 there's no chemistry there how are you gonna like be thrust into a situation where you're kind of semi-separated is a bit awkward and like not want to go you know find a closet so i didn't finish the book i gave up at like half eight and i nearly scratched my head and i wonder where's god when you need i'm so angry i only i've only read 30 pages but i'm fuming i'm fuming how are we i'm still ill if you watch my previous vlog which was me reading kendo and cardigan as book jesus i still ain't healed i ain't healed recently in my last video i posted would have been the um book series is that i need to finish this year it's not the last video but go off sis for the most part series is that i have loved and i want to finish this year i get such a feeling of satisfaction from finishing series honestly it's addictive like when you it's addictive enough finishing a book but when you finish a series you really think you are that bitch like you think wow i have just gone through all those books what i thought i would do this week is make progress in a few of those series the ones i'm most excited for and um take you along the ride so these are all quite popular series is here on booktube i'm going to show you the books now and then it's going to be a reading vlog of me reading them so i've picked three books from different series they're all actually the second book in three part series so i'm really not going to finish any series in this video but i'm going to be making progress in them so the first one the one i'm going to read first is girls are still in shadow by the tata nyang if you recall girls are paper and fire was one of my favorite books of last year i adored and so i can't wait to get into this one a few people have not enjoyed this one who did enjoy girls are paper and fire though um they say it definitely suffers from middle book syndrome i've heard that natasha wanted to make it a duology and she was convinced by the publishers to make it a three part series and that you can definitely tell that from reading this but to me there's rarely a book that i can say this feels like home and girls are paper and fire just feels like home to me i think it deals brilliantly with the topics it covers and also it was a big part of me getting into reading this uh in 2019 i read it in florida i bought it and read it in florida on holiday and so it just it has such happy feelings to me you know when i think about reading it and so i can't wait to read this i'm gonna start today and i feel good about this i feel like there's something about the tasha's writing and these characters that is just like at the core of me but we shall see i could also not like it then next we got gemina by amy kofman and j christoff this is of course the second in the illuminay files illuminay was the first book i read this year in 2020 and i gave it five stars i've actually struggled with five stars um this year i think i've only given out two or three so far and i'm about a week into february at the moment so um i haven't given out loads i've read about 14 or 15 books so yeah i'm definitely reading less five stars than i would usually so i'm really hoping like all of these books i'm excited for i'm really hoping that this will prove through and be another five stars if it's on par with illuminay and a lot of people say it's even better then i can't see how i'll give this five stars i'm also going to be buddy reading this with nicole from nicole on her books as always i'm always telling you to go and subscribe to her because she's just like the love of my life i adore her so definitely go subscribe to her and she also purchases for me she also gave it to me for my birthday god the way this is told this is holding a multimedia format um i adore i think it's such a welcome break the same way something like graphic novels is where you switch up your format this i find you read so quickly because of the all the different um like types of stuff that you've got going on in this book so again i can't wait to get to this i cannot wait and then the last one i'm not even in frame get a groupie yourself beggin um the last one i'm a bit scared for is probably from the most hyped up series like out of all of these on booktube and i'm going to be reading seige and storm by lee bar dugo now this is of course the second one in the shadow bone trilogy and i'm nervous i gave shadow bone three stars i didn't love it the reason i want to get through this series quickly is so that i can read six of crows in quicking kingdom which i think are going to be five stars for me but i think this series are kind of going to be three and four stars for me i'm actually not expecting a five star from this we can hope but i i don't think we're gonna get it we follow elina and like her special powers and there's mal who's a tracker they've been friends since birth and there's the darkling who's like he's a bad guy but like you know yeah i'm gonna go start girls of storm and shadow again i'm so nervous because it's like the best just it's just so good anyway it's gonna be i don't want it i don't want it to take girls of paper and fire for me if it's bad like if it's not what if what people said is true i don't want it to take it like i want to hold girls paper and fire pure in my memory so i'm basically reading this in this video to make myself read it and get to it or go see and i'll check back in once i have some thoughts on this book uh if you haven't seen my last reading vlog was me reading kentall garley jenner's book and reading that has definitely put me in a little bit of a slump it took me a few days to kind of get back into reading again i'm now about halfway through girls of storm and shadow i was actually quite nervous going into this just because a lot of people who really enjoyed the first one didn't like this one um i know that kayla from books and lala gave it like one or two stars and i picked this series up on her recommendation you know like girls paper and fire is one of her favorite books of uh last year so when i saw it she gave it a bad rating i was like okay and so i wanted to take a little bit of time um to collect my thoughts before like telling you what i think and i really like it so far um i think it's definitely slower i think the beginning is slow i think it's kind of a mix of that and the last book i read that meant that i read the beginning quite slowly we are in a different location in this book to than we are in the majority of the last book and i think it struggles to kind of cement itself a little bit but we're traveling around a lot in this one we're going to a lot of different locations which i actually think works well for it because no setting is going to have a basis in the story like the one in the first book did you know what i mean be like so core to the story and so going to all these other little places enables us to explore a lot of different parts of the world a lot of different cultures within the world i always worried we would never kind of revisit a lot of the characters we visited in the way we spent time within the first book um from that location but we actually do and i really i've enjoyed there's only like one section one chapter with that so far for me but i really like that as well because that was something when i was coming into it i was saying you know i really want to spend time with those characters and catch up with them and see what kind of place they're in after what happened at the end of the last book so i'm really glad that she's found a way to mix that together and have what happens in those chapters affect the rest of the story as well so i think that's gone really well there's something about natash and yang's writing that i've always said it kind of feels safe not in like a it's not adventurous way but if you feel safe while reading it you know it feels very homely as the word which i think is really important when we're dealing with the subject matters that we are if you don't know the first book girls are paper fire and in this one i guess the whole series there's there's heavy trigger warnings for rape and sexual assault so the king has a group of paper girls who are forced to sleep with him and our main character lay is one of those paper girls so i think her writing feel it i have never really felt that with author before but it feels to me very comforting assuring what it's doing but very like soft this is so weird i've never like spoken about writing but i think how something to counteract the kind of heaviness and the darkness of those topics is really helpful and um in this one we're dealing a lot with trauma how how people feed their trauma and try to mask it and this one as well another topic that we're covering which i think is quite interesting and which i didn't expect was to kind of look at just how power corrupts universally i guess in the first book we follow the demon king and he's just kind of like outright evil right there's a lot of discussion on how when men are given power they can think they're well meaning but it's always going to end up hurting people and sacrifice is always gonna be made and maybe the people who are making them aren't the right people do not in me for now at least i i'm not disappointed by it i don't think it's going to be five stars like girls with paper and fire was to me but i'm often great at betrayed that for sequence in this you know sometimes i'll give a first in the series of five star and the second or two star um and so going from five to a four which is what this is sitting at roughly for me now isn't as painful and i still feel fairly like okay it's fine you know the second book or the second album why is always difficult so it's much later in the evening and i've just finished girls and someone shadow ignore my yoga mat by the way we're just uh we're just gonna usually i come to like these check-ins with a bit of an idea of what i'm gonna say am i in focus even i don't know what i'm doing anymore it's a mess i think i'm gonna give it four stars i really enjoyed it it was kind of the same amount of enjoyment for me throughout it there were some twists and some of those i saw coming and some i didn't i enjoyed the aspect because the ones i didn't felt very like realistic and once i knew about them i understood what happened i was like yeah okay do you know what i mean does this book feel a bit empty maybe i had heard that it was supposed to be on a tassel and yang wanted it to be a um two book series and she got convinced to make it three books i i think she's fleshed it out very well and there's not a lot of scenes that don't feel like they have a place there but it doesn't necessarily feel as high stakes as you would want it to she's intertwined the story very well that for us we can't necessarily cut out parts of the story that you would want to because it's connected to what happens in other parts which obviously wasn't her plan she's interconnected it later when she realized she was going to make it a three book series so that things were all connected so i can't say oh i think this bit should have been cut because it has a knock on effect or something else but i think way way way back in the in the drawing process i think maybe the series would have been more comfortable with the geology she's one of the most vivid writers i've ever come across like have you noticed how whenever i start thinking of that book the book that should not be named i start coughing i'm not kidding when i said it made me ill like it's bad vibes bad energy just all around just like not not conducive for success in comparison to the rebels city of india by kendall and carlie janer i said in that video how i i could never envision where i was like i could never i didn't know what any of the settings looked like i didn't even know where we were half the time like what kind of setting we were in whereas polar opposite of this and part maybe part of the reason i enjoyed reading it so much was that the test from yang makes sure like her settings are some of those vivid i've ever read i can picture everything in such great detail without necessarily other reference points like she she creates such original landscapes and settings i think i love being a lay lay to me is a great character but she's in a relationship in this book which isn't entirely healthy and i think because we we feel for both people in the relationship for both her um and her girlfriend i don't want to like name names i don't want to spoil anything but i think it is commonly known that she falls in love with um a girl in this book right in the series so it's not entirely healthy and i don't know if it's discussed enough her partner's actions when they're bad or portrayed as bad but i'm not sure the dynamics of their relationship particularly towards the end are reflected by outside individuals enough their relationship is very insular it only occurs between them two and so you've never got anyone else saying to her no that's not the way this should be happening um i'm not like crying by the way it's my my cough i don't want to i feel like i sound so sad like no one ever tells everyone is just my voice yeah no one's ever telling her that's wrong and so i think it sometimes it almost believes into like that whole am i crazy thing i mean like the girl she's in a relationship with is is not a bad character by any means not a bad person but she's flawed and um yeah i'm just not sure the dynamics are are fully gone into enough particularly with a series that deals with you know sexual assault and i think i think obviously sexual assault is very separate to relationships but her her perception both of their perceptions of relationships are going to have been affected by what they went through um and so i think the pair are linked in some way in this book so um yeah i just would have liked to see i mean we will get that in the third book but um a bit more of a look at the dynamics between them so but i really loved all the new characters in this to me it didn't feel like we were with new characters it didn't feel drawing it felt like these were people that we knew all along and i just there were a few easter eggs on there for fans and i just really enjoyed it and it makes me feel kind of like more of my taste levels because people who i often are very similar tastes um weird didn't like this but everyone's gonna like different books and i'm here to tell you that girls of stormy shadow isn't as good as girls of paper and fire i don't think anyone is out here saying that but i still think it's very good and i think if you love her writing if you love the core of the story i think she's actually traveled it through very well considering we are in completely different settings this time completely different situations i think the core of the story is still very much there so um yeah i'm gonna give it four starts so now i'm gonna start gemina um i'm budging reading this from the cove from the cove in her books and this is quite long it's um 659 pages but they're usually quite a fast read so i'm hoping i'm gonna get through this quite quickly because today is wednesday night so i've got thursday friday saturday and then i upload this vlog on sunday night but usually i spend like the whole of sunday editing so embarrassing how long editing takes me like everyone else like oh i edited a video saying it took me three hours and i'm like i wish any video already took me three hours yes i'm in my pajamas i don't want to hear anything about it so i didn't read anything yesterday i literally read one page that ain't good i have got 36 hours to read uh about a thousand pages which i mean like it's not that bad i've seen people read more in that time but like for me i don't do that on the reg i am like 25 pages into gemina i'm loving it straight away i mean it's just incredible i mean i i don't think it can do any wrong i think i'm gonna love it again we've got a lot of different mixed medias and just the characters we're following different characters from what i can tell predominantly but i'm still like obsessed with all of them and they're they're such uh individual unique characters so different to what we've seen already my aim today is to get about halfway through this and then tomorrow um there is the what is it actually called hang on i'm really bad at at readathon names okay it's the basically readathon run by brit and there's a 24 hour readathon and i think i'm gonna like semi take part in that all my plans are tomorrow is to read so my lunch is already made dinner will be made i'm not gonna have to do any cooking tomorrow which always takes up so much time i'm just plan plans are go to the gym tomorrow as well and read so the plan is to still finish this in time to edit this on sunday if you're seeing this on sunday you'll know if i've done relatively okay but like i'm scared because this ain't me this ain't me i don't read that much that fast oh my god ignore how bad that spot is okay i'm gonna go read the next hour until i need to go out then i'm gonna go out then i'm gonna come back and i'm gonna read more and i'll just keep updating you but i hate myself morning i literally i've just woken up i haven't done anything yet this morning i haven't brushed my teeth i haven't had anything to drink i just came and picked up the camera and i thought right there's a vlog straight away so um i did try to set alarm this morning and i didn't get up with it um i was just really tired i don't know if my mind but so it's like what is it like corpus nine right now and um last night i managed to get to about page like 285 of this so um i was aiming for like 300 and i did pretty well considering when i was at like 150 i thought oh there's no chance i'll probably only get to 200 but then i let um oh my god it's too early i sped through um like page 200 to 280 so yeah i think i think i'm gonna be getting through it a lot quicker now the pace of the book picks up and because of the way it's written when the kind of pace of what everything's going at picks up you're reading it quicker because um there's some pages that are like really short um really short things to i guess like keep the pace going for you so um you know it's so good these books are incredible these books are incredible like i really haven't been out here reading anything like this at all like they're just in my opinion in a league of their own they're incredible they are they just i can't stop going on about them the stakes in this one didn't feel very high for the first 100 pages you were kind of like okay what's happening but then the stakes rose very very suddenly very suddenly like it was crazy so um yeah i can't wait to read the rest of this i'm going gym at about um i gotta leave at about half 11 and so i've got like two and a bit hours now um obviously i'm gonna be having breakfast and sort myself out a bit first but i reckon i can get a really good chunk of this done i'm gonna aim to get to at least page 400 of this before i go gym and then when i come back it's just getting through it you know getting through as as much as the books as i can i need to check in on twitter and see what everyone's reading for the readathon um and see how it's going for everyone so yeah i'm gonna go get some breakfast and i'll check in with you in a bit uh i'm so angry i'm i'm so angry at this character i'm so angry i'm so i'm so i'm i'm so angry i only i've only read 30 pages but i'm fuming i'm fuming yo what this series is so good at doing is pulling oh my god i've gone really red it's like pulling twists out the back that you could never have seen coming you're just like and you're like how did i not predict that because then you feel dumb but then you're like oh my god why why do i hate everyone god i i was ready to throw my book across the room i was ready to throw my book across the room i was so angry okay i want to get back to reading yo i okay i just got back from the gym and had lunch i'm not even gonna try to look good for you right now because it's impossible after that gym class oh my god i feel like death i i i feel like i feel so tired it was so hard but um yeah back home the book just keeps getting better and better like i might even prefer it to illuminay and considering illuminay is my favorite book i've read so far this year like we're gagged we're gagged everyone's saying hi to the panda by the way it's good luck to give him tummy rubs okay uh i'm exposing her word we are i i don't know how they do it and i think it's really clever that they've switched characters but they're all still connected and the store oh my god it's just so good it's just so good and i don't know how they managed to create all these amazing characters that i like i'm obsessed with that i love so yeah i'm gonna go carry on reading my arm hurts i need to start putting this on the tripod when i check in because my arm gets so tired okay bye wish me luck i've had enough i've had enough i'm checking out i finished gemina it's gonna it's gonna be five stars it's gonna i mean the thing is with this series of books they are so full of tension like you're rooting it and you're like like skipping the pages and some a new development is constantly happening something is constantly going wrong that they've got to deal with um in both the books and so you're just full of tension like i feel so wired of tension right now um if i said i'm giving it five stars i'm giving it five stars it's five stars it's incredible i don't know if it's better than a luminae or not to me it is similar did i say all this before i think it's going to be very similar the series or it is to the barrel of nightingale series or the winter night trilogy in the sense that that series was all five stars and like i can't differentiate between them in terms of how good they are they are just all that good they're all on the same level and they kind of all blend into one story where like you can't separate it it's just one big story it's not separate books it's like a whole arc do you know what i mean i don't know if i'm explaining that very well but that's what it feels like to me i uh it takes you through every emotion i was screaming i wish i was filming myself because i was angry i was so angry and upset i was so angry and upset and then like it's it's turns around on you it's full of twists oh y'all wanted a twist eh come on illuminate let's get and you just ah god i'm just if you haven't picked up this series yet please get to it right now i'm trying to stare into yourself please go go read it right now i don't care about what elf whatever else you've got on your tbr i really don't care unless it's something that's very nice and get on which case maybe pick that up first but no i don't mean that i mean i've been speaking about that longer in case you listen to me which i'm pretty sure no one does so anyway um go read it go read it and the thing is you'll see it and you'll be like 659 pages but you read it so fast like i really don't feel like it took me that long to read it because you know some pages are let me find something that doesn't like spoil it some pages are like that right or like this like that but you'd also have pages like this where it's like surveillance transcript of a surveillance camera right so it doesn't actually take that long to read and it's just it was just incredible like i want to go and reread it and i just need to i just need to i don't know i need to read everything that Amy Coffman and Jay Kristoff have written both together and apart because it's just incredible just incredible so um i did actually finish that roughly on time i finished it like five or ten minutes after four i think it's probably like half or now because i had to set the camera for everything but we're gonna start Siege and Storm by Lou Bardugo and i've got to finish this tonight really yeah i mean there's no excuses i've got to finish it tonight i don't think this is going to be as good a read as Gemina i'm ready for more of the darkling listen i'm just i i think i've said this before listen i don't know why i've said too far so i'm just gonna say it i'm so happy i'm reading these in the era after Ben Barnes been announced as the darkling because it means i imagine him as a darkling and i think it just improves a reading experience okay so i didn't finish the book i gave up at like half eight and i really scratched my head and i wonder where's god when you need him i gave up but i got how far did i get like 80 pages in and i'm actually enjoying it a lot more than Shadow and Bone you know we might have a full star on our hands i mean it's only days but i feel actually like this book is better like i'm enjoying it a lot more a lot has happened in a very short amount of time which i think with this series benefits it because you know the writing you know Lee Bodger has come a long way in my opinion i think you need that quick pace to keep me interested at least so um yeah i think it's and i think it's better written than Shadow and Bone as well i think it's way better written i think there's been parts i've read i'm like oh that's nice you know but yeah sorry that i gave up what can i say so so after i gave up trying to finish this on Saturday night god at like 70 pages 80 pages i i then didn't read any more until really this morning day is Wednesday so i went three days without picking this up now i it wasn't like i didn't read i just read other books the problem with this is i don't think it's a bad book it's not a bad book at all like i'm enjoying it but like that there's nothing that makes you want to pick it up like in those days where i didn't read it there was nothing that made me want to pick it up and i don't think it's necessarily worse than Shadow and Bone but i don't think it's an improvement i've been reading this all day at first you know i was like i'll check in at 150 pages and i was like okay 200 and then we made 250 because i've been waiting for something to actually say to you i've been waiting to have an actual opinion apologies my hair is like crazy by the way i've been waiting to have an actual opinion because thus far nada i i just haven't cared like i haven't i've just been like oh okay fine i haven't had anything that i loved to talk to you about or anything i was outraged about you know like it was just chill it was just whatever i i didn't care i'm not gagging i think the problem is you could say that Girls with Stormwind Shadow was very similar to this in the sense that like it's a kind of you know we travel somewhere book and not loads happens i mean something are we still have 120 pages something to happen but like in that series i'm very attached to the characters i think the characters are very well rounded very developed and i don't think these characters are i don't care about any of them any of them not even any real like side characters i just don't care i really have nothing to say to you like i'm reading this Horace book and i have nothing to say to you about it like i just don't care i just don't care i just want to finish it it's not a bad book like i i'm enjoying it but there's nothing to talk about like it's bland like it's like the equivalent of quaker's oats like maple porridge right like you bite the sachet and you put it in the milk and it's the maple flavored one right it's nice you eat it and you go like yum nice right but but after a few speeders was like this is samey and it's nothing to write home about no one's gonna be saying that's their favorite breakfast no one's gonna be saying that's oh that's the best breakfast i've ever had like it does the job you go oh yeah nice but there's nothing to say about it it's just bland porridge i don't hate mal yet i don't hate him i don't hate him i think like he's not really annoying me at all but everyone says he does something and i'm trying to predict what he's gonna do oh another thing the romance in this book oh come on could you i sounded really posh i'm not posh i was like oh come on could you get anywhere boring like they're not even there's no chemistry there how are you gonna like be thrust into a situation where you're kind of semi-separate it's a bit awkward and like not want to go you know find a closet or something do you know what i mean like not even speaking to each other there's a complete lack of communication that's what bothers me i can't stand like a communication when there's no good reason if there's a good reason i don't care that can be kind of like but this is no good reason for them not just not communicating how they're feeling or i just that's irritating me that's the main thing that's irritating me like guys why can't we just sit down and have a chat so final thoughts i have none this book was just so i don't even i don't even have any i don't have any positive feelings towards it but i don't have any negative feelings towards it like i'm just completely unbothered about it and i i i read it yesterday and i feel like nothing happened i okay question also am i supposed to hate mel now because everyone says he does something in this book or is it the next book that makes you hate him he's done some stuff in this that make me think oh he's just an idiot but i don't hate him like i don't think he's a bad person i understand where he's coming from am i the only one who understands where he's coming from so i gave it three stars it's probably more like a 2.75 but like i usually give oh i don't know three it was fine it was fine there we go i've made progress in some of the book series that i really wanted to get to this year i feel really happy actually i've made progress on one of these because then i've only got one book left in each of the series and it's the final book which is quite exciting so yeah i'm really happy that i made progress i'm sad this video took longer the film that i wanted it to but you live and you learn and uh yeah i hope you enjoyed the video and i will see you very very soon with another one thank you for watching bye