Every Book I Read in 2018

hey YouTube it's Zoe and today we are going to talk about every single book that I've read in 2018 we're going to cover my reading stats every star rating I gave to every book and then I'm going to review the books that I didn't review during my only other wrap-up of the entire year I was really on top of my book reviews so this is going to be in quite a long video I hope you can get comfortable grab something to drink and I also will include timestamps down below in the description if you want to skip to a particular part of this video in case you don't want to watch the whole thing which I totally get anyway let's get started now I only read 35 books in 2018 not including the 20 books that I read for school but I don't want to talk about those because I've graduated it's in the past don't look back so I only read 35 books for fun but I did reread a book I read a book twice this year so I only read 34 individual books for pleasure in 2018 not my best reading year but I'm okay with it it's better than reading nothing also things were happening this year so I'm calling it a win even though I didn't win my Goodreads Reading Challenge side note at the beginning of the year I usually set my Goodreads reading goal to be kind of an aspirational goal something that I would love to hit in an ideal setting but I never really hit that goal so at the end of the year I lower my goal to match the actual amount of books I read that year just to make myself feel better but at the end of 2018 I forgot to lower my reading goal so it said that I failed it actually hid my reading challenge from me so I can't immediately see that I failed and now on the reading challenge it says better luck next year which is so sassy and then a one-sided feud with Goodreads I'm so upset anyway my low number will make these statistics easier to calculate so that's a good thing out of the 34 books that I'm looking at my average star rating was exactly 4 stars which is higher than I was expecting but I need to keep in mind that I DNS books all the time the moment I'm not feeling a book I will put it down and never pick it up again usually because I've forgotten that I actually read it in the first place whether I'm 50 pages into the book or 50 pages from the end I'll just stop reading it so usually the books that I review our ones that I finished and enjoyed also I tend to have pretty good luck with my books because I am recommended books from people who know my reading taste and know what I will enjoy or I find recommendations through reviewers or book tubers whose opinions I trust also also let's be honest I haven't been that critical with my book reviews in the past every book that I like I give 5 stars every book that I end up hating I give 3 stars so I mean I'm exaggerating a little bit but I haven't been that critical I think I've been afraid in the past to be critical with my book reviews because I know someone out there will enjoy the book and I don't want to deter people from reading certain things I think my purpose here is to review books so why am I not being critical that's something I plan on fixing I don't know why I went off on this tangent but moving on to the next statistic what was my average page count these books total twelve thousand eight hundred and seventy one pages with an average page count of 368 my shortest book was we should all be feminist by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which is only fifty two very small pages because it's based off of a TED talk and my longest book was Lord Of Shadows by Cassandra Clare which was 699 pages and this was actually the book that I read twice this year as for genres I read seventeen books exactly fifty percent that I'd consider to be realistic which I am including why a contemporary romance historical fiction mystery everything that's more or less realistic 13 of my books or 38% were sci-fi fantasy paranormal I'm making some very broad genres here I read four non-fiction books which doesn't sound like a lot but that's 12% of my reading and then I read for graphic novels two of which were graphic memoirs which I included with nonfiction now let's break them down by age category I read two books 6% of my reading that were middle grade or children's books a whopping 62% of my reading 21 of my books were young adult and then 11 of my books 32% were adult in 2019 I hope to read closer to 5050 why a an adult and 5050 realistic fiction and fantasy sci-fi paranormal all of those things in general I hope to read more widely now we're going to talk about all the books I read I will include timestamps to every book that I'm going to talk about if you want to hear me talk about certain books and it will also include a link to the only other wrap-up I did in 2018 if you want to hear me talk more in-depth about the first couple of books the first book I read in 2018 was I believe in a thing called love by Maureen gu which I gave 3.5 out of 5 stars I thought it was an extremely cute but extremely predictable why a contemporary inspired by kdramas I read a graphic memoir Persepolis the story as a childhood by Marjane Satrapi which chronicles her life growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and I gave it four out of five stars I read all four books of the Raven cycle by Maggie Stiefvater during a 24 hour read-a-thon so I can't really distinguish where one ends and the other begins but because I love the overall story I gave all of them 5 out of 5 stars but I think my favorite is blue Lily Lily blue but I am honestly not sure I'd care about these characters so deeply I am very much a character focused rather than plot focused which is why I tend to stray towards contemporaries rather than fantasies but this is a paranormal series the focus is so heavily on character development and relationship development and loved it I'm pretty sure I'm going to reread these in 2019 1 because I love them but 2 because I need to know what happens in each individual book I need to pick a favorite one of the series next I read crazy rich Asians by Kevin Kwan which I gave 4 out of 5 stars the movie adaptation also came out in 2018 and truthfully I kind of prefer the movie which doesn't often happen I have seen a movie three times already and I just want to keep on watching it until the end of my days however I still very much recommend the book because it is imbued with so much Chinese and Singaporean culture there are footnotes with explanations and translations I really felt like I was visiting this foreign country which I have never been to before it's a very different experience than watching the movie but it feels kind of like a travel guide and also like Gossip Girl I read the wedding date by Jasmine Guillory which I also gave four out of five stars this is a fluffy adult romance which has a trouble I love fake dating that leads to real love I also read further more about how to mafia which is a middle-grade of fantasy novel and I gave it four out of five stars when I first read it but upon further reflection I think I'd give him more of a 3.5 to a 3 star rating it was fun and whimsical to read in the moment but it was a little bit too nonsensical and the world wasn't as fleshed out as I liked also it was ultimately pretty forgettable I haven't thought about it since I read it back in March next I read Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare for the first time in 2018 this is the second book in the dark artifice of series and I read it almost a year late because everybody was warning me about the ending and I was scared the first time I read it I gave it 5 out of 5 stars but talk about the second time I read it later ah now I'm moving on to the books that I read from May onward and therefore have not reviewed in a wrap-up yet first step you save the date by Morgan Matson which was her newest release and I was waiting years for it because they kept on moving the release date back and my expectations were getting higher and higher because I was waiting and sadly it did not deliver this is a white contemporary which follows Charlie the youngest of five siblings for the first time in years all of her family members are going to be under one roof to celebrate her older sister's birthday birthday wedding her parents are also planning on selling their family home when Charlie heads off to college so Charlie's childhood is essentially being ripped away from her and she's having trouble coping her mother also writes a famous comic strip and there are examples of the comic strip and the book that's one thing I love about Morgan Matson's books they're more than just prose more than just writing the actual story like in a Mian Rogers epic detour there were receipts as well as little journal pages it's just a nice little addition it makes the book for me Charlie tries desperately to make this wedding weekend perfect and everything I mean everything that can go wrong goes wrong I gave it three out of five stars which is the lowest rating I've given any Morgan Matson book I really enjoyed some aspects of the book such as Charlie's relationship with her family the comic strips and Morgan Madison's writing style I really enjoy but the plot was all over the place disaster after disaster kept on happening and my anxiety was going through the roof it was no longer a cute rom-com with a few hijinks this family was a straight-up cursed I can forgive contemporaries for being unbelievable at times if I am really into the characters and the romance but that was not the case Charlie was annoying and selfish even though she was try to do things for someone else it was all ultimately to serve herself and the romance question mark this one just wasn't for me I then read floored by 7 UK authors which I'm going to read off because seven authors Sarah Bernard Holly Bourne Tanya Byrne nan Pratt Melinda Salisbury Lisa Williamson and Eleanor wood my new friend Emma from drinking by myself works for the publisher over in the UK and she asked when I was there for the summer if I would read the book with her and film a video for their YouTube channel book break and did it we filmed a video we talked about online relationships and the book it was a lot of fun I will link it somewhere on the screen if you want to watch it I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars it follows six British teens who all end up in an elevator in the same building when a man in the elevator dies right in front of them they start up a group chats to kind of talk through what happened and they eventually become friends and decide to meet up on the same day every year I think it's the anniversary that the man died which is gruesome this takes place from the time that they are teens trying on different personalities figuring out what they want to do with their lives through their early 20s and it follows how their personalities their goals and their relationships have changed since there are six different perspectives and you only hear from them once a year it's hard to fully grasp each character and really care for each character also pretty sure that each author had their own character and you could tell that none of them wanted their character to be the supporting cast so all their storylines a lot of things were happening and it was hard to keep them straight it was a fun quick read especially because I was reading it while living in London and it takes place in the UK but it's pretty forgettable I haven't thought about it since I read it back in May but now we have a book that is not forgettable in the slightest my favorite book of 2018 it is the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins read yeah five out of five stars oh I know you're probably sick of everybody talking about this but it's really good please read it this is written as if it was a memoir it follows two perspectives the first being Evelyn Hugo herself she is a woman of Cuban descent who becomes an a-list Hollywood movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1950s to the 1980s but she was better known for the seven husbands she had during her lifetime a big scandal it also follows Monique and unknown New York reporter who is shocked and confused when Evelyn calls her up and asks her to write her tell-all biography which is going to make a lot of money how if it takes place during the present following Monique interviewing Evelyn and half of it takes place during the past following Evelyn's rise to and fall from Fame I loved learning and reading about filmmaking and I loved historical fiction I loved by representation and I loved drama put that all together to get this wonderful book and on top of that Evelyn Hugo is such a complex and compelling main character she does morally questionable things she is ruthless ambitious and she will do what she feels like she needs to do in order to get ahead even if it means using and sabotaging other people and as the older Evelyn is narrating this you get to hear what older Evelyn thinks about past Evelyn's actions you think that she would be denouncing some of the things that she did but now she completely takes ownership of everything that she did clarifying that she did what she thought was right at the time and it's so refreshing I just she's such a strong character and even though I don't completely agree with her she is so interesting to read about and I would gladly read five more books about Evelyn Hugo in different situations I don't know on Mars yeah I'd read that she has strong beliefs strong feelings and a strong Drive she's not a kind or really a good person but I still love her this all her many many flaws this is so addictive and I was so immersed while reading it I completely forgot all of my surroundings I cried multiple times in public so I gave it five out of five stars oh we need a movie adaptation right now if you haven't read it please read it I know I've made your expectations very high but I ain't gonna live up to the height then I read Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gale Honeyman which I gave you 4 out of 5 stars this is about Eleanor Oliphant a thirtysomething year-old woman who lives in Scotland and lives in a relative isolation sticking to a strict schedule she was planned out everything that she does from the food sheets each night to the clothes she wears to work every single day she's lonely and stuck to her routine but when she falls in love with a stranger she is inspired to completely break out of routine and become the ordinary woman that she thinks that this man will fall for the whole book chronicles her getting out of her comfort zone and dealing with mental health and trauma although romance is the catalyst for her changing it is not the focus of this book which I really enjoyed I also enjoyed Eleanor's intelligence and try wit she wasn't immediately likable but she definitely grows on you and I cared so much about her well-being along with Eleanor Hugo and one character that I will mention later they are the most memorable characters of the year it took about 50 pages to really get into it is not action-packed at all it is pretty slow going but once you get attached to the characters especially Raymond and Eleanor herself I couldn't put it down it carefully balances light-hearted scenes with some much heavier topics in a very respectful manner and because of that and Eleanor herself I very much recommend this I reread the feed to all the boys I live before series by Jenny Han which includes to all the boys I've loved before which I gave four stars PS I still love you which I gave three stars and then always and forever Largey and which I also gave four stars I've reread all of these because I she wrote my final paper for my asian-american says class on partially on this series I wrote about the role of food in asian-american coming-of-age stories and large ate and her baking we're an excellent example and I got a good grade on the paper so thank you Jenny Han you probably already know what this series is about because there was a great Netflix adaptation but if you don't know what it's about it follows Largey a teenage girl who writes love letters to all of her crushes as a way to end her crush on them she uses them as a form of catharsis so she releases all of her love onto this piece of paper sometimes I get a little creepy and very specific but she doesn't intend for anybody else to read them but of course one day all of these letters were sent out to the respective crush so they all know her deepest darkest thoughts about them my favorite of the three is definitely the last book always in forever Lara Jean because she is more mature in this book it's less about boys although it is still kind of about boys but she focuses more on herself figuring out what she wants to do with her life where she wants to go to university she's really growing up our little girl the second book is the worst one except for John Ambrose McClaren she is 5,000 percent better than peanut kaminsky I'm just gonna put it out there please don't please don't attack me but it's true my hope in life is that we get a fourth installment following Laura Jean as she's about to graduate from college after if she's dumped Peter Kavinsky and all of that but she's figuring out what she wants to do after college freaking out all the normal college graduate stuff and then John Ambrose macclare and comes back or I mean an equally smart and respectful person that she fall in love with I'm not picky I just don't want Peter Kaminski maybe she doesn't fall in love at all maybe it's just about her finding herself her separating herself from romance okay I'm moving on I'm thinking too much about future books buckle in my friends because now it's time for my least favorite book of 2018 which was Lea on the offbeat by becky albertalli oh my I gave it 2 out of 5 stars but I am I might even make it lower than that I really dislike this book for many reasons so let's talk about it I really enjoyed of Simon vs. the Homo sapiens agenda' I enjoyed his friend group and I enjoyed it becky albertalli his writing style so when I heard that we were getting a story centering on Leah would have Simon's best friends I was pretty darn excited i pre-ordered this book I was interested to see what her story would bring no good things in my opinion first of all it read like bad fanfiction I mean the dedication of the book literally says for the readers who knew something was up even when I didn't it's right there so this reads like it's entirely fanservice it seems like a few readers said to becky albertalli hey i think there could have been a certain romance in simon vs the homo sapiens agenda and becky albertalli was like sure and even i was like sure when i first heard of this but then in this book becky albertalli completely retcons what happens in simon with lea making it seem like all of this came from somewhere not just started in this book but had some history but that wasn't how it was in that book I'm really trying not to spoil anybody but what they were hanging out the whole time inside my verses Homo sapiens agenda' really we had no evidence the characters themselves felt very off especially Nick and Abby they were incredibly one-dimensional and they did not fit their personalities in the first book they seemed like they were recreated in this book to specifically serve the trés of leah in this scenario the plot let me tell you about it it was all over the place nothing happened really until the very end when everything was resolved extremely conveniently and all at once in real life the tension of the situation would not just end the way it did but this is fan fiction so I'm sorry I'm mad leah was also a terrible character like I said earlier with Evelyn Hugo I enjoy a terrible character when they are read amenable and when there is character development not the case Leo was exactly the same at the beginning as she was at the end she didn't learn any lessons from her bad behavior she expected everybody else around her to learn from their mistakes and to never make mistakes in the first place unless they want her wrath but she did not do the same for others she uses people she doesn't care about their feelings I would hate to be her friend and I feel very bad for Simon he deserves a better friend and now I want to talk about the romance in this book I didn't like it at all I was so excited for this book because we were getting by representation which a female female relationship in a popular why a book but there was no chemistry I had no idea where this even came from it felt so forced and let's refer back to the dedication for all the people who knew something was up even when I didn't yeah who who saw that coming except for the adaptation of Simon love Simon there was chemistry I don't want to spoil anything I'm sorry if I have released minor spoilers upon all of you but I would much rather have seen Lea with a new person that was somebody that we'd have to retcon it would have been so much better if there was a new girl at school and then yeah I'd be on board with that but that didn't happen and also Lia is an awful person especially when it comes to other people questioning their sexuality and it's never addressed later in the book people just forgive her why I don't know also moving on from that just so that I can calm down a little bit but a little nitpick it bothers me I've realized when contemporary writers use references to pop culture especially Harry Potter to win points with their readers it seems lazy and becky albertalli does it all the time I only realized with this book but now looking back I have definitely seen it in all of the books I've read from her Leah even calls herself the resident fat Slytherin Rory Gilmore which I mean it's fine if there's only one reference to it but it's throughout the entire book she has people debating Hogwarts houses and talking about Jerry fanfic there are a lot of Hamilton references it really takes me out of the book it seems like I said before lazy and it seems like becky albertalli doesn't know how kids talk these days or something like that and so she's filling in the gaps with references I just like this so much that it's making me rethink the ratings I gave her previous books and I generally like them when I read them so I I just don't know if I'm going to read any more becky albertalli in the future I'll link my Goodreads down below I have a whole review of this book that has a few more spoilers if you want to know what I'm really talking about but I was very disappointed I went into this with very high expectations and I really hope that we get better female female relationships in the future in y-a and just all books because there is definitely a lack of them and I'm sad I'm sorry for ranting for so long I had to let it out it's been sitting with me for months because I didn't do a wrap-up moving on from my rant the next book I read and really enjoyed was born a crime by Trevor Noah his memoir I listened to the audiobook and it was such a great experience I really recommend it if you can find the audio book not only does he have a very nice voice but he speaks so many different language is indigenous to South Africa where he is from and where this memoir takes place I haven't heard practically any of these languages before listening to the audiobook but he it's so beautiful and he switches between them so effortlessly this book chronicles his life growing up in South Africa during and after apartheid which was a 50-year period of racial segregation Trevor Noah is the son of a black woman and a white man which was illegal back then it was very interesting because I had heard of apartheid in history class but we only talked about it for maybe one or two days during this class which I mean was it a good history class probably not this was an inside look at this oppressive system it was so interesting there were so many different factors to apartheid I never even knew of so I learned a lot about apartheid but that was not the aim of this book it's not a history book I really enjoyed hearing his own stories he is obviously very funny he is a comedian and his mom was so strong just seeing how he went from living in poverty in South Africa to being the host of The Daily Show it's astounding he was able to balance the seriousness of the situation of being born a crime with his own humor and I don't have cable so I've never really seen The Daily Show with him as a host I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy his humor but I very much do he can really write a story I was engaged the whole time I listened to this in only a couple of hours less than a day when I was supposed to be studying for my exams I was listening to this instead I gave us a 4.5 out of 5 stars because although it was incredibly addictive and I had such a fun time listening to it it is written non chronologically so he skips around from his childhood to when he's older to his childhood before the other childhood story and so I couldn't really keep the timeline straight he also tended to go on pretty long tangents but it was enjoyable nonetheless and upon further reflection I might bump it up to five stars but right now it's at four point five another book that I highly recommend the audiobook of is Sadie by Courtney summers which I gave five out of five stars I will say that this book tackles some very dark topics such as drug abuse sexual abuse pedophilia murder a lot of tough subjects so if you aren't up for that steer clear of this book this reads almost like a puzzle with half of it being told from the perspective of Sadie who basically raised herself and her younger sister after their mother left and one day her younger sister is found murdered the other perspective is that of a podcast host who is doing a podcast on her sister's murder in their small town and also on Sadie's own disappearance after Sadie leaves to avenge her sister's murder so the podcast chapters are a few steps behind Sadie's chapters chronologically it makes more sense when you're actually reading it it's not that confusing I promise the reason why I recommend the audiobook is because it's not just an audio book it is an experience there is a whole cast of actors a different actor for each character and there are sound effects ambient noises it sounds like a podcast mixed with an audiobook like I said before Sadie is a very dark book there are zero moments of levity which got to be a little much sometimes I'll be honest but the dark topics such as pedophilia and sexual abuse and murder are handled so carefully and respectfully none of the abuse and pedophilia were sensationalized and a lot of it was actually not on the page Courtney summers focuses more on the victims of the abuse rather than the abuse itself and I very much appreciated that so I was able to make it through the book because I wasn't sure at the beginning when we learned of the things that were happening wasn't sure I was going to make it I had to go watch the good place so that I didn't get too overwhelmed then I read my shortest book of the year which was we should all be feminist by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I gave it four out of five stars and as you can see it really is tiny without the acknowledgments it's only 48 pages one of my goals in 2018 was to read more nonfiction percentage-wise I think I did but I mean number of books that I actually read not that hot but because of the goal that's why I picked this up I had heard about this essay and the TED talk for years but for some reason I never got around to reading it although it's very short so I'm happy that I read it I wasn't mind blowing I think it would have been even more meaningful if I read it when I was first discovering and getting into the feminist movement but a lot of it wasn't new to me the part that I really enjoyed though the part that just bumped it up to a four star is that she was talking about her experience as a Nigerian woman and how the feminism movement differs or the idea of feminism differs from Nigeria and United States she's so intelligent and she's able to condense such broad topics into such a short amount of pages without losing any of the impact so I'm happy I read it I'm happy to watch the TED talk and I will definitely be picking up her latest or one of the latest essays it's on my bookshelf right now hopefully I will get around to it too the next book I read was the forest Queen by Betsy Cornwall I read this for a book club and I liked it the least out of all of us I gave it 2 out of 5 stars this is supposed to be a gender bent Robin Hood retelling which sounds like it should be right up my alley but beyond some of the names of the characters and the places being the same this did not feel like it was based on that at all there were only a few instances of actual thieving and most of that was for personal gain rather than giving to the poor which is kind of Robin Hood's whole thing I was expecting epic heists but most of the actual thieving was summed up by characters after the thieving occurred we stole from this carriage that's it instead of showing us them stealing from a carriage what instead this was mostly a survival story taking place in a very small secluded area of a forest they so rarely left that area that I was starting to feel claustrophobic also the writing style itself felt like it was catering to younger teenagers edging on middle grade but there were some graphic depictions of killing and eating animals killing and skinning and eating them it felt way out of place it also seemed like Betsy Cornwell wanted to tackle some darker topics such as sexual abuse and suicide but they were not handled well at all especially the attempted suicide I felt like it was potentially very harmful and the characters all of them save for one felt one-dimensional there were also so many characters so many people living in this small part of the forest I couldn't keep their name straight there was only one supporting character that I felt was kind of fleshed out and that was the only character and cared about their personality treats especially the main character were told to us rather than shown to us so we were told that the main character was brave and this and that but everything happened to her she didn't really do anything she was just there I was just there we were all just there not thieving not doing heists like I wanted as you can tell I have a lot of nitpicks I listed them all out in a Goodreads review so again my Goodreads is down below if you want to know more of my thoughts I have heard from a few people that they really enjoyed this so maybe you'll enjoy it hopefully I'm not deter people who want to read this from reading it on a lighter note I read The Prince and the dressmaker by Jen Wang a deliciously cute and colorful and lovely graphic novel which I gave five out of five stars this is a graphic novel which takes place in 19th century France and follows a prince prince Sebastian who likes to put on dresses and turn into his alter ego lady Chris Talia at night likes to go to the highest spots in Paris he'll miss the help of a dressmaker named Francis who wants to become Bakke one day wants to become a designer of her own but she has to keep Prince Sebastian's secret it was endlessly cute I loved Francis and Sebastian's relationship they were so supportive they helped each other become the best version of themselves they could become gender identity was also discussed very respectfully I also loved the art style it is so cute and colorful and bubbly cartoonish it was such a pleasure for my eyes and the clothes were gorgeous it was atmospheric and pleasant I was happy to be here one thing that bothered me is that a character was forced to come out during a public event but it was resolved pretty quickly and everything seemed to have a happy ending so that didn't hinder the book for me and I don't think that it was harmful overall it's one of my favorite graphic novels of all time I loved it I read the Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by Mary Ann Schaefer and Annie barrows right after I watched the Netflix adaptation which I loved I didn't actually know it was based in a book until after I watched the adaptation I rated this four out of five stars this takes place in Britain and the tiny island of Guernsey in the English Channel during the recovery from World War two our protagonist Juliet is a writer in London and she soon learns that there is a book club in Guernsey that helped them get through World War two when they were occupied by the Germans she gets in touch with one of the people in the book club and she travels to Guernsey to write a book about them we learn all about how they survive through the war and the relationships that they formed with one another their lair oh man it's all about the resilience of people and how kindness and connection can get us through the hardest times and there's nothing better to connect over than books it's a love letter to books and I love reading books about books I love watching movies about movies and reading books about books and in the case of ethylene Hugo reading books about movies how to think it's so interesting I learned so much about Guernsey honestly I thought it was a fictional place until I looked it up I had never heard of this island before but you could tell that the author's did their research I felt like I was there too this place I never knew existed I will say that I kind of preferred the adaptation over the book because this was written entirely in letters to and from Juliet I had watched the adaptation beforehand I already connected to all of the different characters but I think if I just read the book I wouldn't have been able to connect with the people and events as much as I did it was an interesting stylistic choice but not sure it completely worked maybe if it was happened letters half in prose a movie also has Lily James as Juliet and what's-his-face the brother from hunting of Hill House and a bunch of people from Downton Abbey so I was living so watching the movie before I read the book didn't hinder my enjoyment at all in fact I think it heightened invited me that connection and that automatic love for things that happen but the book did fill in some of the details and some of the historical facts that were missing either way you read it it'll work happy I read it but I would be more likely to rewatch the movie than reread the book next I read the diviners by Libba Bray which I have had my shelf for years in one form or another I actually had a copy of this a couple of years ago with an eye unhaul dit but then a few of my friends started reading it so I picked up the copy again and then I finally read it and then I can't imagine Efrain howl again it was such an interesting story it's set in the 1920s in New York City there are kind of like superpowers magical powers paranormal ghosts and demons and what a lot of things are happening in this book I already ordered the next two books in the series because I only hear it gets better from here like I said this takes place in the 1920s in New York City and it follows several teenagers from different backgrounds our main character is Evie who she's kind of annoying she is a modern flapper girl and she talks about herself a lot but she kind of grew on me I didn't want to like her but it happened these teenagers all have powers they are designers and Edie's power is to read the past from people and objects that she touches murderers start happening all over the city and it all ties back to the occult and as it happens Evie's uncle runs the Museum of the occult Evie and her gang try to find the murderer and bring him down and it all gets pretty darn spooky I let's just say that I'll never think of the word naughty the same ever again I read it before bed sometimes I regretted that I thoroughly enjoyed this book the only reason why I ducted down from a five star to a four star is that it was just unnecessarily long it could have been 100 pages shorter it was a little slow at times and there was a lot a lot of 20s lingo just thrown in I really hope that people back in the 20s did not speak like that because that would positively not be the cat's pajamas man who talks like that the next book I want to talk about I actually did read for school so I lied earlier sorry about but it is the best we could do by tiwiii I think that's how you pronounce her name but this is a graphic memoir and I enjoyed it so much that I want to talk about it today because I recommend it I don't have the dust jacket so I'm sorry about that I got this book use it's not very exciting to look at but I promise inside it's pretty interesting to look at I didn't love the art style at first but after analyzing it and talking about it in class and talking about the colors used I have a newfound respect for you this is a graphic memoir which chronicles her and her family's life growing up and living in Vietnam fleeing because of the Vietnam War and then starting a new life in the United States this covers decades of her family's life we see how her parents grew up very very differently from one another and how they struggled throughout the years especially when it came to the Vietnam War she examines why there is a sense of separation between her and her parents it also covers the strain on individuals and a family when they are forced to flee everything that they know and love because of factors outside of their control like war and then are having to go to a foreign land and start a life from scratch without any support system this was not just good for a school book this was good for a book this is staying on my bookshelf the only required reading I think of my bookshelf that is staying there forever the next book I read was after I do by Taylor Jenkins read after I read Evelyn Hugo I learned that she had written several books beforehand this being one of them and now it is my mission to read all of them I still haven't but I'm making my way through slowly I asked a few of my friends what their second favorite Taylor Jenkins read book was because obviously I flew Hugo was number one and all of them almost all of them said this one so I ended up reading it and I gave it 4 out of 5 stars I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn't read Evelyn Hugo beforehand because I was comparing them the whole time thinking how much I wanted to read Evelyn Hugo again which wasn't fair to the book this book follows a married couple Lauren and Ryan who have been married for six years and together for 11 as the back says this is a love story about what happens when the love feeds so they still love each other they still have a respect for one another but they're not in love when they start to question whether or not they should even stay together they decide to do something pretty radical and not have any contact with one another for an entire year the year is designed to help them realize what they truly want in the relationship and in life in general I enjoyed seeing Lauren getting to know herself again especially since her and Ryan had been together since college so she didn't really know adult Lauren I especially loved this one quote which said isn't it nice once you've outgrown the idea of what life should be and just enjoy what it is uh I hadn't been in a long-term relationship but that right there that one quote spoke to me on a spiritual level usually books are about successful relationships and the idealized version of things this was not the case things had failed and she was trying to recover from that although I do love my idealistic books I like seeing something more real even though it is technically fiction however my actual favorite part of the book was the first 50 pages when we were getting flashbacks on how Lauren and Ryan met when they started dating when they started falling in love when they got married to the present day when they are breaking up I loved reading the build-up and then the breakdown of relationship I gave it four inside stars overall I still think the beginning was the best but it was pretty satisfying the entire way through because it was October by this point I had to read some spooky books so I decided to read a book that I've been meaning to read for ages especially because I love the movie adaptation of it and it is Coraline by Neil Gaiman I love the claymation movie it is so creepy I had a full-on nightmares because of it as a kid and loved the style of it I love the soundtrack a plus but because I love that so much I went into this with too high of expectations especially for a 190 page children's book they added several things to the movie they added characters they added songs and dances that have been in here this book is about a lonely girl named Coraline who moves with her family into a new flat in England in their flat they had a door to nowhere it just opens up onto a brick wall but then one day Coraline opens it and it is a door to an alternate dimension kind of a world that strangely mirrors her own except her mother and father in that world have strange black button eyes and are creepily obsessed with her they want her to stay in their world forever although I was kind of underwhelmed by this story it does have one of my new favorite book quotes ever when you're scared but you still do it anyway that's brave hah I think it's especially inspiring because it's a children's book so it's telling you to face your fears I need that sometimes Coraline didn't give me the creeps except for the illustrations they were sufficiently creepy my my my some of the later ones too well I'm pretty sure that this would have been one of my favorite books if I read it as a kid but as an adult who has seen the movie several times I gave it 3 out of 5 stars I'm still going to keep this on my shelf though if you were a kid or you like a kid and want them to read a book leave them to this but it is kind of spooky so maybe keep an eye on them but I want it to be majorly spooked so I picked up a graphic novel with some of the creepiest sometimes grossest illustrations I've ever seen with my two eyes it is chilling Adventures of Sabrina book one by Roberto aguirre-sacasa and Robert hack I feel like this book is cursed like I don't like holding it this is a very dark satanic reimagining of the Sabrina the Teenage Witch we know and love from the Archie comics from the 90s live-action TV show and if you're me from the children's cartoon this is not nice nor fluffy its spiky and mean and I'm scared Netflix released a TV show based on this graphic novel back in October and I read this in preparation for watching that show but after reading this I have not seen it yet it's no longer October I don't have the nerve to watch it I went to knowing that this was dark and creepy but I wasn't prepared for how dark and creepy usually people tell me things are scary and yeah I'm a little spooked but I'm not scared but I was scared I read this before bed one night and I mean I had a tree that was scratching on my window and it was not a pleasant night's sleep I gave this four out of five stars when I read it I thought it was a very interesting twist on a story that I know and love but sometimes I did think that it was a little bit unnecessary with how they took the story and the storyline was a little bit confusing at times there was a lot of lore thrown at us and I'm not familiar with satanic rituals I thought it was very atmospheric though the art style I'm not personally a fan of it but I thought it definitely fit the mood what really bumped up the creepy factor just the fact that I don't find this pleasant to look at so I was not having a great time I was having an entertaining time as of right now I definitely have zero desire to continue this series and I honestly have zero desire to watch the TV show maybe in October when I'm feeling spooky again so after reading that I needed a palate cleanser of sorts so I picked up maybe in another life by Taylor Jenkins read a good old contemporary book to help me sleep at night this has a similar story line to the Gweneth Paltrow movie sliding doors where one small decision from the main character leads to two completely different storylines I gave this 3 out of 5 stars the concept of the story was pretty interesting as well as the first couple of chapters but after that it became pretty monotonous the storylines weren't different enough in my opinion sometimes even the same sentences were copied and pasted maybe they were changed a little bit between the two storylines but they were mirroring each other kind of and I wanted something wildly different I wanted one of them to become like an astronaut or something and then go to space and save the world I don't know I wanted some variety and honestly I much prefer one of the storylines over the other so I was at one point finding myself just getting through those storylines to get to the fun ones the ones that I cared about small nitpick I know I keep nitpicking these books but there was also a weird obsession with cinnamon rolls in this book it was kind of cute at first but then it got annoying pretty quickly that read like it was part of a why a book it read like it might have been part of to all the boys in love before but this is a listen adult woman and she's obsessed with cinnamon rolls and she just eats cinnamon rolls how is she a functioning adult out of the three Taylor Jenkins read books that I have read so far this is my least favorite but I'm still going to read all of the rest of her books okay now time for a book I adored radio silence by Alice Osmond which I gave five out of five stars it's also very shiny this covered so many topics that I was struggling with at the time of reading it including mental illness at university struggling with creating something no matter how much you enjoy it and love it while you're dealing with mental illness and academic pressure especially academic pressure that you place on yourself so it really spoke to me this book is one of only a few that I've read that actually accurately depicts senior year of high school when you're applying for University and sitting for exams and figuring out what you want to do with life even though this is set in the UK and it's not called senior year over there also the whole testing system is different over there and the university application and all of that is different I felt understood I felt like I could so relate to Frances our main character and her just inner turmoil while all of this was happening like I've said multiple times in this video I graduated from University at the end of 2018 but this still brought me back to when I was applying to university and doing so many extracurriculars and panicking and not what I was doing at all I mean I'm still kind of feeling that I still very much related to this book it brought me back but I also felt like it represented who I was currently part of this does actually follow a character in the first year of university and when reading that it hit me I realized that we don't have many books following characters in university I know new adult was supposed to bridge the gap between mid-teens y.a and 30-something adult books but let's be honest most of new adult focuses on relationships and sex and most of the time the characters have just graduated from university they don't actually go there 23 fresh from university but hello people go to college as well so I formally asked the book gods to give us more university centered books anyway back to radio silence digital is Francis who is in her final year of in America we call it high school but she has been at the top of her class for years she is head girl she's very focused on academics because she has her sights set on going to Cambridge she devotes her limited spare time to creating fan art for her favorite podcast universe city not University one day the creator of the podcast reaches out to her and asked that she will be the official artist of the podcast and she obviously accepts the two of them form a beautiful friendship they help each other through some pretty rough times and it's just a friendship with such mutual support and platonic affection it's the sweetest also both of them as well as several supporting characters are part of the lgbtq+ community which I very much appreciated I needed to listen to the audiobook of it because there's a podcast in it so I'm very curious to see how they do the podcast I hope it's good it deserves to be good I then read another five star book an absolutely remarkable thing by Hank green which I was honestly not expecting to love I went in with very low expectations because he is a youtuber and I been burned by youtuber books before but wow I had no idea what this book was about coming in I hadn't seen any of the vlogbrothers videos on it I hadn't even read the back cover I just knew that he wrote a book and that one of my friends enjoyed it I think I need to start or stop doing that for future books I just need to go into books not knowing anything I need to stop researching the heck out of books before I even pick them up but in case you do want to know what this book is about it is a first contact sci-fi novel set in present-day America social media stardom and all our main character is named April May she is 23 years old a struggling graphic designer living in New York City and on her way back from work one day she stumbles upon an impressive ten foot tall transformer looking statue it's on the sidewalk but because it's like 2:00 a.m. no one around has seen it so she asks one of her best friends named Andy April and Andy like from parks and recreation that's all I could think the whole time while reading this but anyway she calls him up he is a youtuber they post a YouTube video of April with the 10 foot tall transformer looking ding which she calls Carl but it turns out that these Carl's have popped up all over the world at precisely the same time no one knows how they got there it's very suspicious April is the first person who has ever interacted with the Carl's and posted about it on social media so she kind of becomes the unofficial ambassador to the Carl's everybody looks to her for new information and things get out of control she becomes an Internet superstar a youtuber supreme both her and the Carl's are thrust into the spotlight and she becomes more famous and powerful than she could have ever imagined which isn't always a good thing if I don't usually pick up sci-fi because space terrifies me and I don't want to read about it but this was such an accessible site by story it reads almost like a contemporary following April and her rise to fame with a few extraterrestrial elements just thrown in instead of focusing on the Carl focuses more on how humanity reacts to outsiders and the social and political changes and chaos this type of scenario would cause it felt like this was actually what would happen my mind was blown do I like sci-fi now just not space sci-fi I think I do April also becomes famous through YouTube and use this Twitter to build her brand and I have read several books about social media stardom and all of that most of them are very inaccurate I'm not a social media star or anything like that but I know how YouTube works and most of the time writers do not know how it works hank green is a social media star he knows how it works I was very thankful for the accuracy of that also April May is such a delightfully awful main character I loved her and I loved to hate her she like Evelyn Hugo does many morally questionable things but again like Evelyn Hugo April May marrieds this from the future looking back at her past she knows how crappy she was she knows that many of the decisions she made word not the best but she is still secure in herself she knows that she did what she thought was right in the moment I loved seeing April Duvall from an unknown graphic designer who didn't even want to be on social media to somebody who is obsessed with how other people see her and fame and fortune and power she's smart ambitious and awful but she is not awful for the sake of being awful she's trying to do a good thing just not in the best way like I mentioned quite a while back I have three favorite characters of the year Evelyn Hugo obviously then April May and then Eleanor olifant I think they are very memorable characters they're all complex one minor criticism I have for this otherwise fantastic book was that the main character was a bisexual woman written by a man and sometimes you could tell some things as she did and said didn't feel natural but I did know that he was a man going into this book so I might have been just more aware of everything that she did but overall I really enjoyed this book I think about this book a lot way more than I think about almost any other book that I read this year and I really want to reread it especially because there is going to be a single I didn't know that going into this was going to be a series but I'm excited I then reread Lady midnight and Lord Of Shadows by Cassandra Clare the first two books in the dark artifice is trilogy I've really read these in anticipation of going to the queen of arendelle miss book signing in December where I got the book it's right over there on my shelves but guess who still hasn't read it my heart was not prepared after rereading it Lord Of Shadows I knew where queen of arendelle ness was going to start and I didn't want to be there right now but upon rereading days I realized that I don't love them as much as I did the first time it could be partially because I've read these before I've read this one now three times so I know how it's all going to end up but actually often I prefer rereading a book because I am more aware of how the plot is going to progress unable to see all the Easter eggs and I'm able to revisit some of my favorite characters like Kristina and mark and Ty not Julian I do not like him Sam I am I still really enjoy Lady midnight I still gave it five out of five stars one because of the nostalgia but two because I still think it really holds up even upon the third read of it it is not a typical Shadowhunters book it is more a mystery than a there's a bad guy let's go find him we have to put together clues and there are red herrings and I love mystery and I love shadow hunters so put it together and I'm a happy camper but then I gave this one a four out of five stars that doesn't sound that low but for a Cassandra Clare book that's pretty darn low for me I've given every other Cassandra Clare book except for her short stories 5 out of 5 stars I felt wrong doing that with this book especially because the first time I read it this year I gave it 5 out of 5 stars Cassandra Clare has such a place in my heart she helped me get through some pretty tough times with her books and she led me to some of my greatest friends now because we all read her books and talked about them together a lot of reading her books is just being in a happy place honestly I have trouble with reading her books objectively that's why all of them are 5 out of 5 stars except this one now there are just too many memories and emotions attached to her books even before I even start reading them but this series the dark artifice is is my least favorite of the bunch it was strong going in because of Lady midnight but honestly the whole thing kind of feels like filler content because we know that there is going to be a serious following ty and kit when they're a little bit older it feels like we're just setting up where their story is going to begin this is just to bridge the gap between the Mortal Instruments and their series that's not to say that it's bad it still has some of my favorite moments basically all the moments that Christina is there I'm there I'm there for it also Emma and Julian are my least favorite protagonists that we've had so far especially Julian he is an interesting main character because I hate him but I don't like reading from his perspective and I'm not rooting for him I don't care about the romance at all I am much more invested in Christina's love life Emma does have her moments sometimes but I feel like mostly she's just a carbon copy of Jace but with boobs it's been done before we've had the cocky main character who is very strong a strong shadow hunter I'm sick of them I think it comes down to the fact that I'm not as emotionally invested in the series as I was with the previous two series it's the third series she's written a lot of books so far so I feel like they should just be getting better and better I only care about Christina I'm gonna keep on messaging Christina because all the supporting characters pretty solid the main characters they just leave I'd be fine with that so like I said it kind of feels like filler it doesn't feel like it'll be a very complete story in and of itself it'll be a good lead up to hopefully a better series with KITT and Ty part of the reason why I've been putting off reading queen of arendelle just for so long is because my reread of Lord Of Shadows didn't go as well as I was hoping for and now I'm quite apprehensive going into that book honestly I haven't heard that many good things about the finale to the trilogy family the last book I read in 2018 was the afterlife of Holly chase by Cynthia hand it was December so I had a craving for a holiday book and this is inspired by one of my favorite classics and a story dear to my heart a Christmas Carol this book got so much hype this holiday season everybody I knew was reading it or had already read it and loved it so obviously I had no choice in the matter I had to read it as well what were we talking about before expectations all of the hype and my nostalgia my love for a Christmas Carol I was expecting something mind-blowing but my mind was not blown I gave it three out of five stars it was okay very quick read I read it in only a couple of hours because I could not put it down I thought the concept was pretty cool there is a whole project Scrooge a whole company dedicated to recreating a Christmas Carol picking out a real-life Scrooge and haunting him or her or them showing their past present and future where they went wrong where they can help humanity the main character Holly was a screw 20 year she was not a good person at all and she ended up dying a few days later she comes back as the ghost of Christmas past and has to work with other Scrooge's the concept though I was on board for but the execution it could have been so much better like I said I was really into this book when I was reading it I was actually reading it at the same time as one of my best friends Hannah from a clockwork reader and while we were reading it we were exchanging our own theories I had this whole theory for how everything was going to go down there were twists and turns it was very exciting in my head then I read the actual ending and it was pretty straightforward and rushed and not satisfying at least to me because I had this whole theory planned out also the butterfly effect have they heard of it the romance in this book I don't know if anybody found it cute because it was not cute at all for me at least there was a questionable age gap stalking so because of all of the hype all of my expectations and my crazy theory that I developed it kind of ruined the book for me and they gave it 3 out of 5 stars and after 12 years in Azkaban we have finally made it to the end of this video we've talked about every single book that I read in 2018 we're lucky that I didn't read more books than that because this would have been even longer of a video if you made it this far I am both impressed and also very thankful or you just had this video on in the background and forgot that you were even watching it but that's ok too thanks for sticking around I love you all so much please let me know down below in the comments how many books you read in 2018 you're reading stats your least favorite book your favorite book anything I love reading your comments they make my day so much so thank you for watching and I will talk to you all soon in my next video bye [Music]

Channel: readbyzoe

Views: 92,623

Rating: 4.9625068 out of 5

Keywords: readbyzoe, BookTube, BookTuber, Book Review, Favorite Books of 2018, Rant Review, Leah on the Offbeat, Shadowhunters, Cassandra Clare, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Book Discussion, Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, The Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Jenny Han, Morgan Matson, Radio Silence, Trevor Noah, Born a Crime, Crazy Rich Asians, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, The Diviners, Libba Bray

Id: NDfVBziY0r0

Length: 66min 23sec (3983 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019