TOP 10 FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2019

my hair is still drying so it's probably gonna like poof up over the course of this video but it's fine hey everyone it's Jenna me and welcome back to my channel this story ain't over so today I am doing a very exciting video one you've probably been waiting for and that is my top 10 favorite books of the year so these are the top 10 books that I've read over the course of 2019 and that I really enjoyed and that I want you to know that I really enjoyed so obviously these are gonna be like very subjective opinions especially for this video I feel like there were certain books that a lot of people didn't like that I really enjoyed and there were other books that I didn't really like that other people enjoyed so I did not include them that kind of thing unlike last year I did not number this list as I have said multiple times before I didn't have the best reading year this year but all these books were so really great I just feel like I cannot really rank them because I don't feel like I particularly loved any of them more than the other I feel like they were all just really really great but yes so we're just gonna get right into the ten books series that I really really enjoyed this year I think that I want to talk about slash series that I want to talk about is the truly devious series by Maureen Johnson so this is a why a mystery series that I recently read and absolutely fell in love with I read these earlier this year for my epic book rex series and I was just totally blown away I was not expecting to like them as much as I did I went into them kind of not really knowing a lot and being absolutely blown away so so far there is truly devious and the banished Xterra the third book is coming out in January it's called the hand on the wall so I've never actually read any Maureen Johnson like I've read some of her short stories with Cassandra Clare but I've never actually read her own like standalone book so I wasn't sure if I was gonna like this but I really really did I think I really liked the main character Stevie Bell I think she was a very unique heroine she's very curious but also a bit shy and she was also very forceful as well which I loved and I just really liked the different characters that kind of crop up throughout the series because it is a mystery series so there's like a little minor characters that you're just always kind of keeping an eye on because you're like are you the killer but basically the series takes place at allenham Academy which was like this fancy kind of private academy that was created by this man named Albert Ellingham in like the 30s and he created this Academy for his daughter and for any kids who had like particular interests or special skills but a few years after the Academy opened our hams wife and daughter were mysteriously kidnapped and there's a ransom note sent to him by someone called truly devious but even after kind of paying the ransom he never got his wife and daughter back and so it's kind of always been this unsolved mystery and so many years later in the current day a young 16 year old girl named Stevie Belt and attending Allingham Academy she is a true crime aficionado and she is kind of obsessed with the mystery of allenham Academy and what happened and the whole truly devious case and so she's determined to crack it and figure out what happened but while she is at school some mysterious things start happening and a murder occurs and so she ends up getting involved in that mystery as well and so each of the books has itself contained mystery but it also has like the overarching mystery of allenham Academy and I absolutely loved it all around and I think it's a great mystery series if you're looking for one I don't usually read like a lot of mystery or like thrillers so yeah I really really enjoyed this and I definitely definitely recommend alright I want to talk about is if we were villains biml reow so this came out quite a few years ago but I read it only this year and I really really enjoyed it it was kind of a book that I knew I was probably gonna enjoy so I kept putting it off and then when I finally did pick it up I absolutely loved it it like consumed me while I was reading it it is definitely built like a mystery thriller so it's one of those books that kind of like consumes you and you like want to just keep reading and you want to find out what happens so basically it follows these six young Shakespearean actors who go to like this private fancy Arts Academy University thing and it is told from the perspective of this one guy in the group who you find out is getting released from jail after ten years and you don't know why or what he did to get there so he was kind of going back ten years to go back to when they all went to school together and he's telling the story the thing I absolutely loved about this book was definitely the characters but also the writing it was very gripping and very descriptive language and it just hooked me in and all the characters were just so vivid and had their very distinct personalities but it was also the way that they interacted with each other I think the thing that the author did the best with was the like tension between the characters whether there were sexual tension or like just you know regular tension like it was just so intense and so every page it was like oh my god there's so much subtext to every scene and I am just like cracking under the pressure but yeah it was just absolutely wonderful I also just really liked Shakespeare and there's a lot of Shakespeare references a lot of like Shakespeare plays that they do in Shakespeare lines that are in this book and so it was just really interesting in that way as well so yeah I really really enjoyed this really great kind of standalone mystery it is an adult one so if you're looking for more adults read it's a great one the next book that I want to talk about is kind of an unexpected one I didn't actually think I would like this as much as I did I read one of the authors of previous books which I really did enjoy but I didn't enjoy it enough to like put on like my favorite books at the year list but I really really enjoyed this one for no particular reason that I can like identify but that book is permanent record by Mary HK Choi so I've read emergency contacts by Mary HK Troi and while like I liked it I didn't like love it love it but this one I think I really really did enjoy I think I read it right when I was like feeling a lot of the things that the main character was basically it follows her main character Pablo Rhind who is kind of failing at a lot of things in life he has recently dropped out of NYU he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life he is working a night shift out of bodega in New York City and it's like the middle of winter and he has like this kind of successful Instagram account of like different food combinations and things and like snacks but he doesn't really know what he wants to do with that and he's kind of stuck on an idea of success that he wants to achieve but he doesn't know how to get there and he doesn't really want to put in the hard work for that and so he's kind of going broke and he's dealing with the pressures from both of his parents he is on biracial his mother is Korean and his father is from Bali I believe so there's also like that element of the book but there's also like a strong element of New York City in this book as well and so when Pablo's bodega is visited at 5 a.m. by this like big celebrity named Liana smart she has like this huge Instagram she's a singer she's just a giant celebrity when she visits they both kind of end up in this weird whirlwind d romance that seems like it's gonna be like a really wrong Comi kind of book but it really doesn't end up being that way it was a lot drier a lot more cynical a lot more real in a lot of ways it was very honest as well I think I like this because it was on the older side of the wide spectrum and you know Pablo's of like college age and so Liana and they're kind of dealing with different problems but I also just really liked the kind of bitter sweetness of the book I would say if there's not a lot of like happy endings or like typical big movie moments it's just like very kind of regular stuff that becomes kind of weirdly extraordinary but also comes back down to earth if that makes any kind of sense I'm not really making any sense I just really really liked how honest this book was I think and Mary HK choice writing it is very honest it's very to the point and it's also like full of pop-culture references and with times and also very specific to New York you know she makes a lot of references to places and things in New York so that was really nice I really felt like I was in New York when I was reading this so yeah I kind of devoured this in the a day or two and I just really really enjoyed it so it's like a weird little book that kind of had me still thinking like way later on so yeah absolutely love those all right the next book that I want to talk about is alone that I don't have with me physically because I let a friend borrow it but that is the third book in the archive side series and that is the toll by Neal Shusterman so this is the cover you don't know it or you haven't seen it before but basically I had to include this because this is the newest book in the arc of science series and if you watched my top 10 books of last year video I absolutely loved side and Thunderhead the first two books in the series they are a sci-fi series set far in the future where humanity is kind of conquered death and disease and so there are these things called sides who are tasked with gleaning people and kind of maintaining population growth and there's also like this crazy AI character that kind of runs all of the world and humanity and all that called the Thunderhead so this is the third book and after the ending of Thunderhead like you were just left with so many questions and you don't know where the series is gonna go so I was just like on the edge of my seat waiting for this to come out and I was just so excited when it did and when I got to it I think it did a really good job of kind of wrapping up the whole series and addressing so many interesting questions about the world and the future and I just thought it was like one of those sci-fi novels that really leaves you thinking a lot about what the future could be like and I just absolutely love the characters in it this series as well it is one of those series that is less focused on a single character or like a couple characters and more focus on like the broader picture and the picture gets even broader in this book so in some ways you didn't get that personal journey but you did get to see that this big masterpiece of a story come to and I just absolutely loved it so yeah there's not much I can say about this without spoiling anything so I'm not going to say much more but all you really need to know is that I absolutely loved it I doesn't recommend the series as a whole because I think it was just absolutely amazing and I just it's definitely like reached like my Hall of Fame favorite book series ever all right the next book that I wanted to talk about is another book that I went to one of my friends so I don't have it with me but it was one of my all-time favorite books of this year and I just cannot talk about it enough and I know a lot of other people also really really enjoyed it and really loved it but I have heard more mixed reviews recently which is like kind of worrisome because I think it was amazing and a lot of that has to do with personal kind of connections that I had with the book but that book is frankly in love abide David UHN so this is David Yoon's debut novel he is the husband of Nicola you'd was the author of this is also a star if you didn't know that connection I was just so excited about this one I found out about it because it involved like a fake dating thing and involved a main character who is Korean and he is the son of immigrants so there's that kind of element but honestly I went into this book thinking I was gonna be a really like kind of cute funny rom-com ebook about this boy who fakes dates this Korean girl that he knows to get away with actually dating this white girl that he knows his parents would never approve of but the book ended up being so much more than that and that was what just kind of blew me away it was a lot more about family and about Frank's identity issues he is Korean but he is you know American born American raised and he goes through this kind of like identity struggle of what it means to be Korean but also Korean American and also more American and growing up with parents who are immigrants and so who have not completely kind of given themselves over to being American it was just really interesting discussion of you know identity and all that and the whole fake dating thing is some element of that and there's a sweet romance and this is as well and kind of a really big element of friendship there's also some really nice like side characters and like minor characters in the book that I absolutely loved as well but his book also talks a lot about like race as well and racism amongst the communities of color as well and so I thought that was really great I just thought it was like really well done in terms of representation and coming from like own voices and I just I absolutely loved it like I remember like finishing it and just like crying a lot because there is also a huge element with Frank's parents as well and I just connected to not a lot so I know some people just couldn't get into this book which I understand to a certain but I'm also like it was awesome and amazing and I just personally really really loved it so yeah it is one of those books that has become one of my all-time favorite books like this has become a year where a lot of contemporaries have become my favorite which is really weird but this is definitely one of those and it was definitely a contemporary where I was like oh my god I see myself so much in this and so that's one of the reasons why I appreciated it so much speaking of books that I like that no one has seem to like the next book that I absolutely loved and which became one of my absolute favorites this year is gilded wolves by Russian Itachi this is a book that I know a lot of people did not like and for reasons I understand and for reasons I don't understand as well but I will say that it didn't take me a while to like get into this book and kind of continue reading it but although I read it quite slowly I still feel like every time I picked it up I did value everything that I was reading and I did get a lot out of it and by the end of it I really want to know what happened but I also just really cared about all the characters I think that's one of the things about this book is that I really really cared for each and every one of the characters it follows I think five or six different perspectives and it takes place in 1889 in Paris and it falls like this ragtag kind of crew of people of different races and cultures and all that kind of coming together to pull off this magical heist a lot of people were comparing it to a six across because of the whole heist element and big cast of characters but it was a lot different in many many ways and I feel like that comparison brought a lot of hate on to this book that was undeserved but the reason I love this book is because of the really amazing discussions of a race and colonialism and talks about and deals with the very real reality that many marginalized communities went through in history and I felt like that was such a huge part many of the main characters in this book are of mixed race they are dealing with different kind of things you know there's a discussion of you know passing for other races or you know being white passing one of the main characters Lila you know she's often mistaken as a help because she is so Asian there's a character in here who is Jewish who is thrown out of her school because she's Jewish and it's about these characters who have been wronged by the world by colonialism and are trying to take back what they deserve and reclaim artifacts or objects you know this whole book is surrounding a heist over and opt so it really does kind of work as like a metaphor for anti-colonialism you know one of the things that rocks we talked she said in a interview is that all that is gold does not glitter all these beautiful things that were kind of taken away to museums and discovered through colonialism you know do not belong where they are now and just because they seem beautiful does not mean that there's not a history of harm and hurt that has brought them to where they are these characters are dealing with artifacts and these beautiful museums in Paris that were come stolen away from their original homes and this book deals with a kind of magic that is centered in objects and so it was a very interesting kind of magic system and I feel like for some people this serious came off very complicated and confusing but I do feel like once you get past that it just had so much to it and thematically was just so important and I just loved it so much and I connected to so many of these characters if there were so many moments where I was like nodding along to what they were seeing and I'm like oh my god yes oh my god yes so this book has like a very special place in my heart and will continue to be one of my favorites ever and I just can't wait to see where it goes in the future books yes overall I just really really love this and I just wish more people would give it a chance so I want to talk about is one of my all-time favorites and I did not expect this but I like had heard someone else talk about this it was Sajid from books are my social life he talked about this and then I decided to pick it up and I absolutely fell in love with it I read this earlier in this year I think it in March and that book is the 11 lines of Roxana alley by Sabina Kahn it's so I think this authors actually Canadian which was totally awesome I didn't know when I was reading it but it falls her main character Roxana Alif his parents are from Bangladesh and she Muslim and she gots one this very conservative family but she is gay she's lesbian and if her parents ever found out they would it would it would not be good which is what kind of happens so on her mother you know walks in on her kissing her girlfriend she ends up getting kind of whisked away to Bangladesh and she ends up getting set up in this kind of arranged marriage in the hopes of just kind of praying the gay away and this is a book that really deals with Cronus in communities of color and just you know the implications of that and why it's really hard for a lot of people to come out but it also deals with the nuances of these communities and the Allies that she ends up finding in her community and although this can be a very kind and great at time can get very homophobic very intense as well it was overall a very heartwarming read in the end and I just felt like it was so important that I was one of the first times that I've read a book that showed that intersection of queerness and you know being a person of color together in a very personal kind of context from an Asian community from a Muslim community I just thought it was just so great and I just love seeing that representation and I devoured this in a single day and it was just so amazing so yeah highly highly recommend one of my all-time favorite contemporaries now I will like recommend this to the day I died because I just I'm so amazing and I'm just so glad it is out in the world for young queer teens of color who can pick this up and like see themselves like I'm just so excited for that so yeah its one of my favs for this year but also one of my all-time faves in the world alright the next book that I want to share with you today the second last one that I have is Eliza and her monsters and by Francesca is epiha so this is a book that I looked totally late to the game with a lot of people read this like last year or the year before and it was really big and I like never picked it up because it was a contemporary and I wasn't really feeling it but I picked this up this year for my epic book wreck series for a video on like books with mental health and mental illness is kind of represented and so I picked this up knowing it had representation for anxiety and I was just absolutely blown away if I was ranked you're Elijah who is this webtoon comic creator so she is known a violent millions of people for her very famous series called I think the monster see and no one actually knows like who she is she has like a pen name and no one's seen pictures of her so no one knows her so she kind of hides behind it this persona of this author and she kind of hides herself from her family as well who is this very kind of social butterfly family they're all on the sports teams and think whatever she's doing is kind of like a hobby and so Eliza's kind of dealing with all of this and then she ends up meeting this boy at school who was actually a fanfiction writer for monstrous see he really loves it and so the two of them end up striking up this like unlikely friendship he is also very shy and has his own struggles with his mental health as well and so the two of them kind of break each other out of their shells and Isis hurts to make friends and all dies but there's this pressing issue of the fact that the boy Wallace doesn't know that she is the creator of the monstrous sea and so she doesn't really want him to find out but she also wants to be honest and it was just a really great book Eliza was a very relatable character it gets very intense towards the end this book goes to very dark places as well towards the end but I thought it was just so well done and so well written and I also just thought the whole element of her being that's a creator of this like giant webcomic was just so interesting it overall I just thought it was a really enjoyable read as well so definitely recommend this one if you wanted like a contemporary that was fun at times but also pretty intense I would definitely recommend this one hey everybody from a few weeks later after I edited this video and realized that I forgot to mention one of the top 10 books for this year so here we are and so that book / series is the focus the air series of by Holly black I could not go without mentioning in the series because it kind of took over my life this year I kind of devoured the cruel prince after I got about the 20% weight in I read it on eBook and just absolutely fell in love with it and I really just liked Jude as a character she was just so cutthroat and they loved Cardin as well he was just a lot more layered than I initially thought he was gonna be and that just kind of continued in each of the later books so the wicked king and the queen of nothing which came out at the end of the year but yes I absolutely enjoyed all three I think my favorite was the wicked King but for those of you who don't know this follows our main character Jude who has a twin sister and an older sister and they're humans who had human parents but their mother was originally married to a fairy and so when that fairy comes to the human world and murders their parents he and taking the three girls back to fairy with him and raising them there and so Jude has kind of grown up around these cutthroat fairies who you know live long lives and you know don't care about the emotions of humans and have really thick skins that kind of thing and so she ends up learning to be really cruel and ruthless and she's kind of grown up with these terrible fairy bullies as well because they can compel her to do things but she ends up kind of getting involved in the politics of fairy and with one of the princes in a fairy his name is Carden and there's some really crazy hijinks in this series as well and I just really really enjoyed it I did feel it was a bit hard to get into the first book but as soon as I got about 20% and I really started to enjoy it and I do think the rest of the series was also really great so if you do like fantasy and if you like fairies and this is a really great one I also just really like the seriously because each book is quite short they're not very long they're pretty quick reads for fantasy so yeah definitely enjoy these and now back to delusional Germany who thought she actually filmed this properly okay and the last book that I want to talk about today one of my favorite books of this year obviously as I said this whole list is not numbered at all I just left them all and I wanted to talk about them all but the last book could have to mention is 9th house by Leigh bardugo which is unsurprising because leave already though I absolutely love most of things that she writes but as you can tell king of scars is not on this list because I didn't enjoy it as much but this book I absolutely loved and it did take me a while to get into it as many of you might know if you've been following my channel but once I got into it I really really did enjoy it and loved it I thought it was really well written I thought that the whole overall story was just really interesting and unique as well it is an adult novel it Falls her main character Alex Stern and she's basically given a second chance after she is found in a very gruesome crime scene and she's given the opportunity to go to Yale and she becomes part of house Leath which is the ninth house of the kind of secret societies of Yale and is the house that kind of manages and watches over the other secret societies and makes sure that they don't go overboard with their magic and rituals and all that kind of stuff and so the book alternates between different timelines for things go wrong and after they go wrong and there is another character of a mentor named Darlington that Alex is dealing with but there are a lot of ghosts and interesting magic as well in this book is a very dark book very sad book at times very intense very kind of gross as well and it also has like a bit of a murder mystery in it as well but overall I really really enjoyed it I think Mike and I just was so invested in the story I really wanted Alex be okay but I also just want to know what happened like you know who did it basically I also just thought it had some really interesting a theme it is a book that kind of makes you angry towards the end and it's not a happy book either it's very intense kind of adult book and I'm very interested to see where it goes in the next book but this has been a pretty popular book this year and I do think for good reason Leigh bardugo is an amazing writer and I am looking forward to anything less choice in the future but those are all the books that I want to talk about today my top 10 books of 2019 this was a pretty rough reading year for me but overall I think all the books that I mentioned today we're just really amazing and awesome and I just really did love them so I hope you found a book that you are hoping to pick up or I have somehow convinced you to pick up one of these if you weren't thinking of doing it before I am super excited for all the readings what I'm gonna do in a 2020 but I think it was a pretty good reading year overall everyone's like 80 books and these were 10 awesome ones that I got out of it but let me know down below what your top 10 books of 2019 were I would love to hear all of your thoughts and kind of what books you guys were loving this year I can definitely think of like a bunch that I know a lot of people loved but I would love to hear your personal top 10 faves of 2019 but until my next video thank you so so much for watching and please remember that this 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Channel: thisstoryaintover

Views: 26,604

Rating: 4.9670906 out of 5

Keywords: favorite books of 2019, best books of 2019, favorite books, top ten books of 2019, top ten books, top 10 books of 2019, top 10 books, young adult, best books, book recommendations, best books of the year, all time favorite books

Id: X4-VtJ7djm8

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 04 2020