reading booktuber favourite books

hello friends it's kayla welcome to my favorite video of the year the third annual reading booktuber's favorites of the year prior this year we're looking at booktuber favorites from 2021 year one we were very scientific with it it was booktubers who had the most similar favorites to me at the end of the year and if any books showed up more than once across all of those like 10 booktubers i then had to read that book the results of that one weren't great there was about four dislikes and two likes by the end of it the following year i made it a little more customizable so it was the same concept but a larger sample size and with a little more of a personal touch i was more picky about the books that i chose and mostly chose ones that i genuinely thought i would enjoy and in that one we ended up with three dislikes and four likes so we're constantly improving this year we're gonna be even more selective and i'm doing it slightly differently to start there is going to be five little challenges because of course there is i'm gonna pick five booktubers that i have the most similar favorites to second challenge is to pick something that is both on somebody's favorites list so it could be from the favorites we just figured out or it could be chosen in a different way but it's also seen on somebody's least favorites list of the year i have a whole playlist of this um i've been watching these these i have already watched i've seen everybody's least favorites it's been so fun i want something definitely hopefully more than one thing that is already on my tbr i also want something that i have absolutely never heard of and then i also want to select a book from a booktuber who has no similar books to me not even similar favorites but like no similar books because i have 50 videos in this playlist that if you're seeing they've already been like watched um it's because technically they have we'll talk to you about it in a second so it's not just like the book that's talked about the most on booktube it's not about reading books that show up the most or that have the highest rating it's about who has similar taste to me and picking from those we're gonna start with five people because what i did this morning is i went through my playlist just shout out to youtube for having this as a thing the ability to scrub through somebody's video i can see every single book that has shown up so i did that with my entire playlist i think there are some booktubers that could pop in with a favorites video like a week from now and throw off this entire thing but right now i have a sample size of 50 and i found five booktubers that have five or more books in their favorites videos that i also rated a four or five star myself and now we're gonna go back through and actually watch the videos together they all just blended together and i really do not remember what everybody had and a lot of things i just absolutely didn't recognize so those five booktubers that i saw have the most in common that we're going to watch now are gabby with eight in common which is not a surprise gabby is always the most similar to me next is a booktuber that i just found this morning this is the video of the year that i usually find the most people that that i'm gonna watch for the following year um and this woman named elizabeth popped up and unexpectedly she had seven in common with me and then with five in common tied are deja reilly and ashley so we're going to start with gabby and get a recommendation from her though i'm pretty sure i already know what it's gonna be and i'll tally up as i go to make sure that i was accurate things have gotten worse since we last spoke and then i have the x talk the book of accidents local woman missing the drowning kind by jennifer mcmahon black girls must die exhausted when the reckoning comes away following the ground we need to do something as well as the maiden maidens was four stars so that's six already just in her honorable mentions i'm also not going to spoil the entire favorites so i will just show you when something pops up that i guess i haven't read people we meet on vacation by emily henry i'm not choosing violence this year i am gonna go with likely to like coming in at number 10 is actually a book that i read this month it's a history of wild places okay listen i don't know what this book is about and so you might say to me kayla you're not picking ones you're most likely to like because you don't even know what it is but here's the thing i already bought it i saw it pop up i'm not sure where maybe it was in like an instagram post and gabby was like this is like my most recent favorite it just came out of nowhere and i've always thought in the back of my head if this author ever comes out with something adult i'm gonna pick it up i think the only thing i know is it's like a mix of thriller with some weirdness like magic potential in my dreams i hold a knife okay that's the number seven in common coming in at number six is going to be near the bone by christina henry the winter people by jennifer mcmahon i am interested in the winter people but if we're talking about like what i think is most likely to be a success for me it's not that just because i didn't like the drowning kind number four is going to be the push i know i've seen it like 10 times today as i was scrolling so it is a really popular booktube favorite and that makes me weary number two is going to be finley donovan is killing it i did buy this too i was actually going to pick this up with a couple other mystery books this week like the first week of january so i would have a vlog to post near the beginning because i know that this is gonna get posted until the end of the month but i've seen this pop up a couple times so i think i might actually just include it in this whole video i didn't remember gabby reading this i don't know why it just seems too fun for me i don't think i like fun mysteries but i really want to try it it's something that's like slightly out of my comfort zone but yeah it's amazing because it's project hail mary by andy weir so gabby and i had nine favorites in common and i have 11 to choose from there's a couple that i know i shouldn't pick like objectively there's a couple i can't pick because i want to read them for something else there's some that i'm just not interested in and i'm really left with stolen tongues a history of wild places in finley donovan cool let's move on to who did i say oh elizabeth let's all meet elizabeth hello my beautiful bookish friends i am elizabeth and this is reading riley the thursday murder club also one that i've read recently and loved bunny i don't know if you're team bunny or not but i am oh also local woman missing by mary kabika and then also the martian i just read this this year i did forget all the things that i saw while i was scrubbing the burning girls by cj tudor meet me in another life by kachiona silvi i love the cover is the good daughter by karen slaughter oh it's so shiny actually surprisingly enjoyed this and that is in my dreams i hold a knife by ashley winstead the only good indians no exit and that is project hail mary by andy weir whoops we had eight in common read this for a vlog where i was reading ashley's recommendations from ashley's little library that's the other person on my list and it blew me out of the water and that is migrations by charlotte mcconaughey it's set in kind of like a near future dystopia where basically 80 of the world's animals have gone extinct because of the ways that we have treated this earth dark places by gillian i think i must have missed her honorable mentions i must have skimmed past them really quickly um because we now have nine in common pretty girls back here on slaughter i told you she was gonna come up again that's 10. if you've been watching me for a while i don't feel like i have maybe a surprise although i haven't talked about it in a while says the humans by matt haig elizabeth and i had 10 books in common i actually want to look a little more into meet me in another life and migrations but i do have seven books to choose from that she mentioned yes two of them are already on my tbr but i've heard such mixed things about them that i don't know yet i might also consider the humans next up since she mentioned ashley let's go to ashley another thriller that is very hit or miss for people is the maidens behind her eyes by sarah pinborough yes the last thriller on my list is aya thriller and that is the girls i've been by tess sharp this was on my tbr and i took it off my tbr this year nine of the mannequins by stephen graham jones things have gotten worse since we last spoke by eric larocca book of accidents by chuck wendig also the bottom of the lake by josh mallardman perfect that makes five the next book is the dark descent of elizabeth frankenstein by kirsten white that one's on my tbr show down among the sticks and bones by seanan mcguire oh gosh that makes six my mistake people meet on vacation by emily henry and i've talked this book to death over the years migrations by charlotte mcconaughey absolutely my favorite book of the year you know what migrations intrigues me not making any decisions right now i am starting to be overwhelmed with the options so we're gonna move on to deja i think i have in common with but let's watch i'm going to start with the honorable mentions honorable mentions so the first honorable mention that i have is good girl bad blood by holly jackson the next book that i have is obsidio by amy kaufman and jay kristoff maybe this is when i should read obsidio i'm not going to grown by tiffany jackson i have a copy of this i just don't know where it went and the last honorable mention that i have is they never learned by lane fargo gallery of blood by s t gibson echo wife by sarah gailey that makes five is amari in the night brothers by bb allison which okay amari and the knight brothers it's funny because like i'm marking this as something we have in common but i also haven't finished it but i know that it's a favorite but liam and i didn't finish it we borrowed her from the library we read it together for a bit we took a pause but then i bought it for him for christmas so we could finish it so maybe like this does count as our actually sixth book in common what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna finish it and then that'll count as like reading a book because of deja we probably read like a third of it so the book in my number two spot is wolf song by tj cloon number one book of the year you probably know i read this back in january it's the second book i read all year and that is pretty girls by kara slaughter seven okay so every single person i have miscounted so after this i will go back and i'll watch all the people that i said i had four in common with and just make sure so i'm picking amari but i also want to pick another because i just don't think that that one totally makes sense so i have eight to choose from most of them are romance the couple mysteries on here aren't ones that super interest me so i'm choosing i'm choosing wolf song what planet am i on right now let's watch riley who i think i had five in common with but clearly i don't know anything my first favorite that i'm going to talk about is project hail mary by andy ware the other book was ray bearer by jordan ifueko next book is they never learn by lane fargo yes book that i have is under the whispering door by tj cloon hench by natalie zena walcott that is the murders of molly southbourne by today thompson so the holo places by t king fisher yes the holo places and that is a dowry of blood by st oh my god that's it okay wait we did have five in common and i have four to choose from so i'm not really interested in the whispering door i'm not interested in that one well i'm not really interested in that one i'm not really interested in that one oh oh no okay i do not know but i just watched the five that i think i have the most in common with now i'm gonna go off camera and watch everybody else's just to confirm okay i just double checked everything everything is good those were the five booktubers at this point that i have the most in common with i think at this point um the people who could like come in with a favorites video a little bit later and throw out this entire thing the most likely people are like meg lexi megan lexi but i was working my way backwards and i just landed on gavin who i think three in common with um but i actually wanted to watch his with you because i think what could be fun um is also reading because we already have five booktubers we're gonna pick five books from them the second challenge something also on a least favorites list has not popped up something already on my tbr like these three i'm going to read and but i bought them so recently that if you don't want to count these then i'm sure i will end up picking one of these three as well i haven't seen a book i haven't heard of except for like romance which i'm not picking up but i do remember when i was scrubbing through gavin's that there were so many things i didn't recognize what i thought would be fun is picking somebody who has my favorite book in their favorites which is house of leaves and i know that gavin does so what if i picked something from his favorites even though we don't have the most in common like maybe that would be fun and then i also think that aaron has had some leaves in her favorites so what if i had to pick something from her and gavin wouldn't that be fun while i wait for my computer to turn back on i'll also let you know that finley donovan was also co-signed by nakia and katie who i had like one to three books in common with and then amari and the knight brothers was co-signed by jess naomi and jamila i did also see hench which is from riley show up on sarah's channel and that's where we're at let's see if we can hit these last two challenges with gavin and erin so first let me see them mention my favorite book house of leaves by mark z daniellowski i genuinely didn't know what's going on for half of it and it's supposed to do that it's supposed to mess your mind up it's supposed to make you think like what is actually going on now let me see if there's something on his list that i haven't heard of or that i know isn't somebody's least favorites next we have a pretty recent book and that is ice cream barbarians by ruby dixon this book surprised me and i want to see that unlucky for me i have heard of that i'm sure it's on somebody's least favorite so don't make me read this so the next book to surprise me was the perfect poo by mg edwards yeah i never ever i haven't heard that i would ever read something like this in my lifetime come closer by sarah grant this is horror it's like possession story you usually see possession stories from like the outside pause i haven't heard of it it looks short and he said it's horror okay let me see if there's anything else that sounds better okay as expected there was a ton in that video i haven't heard of um but come closer come closer i'm adding unless aaron has something i've never heard of on hers but i think aaron's more likely to have something that is on somebody's least favorites list well i didn't even have aaron on my playlist did i not scrub through errands oh my god i didn't scrub through erin's video my bad i just assumed we had nothing in common i think this one will surprise you all quite a bit i knew it would be here that is house of leads by mark z danielski i have never in my life read a book like this like i don't even tab but y'all see all these tags like honestly i felt like i was losing my mind what else is on your list the number six spot we've got to sleep in a csr by christopher fallini this is my favorite sci-fi book that i have read this year this was such an immersive experience no this book is so long i'm gonna keep watching but i actually this book showed up in at least two people's least favorites lists night's shadow by sebastian dickinson the second book in the great ghost series i haven't heard of that ruined by john guinn the rhythm of what byron is innocent jade legacy by fonda lee these people meet on vacation by emily henry shown up a lot i'm not reading it you can't make me okay oh what a mistake i could just edit that out and pretend i never said it but i actually think i'm gonna read to sleep in a sea of stars i've wanted to read it if i'm remembering correctly this was on it was on reagan's least favorites list and then i want to say tori oh yeah it's in her thumbnail oh tori just posted her favorites and i didn't have her on my list let me see if i can find something from her favorites so i'm reading a favorite annaleigh's favorite of hers so i don't feel like it's solely negative and that is none other than legend born by tracy dion legend born legend born wasn't that on aaron's least favorites list oh my god i'm gonna make uh aaron and tori battle because they each had a favorite on their respective least favorites list coming in at number four is middle game by seanan mcguire i have gushed about ring shout non-stop oh she also has ring shout which i just recently bought um this tpr is getting out of hand like literally what am i doing is it just me or if i mentioned like 30 books that i want to read also now that i think of it uh erin i'm just scrubbing her most surprising books of the year video we actually had more in common here than best books but i'm pretty sure there it is she has um she has wolf song on her list too so that just gives me more reason to read it i guess i think the only challenge i haven't hit is selecting a book from someone with no similar books to me and i actually think that i know what it is because i was also just jotting down books that showed up a lot just so i could make note of them ones that like maybe i should pick up at some point like if it's everybody's favorite the books that showed up quite a few times that i haven't already read are the inheritance of rokita divina and know my name and [Music] oh piranesi these two were on booktubers who i had multiple things in common with but okay i just went double checked because i think i was right and like i am looking for an excuse to read this for sure um but it was on lena's favorites jill's favorites lauren amy and leonie who i did not have any books in common with so that could mean that maybe it's not even going to be my thing but it could mean that it's going to be a favorite of all time and now i have a hundred different things to read so let me tally up what the heck i just did here how many books i want to actually read within this video how i can connect everything i'll come back when i have some books ready and i'll show you a little chart of how i got here kayla from the future popping in with an explanation of everything that i plan to read in this video if you're a channel member there's a separate video skip over there right now to avoid being spoiled because in that video i vlog the entire experience actually finding more titles as i'm actually reading the books those segments are are chopped in but for subscribers here's a rundown as more favorites videos came out during the month i have 11 booktubers whose favorites align with mine myanna and elizabeth had 10 in common with me gabby had nine ashley had six and then deja riley and lexi all had five since my goal was to read from five who had the most in common and then three of them were tied for five i end up reading from seven then four other booktubers had my favorite book of the year in common with me so from like 2019 middle game tori and mel both had on their favorites lists and from this year with house of leaves erin and gavin had it in their favorites so my plans are to read finley donovan is killing it because of myanna and gabby and also it was actually on the least favorites list from elizabeth and ashley a history of wild places i'll be reading because of gabby the dark descent of elizabeth frankenstein because of ashley migrations again because of ashley and elizabeth ring shout will be because of tori legend born will also be because of tori and it's on aaron's least favorites list to sleep in a sea of stars will be because of aaron and it was also on tori's least favorites list wolfsong and amary and the knight brothers are because of deja mel is also the reason i'm reading amari in the night brothers hench is for riley come closer is for gavin and then when you trap a tiger is what i grabbed from lexi those last two accomplish the goals of books i've never heard of there are quite a few that were already on my tbr and the last challenge is pier and essie which meets the goal of a whole bunch of booktubers who i don't have anything in common with but it was actually also on lexi's favorites i think that sums it all up everything that i planned to read originally in this video spoilers some things get ditched some things get added but you'll have to find that out throughout the video as i vlog let's begin this is my first reading clip i'm just editing a video today um i got like 20 into a history of wild places and i don't know how to feel about so far so i went into this like not knowing anything we were following this interesting character he's basically trying to track someone down um it felt like the beginning of the other people by cj tutor and i was intrigued it's got a little like stephen king vibe uh there's a little bit of reference to him being able to feel certain things just like a little supernatural vibes i was expecting a little bit more especially considering we're also in this like commune i did not know this was a cult book i'm very worried now this seems like inspired by the pandemic there's this idea that outside of the commune if you leave you'll get the sickness so this book isn't going well but i'm almost done and look how beautiful it is i don't like it i don't think it's particularly interesting i find the repetition annoying but it's like it's setting a good atmosphere the actual plot is just not interesting me in any way because the whole mystery of the book is extremely obvious i don't know if people like it because of the twist or if they just like reading about these people and their fear and they enjoy like reading about an enigmatic leader and that's what draws people to this type of story like just nothing is doing it for me in here and also there is a couple errors in the book um that give away the twist i know this is gonna be so chaotic of me but i'm giving this one star i really really really don't like it and it's not that it did things to like upset me i feel like a lot of one stars this is why i need to adjust my rating scale a little bit because when i say one star you think oh my god this book did something offensive like this book made you uncomfortable it like hurt your feelings like this is just not a good book a lot of it doesn't make sense so many of the characters and motivations make no sense because you don't get to spend time with any other characters much besides like a couple people there's a little book inside the book which there really isn't too much inserted um but like those portions got too heavy-handed for me you know i was trying to show you how things are linked and i get the purpose of it but like oh my god it was a lot it was a lot to take so much like you might be interested in reading this book now because it's gabby's favorite and my least favorite um i'm gonna move on to a book that is someone's least favorite and someone's favorite okay today i did a live show with aaron i took a bath and i've been listening to the audiobook of to sleep in a sea of stars like all day i'm like only 25 into it now and i actually think i'm gonna put a pause on it um and pick up the physical copy just because i feel like i'm not following everything a lot's happening really fast and i don't actually technically know the premise i just remembered last year i put clips in of other people explaining the books so let's do that again this was a very plot driven book and the the world and the science was just so well done and so detail like i was so engaged these are like my favorite aliens that i've ever encountered yeah i would say it's it's very technical it's very detailed and as someone who doesn't read a ton of sci-fi like it's definitely going over my head it's another day of reading this i have read other things that you'll see after this i picked up the physical copy um and i chopped it into fifths and i'm determined to get through each fifth each day but so far it's just really repetitive scenes of like her falling asleep having a dream and waking up and not knowing where she is and then falling asleep and having a dream and waking up and constantly gasping it's all about her breath she's letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding and she's letting on another breath and then she's sighing it's clearly evident this written by a man it's just like there have been two scenes so far where she's like she's like going through horrific things like people that she's closest to are dying she like wakes up and there's been a horrific catastrophe and she's like touching her body to make sure she's all good and then she like i forget how it was described but she's like in the lower part of her body she's like i'm not trying to touch myself in a sexual way don't worry like i'm not ready for that yet i'm just checking myself out it was like duh like what not only did i not finish this in five days uh it's now 20 days later my rating is probably a three there are some really interesting concepts in here um my favorite being the idea of a ship mind which lucky for us there's like a glossary it's basically like the human mind at its like highest capability turning into something that can control the operations of a ship my favorite thing about this is the idea of like ownership of your body there were a couple of scenes i really liked where um it was this idea of like coming back to your own consciousness i don't know how to describe the plot of this i don't think i really know the plot it's a lot of space war i've decided i'm not going to include the people's negative reviews that i was thinking of including clips because i don't want to put anyone else's like negative opinion to be critiqued by others i just don't think that's a fair thing to really do but as the intent of this and a couple other books were to read books that are least favorites i think it's good to like talk about what some people's least favorite things were the number one thing that i see is the characters which i agree with this isn't the type of book that is equally powerful in its concept and its character development and i feel like if it was balanced i could have enjoyed it more the other thing that people talk about is the pace and specifically the repetition and how you could cut 200 pages and it would be the same story because it's the same kind of scene over and over again so i'm sure i'm going to say this multiple times but i do understand people who like this and i understand people who don't like this [Music] i'm going to get into the dark descent of elizabeth frankenstein i can't even remember who originally introduced me to this or why i picked it up but it's funny because i just mentioned kirsten white in my 2022 most anticipated books because she has her adult debut called hide i think it was so i think it'd be cool to introduce myself to her here before i pick up her newest thing i also don't fully know the synopsis of this so let's have ashley tell us about it this is a frankenstein retelling that follows elizabeth the wife of frankenstein she moves in with victor's family as a child she ends up getting taken in by them to be his sort of friend and playmate and then he kind of goes missing and she's really concerned about that she wants to find him and then she starts getting wind of the monster that he has become hello hello i have fantastic news i loved this means i liked one of ashley's favorites which her favorites list was literally like half and half my favorite books and my least favorite books of the year when it comes to horror i'm glad that i know of her as somebody who can appreciate like a slower paced novel and that gives me hope for like what migrations is going to be because i find a lot of times when i read a book that's lower paced especially in a genre that's supposed to be like horror thriller that that's a critique that comes in so it's exciting because i'm newer to ashley's content so it's it's nice to find somebody who i don't know i guess like slower books too this is like the first gothic novel i've ever really enjoyed frankenstein as a story is not something that i feel really close to and that is beloved but i'm familiar enough with it and i get the role that elizabeth plays more or less so it's just so interesting seeing her as the main character in here uh she is a teenager which is just a great reference like in the authors now kirsten white talks about the fact that mary shelley like invented science fiction as a teenager and she herself like couldn't or didn't take all of the focus of writing her own novel like even in mary shelley's introduction to the book she like talked about her husband basically and so kirsten white loving frankenstein wanted to make elizabeth the main character and show like really the depth of her character so we get a lot of her like motivations for things and she's just such a fascinating character this was definitely very slow paced it was like a a character study i'm giving this a four and a half i can't think of anything to critique about this so today is the day for pure and essie i'm just very intrigued by this i don't know much about it besides when it gets recommended to me so like when i talk about the invisible life of addie larue or station 11 or the midnight library and house of leaves and when i talk about books i didn't like like the ten thousand doors of january or the library at mount char or the starless c this gets compared to those as far as like contemplative fiction or evocative fantasy it's about a house and there are endless halls and there's secret knowledge i'm halfway through pure nazi and respectfully what's going on we have one main character piranesi or is that his name and then we have the other like the other guy and they're worried about other people coming in and learning the knowledge but now they're questioning if the hall full of knowledge is actually like if there's knowledge there and piranesi's whole thing is that like he never forgets anything so he's like the perfect person to live here and do what he's supposed to be doing but then like does he actually remember things or is he forgetting that he's forgotten things i did it yay this is like an objectively good story did i feel super emotionally connected to it did it have like a huge impact on me no but it's a four star uh i also think this is a lot more like uh accessible is that the right word than i assumed it would be i know i'm not talking about the plot at all and i'm not going to like i can't say any more about it but sometimes when there's a book like this um that i see a certain type of booktuber reading and people are recommending to me because they know i like weird things i often expect it to be a little too sophisticated for me or that it's gonna take a lot to like really understand or get into but this wasn't that at all and i feel like i could recommend this to anybody so that's really cool time to decide what i'm reading next i went to the library and picked up migrations and then i went to indigo and i picked up legend born and then i went to my village i found the humans i know i didn't say this was going to be in my tbr this isn't the book that i chose but it felt like a sign my rule is if i get through all of the books on this tbr which is already at 12 then i will try to fit this in as well but to pick what i'm reading next i'm already reading two like sff books so we're gonna read migrations [Music] and we'll have elizabeth tell us about it because i i don't think i really listen to what she said she wants to follow this arctic turn on their last migration she finds the ship of fishermen that she tries to convince them to let her on and then along the way you figure out her entire backstory you figure out why she wants to follow these arctic turns i'm 27 pages in and i think i love it so current day she's trying to get on this ship with these guys and she meets them all like at a pub and it's a very like found family type of vibe then she drops a little bomb on us and then we're jumping back in time two years ago and we're gonna find out more about her past and i think that's gonna be consistent throughout the book and that is a writing style that's one of my favorite things oh my gosh migrations was such a lovely book i'm gonna be a little bit of a cynic and say that i didn't love the ending i mean objectively i love it and like i get it because this book has a very clear intent i definitely can't imagine it ending any other way but i was hoping a little bit four and a half stars really solid definitely recommend i typically love near future settings so i definitely recommend fans of this pickup like moon of the crested snow just because they both also have like that chilly atmosphere i felt like i was here i was cold i was in the water i was freezing and i just learned upon finishing this that it's by the same author as what's the title of that wolf one this is on my tbr i want to read it so bad and i'm even more hyped to pick it up now knowing it's from the same person this is a bigger book than i fully realized i started it last night it's 400 pages i'm a third of the way through i don't fully understand what henching really is i'm just i don't know where the story is going to go because it seems so chaotic so i needed an explanation there's superheroes flying about saving people everybody knows about them except they cause a lot of destruction our main character actually works as like a temp agent for villains and one day on the job she has a run-in with a very famous superhero it puts her in the hospital and leaves her permanently disabled that is sort of her villain story origin so that's where i'm at right now and like i am intrigued enough to continue because it feels like a shift is happening she now has a one-track mission of revenge and taking down superheroes the main character's like narration style isn't for me but i do historically like revenge stories i have a couple hours right now in the car before i have to pick up my dad from physio and i'm just gonna blow through a good chunk of this and we'll see how it goes i finished hench it matches my shirt as expected this was not but not for me um i don't think superhero stories like are for me at all but the thing about reading booktuber's favorites is yeah i want to read ones that i think we have similar taste and then maybe i'll like but also i just like staying up to date with what like my favorite booktubers are even reading and up to so this is getting like a a two i think the concept was interesting the main character is i don't like i didn't like reading from her perspective it's not that i think it was poorly done i just don't know that the main character is written in a way that's easy to understand where she's coming from because she has a lot of opinions but a lot of her opinions are contradictory but i guess you could say that's a well done part of the story is that she subverts certain expectations anyway there was potential here but it just didn't totally work for me it's way too much action but for somebody who's picking up a superhero book who wants a superhero book with lots of action which is what you expect from a superhero book i'm sure it's perfect the mail has come and these two arrived this is much bigger than i thought so instead of moving on to wolfsong i'm going to read come closer by sarah graham i don't want to watch the clip with gavin right now because this is such a short book i don't want anything rude for me i just know that it's about possession and then we'll watch it after and see if what he liked i liked or if i like it all right that was a very jarring intro i wasn't expecting the f slur on the very first page so our main character is already like doing things that she doesn't remember doing so i'm hoping that this is an actual like demonic possession story and i feel like it's going to be and not just like a metaphorical one or like a mental health related situation okay i didn't update you at all while i was reading that it was a very quick read i have thoughts but i'm gonna see what gavin had to say i could not see a way out for the main character so i was like literally holding on to every paragraph just hoping upon hope that something will change and something will happen and the main character will be saved but it was such a hopeless and desolate situation i just wasn't sure how that was going to happen and one that i think is quite underrated i don't think i've seen anyone talk about this on i have now yeah so this book actually came out in 2003 but i was most interested to read it because sarah graham has something coming out that i'm intrigued by for 2022 and guess what this was five stars it is evident that it's written in 2003 there are like some language things that i don't love not scary it's not creepy necessarily it's just very grim you're following this woman and she's losing control over her own decisions and she's having like blackouts there wasn't like twists there were some disturbing little moments um it was also like fun because she keeps taking this quiz that is like are you possessed by a demon she has to take it like once a week and eventually she just like starts checking off more things on the list it was a little bit weird and it was a good time now on to rainshot [Music] it's the end of the day nope nope finished ring shout i did it and it was a lot i thought i was gonna bang it out really quick and listen to the audiobook while just like getting some stuff done around the house but i hated the audiobook which is weird because normally books written in first person present if anything i struggle with reading physically in the end this was another five star i read two five star novellas today two five star horror novellas fantasy science fiction horror but also like a lot of real real realities is what i was about to say it's late listen to tori explain it far better than i could this story takes place in an alternate version of the jim crow south and our main character maurice is a monster hunter she hunts klu kluxes and klu kluxes are demons that inhabit the bodies of kkk members and the characters themselves are so well fleshed out and the audiobook version is also incredible i physically read this and then afterwards listen to the audiobook and the performance of the audiobook amazing yeah i mean we as we as humans obviously all have very different like tastes and styles the book itself is like meant to be also i think it calls it dark humor and the narrator is very like performative about the whole thing which is obviously how they wanted it to be read so i feel like i saw news about this becoming a movie it was a very well described situation like all of the characters and everything that they did i could visualize it so well that i want to see it on screen i feel similarly to this as i did with um trail of lightning like the creature in fantasy stuff and then also all of just like the fascinating conversations and how they exist in this fantasy world but they also obviously have a lot of relevance to history and current day experiences this is fantastic highly recommend very intense she's a mona lisa good morning friends today i am reading finley donovan is killing it i'm doing reading sprints with aaron here we are a woman and she's like at a coffee shop she's writing a book someone overhears her talking about killing someone but it's in her book and someone thinks that it's happening like in real life and then they want to hire her to like kill their spouse or something like that her husband's an [ __ ] is like telling her her job as an author isn't real and she's behind on all her bills and he decided to fire her nanny because he doesn't take her job seriously so now she's desperate for money and now i think everything's gonna kick off but you can watch some other people pitch it while i read this woman who like everything she's got down on her down in life you know like her husband's trying to take her kids she can't write that book and she's just not really killing it you know i really love this book and it was just so good it was funny and i loved like the side romance that was going on in this book like there was just so much to love about it i also love the fact that it ends on this note where you're just like um excuse me what okay reading update this is a very funny book it's ridiculous it's very entertaining but also i'm getting very angry at every decision that finlay or finley is making obviously she doesn't know what she's doing but like every single thing that she's doing i'm getting so mad about because i'm like you're gonna get found out like you're making every mistake possible i loved it five stars it's so silly and the high jinks were just constant and ridiculous it's kind of stupid and i was not expecting a love triangle but it was fun it kind of reminded me of good girls so i'd recommend that to anyone who hasn't watched it yet and i'm so glad it was five stars because that gives me a little like redemption with reading gabby's favorites which i really needed [Music] i might have made a mistake you know sometimes it's fun picking up books and not knowing what they're about sometimes we all just make mistakes i'm only 50 pages in i thought it was gonna be like very real world setting but the first 50 pages really threw me for a loop it's giving me very much cassandra claire lainey taylor vibes and i'm worried about myself and then i looked at the goodreads and it said something about king arthur tori pitch me this book please i love the way that tracy dionne weaves this legend of arthur and the knights of the round table just so seamlessly into this story cause we're following this character bree and she recently lost her mother and she falls in with this group of students who are a part of this order more secrets start spilling out then maybe her mother's death wasn't an accident and just things start to come to light about her own history and her female ancestors and the women in her past and i love the aspect of the story so much i'm slowly but surely making progress i'm liking it more now i'm like 150 pages from the end would i prefer this book if it was written in dual pov when a character is brand new to a world and so much is being explained to them i need a second pov the book is so bogged down with explanation and there's there has to be this explanation because there's this magic system every single person that she meets needs to explain something new to her if one of the boys in here was another pov or even if we had three or four povs there could be a more subtle way of introducing the magic rather than just like i'm so unaware and so naive and teach me teach me teach me half of it could be from a perspective of somebody who already knows these things and they're teaching it more to us as a reader than to the main character because i'm just exhausted if you had told me in the first half that i was going to end up giving this like a three and a half four by the end i would have been surprised still don't think by the end even with all the explanations that i fully grasped all of the things that are going on i liked all of the stuff that was like about ancestors and the history of magic the history of the school and obviously the history of mages and that whole system but did it do something like super special for me no will i consider picking up the sequel yeah i will [Music] sprints to the front door and it is this some kind of joke i should think naughty fro i only do deliveries part time but i take it seriously i know i haven't vlogged much of reading of mario in the night brothers but i have now completed it this was on everybody's favorites list everyone gave it five stars i gave it five stars it is a really good set up for a series that i think we're going to continue just for years to come i'm so excited about the age that this like came out for him to be able to read it and be a similar age as the main character and like grow with her amari basically joins this like well she goes to camp kind of but it's this secret group she's first trying to find her missing brother and then she gets caught up in all of it um she makes a lot of friends the side characters are just as strong i loved learning about all of them i just loved seeing amari um connect with people because basically there are these badges to earn and there are the secret skills that you have and she has like an illegal one and she ends up being really ostracized and just doesn't feel like she belongs and that's the same as what's kind of happening in her real life this was the perfect mix for me of real world and magic and you get to see her grow into herself become more comfortable i think we'll see her being more assertive in future books a lot of stuff is happening to her and i hope as we continue in the series like she um challenges what she thinks she can do or she even like breaks outside of this perfect mold and like following all the rules so as expected this is a five star i already knew it was a favorite middle grade even without finishing it so i'm glad i took the opportunity in this video to just complete it and read one of the most common favorites of the year [Music] today i just did a live with bree for some reading sprints on her channel and um somebody was talking about how they were reading this in the comments and they they said it was werewolf smart and now i'm i'm worried i thought i was just reading a nice werewolf's love story i don't know what i thought let's actually find out what this is about when i tell you i have never sobbed like i have in this book i wasn't even like i had like a little bit of tears i was sobbing so in this book we follow our main character ox and ox was kind of abandoned by his father when he was really young and he just lives in this city and when he's 16 a new family moves into town he becomes friends with this little boy who's like probably like eight or nine at the beginning of the book so they have like a pretty decent age gap but they become such good friends when the sun is about like 17 18 and ox is in like his early to mid-20s they start to have a romance this is starting to seem like a bad idea were you all questioning my decision when i picked this yeah wish me luck it's many hours later let's all acknowledge that this was an error i'm sure you already knew it was an error i'm going to apologize for making you think that i was going to read that but i wanted to give it a good go just so people wouldn't be like oh you didn't even try like maybe you could like this type of story 100 pages i did it absolutely [ __ ] not absolutely not no this was a mistake i take full responsibility um so sorry i truly don't have thoughts to share like i don't this isn't a book for me like i thought i thought wrongly what this totally was gonna be what i just did though is i ran to my library because the one just down the street had jar of hearts seeing as the other gabby pick that was a mystery really worked for me i think there's opportunity with this one and i obviously want to give myself another chance with one of deja's picks [Music] i'm ten percent in it's first time i've spoken today it's not going great um we're following a woman who's in jail don't really know if she's responsible for the crime that she went to jail for basically back when they were in high school uh her older boyfriend who was out of high school committed a crime with her like they did something together now i'm trying to figure out if the whole book is going to be in jail i'm about 25 through now i honestly just like can't see why this would be anybody's favorite at this point i don't really feel like there's a mystery it's dark uh it's talked about a pedophilia and dead children i just really don't know where it's going i'm halfway through this is definitely a quick read but i'm about to go live with my channel members and i'm gonna try to read the second half of it live because i think that'll be fun we are flashing back to when they were like 16 and some moments then of their friendship and her becoming consumed with this relationship and then we're also current day actually has gotten out of jail i finished my book i should have just read wolfe song this is one of the worst thrillers i've ever read like literally what one star i hated it first of all i was bored the twists were like predictable and stupid it was like karen slaughter on crack super gratuitous and over the top and ridiculous at the end but like not in a well-crafted way like not in a way that really even made any sense i feel like i'm a bit of a broken record sometimes when i constantly say like i didn't like it but i get why people do especially when it comes to thrillers i say it all the time because i give so many thrillers three stars so at least this time like it's a one star and with all due respect besties i don't get this i'm really gonna have to watch some reviews like on my own time to understand what did it in this because i don't think the reveals are good i just don't think anything is surprising it was really like lazy character work not to mention the spelling and grammar issues that i had that the audiobook didn't but then also just like all of the unbelievable dialogue it was like these characters would have pages and pages of discussion about something and then a character would go do you think that these two things are related when it was like that was what the entire conversation was about i'm bummed i really wanted to support a canadian author um i hate that this is like the first time talking about deja on my channel and it's like negativity with two books so i would like to formally apologize like i said before though a lot of things with mysteries specifically have to do with timing for me so i'm sure that there are books in my past that have been similar to this that now i would probably take issue with some things i do have a couple days left until i wanted to post this so let's get into the humans this man who is a mathematician and he's on the verge of discovering this equation this mathematical theory that has never been proven before and it could change everything the aliens have been watching us from afar and they're like this guy's on to this and the humans are not ready they send one of their aliens to basically take over the body of this mathematician then he slowly falls in love with humanity what i'll say about my brief experience with matt haig is he's very heavy-handed like i feel like you know the intent of the book from the very beginning and how you're supposed to feel so i'm a little more than halfway i i was gonna say it's fine so far actually i don't really like it so far it's not doing much for me um there is this idea like i talked about with finley donovan that is a mistaken identity story i feel like this would almost like classify as that this alien guy just has to pretend that he knows everything just getting exhausting just constantly asking everyone like oh what do i normally call you is our marriage pretty good or what and we just hit the trope that i hate within this thing when you're having to rediscover something about yourself i know in this case it's not the same because it's an alien it's not actually him but when you're just thrown in a scenario and you have to readjust your expectations of like the person you thought you were or he thought this person was there's this one specific thing that every single book does and makes the character out to be a certain way and like there's a reason for it but i just it's an it's annoying having to read it so many times i finished it i wish that i had something more interesting to share or like that i had a stronger opinion or my final rating is a three i feel like this was a really predictable book it hit every beat that i was expecting it to hit there are a lot of people who need this type of story who like need someone to say like there's a reason to keep on living like there there's purpose and you you always have a second chance and you can always just start again i get it i really get it um it didn't do anything for me [Music] so we're on to the final book of the video i'm gonna see if i can read it in one day but the final one is when you trap a tiger by tay keller i only just recently heard about this for the first time from a couple people who typically read middle grade it was in their favorites um the one that comes to mind is ashley from bookish realm i think me and actually only had like two books in common but there's a very high chance of me enjoying this because of me and lexi's aligning tastes since it was in lexi's honorable mention she didn't actually talk about the book so i'll see if i can find a clip from another video and then i'll also have ashley pop in because like i have her talking about it to be kind of brief on because i have not finished that i'm on page 100 and that is when you trap a tiger by tay keller it's kind of like a contemporary fiction but it has a lot of really beautiful fantasy elements woven in along with some korean folklore this is following lily and lily her big sister and her mom have all moved across the country basically to stay with her grandma and then once she is there she sees a tiger that mysteriously like pops up in the middle of the road but no one else can see it just lily and it is a newberry winner if you know anything about new berries then you know that they have a tendency to make readers cry lily is moving in with her grandmother her harmony with her mom and her sister because she is getting sick colony is getting sick and they are there to kind of help take care of her okay i'm excited so the reason i picked this of all left these options uh is because it was available as an audiobook because i just picked it today and i'm trying to read it all today while i actually edit this video um and it was relatively short compared to the other ones that were also available via audio this book is so good rob and liam are out right now and i told rob to stop at our local like indie bookstore because there's one copy remaining in stock i actually am already planning on re-reading it physically because the audiobook is great but i think like for the emotional impact this type of story can have reading it physically for me is the best way i love books where storytelling is part of like the story and it's funny how like both of the other books that i have with tiger in the title on the cover like night tiger and when a tiger came down the mountain those are about storytelling too and they have this little fantastical element too even though you know going into it it's gonna make you cry and it's about somebody like losing their grandmother and she's slowly discovering throughout the book how sick her grandmother is it's still having that impact it's just really impressive i think an obvious comp title i would recommend it for fans of monster calls all right i finished it as expected and as intended it hurt me it's a really quick story and it's obviously a middle grade so there's not too much to dive into as far as like more plot discussions to have i'm just so stoked that i had two middle grades that i love so much and i'll be passing it along to liam i guess he's picking it up for himself right now the idea of identity is the number one like impactful thing in here and the author's note talks about like her korean background and how she grew up with certain stories and felt like she was losing those as she grew up and there's like this pairing with identity and the idea of losing or never really having felt a connection to your heritage the main character is super relatable she starts out never really knowing how to feel and how to react and looks to everyone around her for how to respond to things because she's the youngest in her family and feels like she has to protect like the feelings of other people she doesn't really let herself explore her own emotions and that was a big important shift of the story is like connecting with her grandma learning from her and learning from this tiger and gaining more a sense of identity it was really beautiful and i'm glad that was my last read and i'm glad i made time for it and that's the end all right that's it quick wrap up i read 14 books this month going in order of rating these ones were at the bottom and i expected them to be higher these two were next in line falling pretty much where i expected them to these ones were a middle ground like between three and four stars again i guess where i expected them to be these three four to four and a half stars were i think better than i expected and then i had five five star reads including the tiger one seeing as these two weren't on my tbr and i hadn't heard of them before this video stoked on that excited the books on my tbr ended up being as good as i had hoped and the one that caught me most of guard because it's my favorite from the entire video is finley donovan and i already have pre-ordered the sequel so look forward to me reading that let me know if you're planning on reading any of these now or your thoughts on anything that i read and i'll see you later thank you so much for watching bye

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 134,077

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala, favorite books, reading booktube, reading booktuber's, reading favorites, gabbyreads, ashley's little library, How to Train Your Gavin, Daijah's Book World, Reading Wryly, Booked and Busy, Tori Morrow, myonna reads, Alexandra Roselyn

Id: GAaPKqtXZ4I

Length: 59min 57sec (3597 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022