 hey guys it's Julia and welcome back to my channel and for today's video I'm going to be doing my April reading wrap-up talking about all the books that I read in the month of April. including manga and novels I read a total of 12 things and I participated in the dewy's 24 hour read-a-thon so for those books that I'll mention at the end I'm not gonna be talking too in-depth about them just because I filmed a whole reading vlog of that experience so I'll have that video linked down below and up on the screen as well. first book that I read this month was we are okay by Nina Lacour. book deal with grief and mental health and it's a contemporary novel unfortunately really disappointed in this I found the writing was really dull and the story was predictable it was I felt like it didn't offer anything new to the table and to the topic of grief personally. the plot was slow which considering how short it is like nothing really happened in this book and it just really lacked for me and I was disappointed in it. I ended up giving this two stars and the cover is beautiful though but I didn't really like the book at all. they're just disappointing when I read chasers of the light by Tyler not Grexon and this is a poetry collection that has like photography in it and stuff like that it's beautiful like it's very very pretty but I only ended up liking like a few poems in here and I just wasn't overall impressed by it I didn't think it like these have a lot of hype these ones and I just don't see why exactly and yeah it just was enough like I've read better poetry but like the pictures were pretty I just giving it 2.5 out of 5 stars yeah so the month started off pretty shitty. up here I read grill and pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. this book does have a lot of trigger warnings so those include self harm, suicide, depression, PTSD, sexual assault, alcoholism, substance abuse there's a lot of topics that are explored in this book so please be aware of that before picking this up. I ended up listening to the audio book of this one and I quite liked it. it's about a 17 year old girl named Charlotte and she is currently in a psychiatric hospital so we follow her and her experiences and her thoughts and then we also show while she's out of the psychiatric hospital that's not a spoiler but we basically follow her as she develops so complicated and tragic and at times I feel like the author that was my cat sneezing bless you I feel like the author tried to talk like way too many topics at once like there was so much thrown in here and the story dragged at times because it is like decently sized for a contemporary and there was just some things like that that it lacked for me but overall I thought it was a really interesting story and I could appreciate a lot of things about it. overall I gave this 3.5 out of 5 stars and I would recommend it if you can handle reading about this type of subject matter. next up here I have the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson. so this book is a self-help kind of book basically it's a it's basically a self-improvement book and this one follows you know the what the title says. basically this is really interesting I really liked the way this was written and definitely like if you're thinking about picking it up like read the first chapter online and kind of see from there because the writing style might not be for you like he's very blunt and that's something that I personally liked about this reading experience. of course I love some chapters more than others and in some areas it lacked for me and then in some I like absolutely loved it. like my favorite chapters included like don't try um you are not special the importance of saying no and dot dot dot and then you die so there was just a lot of good things about this and I think that it was really good for me to read this month especially so I ended up giving this one 3.5 out of 5 stars. next up here I reread Simon vs the homo sapiens agenda by Becky Albertalli. so I read this in prep for Leah which I still haven't read Leah on the offbeat go me but this is basically about this boy named Simon who is 16 years old and he has not come at his gay yet so he has anonymous emails with this other boy and all he knows is that he goes to his school and they form a relationship online and when one of Simon's peers sees these emails he blackmails him into helping him hook him up with a girl or else he'll reveal that he's gay. so that's what this story follows and I absolutely loved it. I loved it more the second time around definitely. I had more of an appreciation and I still enjoyed it the first time but this time I just really enjoyed it and I'm so happy and it makes me so happy this book. it's definitely one of my favorites and I love it a lot. there's still something that's like stopping me from giving it the full 5 because I don't think it's like the best contemporary I've ever read. like I've definitely read books that have um gay male protagonists that are I've enjoyed more than this book if that makes sense but I still give this like a solid 4.5 which is really good for me and I just really like this. so if you haven't picked this up yet I would do so. it's like the seven books that I've read for 24 hour thoughts so I'll just go through my ratings with you guys because I do talk about it in that video but I read it took you to volume three which I ended up giving it four to five stars. volume four which I gave a solid 4.5 I literally have it sticking out so that five volume five which I gave 3.75 volume six which I gave 3.5 then I read practical magic and this is by nicky van dakar and this is a beginner's guide to horoscopes crystals, horoscopes, crystals, spells, tarot cards all that sort of stuff and it's a beautiful book by the way like it's stunning but I did quite like this one I think it's a good beginner's guide and of course I believe more things like I don't believe everything in this but I think that's perfectly normal and if you're at all interested in this subject matter this is like a good book to go to and it's also beautifully illustrated but I ended up giving this one four out of five stars. next I read my friend dommer by dirfbackdorf and this follows the like the high school days of serial killer jeffrey dommer and how he was in high school and it's told from someone who went to school with him and this is a graphic novel I did quite like this one I wish it was longer and had a bit more detail because but it was really good like I liked I liked the art style and I was really invested like after I finished this even though I was doing the 24-hour readathon I started like looking into stuff like about his life even more and doing my own research so like I definitely like this and I would if you guys don't know of any other like true crime graphic novels let me know I would be very interested in checking some of those out but I ended up giving this one a 3.75 out of five and last but not least I have the lovers dictionary by david levathan so this follows a relationship and it is told through a dictionary format and I only ended up giving this one three stars I thought it was solid at times it was cute but like it wasn't it was just okay overall and I just wasn't overall impressed I do talk about it more in the my reading blog as well as like some of these other books I talk about more but it was just an okay read for me personally you guys have it those are the books that I read in the month of April let me know what you read down below and I'll see y'all super soon with a new video bye