 And welcome back to my channel, it is time for another episode of Booktube Twin Test. So this is a series where I put different Booktubers to the test, they each give me three books that they love that they think I'm gonna love and I read them and we find out who my Booktube twin is. This is the award from the first couple episodes, so today the Booktuber who we're gonna be paying for death today needs to get like 13.5 I think to beat Kayla. Now the Booktuber I'm sure you've all seen by the time so that we're gonna be putting to the test is Mara from Books Like Woe. Quite a few of you have said Mara, I'll put you up on the screen now and I agree, I concur. Mara and Kayla are probably the two Booktubers I watch the most and Mara I've been watching more and more in the past few years, year and a half. As I've been getting more and more into mystery she's someone who I've really been looking to for recommendations and getting a lot of great recommendations from. So this is probably the episode of Booktube Twin Test that like I've been most excited for since we did that first one with Kayla and I feel, I feel the most positive vibes towards. You know I feel like it's gonna happen. Just gotta keep positive and keep busy. I just can't wait. I don't know what we're gonna get. I feel like she could go a lot of different ways but I'm just excited to see. So let's go ahead and watch the video that Mara has sent over. So if you haven't seen this before they each give three recommendations and how many stars I give each book correlates to the amount of points they get. Okay let's do this. Well hello Ms. Meg. Hey. I have been on quite a journey to find your TBR because I, so when you message me it would, I may or may not have been looking at Instagram during a work meeting and so I may or may not have fully seen the Twin Test part so I initially was like oh she just wants me to pick some books for her to read. I have some ideas. So I grabbed some things that I thought that you would like but not all of them were ones I like. I mean I think you're like me. You're a good time gal. You like it. Just a fun thriller. I did. This one I was so so on but it's all vibes with little plot and I know that you love stuff like that, the Wilder Girls and you know. Oh my god. Not Mara exposing me. Anything to see if you liked. And then you know if you like the love hypothesis that means you like a grumpy hero with a big eggplant. Oh my god. This had some nice fanfiction quality but when I went back and actually like fully read your message and realized it was Twin Test I was like oh okay that won't work because not these are not favorites. So then I was like okay let me think through some of my all time favorites, things that I absolutely love and that I think have some connection for you and I was thinking about it and I was like yeah okay but some of these are risky and I thought to myself self do I want to win? Do I want to unseat Lala? Am I coming for Kayla's crown and I realized that yes I am, I'm a very, listen our whole family is super competitive, there have been fistfights over Scrabble which is especially ironic considering all of us are terrible spellers. Okay hold up, hold up. So I saw Library about Child had been a good pick, I didn't want to read that. I saw Nora Roberts, I've never read Nora Roberts. I know Mara loves Nora Roberts, has read like almost all of her books. My mum loves Nora Roberts, she reads a lot of Nora Roberts romance books and she reads a lot of JD Rob which is Nora Roberts like speculative thriller I think kind of thing or just thriller, maybe thriller romance, I'm not, I can't remember. But like that's an alias she writes under, my mum has a lot of them and Mara mentioned recently a JD Rob that you can start with because the series been going on for like 30 years or something shit. She mentioned one that you could start with, a recent one and I have been planning to start with that but I never would have thought of Nora Roberts for me personally. So I'm competitive, I want to win and I don't think that these are winners, they could be. I'll kick myself a few into reading these later and loving them but I'm going for what I hope is a winning stack. Okay so final recommendation, I am going with three mysteries. All of these are favorites, all time favorites like top 100 books I've ever read and all of these are a variant, a different flavor of a mystery because you like a mystery and I feel like this is what is a better winning strategy. I do! This is so exciting, I was hoping Mara would pick mysteries because I don't get to read mysteries a lot in these kind of videos where my TBRs picked for me by someone else or like I don't know, by like an app or whatever because mysteries aren't as read and I love like mysteries, not thriller mysteries, mysteries and Mara gets that and I'm like oh my god I'm so nervous, I'm actually about to cry. So first up, like maybe let's just start with the one that is very on-brand for me and I saw that you had this shelf so I think that you have some interest in this. Death on the Mile by Agatha Christie. Okay I am the Christie gal and this is a classic who done it. This is one of her very best books in terms of the writing is great, the characterization is super interesting, I think it has some interesting themes. I also saw that you loved Murder on the Orient Express and I think that this is the book closest to that in her uvra. We got a lot of like foreign travel vibes, it's just like a lovely escapist good time. So the movie just came out so you can read this and then see the movie but I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with Death on the Mile as a TBR pick. Okay let's quickly chat about that. So when I sent Mara this message I almost said don't pick an Agatha Christie. I'm gagging. I almost said that because many of you know, essentially my Agatha Christie journey, I read Murder on the Orient Express, I loved it, I gave it five stars, it is still my favorite Agatha Christie I have ever read. I love the format of it with like all the interviews that happen and then what I've done is I've gone back and I'm reading the pro-ro series in order. So the next one I have to read is Perilla Endhouse and I was pretty sure that wasn't one of Mara's favorites. I was like I don't want to read it out of order. There's no reason you need to read it out like in order, really the pro-ro series you can read them out of order but I was like I'm reading them in order so I almost said don't pick one but then I thought you know I love Agatha Christie, Mara is like the epitome of loving Agatha Christie and she's a big reason as to why I want to read more Agatha Christie so I feel like it would have been a disservice for me to say that. So I'm actually really glad. I've been so excited to read Death on the Nile. I haven't shelved because I own it because I bought a special edition of it. Can you see it? It's like there I think. I bought the HarperCollins special editions that they do that I absolutely love. There's my Murder on the Orient Express one, I absolutely love them. So that's why I had it shelved but I was not expecting to read that for like a couple years until I got to that point in the series but it's all good. I'm excited. Okay. Then we're going to go to a mystery that has a that is speculative. So I picked The Rook by Daniel O'Malley and this one is our protagonist wakes up in someone else's body and that someone else is in a super secret magic slash sciency speculative ministry and they have to figure out who killed the person whose body they're in and why and they also have to figure out how to do the job that that person was doing. And it also actually it also got adapted into a TV show. This one is just so fun. It has purposeful disorientation which is really fun. I don't know. It's just like rompy, good times. Again, very entertaining, high concept mystery. So I think that this could also be a winner for you. I'm excited for that. I have never heard of it. I have no. Oh, that's scary to me though. I don't think I've ever had a book in a twin test yet that I haven't even heard of. I've even heard of The Rook. So I don't know. I don't know what to expect, but she said something about like a person waking up in someone else's body. Although I didn't like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I liked that feature of it, like waking up in all these different characters' bodies. It sounds like it's just one in this one, but um, yeah, oh my god, oh my god, I'm terrified. And then my last one is more of like kind of horror mystery stuff because Simone St. James always has sort of like a paranormal element in her mystery. This one is set at a creepy boarding school in one of the timelines. So I feel like that works for some of your dark academia or dark like creepy school things that you've liked. And the writing is great. This is one of the only multiple timelines that I really love in a mystery thriller. And I think this could also be a winner. I am so excited. I've got cases which are the newest release, but I've been wanting to pick up Simone St. James for ages, partly because of Mara. This looks like what we're starting with. I'm also intrigued actually because she said dual timeline and she liked that. And I know we both, we both have this issue of when there's dual timelines not liking that because you prefer one over the other. So I'm excited to put that to the test and see how I feel about that this time. So I'm going to be really sad if I'm totally striking out, but I'm coming for Kayla's throat. Oh my god! I want to win this. I want to move up the leaderboard. So these are my picks for you. And thank you so much for thinking of me. This was so fun. I'm going to try not to be too disappointed if I don't take the crowd. But anyway, I hope you at least medium enjoy these books. And thank you for asking me. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so they are the three books that we're going to be reading. I feel good about this, you know. I feel like we're going to rate these high. I'm feeling very, very positive. I feel very excited. I own definitely enough. I need to go purchase the other two. So I will check in with you in a bit when I've decided what to start with. I don't know what I'm going to start with out of these. Right. A hundred pages into the book and I'm loving it. Well, today is going to be the best day ever. Okay, I will, I want to promise before we get into the like topic, um, discussing what the book is about, I want to say this book is long. It's almost 500 pages. The font is small. It takes a long time to read the topic. You really have to like read everything very carefully. It's not like a quick read. So like reading these first hundred pages has taken me like hours, which it wouldn't usually, but I'm still loving it. So essentially our main character wakes up in London surrounded by corpses with latex gloves on them. And she's like, what? She quickly finds out she is not the person whose body this used to be. Her mind has somehow come into this body and this woman was someone else previously and she knew this was going to happen to her. So she has left notes to our protagonist, explaining the situation and kind of helping her live her life. So her life is, I don't want to spoil too much because I didn't know too much going into it, but basically she's like high up in this secret society for magical people. That's what I'm going to say. It's like very like bureaucratic kind of like behind the scenes of English government like, you know, powerful people, do you know what I mean? That kind of situation. So we kind of have two protagonists in a way. We have our point of view character now and we have the old main character who we have letters from and then occasionally we have chapters where we've already had like flashbacks explaining, well not flashbacks. I think it's part of the wider sort of like dossiers of stuff basically explaining her life to our point of view character. So I think it's excerpts from that that we get sometimes as a whole chapter. And you guys, this is so interesting. It's such a like detailed complex fantasy with a mystery element. I'm loving the detail and the complexity of it so I don't mind that it's taken me forever to read. Yes, we're the anxious because I do want to get this video out this weekend and it is Wednesday. So like, you know, I better get fucking reading. I want to try and finish this today. That's not happening. I get the sense it's just going to be so detailed and so much go on. It reminds me of like Jade City, Jade War Jade Legacy and like the level of like detail and world building and like characters were meeting and like it's so interesting being this character who's literally just like landed in this earth is like what the fuck? Right? It's so interesting because she knows nothing. Like we know nothing about this secret society. I'm saying secret society. I don't know if that's quite the right term but you get what I mean. She doesn't know the rules of it. She doesn't know who the people are. She doesn't know all the linguistics they use. Like she's like balls to the wall trying to fake it. Do you know what? I can't believe how much I'm loving it. I actually started this last week and it was like too detailed. It was like, oh, I need like to take a break. So I went away, read something a bit easier and I've come back and it's so good. It does take ages to read. Like I'm not even like consciously thinking, oh, this is taking me so long. But when I look at how many pages I'm reading per half an hour, for example, it's like 20, which is very low for me. How are you? 20. Anyway, yeah. I'm just loving the detail, loving the characters, loving the two kind of main protagonists that we have. I think it's so interesting and so different to anything I've ever read. I'm absolutely loving it. Also, look at Lux. This is just where he permanently is. Look at him. Hang on. Tell me that ain't the cutest. Look at him. He loves to sit in between these yellow pillows. Oh, I love him so much. He's so cute, even if he gets mud all over my bed, all over it. He's the gross cat in case you were wondering. Right, we need to chat. We need to chat. I have no clue when I last checked in with you. I have no clue. Like in terms of, I know I checked into the 100 pages in roughly, but I have no idea what it was. It was probably like a week and a half, two weeks ago. Genuinely, it was probably that long ago. My maths isn't great, but it was maybe a week. Maybe I'm being dramatic. I don't know. But yeah, your girl has not been reading. I just haven't been reading. So I did a video a couple of weeks ago where I read seven books in seven days following seven read-a-thons. And I spoke a bit about it in that video, but I basically was ill for like the entire latter half of that video. And I just didn't want to be there doing it. Then when I'm ill, I don't want to be filming myself. I don't really want to be reading, but I forced myself through it. The train was already running. We were already going. I was like, stop in the video. So I carried on. I did it and, you know, reading seven books in seven days whilst not the easiest thing is something I can definitely do. I often for vlogs, might read a book in a day and stuff. But I think forcing myself to do that to the video when I wasn't in the mood to read has put me. I wouldn't call it a slump, but just after that, I haven't wanted to read. And I've kind of honored that and not made myself read until now. When I've got three days to finish this video, I need to finish the book in three days. It's crazy. It's crazy. I think this is crazy. But I'm actually, now that I've had that break, I'm actually excited. I'm excited to like read these books quickly because I'm so excited for them. They're all like five-star predictions. And this book, I love it. I love it. It's a lot, right? Like it does take a lot. It's not a quick read. Don't come into the thinking it's a quick read. It's not. It takes a long time to read. But yeah, I might be loving it. Yeah, I might be loving it. I might be loving it. Some books you read, right? And you're like, this was like the second draft. You needed to like, you know, a story is too simple, you know? And you're like, this needed to go, you know, through the ringer a bit more. This feels like it's like the 20th draft of a book. It feels similar to me in terms of like, Jade War and Jade Legacy in its complexity and its level of detail where the author knows the world so, so, so, so well. That you're like, how did a human being come up with this? Like, it's like, how is that even possible? It's so good. Like the level of depth when you're reading certain scenes, I love, this may be ridiculous, but I love when I have, when I read a book that I'm like, this isn't objectively like furthering the plot. Like it's just there to give us depth. I love my work. I love my life. I love the interspersions of where past her has written this kind of purple folder, wherever it's called, purple binder of all this information, of all the different places and people in this like secret world. Again, it's called the, the checkie, checkie, checkie. Oh, don't ask me. Don't ask me to pronounce things. Yeah, she's written all this stuff and she, the character, the present day characters kind of read all that stuff, but you're being fed it as and when it's important the present day plot. It's just, it's just so well done. It's really, really well done. And there's certain things that our present day character doesn't know, but other characters around her, her know about her, that then they're, they're feeding to her when they kind of figure out stuff. And it's just, it's so interesting. It's so interesting. There's a lot of funny jokes and there's about like administration because it sounds when you, when you like administration, like when you pitch in like the secret kind of governmental society. So it's all so intriguing, but like the whole main character is essentially, it's just a lot of paperwork. Like she does a lot of like the kind of admin behind the scenes. And so whilst it is this fun, exciting, secret society, at the end of the day, it's like, it's still like an administration. Like it's like, you know, it's still got all the paperwork and it's still people's place of work that they can get fed up with. And I just think that's really funny and something you don't, it's got this kind of self-awareness that you don't often see in books. And I would say already, I'm, I didn't tell you how far in I am on page 300. Sorry. So I've got that left to read. I've got about 180 pages left to read. I would say it's my favorite present day urban fantasy so far that I think I've ever read. I can't really think of something, perhaps something like Ninth House. Yeah. Okay. Perhaps something like Ninth House is up there as well. But in terms of like, I've never read anything like this that I've loved as much as I, as much as I have. The writing is absolutely incredible and crazy. I wanted to say incredible and crazy. It's crazy incredible. The two protagonists kind of, well, two protagonists. It's the same person, but like they're bleeding into one another and you're, you're liking and like feeling for both of them, whilst also like they're the same person, but they're not. It's just so interesting. I'm, I'm confused because. And there was a twist about 30 pages ago that, whoa. It was so good. I love books. I spoke about this with something like they'll never learn. I love, and some people will say it's a spoiler. It's not a spoiler to say there's a twist coming. I would love that. If you tell me there's a twist halfway, I'll go, give it to me now. But there's a twist, like I love books where there's a twist out halfway. I love it that completely switches up what's happening in the story. You've been lured into a sense of false security and you, you switched up on. And I love it. I love when that happens so, so much. I'm just loving this book. It's a slow read. So I'm not reading it fast, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm really, really enjoying it. It is a series, but I'm, listen, I'm happy to be taken along with this series. I don't think it's finished yet. The second one has come out, I think with those ones coming out end of this year, perhaps start of next year. But, um, yeah. And now we're just going to be reading bitches for the next couple of days and just read loads. That's the, so anyway, I am going to go out in the garden and finish this and then hopefully we'll serve them some time this evening to read a good chunk of our next book as well. It took me like 10 days to read. I mean, now we're giving it five stars. Mara starts off with five points. And I felt like at the start of this, this was the most risky book. I feel like Death and the Nile with it being the most similar to Murdoch on the Orin Express, which I gave five stars. We have a good possibility of five stars there. And so most of James, I've wanted to read for so long. Like, I want to get too ahead of ourselves, but if Mara gets 15 points, do we just stop the series? Like, has it reached its point? Like, is that it? Wishful thinking. Yeah. You're a dreamer. You dream a lot in your sleep. I really enjoyed this. Perhaps I feel like the ending I didn't enjoy quite as much as like the middle I absolutely loved. But I think I was just like a little bit stressed when I was reading it. Like I wasn't like in my optimum reading capacity, do you know what I mean? But yeah, I really, really loved it. Now I feel like I haven't mentioned what the whole special powers thing. So basically this whole secret, I feel like I didn't mention this at the start, which is, you know, this from the start, so whatever. This whole secret society is made up of people, often children. Well, they were discovered when they were children, now they're adults in the secret situation with special powers, right? And our protagonist's special power, it doesn't feel like a spoiler, you find it out very early on, is she can kind of like manipulate people's bodies to like do what they, she wants them to do, kind of anyway. And they all have special powers. I just feel like I had to mention that because it's kind of like a key point in the plot and I left it out. One thing I will say is there is a lot of different characters in this. I would have appreciated a character list, like at the beginning or something. I just feel like there's a lot of different characters. There were points where I was forgetting who was who just for a moment. And then when you read into the scene and like read the context around them, you're like, oh yeah, I know who you are. But like when you first see them again, you're like, who are you? I could be walking down the street. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know a thing. Sorry to this man. There's a lot of men basically high up in this institution. And I was like, hang on, I'm getting a bit confused here. There's a lot, there's a lot going on. So I think a character list at the start would have really helped. It's funny, it's very, I feel like you don't get that right at the start, but it's very like full of humor in a really good way. Like our main character will come out with very sarcastic one-liners. I found the whole idea of her being like someone who has no idea who she is and yet forming an identity. Very, very interesting. I will say, I was saying this on reading sprints earlier today of my patrons. If you want to join the Patreon, links in the bio. But it's one step away from being clever man syndrome. No one ever got me here for saying this, but sometimes you read books by men and it's like, oh, I'm so clever. Oh, look at how little bask in the glory of how clever I am. It's one step away from being that. It teeters on the edge of me being annoyed. Like if it was one or two steps more, I'd be like, I hate it. Do you know what I mean? I do like books that know they're clever. Usually they're by women, usually like women being clever. But this is by man. Yeah, it's like one step away from being overly in the know of how clever it is. Does that make sense? But it's not there, which means I can love it and bask in the glory of it and think it's amazing. And I will say it is info dumpy with the past main character writing all these letters about the institution and that's where all this detail comes from. That is info dumpy, but in like a good way. Not in a way that I'm like, you know, isn't a good way. So we start off with five points. I can't believe it. This was absolutely amazing. An absolute favorite knocked out of the park. It was so good. I'm going to start Death on the Nile. And I'm hoping to get at least halfway through this. Act of the Christie is always a pretty quick read. So I'm hoping to get halfway through it. I believe the audiobook on Scribd is narrated by the guy who plays Parot in a lot of the the famous TV show in Britain. So yeah, I love this edition. I'm so excited to read it. And I'm hoping that we will get halfway through it tonight. Bare minimum. I want more, but bare minimum halfway. So you better pay you can pay for me to have a new set of extensions. The fucking hair is threshold. But I'm halfway through Death on the Nile. Can you are you proud of me? It took me let me take my hair out. It took me 10 days to read the book and it's taken me two hours to read half of this book. Varsity different. I was actually saying to my mom, it's very interesting how the book is so like detailed. Oh my God. The window like because it's hot, but like the wind just blew and drew it. All the bugs back. It was scary. It was really scary. Deadly long legs flying. It's scaring me. No, stop coming towards me. Please, please, please stop it. Oh my God. What's on my books? It's there. And I spun him. I don't know where it went. Oh, I see it. Okay, we're going to try and talk. The book is so detail oriented and like Miss Agatha said, details like nothing gets described in this book like settings. You just kind of know like when she says a steamer boat or, you know, going down the Nile. You kind of know what to envisage. She doesn't you just do a lot of description. It's basically just people having conversations, you know. And yeah, I'm loving it. I'm loving it. It's up there as one of my favorite antiquities so far. I love these closed isolated settings for these stories. We've got a really interesting mix of characters. Essentially, the opening of this book is about this one woman who we focus a lot on getting married. And when they find out that she gets married, it kind of spurs a lot of the other characters into action. And it's just really, it was a really interesting premise that set us up for the murder. And the murders literally just happened. The last line of the chapter, I just finished halfway was then who then had shot blank. And it's very dramatic. And I'm just really loving it. Like Agatha Christie just like gets what I want. It's fun, quick, lighthearted in a way reads. And I'm just loving it. The mystery is being planted very well. I fucking love when we have a map. Let me show you. Map of the boat. Yes, please. Yes, please. Yeah, I'll take a map on the boat. Yeah, I'll take that. And we just got a lot of interesting like betrayal and revenge on these themes on Poro in the middle of it. Like, I was trying to take a fucking holiday, bitches. Like, and I'm out here having to solve another case. I was saying to my mom, actually, she was saying how she read a lot of Agatha Christie. Like she went on Agatha Christie like binge when she was 12. And I was like, bitch, why don't you put me on them? Like I'd never read Agatha Christie until a year or two years ago, maybe. And I just love mysteries. I just love mysteries. Okay. I love mysteries. And there's something about this is my first Agatha Christie novel I've read in about a year. I read short stories at Christmas, but this is my first novel in about a year. And I'm just loving it. I'm loving the experience reading it. So I'm going to go to bed and then I'll probably finish off the other half in the morning. It's super quick, super fun, super easy. And I think it was the perfect order to read in, like to read the book first, then read this after it because I'm enjoying them both so much, but for very different reasons. It's the next day. I finished this little now. And I'm going to get five stars. Yep. I'm going to get five stars. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Mara has got 10 points from two books. Mara has a 100% success record. Five in here. I can't believe that. I actually can't believe that. Difficult books to talk about because the thing with Agatha Christie is she's just like, for me anyway, pure escapism, right? Sorry. I'm like, you're on the bed. I'm shaking you a bit. I'm shaking. She's just fun to read, quick. Enjoyable. Poro is one of the most fun characters to just like dive into an experience. But unlike the book where I had so much to say because there's so much detail, I don't have as much to say with this. But I think this is actually up there. Some of the best Agatha Christie writing I've read. I think because I've read a lot of her earlier stuff where she's still like honing her craft, then going and reading a book that's much later in the kind of series. It's a very different reading experience. It's really, really fun. And I feel like her writing was just magnificent. I also felt like in this book, the characters, the red herrings, the way that the characters' backgrounds are slowly revealed and like developed upon. I just thought it was wonderful. It was just fun. I just had so much fun reading it, you know? There's not much more to say than that. I just had the best time. Agatha Christie just gets what I love to dive into. And for me, mysteries are my favorite thing to read. I can 100% say it now. I remember I was on a live on Kayla's channel, like, it must have been like a year and a half ago now, and we got the question, what's your favorite genre? And I couldn't answer it. Everyone else was like, mystery. Megan, it's mystery. I was like, oh, I don't know. But like, I'm 100% a certified mystery fan now. I just, there's something about it that I find, especially books like this, like Agatha. I haven't read an Agatha Christie for like a year of the novel. And I really miss it. So I'm looking at my next two in the series to read Parallel Endhouse and Lord Edgware Dies. And I'm just like, I'm so excited. I, something about them just makes me feel very comforted and happy and there's a nostalgia in it, even though I didn't read these when I was younger and I didn't read a lot. I didn't really read any mysteries. I read a lot of like paranormal fantasy romance a la Twilight when I was a kid. We all make choices, but that was a choice. So I never got into mysteries, but something about it feels very nostalgic and comforting. My one drawback I guess I would say is that like, especially when you can go on into a book where Agatha Christie is writing in a foreign country, like there's some problematic elements. But I will say I was listening to the audiobook and reading along physically and in the physical version, which is obviously a new release, they have altered all of that. They've pretty much gotten rid of all of the like bad phrasing that's used in the book and replaced it. And you can view that two ways, right? It can be like, is that erasing the problemativeness of Agatha Christie? I would argue it's good because it's like adapting these novels for a modern audience. And I mean, I'm not like saying we all say stuff that's bad, but I'm sure in like 80 years time or whatever, because like this is written like 80 years ago, there will be certain things, not that I really think that we do, but I think there will be things that are outdated, perhaps not problematic, but they're outdated. And I'm glad they have endeavoured to adjust that. Now, people have different opinions on that, and I think it is a nuanced conversation. I always think it's a nuanced conversation that I try not to shy away from. When I do read Agatha Christie, I think some people like don't mention it, but I'd always try to mention, yeah, there's some parts of this, if you're listening to an audiobook, you're like, eh, girl, we don't say that. That is not good. There's a difference, of course, between shitty, because there's a few times shitty characters in this, say shitty things. I'm like, well, you're a shitty person. So like, it's not, you know, out of the realms, but there's other points where it's like in the descriptions of stuff, and that's when I really have a problem. So I would just like warn against that if you're listening to an audiobook, if that's something that's gonna upset you, be warned of that, but it had gotten rid of pretty much one of it in the physical version. So, yeah, listen. We're gonna start now. It is, what time is it? It's five o'clock. I need to edit a bit more of this vlog, and then I'm gonna start The Broken Girls by Simone St. James. Our final book. I'm so excited. I want Mara to get a home run. I want this to be a five star. I'm not accepting anything less. I don't know. I just don't think this is like great for me. I don't want to do it. I want to go home. Like, I can't take the pressure of it. But don't you think any job interview... But if this gets a 3.5 or more, Mara's top of the leaderboard. I'm so happy. Mara just gets what I want. This is what I'm saying. This is why I watch every single one of Mara's videos without fail as soon as it comes out, because I just think we have very similar reading tastes. So I'm very excited to have my first Simone St. James, I don't really know much about this, so I'll check them with you probably at halfway with my thoughts and kind of a synopsis. But yeah, let's go get a final five star. I'm feeling, I'm feeling like our luck is, you know, luck is on our side. Okay, so. Let me actually hosting. You can't see. My reading sprints for Bekah's Bacopla Thun, which she's running this weekend. I'm hosting my sprints for Nukul, which are going great. There's so many of you here. I can't believe it. And I've been reading The Broken Girls, and I've now reached halfway, and I'm loving it. Oh my God. Okay, it's happening. Everybody stay calm. What's the procedure, everyone? What's the procedure? Stay f***ing calm. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Mara, what are you doing to me? Honestly, this is like, this is actually, I can't believe it. I'm loving it so much. So basically in this, we have two timelines. We have in the 1950s, these four roommates, and we're getting each of their perspectives, like dotted around these roommates at this boarding school for troubled girls essentially. And then in the present day, we're following this journalist, she's the only perspective we have in the present day, whose sister was murdered on the grounds of this abandoned boarding school 20 years ago, and she's trying to like, the school is being renovated, so she's looking into that, and then a body is found at the boarding school during the renovations. And it's like, oh, so might I say James? Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm. Her descriptions are incredible. The way she describes things are so vivid and atmospheric, like I'm, I can't, I actually feel a bit overcome with how much I am loving this and have loved all the books in this video. Like what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? How do we move on from here? I actually mara to pick what I read every day. Apparently the two timelines, equally interesting. I'm equally drawn into both of them. And that then like so very rarely happens to me, but because they're kind of these two independent stories, I think I don't often like flashbacks, but they're these two independent stories that intersect in ways and relate in ways, but they're not dependent on one another to be interesting. I think that really helps. I'm just, I just can't believe I'm liking both timelines, like equally, and I'm so excited to get back to either one. This is what when they do dual timeline, people are trying to do, they want you to be so excited to get back to the other timeline or get back to the perspective that you'll like want to read both quick. And they never do it. They never do it in the way I want, but this book is, I've spoken about it before. Let me know I love playing Nancy Drew back in the day, right? I was a Nancy Drew girl, even as a kid, me and my granddad used to play it all the time together. And this has strong Nancy Drew vibes, but in like kind of disparate parts. So in the present day, the journalist is doing all this investigating and she just reminds me of Nancy Drew, like the way she's like scouring through old records and like calling people up on the phone. Oh my God, it's so cool in the audio book. When she speaks to someone on the phone, they sound like they're on the phone. Like it's kind of like grainy kind of sound. And in the past, it's set in the 1950s. So some of the language and like the way they think and just particularly like kind of phrases they use is very like Nancy Drew. And it's just giving me, it's giving me everything I've ever wanted. It's giving me Nancy Drew vibes. All right. No, I'm not going to cry. Okay. Maybe I'll cry. I chase Nancy Drew vibes. I don't think I understand what a big part. I think it's probably why I love mysteries so much is my childhood. I didn't read mysteries, but I played them. And it was just such a highlight of my life was playing these Nancy Drew games with my granddad and I loved them so much and they were so special to me. The fact that it's giving me those kind of vibes in separate parts is great. I also think the audiobook narrator kind of somewhat reminds me of the narrator of the Nancy Drew audiobook. She just kind of has this old timey sound to her. I am just loving it. The tension in between the kind of two different timelines and different mysteries there in both of them are so, so interesting. There's so many different mysteries. There's not like one main mystery. There's a lot of different mysteries that you can't constantly thinking about and trying to make the links between. And there's a paranormal element to this as well, which I've heard a lot about. I suppose in James, she always has like a kind of speculative element. There's this element of this ghost that haunts the boarding school and you don't know whether it's, is there a ghost or is there not a ghost? I don't know. It's very, very interesting. So I'm going to go get back to the sprints. I've got an hour left of the sprints. I think I've got about two hours of the book left. So I should read the last, I should read probably another hour of the book on the sprints, and then I'll finish that off after and then I'll come chat to you and give you my final thoughts and Mara's final rating. But I think we can all agree it's going to be pretty high. It's going to be pretty high. Guys, I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry. Not because, well, this book did make me cry almost a couple of times, right? But I'm not going to cry now because I'm sad. I'm overwhelmed. I don't even know. I don't know how to speak. The end of this log, cut it. Cut it. Cut the cameras. I can't. Cut the cameras. I love this book so much. I love this book so much. Let's just get it out in the open. We all know what that means. Are you ever five stars? Which means Mara has got 15 points. Maximum points. I just actually, I can't believe it. I can't look. I can't. Mara making me have the best reading week of my life. That's it. I feel like we all need to take a moment to bask. Before we even speak about this, let's bask in this moment. I've reached the point of the series. I've found my booktube twin. Where do we go from here? Where does this... I mean, if you know the Buffy song. Curtains, clothes on the kids' gackage. Tell me the end is near. Does Booktube Twin Tests carry on? Have we reached? I never thought this would happen. I thought it was impossible. I don't think I've ever gotten three, five stars on a vlog in my life. If you know me better than me, feel free to put up the archives, but I don't think you can. I think there's a vlog where I've given out three, five stars. And that's what we did. That's what we did in this vlog. Mara is my booktube twin. Mara gave me three, five stars. I can't believe it. I've never read three, five stars in this quick succession. I feel like my whole reading year has been turned around. I feel like my life is about to change. Like, what has happened? Guys, what? Mara got 15 points. So just look at the board for a sec. I mean, come on. I mean, come on. I can't breathe. Anyway, let's talk about the book. I loved it. What a beautiful, haunting book. I just, I can't believe it. Like I said, everything I said in the last clip counts. Like, the writing is beautiful. But I mean, the three, five stars who've given out this log are so different. The Rook is like a masterclass of detail. The Death on the Nails are a masterclass of quick fun entertainment while still being so clever. This is a masterclass of really making me feel so much. And I don't get attached to characters very often, but I was so attached to particularly the girls in the past in the 1950s and just feeling so much for them, even though it was perhaps the lesser timeline. I really cared for them so much. And I just thought this book was incredible, incredibly pace. I couldn't stop reading it. The way everything came together, I called a big kind of reveal that happens at the end. I think it is fairly obvious at the whole book what's going on. But I didn't mind, because I just thought it was still kind of, you know, beautiful. And that's how I would have wanted the story to go, even though I knew from literally page 50 that that was what was going to happen. God, what can I say? What can I say about spoiling this view? I just want to gush about the book. I'm finding it very hard not to like spoil things. But I just loved every element of it. I mean, what do you want me to say? I love it. I mean, it's just called The Broken Girls. And I think I really love books about women and girls. And, you know, whether that be nonfiction or fiction, I think it's really important to discuss the shithand that for many years women and girls have been dealt in society. And I love fiction that does that. And I just loved it. I loved it. It was spooky. It was haunting. It has that paranormal element, which I've so many times I have read books that maybe, you know, say they have a ghost in it, or like I think of white smoke, or it's got a haunted house, whatever. But they never follow through with the dramaticism that I want. And like it just, it just gets what I want. It gets how I want paranormal elements to be handled. I mean, listen, let's just say, I can't even get it. I need to read this right now, and I need to pick up all of Simone St. James's other books. Like, I'm in love. Part of the reason I'm so overwhelmed is because I'm like, I have found, I feel even more like this than I did perhaps with Daniel Malley, even though I love The Rook. I feel like I've found an author that I just need to read all of her books. You know, like an author that I pick up every new release they come out with, like A Roofwear, or A Lee Bardugo, or A Courtney Summers, or like these people. And I feel like you can see a lot of themes running through the work that I like that I just need to pick up and read everything that they write. So I'm in shock. I'm in shock. I never thought this would happen. Three, five stars, everyone. Let's just hold them all up together. These three books were incredible. I loved them so much. I adored them. You need to go away and read all of them. They're all great for so many different reasons. I mean, I knew Mara wouldn't let me down, but I didn't know to this extent. I really did not know. I can't believe it. So I just need Mara to pick everything I read forever, evidently. I used to call up Mara and be like, what should I read today? Tell me. Thank you for watching this video. If you got into the end, let me know what you think we should do with the series now. I mean, I want to carry it on because I love doing this series so much, but I'm like, what's the point? We've, I mean, do we just find another twin? Do we rename it Booktube Triplet Test? I mean, what am I supposed to do? If you've gotten to the end of this video, comment the broken heart emoji because that's how I'm feeling right now. And it's for the broken girls. So comment the broken heart emoji if you got into the end. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this vlog and I'll see you very soon in another one. Bye.