 Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, which is my May wrap up in a very different location. It's the month of May. I read 19 books, but first off, yes, I'm in a different place. I'm in my parents' house. We just moved back to Michigan from Minnesota, and we're leaving our vacation in two days. We're driving to Chicago to catch the plane. So I have not set up any bookshelves yet, but when we get back from vacation, we will set up some bookshelves to film in front of. And also, all my videos for the next two months, every week, every video for the next two months that I'm away, is pre-filmed. So I will be in front of my bookshelves in Minnesota. But for today's video, we're here. It's going to be a little chaotic. Also, because I read 19 books, it's going to be relatively fast just because I want to be able to edit it and get it up. And really, a lot of these were kind of books. I had some five stars. I had some four stars, but a lot of them were three and two stars. Hey, yes. And I have Donatella here with me to talk about these books. I don't know how long she'll stay because she is still quite young, but at least she said hi. And yes, Donatella as in the Carrival trilogy. She is my sweet girl. Anyway, so I figured I'm going to start with the two star and work my way up to my five stars of the month. So this is going to be a lot of fun. So I had quite a few two stars, which is part mostly like really sad because, you know, it's a bummer to read books I didn't enjoy quite as much. But at the same time, I feel like if I don't know what I'm going to rate a book or I didn't like it all that much, I'm going to rate it three stars just because it's a book. But reality is, is that I need to be okay with rating two and one stars to books I did not enjoy. It's an honest review. It's so other people know what I honestly thought of it and can go accordingly. And, you know, it's just my personal opinion. You don't have to agree with it. In fact, there are some tropes that I don't like that I'm sure other people like. So girl, you showing your butt to the whole booktube. Okay, it's my personal opinion. That's my disclaimer. But I'm also proud of myself for being okay with rating things two stars that I thought were two stars. Let's just get started. Okay, the first book that I'm going to talk about is Hot Dutch Daydream. Now, this book, there were two reasons why I wanted to read it. One, because of a set in the Netherlands of a set in Amsterdam. And I haven't read a lot of books that are set in Amsterdam. And I've been in a contemporary travel reading mood. So I thought, hey, this would be perfect. To the plot did somewhat sound interesting to me. But I ended up being a two star. I didn't have high expectations for it because of this. But I was quite bummed. It could have been so much better. Are you going to drink my tea? Don't drink my tea. So we set it in here. This is Ashitaka. Tell his brother. Anyway, sorry, where was I? Hot Dutch Daydream. I was not impressed with the love interest. I was not invested in their relationship at all. I didn't like him as a character. And then that made me really hard. It made it really hard for me to root for a couple. And I mean, I loved all the kind of going around Amsterdam. Like that's really why I read the book. But I still wanted there to be a lot more from the book that I felt like it just wasn't giving and the age of the characters. It was really weird because like, you know, she's about to go to college, but she acted super young. But then the work she was doing was like something I couldn't imagine doing in high school. I don't know. It was, it was, it just didn't hit me right. Another book that I read again, because it's travel based, I was in a very like travel contemporary mood. And I read one Italian summer, and I had heard mixed reviews of this. So I knew not to have super high expectations of it. But it still disappointed me quite a bit. There's the cheating trove in here, which I do not like at all. And that can just like ruin the book for me. But then it was also just kind of weird. But you have this main character. I didn't give a description for hot touch daydream. I also just didn't like the title of hot touch daydream. Like, anyway. So we follow this woman who is having kind of relational issues with her husband, they're just falling out of love. And then she loses her mom and they were supposed to go on a trip to Italy, where her mom has been once before and loved it. And she's very close to her mom. Like she's so close to her mom, it seemed unhealthy. And like I am very close to my mom. So that's not something that I would normally bat an eye at. But those two were just so close that I was like, this is a red flag to me. Anyway, so she loses her mom and she goes on the trip anyway. But instead, she ends up going back in time to when her mom was on her previous trip to Italy and learns about her mom. I don't even know. Like she, it's a way of her processing her grief in this kind of magical realism travel back in time-esque thing. And just think about if she really does want to divorce her husband. I don't know. They're just the point of this book was just kind of all over the place. There really wasn't much there other than processing grief, which I just don't think happened very well. The writing just was not great. So it was a two star for me. Then I had From the Jump by, I think it's by Lacey Walden. This is another travel book where our main character is super obsessed with work. And her friends always go on these amazing vacations without her. So then this year she designs the quitter job and joined them in South Africa. And now I was really excited about their trip to South Africa because that's not one that a lot of places write about, you know, the writing about Italy or France or, you know, just kind of these European destinations, right? So it was really quite refreshing to read about a vacation in South Africa, somewhere that is in Europe. And I was really excited about that. It ended up being like a corner of the book. I was expecting the whole book to be on this vacation and the drama and the romance to be on the vacation, but majority of the book happened after that vacation. Like she goes there, they do like two things, and then they're home again. And that was the entire rest of the book. So that was really disappointing for me because I thought it was going to be about the travel when it was the travel had kicked off a new thing for our character of doing what she wants and taking risks and blah, blah, blah, which was fine. But even if I knew that was the case going in, I'm not sure I actually would have read it. And then another travel read, just haven't met you yet. I don't know what it is, but any like English contemporary romance and even English thrillers, I don't, I haven't liked. I think it's probably a cultural difference, but just haven't met you yet is about this woman who is going on a trip and she bumps into someone. Oh no. And then when she gets through a destination, she realizes she actually switched suitcases with the man she bumped into. And so she, of course, opens up the suitcase, trying to figure out who it is so she can contact them and say, hey, I have your suitcase. You have mine. We need to fix this. And she realizes that all the elements in the suitcase create an image of her perfect ideal man. And as someone who had been like a reporter doing people's love stories like they're cute, her whole career, she was so excited that this is going to be the perfect meet cute for her to finally stop being single and lonely on this vacation island with a dream man. That's not the direction the book took. Okay, I don't I don't want to spoil it. But I was pretty disappointed with the path that it took. I just halfway through the book, I was like, oh, I know what's going to happen. I'm not going to like it. I don't care. It could have been worse. But honestly, I just did not care for it. I didn't like our main character. I thought she got just way too attached to this imaginary guy, which is kind of the point of the book, she gets overly attached when really, I think, you know, she's just trying to look for him. And the whole thing with her parents just meh. And then the whole there's a bit of an age gap. And that's not really my cup of tea or at least no one had done intentionally. I don't know. It just it didn't hit right. Again, like there are just so many things that I like, were kind of meh or not great. And there was nothing to it that was like, Oh, I really like this or this is really cool. Which is why I was a two star because I was like, there's nothing I liked about the book. It just I just didn't like it. I almost don't want the two stars. I read Queen Bee. And I was really excited about this one because it's a South Asian main character in like Regency times. And I read this for my book club. So we're all going to read it. And we it's for the beginning of July. So we haven't talked about it yet. I read it in May I read it super early because we had decided June and July's book because they were really close. So we decided to just do both one and then the other. I ended up getting both from the library. So I just read one, then the other. And I just get the feeling that some people in my book club are going to like it. But for the most part, we're just going to tear this book apart. Because I was really excited for it. And then I just wasn't pleased with it. It took it took a long time for me to really get into it. Just because we were kind of thrown in with this girl who got kind of disgraced and embarrassed because of rumors spread about her. So then she goes to the school where she kind of gets corrected in the social lights term. You know, like she's like the daughter of the Duke or something. And so she's very high standing. She's about to enter her season to hopefully find a man to marry. But she gets disgraced. It doesn't end up well for her. So she goes away and she decides that she is going to come back under a different name, like three years later. And she's going to get her revenge on the girl who started the rumors. And I'm like, there's so much of this that does not make sense. Like I get three years. The idea the idea is that three years have passed and she basically is gone through puberty. And which is why she's unrecognizable, which A, no, just because somebody goes through puberty doesn't mean they're completely unrecognizable and they can just choose a new name, be a whole new person. B, if she had gone through puberty during that time to look unrecognizable and along with dyeing her hair and cutting it. But again, you know, that's not really a huge thing. Then she shouldn't have been in her season in the first place. Like there were just so many things that did not add up that I didn't like. And I mean, I admire that she wasn't a perfect main character, but I mean, no, she kind of frustrated me. The romance was okay. But I was bored for a lot of the book. I felt like it was really slow moving and not a lot happening. And I was just waiting. I just really honestly, if it wasn't a book club book, I really consider on just skipping to the end reading the end and being done with it. Like I was very much considering DNFing it. It just not at all what I had hoped for. I felt like there was a little bit of hype for it. And it just was quite disappointing, honestly. Then my last two star read was Imogen. Obviously, this is by Becky Albertalli. And I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to read this book. But you have your main character who is a senior in high school and her one of her close friends actually is a year older than her and is her freshman year of college. And so it takes place over spring break like she goes to visit for a weekend and kind of meet all the friends. And this is also the school that she is going to go to. Like that's already decided she's been accepted and she's going to go there. It was a similar thing with for the jump where like the weekend visiting her friends didn't take up the entire book, which is a good thing because then it would have been a really slow book. But like I just didn't care. There was so much filler. And the real kicker about this book is that the main character, Imogen, her friend, tells her other friends and it's a very queer book in that Imogen is a straight girl who has all these queer friends and a queer younger sister and etc. and so forth. But her friend makes a bunch of queer friends in college and kind of feels left out that she never actually dated a girl. So she claims that she and Imogen used to go out. And so she says that Imogen is bisexual. And so while Imogen is at the weekend she's hanging out with all these queer people and she is pretending to be bisexual to say her friend's representation. I had a lot of issues with that summary to begin with. But I was like you know what I'm just gonna give it a chance and I who knows because it really is the friend who is bisexual who is forcing this upon her straight friend. But honestly I was just so bored. I fell asleep a couple of times throughout the book and when I woke up I was like I don't need because I was listening to the audiobook and I was like I don't want to go back and listen to what I missed and I don't really need to because nothing new happened and I don't really care. So and I hated the ending. I was so annoyed at the ending of this book. I was like really you really had to go that you really had to do that. That's really kind of lame. So I was not pleased with the book at all and I just don't quite understand why that was so necessary. There were just a lot of like as a bisexual in college I know no no so it was the two stars. I'm still gonna keep the book but it was the two stars. Now we can move on to all the three stars which is a lot of books as well. First third star book that I'm gonna talk about is Love From Scratch. This I thought it was going to be an adult contemporary romance. It was YA which I also love YA contemporary romance but this one was alright. So Love From Scratch is a kind of competition like rivals to lovers so you've got two interns. One is a southern belle and the other is this big guy and they are at a food like kitchen advertising company and like like a social media kind of empire-esque and they end up filming a show together. A cooking show she doesn't have a lot of cooking experience whereas he does. He is kind of the baker and she handles more like the social media advertising marketing side of things and they both really want this one like job in the fall but they're both students and they're kind of competing for it. Honestly this was such a forgettable book. I was really excited for this. I was kind of like anticipating it but really the romance was meh. I mean the guy was I didn't really like how he treated the main character even if it was all like fun and games like I just that with how he was claiming to feel about her just didn't make sense to me and I don't know I was just kind of annoyed. I felt like too much was riding on it and yeah it was just a three star like it was it was what it was. Nothing special nothing intriguing but not like it was bad per se like it entertained me enough. Switching gears I read The Dutch Wife which is a historical fiction. I saw this in a good will and I was like yeah I kind of want to because I'm going to be going to the Netherlands this summer and I want to read historical fiction. It's another world war two which I'm trying to read more than just world war two historical fiction but again it was a good will for really cheap and it's by Ellen Keith and it and really what sold me on this so I mean again I am ethnically Dutch um and I am a wife so I was like oh I'm very intrigued by this because our main character is mentioned that she likes to make cakes like I don't like she works in a bakery or something but you know it's war times so it's not something she gets to do. I'm sorry the camera is shaking the cat on the bed really what sold me on this was the blurb Raiders of the Nightingale will be rewarded by this original and unforgettable tale. I loved the Nightingale that one just brought me to tears so I decided to pick this up because we actually follow three POVs and there are quite a few trigger warnings in here okay so the Dutch wife is you start off and she has been captured and separated from her husband and she is actually put to work in a brothel at a German camp it's actually a German concentration camp and um so she's there for the prisoners not the officers um which I thought was definitely a new and original take that I haven't read before um even in like the concentration camps like I've read another book with a concentration camp a world war two but it didn't tackle this side of things there are a lot of trigger warnings there with her being raped by German soldiers and everything like that because she is there against her will but you also follow the point of view of one of the German soldiers he's a little bit higher in rank I don't remember what rank specifically but he's fairly high up and he gets really attached to her and so and it's a very unhealthy like kind of abusive relationship in that like he falls for her and she doesn't love him back but she kind of has this like um Stockholm syndrome of like this is the only man she sees and there's this intimate connection between them but at the same time she misses her husband and wants to make sure that her husband is still alive and so it was really fascinating and heartbreaking to read about that entire situation and then you actually have a third point of view of a gay man in Argentina and he becomes one of the despacitos which if you don't know the despacitos is a huge issue that has been happening for years and years in so many countries where the government possibly um is basically kidnapping people and children and they are the despacitos mean the disappeared and so he's a gay man in Argentina he's a gay man in Argentina where the Nazis you know kind of flee too once they start losing the war and just his experience as a kidnapped gay man and everything that he goes through there so it's really interesting to see how these stories are connected even though they don't come together in the end it's a very like hard-hitting lots of serious topics lots of triggering topics um I liked the writing but I just had some issues with like character development and other aspects of it that made it a three star but um hmm I can see how fans of the nightingale might like this but I do not think it is up to like the nightingale standards like nightingales up here like for me it was a five star this is like a three maybe almost a four star um but yeah wow it it just hits hard on a much much different note I read a venom dark and sweet by judy i lin this is the second book in the magic steeped in poison duology so I've now officially finished the duology and the idea behind this uh asian inspired fantasy world is that you do magic through tea the tea itself is not magic you are wielding magic but you only do it through serving tea um so this was three stars it wrapped up the duology quite nicely you really got into a lot more political intrigue and like it just got so much bigger like I like the first book a lot more but I understand the value in this one and everything I just I don't know it just got to be so big it kind of got to add a handle a little bit I think of the position that our main character in in relation to everything happening it didn't quite make sense of their importance and how they were going to do something about it so but I mean look at that cover it's beautiful and I I thought it was so such a cool magic system to read about and we learned a little bit more about it but I just wish there was even more of a concentration in it so yeah I read that one too and then I read a book that is arguably sci-fi they're it's the same idea as like one italian summer so it's it's throwback by Maureen Gu and it's um you have our korean american main character who she does not get along with her mom but she loves her grandma um and her grandma goes into a coma and she gets into a ride chair which actually ends up transporting her from 2025 to 1995 when her mom is running for like homecoming queen and so she is sent back to kind of repair the relationship between her mom and her grandma and help her mom run for homecoming queen um so it's kind of got that sci-fi element there um I'm three stars there are elements of it that I liked but really the main character bothered me so much she was just so complaining and it was kind of really annoying to read from but at the same time her mom was not better like I think our main character was way too realistic to like an actual high school student of just being annoyed at everything and not liking uh their parents and just you know complaining all the time I I'm really glad that you know there were some things of like oh technology is different and sayings are different um a lot of ideology is different but and I mean it was handled okay like our main character has these very modern liberal views which I appreciate because I tend to share those views but it was so much so and especially like she went back to 1995 like she knows that society is different but she really just did not know how to handle it but yeah I don't know like it was trying to take the surface level idea of winning prom queen and relating that to a deep emotional level of a relationship between the daughter and her mother and I don't think that connection worked as well as they wanted it to also the twist ending wasn't super twisty like you kind of saw it coming so it was the three stars like I enjoyed reading it it took me a while to really get into it but then once I got into it I appreciated it a lot more so it was good I would recommend this and then we're getting back into the contemporary romance and I read happy place which is Emily Henry's new book and I gotta say this is not my favorite of her books okay don't hate me so if you don't know much about this book uh we have our main character who she and her fiance uh were like friends to lovers but they actually broke up five months ago and they didn't tell anyone that they've broken up uh but their friends are getting back together for one last uh like group trip to this cabin before um the dad who owns the cabin sells it and so it's one last like summer like vacation and so it's a it's a fake dating second chance like they pretend to still be engaged but they're not but you know then they're falling back in love and etc and so forth there were just a lot of like not necessarily unhealthy things in here but like not enough changed for the characters where I think they're gonna last when I read a romance I want to think that these characters are gonna last they're gonna get married and they're gonna live happily ever after I do not think these characters in real life would get married and live happily ever after and that's kind of the ending that the book wants you to think it has and I just I don't believe it so I know it's kind of harsh to say and I'm sorry but um like I've been a big fan of Emily Henry and I mean I'm not a fan of friends to lovers but you kind of get the dual POV of like at the beginning of their relationship and now but I've liked Emily's Henry's books I don't know if this is my least favorite but it's kind of close to of her books I still highly recommend this um like if you're a fan of Emily Henry definitely give this a try but like I don't I just I just don't see how it would work and I don't like the resolution between the characters and I don't like how everything played out you know it's a bunch of adults who are not acting like adults like they're supposed to be mature human beings and they're not and that bothers me because they are old enough to have a sense of how life goes and they just they frustrated me they every single friend frustrated me except for one and she did not get enough page time to save the book in my opinion I'm also a little spiteful that this is hard cover I know that Emily Henry changed publishers and that's why I like this is hardcover and her other books aren't but I really wanted the book as soon as it came out and I wanted it to match but it doesn't match so I know I'll get a grip it's fine but yeah and like the whole thing with it being a happy place it confused me so much because it'd be like happy place here happy place here happy place they are happy like all these different happy places and I'm like I thought the cabin was the happy place but really it's that's how you're supposed to know that you're going back in time but I just thought it wasn't super clear and it confused me and I didn't like it so you know three stars like Emily Henry's writing is fine but I just I don't know I think this book was a miss so I think Emily Henry is still gonna be an autobi author for me I still look forward to what else she releases I just hope that they're better than this one don't hate me if you love this great I'm happy for you but just don't hate me okay I beach read is still my favorite book lovers is still my second favorite okay that's just I think it's a mixture of trope like what I personally like I personally like enemies the lovers more so just okay don't hate me sorry it's just my opinion you can have a different opinion that's perfectly fine now I'm moving on to a bunch of queer reads so the last three star book that I read in May was Friday I'm in Love and this is by Cameron Garrett I was so excited to read this it's about a main character who really wanted a sweet 16 party but didn't get one her and her mom couldn't afford to throw her a sweet 16 party so instead she decides to throw a coming out party she hasn't really told anyone except her best friend that she is gay and so she wants to throw this big prideful rainbow party and come out to everyone and celebrate and just kind of get it all done and over with while having an awesome huge party but again you know it's not like she can't afford it so she strikes a deal with her mom her mom will pay for half and chill pay for half and so she works to make that happen I mean it was a cute fun read I just I don't know some of the things that happen in here I was like okay and like I liked the romance I thought the romance was really cute but I do think it could have been better I don't know I liked this one I love the cover such a beautiful cover I just think you know for what it was it was a good book it's a 16 year old trying to have a party on a budget that's fine like it's a good book I would very much recommend this I just think for my personal tastes there were some elements that I would have liked to be a little different but yeah this was a good one this was a good it was a good three star book okay now let's move on to four star books I have three four star books this month one I am so happy I read it's been on my tbr for quite a while and that is out of the blue by jason june who's the author of Jay of Jay's gay agenda this is a clear like merpoke book so you have one guy who is a lifeguard and he just had his boyfriend break up with him and he didn't think there was something wrong the relationship he was all excited to take these next steps of life together I mean they're in high school so he's thinking you know graduation college things like that and he's all excited to just be with his boyfriend so cute then his boyfriend breaks up with him for his ex best friend which is like ouch super painful then we have kress who is a mer person and they have to go on their journey that every mer person takes of going on land for a moon cycle for about a month to help a human kress is not excited about this not excited about it at all but they end up meeting our lifeguard main character and deciding they are going to help him get his boyfriend back so it's a fake dating to make the ex jealous but then of course they actually fall in love and there are just there are so many things going on in here it's the perfect summer read obviously because kress is a mer person but also that it's la it's summer everyone's swimming and everything like that you know just very warm beachy vibes and it's queer so i think it's perfect for june so i've read it in may and to get excited for june i'm not going to spoil it but that ending i still can't decide if i liked the ending or not i'll just say that probably the reason that this was a four star book to be honest when it got to kind of the last quarter of the book i started to get a little annoyed about what was happening so but still an amazing book the fake dating was so cute they are both just so cute so if you haven't read this and you need a good queer beach read check this one out i finally read tokyo dreaming it took a while okay it took a while for me to get to this um and i liked it i had heard that there were reviews of people who didn't like it as much as the first one and i mean i can kind of see where that is but honestly i liked it i liked the premise of it being her parents wanting to get married and all the politics involved in that um and you know everything that our main character does to help her parents but try and stay true to herself and what she wants versus what her role as um the daughter of the prince of japan is and everything like that i thought it was just another fun read did i like it as much as the first one no i mean the first one was a five star and this one's only a four star i think we just missed some of princess isamese like unique charm but i think i understand why she had to tamper that down to be like a better in the public eye for everything like that but yeah i i still think the duology is definitely worth reading i loved it so much fun so there you go and then the last four star book that i read this month was the golden spoon this is the great british baking show but in america and with the murder mystery so here's the thing about this one my friend read it physically and she didn't like it at all she told me not to read it well she was very excited for it so i put a hold for the audiobook on the library then she read it and she didn't like it she told me not to read it but then my hold came through and i was like well i'm bored so i'm just gonna read it anyway and here's the thing one reason why she didn't like it was because there were too many povs to read from and they all read kind of the same for her and they all blended together which made it really hard to read the story however i listened to the audiobook and they had a different narrator for each point of view so it was actually significantly easier for me to keep track of which point of view we were reading from and hear a different character voice not necessarily in the writing but with the narrator when the old woman when it's the old woman point of view you have an old woman reading it when it's the young minnesotan girl you've got a young narrator reading it when it's a guy you've got a guy reading it like so i did not have near as much of a hard time following the book because of that so i would definitely recommend the audiobook version of this if you're going to read it unless you are really good at keeping track of povs because there are quite a few or you know do a combination listen to it while following along whatever but just it's a better reading experience if you listen to the audiobook now i was excited because i love the great bittish baking show as someone who is baked for over two years like as my career i'm excited i love reading baking books um and i loved all the baking elements it felt very great great bittish baking show it was amazing that aspect of it was phenomenal that was the best part of the book however the murder mystery part of it was something that was highly advertised with it but it honestly did not happen until the end of the book like so much of the book was just the baking competition and you're like waiting for someone to get killed like because you don't know who's going to get killed you obviously don't know who does it and i feel like there were parts of the book that were trying to be eerie or trying to be creepy but it wasn't creepy enough like i was not getting chills waiting to see who's going to die i was just like i like the competition this is just a baking book there's nothing more and then all of a sudden the last 30 the book you have the murder you find out who did it and you go through the aftermath of it and that's it so it was very condensed at the end of the book and i didn't really like that i wish it had like been more throughout like the beginning or even the middle of the book just to make sense that it's a murder mystery baking book so that part was definitely disappointing honestly if that had been handled better it probably would have been a five star read but just because like and even then it's like person got murdered you know almost instantly who did it and you know who gets blamed for it and then that's it it's it's just kind of done so it was very rushed at the end and that was really disappointing so all right now i get to go to my five star reads i had four five star read books this month i read so many books and i am so happy so i read immortality a love story this is the sequel to anatomy a love story by danah schwarz this sequel actually takes place after the first book i thought it was going to like follow a different character or be something else no it does take place after the first book so the cliffhanger that the first book has i thought was just going to be an open ending and i was content with continued on so which which wasn't too bad you know it's fine that's totally fine again i just loved it the gothic medicinal like dead body 1800s scotland was there and that's all i wanted from it and that in the romance it's a gothic romance of 1800 scotland with a female main character who's trying to become a doctor it was great i thought it was a great continuation of the sequel um like if there were elements in the first book that were introduced at the beginning then i felt didn't quite carry through the rest of the book and i was a little disappointed in that but those elements came back in this second book and i was like yes oh yay it's here we're getting into this element of not quite science fiction but gothic medicine yay i'm excited i love that so i was very happy that we returned to that um the characters i don't want to spoil the first one if you haven't read it but if it sounds interesting to you like read it i i loved it it was great in a similar vein kind of i read how to sell a haunted house by grady hendrix and i think this is my favorite grady hendrix books that i've read yet i've read um the southern book collabs guide to playing vampires and i've read the final girl support group and i liked those those were both four stars like those were both kind of lacking some sort of continuity or subject matter that was just like this could have been clearer or executed better but how to sell a haunted house i loved i got creeped out by this book so good the puppets it's a puppet book okay just so you know it's a puppet book and i don't want to say too much about the like actual summary of the book i feel like the title had a sell a haunted house and the fact that it's with puppets is all that you need to know so i was thoroughly creeped out i i liked how everything happened finally i got a five star grady hendrix books i'm so happy i can't wait to read more from this author and i can't wait to see what else they come up with awesome i read fake dates and mooncakes by share lee this is a queer male male baking fake data fake dating romance there's a lot happening in this little book um you have one main character who he works in his family's restaurant and he it's his aunt's restaurant because his aunt started to raise him after his parents passed and um they're struggling quite a bit and there's this mooncake festival or competition and he wants to make the mooncakes that his grandma used to make in order to um enter in this competition to try and save the restaurant um and then you have the other guy who is like this rich guy he is very much like the crazy rich asian style family of he his cousin is having a wedding and he needs a date to the wedding so this family stops trying to pair him up there's lots of family drama family politics there so he enlists the help of the restaurant guy to be his fake date and then of course they fall in love um at the wedding and it just kind of takes off from there like the wedding was kind of the first half of the book and then the mooncakes are the second half of the book so you get both events in the book and you get their relationship throughout and it was just an adorable read with amazing asian cuisine and gay love and it just uh i i blew right through this it was so heartwarming and then the final book and probably my favorite book of the month i think i think yeah this was probably the best book i read this month was practice makes perfect by sarah adams this is a grumpy sunshine not really fake dating but like practice dating so okay the book when in rome by sarah adams happens before this book i have not read that book i've had it on my tbr for a long time and i've had it on hold at the library for a long time i didn't realize that this was in the same vein like following the same family but you don't need to have read when in rome before reading this okay that means that i really want to read when in rome now because i know the characters so you have the sister of the brother from when in rome she owns a flower shop and she's an adorable sunshine like she owns a flower shop come on now um lives in small town rome kentucky everybody knows everything honestly the townsfolk were some of my favorite characters like the banter between townsfolk like just these two old ladies coming to the flower shop their interaction their conversation was hilarious i loved it and i love it when you have side characters like that who are fleshed out have their own backstory have their own private jokes like that that just that's what really made this book so almost perfect for me it was just how well thought out everything was and in this town that is so fleshed out and writing and then you have the bodyguard of the celebrity from the first book and he's back because those two are getting married and so he needs to protect her as they go through the wedding and you can see he is a dark tattooed masterpiece of a man our our florist is not great at dating all she really knows how to do is talk about flowers and so the bodyguard is kind of forced into agreeing to help her practice and i love how they handled that the the safety and the communication that happened there but that also them falling for each other and just i loved it all the banter the characters literally i don't think there's anything that could have been better about this book this is definitely a contender for one of my favorite books of the year and romance isn't even my favorite genre of all time um it is adult romance left all of that too um but my favorite genre is fantasy but this this could take the cake we'll just have to wait and see but i i highly recommend it if you have heard about this book and you're intrigued at all just read it it was so good if you like this video give it a thumbs up comment down below some of your reads that you read in may that you liked or really didn't like if you read any of these books if you agree or disagree with my thoughts i would love to chat with you down below also feel free to subscribe i am posting videos once a week um over the course of the summer but be sure to hit the bell to be notified when those videos do go up otherwise i have bookish social media linked down below you can keep up with what i'm reading and all of my adventures in europe and everything down there so make sure you follow me there uh but that should be everything so until i see you all in the next video i wish you happy reading