 Welcome back to another reading vlog, so a couple months ago I did a video where I had book recommendation app picks what I read and you guys really loved that video, you had a lot of fun with me being in no control over what I was reading. Anyway, so I'm in control but I'm out of control and I'm also controlled, so in a way I'm everything. So we're gonna do it again, I'm gonna work with Novelik again which is a book recommendation app and I think it's so much fun to be had, so many fun things to do and explore but I thought I wanted something different this month, this time. I realized it's Pride Month so we're gonna be picking books or Novelik is gonna be picking books through like an LGBTQ queer lens essentially and I'm just so excited. I've never really done like a specific Pride Month vlog so I'm really excited to be reading queer books this week and having no control over what I read and giving all of the control to Novelik. So we're gonna read two books in this vlog, one of them is gonna be the book club, I'm gonna rerun my book club on there but I'm not gonna, you know, we're gonna pick that in a fun way and then the other one I think I'll use the ask the community section again because I love that section so much last time and so many of you have loved it when you've gone and tried it out. So I think we'll do that. Novelik are very kindly sponsoring this video once again which is so so kind of them, I love working with them, these vlogs are so much fun. So let's go use, I think we're gonna use the collections part of the app where you get book recommendations from collections of genres. I think we're gonna use that to pick what our book club book is gonna be this time. So it is time to figure out what our options for a book club poll are gonna be. So for this we're gonna have the book club again. I'm going to the books section, browse your personal bookstores, this is like a recommendation section where you get recommended 12 books and there's lots of different categories. There's kind of the main genres and then there's kind of like more thematic options and they have an LGBTQ option. So we're gonna go on this and I'm gonna pick three I think of the books on there and I'm gonna put it to a vote. Basically the way that this section of the app works is I will only give you 12 recommendations at a time but because for this poll I want to post an Instagram picture, we can see the book options that we've got and I kind of want to try at the moment to read the books I have. I have about 220 unread owned books. What we're gonna do is we're gonna keep clicking on the tab until we have three books that have come up that are on my physical TBR essentially. So you might have to click a few times, it might happen once. Okay I've read so much of your boys and Cinderella is dead, none on that page that are on my TBR. Next. Nope, none on that page that are on my TBR. We're just gonna keep loading it until we add up to three. Okay now this isn't on my physical TBR but my mum has it next door and I've never really been intrigued about reading it but I guess I should put that as an option because it literally is on my mum's bookshelf and I see it like every day next door. So I don't know what it's about. I feel like it's like a literary fiction. Interesting, it does sound interesting. Okay we'll have that as our first one. That will be one of one in the poll. Oh wild and wicked things. I own that as behind me. That would be good because it would mean reading a new release. It's literally right here and I need to read more new releases. That's two. That's two that are on my physical TBR. Let's see if we get one more. I do want to read the girls I've been but we're trying to read the books I own physically. God there's so many good book recommendations like the mercies I want to read, wilder girls I loved but I'm again trying to read the books I own physically. Animals at Lockwood Manor sounds very interesting. Library of the Unwritten. Oh that's a five star prediction. That's one of my five star predictions I haven't gotten around to yet. Okay so it's gonna be is it love after love, the wild and wicked things and Library of the Unwritten are gonna be our three options that I'm gonna give for the book club. Fun! Okay I'm gonna go take an Instagram picture of those together and get the poll up and we shall see what wins. Okay so I posted the poll with the three books and I was kind of hoping between the Library of the Unwritten and Wild and Wicked Things and you guys ended up voting for Library of the Unwritten for the book to read for the book club. Success! I am so happy that this came up on the LGBTQ selection page. I actually don't know how this is queer yet. I need to like I suppose I'll find it out throughout the book. I am actually a hundred pages into this. I should be halfway already through our schedule for the book club but I'm a little bit behind. I'm a hundred pages in and I'm enjoying it so far so I'm on my squeaky chair apologies but we are following the library of the Unwritten books and the Librarian of that and basically it's really important that books stay contained and books don't escape the library and heroes don't escape their books so at the start of this there is a hero who is kind of like speaking to his author which is a really really bad thing and the Librarian and her assistant go to track down the hero and put him back in his book essentially and there's also this like nervous demon called Leto who's really really fun who's kind of gone to give them this message. There's also this fallen angel that we're following as well from heaven so the library of the Unwritten is in hell but it's like a neutral space in hell. Yeah that's kind of what we've read so far and that's almost an opposite really says and I'm just really enjoying it. It's read as like cozy fantasy it's like funny cozy fantasy reminds me a lot of TJ Klune I think if you've liked any of his books I think you would enjoy this. It's getting me engrossed in reading again which that's what we've been waiting for. It's what we wanted all along. Which is a really great thing I'm really this is one of my five star predictions. I made my last five star prediction video over a year ago but there's still books from that video I haven't read and this is one of them and I've been waiting until I've read them to make another one because I want to like react to that and see how I've done. I've kind of like ticked them off once I've done it but I don't really remember what was on it or how well I've done in terms of predicting five stars. I really like the character of Claire who's the librarian, I really like the character of Leto who's the demon. I feel like the first 100 pages has gone really fast and there's been a lot of worldbuilding as to how the world works and the rules of the world and like heaven versus hell and what that really means. I'm pretty sure God is a woman so we love to see it. It's giving, it's giving share. So yeah I'm really enjoying it. I'm excited to see the story goes. I feel like we've been given a good basis a good foundation of the story and now I'm excited to see where it goes from here. Listen I'm gonna be a reading gal. I'm about to be a reading gal. I'm doing reading sprints with Kayla and her channel members and my patrons so that's helping me get a lot of reading done. So yeah I'm hoping I'll get close to the halfway point tonight but I mean it will also get distracted in reading sprints and just end up talking. So we're gonna try and control that. I just woke up. I'm gonna do my skincare as I talk to you. My skincare I just ran out of everything so I've got like nothing and it's all on its way so I'm doing a very also what I'm looking for like reduced skincare routine. So I am now on page 280 of Library of Unwritten and I'm still really enjoying it. I would say, hang on, I would say it's a fourth star for me at the moment. It's not a five star it is obviously a five star prediction. The one thing, before we get into the good things, the one thing that's keeping it from being a five star is that the book can be kind of slow at times. There's moments where I find myself not having grasped something happening like I'll have found out that maybe a certain character left the room that the rest of the characters were in and I didn't realize that had happened. So I find myself not quite, A it's a bit slow and B sometimes I find myself not quite understanding everything that's happened but I am really really enjoying it. I'm having a lot of fun reading it. Something that's really fun is at the start of every chapter there's like diary sections from past librarians of the Library of Unwritten and I just I love when books do that. It just adds a little bit of spice, you know, like sorry this is incredible. It just adds to the world building the complexity and do you know what? I never annotate. I'm not an annotating galley. I know sometimes I wish I was because I feel like you know it does really well and everyone loves the annotating galleys. I'm not that but this book is the first book in a long time to make me wish that I annotate because there's been some paragraphs that just so plain and beautiful and they're like writing is like lyrical and I'm just like oh I'm into it. I'm like absorbed into this world so yeah I'm I'd say the writing the kind of lyricism and the beauty of the writing is one of my favorite things and I love the characters they're on this quest oh they're like LGBT representation has arrived. You know, hi gay. I would say actually as I read the book the whole book is gay. You know those books where like every character has a queer outlook on life I would say it's like one of them but they're more like specific this is the queer rep that you're getting but I would say there's gonna be more actually but what did I just show you as if I'm like a guru. Yeah the queer rep has arrived and I feel like actually I really shipped who the characters. Do I say who? Should I say who? Yeah I ship hero and Leto so Leto's the young I need my mirror for this. Okay Leto's the young demon that arrived to like tell the librarian what was happening and hero is the hero from the unwritten book that got out and I ship them and I want them to be together and I just feel like it's gonna happen and there's such interesting discussions to be had about it's like representation of heaven and hell and the kind of dimensions of heaven and hell like heaven isn't a very good place for the people that work there like the angels and I just think someone brought that up in the book club chat and I just thought that was so interesting it's such an interesting dimension so yeah the books got a lot of interesting stuff to it sometimes there are moments where I'm like I don't know I'm not like I'm not vibing I'm I'm kind of losing interest but that's just the nature of books like sometimes I just lose interest it's not like you know a fast-paced thriller where my mouth my finger just went in my mouth where you're not gonna be able to put the book down regardless of what you think of it so yeah I do want to show you quickly a new feature of the app is that now you can not only like mark books is currently reading but it more clearly shows on the app so I thought I would show you here so go to search for a book library and have a fucking spell of the unwritten click on that there she is and then I click here and I can mark it as current read and then if we go back here the main page it's like on the main page so it more clearly you can more clearly see what you're currently reading and then like when you go on a book you can there's links to go buy it here we are links to bookshop £8.36 right now so yeah there's a lot of cool features you can also mark books as TBR red favourite owned DNF and when you go on it you get the synopsis and you also get like a list of the genres fairy tales and people reading the book it's cool oh my god you get clubs reading a book it's my book club how cute okay I didn't know that so yeah that's just like another feature I wanted to show you guys but anyway I'm gonna go put my makeup on and watch some YouTube I do so and then I'm I will finish the book today my guess is I will finish the book so yes oh I am going to go I'm going to get my hair done so I'll try and film some b-roll of that for you right I'm here to get my hair done and I'm just feeling so nervous I used to dye my hair a lot I used to get it pink and stuff like that but I haven't done anything to my hair in a long time and we're changing multiple things up in terms of cut and color so yeah I'm gonna go to my appointment but I feel so nervous you guys I don't know how much I'm gonna film in there because this is a new hairdresser for me so I don't feel like awkward whipping out whipping out the camera but if I can film anything of the process to you I will are we ready are we ready it's the next day so it hasn't quite got it's like fresh haircut vibes but I think I like it I really like the color I feel like the color and like it's really cool I really like the color there you go you can like see it properly if I stand on my tiptoes the one thing I'm not sure about is the middle part I decided to try a middle part for like the first time in my entire life and we're not sure we're all under all of my family we're all of it because the thing is side parts aren't in so I feel like I need to have a middle part but I don't know if I suit it a very round face so I'm gonna give it a week and I'm gonna see how I feel I can always switch it back but anyway the hair I'm feeling my own let me feel my own I didn't film in the salad I was too scared I don't know these people maybe next time I would but I was I was too scared but I'm very happy with it I really like the color for summer I mean it's summer vibes I mean I really like it anyways I finished library then written finally it took me quite a while I'm gonna give it four stars maybe verging on like a 3.75 for me this last section I just wasn't as engaged in it I feel like the characters began to lose a bit of their like development and sides to them I feel like you expect a character to kind of grow in development as a book goes on I feel like they kind of went backwards I also feel like for a book with the library of the unwritten there's not enough library in this I mean I know the whole book is them kind of going on this quest to save this kind of like devil book that's got unleashed so the whole point is them going to all these places but I I would have like more library I like the library vibes I'm reading a book about the library but I did really enjoy it and I feel like now that we've had this first book the series could grow in my estimations I really really liked the first the first like section up until when I last spoke she was probably like a four to four point five the last bit was pretty good three three point five so like a four perhaps three points and five but I don't do that so it's a four feels correct again I loved the writing the LGBTQ rep in this is wonderful I recommend this to a lot of people and yeah I'm gonna try and like get through the series as quickly as I can because not only am I trying to finish a lot of series this year but I'm trying to like once I start a series get through it quicker because otherwise series can just like the last on my TBR for years so the second book we're gonna read in this video we're gonna pick using the ask the community tab so we did this last time and I got one of my favorite books of the year so far from it so I have high hopes this time I asked for something different let's go on the app and I will show you you go on the homepage to the ask the community section here and this is where you can ask for requests there's loads different requests as you can see my requests this time sorry I just put up a picture of my my new hair so we might get a few notifications I don't actually love myself this much I just act like I do this time I asked for I would love a recommendation for an LGBT murder mystery one with the LGBT representation is a major part of the book so I feel like my mission to my favorite genres but I don't often read queer books in that genre so I wanted to try and do that more so let's have a look I'm gonna scroll to the bottom first and work our way up okay oh the dead in the dark I don't know that some okay my my two I should before we get into this I should give my two rules I haven't seen what's on here but a book is prioritized if someone's read it because I there'll be some people here who are recommending books they haven't read I want it to be like a book they've loved so it's prioritized I don't really want to pick a book that the person hasn't read and it's definitely prioritized if I own the book because again we're trying to get through my TVR so the dead in the dark wonder hasn't read it so I don't think I'm gonna read that Brianna hasn't read this one so I don't think I'm gonna read that Chloe now this is a great pick dead to dead girls does have a sapphic main character relationship in it but I've read it it's right here I'm not gonna get it in case it makes the whole book shuffle I'm sorry for the notifications but that is a great recommendation I would probably if I was doing this video a week later I probably use this as an excuse to read the sequel to this to like make series progress the rules don't apply but the sequel comes out like next week so I can't read it yet 1920s trying to solve a murder filled with queer characters it's amazing the boy in the red dress 1929 so that's a murder mystery it's definitely queer it looks like we might have a drag queen kind of performer oh that one's exciting cemeteries and dead ends okay that's a real contender and Renz Renz read it another historical one who is possessed by the something of his murdered best friend and thrust into a deadly hunt for a serial killer that's a good that's a good possibility to Chicago 1893 this does stand up my vibe as well oh far from you by test sharp okay that's a murder mystery YA even though it is YA test sharp is not afraid to get explore more mature content and the mystery is really intriguing Allison not so much a mystery well definitely murdery with ominous mysterious vibe female female relationship hmm okay I think it's between far from you the city beautiful and the boy in the red dress are our contenders which one do I feel like I want to read most I'm feeling like the boy in the red dress you know I feel like I want to read the boy in the red dress that one intrigues me I've never read it seems like we have a drag queen main character and like or like at least like a kind of drag performer main character and murder and I like I love 1920s set a speakeasy like I feel like in the French Quarter I feel like this is the one we're gonna read so I'm gonna go get this one and we're gonna read it this is what I love about this section you can you can discover books that you never knew existed I find it so hard to find queer murder mysteries and like you guys have said them up to me in a platter so we're gonna read the boy in the red dress next blue dude blue moon and a mysterious shaded with someone I'm not really into do you need to fix it talking bullshit so I am halfway through the boy in the red dress I will say this reads so fast library and written took me a little while to read it but this one reads really fast so I have some thoughts so the basic premise of this it's set in 1929 1930s New York no not New York I can't remember where New Orleans yes New Orleans and our main character her aunt runs a speakeasy and she's put her in charge sorry let me like change the angle a bit she's put her in charge of running it for New Year's Eve and unfortunately a girl gets murdered unfortunately sadly a girl gets murdered and the prime suspect is the boy in the red dress who's our main character's best friend and he's kind of like the drag performer at the bar and she basically decides to investigate the murder in order to absolve him of any guilt is essentially the plot and the group that the girl was in is kind of like the rich debutant kind of group in society now the biggest pros of this to me is that this is exactly what I asked for this is exactly the recommendation is spot-on I like you literally couldn't have got it any better it is a classic murder mystery in a sense perhaps a bit more character focused and I feel like a lot of other murder mysteries are particularly because this is YA I feel like adult books aren't usually as character focused and interrelationship focused whereas this is but you know it's a murder mystery and the rep in it is great the main character is bisexual and I as someone who is bisexual I very rarely read any representation for that let alone good representation and I think the representation is great you know she speaks about being attracted there's like particularly a boy character a girl character she's really attracted to and she's never like well I'm bisexual she's just like without thought talks about without kind of ceremony talks about her attraction to both of them and there's so much rep in this obviously we've got I would say trans rep in a way Marion is the boy in the red dress he uses he him pronouns in the book but obviously it's set at a time when you know I don't know how easy it would have been to use she her pronouns obviously he's adopted the name Marion instead of his previous dead name so yeah like it's I think it's like gender representation in some sense I guess we could say I think it's a good beginner's murder mystery for like a YA audience so like the representation is great it's a good simple murder mystery but like the writing is just like fun like it it's not doing much for me like it's a quick read but I'm not feeling much I'm kind of just like ready to read it fast and then I've read another book it's probably like a 3.5 at the moment not because it's bad there's nothing really bad about it it's just not doing much for me the main character is kind of like she keeps going and like following one of this kind of the group of friends of the girl who was murdered like around to their like place of work or a place they're known to frequent and kind of like semi blackmailing them or threatening them to do what she wants she's like acts really tough she's like if you don't give me information who knows I could scream or whatever like it's very strange it's like strange tactics but yeah I think the representation is great and it is a LGBT murder mystery particularly where identities form a big part of it so it's exactly why I asked for so the community asked me section was spot on but just in terms of enjoyment I don't think it's going to be a brand new favourite I think if you enjoy the Diviners I think because it's set in the 1920s we go to bars a lot in the Diviners and he's got a very good group of friends in this I think it's kind of like that without the fantasy in a way that's kind of what it reminds me of so yeah I'm just gonna go finish the other half I don't think I think I'll take like an hour or two hours maybe and I will let you know later what my thoughts are but yeah it's just like fine it's good but it's not like blowing my socks off you know I finished the boy in the red dress last night and I'm gonna give it a 3.5 overall I've been very very harsh nice to meet you Kelly I think it's like fine I actually found out this is a debut this is the only book I think this author has and I think it's a really good YA murder mystery debut and I think it's like I said a great introduction to murder mystery if you're someone I think for like a younger audience who typically only reads YA is used to having really good like groups of friends and like you know hijinks but like through a murder mystery lens I think it's a great introduction because it's like introducing you to red herrings and like kind of detective skills and stuff so I think in in that regard it's it's a good book I just didn't it didn't like do anything for me like I had a fun quick read I read it in a day do you know what I mean it helped me try and catch up on my goodreads goal which is a mess I'm allergic to thinking about my goodreads goal what I think is great and what is great for the recommendation request is the whole book is queer the whole book is gay you know your bisexual main character you have a drag performer you have lesbians you have like listen it's like you know the whole cast is full of representation the recommendation request you guys found exactly what I wanted if you haven't downloaded novelic go download it and try put a request in the community section last time I did this loads of you did it and everyone was answering each other and it was just so much fun so I think it's a great place to go and find recommendations for kind of niche stuff that you can't google this is what I said last time right like even if I google like lgbt murder mystery I wouldn't find stuff that like our audience our group our friends you know the kind of community that we have on here we all know that each other would like you know what I mean so I think it's really useful to view through that lens and there's things like I want to book like this I want to book like that that you can't google and you kind of need someone to recommend to you so I just think it's such a wonderful place for that it's like my favorite part of the app I think it's genius I think you should all download it and go give that part a go the link is always in my bio in these videos to go download the the app I also just wanted to say that obviously I've been running the book club for library of their own written and it's coming to an end and I've just had so much fun doing that as well we've had some really good discussions it's been different because obviously last time we reread or I reread one of my favorite books but this has been new for me and when we were having discussions particularly at the halfway point people were saying things like thematic ideas or realizing things that I hadn't realized and hadn't thought of and I think it's so much fun so you can go start your own book club on there if you want you can make one with friends you can make private or public ones you can like make one with a small group of friends and make it private maybe if you have like a community on bookstagram or book twitter whatever you could create a little book club together or you can make a public one and try and build it up I think it's really really great and we've had some great discussions on there novelic is such a fun app I think there's so much fun to explore there's so many fun ways to pick your tbr from there if you kind of want to like build your tbr in a fun way like booktubers do I think there's so many different avenues to do that they have even this pride month section the banner on the app at the moment where there's like even more pride month recommendations I was gonna pick if I were to reach three books in this video I was gonna pick one from there but I think the video would have been too long but there's like 12 recommendations on there and there's something for everyone like a you know nonfiction YA fantasy like there's literally something for everyone on there so I just think there's so much to go and explore on novelic so I would 100% recommend you go check out link in my bio go check out the app make sure you use the link in my bio because then they know I sent you don't just search on the app store but yeah I would really recommend it I hope you enjoyed this vlog we read two pretty good books do you know what I mean it might be other than written was a five star prediction for me so a little bit disappointed but I feel like I know that the second and third books could be five stars still it still has that possibility so it wasn't a failure we still had pretty good luck if you got into the end of the video comment there's a rainbow flag emoji right I'm not making it up comment the rainbow flag emoji if you got into the end so thank you so much for watching this video I really really hope you enjoyed it and I will see you very soon in the video bye