Reading ONLY YA Contemporary for a Week | *reading books YOU sent me* pt. 1

hi friends my name is jess and welcome or welcome back to books past bedtime [Music] today we are going to be starting a very fun themed reading vlog i'm very excited about this i've been wanting to do this for a while and i'm finally just getting it done and so in this reading vlog i'm going to be reading five books that have been very kindly gifted to me by my fellow bookish friends i thought this would be a fun way to show my gratitude to them for sending me books and also to talk about books with them that they may have loved or enjoyed so let's just jump right into my tbr and i'll share with you what i will be reading this week so the first book i have here on my stack is a watch over me by nina lacour i believe that this is a magical realism and maybe it's queer and it's about this young girl who graduates from high school and doesn't really have a lot of direction so she decides to move to this farm in california she starts working there i think there's a lot of ghosts there um i think it's like a little bit of a paranormal read but while she is on this farm in california she confronts her past and works through some trauma i believe that this book is about grief and growing and learning how to continue your life in spite of that this is all conjecture i'm not totally sure but that's what i've gathered this book is about and it is so so beautiful and i'm very excited to pick this one up and this was kindly gifted to me by my very good friend amanda here on booktube love her so much she is the best you definitely should go subscribe to her channel if you're not already she's just a ray of sunshine so bubbly the sweetest person ever i love her so much thank you amanda for sending me this book and i cannot wait to jump into it the next book i have is a verona comics and this book is a why contemporary and it is about our two main characters who are both children of comic book chain owners so the family of this one character owns this huge like national corporation of comic book shops while um the other character her family owns like a smaller more mom and pop style comic book shops and they kind of have a like forbidden romeo and juliet esque romance because their families are in competition i've heard that this is really hard-hitting and explores a lot of difficult topics so i'm ready to cry this one was very kindly sent to me by my friend kirsten over at kirsten's corner you also should go subscribe to her she is putting out great content and she's just one of the best people ever she is a fiercely loyal and supportive friend and i love her to death and she loves this book so i'm very excited to finally read it next i'm going to be picking up the extraordinaries by tj clune this is a why a fantasy book about this main character he is a big fan fiction writer and the fan fiction he writes is about superheroes in this world the superheroes are called extraordinaries and they are real they exist in real life and are like celebrities and he's obsessed in particular with this one extraordinary and that is who he writes fanfiction about he's the kind of guy where his friends all roll their eyes when he starts bringing up this extraordinary guy but he has this really close friendship with his friend seth and i think that they might have a romance down the line even though our main character nick is obsessed with this extraordinary i loved the house in the cereal nc by tj clune so i'm very very excited to pick this one up this is one of the ones that i'm most interested in of his backlist so i cannot wait to get to this one and this was very kindly sent to me by paige over at the pm reader paige is such a sweetheart she is one of the nicest kindest people on booktube and i am very excited to finally get to this one she's a big tj clune fan and so i definitely want to start picking up more of his backlist as well so thank you so much paige for sending me this book i'm very excited to jump in next i'm going to be reading the weight of the stars by k ingram this is a sapphic sci-fi story about these two girls at first they really don't like each other but they actually experience something together that brings them together and they form a friendship and eventually romance down the line one of our main characters moms is an astronaut she's about to go into space and girl is dealing with the trauma of that just the anxiousness surrounding that so i think this is like a light sci-fi i think it's set on earth but it has sci-fi elements to it and i'm very excited for it particularly because it is sapphic i have also read k ingram before i read the wicker king um last year and absolutely loved it i thought it was so so good and i really like their writing style so i'm very excited to jump into this one and i think i'm really going to love it i mean sapphic sci-fi why would i not love it um this was very kindly sent to me by one of my oldest booktube friends mayor mayor is super creative and creates some of the most interesting content on booktube so i definitely would go subscribe if you are not already thank you so much mayor for sending me this book i'm very excited to jump into this one as well and finally i am going to be reading all boys aren't blue by george m johnson i did want to point out previously on my channel that i did incorrectly um refer to georgia and johnson with he him pronouns when they use they them pronouns i'm very sorry for that that was a insensitive and just stupid oversight on my part but moving forward i will be referring to them with their preferred pronouns so basically all boys aren't blue is a memoir of george m johnson's life george takes us through their time as a child all the way through to adulthood and how their intersectional identities influenced their life growing up black queer they talk about gender masculinity family dynamics black joy this book was kindly sent to me by my friend rachel rachel is such a sweetheart has some of the best content on booktube i love her channel so much and i was so grateful for her sending me this book she sent this to me when i hit a thousand subscribers and it just was so sweet meant so much to me i'm very excited to pick this one up this is one of rachel's favorite books of last year so i can't wait to jump into this one and this is the first one that i actually read for this reading challenge so let's talk about what i thought about it i actually ended up listening to this one on audio and it is narrated by george johnson themselves so it was a very great listening experience and i definitely really recommend the audiobook i loved hearing them tell their own story and i thought it was an even more impactful experience i loved this book a lot i feel like it's very hard for me to review nonfiction because at the end of the day this is georgia's story it is extremely valid and there's no way i can really criticize it and i wouldn't want to anyway because this is a very beautifully written story it is a very powerful read i feel like it would appeal to a wide audience really is a good way to learn about intersectionality and the issues that black queer people face in the world every day i thought that this was a really great read and was beautifully done i really enjoyed it i can't do anything but give it five stars i absolutely loved it and i would really implore everyone to read it to check it out it was such a great read and i'm very grateful to rachel for sending me this book and encouraging me to read it i really wanted to anyway but that just made the experience even more special so thank you very much rachel and i have also started the extraordinaries so that is the next book we will jump into now hi friends if you hear where in the back it's my laptop she's working hard but she's a little out of shape and she's huffing and puffing but she's doing her best so i'm sorry about the noise but i failed again at giving you a 50 update and i've actually finished the extraordinaries by tj cloon the lighting is just not very good i'm sorry it's night time but i actually ended up loving this book i thought it was so much fun and that's why i didn't have a 50 update because i just absolutely flew through it i listened to it on audio and i really enjoyed the audio book i would definitely recommend if you are interested because it was a lot of fun and i really enjoyed the narrator he gave a really good voice to our main character nick um so basically just as a little refresher this book follows our main character nick and in nick's world superheroes and super villains exist so he is obsessed with this superhero called shadowstorm he writes fan fiction about him wants to date him is in love with him all that stuff um and shadowstorm has an arch nemesis called pyro something or other it's bad that i forget this but i don't remember his exact name but he's fire villain and nick is like our typical like angsty teenage boy um he actually lost his mom before the events of the book so he's dealing with the grief of that still but his dad is really great and supportive and he has a lot of great friends in particular he has a really close best friend named seth seth is just like a little cinnamon roll he is the sweetest thing ever the whole book is really funny because everybody around seth and nick understand that they are perfect for each other that they are both in love with each other mutual pining out the wazoo but nick is like very oblivious to everything he is an adhd 16 year old boy so he is just all over the place and that was one of my favorite things about this book is that i feel like nick just had a really strong voice he very much felt like a 16 year old boy with adhd the narration style and the way everything was done um just characterized him so well that he just seemed so real and very much fleshed out which i really appreciated and i also really liked his friendship with seth i thought that was so cute and they're like eventual little romance that once nick finally stops being an idiot it's just so sweet and wholesome and i loved it so so much this book is actually plotted really well too i can very much tell that tj clune was a fan fiction author and i don't say that as an insult i love fanfiction and i think that it has a lot of qualities that i would like to see more of in regular fiction because i think they work really well and in particular this book was just plotted so well it was very page turning and it just had that addictive quality that like kept me coming back to it and kept me thinking about it all the time when i wasn't reading it and i think that that is a result of tj clune's fan fiction experience i really do so i really liked that aspect of the book i also thought it was really fun i'm not a huge superhero person but i really liked this book i thought it was a lot of fun and my friend paige who actually sent me this book um i was talking to her about it which was super fun that's what i'm really liking about this vlog is i can actually like talk to the people who sent me these books who also enjoyed them and it's just like a little bonding thing but i was talking to paige about it and she was telling me that there's a sequel to this book and i was like i didn't even know that and i'm even more excited so i'm looking forward to that and this book didn't really end on a terrible cliffhanger or anything but it definitely will be fun to um jump back into this world with these characters because i just had a lot of fun i did want to touch on something really quick one aspect of this book that i think is worth noting is that um nick's dad and a couple of the other characters are policemen in the city and they are painted in a really positive light and not in a way that like all police people are good but in that these particular characters in this story are good and this book was released in the latter half of 2020 tj cloon did put out a statement about how he wrote this previously and his intention was not to promote police officers as being this force of good um i will pop it on the screen here if you are interested in reading it just so you know what's going on i did just want to make everyone aware of that if that is something you're not comfortable with reading that is totally fair and valid i think it was just kind of a case of wrong place wrong time so i think this book is definitely still worth the read and i really really enjoyed it um i think i'm going to give it a strong four and a half stars and i'm only docking a half a star because it was just like very y a if you know what i mean and that's not necessarily a bad thing but some of the scenes in it were really cringy and just like the second hair and embarrassment i got from some of the things that nick did or said just were like a little too much for me but overall i really really enjoyed this one i thought it was so much fun and i can't wait for the sequel and thank you so much paige for sending me this i absolutely adored it i thought it was so good yay a 50 update finally so the next book i have picked up is watch over me by nina lacour and i am really loving this so far this was kindly gifted me this was kindly gifted to me again by my friend amanda thank you so much amanda i'm really enjoying this one and honestly i think you would really like it as well so you should definitely read it next so we can talk about it but basically this follows our main character mila mila grew up in the foster care system and when she turns 18 she accepts this job to intern on this farm this farm is filled with other foster kids she gets to help teach them and look after them and work on this farm but this farm is haunted it has literal ghosts on it there is also a lot of things that trigger mila's trauma in her past around her so she is kind of working through that especially being off on her own for the first time so i'm about 50 of the way through right now and i'm honestly really really loving it i really love nina lacour's writing it probably wouldn't be for everyone because it's kind of speculative in a way like it's not very concrete like this is what's happening and then that happened it's quite flowery and lyrical but i really enjoy that kind of writing so i'm really vibing with it i also love like it's got pages with like not very much on it and it just makes it really quick to get through which i love in a book i love a short book that packs a huge punch and this one is really doing that so far um amelia is definitely a very interesting character and she's kind of noticed some weird things about the farm too um everybody except her and the little boy that she teaches all have some piece of gold jewelry which like signifies that they belong in that family and mila really wants this piece of gold jewelry and so does this little boy but they're like they don't really know why everybody has this jewelry it's almost like cult vibes if you know what i mean it's just really fascinating i'm really interested to see where that goes and i i'm like i'm worried about it being so short because i'm like how much more can happen but there's really been a lot that's happened in the short span of time and i think that's what bodes so well to um nina lacour's writing style it being just whimsical and almost minimal enables her to tell a lot of story and few words so it's really boding well for the story i really am enjoying it so far and i am excited to see where it goes and i will let you know ultimately what i think of it but right now it has the potential for me to be a four or five star book depending on the ending i really would like to explore more of mila's past and her grief and trauma that she experienced and have like see her work through that a little bit more also interested in like the ghost story line there are literal ghosts on this farm that everybody can see everybody on the farm seems to have like their ghost the one that they see all the time that they relate to and that kind of appears for them follows them so i don't know what that's about either and like the culti vibes of the weird farm i don't know it's really good so far i'm really enjoying it and i will let you know what i think when i finish it i finished watch over me by nina lacour and i ended up really loving this book so one of my favorite parts about it was the writing the writing was just so beautiful there are very beautiful lines in here and i like i talked about in the last clip it's very minimal there's not a lot of explanation there's not a lot of like building of the setting building of the characters there is but it's done very minimally they're in very few words which i just think is so impressive to me um i don't like reading more than i have to so i love this book and how it was written it really vibed well with me and i loved all of the short chapters it was very quick to fly through but i feel like it really packed a huge punch which is so impressive with so few words so i loved that aspect i also loved mila as a character i thought that she was a super interesting character and had a lot of good in her i also loved lee the little boy that she takes care of he was so sweet and he just broke my heart and i just loved seeing him interact with mila i thought that they were really cute together as like a teacher-child relationship you know i also really loved the setting of this book the farm that mila went to definitely had culti vibes um and it definitely had ghosty vibes there's ghosts floating around everywhere but i also just liked the setting it was in california by the sea just really beautiful descriptions that i loved reading about and i just liked the kind of vaguely unsettling vibes that the ghostiness and the coltiness gave this book it made it really fun and interesting and like compelling to read because you were like what the hell is going on so overall i really love this one i think i'm gonna give it four stars maybe four and a half it just didn't quite have enough to be a five star read but i definitely think that this is a really good book and i think it is really um valuable in terms of like seeing healthy representation of working through trauma i loved the um metaphors that were used surrounding that and i just loved this book so thank you very much amanda for sending me this i like i said if you haven't read this yet you should read it because i think you would really like it but yeah everyone goes up to amanda because she is the best thank you so much amanda again and i'm so glad that i read this one because i absolutely loved it so i just got halfway through the weight of the stars by k ingram and i'm really really enjoying this so far this is basically a y sci-fi it follows our main character ryan and ryan is this kind of girl who really enjoys helping people um whenever there's a new kid at school that doesn't really fit in with anybody else she kind of takes them under her wing and she has this like motley crew of friends that she's helped that are very much like a found family and this new girl moves to school her name is alexandria and she is kind of an outcast she doesn't really fit in she seems very angry with the world so ryan decides to befriend her and she learns that alexandria is actually the daughter of this woman who has been in space for alexandria's entire life so alexandria is really interested in um sitting outside and trying to catch radio signals radio messages from her mother up in space and ryan starts helping her with that this book is very light sci-fi it's really just about life and dealing with things as a teenager i really love the found family aspect all of the friends in the group are very well fleshed out and very interesting to read about i love all of them already i also love all the casual diversity in this book i believe our main character is safic her brother is mute he doesn't speak um one of her best friends he has parents that are in a polyamorous relationship so he has three parents and everybody in the friend group is just very unique and diverse and i just absolutely love that and it's not like a thing like it's just how it is for everybody which is my favorite way to read about diversity i just think this is a really well done book i'm really enjoying it so far i really like ryan and alexandria's characters and i'm hoping that they have a romance because i'm kind of starting to see that um but it's definitely a slow burn slow build kind of thing so i'm not totally sure if that's gonna happen or not but i'm hoping for it i'm also really liking the writing style i have read k ingram before so i knew that i liked their writing style already but this book just confirms it even more um it has very very short chapters so it's easy to fly through i love a short chapter um so i'm really having a good time with this it's a really quick read and i can't wait to finish it up so i did finish the weight of the stars by k ingram and i absolutely loved this book i haven't totally decided my reading maybe once i talk through it a little bit i will but oh my gosh this book was so good i loved it a whole lot i feel like i just really vibe with kate ingram's writing style again it's like similar to kind of how i describe nina course it's minimalistic but it's also like poetic and beautiful and i just really vibe with that kind of writing style i just think that the more you can say in the fewer words i can i don't know how to wear this if you can really pack a big punch in very few words it's just very impressive to me i just really vibe with and gravitate towards that kind of writing style and with this book that is definitely the case the chapters are really short there's not very many words on each page but the story itself is hugely impactful has a lot of meaning behind it the characters were incredible the plot was amazing i just really loved this book a lot and even though there were kind of a lot of characters every single character had their own unique personality and they had something lovable about them but also something that made them unique and realistic i just really came to love ryan and alexandria especially and i loved them together they were so freaking cute and i think books like this with casual diversity where the diversity is not the point of the book it's just like a footnote in a person's story where like you can see how diversity makes everyone better and work well together but at the same time like that's not everything that person is i just think it's so important and also seeing diverse characters get happy endings i just love that um and k ingram has like a great way of creating like a bittersweet almost open-ended ending but that leaves you feeling very hopeful like kind of hints at the fact that it's gonna be a happy ending which i really vibe with i just absolutely loved everything about this book i thought it was so freaking good and i think i'm gonna give it four and a half stars which uh sounds annoying after i just ranted about how much i loved it but i don't know that this is going to be like a long-term favorite for me i'm kind of gonna simmer on it a little bit i am kind of stingy with my five star ratings it has to be for a book that i know like i will forever recommend and this one while i loved it a lot i'm not quite sure if it was quite to that five star point but after i sit with it a little bit i might let you know in my overall wrap up if anything changes but for right now it is a four and a half i absolutely loved it thank you so much for sending me this mare um this is probably this one watch over me are probably my favorite oh my gosh i love the extraordinaries too though i don't know what's my favorite i'll let you know in the end but i absolutely love this one i thought it was so so good and thank you again mayor i just started reading verona comics by jennifer dugan and i am underwhelmed a little bit so i decided to get this one on audio from my library and i believe that was a mistake so the um guy ridley is that his name i think that's his name something like that um he is narrated by michael crouch who is a very popular ya audiobook narrator and i just i don't know don't like him as narrator at all like i mean he's fine but i just don't vibe with him very well it's just like a personal issue it's not like a him issue it's a me issue but unfortunately that's making me like not like this character because i don't like michael crouch's voice but i don't want to read it physically now i've already listened to half of it on audio and it's a really quick audio book and it's fine but his voice just like irritates me i don't know what it is anyway but like moving past that this just feels very like cringy y a to me and a lot of people say it like is very hard-hitting and makes them cry so i'm kind of hoping that the second half is a little bit better but right now it just feels kind of like trite like the characters are just i find myself rolling my eyes at their dialogue a lot in the way that they interact i do like all the casual queerness in this book pretty much all of the characters are queer which is something that i definitely appreciate and enjoy reading about but i'm just really having some issues connecting to these characters and the whole premise i didn't even explain what this book is about but the whole premise is that these two characters um their parents own competing comic book stores and they're like in direct competition hate each other um and this girl and this guy meet at this comic book convention and they're like wearing masks which again how do you not know who the other person is they literally have like little eye masks on and then they meet each other later like he knows who she is but she doesn't know who he is and i personally don't like that kind of trope i don't like the weird power dynamics it creates and like they're also texting as the people they met at the convention but they're also talking in real life because this kid's dad's trying to take down the girl's family's comic book shop and so he's using him to like infiltrate and it's just like a weird dishonest relationship which like it's not his fault like i understand why he's doing it because his dad is a jerk and he's trying to like get on his good side because it's been pretty much abused by him his entire life um so it's like a rough situation but at the same time it's just kind of a trope that i don't like i don't like the lack of information between the characters and the lack of communication and the lack of honesty i just don't think it's a good way to start the relationship although he pretty much like right where i left off he just told her that he is also the person that she has been texting so he's revealed that like halfway through the book she doesn't seem mad but i haven't finished i'll stop like in the middle of the chapter so i don't know if she's gonna get angry or what is gonna happen i'm kind of hoping that it gets better because it's just been a little bit cringy so far and i just don't absolutely love the characters or anything there's nothing really that's like grabbing my attention about this book but i'm hopeful for a better second half and we will see if i had to rate it right now it definitely would be like a three star range which isn't bad by any means but there are definitely some issues that i have with it so i feel like the second half it's really gonna make or break the book for me we will see i will keep you updated and i'll let you know when i finish it and my final thoughts i did end up finishing verona comics and i definitely liked the second half a lot better than i liked the first half it definitely got a lot more hard hitting in the second half which is something i really enjoy in my contemporaries and i think that this one handled it really well so in the second half of the book we really dive into the thick of ridley and jubilee's relationship and after quite a while we start to realize that it gets increasingly toxic and that really has a lot of issues going on um he has anxiety he has home life issues and he really kind of uses jubilee as a crutch as a way to make himself feel better um but he's really not getting the help that he needs and we start to see that within their relationship it becomes very codependent and just toxic until everything comes to a head they get into this scary accident that really really perpetuates himself and that's kind of like the catalyst the breaking point of their relationship i really respected this book for the direction it went after that catalyst happened because i don't feel like a lot of wyatt contemporaries or a lot of romances at all take the stance that this book took it really wasn't afraid to say that ridley and jubilee's relationship was toxic and more negative than positive while you did want to root for them for them to get together they were cute together in some scenes um this book definitely made you realize as the reader that what they had was not healthy and is not a good model of a relationship and i really respected this book for that in the end ridley does go and get the help that he needs and jubilee also goes to therapy for people who have been in codependent relationships and while at the end they do kind of come together they come together not as like reunited in a relationship they approach like forming a friendship in like a whole new way kind of like starting over they don't jump back into anything even though there is hope for them to stay in contact in the future and i think that was just like a really great message and a really good way to end this book and while i think that maybe the tone was a little bit too cutesy contemporary in the beginning i think that overall this book did a good job establishing what it was trying to say and getting across its message and i really agree with this message and i thought that it was really well done and i really enjoyed it in the end and appreciate what it was doing and for that reason i think i'm going to give this a four star i really enjoyed this book overall um the audiobook i would not recommend personally just because again i don't like michael crouch and if i was just writing the audio book alone it would probably be a two but that was my own fault just because i'm so busy it's hard for me to read physically but overall this story was really well done and i really ended up enjoying it and i think the characters of ridley and jubilee will stay with me for quite a while and so that is the end of this vlog i am going to do a quick little wrap up really quick just to give a little refresher of everything that i read during this week the first book i read was all boys aren't blue by george m johnson this was kind of gifted to me by my friend rachel i absolutely loved it i gave it five stars i would really implore everyone to read this story it is just a beautiful memoir and really gives you a great insight into the struggles that black queer people face in their day-to-day lives and the next book i finished was the extraordinaries by tj cloon i'm also going to go ahead and give this one a 5 stars i absolutely loved it this was probably my favorite one that i've read in this vlog so thank you so much paige for sending me this i just thought it was such a fun hawaii fantasy contemporary kind of story and i love that it was gay and it just was so much fun and i absolutely loved my time reading it next i read watch over me by nina lacour i gave this one four and a half stars i really loved this one as well i thought it was such a great exploration of grief and finding your place finding your family but it also has some creepy unsettling portions and i'm still not quite sure whether i liked the ending or not but this one was so well done i loved the writing and i loved my time reading it and thank you again amanda for sending me this one i'm so grateful for you and then i finished the weight of the stars by k ingram k ingram does it again they are quickly becoming one of my favorite authors i just really connect to their writing and i just think it's the best this was such a fun like light sci-fi why contemporary also gay i think all of these books pretty much work but i loved this one a whole lot and gave it four and a half stars thank you mary so much for sending me this one and then finally i read verona comics by jennifer dugan i also really loved this one i loved the casual queerness in it and i loved the stands it took on toxic relationships i thought it was a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of other y contemporaries and romances out there that really glorify toxic relationships i appreciated this book for taking a stand and saying no and overall i gave this one four stars and i really loved it thank you so much kristen for sending me this and i'm very glad that i have read this book because i know you love it as well and that is the vlog thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this if you'd like me to do another one reading more gifted books definitely let me know because i have quite a few i appreciate everyone that has ever sent me a book it means the world to me really and truly and i also just really appreciate everyone who watches and interacts with this channel so i hope this is kind of like a good thank you for that because i really do appreciate it so so much and yeah i hope everyone has a great day definitely follow me on instagram and twitter if you feel so inclined and i will see you in the next one bye

Channel: bookspastbedtime

Views: 311

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: reading books you sent me, reading books you want me to read, reading ya contemporary for a week, ya contemporary reading vlog, ya fantasy reading vlog, ya contemporary recommendations, reading gifted books, reading books you gifted me, secret tbr reading vlog, reading blue books reading vlog, bookspastbedtime, ya fantasy recommendations, reading books sent to me off my amazon wishlist, reading books i got as gifts, 48 hour readathon vlog, cozy weekly reading vlog, reading vlog

Id: pJU_Yh7knKo

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021