 hey everyone hello hello hello hello i hope you're all good today we're going to be doing my june wrap up i feel like for me june was a bit of like a reading month it was very met it was very blah it wasn't bad i read quite a bit i think it was like in terms of how much i read my second highest reading month this year but i don't think i read like many great books we'll go into all my stats we'll do that now first and then we'll go into like the individual reviews for each of the books so in june i read a total of nine books which is one less than i read last month so not the shablam i was hoping for after finishing uni but i was like seeing family i was making more videos so i think it's a fine number sure jan i read 3001 pages which averages out to about a hundred pages a day which is always my goal at least a hundred pages a day on average is something that i'm happy with i don't read a hundred pages every day some days i read none some days i read like 400 you know it's completely random this also gave me an average book length of 329 i actually read a lot of like 400 something page books this month and then i think i read like an 80 page book and 100 page book and they brought the average down quite a lot and my average rating was 3.38 that is the second lowest average rating i've had so far this year for a month so like i said i read a fair amount but i didn't have many new favorites um i read one five star one four point five star two four stars two three stars two two point five stars and one two stars so like at the end there were a bit were a bit bottom heavy in terms of our average ratings in terms of genres i read one contemporary three fantasy one historical one mystery one nonfiction and two thriller fantasy is definitely my most read genre but i i don't feel like i've had a ton of success with fantasy so far this year really like in terms of number in terms of like shared numbers of what makes up my highest rated five i read were y a and four were adult it is pretty much always like a 50 50 split between those two for me so in terms of how i acquired the books four were gifts one was a book i'd previously bought myself two were from publishers one was from script and one i got in a book box six i read with stand-alones and three were part of the series which i'm happy with because my reading has definitely been series heavy i think this year in terms of my reading for the whole year 54.3 of what i've read has been from series so i'm happy that this was a bit of a month where i read some more stand-alones a lot of time i've been starting a lot of series i need to finish series yes you do no yes you do i think i'm gonna tonight i'm gonna make a series spreadsheet of all the series i'm currently reading so i can visually see it because i do have a category on good reads but it's not as visual as i'd like it to be so that's my plans tonight if anyone is wondering it's so exciting i know in terms of author race a lot of you know i'm trying to read over 50 non-white authors i didn't do well with that this month i read from three black authors and six white authors it was something i was very conscious of throughout the month but it just in terms of the videos i was doing that's just how basically it fell so that's something i definitely want to try and rectify it next month and then in terms of author status one was a debut two authors i've read before and six authors running to me which is always fun let's get into the individual books i will say one is not in any reading vlog and one isn't a reading vlog that hasn't come out yet seven of these books do have full reading blogs for them so i'm gonna try i always just say the same things i'm like do you guys really want to listen to this i suppose you do but if you aren't like really in-depth thoughts where i talk about these books like 10 minutes on their own and take you to the journey of me reading them i will link and i'll tell you all of all of the vlogs these are in basically if you want to go check these out so the first three books i read were in a vlog where i basically tested whether i preferred books with similar characters to me in them because i've never understood when people are like first was sorcery of thorns by margaret rogerson and i gave this 2.5 stars i know this is a standalone fantasy which i really do enjoy i feel like we don't have enough standalone fantasies everything needs to be a five book series i'm like girl just give me give me it in a in a decent sized chunk please and lisabeth has grown up in these libraries she that's where she's lived all her life and the libraries start to come under attack and she is accused of one of the attacks and she has to travel with this magician-y guy sorcerer and his demonic servant i can't remember with this book what's spoiler and what's not because it does have to pack a lot in because it is a standalone fantasy it's always hard to talk about the first book you're in in the month isn't it like chronologically i'm like i don't remember i don't remember love i don't remember at all i really don't because i go just fell flat for me it just it just fell flat i just felt so meh about it i didn't feel like it excited me in any kind of way i didn't feel connected to the characters i didn't feel connected to the relationships in it i felt like a lot of what happened at the end was rushed i am struggling to talk about it because it was so unmemorable that i'm like who is she who is she where did you find her listen i wouldn't recommend it i think that's all you really need to know i wouldn't you know it was fine i don't think i'm gonna pick up an enchantment of ravens anymore i think i'm gonna remove it for my want to read because i just don't know if i'm interested i don't know if me and this author vibe next i read good girl bad blood by holly jackson this is the second in one of my favorite murder mystery YA series this is an amazing murder mystery series if you love murder mystery if you want to read some YA like it's so good i agree the best maybe the best we're following pip who is this detective in her small town and in this book she had sworn off the events of the first book that she wasn't going to play detective again you know she's only like 17 it had kind of taken too much out of her and so she had promised her family her friends that she wasn't going to do that again and then one of her friends brothers goes missing and so she is trying to help find him i loved so much about this the writing was better in the first than in the first book the multimedia elements were improved and more in number than the first book so we have pictures we have maps we have fit bits we have audio recordings we have so many elements that bring this story to life in the modern age which i don't think enough mysteries set now do and pip went on a really interesting character journey in this book she really grew she really changed she hadn't gone through something so monumental and she really went through a shift in this book and i thought that was done so well but the biggest reveal at the end was predictable for a mile off it was predictable from 20 pages in it's sad it's sad you know it's it's a shame and so i couldn't in good conscience give it a five star if it's predictable with mysteries i think an ending can not it can be not satisfying necessarily or like miss the mark a bit i cannot dock a point for that because it's so hard to do a good ending to a mystery but when it's like super duper predictable and i knew it the whole way through then i do dock a point for that because i'm like we could have done something else do you know what i mean i feel like it was just obvious from the get go and that did disappoint me but it's still one of my favorite probably the best ya murder mystery series i've ever read maybe my favorite murder mystery series then i read the raven boys by maggie steve water i gave this three stars it's gotta get a sip of water i know everyone loves this series but i just didn't click with it basically in this we're following blue who's been told if she kisses her first true love he'll die and her meeting the raven boys who are these kind of like boys who are searching for these lay lines of power within the world i still don't get it either listen we can all be confused together um i don't like talking about the raven boys because for some reason it gets me really nervous like i just don't i just like everyone's gonna come to me but anyway this felt like a prequel to me it felt like a prequel it didn't feel like its own book it felt like we were setting up for the next book i don't really feel like much happened maggie steve water's writing is always like a roundabout way of saying something right it's always it always takes like a couple corners to say a thing you could have gone straight ahead with and in many books i do enjoy that but i never fully got on board with it i was constantly like do i love the writing or do i hate it i don't know nobody knows i'm gonna continue on the series because i'm excited for where the series is gonna go but i felt like this could have been distilled down into 150 pages like it didn't feel like it's own book it felt like we it was setting us up for what is to happen in the rest of the series next i read whites on race and other falsehoods by otego yuwagpa i gave this four stars i listened to the audiobook on script i would really recommend if you do have script if you don't i do have a link down below where you can get i think it's two months free um could be wrong but i think it's two months free i'd really recommend you go and listen to it because it's only like an hour an hour and a half long it's not a long audiobook at all this is a collection of essays from the author particularly after george floyd's death and the surrounding reaction on her relationship with white people and why that is such a difficult and fraught relationship and i so this is like the only book that you're not going to hear me speak about in a vlog obviously because i just listened to the audiobook i didn't read it for a vlog and i feel like i can't articulate it well enough to you right now but it is such an insightful listen i don't want to sit here and be like oh it's such an important book because that is part of what the book critiques is how especially people like in the book community reacted last year to the events that happened and how we made these like anti-racism reading lists and whatever you know so i'm conscious that it made me reflect a lot on my own actions at the time and what i'm probably even doing wrong now so i would just so i'd recommend you read it i'm not gonna say it's like an integral reader an important read because that is in some ways part of the problem it is very honest and it addresses the tensions between black and white people particularly in the uk the author is british and so it's framed through that and how difficult the experience of last year and life in general is for the author so like i said i would really recommend you go and either read it physically i think it's only like 80 pages long or you go and listen to the audiobook because it definitely made me think a lot and made me evaluate my own actions but also that's not the point because that is part of what the book criticizes as well so i'm very conscious that i'm probably not doing it a proper service and how i'm talking about it so i would just recommend that you and go you go and read it yourself okay the next three books for all books i read for a 24 hour reading vlog which i did which was fun but not very successful but i never smile ever why because i'm not a happy person so the first book i read was the baby is mine by oyan can breakaway so this is the author of my sister the serial killer which i really enjoyed this is a short book it's basically a novella and i gave this what did i give it i gave it 2.5 stars so in this our main character has been thrown out of his girlfriend's house for cheating and he goes to live at his uncle's house his uncle has passed away but he goes to live and he finds his aunt and another woman and a baby and they both claim that the baby is theirs i just felt like this book never really got going i felt like it was very predictable i felt like it wasn't very thrilling it's a very short book and i don't feel like the ending was a surprise at least with my sister's serial killer the ending was a surprise i didn't feel like that with this one this is part of an initiative called quick reads from the reading agency which is this collection of short books to help people you know either with dyslexia or help people get back into reading so i do very much admire the initiative but i also think the books in that should be great you know what i mean like i don't think we should be like oh it's for this initiative so if it's a bit disappointing like you're not necessarily the target market for it like i think the book should still be amazing and this wasn't amazing for me do you get what i'm saying so it was just okay i really love oean can break rates writing i think she has this like sarcastic tone of writing and very matter of fact but i would just recommend my sister's serial killer over this next is one of the biggest disappointments of my life i hate talking about it because it's a debut and i just feel very guilty like i feel bad for talking about bad about this me trying to avoid talking about this book it's the islanders by sd leonard i gave this two stars and um yeah this was probably my most one of my most anticipated releases of this year it is based off the show love island which has just started back up again and this is very much inspired by and then there were none by agatha christie where basically someone is killed and then a voice tells the people on the island that someone is going to get killed off every hour until our protagonist figures out who's behind the murder a lot of this is a personal problem i spoke about this a lot in the vlog so again i will link that below and in the cards firstly i didn't like and then there were none so i think this format of death after death which you know is coming like deaths that are anticipated doesn't work for me i like that to be i'm very simple i like a simple format with some twists i like there to be a murder i like us to investigate it and then i like us to find it out and if you're gonna have a lot of murders don't let me know when they're coming like i just don't think it works for me and this was also told in first person present tense which i just don't think works for me in thrillers first person passed yeah but first person present it just felt clunky it didn't flow for me i kept getting drawn out by the writing and by the first it was particularly the tense like the first person present tense and the writing is the first step so like because i couldn't get into the writing style i couldn't really get into the book at all so i do think a lot of it is a personal issue i would maybe still recommend it if you've heard me talk about it and you were interested in it and then the final book i read in that vlog which was slightly well not slightly much much more successful was the black flamingo by dean atta no i don't think you understand i'm obsessed this is a why a book told in prose that is not correct about this boy michael and we follow him from when he's about six up until university so i really loved in this one how we followed him throughout his life we follow his relationship with being gay and being black and living at that intersection and how he finds drag and and you know performance of gender away at university to articulate that that is the whole plot of the book but it's not a spoiler you know that's what it tells you on the back the thing it tells you on the back is the end so what you're gonna experience with this is the journey the writing is some of the most beautiful writing i've ever read i will always talk about how much i love elizabeth asavado's books told in verse i think earlier i said prose i meant verse don't come for me sorry i messed them up verse this is my favorite book told in verse i prefer this to elizabeth asavado which is like slander i just loved this book i want to reread it again straight away it was beautiful it was touching it was so articulate like dean atta managed to articulate so many big feelings and thoughts and worries and emotions in five words you know it was just beautiful it was just simple it was done so well um it took me like an hour to read so maybe if you're in a reading slump this would be a really great recommendation then the next book i read in an episode i've wrapped up which i'll link it's like a whole 20 minute video of me talking about this book and it is the fair fight by anna freeman i gave this four stars this is a historical fiction set in about like 1800 bristol it's touted as being about female boxes but it's not really lies lies and more lies and lies on top of lies we follow one woman in poverty who boxing is like her calling we follow one man who goes to private school he has got a very intimate and close relationship with one of his one of his closest friends perry they're rich and they are kind of like adjacent to the boxing trade um and then we follow perry's sister charlotte who in george's view the man is very quiet seen but not heard and then in her perspective she's very angry and upset at the constraints that she has put under in this society and that is basically what the whole book is about is about how these characters must live and operate and survive within their individual boxes in society and how that controls them basically was a whole book i was wearing this underground female boxing ring in bristol and that's not it but i really thought it was um a very fun book like ruth who is our character in poverty like it's her dialect is written into her perspective we really get a sense of her as a character and how strong she is also the poverty and that she lives with and how that shapes all of her actions so if you like historical fiction i would recommend this i thought it was a fun read and then the last book i don't want to say too much about you naughty naughty you teasing me you naughty naughty it's gonna be in a vlog that's coming up and so like i kind of want to keep you waiting i'm like do i even tell you my rating i mean you can't really work it out by when i told you my ratings before but i read daughter of smoke combined by lanie taylor what do i tell you do i give you my rating um no i will say if you've watched me for a long time you'll know i love lanie taylor's writing i love how lyrical it is i love how beautiful it is in terms of writing probably one of my favorite authors but i didn't feel like the pacing of this book held its own i didn't feel like the plot held its own um and it's not my favorite lanie taylor i've ever read i don't want to say too much because i do want to talk about it in depth in depth in the vlog and it's gonna come out in a couple weeks i hate when i've like read a book and i wrap up and the vlog isn't gonna come out for a while because i hate spoiling it so i think that's what i'm gonna say i'm gonna keep you waiting that's all i'm gonna say um goodbye okay so that is all of the books that i read in june i'm hoping for a great reading month in july i've got a really i've got a lot of fun videos planned i've also got a few books that i'm tentative to read but i've got to read for a certain video it's gonna be very different than anything i typically read so i'm a bit nervous for that let me know how june went for you down in the comments if you've gotten to the end comment a blue emoji i love the blue i do love the blue on this cover in this edition this is the aluma craig special edition comment any blue emoji if he's gotten to the end thank you so much for watching i appreciate all your guys' support so so much and i'll see you very soon in another video bye