 Hello, hello everyone! My name is Laura, this is my channel Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, the last video of 2021, and it is my final wrap-up. It is going to be a kind of a two-parter, because I'm going to include my December wrap-up in this video, as well as like kind of a yearly statistics, as well as a yearly wrap-up of everything. Interesting about this year that I read. That didn't make any sense. So I'm going to first start off with the December wrap-up to kind of get that done and over with, and then we can focus on the full year. I am filming this on January 30th? Yes. January 30th, so technically I have the rest of today and tomorrow to like finish a book and do something, but I don't think that's going to happen. I am going into the new year with some books that I have started and not finished, even though I wanted to finish them. So I might try and finish some of those, but I don't think they will happen as I still have to work tomorrow and I have some plans tonight, so most likely not going to happen. But as of this month, December 30th, I read 13 books, which is pretty good for me. That's actually like very good. I did a lot of reading during quarantine when I had COVID. So if you want to check out, I did do a two-week reading vlog of when I had COVID, what I was reading and what I was doing. I'll link that up above or down below if you're interested in checking that out. Otherwise it was also the reindeer read-a-thon this month and I was so close to finishing everything. Really what got me was the problem where I had to read a book with 500 or more pages. I just never started that book. I finished everything else, but I didn't start that book because I didn't think I would finish it and I would rather read other books. I know, that's not how read-a-thons go. But the first book that I finished was a historical fiction. It was called The Prisoner's Wife. I believe I give this, I give this like a four-star or like a 3.75 because I had liked it a lot. I liked her characters most of the time. There are a few instances where I didn't like them very much, but it follows this Czech farm girl and this English soldier and he has to work on her farm. They end up falling in love and running away and she has to dress up like a man in order to avoid getting caught and separated. It's a very powerful story. I believe it was based on a true story. I very much enjoyed it. I liked the writing. It's a really good book to read during the winter because it is quite cold. And then I read Unravel the Dusk and this is the second book in the Blood of the Stars duology by Elizabeth Lim. And again, I rated this, I think, 4.5 stars because I very much enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one, which is why it's not a full five star, but that's more because of personal preference rather than the author did this thing wrong or could have done it better. I think the second book was just much more focused on political intrigue, which is not a bad thing, but I really liked the creativity and the adventure in the first book better than the second book. So then when I put them next to each other like this, one is going to be rated lower, but I recommend the duology overall and I'm really excited to read Elizabeth Lim's newer book, Six Crimes and Grains. Hopefully I'll get to that next year. Anyway, so these are going to be short reviews because I don't want this to video to be super long when I go through the statistics of the end of the year. And then I read Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Shana McGuire. This is the second book in the Wayward Children series. I loved it five out of five stars. I love the Wayward Children series. I loved our characters, Jack and Jill, the world that they went to at first I was a little hesitant, but then I just ended up falling in love with it and I enjoyed it. And I really want to go back and read the first book again to see how our characters were shaped. But no, I'm going to try and continue on with that series. And make sure you subscribe and hit the bell so that you're notified because in January I do have a video going up about all the different series that I have started and want to finish. So just make sure you subscribe to catch that. Then moving on, I read Hunt of the Grimulcan and this is by Danny Swanson. I rated this book like 2.75 stars, 3 stars, somewhere between the 2 and 3 star range. It was not my favorite book. It's the start of a trilogy and I have heard that the trilogy gets better. And I thought there was a lot of promise and a lot of potential. I just felt like it could have been executed better in many ways. So I will continue on with that series as well, but it was just that first book was a little rough, but I believe the rest of the series a little bit more fine-tuned and polished. Then I read The Other Side of Perfect and this is by Mariko Turk. This follows our main character who is Japanese American and she is a ballerina until she falls and breaks her leg. Then she ends up having to go to normal person school and she gets involved with musical theater and she learns things about the ballet world that are not great. And she kind of learns how the ballet world is not even close to perfect. I think the commentary that this book has is really, really good. I think I rated it like 3 out of 5 stars. I found it to be just kind of an average book. Like the commentary was great. I wish there was more of it in the context of everything that was going on. I wasn't a fan of the love interest and I hated her main character for a very long time. And I just felt like she didn't get redeemed enough for me by the end. But it was like a solidly written book with decent writing. And again, like it was the fact that they're talking about the racism in the ballet world and how that was handled, I think is one of the best that I've seen. Then I also ended up finishing In A Holidays by Christina Lauren. This was my first time reading a Christina Lauren book. I again rated this 3 out of 5 stars. I thought it was average. It was good. Like I'd still recommend it, but it is a Groundhog's Day Christmas story. So our main character lives through her family holiday in the cabin that they always go to every year, makes a mistake, does something that she regrets, and then has a Groundhog's Day situation. I wish that Groundhog's Day had played a little bit more into the story, which seems ridiculous because it's the whole premise. But I feel like she restarted like two or three times right at the beginning of the book and then never again. And I just kind of wish there had been a little bit more like cliffhanger or risk or, you know, because once she kind of lived past a certain point, we were like, okay, there's no way that she's going to restart again. And then she never did. And so that just didn't really keep me excited or on the tip of my toes. And I thought the writing was average. I hated the ending, like not just the ending of the book, but the epilogue. I hated the epilogue with a burning passion. So again, maybe 3.5 stars. It was a good book. I would recommend you read it if you need like a new Christmas rom-com because I did enjoy the characters and kind of the idea behind it. But I felt like it wasn't really anything super new or super impressive. Next up, I finished 10 blind dates and I loved this book. I think on Goodreads, I may have given it a 4 out of 5 star when I'm still to this day debating if I want to raise it to a 5 star because I just enjoyed this book so much. Our main character ends up breaking up with her boyfriend right before the holidays and she's really, really sad about it. So to cheer her up, her large Italian family decides that they will use the 10 days leading up to Christmas and also between Christmas and New Year to do a blind date. So she doesn't know any of these people. She doesn't know what they're doing until she has to get ready for the date. And it is very interesting. I loved it. It was adorable. It was so cute. And I really also liked the side plots going on with the main characters. Sister and just her family in general. All of them were such wonderful personalities and it was just such a fun, cute, like, read to do. And it's perfect because it's great for right now in between Christmas and New Year's and not just leading up to Christmas. Which I think we need more New Year's books here. Personally, I think we do. And then surprisingly, I actually read A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee. This is mentioned in my Christmas reading blog. So again, I'll have that linked up here. I think it actually is probably in this side. So you can go ahead and check out my review there. But I kind of read this on a whim. I read it in a day. Five out of five stars. The aesthetics, the vibes were there. It is dark academia through and through with every character, every place, every scene. It was just pure dark academia. Was it perfect? Probably not. Do I care? Not at all. I still rated it five out of five stars. And I'm considering rereading it either this spooky season or to encourage me to finish writing my own book. I'll get there one day. Then I read Royal Holiday. And this one I rated three out of five stars. I thought it was an average book. It is a Christmas romance, but it takes place with adults. So our main character, her daughter is going to England for work and she decides to tag along and actually have a vacation for once in her life. And she meets the head of the Queen's security and they fall in love. How cute. I appreciate that they were adults and that they acted like adults. They communicated and if there was an issue that came up, they worked through it like adults. And I was so relieved when that happened. But I felt like our characters weren't super in depth. I thought that past work and being in love, there wasn't much to either of the characters. She rated us a little bit of family, but even still with our female main character, I wish we had got more of a familial relationship between her and her daughter. So again, three out of five stars, average, good writing. I look forward to reading more from Jasmine Guillory. Next up, I read one by one and this was in my Thrill to the Weekend slash follow a lot on vlog, which I think is also my Christmas vlog. I read books, people. It's pretty great. And one by one, I rated, I don't know if I rated it four or five out of five stars. I rated it 4.5 stars out of five. Because see, I thought it was going to be a five star read all the way until like two thirds into the book. And then the ending just kind of went downhill. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. But I think they revealed the killer too early. Okay, I should back up. So one by one is following. It's a dual perspective and it follows this company who goes to a chalet in the mountains of France on a company retreat. One perspective is from an employee who really doesn't fit in with anyone else. And the other perspective is by one of the maid slash server slash one of the two people working this event in the chalet. And so there's a big avalanche that happens and then they all get trapped there. They have no way of communicating. They can't really leave the building. It's dangerous outside. It's cold because it's snowy and one by one they start getting murdered. So it was a thriller. Like I said, I loved it. The suspense and the writing just and captured me and I was so happy with it. I just couldn't put it down. I was intrigued the entire time. But I think they revealed the killer a little too early and I didn't like how they did it. And I didn't really like what it all came to. Plus I thought they drew the ending out a little too long. This is by Ruth Weyer, by the way. And so like it's still an amazing book and I would still highly recommend it. Especially if you're not super into thrillers but you need like a wintry read. I would go with this one. I have two more books. I finished two more books. Okay, I read The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. This is the second book in the Hawthorne Legacy or The Inheritance Games trilogy. The third book, The Final Gambit, comes out next year. I buddy read this with Polina's Pages and I will link her down below because her channel is awesome and you should definitely check her out. But we bet he read this together and I finished this. She finished it faster than I did. She read it in like two days. I think I read it in three. It was good. Probably not as good as the first one. I had some issues with the relationship between the main characters just with like the information they were learning and then learning more about. I think that their relationship would have changed a little bit more and I was expecting a little more from it. And the puzzles were a little more straightforward. Not that they were predictable but they were just a little more straightforward which was easier for me to understand which I appreciate but also at the same time, after reading the first book, it's a little easier than the first book and that's a little bit of a let down. I still very much enjoyed it. I think I still gave it like four stars, maybe? But I look forward to reading The Final Gambit when it comes out next year. And the last book that I read was The Twelve Dates of Christmas. Yeah, so I rated The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayless two out of five stars. It was not a book that I enjoyed a lot. I felt like the beginning was very abrupt. Like we started in a weird place and the wrong things were explained to us. It was like an info dump but not of the information that I needed. And I feel like the middle mellowed out. I wasn't super satisfied with like the beginning of the end. I liked the ending but I didn't like the beginning of the end. It was a weird roller coaster. The Christmasy vibes were there and they were amazing and I loved it. It's such a wintry book but overall I was not impressed with the writing. I was not impressed with the characters. I don't even think it was like that. I think it was a good book. It was not average. It was a little below. It was a two star book for me personally but I bet other people probably loved this book. I still say it might be worth giving a chance if it sounds interesting to you. Our main character signs up for these twelve dates of Christmas program where leading up to Christmas she goes on twelve dates with twelve different men hoping to find her one true love. That's kind of the premise. I mean there's a lot of other things going on with the main character in terms of like work and conflicting emotions but I just wasn't super satisfied with the end romance other than the actual couple getting together. I don't want to spoil anything so that's why. Those were all the books that I read this month in December. It was a very good reading month for me. I'm very happy with it and honestly it was a very good reading year for me. So let's get into my yearly statistics now. Right now let's get into my final wrap up statistics for the year of 2021. So I read 95 books and my goal was 75 books so I very much completed my goal and then some. And my goal for next year, spoiler alert, is going to be 100 books. And I say spoiler alert because I have my 2022 goals reading video which will be going up the first week of January. So again subscribe if you're interested in watching that. Okay sorry if like the lighting and the quality and everything changes. I had to switch from my filming phone to my actual phone because I have filmed this clip four times and it has not worked at all whatsoever. So I read 29,615 pages. My average book length was 311 pages. The shortest book that I read was A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. I read this one for a class and then the longest book I read was We Free the Stars by Hafsa Faizal and that was 592 pages. And I listened to the audiobook for it. My most popular book was The Handmaid's Tale which makes sense. My least popular book was Hound of God which I ended up DNFing. It was one of my two DNFs this year which is pretty good. I'm trying to be more allowing of myself to DNF so I can read more books that I enjoy. But I just didn't have too many this year that I wanted to DNF. And actually my average rating of this year was four stars. Goodread says it's 3.9. Storygraph says it's 4.1. So it really was a four-star reading year and I completely agree. I read so many good books. I gave out so many five-star books which was amazing and totally unexpected. But I also because I read so many more books than I'm used to reading this year there were just a lot of other average books and a lot of four-star books to even it out to a four-star reading year. My four most read genres were Young Adult which makes sense. Fantasy which also makes sense. Romance and contemporary. Contemporary makes sense. I didn't used to read a lot of it but I did read a lot this year. But I feel like all the romance that I read was contemporary romance. And so for it to like be higher, like to be my third popular genre, I am so confused. I was not expecting it. I thought that was so weird. But you know, we'll see. I will probably read more romance next year anyway. I think I really know a lot more of the statistics off the top of my head because I no longer have my notes. But yeah, I had a lot more. I just had a lot of really good reads this year and I'm really happy and I'm really excited about it. Thank you all so much for watching this video. If you liked it, give it a thumbs up. Otherwise comment down below how your reading year was, what you think the average star writing of your entire year was. I hope you had a lot of five-star reads. But otherwise all of my bookish social media is linked down below so you can follow me or we can become friends. We can give each other recommendations. I'm always up for a body read. I post twice a week on Sundays and Wednesdays so make sure you're subscribed with the bell notification on. So you do get notified on those days when I post and throughout all of December I did post four videos a week. So if you haven't seen any of those, you might want to check them out. I think they're kind of fun. And I'm really excited for the videos I have planned in January as well. But until I see you all in those videos, I wish you happy new year, happy 2022 and happy reading.