 Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're all good. As you can probably see, if you watch a lot of my videos, we have a location change. I'm back home. I'm back home with my family, with my cats, with my bird, because I'm so happy to be home, but I literally only got home last night. I haven't unpacked a single thing. So my life is in a mess, but I still need to film this video. We are going to pretend we didn't hear that. So we're going to be doing my May wrap up today. If you have been watching my channel this year, if you've been watching my wrap ups, you'll know, I've been in a reading slump. I've been reading like five to seven books a month, which is really, really low for me. But guess what, sis? I finished uni. I'm done. I'm done. So that means May, the reading slump is gone. I feel like today, the future starts. So it's a good day. I'm so happy. I did really well with my reading in May. So we're going to chat all about it. I'm going to try and not talk for too long because I can talk for so long about these books. And we've got more than we had been having to talk about. So I've really got to like get the pace going. But before we get into the video, I want to tell you about an app which I love. I love that it's actually sponsoring this video, which is so exciting. So Byzons, you may have heard of it, is an app where you can discuss books basically. You can mark a book as currently reading and you can chat to people who are also reading this book and like talk about theories and stuff. Or you can mark a book as read and talk about books with all the spoilers and talk to people who have read the books as well. I think this is such a fun way to meet new people who read the kind of books that you do to chat about the books because a lot of us watch BookTube but it's quite like a one-way street. I'm just talking to you guys. And of course we can talk in the comments and stuff. But with Byzons, it's really great because you have that back and forth dialogue if you want with other people who've read the same books that you do. You can also do like little book clubs with your friends and chat about the books in the forums together. You and your friends can share your profiles with each other and follow each other. I have a profile on there. I'm not sure how to link it, but it's Meg with Books. I'll try and link it if I can figure out how to do that. I love it. I think it's such a cute idea, it's such a unique idea. It's so different than any app out there. And I think it's great. I'd love to chat with you guys on there. So come chat with me, download the app. I've got the link in the description to download it. So yeah, I hope you check out Byzons. I think it's a great app. And let's get into the video. So with my wrap ups first, we talk about my reading statistics and then we'll get into talking about each of the books individually. So my reading this month. Woo. Oh shut up, you're boring, you're boring. I read 10 books. I read a total of 3,354 pages which is an average book length of about 335 pages. So I think that's a pretty good book length on the whole, a little bit short. I did read, well not really. That's like an average book. Cause I read some longer books and I read some shorter books this month. I also had an average rating, get ready. You're gonna fucking cry. Oh my God. I had an average rating of 4.4. 4.4, that is so much higher than any other average rating I've had any other month. I think my highest any other month was like 3.6. Excuse me, 4.4 average rating. Oh my God, I'm so excited. In terms of my ratings, I had, ah, I had five, five stars. I had four, four stars and one, three star. Come on, what? I'm really happy with what I'm seeing. It was such a good reading month in terms of ratings for me, like five, five stars this month. I'm so shit. There's some really great books in here. In terms of genre, I read three fantasy, one contemporary, one nonfiction, two mystery, two magical realism or fabulism and one graphic novel. So a really nice mix of genres there. That is my favorite way to read. Like some months it's been like all fantasy and I've been like, oh. I think the last month it was like all fantasy and I just like to have a really great mix of all the different genres when I'm reading. In terms of like age, six were adult, three were YA and one was middle grade. Usually that's kind of like 50-50. I think I have been reading more YA this year and I did definitely enjoy reading more adult this year. I classified six as own voices and four as not own voices. In terms of how I acquire the books, one was from Audible, five were gifts, three were ones that I'd previously owned and bought myself and one was sent to me by the publisher. It was also 50% series, like books that are part of a series and 50% stand-alones. I've been reading a lot of series this year and I feel like this month I was able, that's a nice balance, like series books and standalone books. Cause if you're just reading series books, you don't get almost that level of like satisfaction of completion cause you know you've got like X amount of books left in the series. Author status, five authors were new to me, four were debuts and one was a author I'd read before. So almost all new authors this month, apart from one, which is great that I had so much success with that. And then finally, a lot of you will know that I'm trying to read at least 50% non-white authors this month. And I read from two black authors, four Asian authors and four white authors. So it was 60% POC authors and 40% white authors. So I'm very happy with that. So that is all of our reading stats. And now let's get into the books. I am gonna like try and talk quickly about these because there's reading blogs for literally all of these. I will link the reading blogs down below where I go into a lot of depth. And otherwise this video is gonna be like 20 years long and who needs that? So I'm gonna try and contain myself but I'm not very good at doing it. What do you do successfully? Quickly. So first I read Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour. Oh my God, we kind of match. I love this. I gave this five stars. So this is the story of a girl. I'm not regular names, Mila. She has aged out of the foster system and she goes to live on this farm where she can like teach other kids who are orphans. It's kind of like a job for her but she's also able to live there because obviously it's very hard to get on your feet when you age out of the foster system. So she goes there but it turns out that there's ghosts who kind of float around the farm and interact with some of the kids on the farm. But this really is a story of trauma. We know that Mila went through something very difficult a couple of years back and we're kind of having flashbacks to that and understanding what she went through and what happened and it's a story of her and like the boy she looks after trying to come to terms with their trauma together and it's just this beautiful haunting story. The writing I described. Sorry, I don't know why I can't get comfy today. I'm like. I'm comfortable. I'm sitting back pretty and waiting. I described the writing as very haunting, as very mysterious. It is a story that like clings to you and won't let go. Oh, I just loved it. It was so good. It has that kind of like magical realism, fabulous and element where you're not sure what is real or you're not sure what is trustworthy and I really loved that. You're not sure is this kind of like fantastical? Is it imagined? Like what extent is the stuff that's happening in this book? Reality and I think the lines are like continuously blurred without this book and I loved that. And I also said I loved how quiet and intimate this book is and it's very quiet with its grief and its trauma. And I thought that that was just done so well and really handled very delicately. So five stars. I loved it. I read this in my subscribers favorites video. So I read some of your favorite books of the past year so far. I'll link that video or the other books I read in that video I read at the end of the month. I started the vlog and then I paused it until the end of the month to do other vlogs. Then the next three books I all read in my reading translator Japanese fiction video. This was such a fun video to do. And I really discovered some favorite new authors that I'm excited to read more from. So first I read The Honjin Murders by Sushi Yokomizo. I gave this four stars. This is a detective murder mystery where it's a locked room murder mystery where a husband and wife are killed on their wedding night and the door is locked. There should have been no way for someone to get in or out. It's locked from the inside. I really liked this. This was very clever. The ending to this, it's like how the fuck does a human being come up with that? Sushi Yokomizo trying to convince me he didn't actually commit this murder to have come up with something so crazy. Just let me explain, will you? Save it for the police. It's so absurd and like what? Like what just happened? But I really enjoyed this. This is part of a Japanese detective series. This is the first one. And I think there's like 50 to 70 books in this series and only two I believe have been translated to English so far. I'm really excited to read the next one. We have this detective who travels to the area. He doesn't actually turn up to like 50% of the way through the book though. He notices those small things in people, like little quirks and is able to piece it all together. This is just a really fun murder mystery. If you like murder mysteries, I'd really recommend this. Then I read Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Karaguchi. This is the story of this cafe where you can time travel back in the past but you have to stay in that seat in the cafe. So it's not like you can travel back in the past anywhere or like go anywhere you want. It has strict rules. And you have to come back to the present before the coffee gets cold. Otherwise you'll be trapped as a ghost. And this is like four short stories about we have a lot of the same characters and a lot of them. And this was absolutely beautiful. It made me cry a couple of times. It's really imaginative of the kind of human issues and topics it discusses. A stuff I've never read in literature before. Issues I feel like cut to the core of humanity about issues that we forget about and don't discuss enough. I gave this four stars, by the way. I don't know if I said that. It is written in this very matter of factly way. I heard it did used to be a play. So that explains that. It's very much dialogue heavy. I sometimes felt like the characters didn't have much characterization or as much as I wanted. But on the whole, the issues and the topics that were touched upon were what made this book for me. And then the last book I read in that video. I know, I don't want to get upset. Don't get upset. Don't worry. Oh my God. It was The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hero Arokoa. I've spoken about this a lot recently. So let me just shut up. But I gave this five stars. My cats are with me. One of my cats is in my wardrobe over there right now. She's sitting in a box. Sometimes I can hear her breathing heavily because she breathes really loudly. I love cats so much. If you love cats, you need to read this book. No Christians ask if you have pet cats. It perfectly encapsulates cats' sarcastic tone of voice and how they think all our humans are fucking idiots. It perfectly does that. So in this, our main character is, he needs to give away his cat. We don't really know why. And he's traveling around to meet some of his friends to see if they're gonna be good fits for his cat, basically. And we read so kind of from that story perspective, but we also read from the cat's perspective. And I just love it so much. When I said before the coffee gets cold, let me cry, that was like a silent cry. This was a yelling. A book has not made me cry like this for a long time. This was me yelling at the top of my lungs. Like I was distraught. I can't even look at the wall with that fucking sad face. You start realising where it's going at maybe the halfway point. And I was like, no. It killed me, but if you love cats, go read it. Like, it's so good. It's such a good book. I loved it so, so, so much. And I wanna recommend it to everyone. Okay, then the only book I have not vlogged, so I'll speak about it a bit more, is In Order To Live by Yunomi Park. So this is a story, a memoir of the author's life as a child in North Korea and her eventual escape from North Korea and what she went through up until now in her life, really. And I really enjoyed this. I gave this four stars. This was a very like emotionally difficult book to read, but I think that's the point. Hearing about what she went through in North Korea and after as well, you know, escaping North Korea, thinking that everything's gonna be okay now. You're gonna be able to live a normal life and realising that that's not the case and being subjected to further abuse is really heartbreaking. I really liked how this book was written. I found it a really engrossing listen. I listened to the audiobook and it was almost like a conversational tone and I found it really easy to listen to and to follow along and to be really engrossed in the story because sometimes audiobooks are hard to listen to whilst you're doing other things, like cooking is usually what I do when I listen to audiobooks, but I didn't find that with this. I found it like we were having a conversation about her life. I would just really recommend this if you wanna know more about what it's like growing up and living in North Korea. I thought it was a really illuminating read. I really, really loved this. I thought it was such an interesting memoir and I would really recommend it. Okay, the next two books each have dedicated reading vlogs just for them. So let me just like, I speak far too long for books you've already heard me speak about a lot. If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be, shot the fuck off. But next, I'll stop the volume for, it's gonna go, oh my God, it's gonna go there. I haven't seen them with each other yet because I literally have only just got home. Oh my God, let me just, oh. So this is volume four of the Heartstopper graphic novel series and I love them. It's the story of Nick and Charlie. They fall in love and it's their relationship together. These are just the best graphic novels in the world. They're all five styles to me. They are what got me into loving graphic novels. I just love you so much, I just love it so much. This one is following them quite a bit into their relationship. This one covers some more difficult topics that the first ones haven't. It really went into some deep topics about mental health and eating disorders. And I just thought it was handled with such care and love. I love Nick and Charlie. The facial expressions in this, oh my God. Tori, Nick's, Nick's Charlie's sister. She's in Solitaire by Alice Oseman which I didn't really love. That's Alice Oseman's debut novel. But she is growing into one of my favorite characters. Like the way that she acts in this, I'm like Miss Tori, you better, you better. I love her. I wanna read another book like now with Tori Spring. I would read that, I would read that because she's an icon. Go check out my whole reading vlog for this if you wanna hear my in-depth thoughts. I take you through like me reading it but it's just the cutest thing in the world. You can do no wrong reading her, stop her. It will just make you happy. It'll make you happy. I really wanna reread them all now that I'm back with them. The next book also has a dedicated reading vlog. It was my episode of Wrapped Up for this month and that is The Devil in the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. So I unwrapped this book and then I had to read it. I loved this, it was five stars. Hey, success. This is such an interesting, complex book. It's really hard to describe all the complexities of this plot but basically there's this ship that is gonna travel, this is set in 1634 and there is this ship that's about to travel with this world famous detective, very Sherlock Holmes-y on board but he's imprisoned by the guy who's like in charge of the ship or like the guy in authority. The ship gets this warning right before they're about to leave that they are all doomed, that like the devil is gonna curse you, et cetera, et cetera. And then shit starts happening and shit starts going down and a group of characters have to work together including the detective's assistant because the detective is like I'm chained up, you gotta go figure this shit out. They're trying to figure out what is happening with the demon and how to stop this basically. That's a really shoddy description of the plot but there's so many layers to it and so many ways that characters like intermingling there's that it's hard to explain. I loved this, I gave this five stars. It was such a complex mystery with so many layers to it, that was what I loved. It wasn't straightforward. I don't like my mysteries to be like boom, like a straight line from beginning to end. I like my mysteries to have, to be like a tree with all these complex branches coming off of it and that's what this felt like. It was a really enjoyable read. The characters were amazing. I thought our setting on this grand ship was really well captured and very atmospheric and absorbing. The characters were all so, so interesting, they were so complex with so many layers to them. I did say in that vlog the ending is bold, like the ending fucking goes for it. The ending says take me or leave me basically but I don't think it entirely worked. It was close for me but it was like not fully there. I didn't knock it down a point for that because I felt like on the how I loved it and if an ending isn't gonna fully work I'd rather it be a brave ending than like a kind of fizzle out ending. You know what I mean? So it went there and I would really recommend this. I haven't had a lot of people speak about it. It is quite a big boy but I read it in like two days. It's quite an easy book to get through once you get into it. I loved it. If I had a wig, I would throw it. And then the last three books that I read are all in that subscribers favorites video that I mentioned. So I read Amari in the Nightbrothers by BB Alston. This is a fantasy middle grade where Amari's brother has recently gone missing and she gets his invitation to this camp basically for the department of, what is it now? Oh, bureau, sorry, Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. That was where her brother worked secretly for years and she is absorbed into this magical world that she had no idea was going on and she wants to find out what happened to her brother and so she wants to train to be an agent to find out what happened to her brother basically. So there's these magical trials throughout this and this was a great, great middle grade. I gave this four stars. I thought Amari was such a great character, such an interesting character. The magic in this was so fun. It has that like magical boarding school vibes. It's that perfect amount of like whimsy, protrusion, like it's just the perfect middle grade. I would love to have read this when I was a kid. The way that this discusses topics such as race and class and how they can intersect and how you can be affected by that in so many different areas of your life. I loved the atmosphere in this book. I love the magic. I thought we had a really great set of characters as well. Like some of the adults who looked out for Amari, some of her friends, I thought they were all really well fleshed out and realistic. So I'd really recommend this if you're looking for middle grades. I think it may be my favorite middle grade so far ever. I really loved it. I just thought the magic was perfect and it's just such a fun story. Like such a fun, well written story. So then I read Legend Born by Tracy Dion. So this is a story of Brie whose mother has just died in a car accident and she has experienced a lot of difficulties with grief and she gets absorbed in this secret society at this university she's at, which is basically Merlin's and Descendants of King Arthur. Like that kind of a retelling of that kind of story. I didn't love this. I gave it three stars. Just wanna sit here on me over a minute, gather my thoughts. Now I'm gonna preface this by saying I loved the ending. The ending has made me wanna continue on with the series. I hoped that it's gonna make the series more interesting for me, but it just fell a bit flat for me. I was just a bit bored. I didn't feel like much happened. Like to justify the length, it's almost 500 pages. The audio book is like 18 hours long and I didn't feel like much really happened. I wanted to love this so bad. I'm fucking devastated about this this day. Maybe the sequel will be better for me, but I was just bored and I feel terrible. In contrast to My Little Night Brothers where I felt like all of our minor characters were so identifiable and clear in their characters. In this one, I didn't really feel like that. I didn't really know, there was like so many people in this society, so many white boys and I just didn't know who any of you were, I'm sorry. Like I could not pick you apart. It's she, who is she, who is she? Where did you find her? I didn't feel like they had an identifiable voice to them. I felt like everyone other than our three main characters, their voices kind of blurted into one. They didn't speak in different ways. They all spoke the same, they all blurted into one. And just more than anything, I never bought into the magic system and could never see how it extended beyond this secret society on the university campus when it was supposed to be this really influential thick, sorry, I like smacked you there. It's supposed to, the society is supposed to extend into wider society and have real power in the world. And although that was like stated, I never necessarily believed it, if that makes sense. Legend Born was a real disappointment. I'm very sad. Let's not talk about it. And then finally, I read one of my favorite books I think of this year that I've read so far, or Oval Time, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. Oh my God, this story is beautiful. So in this one following Linus Baker, as he goes to this home where these children are staying and they are like magical. They are very powerful magical children and it's his job from the Department of Magical Youth to see whether what's going on is acceptable basically in the care of these children. And it's about acceptance. It's about facing prejudice for who you are. There's a lot of abuse towards these children just because of who they are from like the wider society. But it's also about Linus like coming to terms with how wrong his blind acceptance of the department's methods has been and how some of them have harmed children in the past. Oh my God, I'm not doing this book justice. I can never speak about it in a good way. It's beautiful. It's whimsical. It's told with this jovial tone, this upbeat tone. I absolutely devoured this book. You could not stop me reading it. I was just like, I love the kids. I loved the positive, hopeful outlook that this book has. It's just absolutely beautiful. Like it's just absolutely amazing. If you haven't read this yet, like it's incredible. I'm not doing it justice. I find it so hard when a book is one of my favorite books. I find it really hard to speak about them. I'm just like, it's perfect, go read it. And yeah, I can't wait to force. I'm gonna literally force this on everyone that I know. Like just shove it down their throats. Everyone in my life is gonna read this. So that is my May wrap up. I'm so happy with everything I read in May. Not only did I read a lot, I read all of this plus another audiobook, but I loved pretty much everything that I read. I had so many great, great books that I read this month. I'm so happy. I feel like my reading is finally on the up now that uni is done. I'm finished with uni. I'm so excited to be back home and to get settled back here and just be with everyone and not be on my own in one room for my whole life. So I've got so many ideas for YouTube. I'm hoping to start uploading three times a week from now on. So make sure you look out for that. It's gonna be Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays. So I usually upload on Thursdays and Sundays. I'm gonna add in another one on Tuesdays. And yeah, thank you so much for watching this video. Let me know how May was for you in terms of reading. If you got into the end of this video, comment. Comment an emoji that sums up your month of reading. And make sure you check out the link again for bisons. It will be in the description. I think it's such a cool app and I would love to chat with some of you on there. I think it's such a cool idea. So make sure you check out the link below for that. And yeah, I will see you very soon in another video. Bye.