intense ending this one made me cry but it's it's an ending that you're anticipating because the book is definitely building you up to reveal pasts basically it's about a girl named tate and she moves in with her brother and he's a pilot and he has some pilot friends and one of the pilot friends she feels a connection with but he doesn't really want anything long term and he tells her straight up like don't expect a future with me don't ask what my past were just kind of [ __ ] buddies and of course that can't end well because someone's gonna develop feelings and blah blah his chapters are from the past and it's him falling in love with a different girl and the whole book is him falling in love with a different girl and it's so weird how can i want both of these couples to make it and obviously one of them's not so i did find myself skimming miles chapters a little bit they are written more like poetry they're a little bit cheesy but they're his relationship with this other girl and you already know it's building to like a really bad traumatic ending because miles in his relationship and his like chapters with tate and from tate's perspective he's a really broken guy he doesn't want a relationship he cannot fathom ever being in love again so they have a purely sexual relationship and i won't say that their relationship is healthy by any means because she clearly wants more from him but as far as their communication goes like they're on the same page she agrees to be in this purely sexual relationship they have rules they're following but there's part of tate that will always want more because they're clearly like they have a special connection but like as far as colleen hoover books go and how problematic the relationships can be i feel like this is on the very like bottom of the spectrum while i would never recommend it as something to read for like relationship advice i loved it i thought it was so fun one of the only new adult romances i have ever enjoyed i will always be a sucker for the trope of one girl being friends with like four or five guys and like different guys in the group like being interested in her and then protecting her from each other i just think that's a really fun dynamic tate and miles are like aggravating protagonists to read from but i loved it i gave it a four star on goodreads but i'm pretty sure i say in some capacity some video somewhere that it's a 4.5 and i'm keeping my rating i'm very surprised so now i'm on to forbidden and i'm worried but i don't know where it is i think i left it in the vehicle because i took it camping thinking i was gonna get to read it i don't know how i thought that was a thing oh and i didn't check out the audiobook at all of ugly love so i can't recommend it or dis recommend it uh and forbidden doesn't have an audiobook so i'm gonna try to physically read a good 400 pages in the next like day or two wish me luck the funny thing about forbidden is i literally could not tell you anything about this book the reason that i consider it a favorite is just the memories of how it made me feel i've never in my life had a book make me cry as much as this but again since i read this before really getting into reading maybe the impact of this wouldn't have been the same if i read it now with the reading history that i have all i could tell you about this book is that it made me feel just hopeless and sad and devastated and it's about siblings who have a relationship but i don't remember any of the actual plot considering how long this book is like i i can't tell you anything that actually goes on in here besides the relationship between the brother and sister that's what makes it a polarizing read um but like even the writing of this i'm on page 14 and i was so taken aback by how flowery the writing is i don't remember the writing of this book at all and i'm still wondering like what the heck happens in these pages i think they have a absent father and a mother who doesn't care for them properly and something where we go from there i don't know i'm still worried this is going to put me in a reading slump but i'm getting into it today i finished forbidden i finished it a little while ago this has not been a week for filming updates it has been a heavy week but i just need to like wrap this up and put out this video because it's done um it's important to me to call attention um it's strange having people all around the world like paying attention to a community so close to you um if you don't know um kamloops is a city like right next to where i live um and to chem loops to sequence first nations is a community very close to me and they after decades of knowing um the truth about residential schools and the missing first nations children in bc um there's finally an investigation is still ongoing but they have finally um gotten the proof that there are at least 215 bodies of first nations children buried on the site of the kamloops residential school it's something that's important so important to acknowledge um and i know that everyone is kind of talking about it right now which is just strange um i have spoken to multiple survivors from that school i know that i have followers here and friends um who have family members who are survivors or who were forced into the residential school program in canada and because of that i want to be very aware of like re-triggering um things because this is a place of fun silly content and whatever else but it is so important that people are talking about it um but more important that this community is given the space to grieve the acknowledgement is extremely important um that they're given you know the space to call for reparations and reconciliation in whatever capacity they need so if you're not already informed make yourself informed um it's so just disgusting i don't know how to go on with the video but we're going to wrap it up with telling you my thoughts on forbidden which is pretty much the same as it was when i originally read it uh the ending didn't have the same like impact that it did the first time because i knew it was coming uh other books that i've read like if i'm talking about ugly love like it had a bigger impact because like there were things i forgot or there were like multiple twists going on but the really big emotionally impactful moment in here um isn't something that like you could ever forget and i feel like glad that i get to defend it um in a way because there is this like strange implication that i think i talked about it at the beginning of this was like which was like a month ago now this like assumption about people that if you read something that's bad or controversial and what have you that it like makes you seem like you have a certain opinion because a lot of the reviews that i see about forbidden are like oh this was such a disgusting subject matter i can't believe people like this book and i disagree with a lot of the reviews that talk about um what was i saying that this book like romanticizes certain things or makes assumptions about certain people because uh the children in this book are given a lot of responsibility they're neglected their mother leaves them for weeks at a time and they have a lot of responsibility and a lot of trauma um i also forgot that this book was set in england which is a strange thing to like i don't know if i ever really recognized that when i first read it weird but the children who are essentially given the role of parents at the ages of like 16 and 17 or 18. um they have a lot on their shoulders they have a lot they're responsible for their best friends their siblings and then they begin to engage in like a romantic or sexual relationship they know that it's wrong and they constantly talk about how it's wrong and it's sick and they could go to jail and all of the bad things that will come of them engaging in this relationship but they do choose to and both of them due to their trauma and what's currently happening in their lives um they are very different people and deal with things very differently and because of that i feel like it doesn't imply certain things about people who've experienced trauma as always i think you can think anything you want about a book like you i'm not saying anyone has to like this book i ended up giving it four stars at the end of this time around so i wouldn't say that this holds up as far as like an all-time favorite that i recommend to everybody um that i have like fond memories of but i will remain that it's one of the most impactful reads that i've ever had i don't usually have strong memories of reading a book but for this one i do because we're actually living with family for a month in between um moving from house to house and i remember just like lying in the basement of the house and reading this and just bawling my eyes out by myself in the basement trying to be quiet because we were all kind of living in one room and i think liam was asleep and i was just like sobbing silently to myself so let's see what i said about it in my review you can tell because i just moved into the house because the dresser behind me doesn't have knobs or anything i don't even want to say anything about this book because all the feels all the feels is like so intense i thought i was ready to handle like the mature nature of that kind of a relationship um and the issues that come from that and the intensity that comes and i i was not ready i was not ready um i was broken by the end of this book like it ruined me i will never forget this book for as long as i live and the way that it made me feel i definitely think that you could consider some of this book gratuitous like having sex scenes and like leading up to sex scenes um is a choice to like fully explore instead of just like this vague idea but i think that it's almost important to fully describe how the characters are feeling for each other in those moments just to really drive home like how [ __ ] up it all is i actually of all of them regret including it in this list because like having to talk about it still is just like not a not a comfortable feeling by any means but to organize it in the final rating now i think ugly love holds up and i still consider it a favorite though i don't recommend it to everyone um forbidden i think holds up and remains one of the most impactful reads i've ever had but i don't recommend it to anyone um the duff is just okay i think if you want to read it in this day and age like it's fine this is where i leave you um [Music] i mean it's target audience is still like an audience that i think will enjoy it i just if i was going to read a book for the goal of like reading about a group of siblings or reading about a man like in a change in life scenario like i would just pick up a book that didn't also include things that were gonna make me like angry so it's not that i don't recommend it it's just that i don't know why i would recommend it over like a book that is more sensitive topically and hopeless i don't know what to say about hopeless i've always wanted to reread it so i'm glad that i did but with the things that bother me about it paired with the fact that i just don't think it's that good of a book in general like i don't think it's that well written i don't think it handles a lot of topics in a way that i enjoyed anyway i completely see where you are all coming from and telling me that it's not a good book so that's it i read these five it took the whole month my wrap up this month is also going to be strange because it's pretty much just these i'm always glad to know more about my reading taste um though i did hope to have more fun reading these than i did thank you for choosing them and uh the next one i don't know when the heck that's gonna be out i don't want to put myself through this again for a minute so yeah i will see you soon thank you so much for watching bye

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 64,239

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala

Id: OPSViErwqEQ

Length: 56min 21sec (3381 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021