 can add this to Leanna's band takes. Really my guy? Really? And the main character is so stupid I just couldn't believe it. Hey guys it's Leanna and I'm here today with my September wrap up. 13 books so not quite as many as the last couple months but pretty freaking solid I think especially because some of these are kind of long. All right well without any further ado let me go ahead and tell you how I felt about all these things that I wrapped. Well this wasn't actually I mean there were three high highs and low lows this month so this is gonna be a bit of a an emotional roller coaster. Also people my neighbors decided to start using the hot tub like five minutes ago so I'm really hoping they don't decide to like also start playing without music but it is what it is. The first book that I read in September was Middle Game by Sean McGuire. I recently heard someone talk about how they much they hated this cover but someone is Jess. Jess if you're watching I disagree. The only reason I actually wanted to read this was because of the cover. It just looks so I don't know eerie and mysterious and it stands out like when you look at a bunch of fiction covers like this one catches your eye as like being very different from all the others. So the only other Sean McGuire book that I've read to my knowledge because they read under a bunch of different pseudonyms so to my knowledge the only book that or at least the only other book I've read that was officially authored by Sean and McGuire is the first in the Wayward Children series. The Every Heart of Doorway by I do believe it's called was not a big fan. I didn't hate it by any means but I just I don't know I felt actually Middle Game ended up being my experience with it very similar to Wayward Children except worse and the worstness I think is directly proportional to the length. So Wayward Children didn't have time because it's a really short book to like aggravate me because it hits limited in what it can do in that many pages. Middle Game was like same to me as that it just spent much longer doing things that I weren't that I wasn't a huge fan of. I don't know this book gets a lot of love and I honestly don't understand why. There are some books this is why like I have some reviews so I don't get it because there are some books where I'm like this is not for me but I get like honestly books like like From Blood and Ash or Serpent and Dove a part of me a very small part of me kind of gets it because it's this like pulpy soapy like really oversaturated romance thing that like I think is awful I don't think the plot's very good and I don't like the people involved but I kind of get the like soap opera appeal of it if you're kind of living vicariously through it and if you're like into the smutty bits like I guess I get it uh kind of a little bit there's only books like this one where I'm like I honestly I don't get it I don't get it okay so what is middle game I don't even know how to explain it I realize now why I didn't really know that much about it going into it even though I'd seen a lot of people get up because it's a really difficult book to explain but so um okay um I guess the easiest is that there are two young people who there's like a lot of background for this but I don't want to be spoilery but so there's there's these two young people that are special and they are uh connected from birth but they are separated at birth and they're named Roger and Dodger which I know this is Jess off it makes sense in the book why their names okay I okay it doesn't make sense but there is a reason it's not just like their names are Roger and Dodger and like that's it and everyone just goes with how silly that is it's like hauled out in the text like ostensibly a reason a reason why that is a thing that their names like rhyme like that but anyway so these two young people a girl and a guy Roger and Dodger Roger being the guy Dodger being the girl they even though they're separated at birth they like are able to thank clearly and so they kind of regard each other as kind of like imaginary friends when they're kids well one of them does anyway but that's kind of how it's kind of what they are but there's like bigger things at play like the reason that they were separated birth like you know the the bigger powers that did this to them that have a stake in them and in what they can do begin to affect their lives and that's yeah I don't really know what else I can say without like going into the details of what this book is about and then we get to spoiler territory and we'll just like take this entire video to like explain this because it's like a really really weird book but anyway um I initially was into it when it was like just them as kids and they had just discovered this kind of connection between them and were talking to each other and that like that portion of the book I was like kind of into it and I was like okay like I think I'm gonna like this I didn't realize that that would be like the peak liking like I thought I was like oh this this is good and then I was excited for it to get better except it didn't and that was the good part so once it got very into it's like speculative part of it uh it totally lost me and I wasn't that into it to begin with so like initially I liked the characters of Roger and Dodger and like I was invested in them and in their like relationship I say relationship but it's it's a pretty platonic one so their friendship and their yeah I mean it is a relationship but they're very significant to each other but when they grew up and the more the plot got wibbly wobbly the more everything annoyed me and they annoyed me and the whole thing was just so bananas and I just couldn't buy into any of it I was just like no no so I believe this is getting a sequel um or at least a spin off or I saw another book that looks like it has the same cover or a similar in style cover that is also by Sean and McGuire it's an it's a stunning cover I know I was excited to watch to read it this thinking that before I actually read middle game and now I I'm unless I hear from people who disliked middle game and for some reason picked that book up and are like this one's actually really good I will not be picking that up so uh y'all be seeing this on pango soon sorry that was a horrible explanation but like honestly like if you have read it I feel like you're going to agree with me and if you haven't read it but you now do pick it up I think you'll agree that like you can't really explain it it's bananas the next book that I read was The Maidens by Alex Michael Eities Michael Eities I feel like I I learned how to pronounce it after putting this on my TBR and then the month has gone by and I forgot again I think it's Michael Eities Alex Michael Eities whatever Alex this is a very obviously dark academia if you watch my dark academia vlog majority of that vlog or at least the reading portion of that vlog was devoted to The Maidens and I kind of went in depth in that vlog talking about it so I don't have like a standalone review for this but I did kind of go over my thoughts about this a lot in that vlog um so I don't want to like beat a dead horse um this book has gotten a lot of like a lot of hype and then a lot of criticism from people that did pick it up and I liked it better than a lot of people seem to have but there's a very specific reason I think that I came away from it slightly better satisfied even though I still think it's a really deeply flawed book so this is dark academia it takes place in a university it takes there's like this sort of secret society-ish type situation these women who have this like charismatic professor and they refer to themselves as The Maidens and once again we have Greek classics um the POV character is a former student she's a group therapist so we have like weaving in of mental health and therapy and psychology with also like Greek classics and murder and I um as it was going along I felt like it was a very service level in terms of what it was drawing on for psychology as well as for our Greek classics I feel like if you're an expert either of those things you'd be like wow this is like basic one-on-one stuff like not nothing that like experts would be hitting on so like I was like uh but like I thought it set a good mood and I thought it was very uh like a page turny so like even as I was going along and thinking it was flawed I was like zipping through it because I was it was it was vibey and I wanted to know the mystery so I thought it was it was compellingly written even if it was poorly written if that makes sense and then people have criticized the main character and the thing is I don't disagree with their criticisms I just where I where I differ is that I don't feel like the the way that people talk about this character they seem to approach it with the assumption that the author wants you to think this character is intelligent and is smart and is is making good choices and that's where I differ I feel like there isn't there are signals in the text to the reader that you are meant to find the main character to be flawed that you are meant to question their judgment that you are meant to think that they are not necessarily a reliable narrator even so that's where we differ basically so like the way I've heard people criticize it has been like and the main character is so stupid I just couldn't believe it the way they talk about it makes it sound like they think the author thinks the character is smart and I don't think that's the case I was reading at the entire time thinking that the main character is sus and thinking again there are a lot of signals that I thought that were intentional like the author put them there to make you go oh can I even trust my POV character so that's why it didn't bother me that the POV character seemed like to me making wild decisions and wild emotional conclusions because people are like she's like such a bad detective she makes these wild leaps and I was like I don't disagree I just think that like that's a feature not a bug if that makes sense I think she's meant to be perceived that way so I mean maybe I'm giving Alex too much credit that's how I interpreted it so it definitely added to my enjoyment that that's how I was experiencing it if I had gotten the vibe that these other readers have that you're meant to think she's smart and clever I mean I would be annoyed AF but I just didn't get that vibe I didn't think I was meant to think that so I think it's a fun page turny read I don't think it's a very good book but I do think it's an enjoyable book so like I flew through it very quickly and enjoyed my time with it I just I mean it has a lot of flaws and like the the ending to it the conclusion the answer to the mystery is I don't know if it makes a ton of sense so it's not like a book that I'd want to reread it's not one of those where you like find the answer and you're like oh now I gotta go back and like see all the clues that I missed like I'm finishing I was like okay well whatever so I had a good time I don't think it's great but if you've got it if you've had your round if you're curious like I say read it it's short I flew through it in a day so if you want some dark academia vibes this will do it next up I read the Mary Shelley club by Goldie Maldovsky this I also talked a lot about in my dark academia vlog so even though I ended up talking a ton about them I kind of don't want to talk too much about this I also talked about this in a recent recommendations video I think maybe possibly this is basically kind of horror dark academia thriller type situation it's why it takes place in this like sort of elite school and there is this club that they call themselves the Mary Shelley club because they've taken their inspiration from the night on which Mary Shelley along with Percy Shelley and Byron and I think there was another person there but anyway the night that Frankenstein basically came to be because they had challenged each other to tell scary stories and Frankenstein was scary even though this club has like pretty much nothing to do with that they call themselves that because of that but what this club does is pull pranks on people outside of the club and those pranks are largely inspired by like horror and like in horror movies and the horror genre like they're all being horror buffs they love watching horror and so they're basically like enacting it irl to kind of see if like the things in horror movies would be genuinely scary in real life so they kind of challenge each other to this our main character is like new to the school experience something traumatic so she's like recently become kind of addicted to horror which she was using as a kind of a coping mechanism to kind of like face her fears so now she's kind of addicted to horror so she immediately wants to join the Mary Shelley club which is a secret club and um things kind of just like escalate from there initially i was not a big fan of this when i started it i was like i don't think i'm gonna like this but as it went on it grabbed me and by the end i was like oh gee oh gee oh gee because at first i was like for a horror book for a thriller this is neither horrific nor thrilling i don't feel any suspense i don't feel any interest or investment but again as it went on i was like oh oh there's something darker afoot oh my goodness i ended up having a really good time with this and i ended up giving it uh basically with the maidens i gave three and a half and lowered it to a three this i would have given three and a half but i raised it to a four so it's like a higher three and a half so yeah i i would recommend this um yeah next up i read the inheritance of orcadia divina i think i got it right this time the title visor at a kordova this i buddy read with angela from the literature science alliance she liked it at a whole heck of a lot better than me kill super ease i am the hardest to please i didn't hate this i just i thought that the beginning and i thought that the premise were far more interesting than the book ended up being and when i talked to angela about it there were a lot of things about it that like because this is not something that i this is not an experience that i've had so it's not something that i even noticed so i had sort of like retroactively slightly greater appreciation for some of the things that it was doing in terms of like representation of like um it's a hispanic family and there's just like various like specifics about how that family is depicted that angela uh zeroed in on and like it wouldn't have occurred to me because i have never i mean i've known a lot of hispanic people but i've never like lived in a hispanic household or really been uh felt like i had any kind of pressures that come from like uh internally to like that culture of that makes sense so like i wouldn't notice that it's being depicted one way or another of that makes sense so again when she was describing things that she was noticing about it i was like oh i mean retroactively like that's interesting but as i was reading it i was just this is a story about a family this is and this family is not that interesting to me and then like the way that it was structured and paced i felt like was to its detriment like i feel like there was a was a compelling way to do this and this wasn't it because the big sort of mystery that is kind or i guess it's a mystery basically the inheritance of orchidia divina so she's this it's matriarch and then she's like kind of magical-ish and now like her time is upon her and so the family is gathered because you know gotta say bye-bye because she's dying but now we also kind of have to like figure out where her magic kind of came from in the first place and now that they've sort of inherited their portion of it kind of it doesn't it's not exactly like that but kind of like that they have to basically like her past is kind of like caught up with her uh descendants rather than with her because she's dead so i just feel like i never felt like this was mysterious i never felt intrigued by any kind of enigma about it and i feel like it's partly because everything's kind of like told to you up front and nothing is really held back other than sort of like the answer to like kind of orchidia's backstory but her backstory was not it just it didn't feel mysterious or enigmatic is all i can say and i kept wanting it to i kept waiting to feel like absorbed in this mystery and absorbed in the sort of like strangeness of things and i was excited to have something that would be kind of like inexplicable but clearly a little bit magical and and it just i never felt the magic or the mystery of it so like the whole time i was just like it's fine i i don't i don't feel like i care about any of this and i think again the way it's paced and the way that information is like disclosed to you the like timing of that and i don't know i just feel like there are ways to like that things could have been held back more or could have been uh i mean i talked to angel a lot about this and some of it is like i mean it's specific to the book so you'd have to be reading it for me to be like so see you at this moment um so but just like broad strokes like throughout i was like i wish this had been written a bit differently because i feel like there's something like that at its core this is a story i'd be interested in and i just yeah so it's fine it's not a bad book there are things about it that i like i did think that like there there was the very lush and beautiful prose which i liked from the get go it was quite atmospheric at times um it's not in the way that i wanted it to be not in the very very magical mysterious way but there was definitely a sense of like i can taste the food in this scene i can see the the image that you're painting for me the family kind of each they for such a short book they do kind of have distinct personalities so there's some prose for you since i only gave you cons so i mean i didn't love it um angel i think i don't know if she loved it but definitely liked it a whole heck of a lot more than i did so trust her not me i guess that's i'm harder to please next step we'll do these together because i read them back to back i read well i reread the trouble with peace and then even though this wasn't part of the plan or part of my tbr i immediately read the wisdom of crowds by trover crombie and um this was the highlight of my month this was the highlight of my year the trouble with peace rereading it was phenomenal it was my as of its release it was my new favorite iber crombie book a dethroned all its predecessors so the pressure was on for wisdom of crowds i was like are you gonna dethrone trouble with peace and uh i have a review up where uh the thumbnail is that i cried iber crombie has never squeezed tears from me before so that's a new high a new low it's new anyway for him to achieve that if that's an achievement so i have a full review on my channel the first half of the dawn spoiler or the first part of an anyways dawn spoiler i don't know if it's exactly half but you can check it out even if you haven't read it um but then again the bulk i think the bulk of the review is spoilery where i explain why before i cried uh but yeah this is probably my new favorite iber crombie book it's i as again i dressed in that video i was like it's kind of weird to say that your favorite is the one that makes you cry but ah it was chef's kiss worth the wait i hyped it for myself more than it's possible to hype anything and it's still lived up so my year is over now because my whole year was leading up to this and this is done now so good night everybody the next book that i read was the goblin emperor by kathryn addison and i mean when i told uh this is the blades of bottom slippers booklet pick i picked it so the live show is on my channel this is my fault i i say fault i didn't hate this but i did not love it and when we talked about it on the live show and i mentioned that i mean i did read it right after wisdom of crowds which like certainly didn't help the juxtaposition there of like the best book of the year the best book never and then then to read this anything i read after it would certainly pale in comparison however i don't think that if i had read this at a different time i would feel any differently it would didn't really change everything um so again we have the live show on my channel if you want to see us talk about it bethanie and mara liked it a lot more than i did i actually Amanda like i mean they all liked it better than i did kill surprise this is of i don't know why you didn't say it so this is a fantasy book an adult fantasy book it's an award-winning fantasy book it was the locus award winner and then it was a finalist for nebula and hugo and a finalist for world fantasy i'm just like really her it's because it's not a bad book but when you see like all of those accolades you're like really there was nothing better out that year when people talk about this being like a very like political book i mean i honestly i disagree because the level of politics in here is not very intricate this book is about one character that is the only character that like actually gets development and it's about that character basically being a fish out of water and when we say politics it is more the politics of etiquette the politics of status the politics in fashion the politics of tradition and courtly life that he is navigating um and he's at a disadvantage both because he was kept away from it and because he is um halfling so most of these people are elves he's half goblin so like racism and that's the entire book i i kid you not i just told you the entire book that and and yeah that's it and just like a lot lots of that so if that sounds great to you then absolutely pick it up but if you're like seriously that's it don't read it because i'm i'm not kidding that's it so like the pros is fine correct use of the and thou a plus for that um there are again there's like one piece of the world building that i was genuinely interested in and then it's like not even a big part of the book and apparently the spin-off book is like really to do with that which i'm kind of more interested in i don't know if i trust this author because i didn't love this but that was the piece of it that i was like ooh and then they just like went away and that we're like oh we're not doing that in this book and i was like but that one was interesting so i might pick up the witness for the dead because that was like again the one piece of the world building that i was like oh i've never seen that before tell me man we're done with that okay so i i this is another like i don't get it next up i read reread dude by frank herbert and this edition is shiny af apologies for that my pretty one i gave to my dad which i think i mentioned in my tbr video so reread this for obvious reasons the same reason everyone else is reading this right now because of the movie i felt about it the second time exactly the same what i felt about it the first time which is to say it's fine i mean it's an extremely mixed bag because as i said when i first read it i think it's a classic for a reason i think it deserves to be a classic and it was a trend setter a genre progenitor it is all of those things i'm holding it down because it's so fucking shiny but okay i'll hold it here and and that being the case like it deserves credit but i have other authors taken these ideas and done these i does done these things better written them more compellingly less like in in less problematic ways yes so they could not have done those things i mean frank herbert walked so that they could run which is why i'm like credit where it's due like he started it he no one was doing this no one had done this so like a plus credit where it's due and it's good to sort of see the roots of this and admire it for the innovation that it was but like i mean the first airplane i think i i i forgot about this but i genuinely think this was my comparison when i reviewed this years ago so i really seriously did feel the exact same way because like i independently arrived at that comparison again but the first airplane that was ever invented it was the first and without that you couldn't have like what we have today but is it the best would you want to fly in one now so credit where it's due this was the first and there are things about it that are still good that i still even think are enjoyable but there's so much about it that i is not enjoyable and that could be like if this was if i was allowed to like take a hatchet to it and edit shit out of it um and change a lot of the pacing i mean well it would suit my taste anyway obviously the people who think this is a perfect masterpiece would murder me for doing that but i'm just saying like there's a lot here that's really good and i just there's it's baffling to me a lot of the decisions that are made in terms of again how to structure it how to pace it how to convey this information to the reader i'm like this is cool stuff that you've built this is cool information there's like a cool overarching like thing that's happening here you've done some cool world building the way you're delivering this to the reader like like why are you burying the lead why are you doing it in a way to make something that is actually so interesting you're making it boring and you're making it a tour and you're yeah anyway i have a lot of issues with that and then also like issues with things that like i guess you could say they haven't arranged well i don't know that they were fine even at the time that are just like oh no i mean the biggest like elephant in the room is baron harpinan you're just like really my guy really so like again so like that where i'm just like i don't know how you could defend that as being like a great part of a perfect masterpiece because i'm like it's not perfect because it has that in it that's indefensible so anyway i i mean i like that i got a refresher on it i will be very interested to see how what deni villanue does with this how faithful it is and which parts he will choose we already know that fade ratha is not going to be in the film but the film's also only really like the first half of dan and fade ratha does not play a big role in the sort of the first half of the book so that doesn't necessarily mean that he's taken fade ratha out of the equation entirely so i mean i'll again i'll just be curious to see what liberties he's taken with the story uh he's an excellent director so i have great faith that whatever he gives us will be quality unto itself regardless of how faithful it is to the source material okay the next book that i read was never more uh the first book in the um is the series called the trials of morgan crow or is that just like part of the title well regardless this is the first book um in a series and this is a buddy read with vish from books with v and both of us really enjoyed this and both of us intend to continue on with the series i already oh both of us actually have all of the books already it's kind of what it happened and this is just an absolutely charming middle grade fantasy book it has like a lot of this sort of like escapist whimsy and humor that uh people go to harry potter floor and for those of us who are like uh not comfortable with reading garland anymore because of reapsons and but you kind of want to like scratch that itch uh i think never more is a good option i actually i mean i have heard a lot of people say that and i would basically i'm saying i would concur it very much scratches that itch you have like the fun whimsical setting that is kind of this like kind of a portal fantasy it doesn't like take place in the real world and then we go to a fantastical place but there is a even more fantastical place than where our character is from and there are some like quirky adults and there are some interesting bizarre things about how this magic works the main character which is the thing that is uh also true of harry potter books and which is upsetting to me that it was not it never made it into the movies is how snarky the main character is because i mean in the books harry is kind of really snarky and that's kind of one of the things that i liked best about it was like his like kind of low key dead pan snark which again isn't in the movie at all so the main character morrigan crow is kind of snarky and kind of sassy and like you get that from her from like chapter one and as soon as i started this book i was like i don't know if i will end up liking this book or not it's way too really to tell but i know that i like morrigan crow so she like the book would be fine if she wasn't so great um but it's really like morrigan crow herself that makes this book a delight so i definitely definitely enjoyed this and again i'll definitely continue with the series and i would recommend the next book i read which might be a surprise and this was not well it is a surprise because it wasn't on my tbr but it's a surprise for another reason um and that was over the woodward wall by debra baker who is in fact shawna maguire so this book in middle game the young people because in middle game takes place like ostensibly in the real world um it's is it urban fantasy i don't know but it's in the real world and there's a book that is a children's book that they have both read and like it becomes significant to the plot it's just like a book in universe so this is that book so in the characters in middle game have read over the woodward wall they talk about it the way we would talk about alison wonderland or the wizard of osso this is that book and i liked this initially a great deal i thought that i was going to come away going well middle game was horrible but i'm so glad that like i mean that middle game exists because without middle game we wouldn't have gotten over the woodward wall however the latter half of over the woodward wall kind of went off the rails and i thought it was a standalone because this book as far as i remember in middle game is always referred to kind of as like a standalone book just the way that like peter ban or alison wonderland is i mean there is through the looking glass but like it's like a book um and this is actually the start of a series i thought this would wrap up conclusively and it absolutely did not so like that would have been at least like a solid full circle payoff and then we didn't even get that it just like went off the deep end and then stayed in the deep end because we never like made our way back out again so i did enjoy this more than middle game the writing style did have more of the sort of like whimsy and had that alison wonderland kind of vibe so i enjoyed it again a great deal to begin with and then it just stopped making sense altogether and the characters no longer were interesting or compelling to me and it was just wild so i do i recommend it's extremely short so like maybe give it a go um if you already like shawarma wire um if you read it but like next up i read the ivies by alexa dunne this is my first alexa dunne and i liked it i didn't love it but i kind of feel about this similarly as i did the maidens where um although this has less concrete flaws and is more just kind of like it's not that great a book but i just had a great time with it like i was interested the entire time and even though i think again i don't think it is that is breaking any boundaries i don't think the plot is that innovative or creative i don't think there's anything that clever about it i don't think the characters are like extremely deep in their characterization or anything like that but it's written in a way that it's like page turning where you like want to know the mystery or you keep wondering who did the doing of the who done it it's dark akademia so like you have that vibe um of this like elite school and people being cut throughout so it was it was a good time so yeah i wouldn't go like oh this book is amazing i was just like oh that was a good time like i flew through it and it's really short um but i also just flew through it because it was compelling and i think i said this in my tbr that i was hoping um that it might give off kind of like fourth season of riverdale vibes um which is the season which jughead goes to an elite boarding school uh and there's a kind of like dark akademia subplot in riverdale i was like if it gives off dark akademia riverdale vibes i'm here for it and funnily enough i mean i would say they kind of did honestly mary and shelly club more so gave off uh riverdale vibes but again funnily enough in the ivies they mentioned riverdale um which i thought was hilarious because as soon as i heard that i was just like i feel attacked because like that's what i compared it to before even reading it so that was kind of a fun moment for me personally any of these if you're in for like a soapy gaspy time i think this will deliver like don't expect too much from it is basically what i'm saying it's a good time it's not an amazing time it's not a great time but i mean it was enjoyable it kept me turning the page second to last i read tigana by guy gabriel k and this is the book that my patrons chose for me to read and vlog for them so i have done so and i gave this two stars so you can add this to liana's bad takes i don't think i'll be posting like a standalone review because i kind of like got it all out when i was vlogging and i just don't feel like revisiting that plus i've been burned so many times posting negative reviews of extremely popular books and then having to deal with unreasonable people who take personal offense at the fact that i just liked a book that they did not write but yeah this was not not for me for many many reasons i didn't think the prose was all that good there was even a sentence that that i distinctly remember i think there was more than one but one that i distinctly remember was grammatically incorrect there was a lot of sentence like this construction of sentences where i was just clunky and didn't flow and i was like this is supposed to be beautiful prose like this i'm stumbling over all of these sentences it was constantly telling and not showing and the characterization was like very weak in my opinion they felt like cardboard cutouts and then the main thing that tigana is about the the fact like the the overarching like what is tigana what is it that people are kind of doing here i take borderline personal offense at which i don't really want to talk too much about um but i am i don't it would bother me a great deal so i was just never gonna be on board with this or at least not the way that it is written i think you could write something like this with similar themes in a way that i would adore this wasn't it this again was borderline personally offensive to me so yeah not not a win for me and last i read miss peregrine's home for peculiar children i did start this early in the month but i only just finished it today this is the first book in the peculiar children series and this is a series that i've been wanting to start for a very long time mainly because of the aesthetic of it it just looks like it would be my jam and the main thing that i enjoyed about it was the aesthetic all of these like photographs that are peppered throughout like like so which i learned at the end of the book i was wondering i was like did they hire actors for this but they are all actual real old photographs that like people have collected and he used so basically this is like a jukebox musical except instead of songs they are photographs that we're kind of working into the plot in a way that like kind of fits like in a jukebox musical with a lyric already written for you and you kind of build a story around that and it feels like it i didn't know that like as i was reading it i was just like i didn't find it all that compelling and then when i learned that these photographs just already existed and he was weaving a story around these existing photographs it's like oh well maybe that explains it yeah i just i kept wanting to like it and i didn't ever hate it there was no point where i was hating it it just failed to keep my interest i just wasn't invested in anything going on i was in particular invested in the main character the thing i liked best about it was the times when we would call attention to these photographs and i would have reason to look at them and to kind of really examine them and there was a moment when kind of about the big reveal on like kind of what the big bad is and that was like a bit spine-tingling i will admit but i was like i when i got to that i was like oh okay now off we go is not a disappointment which from here on out i'm gonna be riveted and absolutely not i got right back to being bored i saw the movie when it came out ages ago and obviously at the time i had not read the book and i remember i saw it in theaters and i remember liking it but not loving it i remember feeling like i did get kind of bored with it so i was really hoping to like the book better and i obviously didn't but i did would just re-watch the movie after having read the book and um it had been so long it was almost a new movie there was like a couple scenes that just like stuck out in my memory and honestly those were scenes that aren't in the book so part of me when i was reading the book i was like is that gonna happen ever i guess not but so yeah no immediately after i finished the book i watched the movie and i like the movie a whole heck of a lot better now like i genuinely kind of love the movie a lot more than like i felt about the movie now the way that i had hoped to feel then and i don't know if i was just like in a weird mood when it came out or like or what but i really liked it now and i think a lot of the changes it makes to like from the source material are good changes the biggest change being the main character he's kind of the worst like not so much that i kept like actively hating him but he's kind of the worst he's like very privileged and very whiny about it and he's kind of insufferable not in such a way where you're constantly aggravated by it but like he kind of is like it's really hard that's i feel like it's why i didn't connect with him because it was just really hard to like find sympathy for him whereas they they kind of took away a lot of the things that he doesn't says in the book in the movie version making him immediately more sympathetic because he wasn't such a twat so um i think i'll continue the series i own the next two books as i'm kind of i mean the movie kind of ends and the movie is kind of similar and kind of faithful until it takes a sharp left turn and does its own thing and i don't know if the thing that it does is drawn from other books or if it just like was tim Burton being like i want to do this because where this ends like very different movie ends so i'd be curious to see kind of where the books go and i i own them already and i like looking at the pictures so i'll give it i'll keep going and see if it gets better um but the first book so all right and those are all the books that i read in september let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about the books that i read and about your thoughts and feelings about my thoughts and feelings whatever you want to let me know i post somebody else on saturdays other random times as well nothing saturdays as well like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you