 I'm not expecting, you know, the greatest character writing I've ever seen. Are you actually actually saying that? Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you are well. Some of you may know that I'm in a bit of a different location. I was actually here at the end of my last video but probably a lot of you haven't, you know, seen that front of the video or whatever. So I'm at Tom's house, my boyfriend, and since we are in isolation in the UK I've started to come and live here while we're in isolation and so all of my videos will be filmed here. So if you saw my last video you might have seen that I kind of didn't read for about two weeks. Partly just because I was busy, partly because I just went through a bit of a slump, and partly because I'm finding it a bit difficult to read with all the anxiety I've got surrounding the state of the world at the moment. I have good days and bad days, do you know what I mean? I have days where I don't feel anxious about it, you know, that much of a tool I managed to kind of take my mind off it and have days where it's all I think about. What I really want to do this week, because I try to always have a theme and I thought, you know, what can get me back into reading, what can get me feeling accomplished, and I thought what I really want more than anything is just to read some kind of light easy YA right now. I just feel like it's the perfect time for it. Any kind of big book, serious book that's just feeling a bit too intimidating right now and I think I just need some easy stuff that I can dip in out of when I'm not playing Animal Crossing and a bit of a self-care vlog, you know, looking after ourselves in isolation. First we've got Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. So I've read all of John Green's other books and I really enjoyed them. I think John Green is a great writer. I think he's a much better writer than he gets credit for. I remember in The Fault in Our Stars, I loved all the kind of religious imagery and God imagery he built in. You know, there's books of his that aren't my favorite, you know, there's some that we can all agree aren't the best. I don't know much about this. I just remember Ariel, Ariel Bissette talking about this so much and I listened to a lot of her recommendations. I really like the kind of more, well this isn't obscure but I like a lot of the obscure recommendations she gives as well. And so I just thought, you know, if I've read all of John Green's other books, I might as well read this. It's so short. It's less than 300 pages. It's only 280 pages. I just like this is exactly what I need to read right now. I say something about a girl like trying to track down a billionaire who's on the run. So I'm quite excited. I feel like it sounds like quite different plot some of his other books and I think a lot of people whose opinions I trust who have read all his other books and I've read this that they prefer this one. So no, I don't want to do that. That's rude. Then the second book I'm going to be reading, I don't have a physical version, I'm going to be reading on ebook. And that is Bitter Kingdom by Ray Carlson. So for those of you that don't know, I've been hosting, go hosting a read-along for this series and this is the final book in the original Girls of Fire, girls? Girl of Fire and Falls series. This is going to be on my channel. So I want to make sure that I kind of take notes. This is going to be so bad. Okay. If you wanted to read this series, it's so good. They've all been really high four stars to me. And I don't know, I feel like maybe this last one, if it hits out the part, could be a five star. I think it's got great world building this series, really great protagonist, great complex cast of characters. It's just a great piece of fantasy series. So I'm very excited to read that. And I have literally read all the past two like in a day, like you can read them so fast. They're not even short, but there's something about the pacing in them and just the way the plot goes that means you read it so, so, so fast. So I'm very excited to read that. And then the final book, which I'm going to be reading, is Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagen. So I heard Kayla from Mix and Lala talk about this, and I think she quite enjoyed it. I did a project for one of my modules at university where I looked at the representation of black protagonists, young black protagonists on YA books, particularly where, more not particularly where, where the US and UK covers were different and comparing why they were different. And this was one of the books that I kind of studied in that. And it just made me super interested in the book. A lot of those books turn out to be ones that I put on my TBR. I'm very excited. I'm very excited to pick this up. So excited. Keras actually said this to me who I've been meaning to speak about Keras on my channel for the longest time. I've been a bit behind on uploading and so I just, it just hasn't worked out yet. But guys, you need to go subscribe to Keras. Not only is she like the sweetest person on BookTube, she's always there to help. She's just so, so kind. But she puts out great content as well. I love watching her videos. And she's almost at 1,000 subscribers when I'm filming this. She may hit it before I upload. I'm uploading in like a week. If you haven't subscribed to her, you should definitely go do that. I'm going to leave her link down below. But she very kindly sent me this. I think for hitting 2K, yeah, she said it to me for hitting 2K. And she said she loved it. So if Keras loved it, then I feel pretty good. I think this is about two girls who start to run an activist group at their school or something like that. And so I think that will just be a really interesting topic to read about. And so yeah, I'm very excited to pick this up. So I just feel, and the whole point of this video is just to feel no stress going into the week. Not to feel like reading is a bit of a burden, but saying, Megan, you can get through these books so fast. Because this is a self-care video, we're making brownies. Made some brownies. As we've seen in this vlog, 150 of turtles all the way down. And I don't know how I feel about it. So I know in YA, characters are often aged up a bit. The character seems so much older when you're younger reading it because this target demographic is probably like a 13 year old, right? 12, 13 year old is probably the target demographic for this book. But I just can't see these characters as 16. I'm having a lot of trouble believing that they're as old as they are. To me, they act like 13 year olds. And so I guess that's to make it a bit more accessible and reliable for the target audience. But for me, I'm like, yo, it makes certain aspects when they're getting into relationships and stuff unbelievable. And obviously I was like 13 when I read all of John Green's other books. And to me, the character seems so old. But now if I reread them, which I'm not going to do, I do own them all still. But I'm wondering if now if I reread them, would I see them as quite young? Because I just can't get past it. And to me, I think the plot that was sold to me is like trying to track down this billionaire. And then that, you know, I thought it was going to be a bit of mystery, a bit detective, you know, then trying to find clues. That hasn't really happened. It's just been a segue for her to get to know his son who she used to be friends with. And that's kind of disappointing. Like I wanted something a bit different from this. And it just feels like any old kind of like romance. The characters for me though the biggest thing that I'm struggling to get past. Okay, so you know when you watch a Disney channel original movie, right? We all know we've all watched them in our time. Think of not a good Disney channel original movie like Heist of Musical. Think of like an obscure one where the characters just seem so stereotypical, so over the top, so surface level, apart from the protagonist that you never really get to know them. That's what this feels like. Our protagonist feels very in depth. I feel like I really know her. It deals a lot with mental health and I think it's mental health rep is really good, which I'll get into in a sec. But all the other characters just seem like caricatures. And not necessarily like a big way, but they have one defining characteristic or a hobby or something like that. And you never get past that. And so that means I'm struggling to get into it. I mean, I recognize this as a YA book and quite a young YA book at that. I'm not even expecting, you know, the greatest character writing I've ever seen. Are you actually actually saying that? But it is hindering my reading of the book. But this deals a lot with someone who has kind of what I would say is health anxiety. It's never said in those in those terms. But she the protagonist is constantly convinced that there is something inside her which is going to cause her to die. And as someone who struggled with health anxiety a lot last year, and I had to go like to counseling for it and stuff, I would say it's a really good representation of health anxiety and how you find little symptoms to convince yourself that there is like a big problem going on and how you research certain illnesses. And so you become convinced that you're going to have it and stuff like that. I think it does a really good job of that. And I think that that's a great thing for us to have in YA, particularly for young individuals, because I mean, obviously it hasn't been spelled out as health anxiety. But before I experienced that myself, I never knew that was a thing like I never knew you could have an anxiety that really focused on convincing yourself you were dying of X illness. And so I think it's a great thing that people, loads of young adults, young people, teenagers, kids will read this and become aware of something and maybe be able to spot the signs of it in themselves as they ever experience it because I literally did not notice a thing. And so seeing it in a form of media I think is great. And I think it's done really well and I think John Green has really done his research. So I have mixed feelings about this. I think at the moment I would give it a three because there are positives, there are negatives. I just finished Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. I'm giving it 2.5 stars. So I've rated it 200 reads. I'm trying to accept that that's okay. Because here's the thing. I don't think this is a bad book. Now I want to point that out. Just like a lot of what I spoke about in the first clip where I spoke to you about this, just let it down for me. I didn't think that it was particularly great characters. I really struggled to get along with any of the characters. The relationship just seemed so weird. The big climax of the book I kind of liked but then the ending of the book really tailed off and a lot of what I felt like we'd been waiting for didn't happen and so a lot of it felt like a waste of time. I was just forcing myself through it by the end of it and it's only 280 pages so I shouldn't have to force myself through it. I like John Green's writing. I like the way he forms sentences and I think what I really want from him to be honest is I want an adult book. I want to see him write adult fiction. I don't think that his type of YA fiction is necessary what we're looking for now and I think if he's going to write YA he needs to change it up a lot. He needs to change up what he's writing a lot because this just did not work for me. Christopher and Gemma are playing with a lemon in a sock. So I'm gonna start today Bitter Kingdom. This fantasy series by Ray Carson is just great and I'm so glad I've been doing all these live shows with Nicole and Simone and Ishii because otherwise I never would have read these books so actually I'm really excited to get into it and I know already it's gonna be at least a four star. Like I really don't think it'll be anything less than a four star considering how this series has been going so far for me. I thought because this is like a self-care vlog I thought I would film myself doing my skincare. My camera is really low on battery so I'm just hoping it holds out. So I have very sensitive and very dry skin so my skin goes red super easily. I don't think it's very red now no but it can go red very easily. So if it does, you know, don't blame me. I just washed my face using the Evercom Earthm rent cleansing gel, gentle cleansing gel. I'm just gonna use the Pixie Glotonic Hulk Classic. So I'm halfway through the Bitter Kingdom and I thought what was gonna happen was that the first two in the series were gonna be you know four strong fours and then this was gonna be a five and I'm just not feeling that strongly about it which is kind of making me sad. I thought it was gonna be obsessed and just love the ending to this series but I feel like it's almost like not a proper ending yet and I'm halfway through. I feel like it feels like a middle book. Then just always after toning my face because my skin can get a little bit red. You can see it's well not really the camera's making it look more red than it is. I'm just gonna spray some of the quarterly grape water just to soothe my face a little bit. I don't make myself ration it but I do make myself ration the beauty elixir because this is expensive. Two sprays only per day. That's all we're allowed. I feel like the language choices are a bit strange in it. Just something about the writing just feels a little bit off for me. I feel like I'm finding myself skimming parts of it. Now I'm using the Kiehl's 100 Plumping Retextrising Serum. It's just not gonna be a five star and that makes me sad. I think I probably went into this with too high expectations. The last two things I'm using are the Kiehl's multi-correcting serum and cream because it all came this one came in a pack to get that's why I'm using a lot of Kiehl's. The one thing I will say is though that this series is at least very consistent. Sometimes I read a series and there will be like one book that's a five star, one book that's a two star and you're like what? How is this even possible? This series feels like all very much on the same level. It feels all very much on a four star level which is still great. My camera did die. Here's the thing. We do a lot of travelling that's like in the nature of the, what am I looking for now? The landscape you know like the the geography of the place we're in that we do a lot of travelling but I'm like fed up. Like I'm just fed up. It feels to me just very similar to what we've already read but I'm still really enjoying it. I'm just playing on the negatives because I thought this was going to be a five star. It's still probably a four star. I'm still really enjoying it but I'm not enjoying it as much as I was really hoping I would. If you can see the mass that is this room behind me, just don't. Let's just not talk about it. This place is where I sit on members. Hashtag water dump. I finished The Bitter Kingdom last night and I think I'm going to give it four stars. Although it's maybe like a 3.75. I just didn't connect to it as much as the other books in the series. There was just something about the beginning where I felt like we were trying to create new conflicts rather than solving the old ones. I feel like the last book in a series should never be creating new big new issues. I don't know but in a way it wasn't but in a way it was. I can't explain it but just something about the plot of this book at the beginning didn't really work. For me I felt like it didn't feed into the bigger picture of the story and the resolution like I wanted it to. The last quarter I loved. The last quarter could have been like a five star. I loved the relationships that were built up that were strengthened that were introduced in this book. I love any new characters that we have and also the thing about this this series that I really admired was that like throughout it wasn't afraid to talk about sex right? It's a YA book but it wasn't afraid to talk about birth control. It wasn't afraid to talk about like lusting after someone and so we'd been building up a lot of tension between our protagonist and her love interest. I don't want to say who. I don't want to spoil anything but we've been building up a lot of tension and then when we finally get to the moment where we're gonna do it it's fade to black and like I get it's a YA book but we could have had a bit or something. Other ways don't make such a massive plot point being how much they're lusting after each other, how she's having like a sexual awakening. Like don't make that a big plot point and then not give me anything. You know and I'm not someone who usually cares about romance and books or sex scenes or whatever like I'm usually like not, I usually don't care. Like that's not a big part of the book for me but she'd made us so invested in that side of this character's relationship and then it's nothing. I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! How dare you learn something from this! So now today what I'm doing I'm just reading the whole day today because I can't be bothered to do anything else. I'm reading Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan. I'm about 40 pages in I just started it while I was in bed this morning and I'm actually loving it. Like it's already when I wanted turtles all the way down to be and its tone. Like that kind of mature YA in terms of character relationships and stuff I'm already really enjoying it. So what I from what I can tell so far is that Renee Watson has written Jasmine's parts and Ellen Hagan has written Chelsea's parts and I'm already preferring Renee Watson's parts. I'm actually reading for a different video another one of her books right now and I think she's actually a wonderful writer. I want to read more of her stuff. Jasmine's parts just read better. They feel a bit more mature. Whereas Chelsea's parts feel a little bit like stereotypical YA in the way that it will say like uh or like um what are some of the things where it's in italics? Ew in italics. Do you know what I mean? Or gag in italics in response to something and I don't really like that. I'm about halfway through and this is a great book. This book is exactly what I wanted from this video. I feel like it's exactly what I read right now. I'm reading it so far. I love that it feels so joyful, it feels so hopeful but at the same time it's tackling these important issues of gender discrimination, racism, um fat phobia and and obviously they are just blanket terms you know all the different issues that come within racism all the different issues that come within gender. Do you know what I mean? It's tackling all of them and it's doing it in such a great way. So in this at their secondary school it's known for being quite um I guess progressive and they all have clubs after school which look at using maybe a typical school club and it always says for social justice like poetry for social justice or um the theatre for social justice or whatever that kind of thing uh but they both find that those clubs actually aren't serving that need so for chelsea who's in the poetry club they're studying just old white men from the 80th century poetry and uh jasmine in her theatre club she gets subject to like racial discrimination them telling her that she should play the sassy character goal and attitude and like saying that no one else in the class could do that as well as she could because she's the black girl if that makes sense so they decide to set up this women's rights club together and it's following them doing that following them coming up against hate in the school because of it you know people being resistant to them trying to make change and it's so good. There's just so many powerful topics being covered so well in this YA book this is what I wish YA was like you know I think it's doing it so well and the characters seem their age you know that was a really big issue for me in terms of all the way down how young they seem they seem like 13 or they should have been 16 whereas to me this is how I feel like 16 17 year olds act and think because I think when you're like 15 16 that is when you start to really become aware of the world and start to really want to fight back want to make change I feel like that's when it's strongest almost I'm really enjoying myself reading it so I'm gonna go carry on I finished what just rise and I love this book I just think it's a great YA book for you know so many people out there to read I think as a brilliant message I think it tackles all the issues it sets out to tackle so well I love it I love it and I read it so fast like this is one of the easiest reads I've had so far this year so again if you're looking for an easy read if you're if you've been put a bit of a slump I would definitely recommend this I think it's incredibly well written I think both the girls have such strong identities they both feel so fleshed out the world that they're living in their homes feel so vivid I just think it's a great little book and I don't know if I'm gonna give it five stars though I don't know because nothing there's nothing I can complain about I think it's brilliant I think everything is done great but like sometimes that five stars just that little little thing I might give it a 4.75 but then that's just like pointless at that point you might as well just give it a five star you know what hmm yeah I'm gonna give it five stars I'm gonna give it five stars I'm gonna give it five stars is it like my new favorite book although I'm giving it five stars no like that's fine but I think it's wonderful for what it is I think it's perfect flawless for what it is I don't think a YA book like this is necessarily ever gonna be one of my favorite books but like this is a special book that's it for this video I mean if you've ever thought of picking up turtles all the way down just pick up Watch Us Rise instead because this is better so much better um yeah this um like I felt kind of bad for a while giving this two stars I was like I feel kind of guilty about it but having read this I now don't because it should be to their standard like your character should no but yeah I feel you know happy that I read both of these and obviously The Bitter Kingdom I'm so excited to do my live show for that tonight it will be up on my channel like permanently if you ever want to go back and check it out and The Bitter Kingdom although I didn't love it as much as the other books in the series it's still a solid series and I can't wait to read An Empire of Dreams when it comes out I hope you enjoyed this video I hope it's given you some books to read you know if you're having a bit of a stressful time just go on Waterstones, Barnes & Noble whatever local bookstore doing you know clicking collection club the club it's great it's a great book well I'm so happy I read this great book um yeah and I hope you enjoyed this video I'll be back soon with another video you just can't get enough of me um I'll see you very soon bye