where i went and what i read while i was there

hi spend a second so if you were aware I have disappeared for the past four months it was never really my intention like okay I'm a thirteenth I'm gonna delete everything I'm just a Gemini's who I'm unpredictable and I needed a break I mean clearly if I left but I want to talk a little bit first about why I've been gone where I was what that reason was for that I disappeared and then talk about all the things that I read a while I was not posting cuz we got quite a wrap-up so where I went the long story short is I deleted everything because I wanted to focus on job hunting and I was really nervous that because I'd been showing off my youtube as this marketable thing which I think it is I think saying on your resume hey I do videos I know all this I know the current trends I know how to edit you know I have an audience I think those are all really good things that I wanted to bolster and be like hey look at me I had interviewed for my dream company and didn't get it and not only did I not get it I watched someone I know get it instead I'm afraid to talk about that because I feel like people are gonna be like oh that's it I know it doesn't sound like a huge deal but I took a huge blow um when that happened and part of it was just because in general job hunting is so draining in a way that no one prepares you for it's everyday being like here's Who I am here's what I can do here's how I'm marketable here are my strengths do you want to hire me and it's just constantly know you're not good enough you don't have these skills even though you paid $100,000 for school you don't have this and this and this so it was so taxing already on my mental health I then added on to that I felt like I wasn't putting a good foot forward with YouTube because in my vlogs which is primarily what I would post I would just be upset all the time you would see me laying in bed for a week straight without showering cuz I was in that mental state of no one wants me overall I just was feeling really negatively about my youtube presence and I felt so insecure that jobs were seeing that and being like oh she's lazy or oh she doesn't do one way or another I was just not feeling like I was putting my best foot forward with my YouTube content just for me to be able to feel like I can apply to jobs that people aren't googling me and the first thing they see is me sitting on the floor crying about not having a job I did not like that that part of me was available online so I wanted to take a step back from YouTube and just be me in person for a little bit I knew I would come back I'm sorry I was being cryptic with not really talking about it but it's still hard for me to admit like I didn't get what I wanted I could probably do a whole video just about job hunting in general it's exhausting and it's heartbreaking so long story short I just needed space for me to be able to hike myself back up and like get out of bed and not broadcast so that I'm not doing okay which is something that I would typically do cuz I like to stay candid with people but I think vlogging me being sad was perpetuating that so I needed distance from it and now I'm happy to announce I am employed I signed on an apartment so I'll be moving at the end of this month I don't know when this video is going up but the end of September I'll have my own place with my two kitties and we're done with everything like we're through it we made it that's the goal or the outcome what did I do in the mean time that I was gone I joined a gym I've been going to the gym I joined toontown the jokingly and then ended up playing it for three months straight in getting to like level 106 if anyone wants to play toontown with me my user name is Anna soup and I read just over 45 books and that sounds impressive but it was all graphic novel I just wanted to make fun and fast and light you know a lot of the books that I chose weren't good for me in that headspace that I was in which i think is a good context to watch this video in is there's a lot of books or not a lot there's a couple books I didn't like and it's entirely because I wasn't in the mindset to deal with like dark books books about job loss and like all that stuff I literally made an Excel spreadsheet about all the books I read this is the job person I've become I just want to go through with you talk about what I've been reading over the past few months I'm gonna call this like a summer wrap-up and this is going to be every single book other than like one book that I D&F that was for review that white he's not even worth mentioning cuz it wasn't really my thing and just talk about everything that I've read so this is sort of my apology video sorry I disappeared thank you for coming back or staying here and just being supportive of me during literally the worst year one of the worst years anyway but yeah we're back what better than ever and here's the books that I read while I was gone so the first book that I read after I disappeared off YouTube was actually a sequel this is fenced vol 2 by SIA spicata Joey another mavin Johanna la Fuente this is your graphic novel series but all these boys that are at this fencing school the main character is Nicolas and he is vying for a spot on this really prestigious team that has CG on it who is like the National Champion this entire series is just them all sparring and trying to get onto that team I wish there was a better synopsis for it but there's not because the biggest downfall about this is that it's just so short like it only takes place in 24 hours and there's two volumes that it feels like we haven't really gotten anywhere other than seeing their fencing matches but despite that it's still fast-moving it's still interesting I like the characters I don't know this is going to be a male male roommates but there's a lot of that camaraderie there obviously they're like enemies enemies two lovers we'll see so this is kind of difficult to review because on one hand it's a little bit boring because we haven't really gotten to really any action yet but also I'm not a huge fan of sports books or like sports romances and yet this doesn't make me bored on behalf that it is about sports kind of this dualistic thing where it's not boring but it is but yeah the art style is just easy to comprehend again just the tensions are running high between the characters so it makes it addicting I gave this book four stars I definitely want to continue the series see it's piccata and general like cancel me but I love CSP cut her writing is awesome I love her character billing so hopefully this series just picks up the pace other than that I have no complaints the next book I read I got from the library which is going to be a huge theme the my librarians hate me because I was on that request page every day being like I want this graphic novel I want this look so I read a ton of books from my library so the next book I read is called moon struck magic - bro this is Volume one in a series so this is a book about Julie who is a werewolf and as you could see in the background a bunch of these characters are magical creatures this is a magical world the main character is latina and she works at a coffee shop the gist of this book is that she and her girlfriend it is a female female romance go to a magic show one night and they bring their friend Chet who is a non-binary centaur I guess and Chet ends up being the victim of having a spell be put upon them and it's all about having to undo this and navigating the magical world and finding out what the cure for it is I thought this book was so cute and fun this book is one of those books that has the funniest banter the characters are just so well connected with one another that it just really shines through that their dialogue is so funny and cute and supportive I love the setting of this I love the magical feel of it my favorite character by far was Chet the best way I can describe their personality is Cusco from the Emperor's New Groove mixed with Kenji from shatter me they are just so funny so wholesome so scatterbrained I don't know they were just incredible I love that they were like a big part of this story the Olmec downside of this book was that it was a little bit difficult to comprehend because it is very magical and so they're having to solve this magic spell and not a lot of that was explained so I feel like this book did a lot with the characters interacting with one another and like character development but then as far as like solving this mystery type deal it left you bury in the dark I gave it four stars I'm highly interested in picking up the sequel but my library I said no I do highly recommend this one it's very inclusive very fun and I didn't hear anyone talk about this so here I am talking about it you should read it next I read a manga series from the library that's called I hear the Sun SPOT it's by you keifa Meno and this is a series that is about these two college students the main character is Tai Chi who is just constantly hungry he's very much going person very loud and one day he meets Kouhei Kouhei is hard-of-hearing and he needs an interpreter for class to take down his notes and to help him out with his assignment so these two boys make an agreement so that Taichi will take kouhei's notes and sort of be his interpreter in exchange for Kouhei bringing him food it sounds very weird but it is so wholesome and so funny this is one of those books with the camaraderie between the characters is there's one super loud outgoing wholesome character with like a brooding darker troubled character so this book was really cute but it also had a really deep meaningful part of the book because this book actually really delves into Kouhei being hard of hearing it addresses topics like people were man to sizing him for his disability or thinking that because he has a disability like they need to treat him a certain way or treat him differently and he kind of ostracized Vargas isolates himself from other students just because he's had such negative experiences with the way people have treated him and this series kind of explores how he's able to open up more around Tai Chi because Tai Chi treats him more like an equal and he sort of almost becomes an advocate for not only Kouhei but hard-of-hearing people in general and I've read three volumes involved in this series the second one is called I hear the sunspot theory of happiness and then there's also something called limit one which I don't know how mangas work I don't know what limits are or that means like spin-off series but it's another continuation and I think there's one more that I haven't read yet I liked them all I'm gonna say like the original - I gave four stars they're my favorites the third one talks about how the characters I don't want to spoil it but they kind of go separate ways a little bit just for life circumstances and so you never really see them together much and if you like at that point in the book I want to see them together and I want them to stop being angsty because spoiler alert is also sort of turns into a male male romance and it feels like it's a bit repetitive by book three that they're still experiencing the same type of angst that they were in book one so I'm kind of just like alright let's speed it up let's do something let's fix something so even though it begins to meander a little bit and strays away from what I wish it would it would focus on it's still such an impactful read it's very sweet and I get a lot again I gave the first two four stars and then I gave the limit three stars and however many more there are I would like to read them one day I just don't have them at my library okay okay the next book I finished was written links book of mythicality by rhett rhett mclaughlin and link Neal if you recognize these two men they're from the YouTube channel good mythical morning which I have loved since college when I discovered them these two guys basically have a channel that's almost like an entire TV production where they talk about mythicality and mythicality to them and kind of the focus of this book is being weird and being true to yourself and authentic without being ashamed of it and so this book really dives into different topics like making friends having parties so just like different I guess practical skills but it's also this exploration of Rhett and Link's personal lives and how they relate to mythicality and how they sort of became this brand and created this brand it's really hard to explain if you don't watch the YouTube channel but the best way I'm gonna explain this is sort of anecdotal stories combined with here's how you can be that energetic unapologetic person this is a mix of those stories and some activities very colorful and there's lots of pictures and multimedia stuff going on I really wish I'd read this on audiobook or listen to it on audiobook I love written links so much I'm probably 99% sure they'd narrated this audiobook I can't help but feel like I would have liked it more as an audiobook because as is it was fun but it takes a while to read because it's chapters about different things and it can be sort of tedious to read I like their backstory I liked all the different infographics and the activities but I just can't help but feel like I would have liked it more and I would have wanted to reach for it more often if it had been on audio and I could hear their inflection and their voices almost like I was watching a video of theirs which I enjoy so much this wasn't bad by any means you know four months after the fact I'm still kind of I find it difficult to remember a specific piece of advice that I read from this but I think if you like their YouTube channel you should definitely consider picking this up because it gives you a lot of information and I think it really supports their message of being mythical and being weird being okay with it so I just love them I'm so happy that I supported them this was really fun I gave it three and a half stars the next book I read is called a snap girl this is actually Volume two so I read the sequel this one's called California screaming this is a serious about this LA fashion blogger named Lottie and the whole premise of this series of the she has to maintain this image that she is polished and beautiful and everyone envies her life but in reality she has allergies that make it so that her nose is running constantly hence snot girl she ends up being involved in this really crazy murder case but it's so bizarre so hyperbolic is like it's almost unrealistic and there's fantastical elements and it's so difficult to describe the art and this is my favorite art of any graphic novel it is so colorful and so just like when you think of like la fashion and the whole vibe of this it just fits it so perfectly the best part of it are the characters because they're all so unlikable they're all from LA they're all just being skeevy and manipulative and they're awful but it's so fun to read about kind of returning to what I said previously about this having like fantastical elements I think that's the reason why this one was a little bit harder to grasp her than the first book because there is an element of like what's happening and sometimes that's fun like in the bizarre way you're like oh this is so weird and other times you're like we need an actual plot to be able to comprehend to actually like connect with this and care about the characters I gave it 4.5 stars because I just love how this book is so morally great and is dealing with this really scandalous really dark thing but all you see is like the colors and the brightness and like it's LA and it's glamorous so I just think it's genius the next book I'm gonna mention is actually a DNF which if you're unaware that means I did not finish it and this might shock you that I didn't finish this book because I typically really really enjoy these authors but dating and hating gubeck are similar I made it 144 pages into this book I gave it a good shot but when I tell you this in opposites you'll kind of understand why I had to stop reading it but this is a book about these two agents in Hollywood whose agencies merged and so they're both now competing for job titles with their boss and with clients so it's all about these two people in the workplace competing for a job and that was too close to home so I said no I don't know if I'll ever be able to return to this without it hurting but also reading this it is so work heavy and typically Christine Lauren romances are like romance heavy but this one is just constantly them at their jobs and them dealing with customers and it just wasn't fun to read I was listening to this on audio because it was hard to get through and I never do that with romance so can someone tell me if this is an outlier from their other books or I'm just being sensitive I don't like this book and I feel like I'm gonna give it two stars if I finish it but I don't know if it's just me or if the book itself is like not on the same level as her other books I just wasn't having fun reading it so I stopped reading it okie dokie the next manga series that I read from the library I actually got a copy of this for my birthday so I have one this is the girl from the other side but in the gobby which i think right now is a six-volume series I think I've read up to volume four this is one of my new favorite mangas of all time this is a series that has a world that's divided from the outside in the inside so the inside is basically the human population as normal and the outside is the world that has been infested by these dark creatures that you can see right here so it's the inside is trying to keep themselves safe from the outside and this book follows the see young girl who is on the outside for reasons that you discover as the books go on and this creature that watches over her that she calls teacher and it is the most wholesome book in the entire world this has my favorite art style of any manga let me see if I can get you a good page because this book really details this scenery which I feel like manga typically doesn't do it's just I don't know what page I can use to communicate how beautifully this is drawn from the interesting world building and the dynamics between like good versus evil and like this monstrous creature versus innocence like I think I could write an essay about this book from an English degree point of view but also it's just so fun and so cute I've been sort of fluctuating my ratings of this book between four and five stars I think some volumes are more confusing than others but overall there have kept a very steady high rating and it's this weird balance between this gruesome world versus this light-hearted and sweet storyline I'm gonna sneeze oh yeah I think I keep this first 14.5 stars but they're all leaning up toward 5 stars they're just so great highly recommend like that's a recommendation where it's like don't even get it from your library just buy it because you won't regret it the next book I read it's another graphic novel I read bloom by Kevin Panetta and Savannah Danno ciao this is a graphic novel that's sort of a coming-of-age story it's why a spell Ari who is 18 he wants to move away with his band but his family owns a bakery and they need him for the summer and there's this growing rift between his parents and him because he wants to go off and do his own thing his parents need him so to sort of compromise he decides that he's going to hire and train another boy in his town who will fill his role so that he can go away at the end of the summer and over the summer as they are training together and working together Hector and Ari just become closer and Ari begins to question the conflicts with his friends and his family and come to terms with that and mature as well as having like a blooming romance with Hector first and foremost I think the art style of this book is fabulous it is all this blue art scheme like the title says bloom there's all these like metaphors for their relationship blooming it's really precious but I think this book is sort of cookie-cutter it just seemed so average to me maybe because I've been reading Y a for like six years now I was just never shocked by anything that occurred and I don't necessarily read because I want to be shocked but this book felt very monotone because it just seemed like generic pop ones that I've read in any other way a contemporary story that being said I did like that it was set at a bakery I did like how whenever Ari was being sort of childish he was called out by Hector you get to see his shift throughout the book and grow up out of that but like I said I just felt very formulaic and then by the end of the book I think it was rushed that's not to say that it's not a good book I think for if you enjoy any of the elements that I mentioned this will fall into those categories and it will easily check those boxes but I think I just want something a little unique something that would take me to my surprise or grab me by the heart but this book just sort of fell under the category of it was pretty good so I gave it 3.5 stars the next book I read I'm really upset that I don't have a copy of because I want a copy for my shop eventually I read a woman world by a Mandir Dhaliwal this is a book that's set in a world where all the men have died out and it's not even one full story it's all these little scenarios on every page it's like little vignettes of things that happen in the world after that occurs and it is so funny this is one of those books where I'm like why has no one talked about this it is perfect this book references memes this book breaks the fourth wall this book has genuinely made me laugh out loud which is so difficult to do especially in a graphic novel format and I think the best part about it is it is just so inclusive as well so in the book there's lots of women that are naked and so you get to see all different types of skin colors and body types there's trans women I just cannot say enough good things about this book it was one of those books were like every page I took a picture of it to send to a friend because I was laughing so much and had to show someone else I highly recommend it if you want a book that's gonna make you laugh but also make you think a little bit and if you want to support women the authors a woman of color it's the best it's the bee's knees it's the piece whole Anatomy it's so good the next one could I read is called brave like Lily by Richard katanas Richard is actually a youtuber friend I've known him since like 2013 I'll link his channel down below and this is one of his many books so this book is about a Mexican American boy named Matteo this 13 year olds older sister was killed via police brutality the police shot her unjustly so this is Mateos response to that and him having to work through his grief that really comes through via his anger I think the conversation of police brutality is really relevant and I liked how it was tackled from that angle of being in my Mexican American community the biggest thing that shone through in this book for me was that Mateos anger was just very Stark his anger is so palpable and so touching and this wasn't just primarily a book about police brutality also a lot of subjects like Matteo is gay so it talks about him wanting relationships with other boys in his class it also talks about family relationships and accountability my only complaints about this book were that it reads really young and I think part of that is because the writing style was very simplistic but also because the story felt a little bit half-baked it's quite short and I feel like we could have taken a little bit longer to flush out some of the events that were occurring and the emotions that he was experiencing obviously it's like a heart-wrenching and a grieving story so I wish that the length of it and the depth of it could have reflected that and I feel like it could have just slowed down a bit to unpack it still overall I think it did handle a lot of great topics really mindfully in a way that I think packages it for a young reader really perfectly so I did enjoy this book I give it three stars and I would like a copy for my shelf one day okey-dokey the next book that I read I don't know why I just transitioned to that happy tone because this is also a pretty sad book I was sent a book by fierce reads for review and this one's called the other side by Juan Pablo Villalobos so this is actually a nonfiction book the subtitle here says stories of Central American teen refugees who dream of crossing the border so this is actually a book that is inspired by this author going to different refugees in America or people who are currently in like border control camps and talking to them and finding out their stories and this is all focused on teens who came to America from Central America so it talked about their different experiences why they came to America how they're treated in America attack goes like deportation and different struggles they're having in their home countries really just to educate people about why these people are here and to humanize the back stories of the people who cross over so I really enjoyed this as an educational resource because I think it really specifically hones down on those particular people who come over you can see it is very short this is barely even 150 pages each individual story in here I think is 15 are only like 5 to 10 pages long so it's a really brief read so I enjoyed that but also with it I feel like there came a lot of stunted development of first of all emotional reactions to things that were occurring because this was a very just physical description of why they came how they came and there really in a description how they were feeling or any grief and really just any details slipped through the cracks because it was so short part of me feels like I would have rather read one story about one of these refugees that's totally fleshed out and has that emotion has those details rather than 15 shorter ones but I feel like that also defeats the purpose of having a collection that shows a ton of diverse the stories so it's difficult this is definitely a quick read and it's informative which is why I enjoyed it and why I recommend it but it's not something that's going to be lasting because it did lack that element that made my heart connect with it so I gave this book three stars I enjoyed it for what it was the next book I read was my brothers husband but Ginga wrote egami this is a manga series I think it's duology about a man in Japan named ehe he visits his daughter Kanna they live a very typical easy life and then one day this man named Mike shows up at their doorstep who he explains to be this is a difficult guy cheese twin brother who moved to America or Canada it's his husband yo cheese brother was killed in a car accident and so Mike his estranged husband is coming to Japan to connect with his Rhodes and his family to discover what it was like for him growing up and just be closer to his home so it's about how I she takes in Mike in this whole manga explores the theme of homophobia especially within traditional Japan societies and neighborhoods both from the perspective of an adult who is less accepting of that than the daughter who is younger and a lot more accepting because those ideals haven't really been instilled in her as deeply so this is all about them learning more about Mike and being gay and also at the same time a story about grief I like the storyline of they were challenging their beliefs or I guess at least ejg was the daughter really didn't have anything that she needed challenge she was really accepting from the get-go I gave this three stars and the biggest reason for that is something that I haven't heard anyone else talk about it so I don't know if it's like a me thing so this author is also the author of a lot of like gay erotica manga which I'm not at all shaming like go for it but the way that he draws the male characters you can already tell they're very thick and burly I began feeling uncomfortable with how these male characters were drawn in such stark contrast with their being a child in the book which it's difficult to explain because I know like these men obviously aren't pedophiles I'm not trying to imply that gay men are pedophiles it was hinting that you're supposed to see these men as like muscley and powerful I'm big and sexual and yet there's a child in the book that's a huge focus of the book and they exist in such close proximity to one another so one instance of many that I want to point out is like things like this where as you can see he's like very muscley and she's like touching his chest for whatever reason and then he gets mad and all this but there's just so many scenes where like the little girl will like want to sleep with Mike just if she had a nightmare or something but he's like in his underwear do you super big and mostly and I know people have those body types but am I wrong and seeing that that way where I just felt so uncomfortable that this author is sexualizing these men while they're interacting with a young girl it's more of an issue with the author and the drawing style than the characters or what the characters are doing I just was uncomfortable doing it it came off the wrong way to me by all means if these two characters are gonna have a developing romance question mark I don't know go for it but I hated how it was always these two characters were like sexualized next to a young girl it was just weird to me so that was the reason why I took off two stars it was still a good read like I said because it challenged in both norms but it made me uncomfortable of in lives of Roxanna only which is by sabina Khan this is a Wyatt contemporary book about a girl named Brooke Shana who is a lesbian she's from a very conservative traditional Muslim family that's from Bangladesh Brooks on who lives a very secret life trying to stay private from her parents she has a girlfriend that her parents don't know about until one day her mom finds them kissing and so she's shipped off to Bangladesh to be in an arranged marriage a lot of really dark intense things happening in this book and this is gonna be one of those books that I mentioned earlier that I think if I would have read this at a different time I might have interpreted it differently but it is what it is first foremost I really like this book because it talked about culture and it talked about having homophobic parents and the struggle that comes with that having to hide yourself I think the intersection of culture and being unaccepted is something that a lot of teens could relate to I just really appreciated that it offered that perspective because I think it is something that's so relevant but I would say that the theme of that is pretty much the only thing I really enjoyed from this book because I had a big big big problem with just how cruel and homophobic this book was there was intense abusive homophobic behavior that Roxana had to deal with to the point of like physical abuse and obviously that's not fun to read and I'm not saying I gave the book a low rating just because it was in the book but I feel like it was given forgiveness so easily having to read that and knowing that conversion therapy happens to people when people are killed for being gay like it's a real thing and it's like hurtful so for it to be forgiven so easily almost added to the hurt that this book caused because I didn't like it we're casona deserved better than that take everything that I say with a grain of salt because I'm not a woman of color and I don't really understand the culture of being so close with your family that you forgive your family and they're kind of this very tight-knit community for you but I still felt like there was a lot of Justice that Ruksana deserved and being able to just forgive people so easily for putting her through a lot of literally torturous things I didn't like it I felt really sorry for her and I didn't like that she was so forthcoming with forgiveness for terrible things that she went through also one thing I did not like is that in order for her family to sort of change and be like oh maybe we should accept you a gay person had to die for them to be like oh this might happen to you if we keep being unaccepting so I just really didn't like how I had to kill a gay person just for the parents to have this revolutionary turnaround of oh wait now we love our daughter sorry if that was a spoiler but if you think it's a really important thing to mention because the book that's working toward normalizing gay people in other cultures and yet to do that it killed a gay person so it's difficult again I'm trying to grapple between her coming to terms with her culture and me not being a part of that culture despite my personal issues with it I also just didn't really like the writing style I felt it was new week but yeah I'm not gonna lie my biggest gripe with this was just I did not understand why characters were being given forgiveness when they didn't deserve it so it was difficult to read but at the end of the day it was an important read but I just think the way the author handled it and excused the fact that she had gone through those dark things I wasn't a fan of coming from a 2-star book to a five-star book actually I think I gave it 4.5 but the more I think about it the more vibe the friendzone but a be-hymen is this is an adult romance book following a main character named Kristen she has uterine fibroids which gives her constant chronic pain it's a period issue if you didn't know it's universe related so she's always had trouble with her period that's always painful for her she's constantly bloated she's got like literal tumors and her uterus so she's planning on having a hysterectomy just to correct that and to make sure she's not living a painful life and then she meets Josh she ends up falling a bit for Josh but finds out as they get to know one another that he is a huge family man he wants a bunch of kids and the more they fall for each other the more that she wants to hide that from him because she knows that she's getting this done so it's just this really turmoil ridden story about how they're falling for one another but she's unable to have kids she's gonna have this procedure that literally makes it impossible to have kids but they're falling for one another this book is equal parts hilarious and sassy and fun this also had a really really sexy scenes and one of the reasons why I love it is because the love interest knows that the main character has period problems but doesn't know about the hysterectomy and the chronic illness so he's automatically super understanding about periods and sex and it's also candid and I feel like other roommates books very easily glamorized relationships and sex and they make it so perfect and so gleaming and so pretty and this book just breaks down that barrier and it talks about human things and like bodily functions and I think that that made it so much more realistic and so much more enjoyable I love how the main characters chronic pain was explored and the way that she has to deal with that it also the love interests support of her during that that kind of ties into that candidness that I just talked about it was so beautifully done and I think the way that this explored that conversation and I know a lot of people would probably have an issue with how long it takes Kristen to actually talk to Josh about having the hysterectomy I've seen a lot of people say that that's annoying to them but for me I felt like it was so angsty and it was so realistic for her to want to hold on to something that she really loved their relationship it's just so complex even though it's a romance book and there's so much emotion and so much heart to this that you wouldn't expect it to have even though it does have the fun and sexy parts so I just loved it I loved it and as much as I want to say this was like the perfect book I did have a couple minor issues with it there are some distasteful jokes in here and there's definitely some of that like you're not like other girls vibes but the reason why that really didn't affect my reading experience a whole bunch is because it's not like a main drive of the book it's just like a comment that they would make in their inner monologue every now and then and then also I think a big issue that people who don't like this book have with it and also I'm really not a fan of is the ending of the book read it and we'll discuss ignoring those two parts of it I just love this book it made me laugh it made me cry as you can tell I have sticky tabs galore just read it okay just read it the next book I read was aisha at last by loose modulating this is a book that the Pride and Prejudice retelling with Muslim characters so it's a Canadian author Canadian setting the main character Aisha is a very much like a modern Muslim I don't know if that's a good term for that but versus the love interest of this book halide is a traditional Muslim he wears the floor-length gowns and he has the head wrap and he doesn't shake hands with women so all those different more traditional Muslim customs and it's about how they get to know one another again mirroring Pride and Prejudice where there's judgments about one another it's all about how they end up having to work together and unravel those prejudices in that pride it was just fascinating there is like moments of Islamophobia by for example at colleagues workplace his boss is white and makes a lot of judgments on him because he'd like the way he dresses and his different customs and what he eats and all that stuff so I think that is really challenged I think that that's an interesting part of the book as well my only issue with this other than the fact that I wasn't the hugest Pride and Prejudice fan so it was kind of difficult for me to like make those connections to what was what and where was where is this book had a really difficult pacing it was pretty dry so it took a lot of effort for me to go back to it it felt like a lot of the scenes were filler and so I ended up having to skim to the places that I cared about and so I think the last may be a hundred pages of this book I just pick and chose but I wanted to read I got what I wanted to know about then I continued on so I gave that book three stars I think you would enjoy if you're familiar with Pride and Prejudice and especially if you're interested in like an Islamic translation of it the next book I read was another graphic novel from the library this one was called cucumber quest the donut kingdom by Gigi DG so this is a kids middle grade maybe young reader graphic novel series about this main character named cucumber it's a very food based world who has to go on this mission and he is a very unlikely candidate for that he has to go on a mission and defeat this evil queen who is collecting these powers that's gonna make her take over but all about how he goes to do that his sister almond comes and intervenes and helps and it challenges gender roles about men going on tasks and women staying home it was very cute very easy to read the art style was adorable but it was just so trophy and predictable and young which I know is a dumb criticism to make because Here I am a 22 year old woman reading a book for 10 year olds but I feel like there's a distinction between books that are interesting for young readers that still surprise you as an adult versus books for young readers that just play into the very typical role in that book definitely was more typical than interesting so it was quick it was cute I'm just not gonna read any of the sequels so this is a short review the next book I read was Tocco and nada by you Pacheco this is a second volume - a series that I read previously this year and this is all about these two girls one of them is from Saudi Arabia and one of them is from Japan and they both are roommates in America going to college sort of like woman world they're not one complete story but they have for panel that are humorous vignettes of their life America and it talks about their different cultures and how it differs from America and from one another it's very informative about her Muslim culture and the differences in America and the misconceptions that people have about it so I guess it's almost like this educational resource for I guess Japan that doesn't have a huge Muslim presence but these books are just so cute and so fun nada is definitely the sassy one sarcastic one Satoko is very shy and quiet and they really bond together well and become a team and a pair so I just love but this is a mix of both being informative and funny I did enjoy volume one a little bit more than this one but I still cannot wait to continue the series I think there's just so much fun they offer so much information then I read a couple more graphic novels from the library the first one was spinning by spending yes meaning by Tilly Walden this is Tilly Walden's memoir and it's all about how she was a figure skater when she was younger who was also coming to terms with her sexuality being a lesbian I like the art style of this it was all in purples and very melancholy which is something I love leave your melancholy book recommendations down below I would love them but I just felt like this story was a bit monotone a bit flat I feel like I was just looking for the purpose of it like at least there would be some sort of character not character growth but like coming-of-age story or she would have this realization about herself there was just nothing about it that made me connect with it a ton even though I do like stories about girls coming to terms with their feelings liking other girls even that I felt like was very under explored and I didn't really snap with it I give it three stars it wasn't my favorite but I am so impressed with Tilly Walden because if you don't know she's my age and she has like seven graphic novels published like what then I read a manga called our dreams at dusk this is by Yukiko Mitani this is a graphic novel that interested me by the synopsis but the synopsis explained more than the actual book does so according to this office this is about a boy named tasuku who is struggling with his sexuality he knows he's Gabe's and so he's struggling finding people to relate to and one day he comes across this magical woman who introduces him to a whole group of people who identify somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum and so he finds this safe space with of them and there's really no plot other than that I guess it's sweet that he was able to meet people but I was so confused by this book most of the time because there's magical elements to it like I mentioned that really aren't explained the whole book just seemed to be rushed we didn't really get to even know the main character very well so it felt like we were learning more about the people he was talking to than the actual main character himself I think this is one of those books we'd have to read on to understand more but I'm just not interested in reading on I give this book two stars I see what it was trying to do but I feel like maybe the translation of this was off or just needed to be a little bit longer then I read I want to say a picture book but definitely a very short let's just say picture book see prayer by Khalid Hassan II so this is a book that's in the form of a letter from a father to a son it is about refugees inspired by Syria having to cross the sea or the ocean to get to a safe place and it's about this father worrying for his son's safety after there's been so many tragedies about kids not making it over and how that's so unfair I'm gonna like cry I'm gonna goosebumps that book was so good this book is like 30 pages long again it's like this picture book basically in Hollett Hassan II just has this perfect style where it's powerful and haunting and especially in this book because it's so short and it's in that format from father to son it's heart-wrenching it's just gut turning it was brilliant and gorgeous I get chills thinking about it it's spectacular I highly recommend getting a copy for yourself pick it up from the library buy a copy just walk into a Barnes & Noble and read it in two minutes beautiful book then I read another graphic novel from the library this one was honor girl' by maggie thrash I lied a graphic memoir novel does not mean book it means fictional story so this is a graphic memoir about Maggie also coming to terms with her sexuality as a girl who likes other girls I don't remember if she's a lesbian or bi or pan so that's why I'm saying the girls attracted to girls but this is set at a summer camp so it's all about how she goes off to summer camp and sort of falls for one of her camp counselors the conflicts behind that and how they couldn't really be a thing and she really carried that with her for a while and it's all about coming to terms with sexuality but also that confusion doesn't always lead to closure my camera died so I went to Pet Smart while I waited for it to charge could I just buy an extra battery to prevent having to do things like that yes anyway it was in the middle of talking about honor girl' by maggie thrash but i have more negative things to say about this than positive mainly i felt like this book was too long for what it was it just seems like it was dragged out not necessarily in a way that like explored the characters or furthered the plot it just gave us a lot of menial scenes that didn't really apply to the actual narrative of the book they were just filler almost the biggest thing that I can't go over this is a mean criticism but it's like my it's my truth I'm speaking my truth the art style is ugly it's written in colored pencil in I'm not trying to be rude but it just looks like art that a sixth grader would do it's very basic rudimentary almost it's just so stick figure like I was offended the art style whatsoever I felt like it was too long and it dragged in graphic novels it's very difficult for graphic novels to drag so that was a problem so more often than not I was just bored and confused then actually enjoying the book so I gave it three stars the next book I read is one of my favorites of the year I read the poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo this is a book in verse meaning like in poetry format about this young woman named Xiomara who comes from a really conservative Catholic family she's Dominican she's had a lot of experiences that have shaped the way that she grew up and she really wants to use her voice through poetry to express some of the feelings she has about adhering to her mom's strict form of religion and the way they try and control her and the way they that she has been body shamed throughout her life and a plethora of other issues that she just wants to express through poetry and my favorite thing about this book is that you can really get the sense that she's a poet from the actual style of the book itself because it's in that poetry format so I think it speaks really true to what Xiomara is doing and singing and dreaming of being I love this book this what books and verse should consider the God Tyr like this is what you were striving to be this book is gorgeously written so many of the lines are so memorable and beautifully written again a storyline that I really like is girls she grew up from religious families and then they questioned that and this definitely involves that and I think that is always just so morally complex and relatable to me so I liked seeing the way that Xiomara figured through that and the way that her feelings came through and her poetry the beginning and the end of this was my favorite because there's such a sharp dialogue about what she experiences and when it gets to those climactic points she is really on top of her word choice and it's really hard-hitting but the middle of this I felt like lagged a little bit I don't want to contradict myself in saying this because although the middle did lag a little bit this book has some of the most incredible character building for a book that's so short so I think the middle of it even though I felt like plot wise it really wasn't doing that much you really get a sense of the characters and you get to deeply understand her family and her friend group so I think because this book was able to pack that much character development into obviously such it's not a short novel but there's very few words on every page it's incredible honestly I feel like this book should be required reading it tackles so many great subjects that I think a lot of teens relate to and even me I just can't say enough good things about this book it was beautiful and had the best message and everyone read it okay that's just it the next book I read was King of scars by Leigh bardugo so this is a series that follows one character from the original crochet trilogy nicolai and a character from the six of crows duology Nina and it's about their two perspectives how they're doing after their respective a series what sorts of shenanigans they've gotten themselves into and it ends with a plot twist so obviously Leigh bardugo writing style we love her we'd love to see it it's so great the characters are sassy and witty in that really characteristic way that the Grisha characters are I love Nina and I love Nikolai nice thing with them though and the reason why part of this book just graded on me is I could never get over the feeling that I was reading a book about side characters because these two characters are side characters in the series they exist in and like arguably Nina is one of six main characters but she wasn't in my top favorites of those characters so it was difficult for me to place them in the context of having their own storyline especially because not a lot happens and I'm just gonna say it Nina did it need a perspective most of the action happened in Nikolai's point of view I feel like we put her in there because people cared about six of crows cough cough a little bit more than the courser trilogy I just don't see her relevance to the storyline maybe in the future the story lines between Nikolai and Nina will connect because in this book they're like separate avenues and I couldn't figure out why we were focusing on two completely different things in one book so yeah this never really was boring but it felt like not a lot happened and like I said the two storylines never converge and it feels like Leigh bardugo is one of those authors that weaves threads and has like masterful storytelling and yet these two parts felt so disconnected so I'm still grappling with what that means maybe in the second book things will be clearer on that I'm definitely gonna read the second book based on how this one ends I give someone four stars like I said didn't hate it not super memorable but I do like the characters then I read a book from the library called fix her up by Tessa Bailey this is an adult romance about this woman named Georgie who has a degree but she decided that she wants to have fun and started her own business that's like a clown service for birthday parties and stuff so she's a clown her family does not approve and so in order to make her parents take her more seriously she decides to fake a relationship with Travis who is an ex major league baseball player and at the same time that she wants him for a fake relationship to like boost her own image he also is trying to get a radio job after being branded this very player ish type of guy who's gotten into lots of scandals so he also wants to have a better image and decides to reciprocate this fake dating so that this radio station will see him as like a family man who has a girlfriend now and he's so tame now like he has he wouldn't give us a bad image for working here so it's like this fake dating trope and then obviously it's a romance book so like feelings develop I hate this book the writing was so cringy it was so bad there were so many metaphors that didn't make sense and like especially during sex scenes they would say things to each other that I was just like I'm not a big fan of the fake dating trope in general I just realized my cat's food bowl was up here do you want this are you hungry the way the guy acts in this book I'm a really big stickler for like I want it to be healthy and consensual and nice this was not it so this love interest Travis I don't like him he was the type of guy where he was like I don't want to be with her because she's like a sister to me but then he would still sexualize her and it was the type of thing we're like he didn't want to be with her but he didn't want anyone else to be with her and I remember at one point she like hires a guy to come fix her fireplace and he busts in they're like no I'm going to fix it like the caveman of the tribe had to have his control over her and then there's like a scene where he was thinking about her being with other men and he's like it makes me so uncomfortable even knowing she has a vibrator makes me uncomfortable I'm like dude that's an inanimate object are you good BAM and then because he considers her sister there's lines that are so cringy about like how he considers her sister but he still considers her sexy so literally there's a scene where like she falls over him or something and he reaches out to grab her and accidentally grabs her boob and he literally says I get a handful of little sister tit please cite your source where that's okay so like writing style wise love interest wise it was just not acceptable to me also Georgie is just like when I say literally a clown she's literally a clown she was childish and dumb I remember specifically there was this one scene where someone cat called her she was just oblivious like obviously it was someone being like hey girl how's it going and she was like he's going good and like was talking back to him as if like not knowing what was a cat collar it didn't that of course presented a situation where then Travis could step in and be in the car huh my woman get out of here I just didn't feel like it was I'm just gonna say it good it wasn't good the sex was so dumb and cringe-worthy they like had public sex at a baseball field from a high school which is like please arrest them FBI and it was so badly written to like Travis would always call her baby girl which does not help the fact that he was sexualizing her as like a younger sister type figure I just don't vibe with this book whatsoever in my spreadsheet I literally put zero stars because I just did not have a fun time reading it whatsoever I literally felt like I was reading a book from 2011 not 2019 it was bad do not recommend and then I read another graphic novel this one is Laura Dean keeps breaking up with me by rosemary Valero O'Connell and Mariko - ma Tamaki this part was a gift - this one is from Oh doesn't have a name if you set this to me thank you this is one of my favorites of the year this graphic novel is about this young girl in high school named Freddie this one back.you it's black hair who's in a relationship with Laura Dean who is another girl who goes to her school but doesn't treat her well she's constantly cheating on her and they break up and they apologize and get back together and Laura Dean is just a manipulative with her emotions and takes advantage of Freddy because she's young and she likes her and she wants to keep this going because Laura Deena's popular and she's everything that she wants and so she keeps going back to her every time that they have a fallout hence the title and this book just follows her growth and the way that she evolves with her friend group after they witness her continually going back to this bad relationship and the way that she grows from this and realizes her worth over the months Wow this book is amazing I gave this book of full five stars I can't recommend it enough even though I know it sort of has mixed reviews for me I love this book because first of all I think it's my new favorite art style from any graphic novel ever from a storytelling perspective I really liked the progression of Freddy realizing her worth I think a lot of people dislike this book because they think that it's not a good representation of relationships and the main character is juvenile and doesn't make good choices but I think the part that I liked the most about this is because it is unlikable characters and they do make bad choices and they then have to suffer the consequences of making bad choices definitely definitely give this one a try next I read another graphic novel from my library this one was called bingo love and the authors are T Franklin gin st. Onge Joyce Ann and Cardinal ray this is a graphic novel all about these two black women to fall in love in the 1960s in a generational novel that follows after they were broken up by societal norms and their family they meet again years later and reconnect my favorite thing about this graphic novel was obviously the story of it in the content to women of color falling in love and a time that that wasn't really accepted yet I felt like it was such an impactful story I also liked the fact that it took place over multiple years and you see them at two different points in their lives and you get to compare how they were as young people and as adults however I just wish that this book was longer and it unpacked a little bit more of that because it is taking place over so many years I felt like it really rushed their story in their relationship and that development to the point where it felt like insta-love sometimes it would be talking about a scene that happened in the book or like a certain time of the characters lives and there be this story happening I saw happening is that it stops and there's like a little bubble off to the side like if you would like to learn more about this to read this other book so it would like self promo for you to continue reading in a different book and I've never read that in a graphic novel before and I don't know if that's a genius marketing technique or to me it just felt kind of like a scam like I'm here to read this book like why don't you give us the whole story in this book instead of making us buy like Eno Velas of these spin-off stories I felt like that was kind of cheap and it took away from me like comprehending the full story because I didn't I read this from the library like I didn't have the access to go and read those immediately so that really put a bummer on it and my final thing that I just didn't really love about this was the ending of it it's almost an exact replica of the notebook the ending reminded me so much of the notebook that I can't get that comparison out of my head to the point where it almost feels like plagiarism and I know that a story about women of color is highly different from like this male-female White Room is that we've been reading and watching for years but still I wish that even if it was close to how the notebook is like I wish it would have been a little inventive with how that finished but I just wasn't a fan of the ending I guess that's what I'm trying to say so I gave that book three stars but I still highly recommend it if you're looking for a book that talks about women of color and female female relationships it was very touching and then I read an arc of imaginary-friend by Stephen Chbosky which is Stephen Chbosky sophomore novel that is an entirely different route from pricks being a wallflower this is a 700 page behemoth fantastical horror book the book follows Kate in her son Christopher who move away from an abusive father and in this new town Christopher disappears for six days into the woods behind their house and comes back with this really strange voice in his head and this urge to build a tree house otherwise his town will be in peril and so appalled I was like what is this voice what was that forest that he can't remember those six days of what are these forces that are telling him to do things just in general like what's the deal with this town this book was strictly bad like of course at Stephen Chbosky he's an excellent writer he develops things really well he's able to weave threads through but this book like I said is 700 pages and it was a lot this book would make a great TV show or a great movie but as a book it just threw way too much at you to the point where I really only enjoyed like 300 pages of it and the rest I skimmed and it was trying to do way too much at one time it was exhausting and it was way too much information and there was way too much happening it just didn't work for me so I gave this book 2 stars if it was 300 pages shorter I might have enjoyed it more or if it was just a TV show I think I would have loved it a lot because it could really unpack some of that and make it more interesting and digestible but I was not a fan I thought because it was Stephen Chbosky anything he wrote I would like but no the next book I read was a graphic novel called mooncakes it actually I don't think it's even out yet so I read an early copy of this this is a graphic novel that follows two characters one of them is a witch and one of them is a werewolf they were friends as kids in and the werewolf I forgot their names in my internet went out so I can't look it up the werewolf character had to move away and comes back they reunite a friendship they sort of have a budding relationship and it's all about how this town has these spiritual forces and these witches that are posing danger on them so they have to sort of be the ones to step up and protect their town this book has the best cozy fall vibe if you need a book to read in October you better preorder this one because it is going to deliver on that front a thousand percent it is such an autumnal book with witches and libraries and magical creatures and ghosts I love the art also this book has a ton of representation packed into it so the main character lives with her grandmother's two women in a relationship the main character is also hard-of-hearing and she wears hearing aids which is very normalized also her love interest is non-binary they go by BAE pronouns but what I didn't love about this book was I just felt that the plot was very formulaic I felt predictable with no plot twists almost like it was a middle grade book just because it seems so Elementary and the way that things would occur and the progression of the plot I just wasn't really a fan of it I also feel like the relationship and the romance and it was a little bit undercooked and I would have liked to see a little bit more development of that throughout the story but I still enjoyed my time reading it I read an unfinished copy so I'm sure that the finished copy is going to be stunning I would still like to have a copy of it for my shelf because like I said the art style and the story that was really fun so I gave it three stars I would recommend it for October if you're looking for a cozy full read and it was just really different and really inventive the next book I read was also an arc of her graphic novel this one was the T Dragon Festival which is a companion book to the very beloved the Tea Dragon Society which is all by Katy O'Neil who honestly deserves the Pulitzer at this point for graphic novels I know I said Lord Dean keeps breaking up with me was my favorite art style but this rivals it Katy O'Neil as the most stunning art the most inclusive world I honestly can't give you a great summary if this book is once again my internet went out so I can't see Goodreads but the Tea Dragon Society is set in these mythical worlds where there are dragons the population of people are always full of people of color full of people of different genders and sexualities in the teacher admin festival it's all about this dragon who has been asleep for centuries who is supposed to watch over the town or have some involvement with the people of the town and then ended up falling asleep because of nefarious means and so whenever they wake up they're feeling really inadequate and feeling really guilty and it's all about the story of acceptance and making friends again and why you should know is that it's a middle-grade story that's just about community and the whole book has so much representation in it like the town speaks sign language so there's this whole speech bubble system for whenever characters are signing it's just so cute and positive and inclusive every single child should read these or even adults - this is one of those really great books for even though it's for kids and it's great for kids as an adult also really stuck with me and had a lot of powerful quotes it was beautiful art the message of it the way it spoke to me even though I like probably a decade older than the intended audience I give it a full five stars I definitely want to get a copy of it for my shelf when it comes out hopefully it's the same size of this massive one and I can't recommend these books enough or really anything by katie O'Neil because she is a goddess on earth the next book I read is a curse so dark and lonely but Bridget c'mere which is a fantasy book that is the Beauty and the Beast retelling this is about a young woman named Harper who has cerebral palsy and she one night gets dragged into a fantasy world on accident and it turns out it's this kingdom with this prince who has this curse on him so that if he doesn't fall in love with a woman and I think it's like a season so three months then he turns into a beast and basically wreaks havoc on his town and he only has like one more try until he's permanently like that or something along the lines of it's like his last try and so she has to work with him and his last living adviser to be able to solve this problem and care for the people left in his kingdom and sort of regenerate their hope and their trust in this kingdom that has basically been killed and they don't really know what's happening so it's this enchanting and angsty and enemies to lovers story about this young woman with a disability who goes into this world that is so weren't than her own she's from DC so really having to navigate a new political system and adapt to being in an alternate universe and solved their problems because she just has this huge heart that's so giving and willing to help even though she's quite literally dragged into this situation I was just glued on to this story at the time that I read this I was not really enjoying reading that much it was hard to get into books that I read 200 pages of this in one sitting it was just so addicting I loved how strong Harper was I liked how broody and pessimistic I guess the male characters were in this I just really liked the vibe between all the characters in the kingdom but one thing that I was a major fan of with this kingdom is that because it was set as a parallel universe to our real world so it was like real world fantasy world I'm not a huge fan of that I think it's entirely because it reminds me of the movie Enchanted where it's just there's this silly undertone to it that I can't get over to make it seem like it's a serious problem whatever to Harper would talk about her hometown like America and Washington DC and the fantasy characters would react to that it just felt so out of place and it made me feel like I don't like juggling between the two worlds I want to stick with one or the other or have it be like a urban fantasy I guess that part of the story just felt silly to me and it just took me out of the story a bit to be reading those elements the only other thing that I wasn't a huge fan of in this book was I feel like the characters developing relationship was a little bit hidden beneath all the political strife so I understand that after all this exposure to one another it's very expected that they would eventually be drawn to one another but I feel like I got a sense of their relationship not because it was written in the book but just because it felt like it would be an eventualities I like one of them to be together but it didn't really explore their emotional connection to one another as much as I would have liked it to it's just a really beautiful book I love the representation and I gave this one for Star Wars next I read another graphic novel from the library this one was called taproot by Kesey young this is a story about this young florist his name is Amal and he can see ghosts and this is a book that's sort of like there's a spirit world and there's the real world and Hamal is this liaison between to antum all of the person there that has a foot in both worlds so he can help out so I love that this book was more paranormal than contemporary I felt like that gave it a really cool spin but the contemporary elements that were there were really really cool like the town he lives in was so cozy the fact that he works at a flower shop was really really sweet I loved that this male-male relationship the way it bloomed it was so tentative and so sweet and wholesome and I really really liked that even though I wish it could have been drawn out a little bit more it was really well done I just wish that we could have had a couple more of those sweet bonding moments I gave this book three point seven five stars again I feel like I just wish it would have slowed down and done a little bit more I can't really mention why I had an issue with the ending of it because it would spoil it but I just wish that we got more at the end and maybe it could have been like a two-part book where here's the first part of this book where they're solving this ghost mystery then the second part of the book that's a spoiler but I wish that they could have focused on a little more so I think I just stopped at a point where I wish there could have been more past that so moving onward the next book I read we have a new favorite is sorcery of thorns on Margaret Rogerson which is the most iconic book to grace why and also the most surprising book I've ever read all year so this book is about a woman named Elizabeth who is an apprentice at a library but these libraries in this fantasy world are magical libraries so all the books there have power and like they can move and trick people so they're basically like keeping these books under control she's lived there for her entire life because she's an orphan and she was sort of dumped there and so she's been living really sheltered in this rural town and ends up getting caught up in a I want to say scandal if like this tragedy and I want to spoil it and has to go to the capital city to be under investigation for things that she was involved with so it's kind of like her coming out of her naivety being stuck in this one library - being exposed to the sorcerers that are the people who would wield these magical books that she'd never met before or she was kind of trained to fear so it's all about how she's like basically being housed and transported by a sorcerer so she's in close quarters with someone that she had always been trained to be wary of and they realized they need to actually like solve what happened and that she was involved in anyway it's so good so it's like this enemies two lovers story between Elizabeth and Nathaniel who is the sorcerer I mentioned this book is like a blend of Cassandra Clare JK Rowling and Sara J mask but like it did it better than all three of them combined it's got like the demon eye vibes of a Cassandra Clare book it has the romance in the sorcery of a Sarah J Maas novel and it's got like the magical library themes of a Harry Potter book so it just blends everything that we love and put it all in one book and it was doing so well one of my favorite things about this book is that the main character has panic attacks so I love the representation in this book and also the love interest is confirmed bisexual or pansexual either way like that's bonkers and I was crying I loved it so much I really have no complaints about this book which is so rare for me the only thing that I wish were done better not necessarily something that like it's a negative thing I just wished the villain in this book we're a little bit less lack and white I wish there was more nuance to why he's evil and why he was doing the things he was doing because you learn very early on like who was behind a bunch of nefarious actions and there's really no like misleading things about him it's just very much what you see is what you get and then we just have to defeat it and it's gone and I wish that for a fantasy book that's so intricate and it's a world building we could have had just as equally intricate of a villain so if anything that's my only complaint okay the next book I read is another graphic novel for my library called space boy this one's by Stephen McRaney this is a book that has a very misleading title because it's not about a space boy it's about this girl named Amy who lives in her parents of work on a planet in outer space but her father ends up getting fired from his job so they have to go to earth and she has to react AMA date herself to living on this planet to living on earth and so it's all about this internal journey where she's in a new place there's a bunch of new technology it's very different they have gravity here but while she's at this school on earth trying to react l'm eight she notices this boy we don't learn his name in this volume but there's this very mysterious boy which is why I'm assuming it's called space boy and she's drawn to him because he's so isolated in solitary the writing style of this book was so gorgeous I find it difficult to last room to sci-fi concepts and to like understand sci-fi but this book made it really accessible and easy so the plot of it was really easy to understand and I think it really took a backseat to the emotional journey the character was going through which I think was interesting because it is such like a space-themed story that it was actually quite introspective in my only problem with it really was because it's called space boy and because she has this fascination with this boy in her school we don't think you to see a lot of that and I think I just felt that was the one hole in the story where I was like why is this significant enough to be the title of it and I think he'll definitely have to read on to learn that but as is I still think the book was worth four point five stars I just wish we had gotten that a little bit more that like connected all those dots I'm certainly interested in reading on if my new library that I'm going to after I move has them if not we go harass them to buy them but I love this book it was very sweet and beautifully drawn and written so I highly recommend it I feel like this video has been jumping back and forth a lot with books I hated books I loved but now we're back to a book I hated I took like six months to read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte because I wanted to feel accomplished that I read a classic and this is one that so many people rave about and they talk about how strong of a character Jane is and I just regret that he spent so much time on it because I ended up not liking it that much so if you're unaware this book follows Jane Eyre the book starts out what she's young and she goes to the school for insubordinate girls because she's very outspoken she talked back it's really not acceptable at her time for her to be as confident and loud and opinionated as she is and that's kind of a recurring theme where she encounters conflict with people because she's not afraid of being upfront and abrasive even though it's definitely not standard for women at her time so this follows her life as she grows up and then she meets the famed mr. Rochester and is like a teacher / maid at his house and I can't even describe what their relationship is supposed to be I just didn't like this book it was beautiful at some points and I think if it were just a children's book about her when she was a kid going off to the school sort of like a Madeline asked story about like a boarding school and her experiences there and like being this I would spoken kid I think it'd be interesting but whenever it transitioned to her adult life I really just was not a fan of how long winded it was and how they were such like abusive undertones between her and mr. Rochester and there were lots of comments that were just racist um I think I would have needed to read this for class in order to really understand it and be able to justify those things I don't know if I was just reading into it in a different context that made it so problematic or if it actually just is not good this just made me uncomfortable it's like not even a good love story so I just don't really understand what it was trying to do even though it was beautiful and there were lots of quotes I just either was bored or was horrified when I was reading so again really the only part of it that I liked was maybe like the first 200 pages but the ending of it definitely direct it down I only gave this two stars someone send me a sparknotes link or something maybe I misunderstood next I read technically you started at by Lana Wood Johnson I got this from the library it's a why a contemporary book that entirely told through text messages so if you open the book it's just like speech bubbles the entire book the main character who I cannot remember her name and once again my Internet's out so I can't look it up she is texted by this boy in her class named Michael the whole thing is there are two characters with the exact same name the first time he texts her he's like hey it's me from your history class and she's like which Michael and then he says the fun one so the whole premise of the book is that there's two people with the same exact name cuz they're like cousins or something so it's acceptable so the whole book is like them getting closer them just talking about their lives and like they start to talk more and more their text message and she thinks it's this one guy and you don't know which person it is this book had a good idea I don't have anything against a book told entirely through text messages especially because I think it's such a modern format and I think it's really funny but I just felt like the way this was written was not representative of how tiny Jers would talk to each other this book does not read like teenagers for text I feel like this author needs to watch some more tik toks to do some research I said maybe retry and the biggest part of this book that was it let down or I guess one of them multiple reasons why it wasn't let down it's because this book focuses so much on the main characters real like drama with her friend group it was so confusing because you only ever get the angle of the text messages they send so you're not involved in the action and you don't see the fights that occur and the friendships and the conversations and it's so difficult to comprehend because you're only getting like Sara said this but then Stacey said this and then when I went to lunch with Rebecca Rebecca said so it was just difficult to hear the full story I really wish I liked it it was fun and fast to read but it just was a mess I could see it being a good book but the way it was it just did not do it well so I gave this book two stars and the next book I read was tell me how you really feel about Amina Mae Safi so this is a why a contemporary book that's a enemies two lovers female female romance it is about these two girls once again my Internet's out so I don't know their names I think one of them is named Rachel these two girls both go to the same school one of them is like the super popular cheerleader she's driven to go to college the other girl is sort of the opposite she wants to be a film student so she's in like with film seminar and she's known as the school like everyone agreed that that is just her type and she embraces that Rachel's trying to finish her film project and the other girl gets roped into it and so they have to work together on this project and they have to start hanging out together even though they hate each other because back whenever the other girl first came to the school she tried to ask Rachel out but Rachel thought that she was like trying to pull a prank on her so she rejected her and like this really uppity fashion and ever since then there's been bad blood between the two and they have to like grow past that and like learn that they had misconceptions about each other or then like get closer as they're like filming this and editing it and they're hanging out more it was so precious I genuinely loved the two characters in this book I think because they had such stark opposite personalities that the banter the camaraderie between them was really interesting to read one of the things that I wasn't a fan of though and I should have known this and maybe this is just a disclaimer is I am NOT a huge fan of books that are about the film industry so I think automatically it was a little bit slower paced for me just because it talked so much about the filming process and the storytelling within the film so it wasn't just like this relationship between these two girls forming it was very heavily based around Rachel like thinking about her movie and thinking about what to do when thinking about this so I think there's equal parts of romance and like the actual school project happening which I should have expected but I think I was hoping it would lean more toward ignoring the film part and just talking about the girls that was a personal issue though I also just felt like this book put together random scenes back-to-back so there wasn't a whole ton of flow between them this book some dual perspective and I liked hearing from both the girls perspectives but it felt like there was no cohesion between one scene happening and a next scene happening still it was a great enemies two lovers story I ended up giving it two and a half stars just because I did struggle with the pacing of it I didn't up having to skim some of it because like I said it jumped around with so many scenes that I thought were kind of irrelevant talking so much about the projects that I really wasn't interested in I just wanted to see more of them hanging out together and more of them like working together instead of them like separately doing their own thing either way loved the characters if you like I've said that 20 times so we're moving on so the next book I read was love at first like by Hannah Ornstein this is another adult romance this follows a girl named Eliza who owns a jewelry company when she's stalking her ex on her Instagram account for that company that she basically runs the social media for it she ends up seeing that her ex got engaged and so in an emotional fit she makes this fake draft of her with a wedding ring on being like hashtag blast I'm engaged and instead of deleting it she ends up sending it and so she goes to bed not realizing she'd accidentally sent it instead of deleting it and wakes up in her page has exploded with publicity and congratulations people are reaching out to her to offer her free stuff and they want to do promotion on her shop and she realizes even though this engagement is fake it's getting her a lot of business in a time that she desperately needs it and so she rolls with it and she's trying to find a fake fiance so that she can continue to have success for our company this sounded like a cute concept however this book is the worst the main character is a literal scammer whose a lying thief and she's so mean and so rude it would have been okay if this happened it was an accident and she rolled with it and just like saw what came of it but she would literally seek more opportunities to scam people into giving in to it like she would reach out to companies and be like I am engaged do you want to do a story on me or like hey we want a honeymoon do you want to give us a free honeymoon and it was absurd and that was paired also with the fact that she only had a hundred thousand followers I feel like you wouldn't get a free venue a free dress free honeymoon if you only had a hundred thousand ball or it's like that's Kylie Jenner level you know what I mean and then she ends up finding this guy that she is interested in and wants to be her fake fiance but she doesn't tell him and so the guy's name is Blake and every time they hang out like behind turn backs she takes pictures of the thing they're doing together and she's like faking that it's him that she's engaged to and he doesn't even know he's being scammed and lied to it's just completely unrealistic and so mean the people who know that she's doing this don't even tell her not to do it they're just like good idea am I the only one that thinks this is super problematic to like ask for free stuff and like trick a guy into dating you so you can just have Facebook Likes it was absurd and I hated it and it was like a scam artists main character and this would maybe be okay if it was like a literary fiction book about this girl doing this and then everyone finds out and it's this like humbling moment of oh no I did a bad thing this book does not end with everyone finding out she was lying and she has to suffer the consequences of it it literally ends by her and her final love interest going on the free honeymoon even though their engagement was never real the main character just lies and steals and cheats her way into having a successful business and having likes on Instagram and it was just so materialistic and I hated the main character I hated the love interest for supporting the main character I hated her sister for allowing it to happen the co-owner I hated the main character's family for being like yours hombre I feel so bad for anyone who this main character conned in this book because it was miserable I gave it one star this is not a romance it's awful moving onward because that book makes me infuriated like Jane Eyre I had another book that I was kind of working on all year and I finally finished becoming by Michelle Obama which is Michelle Obama's memoir about her life before the White House her life during the White House and her life adjusting after being the first lady I am obsessed I absolutely loved this it was just really difficult to read because it was so long even though I listened to the audiobook I would always put this down and then read a bunch of other stuff but then get back to it like a month later so I read this and really chopped up segments but once I got to the part where like she had met Obama and she was working in politics now and they were campaigning and they got to the White House that's when it really picked up for me so even though it took me a while to get into I loved it I honestly gave this five stars and I have nothing negative to say in my review I thought that she was so well-spoken I loved learning about her even though this book took me a long time to read it did not hinder my experience whatsoever which is typically not the case so I think this book was powerful enough to still be a 5 star read even though I read it so choppa Lee and I read it in so many sittings and it took me literally months to read this on audio I was crying so hard listening to this it just grabbed my emotions 5 stars would love to read more by her and then I read an arc of a book that I still cannot believe I got my hands on I read 9th house by Leigh bardugo this book is about a young woman named Alex who is recruited by Yale to go study at the school in order to be part of the 9th house which basically there's 8 houses at Yale which are basically secret societies that use magic and so this 9th house was created to make sure that none of the other 8 houses are going beyond the rules and they're like not wreaking any havoc on campus or they're delving too deep into the magical world she's just there to keep everyone in line and she was selected because she has been able to see ghosts for as long as she can remember so she has this tap into the spiritual world that they think would be really valuable so it's all about her on the Yale campus and this murder happens in the town and she has to decide is this caused by the secret societies how do we solve this and amongst that is just growing turmoil with the spiritual people I guess in the town so I'm gonna disclaim once again I don't read mystery thriller very often so this could be a me problem I'm not saying don't buy in support ninth house I just had trouble with it because there is so much information in this book and if you asked me to describe to you like what the eight societies are who were the characters what is the magic system what is the spiritual world like there's so much of it but I don't think I could explain to you what happened in this book it was very difficult to comprehend for me and maybe it was because it was part for a learn part it was all like sort of paranormal I just didn't really grasp it that well nothing really happens in this book it's quite dry the book just felt under explained and the mystery they were trying to solve felt like it was really low stakes particularly a big problem that I had with it is because she started at Yale in the fall when all college freshmen do but this book takes place in the winter so I feel like we could have gotten a much more organic introduction to this world if we see her go to the school if we witness everyone explaining things to her about the world and we witness her acquainting herself with everything well the reader is doing it as well so we get a good grasp of the world as she's encountering it but instead it's like we're fed bits and pieces of it as we go along because the story is trying to do this thing where it jumps back and forth and time and it reveals things and there's information there are telling us until the end of the book and I thought that it was too much because there were so many different elements at play that being left in the dark just made it confusing so that all sounds really negative but if I'm being honest its sleep are due though it was written beautifully even though it could be slow at times the way that she describes things was really established well I also really liked Alex's character and especially the way that she interacted with the paranormal world and all the paranormal elements that were in it were really cool even if I didn't understand them all this sets up for a sequel which if you didn't know there's gonna be a sequel and I think I'm going to enjoy the sequel a lot more but it's gonna be a totally different and I can see myself liking the sequel a lot more so I gave it two and a half stars it's dark it's interesting but I feel like the synopsis makes it sound a lot better than actually it is because the story itself didn't really feel entirely there I just don't think it's worth the read it was still really impactful and it does have a lot of great messaging about being a survivor of so many different things and the way that you can reinvent yourself and grow from that and gain power from it the next book that I read is actually a duology but I'll review them separately just cuz their companion books the first one was Prince Charming but Rachel Hawkins the books about Daisy so Daisy's older sister Ella gets engaged to a prince of Scotland and so she's ripped up from her life and has to go over Scotland she used to be like a grocer in a grocery store now she's having to live and be amongst Scottish lords and ladies and royalties the thing I like about this book is that Daisy is so sassy and witty and sarcastic and the book is formatted in a way that every single chapter something new was happening there's a twist at every single chapter there's never a good place to put this book down just because so much is happening in succession but at the same time it also has a lot of realistic trouble folded into it that you wouldn't think would arise from like a royal romance that very few people are able to relate to so there's lots of talking about like family and what it's like to have a sibling that outshines you this is just the ultimate cute feel good book and I haven't read one of those in a long time I think I probably should have read this book a couple of months earlier just to like lighten my spirits if you need a book that's genuinely just a fun quick easy read that will make you smile and laugh out loud this is your best friend I gave it four stars I highly recommend it it's just such a fun series and then if you read that one you can read this thing off novel which I guess if you didn't want to read book one you could go ahead and read this by itself even though I do recommend a book one because it is so much fun but this is kind of in the same vein with Scottish royalty this follows the character named Millie who in lives in Houston so we love Texan girls so this book Falls Millie as she goes to Scotland to attend a boarding school when she gets there she realizes that her roommate is princess flora of Scotland they both are automatically very prickly toward each other and so this book just follows how they're gonna have to be roommates the entire school year and all the different adventures they have to go on together at that school together and the way that that sort of breaks down that tough exterior and how they get to know one another and it just turns into a love story this book is just iconic enemies to lovers I thought it was so well done so cute it puts them in the perfect scenarios that's angsty and they plan for one another but it's still like but we can't be together the only issue that I had with this is I felt like especially compared to the first book where Daisy was so sarcastic and witty it felt like a lot of characters in this book had the same kind of personality where they were sarcastic and witty and always trying to make a joke and I wish that maybe one of the characters could have broken that with some tension or given us the opposite of that personality just so that we're not reading the same line of dialogue over and over of them trying to be funny all the time I loved this book I gave this book four to half stars it was such a fun book to read through so short and easy again they're just the most ultimate feel-good books if you want to fall in love with Scottish princess and princesses you know where to go now the next book I read was live with me by Philip Besson this is a very brief book about a man named Philip I think it's like semi autobiographical but the main character is a writer and he is looking back on his life in his teenage years in the 80s I think 70s 80s when he had this whirlwind romance with a guy at a school so it was this really secretive male male relationship where they were both coming to terms with their sexuality using and at the time it was like this taboo thing you couldn't talk about so it was this really tentative sensitive almost shameful thing between them and then it's kind of a three-part book where it's the flashback to that told sort of in this retrospect perspective which I love it's my kryptonite just this mournful looking back from the past tone and then it switches to when the main character is older and how he's remembering back on that after events have transpired that sort of reignite that memory in his head and this book is infuriating because it is sad it's tragic and it just rips me to pieces but in the best way and even though this book is translated from French the way that this is written is it's so simplistic and yet it packs so much meaning into the words it's really easy and accessible to read and yet it sticks with you and it's heavy and even though you're only reading like a five-word sentence it has so much gravity to it I have very little negative to say it is infuriating to read and it got such a reaction out of me in a so glad that I read it the next book I read was an arc of a poetry book coming out that it was called Aphrodite made me do it by Tristan metier this is gonna be the first of many times I'm gonna compare it to milk and honey but I think it will stand up to that comparison so it's like milk and honey where it has very short simplistic poems literal like one-liner poems at some point so the book has poems that are all about like self love and love obviously its Aphrodite so a lot of these poems are based on love and relationships there's lots of poems about queerness and how Trista I think she's bisexual might be wrong on that but she definitely vibes with other women so it talks about the different types of love she experiences an effusive 'no sand just things that she has gone through but then also those personal poems are sectioned off with like interests persians of poems that are from Aphrodite's point of view and so it's these musings on how Aphrodite is misunderstood and culture and how she feels about love and how she has been misrepresented by men who tell her stories and I think it was a powerful collection because of the juxtaposition of those two but also interspersed with all these poems it was like reading an art ternal because there are these artistic pages that it's not even just like drawings it's like multimedia like photographs with text on it all these collages and it's just beautiful I really wish I had a copy of it to show you but God knows I'm gonna be pre-ordering one news I've really really enjoyed it I am super excited about what she's done here I think this poetry collection is groundbreaking and it's doing something different than a bunch of other ones that I've ever read it has the writing style weren't short and easy to understand but it still packs so much of a punch which i think is rare for me to read poetry then have a lasting impression of it so it definitely checked all the boxes that I typically look for in poetry I highly recommend it when I comes out so the next book I read was ice massacre by Tiana Warner which is a female female mermaid book so this one follows Mila who lives on an island where mermaids live within proximity of them and they have always for as long as they can remember been sort of a threat to humanity and so no one goes on the beaches no one really takes ships out on the water anymore because they've all been attacked so frequently and so to combat and sort of get revenge on these mermaids that have been so cruel to that Island every year the island does a massacre where these men will go out and try to kill as many as possible just to be threatening and assert to their dominance every year those pretty much fail and no one comes back so for the first year ever they're going to put out an all-female mission to hopefully not be swayed by the mermaids you know siren influences and be able to defeat a lot of them and come back safe so Mila is in the inaugural group of women who will go out on the ship and fight the mermaids the twist is whenever she was younger Mila actually became friends with the mermaid in a tidepool buy her house and no one ever knew about it until one day her dad caught her and shot the mermaid and that started bad blood and miscommunications between them and so whenever she's on this mermaid ship she basically gets reunited with that mermaid named Lucy and the bad blood plays out but it's an enemies two lovers female female romance beast it's so wonderful I absolutely devoured this book I love the different character development of all the characters for me reading mermaid books is difficult but this was so easy to comprehend my only issue with it is that I didn't understand the purpose of massacres there was really no nuance in the way that all the sailors and the people on the island saw the mermaids because it was like they attack people they're bad I felt like there were so many plot holes with why they were being so malicious to one another because this is set in current day like this book mentions icarly and Nickelodeon so like it's set in the current day and it's like we're stuck on this island we're getting poorer and poorer we need to kill these mermaids why couldn't you all get an airplane and like leave on an airplane instead of a boat so you don't have to risk getting attacked so there were just questions like that but we're never really addressed and I'm curious why if it was such a problem I couldn't they just take an airplane away and live somewhere else where they have access to food so yeah just parts of it like that confused me and I wish that the author could have taken more time to develop the world-building but as far as the characters and the plot of being on a ship and tending to the wounded and having these literal daily fights of mermen it's coming onto board to try and kill them I think that that was really well done and it was so action-packed again I just stuck on those nagging questions of the world-building and like why did this book resort to violence when it seems like this whole thing was for nothing kind of I guess in my head because it felt so avoidable yeah I'd like to read this equal but it's gonna be interesting to see where it goes from here so I gave that book oh god I didn't write it down let's say four stars I think I gave it like four or three and a half and then I read The Princess Diaries with Meg Kabat which we all know the Princess Diaries I feel like I don't need to give you a synopsis but it follows Mia who's just this average high school freshman dealing with a lot of problems very whiny and very exasperated by life when she finds out that she's actually a princess so she's having to deal with this new identity being afraid of people finding out and judging her for cuz she's already sort of labeled as a dork in this book was just so nostalgic if you've seen the movie you've basically read the book this was published in 2000 it has that sort of early 2000s vibe a little bit silly I can't even describe how it makes me feel but like the sassiness of it and how overdramatic she is about everything was just so funny and it just made me feel like I was 12 again even though I was like 3 when the book was published I loved the Princess Diaries movie and it was such a fun read I really have nothing else to say about I gave it 4 stars I liked me I liked the storyline I actually would like to continue reading the books because this one really only focused on her finding out about being a princess and wanting to hide it and I think in future books it'll be her like embracing being a princess and like wanting to be royal so I'm really interested to give those a read it was just fun and nostalgic and it was super short and easy so if you haven't read those because you think they're gonna be too juvenile or like they didn't stand up the test of time or they're different than the movie I think you should still give it a try because it was buckets of fun and I would not have read it had Sylvia from wish fulfillment not told me hey no these are still good so chat up to Sylvia for letting me hear though they were still good and I'm gonna pass the plate on to you and say if you've been interested but you thought that you might not like it I still say it's worth a go and the final book that I read hi was summer of salt by Katrina Leno which is that why a contemporary book about this girl named Georgina who lives on an island with her twin sister and her mother that is famed for having this ancient bird visit every year and this is kind of a multi-layered story so stick with me basically this family name has always had magic in there bloodlines so the mother and her twin sister have magic but she doesn't and so she's grappling with a lot of different things this summer like not having magic if she's gonna get a power before she turns 18 at the end of the summer she's also gonna go off to college at the end of the summer which she's never left the island before so it's a really big deal for her and then on top of everything for the first time ever the bird that comes to their Island every summer is missing so it's this layered mystery in this angsty story about people coming to the island to find this bird this one newcomer comes who is the girl on the cover and she's really drawn to her so it's a female female romance and I would describe this book as a cross between miss peregrine's home for peculiar children as far as like the magical abilities and second chance summer as far as like the family vibes and the beachy vibes it was the perfect concoction of magical and contemporary and I think even though it did have these really cute summery romance fives at the same time there's also really melancholy undertone I know I keep saying now in Colley but you know it's my jam the pining that the main character has for this new girl who comes on the island named Prue I just think it was so sweet and so funny the writing style in general in this book is really really beautiful as you can see I have a library copy and I definitely wouldn't pick this book up for myself one day also as soon as I finished this I looked up what other books Katrina Leno has written and she's written like four others so I'm gonna have to hop on those because I loved the writing of this one so this was just a really interesting blend of a book it was really dark and bizarre but at the same time it was like a summer contemporary romance just like how I had a ton of different things happening and yet it was still pretty concise the only thing is this book was really predictable and I'm not saying that that's a negative thing because I still liked going on the journey of it but the way that this unfolded I very much saw it coming and for this to be such like a magical book I think the ending of it left me feeling like it was a little anticlimactic I really don't know how to voice that without getting into spoilers but I definitely want a sequel to this even though I know that's not very likely to happen it was just so much fun to read and the way that ended it was so bittersweet hopeful yet still a bit sad this is just my exact cup of tea so I really really enjoyed this book and again I can't wait to buy my own copy to have it on my shelf that was all books that I read over the summer I read a lot of books I loved a lot of books I didn't love let me know if you have read any of the books down below let's discuss what was your favorite book of the summer if you think that I would enjoy anything you've read recently based on my reviews of any of these I'd love to hear them I'm gonna respond to as many comments as I can because I know I've been gone for so long and I owe y'all video after video and comment after comment so I'm gonna be as engaged as it can be first mommy like me thank you for sticking around I'm gonna try and hold these all up for thumbnail now but you'll be seeing more of me reading blogs are coming back I have like unposted videos that I did while it was gone so those will be sprinkled in and yeah I will for sure see you next time goodbye

Channel: WhittyNovels

Views: 34,986

Rating: 4.9729242 out of 5

Keywords: whittynovels, where is whittynovels, whittynovels wrapup, booktube, summer wrapup, book reviews, ninth house review

Id: Brm6Z2SMMsw

Length: 98min 42sec (5922 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019