 Hello friends. Today we're going to be doing a video I personally have never done and I've put off doing for my whole book cheap career because I think I might get angry. I was angry. I was angry. We're going to be reacting to one star reviews of my favourite books. I've never done this before. I've never even looked at one star reviews of my favourite books because I'm not sure I can take it. I feel very attacked when I hear people saying bad things about my favourite books. It's hard. I can deal with like a three star or even a two star of my favourite books. I can deal with that right. I'm not a monster. But one star. One star is drawing a line. It's drawing lines. So we're going to be reading some of them and reacting to them today. But before we get into it, I want to inject some positivity into the room. Get some positivity in the room and thank the sponsor of today's video, which is Book of the Month. Now don't skip ahead. Don't skip past the sponsorship because I want to tell you about how this month's elections are so me-coded. They're just so me-slay. Honestly, it's like they thought what would Megan like. Honestly. No, it's true. No, it's true. So Book of the Month, if you don't know, is a super popular and fast-growing online book service for readers. Their mission is to promote new and emerging authors. Their team scours through all the new releases that are coming and they pick some of the most exciting ones every month and you get to pick your book of the month. So every month they have between five and seven books for you to pick from and you can pick one as your book. And let me just show you quickly. The books that I got this month. The first book that I picked was Love on the Brain by Ali Hales. Oh, word! Love Hypothesis is my favorite romance I've ever read. The only romance I've ever gotten five stars and that is thanks to Book of the Month because I got Love Hypothesis in Book of the Month. I saw it as one of their picks and I thought, you know what? I'll trust them. I'll trust them and let it be known. The trust was well-placed. It's a very similar idea, romance between scientists. And then this one, you're not gonna believe it. It's like they looked at my channel and thought, hmm, what would she like? The next book is Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourne. This is very similar to Thursday Murder Club, which is one of my favorite books. In fact we're gonna be talking about that late in the video. It's about these older women who have spent their lives as the deadliest assassins and a clandestine international organization. But now they're 60 years old, four female friends can't just retire. It's kill or be killed. I love it. It's also reminding me a lot of the Lady Hardcastle mysteries where Lady Hardcastle and her maid flow were spies for many years and now they've kind of retired. So it's like Thursday Murder Club meets Lady Hardcastle. It's like my dream. It's likely reached into the recesses of my brain and plucked out the book that would be perfect for me. So I am so happy with my two picks that I got this man. And you know, I do a lot of book research, obviously into new releases and stuff just because of the nature of having my channel. But even for me, they sometimes find new releases that sound so incredible, are totally up my street. And I've never heard of them before. Kill of a certain age. A few of you have started mentioning to me in the past week or so, but I hadn't heard about it before that. And it's like, how? How? So I really think they are such a great way for you guys to find new and exciting new releases without having to put in that legwork yourself. So they have the best price for new release hardcover fiction. If you want to get your first book for only $9.99, which is crazy, use the code MegwithBooks, check out my link down below. I honestly, listen, if you're in the US and book the month ship to you, go for it. Like 100%. Give them a go for a month or two and see what you like. It's risk free. You can skip months if none of the books interest you. So I would really recommend going and giving it a go. Okay, happiness over. It's time to get emotionally attacked. I'm gonna screen record it. When I've seen some people do it before, they like go and get the screenshots of reviews beforehand. I didn't want to see anything. I didn't want to see a single thing. So the first book that we're going to be looking up one star reviews for is Strange Case, The Acmus Daughter, which many of you know is my favorite series of all time. A lot of you are reading it right now, which makes me so happy. Like it's, you know, it's a really autumnal book. If you're looking for an autumnal recommendation, this is what I recommend to you. And a lot of you are reading it now and tagging me and stuff on Instagram. And like you may take a picture of the page and I like zoom in, and I read it and I get goosebumps. Like that's how much this series means to me. And like the cadence and the tone of like one star. It's a very small amount. So the narration was done by all the characters in the book. However, it was done by Mary Jackal. She is reading their story to the Anaheid and I guess us the reader. When Mary is actually reading the story, it's not too bad. You're going to get wrong girl. Catherine's writing the story. Reading comprehension. When Mary is actually reading the story, it's not too bad. But then she will stop telling the story to talk to others around her. By doing this, she's actually giving us spoilers to what is going on going to happen in the book. This happens all throughout the book. It is so aggravating. No, it's giving us like teasers. It's giving us little excitement to what's going to happen in the book. Diana will say that. Remember when I did this and then Mary will be like, we haven't got there yet. Like that excites me. That's breaking down the usual construct I'm making the chair squeak. Usual construct of what a book should be. It's tearing down the three x truck. Be careful of your tongue. I don't think I can do this. All of the excessive unnecessary. I can't read unnecessary side commentary feels like page for that. And I don't give any shits about how Mary Diane. It's Diana Beatrice, Justine, Watson or Holmes or anyone else or so in a story feels about how the story is written told can see you're getting angry. No, I'm not angry. I'm livid. These are the best characters no to man. These Mary that's quite clever of you actually making them want to read the second book. Nothing in the world could make me read the second book. The best thing about this book is that I finished reading it and never have to read it again. It's shelter's worst books read. Oh, do you guys have taste? Listen, some of you just don't understand. Some of you just don't get it. The girls that get it get it and the girls that don't don't. DNF because the characters interjecting random comments into the narrative area of the page drove me absolutely nuts. Shelby gets it. Shelby's a hot girl. Shelby says hilarious because I'm in the middle of this book and that's one of my favorite things about it. Tell them not dissing Theodora Goss, Queen of Literature. Theodora Goss has a PhD in English. Let that sink in for a second. I can't believe this was so bad when she's supposed to be an expert. That takes it too far. That's sick. Don't attack my Queen Theodora Goss. Don't attack my Queen Theodora Goss. I can't stand for it. I don't think I'm very good at this video guys because I'm just getting angry. Okay, this person says this reads like Fern fiction. This book does none of the work to make us like these characters or really use them. It just takes them and uses them outside the context that made the characters great in the first place. How wrong do you have to be? How I don't know of a lot of these characters, right? So sure I know of Sherlock Watson, right? They they play a minimal part in the story. But the girls like I'd never read Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde. Moro, Dr. Moro never read that. Vappuccini's daughter I think it's called like what the fuck like that's like a short story from Victorian Gothic literature. Of course I had like prior conceptual knowledge but I've never read the stuff that these girls were from. How could you be so wrong when this builds up the greatest found family trope to ever exist? Okay, I feel like we've done enough of Strange Case the Archimist's daughter. I don't think I can take much more of that. I generally don't. That is the worst. Next we're going to look up reviews for The Starless Sea one of my favorite fantasy books I've ever read. I feel like the criticism of this is going to be there's no plot is basically going to be the main criticism and you know what that's right but like that's not a reason to rate it one star. I did not enjoy this at all pretentious confusing and jumping through time to make no sense whatsoever. I feel like I wasted a reading week. Now what is this book about? Honestly your guess was good as mine. Yeah, it's a concept. It's a vibe. It's a moment in time. It's a moment. She did she it's a moment. Make a memory. You know what I mean? She's an icon. She's a legend. And she is the moment. Now come on now. I can't gather a library of your favorite books of literature about the joy of reading about fantasy with imaginative creativity cut out the pages from all of them then scatter the pages throwing them into the air then at random pick up a page and cut it into individual paragraphs cut out sentences that are gorgeous or scissor out the descriptions that make your heart sing when you read them then basically put them together in a 600 page scrapbook there you have made a handmade book of beautiful description sentences. Yeah, I just like but why is that bad? I recognize this about the Star of the Sea like it's all over the place right but I feel like so often in reading we have this like demand that the books that we read lay everything out on a platter for us. I feel like that's why a lot of people hate Catherine House as well. God knows I'm not going to read one star of that. I actually could not take that. We want the plot the meaning to be like spelled out for us right and what I like about Erin Morgensen is that she doesn't do that. I feel like in a lot of books we want to know what was going on in the author's head when they wrote it. Like what does this part mean? What does this part mean? And I'm happy knowing with Erin Morgensen I will never know what that part meant. You know what I mean? I'm just like I'm fine with that. Okay next I'm not going to get it out because it's in a stack. Bane of my night live putting it in a stack because I always have to get it out. Thursday Medical by Richard Osmond. What do I think one star of this is going to say? It's not funny. It's trying to be funny. It's not. It's poorly written because this is the opposite to the Star of Sea right? It shows my duality as a reader right? It shows my versatility. The Star of Sea is beautiful prose. Lots of descriptions. Thursday Medical has almost no description. Richard Osmond said description you don't need that. Unpopular opinion this is a long review again guys. Why are we writing such long reviews? I thought this book was kind of terrible. The narrative jumps about so much it's difficult to remember anyone's name but much less become invested in anyone's individual story. I've seen a lot of people saying that actually the murder plot is totally secondary to all the intricacies and relationships between the characters in the retirement village but not enough time is actually spent on exploring any of these relationships. Disagree. It's disgusting to me. I do love my murder mysteries sometimes to have you know a personal element as well as the mystery. When you think of like Urquiporo for example you love Urquiporo. You learn about him as the series goes on as you read more books but in Agatha Christie you don't really like spend a lot of time getting to know the characters. You only spend time getting to know them for how it's going to serve solving the mystery whereas that's not the case in this. You get to know Joyce, Ron, like you get to know little little quips about them that I think keeps you reading the series because you you're constantly learning like little bits more about their personality. Yes they are like not surface level. I can see how people would think that. They're like archetypal characters in a way but I love that in all of my murder mysteries it's kind of like a trope I feel like of murder mysteries that like Ron is like the gruffy sender like Joyce is like the motherly kind one but then they constantly kind of like throughout the series subvert that and subvert your idea of them so I like that aspect of it. Okay here we go what an absolute load of twaddle. Once again I was taken in by the glow of youth but the truth is totally opposite quite simply it's boring do not bother. I don't know how you could call this masterpiece boring honestly. Okay this person gave it a 0.2 hell. You've shown an incredible lack of respect. Not even a one a 0.2 how can you even give a book a 0.2 like I don't understand. I hate humorous novels well then I hate crime novels well then why did you pick this up? I did not care unless I was disinterested and ultimately disappointed but I think that's due to the fact that it's a funny book that's a crime novel I mean we were set up to fail. Next we're going to read the reviews of Heartstopper volume one which I challenge someone to give a one star review. This reads like all the tumblr blogs in existence poured their worst qualities but somehow the resultant goo turns out even sopier. There is literally no conflict they try gay boy falls for straight guy but from aforementioned blushing there's not even an issue. I thought there could be at least some comment or conflict about homophobia but zilch. Okay I mean listen part of the beauty of Heartstopper for me is that it's about joy and love right there is space for both. It's important that we still have media that shows the more difficult side of being gay or being bi or being LGBTQ it's important we have that media it's important that we have you know adult media that shows the difficulties but it's also important we have joy like especially for kids right this is for kids this is for young people and it's I think it's so important that this book doesn't need to have really a conflict and can just be soppy right let us have soppy I just had a look that's basically all the critiques are is that it's too nice and soppy and sweet um so you're wrong okay and then lastly we're going to look up a good girl's guide to murder which if you haven't heard the news it's been made into a I'm so excited I'm I generally can't tell you how excited I am so yeah it's gonna BBC3 start filming next year I just love my life I love my family I love my job I love my life um so I thought we could celebrate it by reading people's bad reviews this book had it all bad writing a completely unrealistic plot white savior trope I'm not like other girls and probably the most annoying character I have ever read listen part of the joy of Pip is that she is annoying right I was kind of Pip in secondary school I was like very academic high achiever like wanted to be the best and I think the journey that she goes on with her you know pressure on herself throughout the book is very interesting now I have heard a few people give the white savior criticism of the book and I think that is a valid criticism I don't think the second and third book have a problem with that I think it was something Holly Jackson addressed for some reason this teenagers are to start a massive murder investigation where every possible witness tells her everything without having to work for it and of course she ends up doing what the police couldn't now listen never underestimate a bit of teenage girl's skill for research and her ingenuity I'm gonna say it now never underestimate the same it's not unrealistic to me that she could figure something out when uh the police couldn't because police are shit in our legal and criminal system if they're in like in this case as a perceived confession to a murder they're just like well job done when they're like oh she interviewed all the witnesses and they tell her everything it's a small town like it's a small town what do you expect like people know each other people are gonna talk a lot of the people she talks to she's known for years so like incorrect oh my god I made a Goodreads account just so I could give this book one style why guys all the views this are harsh I'm very concerned for this author it appears they've never once met a real human being in their life what is going on up here in this day it was so bad I wanted to give it a zero but that's not possible so I give it a one oh my god are you tyra it was so bad I wanted to give you a zero but that's not possible so I give you a one on that note we're ending this I hope you enjoyed this video I don't know how this is gonna go I need to go edit this now I'm like what was that I feel a bit rather I feel like I need to go for a run or something let me know what you thought of any of these books these are obviously some of my favorite books but let me know what you thought of any of these on any unpopular opinions any books you rated one star that everyone else seems to love I would love to know that's interesting to me because that has happened to me a few times so I'd love to know books that you didn't like that you feel like are an unpopular opinion if you've gotten to the end of the video comment the blue heart emoji for book of the month because I'm just like I don't even feel like I've won the lottery my pics this month I can't go for it I want to read both of these in October November I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to but I would love to um so yeah comment the blue heart emoji down below if you've gotten to the end thank you guys so much for watching I will see you very soon in another video bye