 Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel Laura's on the library and welcome to today's video Which is my favorites and least favorite reads of the year of 2021 Very appropriate for me to wear this sweater in this video because this is my favorite clothing item slash clothing purchase of This year it's comfy. It looks nice. It's really warm It's cropped. I love it. I wear it all the time. So but we're not here to talk about clothes We're here to talk about books so I am going to start off with my least favorite books of the year and I'm going and I'm going to Tell you my five least favorite books of the year and I'm going to go in order of Counting down to my least favorite of the year and then I will do the same thing with my favorites of the year I will give you my top 10 favorite books of the year because there's so many good ones It was so hard to cut this list down to 10 and then within the 10 books that I had putting them in order It was the hardest thing like the top four. I was just oh my word anyway So I will start with my tenth favorite thing go 9th 8th 7th, etc. And so forth So let's get started with those worst books My fifth worst book that I read this year was actually Wilder Girls by Rory Power And I know some people love this book and I know some people hate this book If you love this book good for you, I'm not trying to say that it was a terrible book I'm just saying that my personal preference Was not this book So if you love it, that's great I am happy for you because it was still a pretty good book. I rated it two out of five stars There are just a lot of things that didn't click with me in here and didn't make sense And I just I had a hard time Understanding the common sense within the book, but I think the concept was still pretty cool And I can definitely see how it's other people's favorite books. So like This is all personal opinion here That's what this entire channel is this personal opinion and then my fourth least favorite It was a recent read deal with the devil by Kit Raqah. I did not like this book I the world building was not well explained and therefore confusing the plot was kind of all over the place and it didn't make sense why The characters did what they did and I just felt like the description didn't quite capture what the book itself was So I am putting down this series But it wasn't anything my third favorite least favorite book of the year is actually The Mermaid by Christina Henry. I also gave this two out of five stars. I I Did not like the writing style. I did not like the main character I felt like sometimes she would be one kind of character and sometimes she'd be another like she wasn't a consistent character And I just wasn't a fan of the plot I kind of felt like it was a character driven book except the characters didn't do much either So I just felt like it was a bad version of the greatest showman My second least favorite book of the year was a DNF So yeah, all the books that I just talked about were all two stars Apparently, I didn't rate anything one star this year, which is interesting But my next book is a graphic novel that I DNF'd and it was the lock-in key Volume one welcome to Lovecraft It was the graphic novel version and I had a hard time with it because I felt like all the characters There were multiple characters That were drawn very similarly that were different people and I could not tell the difference between those characters It looked like the same person But I know that it wasn't the same person and there was a lot of like time differences and POV differences That were not explained or not made clear that we were switching time or POVs And so the story just jumbled together. It made absolutely no sense. I tried so hard. I Just couldn't do it So I don't think I finished it. I know I came close to but I don't actually think I finished it And then my least favorite book of the year was also a DNF and it was Hand of God by Steve McEllishtrim. I Got to page like 50 or 60 the main character made me angry I felt like this book was just going nowhere. I was not a fan I read like the last couple chapters to try and save it and I just I didn't like the ending or anything so I DNF'd it and Yeah, just not a fan Not a fan at all if you want more you can see my beast mode a shape shifter reading blog Or a more in-depth review of why did not like that book But now let's switch gears and be more positive and end this video on a positive note And let's talk about my top 10 favorite books of the year So my 10th favorite book of the year was with a fire on high by Elizabeth Acevedo I love this book the descriptions of food were amazing. The characters were wonderful I just oh, it was a beautiful book. There are recipes in here that I would love to try out So I will give a brief description why I love the book and a little bit of a summary But I do want to make sure this video isn't too long But this is about a high schooler who has a little baby girl And she lives with our viola and she is kind of a single mom with a fast-food restaurant job Trying to get through high school while also providing for her not only her daughter But also her abuela. Yeah, and then she she loves cooking and she's really good at it And then there's this class trip to Spain that she wants to go on but money is tight. So You don't know if she gets to go. I mean, I know because I read it and I liked it But yeah, that's the premise of the book again Really really good book my ninth favorite book of the year is actually like two books in a series I'm kind of combining into one because they're both short and I love them for the same reason But that's the the tea dragon The tea dragon festival and tea dragon tapestry second and third the first one is the tea dragon society and The artwork in here is beautiful. The characters are wonderful. The issues are adorable the dragons I wish were real. So this follows the idea that there are dragons that grow tea leaves and you can make Little tea out of them and then you can see the dragons Like point of view or their memories or how they're feeling and the dragons have such cute unique personalities and These two were a little bit more focused on the humans rather than the dragons But it's okay because I love the human characters as well. Number eight was fat chants Charlie Vega I listened to this audiobook and this book There are some points that made me almost cry some points. I was jumping with joy. It was just a very emotional Contemporary it's about this girl named Charlie Vega who is overweight and her mom He does not accept that about her Her mom is very much like a fitness person trying to get Charlie to go on diets and do workouts But Charlie just wants to write her romances and have a romance of her own. She's in high school She wants to date to the prom she wants to be loved by someone because she doesn't feel like she's loved by her mom And her best friend is miss perfect who is all thin and pretty and all the boys are constantly like wanting to go out with her and some Charlie is just struggling in finding and accepting who she is and Accepting herself without meeting anybody else. And it's just such a sweet journey Number seven was clap when you land by Elizabeth Acevedo again this book is written in verse and it follows these two girls who are unknowing half sisters and One lives in the Dominican Republic one lives in the States and their father they share a father dies on a plane crash and so Through that they find out that their father had two families in two different countries and they find out that they have sisters and Again such another emotional book because everyone is feeling the grief over losing a loved one but then also dealing with the intense and complicated emotions of having a whole of him having a whole other family who you are also now related to and It was just it's another beautifully written book. Like I said, it's written in verse and so it's very easy to just quick flip through it Oh my goodness, it is such a good one though And it and it definitely I I love to travel and I love to fly on planes Anything to do with plane crashes and always scares me but just the title of the book clap when you land I think it's something we should always Implement on airplanes because flying a plane. It's not easy Even if they do it like all the time, you know Each flight is different. So But anyway, yeah, so that was book number Seven book number six my six favorite was sweet and bitter magic by Adrienne Thule This was such a hilarious book the banter the grumpy sunshine The little bit of enemies to lovers not like super strong But the twists and the turns and the magic Whoo, my goodness. I love this book So this follows two witches one who was cast out of her coven and cursed to not feel love and the other Never actually went to the coven because she kept her magic a secret, but when a plague Comes upon the land they decide to team up to try and find the witch who is responsible and save the land and themselves or their family members bum bum I Love this one. I it was a page turner. I could not put it down So I would highly recommend if you love LGBTQIA plus fantasy And then book number five is a whole different genre here and it is actually bangs by Sarah Anderson and this is the cutest Cutest Graphic novel romance. It's a romance between a vampire and a werewolf and it's just a bunch of little Short scenes clipped together of their relationship But I was left wanting more and it was so cute And I am seriously going to like read this every year on Halloween because like I thought it's so short But it just I love it's a little bit grumpy sunshine, but not Super much, but just exploring the differences between vampires and werewolves But then like loving each other for their differences, but then also finding the common similarities like Thanks and celebrating that together. It's just I want to read it again like right now. Okay, also, it's a beautiful It's a beautiful book and it's Very nice cloth with black edges. I am very proud of this book. I love it. All right, my fourth favorite book These were all very close together, but my fourth favorite is the gilded ones by Namina Forna This is such a unique World-building fantasy So this is a fantasy where all of the girls have to go through a blood spilling ritual Either your blood runs raw red like a normal person or your blood runs gold Which means you're a demon your impure and you must be cast out of society and most likely killed So our main character wants nothing more than her blood to run red So she can finally be accepted into society because she is different because her mother was a southerner So she is darker skinned than everyone else and they don't like her and then of course her blood has to go and run gold She however is given the opportunity to join the king's army instead of Dying over and over again because for some reason she's not dying So she decides to take up the offer of joining the army So one day she may be pure again and while she's going through training She learns some things about the world and the monsters that they're fighting against that Might get her brain turning in a different direction This is a wonderful book for feminism in a fantastical world And it just it's very interesting because it has like that old-fashioned ideas against Women and with difference of equality, but also strength of religion But at the same time we have a warrior badass main character, and I love it, so Highly recommend this one although I would say to look it up for trick or warnings a lot of like obviously violence and gore and death so just Be cautious of that as well book number four was actually the very first book that I finished this year and that was star daughter I had started Reading it. I think I started reading it either January 1st or like December 31st But I finished it January 3. It was my first completed book of the year This is such a beautiful book. It has been on my mind All year long it and it's my third favorite book of the year still so this is star daughter by she's a crack and This follows a girl who is half human half star and this I believe follows Hindu mythology, which is Right up what I love to read and she accidentally Her father goes unwell and so she has to go to the stars to ask for their help in healing him But the stars are like, yeah, we'll heal him if you win this competition for us So she's like what and then she has to go and win a competition But the stars are all about art and beauty and music and so it is the book is just full Art and beauty and music and the descriptions are wonderful such a lyrical writing I love the characters the main characters best friend is one of my favorite characters ever. It's just oh, it's so beautiful and so Definitely well-earned as a third favorite then my second favorite was a total surprise I knew going into this book that I was going to like it I didn't know how much I was going to love it especially with all the height that surrounded it I was like I love this premise. I'm not loving this hype, but then when I read it. I was like, okay. Yep. Yep Okay, and that book was Beat read by Emily Henry So I read this right at the end of summer, which was the perfect time to read it This follows two different people, but it only follows from one person's point of view. They are both writers She is a women's fiction writer Really she writes romance, but she's been classified as women's fiction and She recently loses her father finds out he had a mistress and has to go to her father's cabin in To sell the cabin and sell the furniture and work through all of that stuff While being under pressure from her publisher to write her next novel her neighbor is her old college rival and he writes literary fiction and He is expected to write America's next greatest novel Which is a lot of pressure on him and he's just blocked So what these two decide to do is they decide to swap She's gonna write the next great American novel. He's gonna write a romance and whoever sells first Wins it was such a wonderful Story, I thought it was amazing the banter between I like okay If you know me banter good banter in a book goes a long way for me And this was just chalk full of it, but I also love the romance It was enemies to lovers, which is my favorite romance trope. Oh, it was just so good I was so interested in the books that they were writing and I at first the grief was Very prominent, but I love how she handled the grief though and that meeting Different people and getting to know the town and just kind of figuring out who her father was it's just so sweet But also oh gosh and also as someone who loves to write, but I'm not a writer But it was very motivating for me to sit down and write my own story and just really nice to like see like they really go through the writing process of you know coming up with the idea Outlining writing it hating your draft rewriting it finishing your draft saying okay I hate editing, but we got to do it now and just like the whole process It was just such a wonderful thing to read about and I also just love book about books So like it just it fit the bill really really well for me And then we have come to my favorite book of 2021. I loved this book I loved pretty much everything about it. I know it's not everybody's favorite book, but when I read this I just had such enjoyment Freeding it so to me it just is it's my personal favorite book of 2021 and that is a deadly education by Naomi Noh-mick. This is a dark academia where the school is Literally trying to kill you before you can graduate. I and this book clicked really well for me so I loved how the main character was not necessarily an unlikable main character, but She was very much independent fun for myself I'm gonna be fine on my own and then she grew to like other people and other people grew to like her I grew to like her which I very much enjoyed like I didn't hate her at the beginning but it definitely grew to like her and I love the uniqueness of the school and the whole magic system and Another big element for me was the emphasis on the power of languages So as someone who wants to like be a translator and it is a polyglot seeing languages being appreciated like this But not just like saying that like learning different languages is cool But also that like it's hard and takes a lot of work that it can have like significance and just I Wish so badly I could go to this school and be a part of it I know I probably wouldn't survive because I'm a thin tiny little person who would be easily killed But I would just love to study and go down the languages course and translate spells like oh, it just sounds like a dream So I'm really excited to read the last graduate which came out this year Hopefully I will get to it next year. Also the cover is beautiful and I love the colors game It fits the book so well I also loved the writing and again the banter between characters was just Amazing. So this is my top book of 2021. Oh my goodness. That was such a hard list to put together There are so many other really good books that I read this year. It was a really good reading year Like my worst books majority of them were still two-star and I had so many other five-star reads that I very much enjoyed that just didn't quite make the top 10 But yeah, so thank you all so much for watching if you liked this video Give it a thumbs up. Otherwise comment down below your favorites and your worst read of the year I'm so curious to know what they are And maybe I can get some new recommendations from it Otherwise, all of my bookish social media is linked down below So you can go follow me and keep up with all my reading for this coming new year 2022 also don't forget to subscribe I post every week on Sundays and Wednesdays and I will be continuing that through the new year and I have a lot of super fun excited Exciting content for you coming up in January. All right Well, I hope you guys have a great last week of 2021 and a great start to your 2022 But until I see you all in the next video, I wish you happy reading