 Hey guys, it's Liana and I'm here today because I beat my 2019 Goodreads reading challenge. My reading challenge this year was 80 books and I beat that early. I'm currently at 83 books read. I'm just gonna do the 80 because that was my challenge. What this is is a really ridiculously long wrap up. You're welcome. I did a quarter one wrap up and a quarter two wrap up. So if you don't want to see me talk about the same books that you heard me talk about once, only now with longer time since I read them, then I'm gonna put in the description down below the timestamps for the end of quarter one and the end of quarter two. So if you just want to see everything that I read after those two wrap ups, then you can do so. You're welcome. But if that is not yet clear to you, what this video is is me going through every single book that I read as part of my reading challenge. So 80 out of the 83 books that I've read this year and quickly recapping each one and how it felt about it. And we're gonna do this via me checking my Goodreads because fuck if I remember what all I read. Let's...oh no...alright, alright, alright. Let's do this. Oh man, this is gonna be a rough start. The beginning of this video is gonna be all the books that created mortal enemies of a great many of people. I started out the year by reading Sanderson books and doing videos on said Sanderson books that does not feel like less than a year ago. It has so defined my life and my channel. The reaction I got on my Sanderson videos that that feels like it's been my whole life. But it's not. The first book that I read in 2019 was The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, which is the third book in the Mistborn trilogy. I did a video talking about my disappointment with the ending of the trilogy because I adored Well of Ascension, the second book, and then the ending, the way everything tied together was explained, I did not like it. I didn't care for it and it retroactively made me dislike Well of Ascension. Overall, I still think it's a really good trilogy and people are still angry with me regardless. I do think it's a well-written trilogy. I just don't care for this sort of message at the end. But overall, I enjoyed my experience reading that trilogy. I gave Hero of Ages three stars because again, the ending pissed me off. So I think I gave the first book four stars, the second book five stars, and then the third book three stars if memory serves. But anyway, Hero of Ages, their book in the Mistborn trilogy, and that's the first book I read after that was Way of Kings, which I have an hour plus long video on my channel talking about how I felt about Way of Kings. That is just its own thing. I swear to whatever you want me to swear to that I had no idea, none, that I would get that kind of reaction to that video. I frequently post negative, positive, and mediocre reviews for books. I just, if there's a book I feel like talking about, I post a review for it. And that's what I did with Way of Kings. And the reaction was astronomical. I did not expect it. I didn't make that video because I was hoping to get that kind of reaction. If I had known, I don't know that I would have made that video, honestly. But it is what it is. So I really don't want to say too much about Way of Kings, except that I was disappointed with it. And I made that very clear in my video, and people hate me now. Moving on to Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, which until recently was my favorite Joe Abercrombie book of all time. I give that five out of five stars. It's in the first law universe and is the first in the series of stand-alones that he did in that universe. So if you've read the first law trilogy, which is the blade itself before they are hanged in the Last Argument of Kings, chronologically after that comes Best Served Cold, but it is a standalone. He says you can read it first without ever having read the trilogy, and you can. I just think it's better if you read the trilogy because there are connections and mentions and things related to the trilogy that you can only pick up on if you've read the trilogy. And the trilogy is really good. So even though the Best Served Cold I think is better than the trilogy, it is better than itself if you've read the trilogy, if that makes sense. So love it. Wonderful grim dark fantasy. Joe Abercrombie at his best. Great. The next book that I read was Gilded Wolves by Rashani Chakshi, which I give two stars to because it was basically bootleg Six of Crows. I talked about this in one of my wrap ups or one of my videos. I don't know. I've talked about it before. It's, like I said, it's bootleg Six of Crows. It takes place in France or French inspired fantasy place, found the characters to be two dimensional and dull and the plot to be predictable and at times illogical. And it just felt like Thor brand Six of Crows. The next book I read was Cricket Kingdom by Lee Mardugo, which was a reread. I wanted to reread Six of Crows and Cricket Kingdom before King of Scars came out, which that was why I was reading Cricket Kingdom. And I gave it a five out of five stars again. Give it five out of five the first time I read it. And I cried harder the second time reading it because I knew what was coming. And I think pretty much with most books and movies, if it's something that made me cry, it will make me cry a lot more the second time because in addition to the thing that made me sad the first time making me sad, now I know it's coming. So I spend all of the lead up to it thinking about how that's coming and it makes it so much worse. The next book I read was Language of Thorns by Lee Mardugo because someone told me that I need to read that too before King of Scars. And I had had it for a while but had been putting up reading it. It is a series of fairy tales that are out of the Grishaverse. So they are just fairy tales, but they assume that you live in a Grishaverse world. So in the way that fairy tales that we've all, I shouldn't say we all, but fairy tales of our own world, Grimm's fairy tales, Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales assume certain things are universally known about gravity, about the tides, about oceans and mountains, things that are just facts of the universe. So all these fairy tales assume that you understand that the Grisha power exists in the world as just a fact of the world. So it appears in the stories as just like that's a thing in this world. I love the Grishaverse books and these fairy tales, I was really upset with myself for having put off so long because I really, really enjoyed them. The book itself is stunning. There's beautiful illustrations. But the stories, some of them I didn't recognize, but for the most part, they are familiar either elements or entirely retellings of familiar stories with their own Bardugo slash Grisha sort of take. And I enjoyed all of them, but some of my favorites were just knockouts. They were so beautifully and archaically written but with some sort of modern twists to them in terms of the lesson that you find in it ultimately. The tie-ins to the Grishaverse were fun. It's just, oh, it's such a beautiful book inside and out. The next book I read was also a reread that was Lies of La Clamora by Scott Lynch. I frequently mentioned that book on my channel or at least in the past I have, I haven't mentioned it that much recently as an all time favorite of mine. So I wanted to reread it. Well, I just wanted to reread it, but also because it had been a while since I had read it. I wanted to make sure I did actually still love it as much as I kept telling everyone that I didn't. I did, it was five out of five again. God, that book is good. If you don't know what Lies of La Clamora is, it's an adult fantasy that it takes place in a fictional fantasy world that's very heavily inspired by Italy and Venice. And it's got sort of an Oliver Twist, Fagan Thieves kind of situation for Locke's childhood where he grows up being kind of taught how to steal amongst his fellow compatriots who are also being taught how to steal, but not just how to steal, how to pull Albert Heist. So they're taught languages and arithmetic and diplomacy and theater and culture and music and cooking, everything they'd need to know to impersonate anyone in the world to pull off any heist they'd ever want. And it also follows Locke and his compatriots in adulthood as they attempt to pull off an elaborate heist and then things go massively south for the gentlemen bastards that they are known and all of their heisting abilities they have to utilize to get themselves out of the mess they're in. Yeah, so five out of five stars. I love that series. I hear that book four is supposed to come out next year. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm very much hoping that's true. The next book I read was Windwitch by Susan Dennard. I didn't care for Truthwitch, but I was sad that I didn't like Truthwitch. So I wanted to give it another chance by reading Windwitch and seeing if it improved, if I started to like it, I liked it even less. I gave that two stars, which it's not for me. It's a YA fantasy and I thought it was all over the place and I just, I didn't connect with it. I didn't think it was that well done. It just wasn't for me. The next book I read was The Last Namsara by Kristen Siccarelli. Siccarelli, I still don't know how to say it. I liked that a lot more than I was expecting to. I had put it off for a long, long time because it came in a couple of my subscription boxes and a friend of mine was raving about it, particularly about the audiobook and I love me a good audiobook. The narrator is fantastic. I gave this four out of five stars. I don't honestly know if I would have given it full four stars, if not for how much I love the audiobook. The narrator has this low, smoky English voice and I love it. Ah, such a good voice. The story is really good. It's not groundbreaking or earth shattering. It's YA fantasy, so it has some tropes in it, some cliche things. It's fairly simple world building, but overall I felt that it was very well done. It was consistent. The world building was interesting. The inflight, the characters, if not the most amazingly original, were three-dimensional and I cared about them when I was reading it. It had a fairly unique premise. It was interesting. It was a good time and I enjoyed it. The next book I read was Priest of Bones by Peter McLean. This book is literally Peaky Blinders set in a fantasy world. I don't, it does not need any other explanation and I don't think I need to give further explanation for why I gave it four out of five stars because I love Peaky Blinders and I love fantasy and this is a fantasy about basically the Peaky Blinders. It literally doesn't need any other explanation than that. That is what this book is. If that sounds good to you, then you will like it. The next book I read was Another Re-Read and that's Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I gave it four out of five stars again. The first time I read it, I loved it at first and then kind of got bored and was not super into it when I got to the Institute and then I loved it again at the end. And on this reread, I was hoping that wouldn't be true. I was hoping that now, because I know all the characters, this time around I would enjoy the Institute but the exact same thing happened again. The beginning was fantastic. The beginning is amazing. Soon as I get to the Institute, snooze fast and then the ending is a knockout again. And yeah, Red Rising to me is still the weakest book in that saga. It's a necessary book. You can't skip it. So if you're thinking about starting that series, you do have to read the first book. It's just push through because I'm a Die Hard Red Rising fan and I don't really care for it that much. So just know that, that if you don't fall in love with the first book, you might still be a Die Hard fan. The next book I read was Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. This I gave four to five stars to. I really enjoyed it. A lot of people had heard say it was too dark because it is grimdark fantasy. And I'd heard people say that it's just over the line, like too far, too dark. And it's not, it's pretty dark. It is, but it's grimdark fantasy. So I don't think it is darker than other grimdark fantasy. I don't know what the big deal is. Why people are reacting so strongly to it. It's, it's dark, but not that dark. It kind of read to me as if someone took several obarga from Red Rising and wrote a post-apocalyptic grimdark fantasy where he's the main character. That's basically what Prince of Thorns is. If that sounds good to you, then you'll like it. The next book I read was another reread and that's Illuminae by Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. This reread was the audiobook. The first time I read it, I read it as a physical book, but I kept hearing how amazing the audiobooks are. And I can confirm the audiobook is amazing. It's a full cast with sound effects. It's more like a dramatization than an audiobook. And it is great. I love the book in general. I gave it five as a physical book and five again as an audiobook. It's just an all around great time. The next book I read was King of Scars by Lee Bardugo. That I only gave three stars to. It's probably my least favorite Lee Bardugo book that I have read to date. It felt really unnecessary. There were parts of it that were really strong, parts of it that were really nostalgic, parts of it that made me, I cried when I read it. There were parts of it that were really strong. And I'll read the next book for sure in the Nikolai Lansov duology. I feel like it would have been better to just leave the story of Nikolai untold and leave him as an enigmatic side character in the Grishaverse. I feel like it took something away from him to do his story. And he's frankly not even it that much for a book that's supposedly about him. So overall it was, it wasn't bad, but it was a let down. The next book I read was Gemina by Amy Coppin and Jane Kristoff. I once again did the audio for this cause I'd heard that the Illuminae audiobooks are great having had a great experience with Illuminae. I went ahead and reread Gemina as an audiobook. Also fantastic, narrators are great, full cast sound effects. It's an all around good time. The next book I read was Bird Box by Josh Malerman. This gave, I gave four to five stars too. I liked it a lot more than I expected to. I only read it because I was gonna do like a book to movie video comparing the two and it's not very long. And I had heard a few people say they'd read it because the movie was coming out and they actually quite liked it. So I read it and I don't really read horror or thrillers much. So I don't, I'm not very well versed in the genre but I did have a good time reading it. It was chilling and I felt a little cheated by the ending but overall it was an engrossing quick read that I found to be, it was a very interesting premise unique and original. So I enjoyed it and I would like to read more books by Josh Malerman. The next book that I read was Deathless by Catherine M Valente. And I'm actually holding a Deathless mug right now it's made by Creatively Crafts if you don't know her mugs are amazing. I had heard amazing things about Deathless. I actually had a few pieces of Deathless merch before I read the book because my favorite candle shop is obsessed with Deathless. So I had acquired some Deathless things in boxes from her shop that had of like, you know subscription quarterly type boxes that just have a variety of things in there. So I was aware of this book existing and it being beloved both by the candle shop owner as well as some other people I know on Instagram or just in the bookish community. I'd heard it praised. I didn't know too much about it. It had never really appealed to me that much. Like the covers kind of, it seemed like something I might like but I had so much merch for it that decided to go ahead and give it a go. I really enjoyed it. I gave it five out of five stars. If you don't know, it's taking the legend or fairy tale or Russian folklore story of Kosche the Deathless interweaving actual Russian history and then Maria Morevna is also from the legend or folklore tale of Kosche. It's basically an elaborate blending of actual Russian folklore with actual Russian history and then a Catherine and Valente twist to the whole thing. I thought the writing, the prose was really poetic and lyrical and stunning and just velvety gorgeous to read. And then because my own ethnic and family background is Eastern European, then I'm more familiar than I think most people, well not most people but then people who are just purely educated here in the United States with a very Western education. You don't really learn that much about Eastern Europe or Russia in school, in the States at least in my experience. So all that to say it was much more familiar to me so I enjoyed it for that reason because a lot of Latvian folklore and Latvian tales are more similar to Russian tales. Latvian history is very closely tied to Russian history so I'm more aware of Russian history so it felt familiar to me for those reasons and then I just thought it was really extremely clever the way that she meshed Russian history with Russian folklore where they're blending so much that you can't tell where one ends and then the other begins. I just thought it was so well executed. So I think it's a gorgeous and truly original book and I enjoy the hell out of it. I don't think it's all that romantic. I think I've seen people kind of swoon over it and think that the romance in it between Kostje and Maria is swoon worthy and that's a little upsetting to me because I don't think it is. I think it's beautifully written. I don't think it's romantic and I think it's a little yikes if you think it's romantic but I think it's a beautiful and romantic story in the sense of like romanticism. It's not romantic in the sense of something ideal if that makes sense. So I don't think it's a good romance in that sense. I think it's well written, including the romance. I think the romance is really important to the story but it's not romantic, I guess. I don't, it's not swoon worthy. I wouldn't say that. The next book I read was Strange Practice by Vivienne Shaw. This book was one that from the cover I thought it would be something that takes place either in actual historical London or something inspired by London but it takes place in the present day which was a bit of a surprise to me which I only realized part way through the book so I had to reassess everything but it's an interesting premise. It's a woman who's a medical doctor but she mainly treats supernatural creatures but she herself is not in any way supernatural. So it was a fun adventure supernatural urban fantasy type thing. It's not, I don't really read urban fantasy so it's not like super duper my cup of tea but it was a fun premise and I enjoyed it. And I gave it three out of five stars. The next book I read was Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves and oh my God, I hated that book. I gave it two stars. It's not the worst thing I've ever read but it was one of the flattest, most boring, most predictable, most insufferable YA fantasies that I've read recently and it was almost entirely forgettable and also then when I think, now that I'm remembering from what I recall I think it used, is it Bulgarian or Polish? It heavily drew on some language or culture and I remember reading some reviews from people who actually speak the language or from that, I think background and they were offended by how inaccurate it was. It was basically, hey lady, why don't you Google it or don't use our culture? So even though that didn't affect my reading of it because I wasn't aware of any of that when I was reading it, it just made me hate it more. The next book I read was Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw. This is a fat ass fantasy book but it's purest escapism. I really, really loved this book. It had been on my shelf for like actually years because it had been one of those that Amazon recommended to me is because you've bought a million other fantasy books you might also be interested in this and the cover kind of called to me. The cover looks to me the way that a book that promises escapism should look and it delivered in every way I could have hoped for. I looked at that cover and thought to myself that I wanted to dive into the world of this cover and get lost there and that is exactly what reading this book feels like. The book reminded me a bit of Name of the Wind but not in a this is plagiarizing Name of the Wind kind of way but a lot of the feeling of Name of the Wind. So it, because it mainly follows this one young man it follows him from childhood into young adulthood. So you have that sweeping long time with following this one character and like the sort of multiple misadventures and things leading him down this path of greatness. He's kind of a prodigy but also kind of insufferable kind of like both. But the circumstances are utterly different. So I don't want to make it sound like it's just a knock off Name of the Wind. It's not, but that sort of situation of following this character through multiple stages of his life where he is a prodigy but that in no way makes his life easy and following him through all these hardships and adventures as he's slowly becoming who he'll ultimately be. And there's supposed to be more books in the series but they are not out yet and this is being such a long book that is I believe self-published. I can see why. And there's illustrations in it too. It's worth it. I highly recommend it. It's a really truly escapist fantasy and I really enjoyed it. The next book I read was The Ruin of Kings by Jen Lyons. I give this book three stars. I thought it was, it's a debut and it is an ambitious debut but it is a mess in my opinion. I thought it was, I can't quite tell if it was doing trying to do too much and not quite managing it or if it intended to utterly befuddle the reader because if it intended to utterly confuse you as a reader it succeeds, immensely succeeds. There are too many perspectives, too many nonlinear plot lines each nested within each other to the point where by the end you do not know what's happening. There's reincarnations and body swapping, multiple perspectives, multiple timelines, multiple points of view. Just it's first person and third person and it is too much. It's too much. You can't follow it, not comfortably. Not even if you are paying attention. You need to draw charts as you go and then reread it a few times. So to me, a well-written book is one that doesn't require effort on the part of the reader other than to pay attention. So if you're making the reader work that much, at that point, I just don't think you're very well-written. Part of your job as a writer is to convey a story in a way in which the reader can follow it. The next book that I read was The Secret History by Donna Tart. This has become one of my all-time favorite books. I'm a big fan now of Donna Tart's writing. I have started reading The Goldfinch but I have not finished it. This is my first dark academia book. I've talked about it a few times now on my channel. It is dark academia. It follows a group of students who are studying Greek classics in university. You know at the outset that one of them dies at the hands of the others. You don't know why this happens. What leads them to this occurrence and what they do after. So it's a very slow, very pretentious read but I feel like Donna Tart's writing is just so velvety and decadent and I love it. It is pretentious but it's self-aware and it sort of has a right to be if that makes sense. I've read a lot of writing where it feels really pretentious and it's unearned. Donna Tart's writing is pretentious but it's earned and it's for me personally, an absolute treat to read. So I highly recommend it. The next book that I read was Four Dead Queens by Astrid Schult or Schult. This is why a sci-fi masquerading is why a fantasy. It looks like a fantasy cover and it reads like fantasy. The way that the story is told and the kind of story that it is, you think it's fantasy but it's not. It's sci-fi. There's no magic. It's just a different world, like a parallel, you know, other planet, other universe where the technology allows for a situation that seems like the kind of plot you'd have in a fantasy but it's technology. So there's four queens ruling and they will be four dead queens. So it's a sort of a who done it that sci-fi and I just had a really good time with it. The ending wasn't my favorite. I did give it five stars though because I really, really enjoyed it and I just felt it was so original and so unlike what I've been reading in YA, especially recently, I haven't ever read anything like this before. So for originality alone, it deserved points and it kept me guessing. I was invested in the characters. I just had a really good time reading it. So I recommend it. The next book I read, reread was Radiance by Grace Draven. I don't remember why I read this again at that point. I'm sure I had a reason. I've read Radiance four times, I think. Maybe five? Definitely four. It's not super long. So it's not that impressive but God, I love that book. I don't feel like I need to talk about it again but in case you haven't heard me talk about it, it's a fantasy romance, which is not something I typically read. I mean, I do typically read fantasy but I don't really read romance and this is definitely more on the romance side than the fantasy side. And I just love hanging out with the characters. That's why I read it so much. So the romance in it is really nice. Like I really like the romance between the main characters because it's not angsty and filled with miscommunication and drama and all that stuff I hate, which is why I avoid romance because I just associate all romance with that. The main characters are reasonable and mature and they communicate well and like what drama there is in the story is almost, is like 95% external. It's a marriage of convenience story. There are two, there are people of two different species. It's their marriage is supposed to solidify an alliance between these two bordering peoples. So again, they're literally different species. No one really expects this marriage to result in children. They're just sealing the deal on this peace alliance contract type thing. So you get both perspectives. They are both repellent to each other physically but they're both also totally mature and reasonable about it. And they both like each other on a personal platonic level, like right from the get-go. They meet each other and they agree that they're both in the situation. There's nothing they can do about it. They're gonna have to live together. They're basically gonna be roommates because again, no one really cares or is concerned about them consummating it. Maybe they will, maybe they won't but it's kind of irrelevant. That's not really not the point of this marriage. So basically they resolve to be good friends and be good roommates and he's gonna teach her about his culture and she's gonna do her best to learn about it and they're gonna be patient with each other because they're both a little unnerved by the other one because their appearance is so different from what they're used to but they get along really well. And so obviously it's a romance. So this platonic friendship turns into romance and begin to see past the exterior which is so alien to them and begin to see the beauty of the person underneath and fall in love. And I just love hanging out with them because they joke with each other all the time. They're not worried about offending each other because again, they're both absolutely repellent to each other and you get both perspectives. So she's a human and he's the one that his people are called Kai and you get both perspectives. So I really enjoy the othering of humans when you get his perspective and he's explaining why he finds her appearance so unnerving whereby our standard she's a beautiful auburn haired young woman with bright blue eyes and she's lovely. Damn, he finds everything about her so deeply unsettling and creepy and he has to get used to all of it. They, again, they make fun of each other and they poke fun at each other for getting freaked out by each other. It's just so reasonable. That's the best word for it. They're so reasonable and I love that. I was not gonna talk about Radiance for that long. I literally said I've talked about this book a lot. I don't need to talk about it anymore. And here I am spending extra time talking about Radiance. Now I just wanna go and read Radiance again. I might actually do that tonight. I usually read it in one sitting when I read it because it's not very long. Brechen and El Dico. I just love them so much. Okay, the next book I read was Ink by Alice Broadway and I gave that two stars. They have a fairly long rent review on my channel for that book that I think I called like what the F even is this book because it was just such a weird book. It wasn't good. It was very strange. Didn't make a whole lot of sense. Nothing is very well explained. There isn't much of a plot. It is a stunning physical book. The book itself is gorgeous. The story was whack. The next book that I read was a reread and it's Fury Born by Clara LeGrand. I reread it as I wanted to have reread it right before Kingsbane came out so that it would be fresh in my mind for Kingsbane but I haven't yet to read Kingsbane so that worked out. But my reread of Fury Born went swimmingly. I give it five out of five again. I really, really love Fury Born. I have heard some iffy things about Kingsbane which is why I haven't picked it up because I can't stand the idea of being disappointed. So I'm kind of waiting maybe till book three comes out and seeing people say about book three. So if people say book three really brings it up again and is fantastic again then I can safely read book two prepared for the disappointment of it because I know that book three will save the day and I'm just gonna wait on that. The next book that I reread was Intreat Me by Grace Draven which is my second favorite Grace Draven book. I reread that a few times too. Two or three times I think. I don't like it as much as Radiance but pretty much whenever I read Radiance I want more because Radiance is so short. I don't like the sequel to Radiance because it was unnecessary. So then I just usually read Intreat Me because it's not as good but it's pretty good. It's a Beauty and the Beast retelling. It's a lot longer than Radiance. It's a lot more drama and romance in it than Radiance. And again I don't like it as much as Radiance but it is really good and it's a really good Beauty and the Beast retelling and I do recommend it as a fantasy romance. The main characters in it, it's kind of a hate to love but not really. The main characters, they don't really hate each other. It's more learning to trust to love kind of thing. I enjoy it. It's a little more dramatic than Radiance but it's good. The next book I read was Phoenix Unbound also by Grace Draven which was her first traditionally published book and I did not like that. I gave it two out of five stars. I talked about it at length. I think I have a video about my favorite authors letting me down. I talked about it a lot there basically. She gave her characters really, really dark backstories and then didn't delve at all. So it read really unbelievably to me that these characters would not be in any way affected or triggered by their past. That it's just like a non-issue. So to me either go there because you gave them these backgrounds or don't give them those backgrounds if you don't want to write a story where they're affected by them. So it just annoyed me. The next book I read was Trick by Natalia Jaster which is a romance as well that was recommended to me by several people on Instagram. And I really loved it. It was five out of five stars. It's not, I didn't love it the way I love radiance because the romance in it isn't what I love about it. The romance in it is sweet. It's really sweet. And I did, I mean, I liked the romance fine but the two things that I loved best about it were the writing because her prose is really fun and whimsical and I really enjoy when prose is kind of more purple and delirical and poetic and fun and tricksy. So her prose I really enjoyed. And then there's fantastic representation for differently abled people and it's the most heartwarming representation that I've ever seen. And the whole book, it was just like, it's just a cinnamon roll of a book. It's just so sweet. It'll give you a cavity. I really, really liked it. Yeah. If you want a really sweet, precious whimsical romance, read Trick. It's so cute. The next book I read was Veins of Magic by Emma Hamm and I gave that one star because I read, this is the second book in a duology. The first book is, what's the first book called? How Hard to the Fae, which is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. And I hated that but the covers of her books are so gorgeous and I own a lot of them on my Kindle just because I, before I ever read any of them I kept buying them whenever they were like a dollar or two dollars on Kindle. And it had been a while since I read Hard to the Fae and I kept thinking, is it as bad as I remember? Maybe the second will be fine. Like, I don't think it's gonna be great. Maybe it'll be okay. And I think because I had just read a bunch of Grey's Draven books and Trick, I was feeling like giving fantasy romance a chance. And it was so bad. Oh my God, it was so bad. It's one of the worst things that I've ever read. Anyway, moving on. The next book I read was The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie which is my least favorite. Isn't my least favorite now? I think my least favorite Joe Abercrombie book I've ever read is Half a King which is not even in the first law universe. It's my least favorite first law book because it's very, very, very well written because it's Joe Abercrombie but there's no plot. It's just the whole book is one long battle scene because the whole book is about like two or three days of one battle and multiple perspectives, multiple pieces that you're following for this one battle. So it was extremely well written and if it was part of a larger whole, I would have enjoyed it more but I just kept feeling like what is the point of this? It's just a battle. That's this whole thing is just a battle. It's very, very well done but why? The next book after that that I read was Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan and I have a very long rant review for this book so check that out if you wanna see my full thoughts. I thought it was crap. And I have had requests to do a rant review for the second book but I don't pick up books that I think I'm going to hate on purpose. So I don't know if I'm gonna do that but that book was Hot Garbage and you're better off just reading the Grisha books if you want that story cause it's hardcore plagiarizing those, hardcore. The next book I read after that was Arora Rising by Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff which I hated and give that two out of five stars. I also have a rant review for that book. I was shocked and dismayed that two of my favorite authors wrote that. Again, I have a really long rant review for that so I don't really wanna go too much into it because you can just watch that. Suffice to say I thought it was childish, poorly executed, not funny. The big bad was stupid. The ending was cliche. It was just a mess. The next book I read was Winner's Crime and the one after that was Winner's Kiss. I'm just gonna do them both at the same time. Those are the second and third books in the Winner's Trilogy by Mary Rootkowski and her books are just the most readable thing in the world to me. I flew through the first book and then I don't know why it took me so long to read the second and third books but they're unput downable. I read the first book I think in one day and these two books I read within probably three days I read both of them. I don't know what it is. Her writing is just so readable to me. The plot is great and it's an interesting political story. It is a romance. The willy or won't be between the main characters is very lengthy. I mean, I just feel like that was drawn out to a painful degree. But that said, again, it's an interesting world, interesting politics, interesting characters. I liked the main character. She's not, she was a likeable main character. I liked her, Kastrel. But just something about Mary Rootkowski's writing it's just, I can't stop reading it. I just can't. So I'm really excited she's writing a new book that's coming out next year I think. I'm excited for that. It's just unput downable to me. Something about it, it's just like crack. The next book that I read was Red Country by Joe Abercrombie. It's like a four to five stars to you. It's the last in the stand-alones in the first law universe. So you have the first law trilogy, then three stand-alones and then short story. So this is the third of three stand-alones and it is his take on a Western as in an American Western. It does take place in the world of the first law. It has some characters that you recognize from the trilogy and from the world of the first law but it's a Western. It's unapologetically unabashedly so. So for that reason it's unique and truly original because I don't think I've ever read a fantasy Western other than that. So I just admire the idea of doing that, taking a grim dark fantasy universe and writing a Western. Because I mean, they're actually, when you think about it, they're in a very similar genres where you have sort of tough gray, morally gray characters in a very violent world. So they're very compatible. I just haven't seen it done. So I enjoyed it for that reason. That's not my favorite thing. It seemed a little slow and I think Abercrombie himself has said that that book more than any of the others felt like he was really like scraping the bottom of the barrel just from his creative well. He was feeling kind of dried up which kind of honestly is appropriate for a Western to have that, because it does have that feeling of sort of the end of all things which a Western kind of should feel that way to me. So I enjoyed it. I gave it four out of five stars and yeah, it's another great Abercrombie book. After that, I did read Sharp Ends which is the collection of short stories and I gave that five out of five stars. The short stories were so great. Some of them were entirely unique creations in the world of the first law. Others were taking characters that we knew from the trilogy of the stand-alones and like for Sandan Glokta, for example, the first time you meet him in the first law trilogy, he's already, you meet him having already been tortured as a prisoner of war and having survived those who's already a broken man and you just know that in his past, he used to be a strong and virile night type dude who was also an asshole. You just know that about him. So in one of the short stories, you actually see young, virile, handsome asshole version of Sandan Glokta, which was just so fun to see that. Yeah, and then one of the short stories is based on Red Country. So there's a chronicler that's following one of the characters in Red Country and so one of the short stories is supposedly what that chronicler wrote about what you saw happening in Red Country. So it was just a lot of fun to see that weirdly heroicized version of what you'd seen in the previous book. It was just such a good time. And the audiobook, one of the stories is read by Joe himself. So I do, I recommend the audiobooks for the first law in general, but the audiobooks for the short stories because Joe reads one of them. I mean, need I say more? The next book that I read was The Seven Husbands of Evil in Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reed, which broke me. I gave that book five out of five stars. I had heard so many people praise it and was a little dubious about it actually living up to its reputation. Historical fiction, which is not something that I read that much, especially not such modern historical fiction, if that makes sense, because it takes place. It's about a former Hollywood starlet, movie star and her life and loves, which does not sound like the kind of book that I would pick up and I wouldn't have. If I hadn't seen people, multiple different genre readers all pick it up and say, this book is amazing. It just is. So I picked it up and I can confirm that this book is amazing. It just is. Evil in Hugo feels like a real person and it's so hard for me to believe to this day that I can't go and rent a bunch of Evil in Hugo movies and marathon them, which is what I really wanted to do when I finished the book. I was a mess. I was bawling my eyes out for like two hours when I was trying to finish it. It took me two hours to finish because it's really hard to read when tears are filling your eyes. I don't know if you're aware. It's a beautiful book and I am excited to read more from Taylor Jenkins Reed. The next book that I read was An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rodgerson. I had had that book on my shelf for a while but she had the new one coming out, Sorcery of Thorns and a friend of mine wanted me to go to a signing with her. So I thought I should read something of Margaret's before I go to the signing and Enchantment of Ravens doesn't very long. So I read that pretty quickly and I really liked it. I'd heard some mixed things and I could see why because it's not an angsty, dramatic romance. So if that's what you wanted, you'd be disappointed. It's just a fun whimsical face story that has all the autumn vibes and it's just fun. And I had a good time reading it and the prose is very lyrical which is something that I personally really like. So I give that four to five stars and I'm really excited to read Sorcery of Thorns which I have not read yet but I am excited to read it. The next book after that that I read was Lost Boy by Christina Henry which is a Peter Pan retelling which is a hook origin story. And Peter Pan being one of my favorite things in the world, I'm more often than not extremely disappointed with things that are inspired by Peter Pan. This I loved. I gave it five out of five stars. It's so true to the source material while also doing its own thing. It's dark but in a really believable way. And if you love Peter Pan and you want something that honors the source while still doing something truly original, I highly recommend the Lost Boy. It's really good. The next book I read was Half a King by Joe Abercrombie which I mentioned earlier as being my least favorite ever ever Cromby book I've read. I gave that three out of five stars. It's an Abercrombie Viking story. So I expected this to be like my favorite thing on the planet because I love Vikings. I love Joe Abercrombie. The way he wrote the Northman in the first law, they were already kind of viking-y. So I was fully expecting to dive into this and find the YA-ified version of the Northman as the whole thing. And it had some elements that were the quintessential Abercrombie way of writing which is clever and there's some fairly good character studies in there. But overall, it was just boring and flat. I have heard that the other books in that trilogy follow different characters. So I do intend to read or at least try the second book because I also just was bored and not able to connect with the main character, ERV. So I was just, I was really surprised that Joe Abercrombie writing about Vikings wasn't my favorite thing ever. The next book I read was Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson which is a YA fantasy romance. I mean, romance is in it. I wouldn't call it a fantasy romance. So it's not a romance in that sense. And I really enjoyed it. It's older, so it has some more tropey cliche things that you see less and less of nowadays. But I think overall it was really well read and it kept my interest. She does a really clever thing with the fact that there's two guys that are after the main girl for different reasons. One of them is out to kill her and one of them is out to marry her. And even though you follow all three perspectives you don't know which is which until like more over halfway through the book. She doesn't know which is which and you as the reader don't know which is which because each of the guy's perspectives is told ambiguously enough to where you cannot tell which is which. And I just thought that was so clever. So I had just a really good time with the whole mystery of that. So yeah, I had a really good time and then I gave it a four out of five stars. After that, I went on a Shatter Me binge, holy moly. I had read the first book Shatter Me in 2018 and then decided to marathon the rest. I honestly had just, I knew that Warner was end game and I still could not believe that that was true. So I wanted to find out and then kept reading after figure of being finally informed and squaring away what the reading order was that I was supposed to read a novella after Shatter Me and then like whatever the reading order is I figured that out. And then I just marathoned them. And I have a video on my channel. I think it's called Am I Trash for Shatter Me or something like that because I unintentionally went on this binge where like my Goodreads challenge is just Shatter Me books for a hot minute. Oh my God. So I gave all of these four stars except the last one, which I get five stars to. I read Destroy Me, then Unravel Me, then Fracture Me, then Ignite Me, and then Restore Me. I haven't, oh, and then Shatter Me, which I get four stars to. I have yet to read Defy Me, Defy Me. That's the latest full length one. I wanted to desperately read it while I was finishing up this binge. It wasn't out yet. And now I haven't gotten around to it. Yeah, I don't know if this series is good but it's very bingeable. I was very, very obsessed with it there for a second. It's not my usual thing. It's why a dystopian angsty hates a lover romance. It's like all the things I hate. I just chewed right on through all those books. Yikes. After that, I reread Blackwing, which I gave five out of five stars to. I think the first time I read it, I gave it four stars. The second time this year, I gave it five stars. It's, did I say? It's by Ed McDonald. It's a very, very grim dark fantasy. And I'm rereading it. That is to say I reread Blackwing and I recently reread Ravencry because I wanted to reread both before diving into the third book in the trilogy, which just came out, Crowfall, which I did start the other day. I'm not very far into it. So I wanted to refresh myself and I'm glad I did because I thought about just diving into the third one but now having reread Blackwing and Ravencry, I thought to myself, oh man, I definitely forgot about that. I remember the broad strokes. I remember the big things who lives and who dies and those sort of big events. But a lot of, it's a somewhat political story filled with conspiracy and intrigue and backstabbing and political machinations and all this kind of thing. And there's a lot of the nuance to the different relationships, dynamics and who has a reason for hating who and who's backstabbed who and all this kind of thing that I'm glad I refreshed myself because it's a lot. And the books are just really good. So I recommend them and the audio books are really good. So if you're looking for a grim, grim fantasy, then I recommend the Ravensmarch trilogy by Ed McDonald. After that, I reread The Wolf by Leo Crew. For the same reason, I wanted to reread The Wolf because, oh, I love it. But also I wanted to refresh myself before reading the new one, The Spider. I gave The Wolf five out of five stars for the second time. I love it so much. I have several videos talking about The Wolf and The Spider on my channel. It's designed to be my perfect book. It's an alternate history fantasy that is, the conceit of the book is what if other humanoid species had survived the Ice Age into the Dark Ages and formed language and culture and were all players on the political warring map of Europe. And you follow the Anakim, who are basically highly developed Neanderthals as well as our human ancestors in the games of war and politics. And it's someone blurbed it as Game of Thrones written by Jean Lacarré, which I think is pretty accurate. It doesn't have magic in it because it's just alternate history. But it's this heavily political, conspiracy-laced, sweeping, epic story that isn't a fantasy, but it's like a sweeping fantasy like George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones with multiple political pieces and armies and stuff going on. And I, it's so anthropological, which is the main reason that I adore it so much. Ah, it's just so good for me, for me. The next book I read was Wilder Grills by Rory Power, which is a YA horror thriller type thing, which I gave two stars to. It was super big let down. It was just, it didn't really know if it wanted to dive into doing a character study or into really doing body horror. So it kind of didn't either enough to be good. And it left me kind of bored and unsatisfied. I feel like it really needed to lean in to one or the other or be a longer book or be a short story. It just like, it was too far in every direction and not far enough in any. So it needed to be just a short story or if it was gonna tell this story longer, that it need to be way longer to dive into all the pieces. And again, it needed to maybe just focus on and that's such a short book, just do the horror and really zero in on that or really zero in on the characters or be a longer book and do both. Yeah, it just kind of didn't know what it wanted to be. I feel like maybe if the author had, I don't know, had more time with it, I don't know. It just, it was very weak in my opinion. For that, I read The Lie Tree by Francis Harding. Hardinge, Harding. I don't know how to say your last name. Multiple friends of mine kept pressing me to read a Francis Harding book. So I picked The Lie Tree and I really enjoyed it. It was a strange read. More magical realism than fantasy and it had some interesting points to make, I feel like. It didn't really feel like a story about characters. It felt like a story about symbols in the form of characters. So it was very interesting. And I am planning to read more Francis Harding books because her writing style I think is unusual. After that, I've been dread the Air Awakens series and I have a whole video on my channel talking about why it's awful. So needless to say, I gave these books quite low ratings overall and I don't recommend them. And yeah, that's all I'm gonna say about that because I have a whole video about that. After that, I reread Golden Sun by Pierce Brown. I was hoping to reread all of the Red Rising books before Dark Age and that has not happened, but I did finish Golden Sun for the second time and I gave it five out of five stars for the second time as well. It is one of my all time favorite books in the Red Rising series and the second time through was just as good. The first time through, there's so many OMG shocking moments that you don't even have time to deal with it. The second time through, I knew a lot of things that would happen. I mean, technically I knew everything but I remembered vividly a lot of things that would happen. So now I got to sit back and even though it was somewhat shocking the second time through, more so I got to enjoy the experience of watching it unfold. Knowing that it's happening and now being able to pay attention to how he's putting the pieces in place that leads to that conclusion that I know is coming and it's just so freaking good. After that, I read The Spider by Leo Karoo which is the sequel to The Wolf. Five out of five stars. Super great. I have a video on my channel about it being perfect. And I still feel that way. And I can't wait for the third book. In the meantime, I'll probably reread The Wolf and The Spider because they are designed to be my favorite books. After that, I read Frankenstein, reread Frankenstein. I had read Frankenstein in high school but I had tickets to see a stage adaptation of Frankenstein. So I wanted to refresh myself on the original story so I could compare and contrast. And having read Kristen White's retelling The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein last year, I had that somewhat fresh in my brain. So now rereading the original Frankenstein, I was thinking back to how she had twisted it and re-falling in love with that book while reading Frankenstein and seeing all the ways that she was clever that I didn't even notice the first time. Yeah, I gave Frankenstein four stars. For its time, it's a marvel. There are some things about it that I don't think have aged super well and I think if it was written today, it'd be written differently. But for its time, I mean, bravo, Mary Shelley, bravo. The next book that I read was Dark Dawn by Jay Kristoff which I gave two stars to. I think I originally gave it three and then I lowered it to two because the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I was. I have a rant review of this on my channel. If you want to more in-depth here, my thoughts, I thought it was a truly deeply disappointing conclusion to a trilogy that I loved and now retroactively hate. So yeah, I don't know what else to say. It's a third book on a trilogy that let me down. After that, I read The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare. This was part of a sort of challenge book exchange project I did with Amanda from the Naughty Librarian. We have a video on my channel and one on her channel. We exchanged books from our genres. So there's some crossover in what we read when she reads a lot more romance and I read a lot more Grimdark. So I made her read the blade itself and she made me read Two Bodies Rippers, the first of which was The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare and I thought it was fun. I hate his no radiance, but I thought it was fun. I gave it three stars. The humor in it was fun and clever and the main characters were likable. I had a good time. I wasn't earth-shattering. It wasn't amazing, but I had a good time. It's a regency romance, I think. It's not super heavy with the historical accuracy and it doesn't really try to, which is another reason I'm fine with it. I've ranted about other books that are historical fiction or something like that where the anachronism of it is atrocious and painful to me. This book is extremely anachronistic, but it in no way purports to be a book that should be taken seriously. So it doesn't bother me because it doesn't feel like it's wanting to be a serious historical fiction book. It's just basically a romance that would prefer to have everyone in a corset than jeans. That's, it's like Austin Land and I love the movie Austin Land. It's like that. So I just, I had a good time. It was clever, it was fun. After that, I read Gideon the Ninth by Tasman Tamsin Muir. I gave that two stars. I have a full review of that on my channel. It seems to me all my full reviews are ran reviews. That's not true. I do have the spider and the wolf, which I love anyway. Gideon the Ninth is a weird book. A lot of people love it. I am very confused because the book has no plot, no world building, no character building, no any kind of building of anything. I just, I didn't know what was happening and I felt like the author didn't care about ever letting me know. So if you just like the aesthetic of lesbian necromancers in space and that's all you're here for, it's got tons of that. But I would like to know more about the world, the stakes, the characters, everything. So I may give the second book a try because I just really wanna know if any questions of any kind are answered. Like, where are we? Why are we here? Why is this happening? Who are these people? You know, basics. The next book I read was part of that project with Amanda and that's Burn for Me by Alona Andrews. I'm pretty sure she expected me to like Burn for Me more and the Duchess deal out so much, but I really didn't like Burn for Me very much. I gave it two stars. I located it. It's an urban fantasy and the main character in it is like a psychopath, but he's the romantic lead. I have no issue getting about psychopaths and in fact, I seek it out. But not as a romantic lead. I love Vicious by Victoria Schwab but Victor Vale is not a swoon-worthy romantic lead whereas in Burn for Me, the main character is a psychopath but also meant to be utterly swoon-worthy and I was not here for it and the rest of it was a lot of the aesthetic that I just don't care for. That's why I don't read modern settings and urban fantasy. I don't want to hear about what color t-shirts she's pairing with her fancy jeans today as she drives in a car to the place where some supernatural thing is happening in the car parking lot of a wall where Mr. Hot Guy, who is a terrifying psychopath is shirtless and I just, it was not for me. The next book I read was The Governance Game by Tessa Dare. When Amanda lent me the Duchess deal, she may or may not have also left The Governance Game at my house, which is the sequel to the Duchess deal. There's four friends basically in the first book and there's going to be a total of four books, each one a romance that isn't really, they're a sequel but follows the love story of each of the four friends. So the second of the four friends is in The Governance Game and at first I had no interest in this because it's about this friend going to work as a governess for a guy who's a total fuckboy and then has a heart of gold. And I was like, nope, no thank you. But then Amanda told me that the girls that she's governessing who are this guy's, I forget now, they're not his daughters. I think they're his nieces. I think they're his nieces, well regardless. They're basically a couple of Wednesday Adams who they play with their dolls and every single day pretty much the dolls die of some atrocious, horrific, violent disease or accident and they have doll funerals every morning which Mr. Fuckboy attends and prepares absurd eulogy as for. And I was like, okay, I am interested. And I ended up giving The Governance Game four to five stars just because it isn't no way to be taken seriously. The Dutchess deal seemed kind of like it should be taken seriously and it bothered me at times because the main character in The Dutchess deal is heavily scarred from war and feels that no one will marry him because he's so appalling to look at except for the rest of them being, you know, Brad Pitt from Fight Club. And so there were parts of it where I felt like the light tone didn't go with the level of physical trauma as well as emotional scarring that he has and it bothered me. Whereas The Governance Game, he's an attractive rich fuckboy. She's a governess and there's some like money issues but that's pretty much the level of drama here. The girls obviously have some emotional baggage which is why they're acting out in this way but it's the light tone was in keeping with this being a fluffy, utterly anachronistic rom-com about some really strange children. I just, I thought it was a really good time. The humor in it never fell out of place for me and I just had a really fun time reading it. Humor in it, the characters in it, I just enjoyed it. It was funny, it was fun. I was invested, I had a good time. The next book I read was A Little Hatred by Jo Evercroft and me. This has dethroned, best served cold as my favorite Jo Evercromby book. It's his newest in the first law universe. It is the beginning of a new trilogy called The Age of Madness and it is just so good. It is so good. Oh, he's taken the world of the first law and now moved it into an industrial revolution type phase which a lot of most fantasy doesn't really do. It sort of stays in its medieval sandbox. So he's moved it into an industrial age and oh, it's just so good. Everything that I love about the first law, the character building, the world building, the politics, everything about it. It's just, it's all there still but better and new and different and oh, so fucking good. The next book I read was The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis, which I gave one star. This is, as I was talking about before, that painfully anachronistic historical fiction that is just egregious. The conceit of this book is that the Bronte sisters were detectives and solving a murder. So I expected it to be not great but fun. Just like a fun idea in the way that my plane Jane is but this book just was horribly anachronistic, not interesting, the mystery of it was bad. The main characters were two dimensional and the main characters are the Bronte sisters so it's just offensive to the real people who they were and it just took every opportunity on every other page of soapbox about feminism and I wanted to die. I have a full rant review for that book on my channel. If you would like to see me be pissed off about it for a bit longer. The next book I read was If We Were Villains by ML Rio. I had been told over and over that I have to read this and then especially after I read The Secret History and loved it, then even more people said, oh, you gotta read If We Were Villains if you like The Secret History. And if we were villains, you know the way Gilded Wolves is like bootleg, store brand version of Six of Crows? That's what If We Were Villains felt like to me as compared to The Secret History. All of the pretension that Donatart's writing has earned, this book aspires to and it has not earned and I personally know a lot more about Shakespeare than I do about Greek classics. So perhaps what Donatart wrote in The Secret History, maybe it would be more annoying to me if I knew more about Greek classics but I do know a lot about Shakespeare so the stuff in If We Were Villains that these Shakespeare students are referencing and discussing and is at play here, at play. It was so surface level that I feel like even somebody with like high school education, high school class on Shakespeare would see through. It was so, so surface level. It all just felt like window dressing with nothing behind it, an empty set. Okay, theater puns can stop now. The next book that I read was The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, which I gave five stars to. The movie is terrible and I have a video about that. The book I loved. I saw the play of it last year and now I read the book of it and it is just a really, really good ghost story. It's interesting. It's short to the point. It is haunting and chilling in all the right ways. It's very atmospheric. It's everything that I wanted it to be. It's the perfect Gothic ghost story. The next book that I read was The Deathless Girls by Kieran Millwood Hargrave. This is a retelling origin story for the brides of Dracula. I don't like Dracula, the book by Brom Stoker because I hate Brom Stoker. But I like Dracula adjacent things and Deathless Girls is very, it feels very archaic and old fashioned in the way that it's told. So in keeping with the legends about Dracula and Vlad the Impaler and it feels old in that sense, but it has a very modern elements in terms of how feminist it is. It is mainly focusing on these two sisters and how they are captured and basically enslaved. There is a female-female romance in it. So a lot of that is modern, but still the telling of it and the people in it and the feel of it is very archaic, which I appreciated. It's very atmospheric. It takes a while to get into. I was hovering between three and four stars as I was reading it, but I thought the ending really wraps things up in a way that I had to give it five stars to. Again, it was just such a satisfying, beautiful way to end it that I, yeah, I gave it five stars. It's not for everyone, but I feel like it is a very beautiful book, both inside and out. The next book I read was Printer's Devil Court by Susan Hill. I gave this three stars to. It's very mediocre. I've borderline forgotten about it already. It's not the one of cousins I read it. After having read The Woman in Black, I was hoping for more of the same and this was really short and kind of pointless and it wasn't really creepy or chilling or anything. It was kind of interesting, but it was too short for me to really feel one way or the other. Like I couldn't give it a really low rating too because it wasn't long enough. It's really short. Yeah, I wouldn't highly recommend it. It's just read The Woman in Black. The next book I read is Tower of Swallows by Andre Sapkowski. This is the second to last book in the Witcher series, which I'm hoping to finish before the show begins, which I don't know if that's gonna happen because I think the show comes out in November, doesn't it? This was my least favorite so far. I gave this three stars. It was very meandering all over the place and there were just so many perspectives, all of which seemed to be not entirely necessary. It seemed to be off-roading all the time with just side quests galore. It's really far into the series I really can't say too much about it. Not even because of spoilers, just because you wouldn't even know what I'm talking about if you haven't read the books. Geralt is hardly in it, so for it to be a Witcher book, he's hardly in it. Just because even he was hardly in it, that's not necessarily a reason for me to dislike it. It just was so all over the place, just so all over the place that I was too scattered to feel invested. There was parts of it that I really enjoyed still. I really like his writing. I like a lot of things he's doing with the world and with the story and with the plot and with the characters, just generally. So I'm excited to read the next book, but this book was just needed editing, I guess. A lot of it felt unnecessary. The next book I read was Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which I have a review of on my channel. I was very disappointed with it. I don't wanna go too much into it because again, you can watch my review. I did not find it to be chilling or creepy and the character study part of it, I think, was weakened by the fact of there being a paranormal aspect. I feel like it needed to lean in to being a paranormal haunting or into being a character study. And it was neither. And for that reason, unsatisfying on both counts. The next book that I read, reread was Raven Cry by Ed McDonald. I'm all set to read Crowfall now. Raven Cry is the second book on the Ravens Mark Trilogy and there's a part of it that is so chilling to me. It's the creepiest, scariest thing that I've read to this day ever. Just because it stayed with me. I feel like I can't talk about it because it's kinda spoilery. These are grim, dark fantasy books, but there's a part of it that I don't even know if it's objectively that scary, but I've read now The Haunting of a Hill House and I've read a Stephen King book now and I read The Woman in Black and I've read some things that are intended to be chilling, creepy or horrific. And none of them have unsettled me the way this one particular scene in Raven Cry did. Oh, just thinking about it right now. Makes my teeth itch. It's, yeah. Anyway, it's the second book in the trilogy so I can't say too much about it. It's a great trilogy and I'm really excited to read the third one. It is an extremely grim, dark, highly political world and story. So if that sounds good to you, then you should read it. The next book I read was The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Reading by Alexandra Bracken. This is a middle grade, which is really something I never read. And it was the perfect Halloween book. I highly, highly recommend you add it to your list for books for Halloween next year because you've got to read it at Halloween. Really, you really have to read it then. It takes place in New England and this boy is possessed by a demon who is from the age of Pilgrim. So he talks in like old-timey Pilgrim speak inside the boy's head and it's like taking place during Halloween time. So there are pumpkins and witches galore and the whole thing is a spooky, creepy Halloween in New England vibe that is just adorable and the perfect thing for Halloween. The next book I read was House of Salt and Saros by Erin A. Craig. I had heard such mixed things about this book that I almost didn't read it. I don't know what possessed me to read it, but I think it was really gloomy outside and I thought to myself that this book, I'd heard, the one thing I'd heard pretty universally even for people who didn't really like it was that it's very atmospheric with that gloomy vibe and atmosphere and I thought that fits the bill today. And I would have read the whole thing in one day but I had somewhere to be or something that evening. I really liked it. I gave it four to five stars. The romance in it wasn't my favorite. It was a bit insta-lovy. That said, it wasn't terrible. I've seen insta-love that I hate a lot more. It was fine, but that's why I talked to the star because the romance kind of took away from the story in my opinion. I would have preferred it to either not be there or to be left more as a potential thing that could eventually someday go somewhere as opposed to actually being pinned down as a full-on romance so quickly but it was such an atmospheric read it truly was and it was more chilling and creepy than most things that I've read recently that purport to be. It was much, I was much more creeped out by House of Salt and Sorrows than I was by the haunting of Hill House. I really liked it. It's not for everyone, but I really, it's a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses if you don't know. I personally found it a really immersive engrossing read that I kind of couldn't put down. The next book I read was In the Hall with the Knife by Dan Peterfrind, which is the first of three, I believe, a clue-inspired mysteries. So it's a who-done-it inspired by the board game Clue. I gave this three stars. It wasn't great, but it was fun. It takes place in a boarding school where there's a bunch of students that are sort of snowed in. There's a horrible storm going on. And the students and some of the faculty are all named after the characters you can know from Clue. So their last names are, you know, Green and some of their nicknames are the names from Clue. So one of them, her nickname is Peacock on account of her hair. The guy who's mustard, his nickname is mustard. So they're all characters from Clue basically but boarding school, high school versions. And there's somebody that dies in the hall with the knife and it's a who-done-it. So it's a fun premise and I'm excited there's gonna be more of them just because I like the game Clue and I like the movie Clue and I like the vibe of that. I didn't love it and I kind of saw it coming, the reveal of who-done-it. So it was fine. It wasn't great, it was fine. The next book I read was The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones, which is a book that it feels like it has everything that I should like and I was so bored with it. It's heavily based on Welsh folklore and sort of Welsh zombies that are called Bone Houses. And going into it and it being called The Bone Houses, I expected it to be about houses that are either haunted or have bones in them but no, the reanimated corpses themselves are called Bone Houses, which is just strange to me and isn't really well explained. The main character is a gravedigger and the main male character, because yes, there's a romance in it. He's a map maker and the Bone Houses have been coming farther and farther into town and he is trying to map the area so he encounters one and she saves him from one and now they're wondering where they come from and why they're coming closer so now they go to the woods to like find the source of the Bone Houses and put a stop to it. And there's some mystery surrounding the disappearance of her father and he doesn't, he's an orphan that doesn't know who his parents are so of course they're all trying to solve the mystery of that too. It was really boring and the characters I did not feel invested in or care about in any way, the romance was insta. It just felt really, really childish and silly and not at all atmospheric or spooky or anything like that. It was just dull. And the last book I read, the 80th book I read this year is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This is a reread. I love The Graveyard Book so much. It's one of my two favorite books that Neil Gaiman has ever written, my favorite's being The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Graveyard Book. So when people ask me where to start with Gaiman, I usually say, if you wanna read an adult book, read Ocean at the End of the Lane. If you wanna read a middle grade book of his, read Graveyard Book. It is Neil Gaiman's retelling of the Jungle Book but set in a graveyard instead of a jungle where a boy is raised by ghost schools and goblins in a graveyard. And it's just so good. It's Gaiman and it's one of the most Gaiman-esque settings and premises I've ever heard of. And it's just such a beautiful, sweet, somewhat spooky, chilling tale. It's got everything. It's got beautifully emotional moments filled with heart, sweet moments that make you giggle. It's got some truly creepy moments with the antagonist who killed the boy's parents, the man Jack. Yeah, it's got everything you could wish for. And it's a really, really good Halloween read if you're looking for one but you could read any time of year because it's just good. So yeah, those are all the 80 books that I read this year. I have no idea how long this video is gonna be but I imagine it's very, very long. Let me know in the comments down below how you feel about any or all the books that I talked about in this video. If you have books to recommend to me, if you just wanna tell me about something that you thought of while you were watching it, you know, whatever, let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, so like and subscribe and I'll see you next Saturday. Bye.