 Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're well. So, here's the thing. A couple weeks back, actually I think it was in December, I reacted to the video that I did last year of all the series I had to finish last year. And it like didn't go that well. Take, flop, girl you have done it again. Constant lowering the bar for us all. But what I noticed, what I noticed from this, I just have a problem with finishing the last book in a series. Like I just don't finish the last book. Like I read the whole series and then I put the last book off. So that's what we're doing in this vlog. I'm just gonna be finishing off three series so that I'm done with them, so I've accomplished something at the start of the year so that the series I need to finish list goes down a bit. And I'm really excited actually. We're gonna talk about, it's all gonna be non-spoilery for these series, so don't worry. We can discuss like, wow good endings, I think they are for their respective series. So the books I'm gonna be reading in this vlog, let's go through them one at a time. The first is going to be The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss. Oh my God, I'm so excited. I'm so scared and sad for this series to come to an end. I've loved this so much. So if you don't know, this is a Victorian historical fiction book which follows Mary Jackal, Diana Hyde and other girls like Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, Beatrice Rappuccini who all have ties to men from classic Victorian literature. It's the story of them coming together in this found family and trying to uncover what has been done to them and what is being done to girls like them by these scientists, by the men in their lives. There was a certain cliffhanger at the end of the last book that makes me like, I just need to devour this straight away. Apprehensive, nervous, bit scared, also weirdly calm, perhaps on the verge of hysteria. And I've talked about this before but my favorite element of this is how Catherine is actually writing this story and the girls will cut in with comments about what is happening. I'm so excited to read this. I love the Victorian vibes. This series has been a favorite. The first book in the series was my favorite book of last year, the my favorite book I read the whole year. So I'm very, very excited to get to this. Then I'm gonna be reading The King of Crows by Libba Bray. So this is the fourth and final book in the Divana series. I don't actually end up reading this so. Should we speed it up a little bit? And then the last book I'm gonna be reading is Supernova by Marissa Maya. This is the third and final book in the Arch Enemy series which is like a superhero series where we have the renegades and the, oh my God, what are they called? Anarchists, I always forget what the baddies are called. And our protagonist, Nova, comes from the Anarchists and she infiltrates the renegades to find that information but she like kind of develops feelings and friendships with the renegades and it's like, oh my God. I have not read this series in a long time. I read the first two books in 2019. So I feel like I am gonna have to refresh my memory a bit but I have heard such good things about this last book in the series. A lot of people say it's the best book. It wraps everything up really well. There's some really hard scenes to read in it. And Marissa Maya's writing, I love. I need to do a reread of The Lunar Chronicles because when I was like 14, that was my shit. Like I loved that series so much. I was a bit obsessed with it and then I've never read it again. So I definitely don't wanna reread it. I kind of wanna get the new covers. What do we have here? We're gonna finish off some series. I'm very, very excited to tick these off and see how these series end up. So that's what we're gonna be reading. A few moments later. I'm already much further through this than I anticipated being. I think about 45% of the way through it. I'm on page 186. I just can stop reading it. I know I haven't filmed any B-roll or anything yet, like any cute clips, but I just couldn't stop. I just love it so much. I just love it so much. You know what's the most exciting thing about winning? It's when you win. I love that feeling. These characters are just the best characters I've ever read, The Athena Club. I love them all so much. It's such a good job of sometimes I... Okay, hang on, let me collect my thoughts. Sometimes I think in feminist historical fiction, there's a tendency for the girls to become, to reject femininity. To say, oh, you're invalid or you're just playing into society if you're a feminine girl, right? I think that's something people critique, still conjecture the Ripper a lot for. But you don't find that with this. Because you have those girls, you have some like Diana, who are really brash and strong and boyish and then you have Catherine who's very sarcastic. You also have people like Beatrice who Beatrice is very interested in clothes and beauty and femininity. And so it doesn't reject that. Like it allows for all interpretations of women in this time period. Like, gender isn't something that's constricting them, which it would have been at the time. But it kind of breaks out of that a bit. But at the same time, it doesn't reject aspects of femininity that other books do. So I think it does that so well. I'm just loving following them again. Like I don't want to part with them at all. I just love them. Do you know how I feel about you? If there was any hope that I could actually be or it's one I aspire to, you know you're the one. We've got some amazing new characters on this. We've got Moriarty who like, iconic. Iconic having Moriarty in here is so much fun. Oh, we had like Dorian Gray turned up like briefly, like a brief appearance of Dorian Gray who's apparently good friends with Watson. Like, I just love how it incorporates all these characters from our classics in such fun ways. Now, one thing I would say is that one of our characters is separate from the other characters. And I'm just not quite as interested in those parts of what I am. I'm becoming more interested in it. But there's something about just being back with those main girls all together that has the best dynamic to it, I think. They're the scenes that I look forward to and that I enjoy reading the most. So I'm hoping in the latter half of this book, they're all kind of gonna come back together again to solve this a bit. It's so fun. The perfect like, historical fantasy mystery book you'll ever read. The characters are still so witty and funny. Like, I fell straight back in love with them as soon as I started reading it. I don't wanna spoil what's happening but Sherlock and Watson are playing a big role in it again and I love them. You know, Dracula's been in it. Like, it's just so complex and layered and it's so much fun. So I'm just gonna finish this today. I'm not gonna check in with you again till I finished it because I can't take it. I need to just consume it. So I'm gonna go read the rest. I wish script let you speed it up faster than two because like, if I'm reading physically as well, my speed is like a 2.2, 2.3. So I wish I could go that little bit faster. But anyway, that's irrelevant. Oh my God, I'm just so excited to finish it. Okay, I'm gonna go finish it and I'll give you my thoughts on whether it's a good ending to the series. Although I'm sure currently that it will be. A couple of days since I finished this because I've had to like, emotionally collect myself. I refuse. I refuse that this is the last book in this series. Like, I'm not having it. I'm sorry. I think I'm having a meltdown. Oh, oh, oh. I can't, I can't emphasize, I'm shaking. I'm still not ready. I'm not accepting this is the last book in this series that does not make sense in my world. It's not happening in my fantasy. I'm not having it. I'm not, I'm not having it. Like, period. Like, fucking, I'm not, I'm not, I'm still. Just wanna sit around me over a minute, gather my thoughts. These characters are, I'm gonna cry. Oh my God, these characters are the best characters I have ever read. The character development in this is incredible. The heart that these characters have, I just love them so much. I love these girls. I love them so much. I want this to be an 80 book series. I'm sorry. I did go and I did some research on this because it's important. This is like what my brain is like holding onto at the moment. And someone asks, is there gonna be more books? And Theodor August said, the publisher only bought three, but I would love to write about these characters again. So can we make it happen? Like, who do I need to email? Who do I need to pay? I will pay. I will pay. Like my mental health depends on it. I'm sorry. This, I need 10 more books. Oh, let's be realistic. The fact that Theodor August is willing, we just need publishers to like commit. It means it's within our reach. I'm so sad. I'm not accepting that this is it. Like, I'm not. It was the perfect ending, but it was also the perfect ending that like left you open to more. Like there were so many mentions of different adventures they'd gone on together since the book. Like because obviously they arrived in the book much further in the future than the events that are happening. So it's like all the time we rescued this person all the time we went here and I'm like, I need to read it. Like I can't, I'm not having it. I loved it. It was the perfect ending to a series. The characters were just paid so much respect. I thought like the ending, like the ending of the book was so good. Like I got a bit emotional. That was going anything. There's like, like we always, always with these books there's like a big battle scene at the end. And the way that it paid homage to all of these girls, I got a bit emotional. Like I thought it was just done so well. I love you, Mary Jackal. I love you, Diana Hyde. I love you, Katharine Moreau. I love you, Justine Frankenstein. I love you, Bitches Rappuccini. Mrs. Paul, Alice, Lucinda, all of you. I love you so much. Like I can't, I can't take it. It was perfection. I loved it. Please, if you haven't already, start this series because it is the best series known to man. Like I just love it so much. Like it's just perfect. The writing is amazing. The way that Katharine is brought out through the rest of the book is amazing. That's like how St. Louis is amazing. The Victorian setting is amazing. Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same. Totally unique, completely not ever been done before. Unafraid to reference or not reference. I already want to reread these books. I think this series is going to become like my comfort series that I will just come back and reread and reread whenever I'm going through a difficult time. Just like put a bit of that audio back on. Like it just calms me. I'm getting so emotional because I just love this series so much and I refuse to accept that it's ended. So I will catch me reading the first one again soon. There's been a bit of a change in what I'm reading in this video. Nothing drastic, but I am writing like my last essay of this semester currently and I just need to do it. Like I can't, I need to just commit myself to that. So I'm no longer going to be reading The King of Crows because this is like long. And in its place, I'm putting the hand on the wall by Maureen Johnson. And now this isn't technically like the lot, but it is kind of, this is a bit complicated. So this is the end of the original trilogy of this series and there is going to be another book. But I listened to Maureen Johnson speak about it and she said that like this is the original trilogy and then any further books are no longer taking place at this school and they're kind of like expansions on there. So I think it's going to become almost like, I think Maureen Johnson wants it to become like a proro, I can never say it, I'm sorry. Someone in the comments would be like, it's pronounced this way. Yeah, I think it actually wants it to become like a very long series, but this is the end of the original trilogy. This is just a lot less intimidating for essay writing Megan. So we're going to go for this, but I am still going to start with Supernova next and we'll read this last. I'm going to go start Supernova and I will check in with you when I'm about the third of the way through with my thoughts. I will not read on to 50% like I did with this one because I could not constrain myself. I feel like I haven't done a good enough job of summing this up because I'm still so emotional, but I will try in my end of month wrap up. That's not happening. All right. To like do this better justice. I feel like I haven't done it justice because I am so emotional and like my happiness is so tied into this book. You just need to know how incredible it is and that you need to go read the first one right now and that I am going to be petitioning. Who publishes this? Whoever the publisher, whoever published this, they are going to be getting a lot of letters from me. Saga Press from Simon & Schuster. Check your emails. Through Supernova. I just realized I sit in basically the same place in all my check-ins in this vlog. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. If you remember, this is the superhero versus villains series. When I started reading this, it did throw me for a loop for a bit because I think it's quite young YA and there's nothing wrong with that but just the writing, like you read it so fast but it's very, how does one say this? It feels very simple, you know? Like the way that characters think is very basic. Like they don't think in nuanced ways. They don't make decisions in nuanced ways. It's all about the plot being super fast paced. Every single scene doesn't have much breathing room because it's just so fast paced. And of course that's great for reading fast. Like I think I just read like 60 pages of this in half an hour. Like you can read it really, really fast if you set your mind to it but it did throw me for a loop and I didn't feel really that engaged with the writing at all to begin with. However, however, however, I think the plot has just gone down a direction that I'm really glad that it has. I think without spoiling anything, like it easily could have been way too similar to books one and two and it's kind of gone on a very different path and I'm so glad that it did because otherwise I think it would have felt way too stagnant, way too predictable. Whereas now I could not tell you what's gonna happen. Like the other two, like you know what's gonna happen. But this one, I feel like kind of what you expected the end of the series to be or like maybe by page 300, 350 would happen has actually happened about the 100 page mark. And so I feel like it has opened the story up to a lot more possibilities. It just made it much more interesting and exciting. And I was like, oh, okay. I'm really interested in having that conversation. I have to tell you that. Okay, like I see what you did there. Okay, and now I'm much more intrigued to read on. So I am getting more used to the writing. I think it's just the kind of thing you have to just get used to. I do have something very exciting to show you actually quickly before I go away and read some more. I actually just backpack. Okay, first of all, do we love it? Yes. She is exquisite. I love her, I love her and I love her even more. There's something about pink and gray that just like gets me. Anyway, I'm getting a bit off topic. This is from Seventeen London. This is the Canary Wharf. And they very kindly set this to me. Like they just wanted to send it to me to see if I enjoyed it. It's totally up to me that I show it to you and I'm like, well, I have to because it's so exciting. I just love it. I've worn it out a few times. I mean, listen, I'm not like I can go out that much right now. But the few times I have gone out to town for everything shut down for like errands and stuff, I wore it just to test it out and see if I liked it and I love it. It's got like a bajillion pockets. So like this can come like that if you want it to be bigger or if you don't need as much, it can look like that and you can clip it so that it stays like that. It is massive. Like on the inside, I don't think I can demonstrate to you how big it is but it has more pockets in here. It has, so you can't see. It has like a ton of different sections in it. Like it has two or three different sections in this main bit here and I love it. I really, really love it. I have a discount code. I have affiliate discount code which I think it's just Meg with Books if you wanted to go check out the website and purchase one of these. Like I said, I would really recommend it. It's great quality material. I don't know if I can describe to you how big it is. And I'm also gonna be running a competition to win one of these over on Twitter. All you need to do is go and retweet and like that tweet and be subscribed to my channel which if you've gotten this far in the video you probably are. So just go and retweet that tweet and you can be in with a chance of winning this. Yeah, I loved it. I would definitely recommend it and make sure you check out the giveaway on Twitter. I'm gonna go read to 2,000 the way through this and then I will check in with you again. I'm now 2,000 the way through so I'm on page 358. It's good and all, but I don't feel particularly invested. Like I'm gonna finish it obviously. Like I'm gonna finish the series but it's just kind of feeling like a three star at the moment. I think the first one was a three star and then I gave the second one four stars but I think like I had just shit day and I just read the fucking one day and it like cheered me up and I just don't feel like this is that great. Do you see how that's incredibly offensive? Yes, I do, that's why I said it. And then maybe it can turn it around because I know a lot of people say they love the ending but it just feels a bit basic. Like I'm not that attached to the characters. I'm not that invested in what's happening. I'm not that invested in the romance because I feel like it just can't, I just can't see a way forward. I just can't see a way forward. I'm gonna be glad that I finally finished the series. I don't know, we shall see. Maybe I'll change my mind. However, one thing I will say is I've read all of Marissa Mayer's books in the past other than her new contemporary. One thing I appreciate about her stuff, I won't say which book or books this pertains to because I don't wanna spoil anything for any of the other ones. But you're not always gonna get a happy ending. Like you're not always gonna get everything wrapped up in a nice neat bow or like it's not gonna end the way you want. Like it sometimes may end in the way that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. So I can see this not ending the way I want. Like I can see it not ending nicely. And like part of me wants that destruction. I'm gonna go finish it and then I'll let you know my thoughts in the morning. Okay, so I can't remember how positive or negative I was when I last checked in. I do not remember saying those things and those things were not meant to be. That was not meant to be serious. I'm gonna give it two stars. So here's the thing, the end was shy. I was 80 pages from the end and I was like, I just wanna DNF it. Like I don't even wanna finish this. That is 80 pages that you've been leading up to for the whole book series. The whole book series, the whole book series we've been leading up to this moment and I just don't give a fuck. Like I could have DNF'd it. Like it was not good. The cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity and the gumption. So many things happened at the end that were just contradictory. Like one thing would happen and then a little bit later something else happened that just made it completely inconsequential or relevant like it never happened. And it was just so annoying to me. And like the way that the characters acted, the way the characters acted is so unrealistic. Like there were no repercussions for certain things. Like, I don't wanna spoil anything obviously, but like some people would just like just forgave certain things in a second in a way that is totally unrealistic. Like it pissed me off. It is miffing me off somewhat. How can some of our characters do the things they're doing and not face repercussions and other characters just forgive them and everything's fine and they're like, no. I don't understand how people thought this was a good ending. I could not visualize that's always a sign of like bad stuff, bad stuff to me is when I can't visualize what's happening. Like in a fight scene, I can't picture it in my head and that was a problem I was having. Just like when we spend a whole three books leading up to a certain point, you want there to be long-term repercussions, short-term repercussions. There wasn't either of those. Like things were brushed over so easily and things happened. This is the thing I hate most. Things happened for the ease of it rather than it being logical. So things that made the story easier to occur like things that moved the story on but didn't really make logical sense happened. Do you know what I mean? Events that make no sense that no one would make those decisions or whatever. Like things that just make it easier to carry on with the story and have the plot arcs that you wanna have and have the character arcs that you wanna have. They happen but they make no logical sense. I think you can tell by my face that I'm extremely tired today. It was disappointing. It was really disappointing. I think superheroes aren't really for me anyway. Like I don't really have an interest of ever reading a book about superheroes ever again. It's just not for me love. It's just not for me. It's not for main park. I feel terribly ill all of a sudden. Now I'm going to read The Hand on the Wall. It's over there. I don't want people to go pick it up but the final book in like the original Trudy Devious trilogy we're gonna read that. Hopefully it'll be like a nice quick read. I'm hoping that I love it. I'm sad about the ending of this one. That's the thing as well. I think endings of trilogies like endings of series can be so disappointing. I think that's another reason why I steer clear of finishing series because it's so much pressure to end it and to end it in a way that you enjoy. And then this was just like, is that it? Is that all you've got? Anyway, let's go read The Hand on the Wall one. Hopefully it will be better. I am now a third of the way through The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson. This reads so fast. Like these books are the perfect palette cleansers. Like they are perfect quick reads just to get you back on the horse if maybe you've been in a reading slump. We are at Ellingham Academy which is this academy for like the gifted and talented. In the 1930s when it was set up the owner's wife and daughter were kid, were like taken, were abducted. It's following that mystery and who did that and a mystery of a current day with deaths that are occurring in each book. This one is gonna be like wrapping that all up. So like this is wrapping up the whole mystery which we've been discovering for three books. I am enjoying it so far. I think it's just like a fun, really enjoyable series to fall back into. I really like the flipping back and forth between the 1930s and the present day. We seem to be following some kind of different characters which we haven't followed in the past before. So I'm enjoying that. Now, here's the stitch. Wait a minute, I'm figuring this out. I'm like Scooby and Shaggy, I'm solving a mystery. I have a suspicion on who the bad person is but I don't want it to be them and I don't think if it's them it'll be set up particularly well. I've read a lot of bad reviews for this. A lot of people didn't like this as the end of the series. They felt like the villain wasn't led up to. And if it's who I'm thinking it's like not so much to do with their character and them as a person but more to do with like the circumstances and the motives. I don't think I'll be happy if it's them but I feel like that's the route we're gonna go down. I could be completely wrong but if you love murder mysteries, true crime I think this would be also a great place to get into murder mysteries if you haven't read them before and you don't wanna read like an Agatha Christie or like an older murder mystery or an adult one this is like the perfect YA murder mystery series and I love it. Like I said, you will fly through it. Like you could probably read this in an evening if you wanted to. Very, very easily. It's so much fun. I think what I enjoy about this as well is that it looks like pro pro acupolo. He like doesn't communicate his thought process with you like as he's figuring it out. It's like, he's like going ooh, ooh, ooh as he walks around and then at the end he has this big reveal whereas in this with Stevie who is this like murder mystery super fan who wants to be this detective she's like sharing her thoughts with you as she's figuring out like she's sharing connecting the dots. I connected the dots. I've connected the two dots. You didn't connect shit but I've connected them. That makes it really enjoyable cause it makes it easier for you to theorize along with her and like maybe connect some dots that she hasn't connected but you think should be connected. Very excited. I'm gonna go read some more of this and then I'll let you know what I'm thinking. Okay, so I've actually finished this. I'm sorry. This look has been a bit rubbish because I've filmed parts of it out of order and I hate that. Like I hate that so much. And I know there hasn't been a lot of like clips of me reading and like the B-roll. I'm sorry about it. I've been in a bit of a slump and so when I was just hitting a role with reading this I was like, I'm not gonna get up and film and disrupt myself. I'm gonna give it three stars. It's my least favorite of the series so far. This is why I don't finish series. I didn't feel like it really had its own story. The other ones have their like own individual mysteries as well as the overall mystery. And like that's how most series go, right? And then like the final book is figuring out the overall mystery that you've been building up to. Even fantasies have mysteries or conundrums at some point. But I feel like we had figured out enough, figured out too much of the overall mystery particularly in book two. Like there was so much that I thought I just knew that was revealed in this book. I felt like almost too much had been revealed and then the author was like, oh shit, where do we go from here? I just don't feel like there was enough for us to figure out for it to carry only the overall mystery. I think it needed something small and it just didn't really have that. The person who it ends up being like the overall baddie, like I agree with the reviews that it was kind of left field. It wasn't who I was saying I thought it was gonna be and that I didn't want it to be damned. It was someone else but it was like my thinking was along the right lines. It was a bit since when? What now? What did that happen? That doesn't make no sense. Also, can I just say also before we're done, the love interest in this series, I fucking hate him. Can we just get rid? Like he's just so annoying. Like he doesn't talk like anyone talks. He thinks he's it. He really thinks he's it and I'm like, my man, you're not it. The trouble you cause, you're not it. He doesn't speak like a real person. It gets on my nerves. I think we need to get rid of him. I'm glad that I now know like what the overall mystery is. I think perhaps the mystery wasn't complex enough to be carried out across three books. Three stars for that. So we've had like, what did we have? We had a five star, okay, the love of my life. I'm still not over it. Don't talk to me about it. We had a two star and we had a three star. So this wasn't that successful and we had a five star, but like this series is just like perfection. This is why I don't finish series because I just don't, I don't think they ever live up to it. Well, they do sometimes, but series are hard and the series are easy to start, but they're very hard to continue because you have that risk of like a disappointment. I hope you enjoyed this video even though it was all over the place. I do not want to come and edit this because like I don't know what my life has been. How is it taking me this long to read these books? We'll never know. But thank you for watching. I'm about to start some new vlogs, which I'm excited for. I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye.