 Like, I was just constantly putting the book down and just going... AHHHHH! Hi friends, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're well. Today we have a vlog which I have been so excited about for so long. I have three cats. And in my themed weekly vlogs, I typically read through books, so... See, I'm telling you, I have the mind of a mastermind. What's that? I don't know, but I'm so creative like that. What I decided to do is I'm gonna have my cats pick my TBR. So I have three cats, I've got three separate categories, and they're each gonna have three books to choose from. And so out of nine books, we're gonna be reading three because my cats have picked them. My cats all have very different personalities and vibes, so I've tried to match the book category to them. So first is Lux. And Lux is the laziest of all my cats. He sleeps constantly. I've never known a cat to just sleep all day. This boy is so lazy, and that's basically all he does. He loves his mum, who is one of our other cats, and he also loves the kitten, youngest cat we have. Lux is just flamboyant, he loves having fun, but he also loves to sleep. And so because he's always dreaming, I thought I would get him to pick fantasy books. Because we have no idea what that boy is dreaming. But I like to think he's got some vivid fantasy plot line going on in his head. I'm gonna be getting him to pick between The Poppy War by L.F. Quang, The Never-Totting World by Rin Chipeco, and The Raven Boys by Maggie Stevewater. One, two, three. Is he blind? Gone for that one. He might make you wanna read some more. Do you like to be in front of the camera? He does. Why do you have to make one? Next is Rora, who is our oldest cat. She's the mum of Lux. Now Rora is vicious. She doesn't take any shit. She's beautiful, but she's deadly. She's literally the most vicious. I ain't taking no shit, cat, I've ever met. So for that reason, I've gone with thriller. Because if Rora was a human, she would be living a life of crime. So for that, I'm getting her to pick between No Exit by Taylor Adams, The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewel, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware. Hey, Rora. How you doing? You're gonna have some fun. Can you see that? Treats. Rora, come on then. She's having a good think about what her favourite book is. Yeah. It's like it's between No Exit and The Family Up. Ooh. Ooh. She's gone for No Exit. So lastly is Miko. Miko is our youngest cat. We've had him for just over a year now. He's about a year old. Miko is a lot of fun. He loves playing. He loves just being a good boy. But he's not a good boy when it turns to night because this cat refuses to come in from the garden. He will hide. He will run. It is an Olympic sport. Trying to get Miko to come back inside. So I see him as the most wildly educated of all the cats because the other two just stay inside and sleep all day. Whereas Miko is out there learning, living his best life. So I've chosen non-fiction for Miko because although he or two are older I think he probably knows the most about the world. So I'm gonna be getting him to pick between Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt, Forgotten Women the Leaders by Zing Sheng and I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle Mackinomara. Hey Miko. He smells cheesy. Nice. Look. Can you see the treats? No. Miko, go back. He's the smartest one. So quickly just to recap what was chosen. First Lux Chosen Every Tilting World by Rin Chepeko. I've heard so many people loving this recently. It's about a world that has stopped tilting and so half the world is permanently in the sun and so is like a desert and the other half is permanently stuck in darkness and is all ice and cold. And I think two sisters or goddesses play a role in this as well but I'm not completely sure but I'm very excited to get this one. I've recently hauled and I think it's always good to get to a book when you've just bought it because the excitement is still really fresh. Then for Thriller, Rora chose No Exit by Taylor Adams. So this is about a girl who pulls into like this kind of service station or stop during this snowstorm and she's stuck with I think four strangers and she goes out and she sees that one of the vans has a girl tied up in it. There's obviously been abducted or something similar and so she's trying to figure out which of these people she's with. She can't trust. And I think it's a very action-packed, fast-moving thriller. I think this is going to be the one I read first just because this has been one of my most anticipated books for the longest time. And I've been in a bit of a reading sub lately and so I just really in the mood for a thriller. And then lastly, Miko chose Forgotten Women the Leaders by Zing Sheng. This is when I've spoken loads about my channel but never actually read it. It's always in those like I need to read this book video but this is a series of books and this is the leaders and it has all this amazing artwork in it. What I love about this is that it has women of all colours of all different nationalities. It's a really, I think, hopefully I haven't read it but from just looking through it I think it's a really global look at the Forgotten Women Throughout History. I love learning about women's history and the women who have made an impact on the world throughout time that like have kind of been forgotten because our history curriculum, what we're taught in schools and what we know about history is so just focused on men. I'm going to cooperate. I'm so stressed. I'm so stressed out by this book. I can't do it! I can't. You are stressing me out. I can't do it. It's not a who done it. You find out pretty early on who the main suspect is. The question is whether she can defeat the evil, whether she can trust everyone else who's at the rest stop, whether she can be ingenuative enough. This has been ingenuative so far. I've got to say, she's been, you know, pulling out the bag so far. My heart rate feels like it's at an all-time high. I have a feeling it's only going to get worse. That's the thing as well. Like, things are just starting to turn. It seemed like I was 100 pages in and I was like, right, she's got this. She's fine. She's going to do it. And then, Curveball just came. Plot twist. Oh, guys, I'm stressed. I am so stressed. It's only going to get worse. It's only going to get more stressful. Like, we were hopeful. We were hopeful. We've crested the tip. And it's only going to, I just like it's only going to go downhill from here. I'm not ready. It's such a page turner. So if, like me, you're in a slump, this is the perfect book to just come and like rip you out of that slump. I'm so happy that Aurora picked this. Aurora obviously has taste. Never have I read a book and been so stressed out. I was at, for most of this, like a stress level 10, a danger level 10. And you just think, oh my God, it can't get any worse. And then about 200 pages in, we went up to a stress 11. And then we went up to stress 15. I think I've actually been getting chest pains and irregular heart patterns from this book. The past two days, like my heart has been hurting. I've been getting heart palpitations. Just thinking about this book. It was so good. Aurora pulled through. So we all gag nation on this. The pacing in this book, absolutely incredible. The things that Darby is able to do, the trick she pulls out the bag, the sacrifice she makes, the heroic she pulls girl I could never. Oh my God, this book. I have been so stressed out while reading it because sometimes with other thrillers, or at least with other thrillers I have read, you have moments of respite, right? There's like periods of not normalcy but not high stakes, high action moments. But in this, you're constantly, constantly on the move, on the go fighting. Like it's so quick and so full on and so extreme and so life or death throughout the whole book. At times I couldn't take it. Like I was just constantly putting the book down and just going, like that. Just constantly. Every three pages. I'm talking about Megan right now and I'm like, oh my God, look what's happening. And he's like, Megan, it's not real. I'm like, I don't care. They're living rent free in my head. But my emotion, and I was just in so much trauma. I was in a shock trauma as well. All the shock, it was like delayed shock. Oh my God. The way it looks at male entitlement as well, I found was a really interesting theme that we got to explore particularly towards the end. The ending, I almost cried. Like I almost cried. I actually think this has raised my blood pressure. I don't even know what that means, but I think it's right. I love, I love in thrillers isolation. I love it. I love when we have a select cast of characters. We are stuck in this place together. We know I love that. All the thrillers I love have that element. Oh my God, my God. It's like you are at 100 miles per hour the entire book. Darby. I want to call my kid Darby now. I'm not even joking. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to broach the subject with Tom that we've got to call any daughter we have Darby because of what this girl did. Is that weird? She is one of my favourite protagonists now. So Nina's to say I'm giving it five stars. So I've started Lux's Pick, which was The Never-Torting World by Rinchepeko. I'm just over a hundred pages in, so I'm just under a quarter. I've only read that much. I'm like not into it yet. Is that true? It's very true. Which is really sad, I thought it would be the kind of thing that I'd be into straight away. So we have the two worlds, not the two worlds, the two kind of lands, and we're following two perspectives in each of them, so four in total. So essentially you have this world that's been split in half, and a goddess rules each, and each of those has a daughter. And so two perspectives are each of those daughters, and we have two other perspectives as well. One who is a boy who lives on the outskirts in the desert and wanted originally to kill the goddess of his land. And then the other one is a kind of, she's a kind of like a healer to the goddess now, and they had been meeting up and like going on dates, but she didn't know she was the goddess. She thought she was just like a normal girl. I'm just an ordinary girl. And we're like cycling through them. So we're going like one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. At least that's what's happening at the moment. So I'm on, I'm just about to start chapter seven, which will be the third perspective for the second time. But what that means to me is like, I'm just not getting particularly connected to the world or any of the characters. There's so many characters in this. And I enjoy when a book is ambitious and has a ton of characters, but they've all just been thrust upon me. But I feel like I'm getting a different sense of world building throughout each character's eyes, if that makes any kind of sense. And I also feel like I can't imagine at some moments what is going on. Like I can't picture it in my head. That's so upsetting. I will say that when I pick it up, I feel like it's quite readable. I'm just like not fully into it in the way that I want to be. However, I need to get into it because I need to finish both of these books by tomorrow night to finish this and Miko's pick, which was Forgotten Room and the Leaders. You pick this book out. What do you think of it? Yeah, you still like it, don't you? So I had to come inside. I was reading outside. Lois on my knee, but it's already every talking to myself. In terms of the never tilting world by Rinchpeco, I am just over halfway and on page 270, so I've got this much left to read, which considering it's like 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I think that's pretty good. I'm still not obsessed with it. I'm still not completely in love with it. I have a few problems, and then we'll get into the things I like. We have those four perspectives that I spoke about and two of the perspectives are together in the half of the world. So it's a continuous story. You're just switching perspectives between the two. So it meant that we were coming back to that plot for quite a while. But it was until about page, I say 120, maybe even a little bit further in that the other two plots met up. So until then, we were following kind of separate stories. And although it was interesting to learn about these two individuals, it just meant that I wasn't connected to their side. They're in the sunny, deserty part. And I felt like that was a subplot to the other two perspectives, which I still kind of feel like in a way. And in terms of the two perspectives that I was enjoying more, they knew each other and were in a relationship before the book started. And then their plot in this one is kind of them, there's a lot of tension between them. There's been a lot of lies in that relationship. Lies, lies and more lies and lies on top of lies. And they're putting a situation which is really difficult for them. But it means that we haven't seen them happy together, which is kind of like, I just stop arguing. It just feels like I have read 270 pages and they haven't made any kind of progress in their relationship and in terms of liking each other again. There's a lot of monsters. Monsters constantly appear and we fight them, but it's like overly fast. And another problem that I have with this is that I just can't picture it. Usually that's a sign of a bad book and I don't think this is a bad book. There's just something about the writing style that means at times, particularly in the really high conflict in the fight scenes, I sometimes am struggling to picture it. At one point, I felt like the plot was very similar to Kendall and Kylie Jenner's book, which I'd hate it. And obviously, Rinchpeco is a wonderful author and it's not Kendall and Kylie Jenner. This is awkward. But like that time has passed, but I had to be upfront. And at one point I was like, this is just the plot of Kendall and Kylie Jenner, but it's not. We've moved past that. But things I am enjoying, I do really, really like the writing, even though I'm struggling at times to connect and to visualise, I enjoy the writing for what it is, if that makes sense. I can see why someone else would love it. I'm just sad that I'm not loving it as much. However, there is a plot twist coming. I think that if it happens, I will live for. I will absolutely live for it. It's a spoiler, so I can't say. And I will just be obsessed if that happens. It will be like a stroke of genius if what I think is going to happen happens. Keep saying it. Just keep saying it. Keep saying it out loud. And maybe you will convince hope. I have also started Forgotten Women the Ludas. I think this is quite a good thing for me to pick up when I'm like a bit fed up of this. I love this already. Learning about these women and their lives and about these women that I've never heard about before is just wonderful. And did you know that women only make up half a percent of history? I just finished The Never-Tilting World by Ren Chepeko. I'm going to give this three stars. Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah! My issues that I'd already spoken about just continued throughout the book for me. The thing that I wanted to happen, I was like, oh, I'll be so happy if that happens, did happen. But not quite to the extent that I wanted it to. It kind of backtracked right at the end from the direction I was hoping it would go. And I just felt like it was a bit of a wimp move. Like I think we should have just gone all the way. I would say I think she's really good at writing romance and like steamy scenes. I don't want to call them sex scenes. Maybe one of them was a sex scene, but it's very tame. Like it's not vivid. This is YA. But she's good at writing that romantic relationship. And it meant, through the romantic relationship, particularly with the characters, I said I didn't connect to as much. I connected to them much more towards the end. Actually I ended up preferring them in some ways, which was interesting. The main thing that I have discovered from this is that I don't like books when it's split between two different storylines. I was thinking about it, and I didn't like it in Next Year in Havana, which I just didn't like that because of a whole, but I think that was a reason as to why I didn't like it. And although I gave it five stars, I really didn't like it in Obsidio. Obsidio's the third in the Illuminae files, and that's one of my favourite series, but Obsidio is probably my least favourite from that series. So I've just come to the conclusion that I don't like books where we are half and half between two different storylines. I just think I struggle to connect to the characters in the way that I want to. I struggle to connect to the storylines. I struggle to keep engaged. I just like a continuous narrative, whereas when it's like this, it feels so broken up to me that's going back and forth. And so me giving this three stars, I always rate based on personal enjoyment. And so I think this is a really good YA fantasy. If you don't mind that, but I think I've noticed a pattern and I think that's something I really don't like in books. So I just shouldn't pick up anything with that stylistic feature. That's right. Although I'm giving this three stars, that's not me saying it's a bad book. I would really be interested in reading anything that else that Rintpeco's written. And so now I am going to finish Forgotten Women, The Leaders. It's currently just past nine, but I am 56 pages into this and it is 200 pages. So that means I've got 150 pages left. But as we know, there's a lot of pages where the whole page is taken up by an illustration. So at the moment, I'm not too worried about finishing this. For me, this is like the perfect nighttime book. I was so excited to read this tonight because I often fall asleep watching history videos. It's so weird. We are going to pretend we didn't hear that. I've spoken before how much I love this channel by a woman called Lindsay Holiday. And like when you watch it, it's the cheesiest, weirdest history. But Lindsay Holiday is a queen in my opinion and that's often the video I put on when I'm about to go to sleep because it's just easy. Like her voice, it just sends me to sleep. But this was Miko's pick. And he's been hanging around in my room the whole day and he's just left. He's like, Bitch, I've been waiting for you to read my pick. I'm leaving now. Give it up. When little does he know I'm about to re-get into it. Linda's this morning and I'm going to give it four stars. I really, really enjoyed this and I would definitely recommend it if you're looking to learn about women from all over the world in so many different time periods. I just loved this. I think though I couldn't give it five stars because there were some stories I was just more engaged with than others. I think non-fiction it's always very difficult to give it five stars especially something that isn't giving you a message necessarily. This is just like history. I just loved learning about these women. There were some women that I had some knowledge about already and there were a lot that I had no idea about and it was good I think to have that mix where some of them I was able to draw on previous knowledge and then others were completely new to me and I was learning about this woman that I'd never heard before. Miko picked a good one. I really enjoyed it and yeah I would really recommend it if you want to learn more about the women the history has forgotten and the art throughout all of this was just incredible like the art was amazing and a real highlight. I mean like isn't that so pretty. So thank you so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it hopefully maybe I'll do it again soon. My cats will pick what I read again but yeah it was just a bit of fun and I liked filming them even though they didn't like it they really didn't like me taking a thumbnail for this video they were like this ain't it not this not this I hope you enjoyed the video I will see you very very soon with another one bye