RATING POPULAR BOOKS I READ OVER QUARANTINE | to all the boys, we were liars, oitnb, booktok, &more!

i feel really bad because i don't want like the author to watch this video and like feel bad but it just [Music] hi guys it's me allison and today i'm gonna be reviewing the books that i've read so far over quarantine for you guys so naturally quarantine is not over please still wear your masks and social distance and everything but i am going back to school soon and i also work so i'm gonna have a lot less time to be reading so i figured i might as well do this video now so i wrote down the reviews of the books on my phone so i'm sorry if you guys see me like looking at it but i just want to make sure i cover all my bases these are the books that i have finished since march 13th to now i'm going to be talking about them in the order that i liked them so like best to worst the first book i'm going to talk about is actually a series it is the to all the boys i've loved before series by jenny han i'm in love with these books so basically i used to read so much and then there were these few years where i would never read recreationally and these books are what helped me get back into it they're an easy read laura jean is the fictional character that is the most like me like there's the big stuff like you know she's a hufflepuff she's an asian teenager bad driver stuff like that but literally down to the like subtle nuances she is just like me like her little thoughts her feelings about things we are the same person bro and not to mention the girl who plays her in the movies uh lana condor she has a youtube channel too and she did a book review recently too like ugg our minds and her favorite like type of book to read is thrillers and that's like my favorite too so the rating that i give to all the boys of love before series is a 10 out of 10. so i will give you guys a summary of the books i'm pretty sure most of you have either seen the movie you've heard of the movie you know the general premise if you don't basically laura jean wrote five love letters to these boys that she had crushes on and somebody sent them out so now she has to deal with that so she ends up fake dating this guy named peter to convince another guy that she doesn't like him it's a whole fiasco so that's the first book and then the second two books cover largine and peter's relationship and the ups and downs of high school and everything and i gotta say i honestly like the books more than the movies i know the movies are so good too but i like the books more and another thing i gotta say is even after reading the books i am team john ambrose people are always like if you read the books you'll understand why peter's better and i'm like no i did not get that at all from the books and my favorite out of the three was the last book which is always in forever lara jean because this is the book that covers college this is when all the characters are getting like their college admissions decisions they're all trying to figure out what they're going to do after high school and i was reading this right when i was going through my own internal college debacle and like each of the characters is like taking a different path and they're all like these paths that i had considered taking i felt understood bro the next highest rated book on my list is one of us is lying by karen mcmanus a thriller mystery drama type of book a summary of this five kids go into detention only four of them come out alive and all four of them had a motive to get rid of the fifth kid the book switches perspectives between the four of them as they try to figure out who did it i give this a 10 out of 10. i went through this book so fast because i wanted to know who did it i think the main reason that i loved this book so much though was because of my ship in the book i think without them i wouldn't have loved the book as much as i do but the ship was amazing there was some controversy over how it handled mental health issues but i honestly didn't know that until i looked at the reviews for it i think it depends on the reader i was fine with it when i read it that's a good read for teens young adults the next book is the perks of being a wallflower by stephen i'm sorry i don't know how to say his last name but it is on the screen for you guys i would give this either a 9 or a 9.5 out of 10. so this book is written from the perspective of charlie right here charlie is writing all these letters to an undisclosed friend in the book so the whole book is written as letters and i really really like that he is dealing with mental health issues with some trauma and the ups and downs of high school and so are his friends sam and patrick so i read this book after i watched the movie i went into the movie not knowing anything of what it was about i just knew it was like a beloved movie it was like a coming-of-age film so i was like i want to watch it and it hit me hard because i had no clue what i was getting myself into i loved it so much so i got the book they're very similar because the author also directed the movie so they're like spot on there are just a couple book scenes that aren't in the movie i think the movie's ending was a bit more powerful to me than the books because the movie's ending went a little bit more into detail and i feel like the movie's ending made me more emotional than the books which is why i gave it like a 9.5 i love that it was written as letters and it really captures like the naive sort of innocent freshman perspective of charlie so well like i love charlie so much i just want to like protect him i will say though if you guys have also struggled with mental health issues or you've gone through similar experiences to charlie sam or patrick be careful with reading the book or seeing the movie so the next book is orange is the new black by piper kerman it is what the netflix show is based off of so this is the true memoir of piper kerman about her year in a women's prison i wanted to read it because i loved the show so much and i even wrote my sophomore thesis paper on the show and i wanted to know how much of it is actually accurate to the book and what happened to her in real life honestly even during season one it diverged so only like the first couple episodes of the show were like true to the book there are like you know little true parts in this like peppered in throughout the show i would rate this book a nine out of ten i really enjoyed it the beginning was kind of slow but eventually i got into it and read it a little bit faster it just for me the reason i give a 9 out of 10 is it kind of sucks reading it from the perspective of piper like i'm sure that the author is a very nice woman like she's a lot better than the tv show character piper like the actress is fine but like the character in the show is kind of i'm sure piper is a nice woman just she had a relatively easy prison experience when you read the book i feel like she got like super lucky and she had like a great network of friends in prison she had a great network of friends outside of prison that made her experience there overall go pretty smoothly that's why i give it a 9 out of 10 because i know like if i went to prison my experience would not be as easy as hers was and a majority of people wouldn't have like as easy an experience as she did like based off of the descriptions of the other prisoners that she writes about overall it's a good book and it's eye-opening and i think people should read it to like understand what the prison system is truly like like she had to wait for years before actually going to prison like she knew she had to go because of like court and everything but she had to wait years like all that stress weighing on her and stuff so it's very eye opening about our justice system and the prison system but i think it would be interesting to read a book by another prisoner like piper's book is good but i would also like to hear about like another prisoner's perspective on it another prisoner's like a whole experience there you know what i mean so yeah i think you guys should read it very eye opening good read the next book i'm gonna talk about is nine perfect strangers by leanne moriarty summary of this book nine people check into a health resort it does not end up being what they thought they signed up for i would give this a nine out of ten it was a good book i enjoyed it i thought it would be more of a thriller that's why i would give it like a nine out of ten because my expectations i think were probably a little too high it is still very interesting but i don't know i just expected more thrill if you know what i mean like when you read that description about like ooh the health resort is not what they expected i don't know i expected something a little more thrilling than what i got but i still liked the book and this is another book that does switching perspectives and this one like you know one of us is lying did four people this one did all nine of the people that checked in and it did the three people working at the health resort so that's a lot of perspectives that was 12 and she did them well overall good book not much to say without spoiling it the next book i don't actually have the physical copy with me because i had it from my high school library like right before quarantine started it is a free life by hajin i read this for my creative writing class and then i found out i needed to read a different book instead so a summary of the book it is about a chinese family moving to america and trying to start a new life i believe it takes place in the 90s but when i read it it always felt like it was like the 50s or 60s i don't know but i think it was the 90s i would give it a 9 out of 10. i really liked it i liked how short the chapters were because it made reading it feel easier it was written like sort of like a bunch of little anecdotes about their life it was really nice for me to read a story about a chinese main character because i feel like most of the books that i've read so far in my life don't have any asian characters that's a strange realization i'm coming to right now but i brought the rating down a little bit because while i related to the main character at times he was also like annoying at times but you know that's also like good to have in a book because nobody's perfect everybody has flaws and he definitely had his flaws i really enjoyed how it viewed america from like an outside sort of lens like it had quotes like if you didn't have money you were nothing which is kind of true and also like without money you can't fight racism in america and another one just as you have to be rich enough to love your country like t okay i see you there were so many great quotes and like paragraphs and stuff that really resonated with me and i either like took pictures of them or i typed them out partially because i thought i was gonna have to talk about it with my writing seminar teacher but i didn't but yeah it was overall just a really good book and i also really liked the scent instruction because it was pretty much like straight to the point i think you guys should read it to give you maybe a different perspective of america to learn a little bit more about like chinese culture i don't i honestly don't know that much about chinese culture and i should because i'm chinese but i don't and so this is a good first step for me the next book i'm going to talk about is a poetry book this is a night sky with exit wounds by ocean wong i read this one for my creative writing class this was recommended to me by my teacher so i would give this a 8 out of 10 mostly because i'm just not a huge poetry person i'm sure if i really loved poetry my rating would probably be higher again this is an asian author overall i really liked his work it's a style quite different from my own so it helped me sort of like to play around with new writing styles in that class which is you know my teacher's goal i have a lot of thoughts written down about this because i had to talk about it with my teacher so i'm just gonna do like a shorter version for you guys like a little summary it was interesting to read this because he has more like abstract concepts and less literal poems than i do for instance in one of his poems called telemachus in here there was this line even my name knelt down inside me asking to be spared and i thought that was super interesting because he personified something that i've never fathomed personifying because like it's not a concrete thing so i've never thought about that but i thought that was really cool and then his line break choices i found very interesting they were often in like the middle of phrases so it was a little bit jarring to me at first and he also played around with the space on the page a lot he uses ampersands frequently and he often writes about his parents i appreciate that he repeats words for emphasis because that's something i do i repeat things for emphasis emphasis it was interesting to me that on a few occasions he wrote his poems from the perspective of a woman too like this was very admirable to me because i always find it hard to write from the perspective of a man since i don't you know have the experience of being a man and so i'm always worried that it won't be relatable from me he did really well writing poems from another gender's perspective in his personal life he does describe himself as raised by women so that may have played a part in why he's so good at it and then abed with burning city was one of my favorite poems in the book and another poem i really love in here is notebook fragments i thought that was such a cool idea for a poem so i did one like that from my writing seminar class the next book i have is one that was heavily recommended by book tick tock if you don't know what book talk is it is the tick tock community that talks about books it is we were liars by e lockhart i was very hyped to get this book because everybody hyped up the plot twist on tick tock so i originally when i wrote my reviews on my google doc i gave it an 8 out of 10 but honestly thinking about it now maybe i'd even bump it down to a seven out of ten so summary of this book there is this super rich family they own an island and they go to it every summer so one summer there is an incident and the book is written from the perspective of one of the teens in the family she had an accident that summer so she can't remember what the incident was what happened and so this whole book is her trying to piece it together trying to figure out what happened right it was interesting and i read it really fast because i wanted to get to the plot twist so that everybody on tick tock hyped up but honestly to me the plot test was a little bit of a letdown i don't want to spoil it but basically with the plot twist i thought it was kind of dumb of the characters like i read it so fast but the main reason i don't love this book is because the characters were not relatable to me in like any sense except for like one the only relatable character for me in the book was gat i don't know it's just kind of sucky to read a book about this super rich super privileged and super oblivious family like i mean that's probably the point but it's just they're not relatable for me for me like maybe for other people they're relatable i don't know i will say i want to reread it though because now that i know the plot twist the book will take on a different meaning to me i guess it is well written i will say um in that sense so yeah maybe i'd give it an eight i don't know i can't choose between seven seven point five and eight the last book i forgot i even read it i feel really bad because i don't want like the author to watch this video and like feel bad but it just [Music] the last book that i finished over quarantine because we're going to talk about my in progress books in a second the last book on my list is the leaving i would give this book a four out of ten first off the summary six kids disappeared when they were kindergarteners five of them return as teens the sixth kid's sister wants to know what happened to him i'm just gonna say it this book is way too overhyped like the big reveal was so anti-climactic oh my god and like there were a bunch of like loose ends that they just sort of left without tying them up and i'm sorry there was like and there was another there was also like a weird awkward forced love triangle in the book and it was like ill i don't sense the chemistry between any of you i'm not rooting for either of the couples and like the sister of that missing kid is so annoying like i don't know i've never been through an experience like that thank the lord i haven't gone through an experience like she did but like she's just annoying also this book it switches between three people's perspectives so it's two of the kids that went missing and then that sister and i would say it was done a lot worse than those other two books i talked about that had switching perspectives because with this one there's like no distinct voices between the characters i'm pretty sure i got it from book tick tock i mean i was so excited to read this when i got it but it just wasn't it didn't live up to my expectations i will say and finally i'm gonna really quickly talk about the two books that i'm currently in progress of reading pride and prejudice by jane austen i love the movie so much which is why i decided to pick this up it is a bit of a harder read though so it's taking me a lot longer to get through this one because it's old english at the moment i would give this probably an eight out of ten it is the iconic enemies to lovers story with elizabeth bennett mr darcy you know divides i will say i think the book elizabeth is more annoying than the movie elizabeth it's probably because she doesn't know everything that i know you know because i've already seen the movie and i know the plot but i really i do like elizabeth's character because like she has personality and depth and i really love jane's character and then the other book i'm currently reading is this one you are a bad bleep i need a bad bleep addison right no anyway you are a bad bleep by jen sarah honestly i really like this book so far because it is about like law of attraction and manifestation and stuff and i really love that stuff so i'm only on like chapter i just finished chapter three but i really like it and so i would recommend it to you guys i also have her money book so i'm gonna read that too it's a fast read i like you know she's straight to the point no nonsense so yeah thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you guys enjoyed if you did be sure to leave a like comment and subscribe i love you guys so so much and i will talk to you in my next video alright bye guys

Channel: Alison Chin

Views: 38,284

Rating: 4.9710951 out of 5

Keywords: alidoggames, alidog15, alison, chin, alisonchin, youtube, youtuber, book, books, reading, book haul 2020, book review 2020, book reviews 2020, booktok, book tiktok receommendations, trying booktok recommendations, rating book, rating popular book series, orange is the new black, to all the boys i've loved before trilogy, to all the boys i've loved before, we were liars, one of us is lying, thriller book haul, best books to read, liane moriarty, teen books, young adult books, tiktok

Id: _bYPHKLDlBs

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020