 I feel like if you're going to copy a book, do it well. Don't compare yourself to me. Ever. You are not on my level, Nicole, you never will be on my level, do not compare yourself to me. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel, I hope you're well. Welcome back to another reading vlog. I am back at university to get myself in the mood. I don't know why this would get me in the mood, but I thought I would read all dark academia books for a week. Dark academia is one of my favourite genres. Pretty legendary if you ask me, I love it. And yet I do not read enough of it, so what I want to do, autumn is setting in, it's why I'm wearing my own terminal dress. I want to read books that feel like autumn and often dark academia is just autumn to a tee. The secret history, ninth house, yes please. I've picked out three books. First I'm going to be reading Catherine House by Elizabeth Thomas. I don't know much about this other than that it is weird. It is weird. I have heard very, very, very mixed things about this because some people just hate it. Like some people do not vibe with it at all. The blurb says that during your three years at Catherine House you will have no contact with those in the outside world. Basically it's a very isolated university, students have been really carefully selected. It's just something weird going on. So I'm really excited to read this. I am going to be co-hosting Kayla from Books and La La's literally dead book class for the month of September. This is our book. We have like three days left in September so I need to read it ASAP. By the time this video is up the live show probably already have happened so if you're intrigued you can always go and read this and then go watch the live show. I am so excited to be co-hosting that with Kayla. I was shook when she asked me. I can't believe that. I actually can't believe that. Without getting too deep Kayla was one of my main inspirations for starting Booktube so it's just my own boggling to me that she wants me to co-host her book club with her. I'm a big fan of weird shit so I'm here for this. I'm really, really, really, really excited. Next is a classic, not a classic, but like a very popular dark academia book. It's If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. So this was very kind of gifted to me by Riley from Riley Marie. This was for hitting 1K so I need to read this now. The reason I've put this up is because everyone compares it to The Secret History which is one of my favourite books and I was going to do a video where I re-read The Secret History and read this and compared them. However, I don't think that that's the best way to enjoy this book. I think I should just appreciate it as a book on its own and secondly, I'm not ready to re-read The Secret History yet. I'm too scared. Like I'm terrified. Does anyone else feel fine re-reading books? They kind of, like they enjoyed like a 4.5 to 5 but those books that were special, like the beyond 5 stars, like your favourites full time, I can't re-read. I get too scared. So I'm like, what if I don't like it again because it was only in the time and place. I can't do it. Anyway, so I'm not re-reading The Secret History yet. I know that this is about a group of friends who study Shakespeare at university and one of them dies and another one of them serves 10 years for murder. And when he gets out, he's ready to tell the story of what really happened. But that's quite dramatic. I'm very excited to get to this. It has been one I've been wanting to read for so long, but just because of that other video I've been putting it off and putting it off. Hopefully it will be as good as The Secret History. And then I'm also going to be reading A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. My copy is waiting for me at my local Waterstones. However, I have not plucked up the courage to go into the city centre, which is like coronavirus central. So I'm super excited to get into this vlog and just read loads of dark academia books and hopefully it will make me actually study and do my work. I'm going to start with Catherine House and I will update you when I'm a little bit of the way through. Into my local Waterstones. I haven't been there because obviously I haven't been living here. I haven't been there for like six, seven months. So it was really nice to go back because it's a really big one. I picked up A Deadly Education, which is the third book for this video. I have to say, I do prefer the American cover. I'll put a picture in, but it is still cute. Like the kind of gold shininess. It looks really good under the ring light. I've heard so many mixed things, but I'm really intrigued by it. Anyway, let's talk about Catherine House. Where have I even put my copy? I am now 109 pages in, so I'm just over a third of the way in. And like, I think I'm obsessed. I think I'm obsessed with this book. Sickening. Absolutely sickening. I think I love it. No, it's not gonna be for everyone. It's told in a really weird, chaotic tone where time is like, so morphed and strange, but essentially, our protagonist, Ines, has gone to Catherine House. You're supposed to just go there, be in seclusion, study, be so clever, and then go into the outside world and be amazing. Apparently, so many of the powerful elite from society have come from this college. I am obsessed. I am obsessed. I love the vibe of it. I love the style of writing. It's so weird. It's getting weird. Like, it's really disjointed and makes no sense and logic doesn't apply, but I love it. I have a feeling that like not much is gonna happen in terms of plot, but I'm okay with that. I really think I am. Like, I think I can say that now. I went very briefly and looked on Goodreads and it's got a 3.09 average rating and like everyone I'm friends with has given it like a two star. But I think I love it. I think the dark, gothic atmosphere is just, I'm eating it up. Look how she ate that. Look how she ate that. What, look how she ate that. The way that is depicting mental health is really interesting. Our protagonists obviously is a very dark past and I think maybe a lot of the students here do and that might be why they've been selected. Her dark past reminds me of Alex Stern from Ninth House where she's kind of on the run from her past. She's kind of spiraling into this really, really dark place while living at Catherine House and you are debating in your head how much of it is down to the place itself and how much of that was already kind of like her mental health due to her past and what she's gone through and the guilt she feels and the worry she feels. Her descent into this like ambivalence towards life has been really interesting to read. I love the dark goings on at the school. There's obviously some shady, shady, shady shit going on and you feel like you can't trust anyone there. There's definitely a lot of ulterior motives and just the part I'm at now, things feel like they're starting to slip and stuff's starting to go wrong and it's so good. Just the writing style feels so like overwhelming and claustrophobic and I'm just totally vibing with it. I'm really, really enjoying it and I think just the vibes of it are gonna carry it through. It reminds me a lot of Bunny by Mona Awad especially in the writing style. Both are like dark academia books which are really weird but more than that the writing style feels really similar apart from I didn't really like it in Bunny. Bunny was fine, I think I gave it like a 3.5 but I was very disappointed because I wanted it to be a favorite. The writing style feels very similar in kind of that detached from reality way where not everything makes sense in the way that we expect everything to make sense but I'm loving it in this case. I'm really, really liking it. I'm so surprised that everyone else hates it. I'm so shocked. I'm an acquired taste. You don't like me? Acquire some taste. Okay, so I am now 200 pages into Catherine Hale's and I'm still loving it, still really enjoying it, still completely obsessed with like the language and the way the story is told and I was thinking I think Kayla said something similar or I'm not sure if I imagined it but I think it doesn't really have a genre, right? Like it's marketed very much as like a thriller, dark book, but it's not really a thriller although it's like kind of just like insidious and strange and weird. It's genre is weird but almost the kind of weird that when you put it down and you're not reading it you're like, isn't actually weird or am I just like crazy? Like it turns you on your own brain a little bit. Every time I turn the page whilst reading Catherine House. This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy. I just love the vibes of it. The vibes of it are immaculate. I finished Catherine House and I loved it. I'm giving it five stars. No, I know I'm very much the unpopular opinion here. However, I don't really, I don't see how I can read because it's so good. Honestly, you guys, I feel like I have the best taste in it. Like I think it's very hard to beat me in taste in it. Like I will, like I admit that I, I'm not like the best at everything but I really have a, like I do never pat myself in the back ever but like I have a really good sense of. I understand that it's very slow. The writing style is weird. It's not gonna be for everyone. You do not get explanations for a lot of what's happening. There's a lot of like monotony of life. So like you're constantly just reading about them going to breakfast or dinner or having sex with another person, another person next day, another person next day. I understand how that's not for everyone. However, it's just genius. It's just so good. It's so good. It's so good. The house itself is so dark and gothic. This book is so like beautifully written. Like one of the most beautifully written books I've read in a long time. You guys are all wrong. You guys are all wrong. Who are all giving this a bad star rating? You're wrong. You're wrong. This has cult vibes to it. Like vibes, it is a cult essentially. Like they're walking into a cult and they go to Catherine House. Although they know they're not gonna be able to leave for three years. There's some cult activities that go on. What I think that this book is so good at doing is Elizabeth Thomas is saying, "'How far can I go in describing the mundane and making it sound delirious?' Like there's a lot of normal things that happen but that just sound completely out of reality It's like you're reading a dream or a nightmare. It's got that kind of like disjointed and thoughts all over the place. You're not completely understanding necessarily everything that's going on, that feeling. There were so many characters that weren't what they thought they would be that turned out to be something completely different and we don't get the answers for that. The characters revealing their true colors and me being shocked even though it was probably obvious the whole time. We just find out that they were different from what we thought and that's it, that's it. We're done, we're not gonna talk about it anymore. It's not a mystery really. It's got some mysterious elements but it's not like she is trying to solve the mystery. She just kind of doesn't care and just wants to go about her life and the security that the school lures you in. I love Inez. I think Inez is one of the coolest main characters, protagonist I've read in a really long time. I thought she was such a cool character. I just loved it and I know everyone hates it. Like literally I've gone on Goodreads and so many people I'm friends with have DNF'd it or given it like one or two stars and you're wrong. Something about this doesn't sit right in my spirit. I would really recommend you pick this up but I know I am not the popular opinion here. If you like weird books, if you like books that are a bit disjointed, I think maybe people that like The Wicker King by Kate Anchron would like this because it's got that kind of same you don't know what's real vibe but like more grown up almost and a bit darker. I cannot wait this Saturday to discuss this with Kayla and Aaron. I know that Kayla really liked it. I haven't watched her vlog where she read it yet because I wanted to like get my own thoughts before I watched her talk about it but I don't know what Aaron thinks about it. And if we all love it where everyone else hates it it's gonna be a bit weird. Yeah, I loved it. If you like weird books that I have typically liked go for it but maybe like everyone else hates it. Sorry, I don't know. I think it's brilliant. I think it's one of the best books I've read this year. I decided to start If We Were Villains by ML Rio next. I have just started Act Two. So I'm on page 116 and like I don't know if I like it. Oh no, that would not do at all. So the premise of this is that of these group of friends a murder occurred 10 years ago and Oliver, our protagonist was put in prison for it. We kind of know that it wasn't him or it wasn't entirely him or whatever. He's gonna tell the officer, the head officer for the case who is retiring he's gonna tell them the truth off record. And so that's what's happening, right? And like we haven't really got into like the mystery element of it yet. I think of my main gripe with this. I have other gripes but my main gripe with this is that I don't know who these characters are. Like there's seven of them in this friendship group. There's four guys and three girls. I cannot tell you the difference between James and Alexander. Like who are they? What is their characteristics? Like what is their vibe? What are they bringing to the table? I don't know. And like for the girls we have a seductive one, a boyish one and a spare. Do you know what I mean? Like there's not characterization to these characters. They have no identity. Who is she? Who is she? Where did you find her? This book is often compared to the secret history and people say if you love the secret history you'll love this. And that's why I was so excited to read this because I loved the secret history but I feel like a key part of secret history is how different all of those characters are and the different things they each bring to the table. But these characters are all just blurring into one for me. Like I just don't know who they are. They all speak the same. They all act the same. I think there's almost too many of them as well. Like they're kind of still fading into the background. I don't know if I'm being too harsh but I just, I'm not enjoying it. And I think that's kind of annoying is that they're all Shakespeare drama students and they all just keep quoting Shakespeare to each other and I initially was annoyed by that. I was initially like, come on. But then I realized I have no leg to stand on because when I did drama and we did old plays like we did Wojciech, which is like this old German play we used to quote it to each other all the time afterwards like in conversation, like as a joke. We used to just always quote, what a man, straight as a tree or whatever the line was, I can't remember. But we used to always quote it to each other. So I have no leg to stand on. I am that insufferable. I am that annoying. This is a year of realization. Like the year of just realizing stuff and everyone around me were all just like realizing things. This book is actually just making me annoyed at myself. And if I'm gonna be reading like slightly insufferable characters, they're not that insufferable yet or some of them are, but not all of them. But if I'm gonna be reading them, like I want you to have a bit of flavor. I want you to have a bit of difference. And this doesn't right now, I don't wanna hate it. I wanted to, I thought this would be like a five star. I'm pretty sure this is in some five star prediction video I've made. Let me go read the middle. Let me go read up to act four and then I'll come back. And like maybe it will be a completely different vibe. Maybe I'll be in love with it. I just got to act four. So I'm on page 295, I'm nearing the end. And the really strange thing about this is that I'm going through ebbs and flows or where I think it's really good. Like from when I stopped speaking to you up until the end of act two, I think, where like the death happens, it was like so good. Like the pace was really quick and you kept going, oh my God, what's gonna happen? Oh my God, what's gonna happen? I think I know what's gonna happen, but is it? After that, they're just moping around like dealing with the aftermath of the death. And it literally is a rip-off of the secret history, but secret history did it better. So that was a while. Right after when I got off the phone from you, but when I got off camera, I was like, oh, I'm gonna eat my words. Like it's getting so much better, I'm really enjoying it. And then in part three, I was just like, no, I'm not. Oh, no, this has now gone downhill. It doesn't know what to do with itself. And it is a rip-off of the secret history, like not just in dark academia, horrible people who are friends who like study something a bit pretentious. There's a death in the friendship group. They are all liable in some way. This isn't spoilers for either of them. I'm keeping it vague purposefully on both fronts. The death occurs like halfway through the book and the other half is like moping around. Like it's exactly the same thing. Like come up with originality. I honestly think this isn't a book for people who like the secret history because the secret history just did it better. Like the secret history is just the better and original version of this. Well, they're speechless. It was fine. I think I'm gonna give it like a 3.5 stars. I feel like the ending, I got a bit emotional, but then I get emotional at everything. So like really I should not be bumping it up for this. But the ending took it from a three to a 3.5 for me. I just feel like the characters were never something that I cared about or like without spoiling anything. There were decisions made at the end by characters based on some like key characteristics of other characters. You know, everyone was like, oh, you know X, they're like this. They would do this, you know? And it's integral to the way the plot goes. But I'm like, I don't know that. Like really? Really? Are we talking about the same person? Like since when was this one of their like characteristics? Since when? These characters were not actualized and realized throughout. I really did not buy into them. I feel like if you're gonna copy a book, do it well. Don't compare yourself to me ever. You are not on my level, Nicole. You never will be on my level. Do not compare yourself to me. It just felt so empty. It felt like a husk to me. It felt like all show and nothing like deeper. There was no depth to it. I wanted a bit more like, but in the secret history, when a character is killed, you're like fully understand why that has happened. And you fully understand why the group decides to do what they do. In this, it's so rushed at the beginning. We spend barely any time with that character. And I guess that's something that the secret history is afforded by being like 600, 700 pages or something. But we barely spend any time with the character who is, who dies in this one. I just felt like you don't feel anything. Like you don't give a shit because you barely knew this character and they were such a caricature. And it's like, well, okay. But yeah, I'm very disappointed. I think I've said this would be five styles to me in the past and it's not going to be five styles to me. I just, I'm really sad. I'm, Riley, thank you very much for getting it for me, but I'm sorry I didn't like it. But it wasn't that I didn't like it. There were aspects, like I said. I haven't had a book like it in a long time where some parts of it I really liked. And then other parts were just a slog to get through. Like it was really a roller coaster of emotion. Okay, so next I knew I said, originally in this video, I would be reading A Deadly Education by Nermi Novik. But I have returned my copy of it. A couple of days after it came out, some discourse started on Twitter about how it was racist or had some microaggressions in it by own voices reviewers, both black and Indian. And just from reading those reviews and listening to those own voices reviewers, I just decided that right now I don't want to read it. This isn't me saying that you shouldn't read it or like no one should read it or I would judge anyone for reading it or I think it's a mistake to read it. Like I may read this book in the future. There were own voices reviewers saying they didn't feel it was racist or didn't feel like it had microaggressions. So like there were multiple perspectives and this isn't me saying that one person is right or like anyone is right. This is just me saying that I don't want to read it anymore because of that. So I've had a look. I'm like there's barely any other dark academia books I'm interested in and I can access like easily in time to make this video. And I think I'm going to pick up Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates, which is about some kind of like dark game gone wrong at university with these students. I'm going to read it as an audio book. I think I've had mixed things about this in the past but it's something I've definitely had people at least speak about, which I hadn't for other books. Okay, so I've listened to about I think 30% of it and like I don't think I like it. Okay. Flop, girl you have done it again. It's just making me feel so anxious like so on edge. I don't know, I feel like kind of sick listening to it. So essentially the premise is the story is being told in two timelines. One is in the present day and it's one of our characters who's basically been living as a hermit for three years hasn't gone into the outside world is obviously scarred from what happened in the past somewhat but we don't know which of our male characters it is. And then the other part is this friendship group and they decided to come up with a game where the stakes get increasingly high and to force people out of the game if that makes sense. I just like don't like it because it's shit. Sometimes I like insufferable characters. This is the thing. Sometimes I like them and sometimes they're just not done well. Like I think your insufferable characters have to be interesting. You know, they've got to be like, okay you're not a nice person, you're disgusting, you're so annoying but you're interesting whereas these guys are fucking boring. Like they're so boring. I'm this close to just DNFing it. I'm gonna like sit it out a bit longer and just see but like I'm not enjoying it at all. And I'm like, I've got so many other things in my life I could be doing. But then I feel like I'm failing you as a person if I DNF it for a video but I know that shouldn't be the case and I should just like read what makes me happy. And then the characters, I can't even tell you their names and it's an audiobook. I'm being told their names constantly. I know we have Chad, Jack, I don't know. These people are so boring and insufferable. How can you be boring and insufferable? Give me some flavor, please. Where's the flavor? Where's the flavor in this? I don't taste anything. I don't taste sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, nothing. And here's the thing. You could say we'll make any loved how in Catherine House these characters were not caricatures but they were very one note, you know. The characters weren't really fully fleshed out. You're like, well, why'd you hate it on this? I'm like, because in one it's done well and in one it's not done well. Like I think two books can have exactly the same features, characteristics, styles of writing, but it's just whether it's done well or not. You can set out to do the same thing and one can do it well and one not. This book was promising me adventure, you know, dares, life threatening dares, a game gone wrong. And I'm getting nothing. Nothing has happened. The game hasn't even started yet and we're like 30% of the way in. I'm gonna like stick it out to 50% and if by 50% I'm not enjoying it, we're leaving it. Like, please don't blame me. It's a 13 hour audiobook. I'm not seeing through all of that if I'm still hating it at 50%. You already know what I'm about to say. You already know what I'm about to say. I'm DNFing it. I don't wanna read this book. Like I just, it's making me sad. It's making me not look forward to reading. It's making me feel anxious whenever I read it. I didn't even get a 50% in. Like I was like, I'm gonna give it to 50%. I'm reasonable. And then I didn't. I read, I had eight hours left. I'm free, I've got it. No way Jose am I putting myself through that. Like why would I wanna do that? If I'm not enjoying it, why would I wanna spend my whole day reading a book I'm not enjoying? The unhinged, weird narrator in the future could not care less. Nothing interesting happened in the five hours I listened to. So like why would I listen to more? I am however, I just wanna know how it ends. Like I wanna know the plot and just see whether it would have been worth my time. I don't even have anything else to say. Like it was just, it made me feel sick. I've never had that before. I had like my body had an adverse reaction to it. Is it just because it was so bad? Okay, apparently the ending was disappointing. Well, good. Oh, the consequence of the game stay boring throughout. I am so happy that I have snatched everything. I tell you, I lay in bed last night and I just made the decision that I was gonna do an effort and I've never felt so free. I've never felt so liberated in my entire life. I'm really sorry that I didn't manage to read a third book in this video. Like I just don't want you to be angry at me. I'm sorry. But obviously the last slot of this video is just cursed. We had the deadly education and now this. Like obviously this video just wanted to be a two big extravaganza, not three. It was like Megan, we're not doing that. Sorry. Let me know if there's any dark academia recommendations you have because I felt like when I was looking at lists after I decided to not read a deadly education, I just struggled to find any I actually like had heard good things about that I hadn't already read. So please let me know because I love the idea of it. Books I've loved, obviously Catherine House in this video, I loved Ninth House I love, Secret History I love. So it's obviously one of my favorite features of a book but it didn't entirely work out in this video. So let me know if you have any recs. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you very, very soon in another one. Okay, bye.