 it was like you see it everywhere you'd walk into a bookstore and there'd be a whole table of the books just stacked up and i'm just thinking no no sir no hello everyone welcome back to my channel today there are a lot of books missing from here because we are going to be doing my book awards of the year 2020 is super exciting it's just around the corner and i love new years as many of you know so what's better way to finish off 2019 than to give out some awards some good some bad now because i haven't been on here long i've only been on booktube for about three and a half months if i've been on here forever i would have spent the whole of december doing like most disappointing least favorite most favorite most surprising all of those but i haven't it's my second day out here yeah it's only my third day out here i don't have instead this is just one video all of that collated and essentially what you should know is that if i'm recommending you a book positively in this video it is one of my favorites of the year all of the positive categories are my favorite books of the year which would have been in that video and all my least favorite books of the year are in the negative categories i thought about doing nominations for this but we would be here literally forever because there are already 17 categories to talk about so i'm gonna try and go through this super fast so essentially i think we should just get going right let's do it going so the first category i feel like we're gonna bang out potatoes no problem so we haven't already did it we have time we will be responsible for stock uh-huh is most under height so this is the book or books that i don't think get enough hype on booktube itself and for this i have decided to go with the winter night trilogy by katherine arden i only have two books two and three with me here right now but for those of you don't know this is a series about a girl called vasya in russia kind of old russia and it's magical she has magical powers she has to save her town her world her city uh i've done that in the wrong order but she has to save everyone essentially throughout this trilogy and it is incredible i talk about it all the time and i don't think it gets enough hype i really don't think it gets enough hype i know some people talk about it and i know the last one was nominated for goodreads fantasy but like i don't care i don't think that i don't think i don't think there's books to get more hype on here than this than this there are trust me under hyped means it's like under what it deserves this still has some hype but like really who talks about it not not many people i watch talk about it a few a selected few but really oh my god everyone should have read it by now and the thing is we're also caught up in reading our yearly like the releases that come out that year we're not getting to our back list and let me tell you if this is sitting on your shelf and you haven't read it yet please go read it it's so magical it's just so like wintery and just it's a perfect time for you to read it so i think it should be one of the books you pick up in january of february and that's it i'm really trying to rush here because i don't want this to be like a 50 minute video especially because i want to edit a 50 minute video so most under hyped cool okay so the next category is most over hyped so a book i think was hyped up way too much and it didn't deserve it and for this i am going for wicked fox by cat chow now i think this was one of the more um especially in the in the weeks and months building up twitch release one of the more hyped ya fantasy books of this year so far and i didn't like it i didn't like it i've spoken about this i think in my first ever video and essentially why a book about a girl who is a fox a gumiho and she has to feed off souls and want to live so she kills evil men in order to survive but it's also like a romance and it's kind of written like a k drama i believe i think i swat some people i watched have said a few people like this a few people who i who's opinion i hold in her regard liked it i feel like it could have been like such a cool fantasy storyline but we got so caught up with the romance and i just didn't care i didn't care about the romance i i wasn't there for it i wanted all the gumiho mythology they were the best parts there were a few chapters i think where you just had a little bit of the mythology around the the fox and it was top tier it was it was really good and then the romance just i just didn't care and i felt like at the same time so much happened there wasn't enough depth that at the same time nothing happened like we were kind of just like you know like uh that's that's really weird but we were just like dipping our toes in lots of different plot points and i just felt really underwhelmed by it so i don't think it deserved all the hype it got earlier this year there's just no opinion there's no opinion your opinion doesn't count so the next category i thought of was best character and for this i'm actually going with best characters and i'm going with girls of paper and fire by nantatun yang this is one of my favorite favorite books of this year so far as all of the positive ones are uh this has been spoken about quite a bit but we follow lei as she becomes a paper girl who are basically girls who are forced to sleep with the king and be his like slaves in that in that way and it's kind of her story of finding love in such a difficult situation and her strength her personal strength it just is a really really great book and i cannot wait to read the sequel which is girls of storm and shadow don't it look so nice next to each other yes god okay um yeah i'm super excited to pick this up but we're talking about the first one right now so i went for this for best characters because i felt like the collection of girls within uh the group they were really wonderfully varied and i've said this a few times about how for me one of the best things about the book was how they each dealt with the trauma that they were going through you know some got really angry some just really withdrew all in themselves and became so sad some fell in love with their abuser um and so i think it was done in a really realistic way and uh them author managed to portray all these different reactions to trauma because it's not just one reaction to going through something as awful as this there are many and for me that's why i felt like all the characters represented something and for me it was really a highlight of this book all the different girls and i really hope that in the rest of the series we get to spend some time with them i don't know if we will because of how this one ended but to me there are a real highlight of this book having such the unique um cast of characters that she managed to show really human reactions in even if we didn't spend a lot of time with the girls and also just the whole cast of the other staff in the in the in the castle as well all great characters so yeah definitely one of my favorite books of the year and if you haven't picked it up i think this is a really really great release to pick up and i hope the sequel is gonna be good next i am going with best villain i like that laugh so for this i oh i'm teasing you uh for this i had to go with vicious by the ishwab this is essentially about villains so for best villain i couldn't go with anything but the book about villains the great thing about vicious is there are two characters each with kind of like separate uh they're on separate sides essentially but you don't kind of know who the villain is are they both villains are nice with them villains is one of them a villain and the other one isn't you don't really know what you're supposed to believe and i think it should really be up to interpretation so in this we follow two boys who meet at school and believe that they can turn themselves into beings with kind of um crazy super what's the word superhero powers that's what i'm looking for uh by having a near-death experience and that's something they experiment with and then we see the fallout of them trying to experiment with that one thing i'm going to say is we'll come to this later but there's i think if you this is a standalone you don't need to read the sequel you know i in my head i'm really trying hard to just view this as its own book because this was incredible this was incredible one of my favorite books of the year but the sequel we don't talk about her i really loved the approach of having kind of uh really morally gray characters there's really characters if anyone has other good wrecks for morally gray characters let me know down below because that's something that i really want to read more of in 2020 it's great i love the characters i love the whole cast of characters they all bring something very unique and i love the approach of having a villain as the main character i want it more i need to read some like villain origin stories or something don't i if anyone has any wrecks for those as well the next category is most likely to make a great film and for this i originally thought i'd go with like a fantasy you know a world that is so unique that it would make a great film but i decided to go with a thriller and that is turn of the key by Ruth Ware i don't have it with me but um oh i just felt like when i read it in my head i read like a film and i really imagined it vividly and i think with some of the twists and turns you have a real uh possibility for some great movie scenes it's told through a series of letters of the narrator to a man that she hopes will help get her off of the murder she is accused of she is accused of killing one of the babies she nannied in this house this smart home one of the children were killed and she is standing trial for murder and she is saying i do not kill that kid sir i didn't kill that kid i didn't kill that kid so do we believe her there are so many reveals and i just feel like it would work any one in the film it's set in scotland like dark dreary uh just thinking about it now yo the next category is most disappointing and i have two the first is the toll i'm not going to spend too long in this i have a whole vlog on my reading experience for this which i will link up above that side and very very disappointing but on the whole i mean i gave this three stars i gave the first in the series three stars i gave the middle one five stars i think i gave this yeah this was like a 2.75 for me so really i guess the middle in the series was just the odd one out and then the rest of the series i thought was a three so maybe this shouldn't be the most disappointing so but yeah i this was a sad ending to the series for which i had so much hope for but i think for me the really most disappointing is vengeful by v e schwaab oh look at the nice hardback oh and look it was this was two stars for me and i can't even it was just shocking it was just bad it was bad i felt like this should just be a sad moment and i've had rumors that there may be a third in this series and let me just tell you no ma'am no ma'am please please just write something other brilliant books that i've heard so many wonderful things about don't carry this on because it doesn't need it i just felt like it was pointless nothing really happened in this story that made me excited or really advanced the characters along or at least i didn't feel it and the introduction of the other characters just wasn't needed we should just spend more time for the characters we actually cared about i just didn't understand why this existed and it was so boring i was just so bored i made myself read this so quickly just to get through it because i don't dnf books and i was sure as hell in about the dnf a book i paid twenty six dollars for no ma'am i'm reading it if i pay that money i am reading it so yeah really really big disappointment for me so the next couple of categories was most surprising or best twist was another one i thought about and one book actually wins both of those but for different reasons and that is ninth house by liba dugo now for most surprising it was most surprising because i didn't think i would like this as much we follow alex who goes to yale and she has to work to kind of keep an eye on the secret societies that are there that's all i'm gonna tell you that's all you really need to know and i had heard a lot of people's whose opinions i trusted and whose opinions i usually have very similar opinions to they didn't like it they didn't like it and so i was so nervous going into this but let me tell you i loved it i have a reading vlog this as well so i won't spend too long in it it's up there again but i loved this book for me uh i've spoken about this a few times i love the books where i feel like i've earned the ending i feel like i've earned the book and something more fun is confusing i didn't and for me that was just why i was so surprising i thought i was gonna struggle i thought i wasn't gonna understand it and i did so that's why it was most surprising for me and in terms of best twist the ending i don't even have to tell you i don't even know how to tell you i can't wait for the rest in this series because the ending left me scammed i was i was so shook the ending had me so i can't wait for the rest in this series and if you haven't put this up yet don't be afraid because i liked it there's nothing wrong with my views or beliefs because i have freedom of speech and everything i'm saying is true so the next category i thought of was most poorly written and for me it had to be Girl Missing by Sophie McKenzie i read this for my reading my favorite childhood books video this was probably my favorite book when i was a kid and i this it's so badly written i'm not gonna spend long in it because no one cares but it's terrible it's terrible it's some of the worst writing i've ever read it was like a 10 year old wrote it so for McKenzie if you're out there i'm sorry gal i'm sure some of your other books are great and i love this when i was a kid so maybe it works for its target audience but for me looking back in it now the writing yo the uh i'm not going into it i speak about it in that video but the character the lead character is one of the most annoying lead characters i have ever read she is the most selfish lead character i've ever read and no one people calling out on it but then i think you're supposed to believe that she's entitled to act the way she's acting it makes me so angry just thinking about it makes me so angry anyway that one i have no qualms in throwing because i've bought it for one bound so next i thought i would have a pair of categories and the first one is what book would i recommend for beginners that i read all this year what is the best book that i think a beginner who maybe you're only read kind of five to ten books a year what book would i choose for that to be one of yours and a book that you can read early in the year that will hopefully get you into reading more books and improving not improving but like increasing how many books a year you read speeding up your reading so for this i chose the seven husbands that Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins read this is a bit battered she's been through it a lot of people have borrowed this from me in this we follow an old hollywood starlet as she tells the story of her life we follow the seven husbands that she had and we find out who her true love in her life was so oh we kind of match Evelyn yo let's pose did i look like i look like i have no brown on yo i thought about giving this to best character as well but it was just picked the post but evelyn is an amazing character life is so well formed we learned so much about her and it's a really really great character study i don't care as much for the monique storyline which is the journalist who is writing the story of her life monique has her own little storyline i didn't care about that i know there comes the end but like i didn't really need it but on the whole i think if you don't read a lot of books a year this is a super accessible read a lot of people read it so so fast you kind of fly through it because it's easily written i mean yo it's not short but i just think it's written in a way that encourages speed reading like you just want to find out all the answers about her life it's so engaging so if you didn't read a lot of books this year i'd really really recommend picking this up early in 2020 because i think it's the kind of book that would spur you on so the next category then is what books i recommend to a veteran you already read 200 books a year girl you are flying through it so what i recommend to you what i recommend to you i would recommend the goldfish by toneta she thick and she doesn't look thick but let me tell you she is 860 pages so if you are someone who reads loads of books a year you're already reading at a super fast pace so the length shouldn't scare you off and i think this is such an ambitious book i think it's something we should all read i gave it four stars there are a few bits that are a little bit boring like you know but um on the whole i think it's one of the best long-term looks at someone's life i've ever read you follow our lead character Theo from when his mum dies when he's age 13 up until like his early to mid 20s we follow him for a really long period and we essentially look at how each event in his life changes him and that's all i really want to say about the story but it's a really really great um you know you have all this time you have all this time to become attached to Theo and you really just feel for him and by the end of the story it just feels like such a you've climbed a mountain you've climbed a mountain so if you already read a ton of books a ton of variety of books already then i would look at challenging yourself with this because i think it is a challenge but i think it's definitely worth it and finally for our kind of general rounds i thought we'd include saddest book and this is for if you're looking to get your cry on in 2020 you want to get a bit of moash you feel ah i haven't i haven't had enough of a reaction to books in 2019 i want to get crying an honorable mention actually i forgot to say goes to love albree i also read this in my childhood books video and if you're looking at reading a middle grade that you've never heard of before but will make you she will make you cry she will make you cry let me yeah an honorable mention goes to this but the one i've actually chosen is all the light we cannot see by anthony doa this follows a young girl and a young boy from kind of the onset of world war two i believe hang on i read this right the start of the year yeah from the onset of world war two up until kind of the end as their stories eventually merged and let me tell you this book had me i think for the last i don't know probably like 150 pages your girl was crying non-stop and it was like one in the morning and me and my boyfriend we lived together we should have gone to sleep and i was like this book just takes you the grabs it grabs it grabs like that it grabs your heartstrings it says sis i ain't letting go i ain't letting go it majority of its chapters i can't like two three four pages super short and so it lends itself to readability as well i think it's helpful to recommend books at the end of the year that are helpful for people to read at the beginning of the year because we all want to get ahead on our goodreads goal at the start of the year don't we i mean i know we all do so i think this really lends itself to that and to flying through it so yeah if you haven't picked this up yet do it so now we are getting into my best of a few different categories and how many categories have we got three so i've thought of three other little characters my best of not my best book but my other little i want to shout them out and then we've got my least favorite and my favorite book of the year are we ready i think we're ready first we are doing best nonfiction book i read this year as you all know i love nonfiction i have gone with this is going to hurt by adam k so this is a story of a junior doctor here in the k in the nhs uh he's not a junior doctor anymore but he was and it's essentially his diary so as you can see let me oh yeah so there's diary entries on every page and he just it just takes us through what he was experiencing at the time and let me tell you it is heartbreaking it is heartbreaking what our doctors were going through then when the nhs had more funding than it does now and it makes you think what they must be going through now and i would recommend reading this even if you're outside of the uk because it is relevant to all of us and especially if you're in the uk the nhs is really under threat at the moment and it's something that we need to save so yeah i loved this i read it in a day it's a super super fast read and it's funny it's heartbreaking it's just astounding and it's so honest one of the most honest nonfiction books i've ever read so if that sounds like something you would be interested in pick it up please pick it up next is best audiobook i read quite a few audiobooks in the year of 2019 it was the first one ever he'd gotten into audiobooks and it's definitely helped me read the amount of books i've read and i use scribed i don't use audible i use scribed if you're looking at trying out scribed you can get two months free with my link below open your purse and i really love scribed because you have an unlimited amount of books you can read whereas with audible and other subscription services you can only get one credit uh scribed has i think if i'm honest a smaller library than audible but that unlimited books really is what drew me to it and is what keeps me there because i can listen to as many books i want and they have most every book i want i say one in 15 they don't have the one i want so it's fine but for this i have gone with Sadie by Courtney Summers i loved this audiobook it is incredible i think if you're gonna read this book you have to re listen to the audiobook the book is partly from my protagonist uh Sadie her point of view as she searches for her sister's killer but it's also told in podcast format of a guy looking for Sadie as Sadie is now missing and so we meet her family through the podcast and let me tell you the podcast sections were my favorite sections of the audiobook because you could hear the clocks ticking in the houses and people walking around shuffling around their rooms and it really just made it feel so vivid to me it was just incredible in the way the music and the ah it just sounded so much like a podcast it was so so so good so i think everyone talks about this but it was definitely my best audiobook of the year and everyone needs to go listen to it if you're gonna go and you think ah i'm gonna go dabble in the script let me go use Megan's link then i think Sadie should be your first choice i recommend it to everyone when they say Megan i need an audiobook recommendation i say here you go just go just go away next i thought i would mention best poetry collection and that would be she must be mad by charlie cox this is her first poetry collection i also read her second one which is validate me but i prefer she must be mad i met charlie cox recently and i will link that video up above as well and she was just it was the best author interaction ever she is the sweetest ever but she must be mad follows charlie's journey from childhood to where she is now on her mental health journey her relationship with herself it has four sections which are she must be in love she must be mad she must be fat she must be an adult so those are the kind of gives you the idea of what the poems are about i've come up really bugged up all of a sudden so relatable like i felt like i related to a lot of the poems in this um and you relate to different sections so like i didn't necessarily relate to a lot of the love sections because they were about uh how difficult it is being in these short-term relationships a lot of young people are in at the moment and i ain't never been in that i'm the guy who was my first kiss i've been with for three years so i couldn't relate to that aspect but relationships with mental health relationships with her body were definitely things that i could relate with so i feel like if you are a young woman or a young person in today's society there will be something in here there will be a good number of poems which you can relate to because it just exposes how so many of us are feeling so i've spoken about charlie coax so much again i haven't i've listened to them a little bit but her poetry collections are on script and i want to reread them on there because she narrates them and let me tell you from going to her from going to her poetry reading when i met her the poems take on a life of their own even more when she narrates them so i think listening to that on script and it's so short it's like two or three hours like hardly anything when it comes to an audiobook um it'll be a great way to start off your year and yeah just the way she reads them she's got the most amazing voice to read poems so i would really recommend checking those out on there next is least favorite book now i am currently reading a book that um could be my least favorite book of the year but i haven't finished it yet so we can't award it that and to be honest this book the book i'm going to talk about annoyed me so much so much it should be most over hyped but i wanted to say talking about it till now okay it's normal people by sally rooney it's terrible and i think the mix it was is i don't know how hyped it is outside of the uk but in the uk this was waterstones book of the year last year it was like you see it everywhere you'd walk into a bookstore and there'd be a whole table of the books just stacked up and i'm just thinking no no sir no lipstick in my valentino white so you basically follow a boy and a girl from when they're very young in ireland to when they i think over a period of maybe five or six years and they sleep together they have that kind of relationship they kind of kind of boyfriend a girl for them and not kind of boyfriend a girl for them they don't see each other for a year and they run back into each other and you just follow their relationship and i just felt we went nowhere i felt like the relationships didn't change they just carried on treating each other the way they always had and i hated the way they treat each other and here's the thing i don't think i was supposed to i don't have an issue in books when characters treat each other badly as long as we know and everyone accepts and you're supposed to believe that they are treating each other badly i don't think i was supposed to believe they were treating each other badly i think it was supposed to be normal it stresses me out it stresses me out i don't think i don't know someone tell me if i'm wrong am i supposed to think they are just like they haven't learned from all their mistakes the whole book i feel like we just all these mistakes are made i'm knocking things off in my aggression i feel like all these mistakes are made and they treat each other so poorly for nothing no one learns no one changes and it's just it was bad i don't understand why so many people love this book i think it is the most basic as storyline ever ever but anyway let's talk about fun things because that is why we are here let's get rid of the negativity go away go away we do not have that in this house we are going to be positive and the thing is we are so positive in this house i struggled to pick my favorite book of the year so bad and even now i ain't sure but i i cut it down to two two girls stand before me i only have one card in my hand so the runner up second place for my best book of the year is the starless sea by erin morganston this could still be my favorite year it was incredible i read this in the same vlog that i read the toll so i'll have already linked that if you want to check that out and check out my reaction to this it was one of the most magical stories i've ever read one of the most special stories i've ever read and it's incredible there is not really a way to describe this other than a key protagonist zachery finds a book in which part of his life is told and he doesn't understand how anyone could know that about him and it sends him on a winding story of meeting strange untrustworthy people and being in underground libraries and having stories that turn out to be true but are still stories and i it's so good it's so good it's just incredible and i have spoken about this so many times i still don't have the words but it's just amazing so this was very almost almost my favorite book of the year but it was pipped to the post by one and that is are you ready i'm not the secret history by donna tart is my favorite book of the year now let me explain this is the first book i read this year i picked it up on the first of january and i read it everyone knows what's your christmas about it's a group of group of friends one of them is killed at the beginning and we kind of follow them through this weird ass story of them being weird people and that's all there is i love the characters in this even the ones who are bad people i love them i love them and i thought the character study in this is so interesting and the way it is set out with us kind of going back in time and then catching up with them so good yo i don't even have the words it is just a great great book and for me i think the reason it has to be my favorite book of the year is because it's the reason i'm here is the reason i'm here making this video this is the book that spurred on me reading 80 books this year it is the book that made me want to read more it is the book that made me fall back in love with reading completely and so without this book i wouldn't have this channel i wouldn't have met all of you guys i wouldn't be here having such a great time and i think for that reason alone it just pips the starless sea off and enjoyment effect is alone they are they are drawed drawed drew they drew they drew but i think because of the effect of this one on my life it has to be number one so are we surprised quite honestly i mean not really but the secret history is my favorite book of the year so there we have it this video is probably long enough already but they are all of my favorite and least favorite and all the different categories books of the year that's it that's it that's my reading year summed up i cannot wait for 2020 i'll be coming to you with my reading goals for 2020 in my next video and let me tell you i am scared i'm being a little bit i'm being a little bit ambitious i'm being a bit ambitious so we shall see how it goes and i'll be here to chat to you about all my plans for how i'm gonna track my reading in 2020 as well i'm very excited to chat to you all about that if you've enjoyed this video let me know down below what your answers some of these categories are any of them i'll put a list of all the different categories in the description so you can have a look and tell me but again i think this would make a better film and turn the key or whatever whatever you want to tell me um i would love to hear what some of your favorite and least favorite books of the year have been so thank you as always for watching until the end i cannot thank you for all the love and support i've had in 2019 it's such a short space of time and let me tell you we are going to have so much fun in 2020 it's going to be a really really great time so i will see you oh my god next time i'll see you really yeah that's so much fun i'll see you in 2020 and thank you all so so much bye