 Hi, my name is Tilly and welcome to my YouTube channel. Today's video I'm going to be talking a bit about where I have been, why I'm returning back to Booktube, and also the books that I have read recently. I have actually probably read more books in the last week than I have in the last six months, so I have a stack here which I'm going to go through and talk about a little bit. There's been some favorites, some not-so-favorite books, but I have had a good reading week, so I'm really excited about that. I'll try and be as good as I can about why I left Booktube. I was looking at my YouTube channel and I probably posted consistently like three years ago. That was also around the time that I started working in a bookstore, which to a lot of people that would be a dream job, but for me I found that when I was working books and breathing books and leaving books, that it was really hard to work an eight and a half hour shift, putting all these books out, talking to customers about books, to then come home and to sit down and to read books or to even talk about books on YouTube or to even post them on social media, it went from being something that I loved absolutely and completely to something that felt like a chore to do. So I really found that I struggled to connect to books like I used to, and I spent a lot of time since then rebuilding that relationship and actually reading books for enjoyment instead of in a work-related point of view. It got to a point where I was having to read books for work or for publishers and things like that. So for me I really struggled to have this connection with books that I used to have and that also then related to everything else that I used to do and really loved like social media and book videos and reviews, everything like that. So I took a break from it and it also came hand in hand with the fact that I then started back at my old job and I was in a much higher position and that also meant I had a lot more responsibilities and over the course of two years I worked really, really hard. I didn't have much spare time so I didn't really have time to read in the first place, but a lot of things changed. My mental health really declined and I've had a few health problems since and those kind of meant that I put my own mental health and my own priorities on the back burner so that I could focus on work and I could focus on the health problems that I was having and it just meant that I kind of lost my touch and my way with things that I loved and books for me was always kind of like a therapy in that sense. So it was really hard to kind of set time aside to enjoy reading but I've definitely kind of got back into that now and I'm feeling a hell of a lot better and I'm very excited because on Monday that's just been so five days ago was my first day of actually not working that job anymore. So I'm really hoping to get back into the roots of what I really enjoy and that is the book, social media, book videos, reading books, living books, reading books. I did move in with my boyfriend. We have our own little house and it has been amazing. He's the absolute love of my life and he feeds my book addiction which is amazing but unfortunately my bookshelves did not get to come to the house with me because it is much too small so I will be filming in a few different locations. I will try to film in my library as much as I can because I absolutely love this place but you might see me filming at my own one little shelf of books at home as well. I did recently move all these books because we've got new carpet done on the library so it is a complete mess and they're very out of order and it makes me a bit on edge so I will probably do a bookshelf reorganization video eventually but at the moment you can just deal with the books not being in order or aligned and things like that. So you've probably had enough of me babbling on so I'm going to get into the books that I have recently read. I'm going to start off with A Sky Beyond the Storm by Smarter Here. This is the final book in the Ember in the Ashes series and I absolutely love this series from the get-go when I read the first book and having to wait for the other books to come in was killer so now is the perfect time to read it because it is a complete set and it has amazing writing, amazing characters and a storyline that will make you cry and laugh and your heart will break into. This is set in a pretty brutal world where it follows two main characters. You have Leia who is a slave and her brother is captured by the empire and imprisoned and she decides to basically sell herself to the rebels and work as a spy for them which is a very very dangerous thing because one of the ladies who is one of the top generals in the empire is very very brutal and would kill her for looking at her wrong and then you also have Elias who is a soldier who works for the empire and they're passed across in this book they uncover some pretty big secrets about the empire and their lives pretty much are on the line and it's very very good, very action packed and you honestly grow such connection to these characters that your emotions are destroyed multiple times but it's amazing. This next one was a really really fun read. I really like these books because I also can relate to a lot of the references in them. They're gaming books but also a bit of a dystopia and I really really enjoyed them. It's Ready Player One and Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline. I'd already read Ready Player One quite a while ago and I was pretty stoked with how Ready Player Two went. It was really fun to dive back into this fun world and follow these gang of friends as they go on another adventure. I probably don't need to say too much about Ready Player One, it's a pretty popular book plus it's also a really big movie as well now. If you guys like gaming and dystopia sort of novels I think it'd be right up your alley. I also decided to try and read Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book was kind of one of those ones where I was trying to get my life back on track and I probably got about halfway through the book and then I kind of just didn't find a healthy habit of finishing it. I think Jane Harper cannot go wrong. I have loved every single book she has put out and this one was no different. I've also got my cat and two of my dogs in here with me and the cat I don't know if you've noticed her in the background but she has been running a bit of a muck and wanting attention. So if my camera starts shaking it's because she's rubbing up against the poles but she also is asking me for attention aren't you sweetie? Want to say hi? I'm a girl that loves a little bit of romance and one of the authors that I have always considered to be one of my automatic buyers was Colleen Hoover. The last few books that she's put out I've been a bit iffy about but I still kind of gave her a chance. I picked up Layla recently and to be honest I think that this book makes me now not want to buy Colleen Hoover books anymore. I went into this book blind. I didn't really read the blurb and I think even reading back at this blurb I still didn't really, I wouldn't have guessed what was going to happen. I guess you could still say it's a real classic romance and yeah. I don't know, I can't really say too much about spoiling it but I will be doing a full review on this one on my Goodreads which I'll leave the link down to below which you can check it out. That one will be spoiler with spoilers. This is spoiler free. Basically you have Leeds who meets Layla, they fall in love, trouble accident happens and Leeds ends up taking her back to the place that they met to try to rekindle their love but whilst he's there he meets Willow and he starts to fall for her. Yeah. This next book I read for the Dimmicks Jindalup YA book club and that was House of Hollow by Crystal Sutherland. This book I think I gave like three stars to. It was good and bad. The storyline and the characters weren't exactly amazing. There were some parts where it was really really slow and I didn't really feel much for the characters but the writing in this book was absolutely phenomenal. It made my skin crawl multiple times. It had some very creepy vibes to it but the actual writing itself was so vivid that you could basically smell what she was describing on the pages. This book follows three sisters who disappeared when they were younger. They returned one month later. Very different. Their hair was a different colour and their eyes changed colour as well however they were still the same girls. They looked the same. This follows their story as one of the older sisters goes missing and the two younger sisters try to find out what happened to her. I devoured these next books. I really really enjoyed them. They're like a fantasy crime book series. There's only two books out so far but I plan on devouring any more that come from this author. That is The Last Smile in Sunda City and Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold. Luke Arnold is going to be at the Perth Supernova this year which I'm really excited for. It's actually why I picked up these books in the first place. I have been eyeing off this one for a while because the cover looked like something I'd really enjoy. It also kind of gives me a darker shade of magic vibes but they are completely different storylines and I really really enjoyed them. This story follows Fetch Phillips who is definitely a character that's not perfect but that makes him really likeable. It kind of has the parallels again like the other book where you follow him when he was younger but also him in the present and you follow him as he did something bad at the beginning which caused a lot of consequences for everyone in the future. Fetch Phillips is a man for hire and so he basically takes on cases and follows them and it's really really fun and fast paced and the writing was really good and the characters are very well driven in this book and I really enjoyed it. I gave this one four stars and I gave this one five stars. I found that I really related more to the characters as they developed in the second book and the storyline was really really good. I cannot wait for the next book. One of my all-time favorite contemporary authors is Taylor Jenkins Reid her Evelyn Hugo book and Daisy Jones in the sixth were fantastic and so I had to pick up Malibu Rising when it came out. I have had some mixed reviews about this one but I personally really enjoyed the book. Unlike her other books where it kind of throws you into that time era I didn't get as much of that with Malibu Rising but I still really enjoyed the characters in this book and the storyline and when everything comes together it follows the story of four siblings each of them have their own little secrets and all those secrets basically come out at this big party that's thrown every year where everyone wants to get an invite to. It also follows in the same timeline their parents meeting and the story of their parents as well. There is some pretty like heartbreaking moments, some pretty loving moments and there's some characters in this that I absolutely despise but the book itself was really really great. I pretty much read it in one day. I really enjoyed it. The last book that I read was Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. This is volume four. I really really adore these books. I love every single character in them except for David and I really enjoyed this one. It had so many heart touching moments but it also talked about some really strong issues that I think is really great that Alice Oseman developed those more in this book. It talks about eating disorders and self-harm and mental illnesses as well and I think that there was really really good strong message in this one which I highly recommend for everyone to have a read of. This book series is based around Nick and Charlie who are friends that then get an emotional connection for one another. This follows their story as they learn more about what those emotions can mean as they also go through high school and friendships and things like that. So those are the books that I have read recently. I have a pretty ambitious TBR for this month so hopefully I'll be able to read a hell of a lot more books and get through some of my book stuff. It feels really good to be sitting back behind the camera and hopefully I can kind of keep this one up when I did post last time. I haven't posted a video in three years and then I did one a year later and then just dropped off the planet of Booktube so hopefully I can be a bit more consistent but at the same time I'm not going to hold myself to any sort of restrictions like I have previously. I just want to enjoy it and get back into doing something that I really love. Leave a comment down below of what you're currently reading and if you'd recommend it. I haven't really done too much bookish-wise so I feel like I'm a little outdated on what I've read so I'd love to get up to date with some more current reads and what people have really enjoyed. Thank you guys for watching and hopefully I'll be back again with another video.