 Hey fellow reading warriors and welcome to this week's video. So this is definitely gonna be a bit of a different video than normal. If you hear water in the background we're getting the jacuzzi and our airbnb all set up. It is very exciting um and also traffic. So we are in Ecuador. We are in Quito Ecuador which is the capital and so this is gonna be kind of a random video of like an Ecuadorian travel vlog but I'm gonna try and focus it either around books or really cool interesting things that we saw but I might try and keep it book themed um so I have already gone to a bookstore and purchased a couple books. I also brought a couple books along for reading so it will still be a bookish themed vlog even if not every clip is specifically bookish. But first I'm going to go ahead and tell you what I've been reading. So I have you had me at Hola by Alexis Daria. I'm about 50 pages into it already and it's only our second day in Ecuador and I'm liking it so far. Yeah I think it's been pretty easy. It'll be very interesting um I think going forward but yeah I just chose this because I just chose this because I think it's gonna be a fun fast little contemporary read for here in Ecuador. She comes from a soap opera background and he comes from a telenovela background and they are co-stars on a new um it's kind of like a bilingual telenovela or bilingual soap um so yeah I'm excited for this one. The other one I have been reading on the plane because I am reading you had me at Hola here in the Airbnb um because it's soft cover and so I don't want to be taking it in and out of the backpack because I don't want to accidentally damage any of the corners of the spine or the pages. So what I've been reading in the airport and what I will finish reading once I finish you had me at Hola is Tequila Kingdom um and so this is about a siren who is going to become queen of the oceans one day but their thing is that they steal the heart of princes and the hearts of sailors um but I believe it's kind of a little mermaidy um she gets banished I think to be human world and um you know she kind of has to live among humans that she doesn't like and there's got to be something involved with the prince um it is a dual perspective and so we're kind of following her and prince at the moment. I am a few chapters into it I I like it it's just you know it's one I've been really meaning to get to and it's very water focused which is kind of nice I have two very different books with me on this trip to kind of fit whatever mood I'm in and then I bought two books at a bookstore we went to a bookstore called Mr Books and it was so fun it was such a beautiful bookstore obviously I have clips um but I've also bought two books from there one in English and one in Spanish so the book I bought in Spanish actually is Labyrinth Lost by Zorena so this is in Spanish and I bought this because so I read the audiobooks I'm still listening to the third book on audio but I love the trilogy it's the Brooklyn Bruja trilogy and I thought this was just the perfect book to buy in Spanish again I've already read it but also I'd be interested in rereading it in Spanish and kind of seeing some of the phrases and how they translate um also it's a beautiful cover and it just kind of it kind of makes sense uh because they're celebrating their Latinx heritage heritage and so it just made sense to buy in a Spanish-speaking country and it's so pretty I love the feel of it too and then the book that I bought in English I wanted I specifically wanted to buy one book in Spanish one book in English um but the book that I bought in English actually was One by One by Ruth Ware and I bought this because even though I don't normally read uh like horror or thriller in the back of my mind Halloween is coming up I know I feel like I'm just starting to actually embrace summer and now I'm already starting to think about Halloween but I plan on going on a really big book shopping and haul at the very beginning of fall because I have some really cool videos planned for around Halloween time and even kind of before that that are Halloween themed so I wanted to get a jump start on buying books for Halloween and Halloween season so I bought One by One by Ruth Ware I've heard lots of good things from other booktubers about this and their videos it is about um eight co-workers who are trapped in a cabin due to bad weather I believe an avalanche or something kind of walks them into the cabin and then very slowly they're getting murdered and so you've got to so you're all trapped together you've got to figure out who's murdering people and what to do about it but also each co-worker obviously has like their own secrets and mysteries and whatnot so yeah I I don't think I'll read this one on this trip obviously again it's mostly for Halloween time um but if I somehow manage to finish the other two books that I brought on this trip which I don't think I will finish both of them I'll probably finish one like here and maybe the other one in an airport I don't know we'll see but then I would actually like I would be interested in trying to read Labyrinth Lost again but in Spanish um because I did listen to the audiobook like I said and I liked it but there was one spot kind of near the beginning where I found myself zoning out a lot um I had a lot on my mind the day I was listening to it so there were a couple parts that I actually missed and so I'm curious if reading through this in Spanish if I'm gonna uh fill in that little bit of a hole there and it'll have the same effect so that is all for this updated kind of beginning-ish clip I probably won't have too many more clips where I'm talking at you except for maybe a closing clip to talk about my feelings with these books um but yeah I hope you enjoy all the other clips of me either reading these books or doing some things in Ecuador probably the last update in the country it is our last day here in Ecuador and so this is kind of like a travel and kind of a reading vlog and I did successfully finish one book for this reading vlog and I finished You Had Me at Ola by Alexis Daria and I will talk about it here and then I'll give you a little bit of an update on Tequila Kingdom um but I I'll probably update you when we're back in the States but also no promises so anyway I rated this a solid three stars it was fine it was enjoyable but there was nothing super remarkable about it there were things I liked there were things I kind of didn't like um for example I didn't like the start of the romance I think I think how the two characters met was great and I love the joke that it brought up throughout the rest of the book but I feel like when Ashton here falls in love with Jasmine he he would say like oh she's she's beautiful and what not but then he would also say like she is smart and kind except there is no way for him to know because he closed himself off from her so it just felt like he really did just fall in love with her beauty and then convince himself that she was a good person to fall in love with even though he didn't want to because he has his own secrets but it was just kind of like he fell in love with her because of just her beauty and then like after everything had happened like he actually liked more aspects of her like it's an enemies to lovers because they get off on the wrong foot but I just feel like him falling in love with her just didn't feel very like genuine or like it didn't feel like love until more so near the end of the book even though like they were saying oh you know I'm in love and blah blah blah um it just felt a little more lusty rather than lovey and I I'm that's not my not my particular cup of tea um one thing that caught me off guard slightly is that so there is an age gap between the characters and it gets brought up for like two sentences and those two sentences were like weird and then it's never discussed again because he they had this moment where she they saw they saw something that they both recognized and she was like oh I liked that when I was eight and he was like I was in high school and it's just when you when you put it that way it's a little weird for me like it again it's just not my cup of tea personally but then like it's never discussed again and I'm just sitting here through this the book and I'm like how much of an age gap is that that's like slightly under 10 years okay okay okay there are it's really cool because there are parts of the show that they're filming sprinkled in like there will be small chapters that are just scenes from the show and I loved those I thoroughly enjoyed them it was really cool because the narration the font would change to more of a script like font to let you know that it's changing to the show and it would say everything from like Carmen's perspective and Victor's perspective which are the characters that these two are playing on the uh like American telenovela Spanish soap opera fusion that they're doing so it was really cool and the very first scene that they did it was hard to tell what was the actors and what was the characters because it would just switch back and forth without like giving much prompting but then in all the rest of them it was only about the characters and that was really nice and really cool um to see them in action into know specifically what's happening in the show and not rely on constant context or character explanations within the novel but we would actually get glimpses of the show which was really cool it was like a whole nother plot line to follow except it wasn't super prominent I wish I do wish we could have had a little bit more um of those scenes or talking just a little bit more about the specifics of the show um rather than like oh they're doing a show but all this other stuff is happening and then they film an episode and then they go back to all this other like I kind of wish it was a little bit more intertwined but this was kind of a slow burn slash like it just took the characters a while to become like friends and then when they were friends they weren't even friends they went from zero to a hundred um there wasn't much in between of when they actually started talking and hanging out to when they actually started like beginning a relationship and I wish there had been a little more build up kind of in the middle where they got into know each other before they went full blown but good steamy scenes though real good the cousins so jasmine's cousins are some of my favorites like honestly so she has a group chat with two of her cousins and they're called the primas of power because prima is cousin in Spanish and it's those two were my absolute favorite I love them I could not that I could relate to them but I have people in my life including cousins who are like that and I'm like that just that's right that's that's relatable and that's really fun um so that was pretty great and then one thing that I really really enjoy when books do this and I think most of the time books do this but not like as explicitly so like obviously there was um I guess not obviously but there was some talk and mention about like the clothes that they wear when they do like certain events or certain scenes and whatnot and right at the end of the book she wears this dress and that just made me so happy I was like yes she she's it's described that she's wearing the outfit that's on the cover of the book and a significant moment thank you I don't know why but I love that going to change the camera ever so slightly because a angle and b my phone is getting pretty hot and the position it was in so we're gonna kind of hurry through this one thing I really really appreciated about this book was the characters learning to communicate so after so they had to work with an intimacy coordinator for the show and they started taking the things that this intimacy coordinator told them to do it and applying it to their real life secret relationship and mainly it was communication so basically they would get into a sticky situation or they would something would happen and they would be like hmm okay you know what we're gonna listen to the intimacy coordinator and communicate and I was like yes that is so wonderful that there are books showing characters learning to communicate because communicating is not always easy but it is very necessary and I just there are too many books out there where plots or main events or just little things are a thing because characters refuse to communicate or try to communicate or communicate badly so it just made me very happy if you've seen my channel you know the communication is a big thing for me also I'm really sorry that the camera is super shaky I'm having to hold it now it's a fun time so I'm obviously not going to spoil anything because I like to do spoiler free reviews but one thing I will say I don't think it's much of a spoiler because it's not a main plot spoiler but in the epilogue it finally mentions therapy and I was happy that it was mentioned but I really wish it was mentioned earlier in the book because it's very obvious that these characters need it and I would have liked if it had just been mentioned a little bit earlier within the book to kind of put a that positive spin on it yeah so overall like there were things that I loved about it things that made it unique like the the scenes from the script and like the good communication but overall I mean it's two novella stars enemies to lovers kind of like not anything super special for me which is why it's a three stars like it's a good book and I'd still recommend it to people but I think there is plenty that wasn't super great that it's like it's a good read if you just have time to just sit down and read like a short 300 page contemporary lesson then do it but the representation one other thing I will say the representation of the latinx community in here was amazing and so obviously the book is in the united states they're recreating their own version of a telenovela and jasmine literally sits down and says this and is like I love the diversity of the cast you've got people from many different countries many different backgrounds some who are immigrants from other countries such as ashton who's from portico well not a different country but english was not his first language and but then you also have characters like jasmine who are a couple generations into living in the united states and everywhere in between and there were characters from all different country backgrounds throughout central and south america and that was really cool to see in here as well and to see that rep I wish that we had gotten more of the side characters like so much of the story was focused on just our two main characters and it switches perspectives so you get a lot of the two main characters but you don't get too much of like the the co-stars or the too much of the cousins so I wish there was a little bit more just to really dive into that diversity but I'm really glad it was there anyway so I finished that book three stars I liked it I'm about a hundred pages into tequila kingdom and I'm really liking that the however I am reading it a little bit slower than I want to because because because it is the hardback that I brought along and the hardback book is the one I want to be pulling in and out of my backpack when we're in the airport so I want to make sure that there's enough reading material for me to like not be too bored either in the airport or on the plane like I want to make sure I have enough reading material where I if I finish it then that that's great but I don't want to finish it before we like start traveling again our flight our flight is four o'clock this morning four five o'clock in the morning um so we get to be at the airport right and early so there will be plenty of chances for me to read in the airport to try and pass time and on the like total of seven hour on planes three different planes but a total of like seven hours on them so there's there's plenty of time for me to read more of tequila kingdom which is why I haven't read more than the first hundred pages but yeah that is my reading update it's our last day in Ecuador we're gonna go home and I'll probably I will give you an update again when we're back home in the states of just how much I got through tequila kingdom so yeah I'll update you guys then okay so as you can tell by now I am back home we got home yesterday morning and we were just super super tired um but we are also now in the process of not only unpacking from this trip but packing for our move this weekend so it's kind of a chaotic hectic time don't worry I will be vlogging that though that will actually be the next video to go up after this one will be me taking down my shelves and putting them up in the new place and reorganizing them because they need it now that I've changed where I film they need it but I didn't want to talk to you about the last book that I read and finished for this vlog tequila kingdom by a alexandra cristo so like I said I finished this book I finished it on the plane um when I was really really tired so right now I'm giving it 4.5 stars however that could be bumps up to five stars I'm going to reread the ending I'm gonna reread the ending because as I was reading it I was getting kind of frustrated with the characters for like not communicating and therefore making the ending last a lot longer than I felt it needed to but again I finished it when I was really tired on a plane so I also don't know if like that was a little bit more explained or if other things happened um that made it this way and that I just I did not register because I was super tired so as of right now it's 4.5 stars but I'm gonna read like the last like four chapters again and see if that bumps it up to a five star or not but I I really loved this book either way um I thought that was such a great book the characters had this amazing banter going back and forth throughout the entire book so it's kind of enemies to lovers is a little bit it's like a little mermaid retelling it's enemies to lovers and I love that the banter continues out through every phase in their relationship it just it makes me happy I love the world building in this book the world building is amazing because there are all these different kingdoms and you get little bits of tastes from each kingdom tell us on what's unique what's interesting about them a little bit about the royalty and the legends and the stories behind them and I loved that and they even talk about like those language and these are all online kingdoms as well as the underwater kingdom I really love seeing how developed and how fleshed out every element of this world is my only thing is that so our main character here she does it mentions that she doesn't speak the the human language as well as like not very well um and yet throughout the entire book she speaks it perfectly and she understands it perfectly so I kind of wish there's a little bit more continuity of oh she doesn't speak this language except for a little bit I wish that then she had been clear that she only spoke it a little bit or that her skills were getting better or something because saying that you don't speak a language and then having your characters speak that language perfectly throughout the entire book that's something that does annoy me as a big language nerd that is something that really annoys me and it doesn't even have to be like grammar trip ups in her but just being like I don't know that word what is he talking about or like just a little bit more continuity in terms of like what you say to us about the characters versus what the characters actually do one really cool aspect about this book is the found family in it so the prince has a ship and a crew that he loves and they're always saying how they're like a family they're like a family my my thing with that though is that he only ever talks or mentions I believe four other crew members um his mate mate the bodyguard the girl yeah yeah three or other uh crew members and I I get how they're really close I get how they can be kind of like a family but I wish there had been some little mentions of other crew members because he would be very close and only talk to these three or four crew members but then he would look out across the ship and be like yeah we're all one big family and I'm like you haven't told me the name of any of the other crew members you haven't expressed anything about them what they're doing what they look like nothing like that so I really loved the main characters and the cast but I wish that if you're gonna make a big claim of like the entire ship it's like a family actually mention the other people aboard so that I can get a better image and I can feel a little bit more like oh yes this is a one big family rather than just oh there's the click of the higher up people and then no one else matters but yeah like I said I still loved the characters in the book yeah I mean this book was pretty straightforward in terms of like it's a retelling so you know what's gonna happen but I loved the twists on the retelling that it took with um the main character Lyra her relationship with her mom but then also Elyon the prince his relationship with his parents and his family um yeah I just thought it was a very enjoyable read it was pretty decently paced um yeah I was hooked from the very beginning and it kept me going and I just I loved it so much I would highly recommend it this is a great summer fantasy read I believe because there is so much to do with water and sailing sirens mermaids mermen all of that in here and so it definitely gave me like summary vibes all the way up until they had to go to like the frozen kingdom but like other than that I think this was a great book to read and summer and I would highly recommend it and that is the end of this vlog yeah I hope you enjoyed um this reading vlog slash traveling vlog I I kind of tried to take footage of everything bookish that I saw in Ecuador but there were also some other things I thought would be fun that I wanted to include in this vlog um so hopefully you still got lots of bookish content that you were hoping for in this vlog but if not I hope you enjoyed little highlights of our trip as well if you are not subscribed to my channel please consider doing so I post every week on Thursdays and most of them are much more bookish bookish centered than this one was but please hit the thumbs up if you liked it and you want me to do more vlogs like this or just vlogs in general because it's not like I'll be traveling to different countries every other week or anything like that I would love to though but yeah otherwise comment down below what you're reading over the summer if you have any summer recommendations and with that I will I will leave you all with a happy reading