 Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're all good. Today, this video, I don't know if it's gonna work. So today I am gonna be talking about the books I would recommend to my enemy. So I saw Smokey Glow doing this with makeup, like makeup that she would recommend to her enemy and I thought let's do that with the books. So the idea here is I have an enemy, I don't actually have an enemy. I don't think I know enough people to have an enemy. But let's imagine for a moment I have an arch enemy, right? In my head, we have like a frenemy relationship, right? So they're coming to me for book recommendations and I need to trick them. Let's just say the devil made me do it. I need to trick them into having shitty reading experiences but I need to sell it to them in a way that makes them think they're gonna like it and maybe it just wasn't their kind of book and they'll come back to me again and I can give them a shitty reading experience again. So that's the idea here. I wanna have some evil energy. Let's get into it. Let's get into my reasoning. So first, so easy, so easy, Shadow and Bone. There's nothing wrong with my views or beliefs because I have freedom of speech and everything I'm saying is true. So easy, so easy. So this is especially easy because I bet, you know, my enemy has Netflix and they're like cruising Netflix and they've seen this show called Shadow and Bone and they're like, oh that's interesting. Maybe they've even watched it and they've liked it. And I'm like, oh my God, you should read the book. I've read the book. So it's a whole series. You should totally read the series. Little do they know, it's not good. Play I'm Succeeded. Watching the TV series has actually reminded me how annoying I find Alina. I'm actually, I'm actually struggling to watch the show a bit because Alina is just hella annoying. Like she's so annoying. Oh my God. In the book, Alina is one of the most annoying characters I've ever read. I'm gonna say it to them as well that you should read this before you read Six of Crows because that's the reason I read Shadow and Bone trilogy because I wanted to understand the Grishaverse better. I didn't understand it better. I still don't understand all the different Grisha things. I've just accepted I'm not gonna understand all the different categories. But I'm gonna tell them like Six of Crows will spoil Shadow and Bone for you if you don't reach Shadow and Bone first and you should really read it first, like understand the world and then you can read Six of Crows and I'll be like, okay. Little they know, they should probably just read Six of Crows. Also, the series gets progressively worse as it goes on. I think the first book was like a three. Then the second one for me was like a 2.5 and then the last one was like a one, I think I give it like 1.75 to be like extra. But it gets progressively worse. So this was my experience. Basically, I just wanna like trick them into what I was tricked and the shitty, I want them to relive the shitty experiences that I had. But like every time I would hope it's gonna get better. I was like, okay, the series has to go somewhere now. Like we have to get some kind of spice. Something has to happen here. And then it would just get worse. So I want them to keep hoping that the next book is gonna get better. And then it's not. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Now I'm a bit nervous about saying this because in my fantasy, like in my future fantasy, I become a best selling author and Lee Bodugo is like my mentor, like we're best friends. So if this video is no longer available on my channel, when that happens in my, you know, my fantasy becomes reality, we all know why. I will delete this when I become best friends with Lee Bodugo, cause that's gonna happen. Delusion, convince yourself. So the next one I would recommend to them is Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. Who remembers this? This was it for a moment. No one speaks about her anymore, rightly so. So I would tell this to them with relive your childhood nostalgia. Relive that John Green hut. I read every John Green book when I was like 13. I had them all. I bought a little box set. I really thought I was like a literary gal, you know, like all the like religious allegory in the Fortnite stars. I was like, oh my God. Me aged 13. Whenever anyone tried to tell me that John Green's books were basic and had no hidden meanings. I think I know more about American novels than you do. You never listen to any American ghost stories. That's the reason I read Turtles All The Way Down was like I wanted to relive that childhood nostalgia. I say to this day, if John Green wrote like, I know he's coming out with like a nonfiction book but I mean an adult fiction book, I would read that. But I don't think I'm ever gonna read his YA again because it's just a bit young. But I want him, excuse me, I want him to come out with an adult book because I think his writing is great. It's just a bit stuck in the past. I'm like, let's shake it up. Shake it up. Oh, God, it's shake. I can't remember. I don't think I have time to wash the dishes out. I don't think I'm gonna shake it up. There we go. I'm gonna sell it to my enemy be like it has like this missing person mystery element to it. That's what I thought going in. It doesn't really. In reality, it just has this really poorly written romance which is like why the fuck is that even happening with what's going on in this story where this guy's dad has gone missing and the most one dimensional characters I've ever read. It's not good YA, it's painful YA. You know what I mean? Like it's just not it. The one thing I do look back on this book fondly with and my enemy doesn't need to know this but I do feel like it's mental health rep is good. People often speak about it being like anxiety or OCD rep, the main character. But for me it very closely mirrored what I experienced when I had health anxiety a couple of years ago where the protagonist or like the idea with health anxiety is like you're constantly convinced there's something wrong with you and like the hospitals are wrong, everyone's wrong and you're like dying. And I thought the rep of that was really good and really accurate. I think it's like own voices for OCD or something with John Green. So like that I look back fondly on everything else, pure average. So I hope the enemy suffers. Also, I'm gonna just say this at the start. When I keep saying like the enemy, my enemy, it reminds me of how Wendy Williams talks about the killer. If you don't know, I'll put in a clip now. You need to experience this like cultural reset. The killer is way too, oh my God. Don't let the killer get you. Like Halloween, I think it's for ghouls and goblins and for the killer in disguise to choke you out. Regular scarves have the ends where the killer can come and just finish off. I don't wanna play music in the shower because I wanna hear if the killer is coming. The next book requires a bit of assumption that they've already read Vicious by V.E. Schwab, but I'm gonna recommend my enemy Vengeful by V.E. Schwab. Now, I think this was genuinely the biggest nosedive from rating to rating in a series for me ever. Vicious, five stars, Vengeful, two stars. And that may even be generous. I have such a fond memory of reading Vicious. It was on the plane to Florida. It was on the plane to somewhere and I read it in like one sitting and I was like, oh my God, this is literary masterpiece. It's a literary masterpiece. It is the story of Victor and Eli who kind of want to become, is it extra ordinaries? I think they like want superpowers and they find out that you can do it by having a near-death experience, basically dying and coming back from the dead. And it's the story of them like years on after their friendship and they're kind of like enemies. That's what Vicious is. Vengeful is still kind of like, still kind of that. But there's also this woman's story added in and it was not good. If you're thinking about reading Vengeful after you read Vicious, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Like, no, don't do it. One piece of advice, don't read anything. If you don't read it, it can't harm you. Just treat Vicious as a standalone. But my enemy doesn't need to know this. They don't need to know this. They don't need to know this. They can carry on in this series. But my advice to you is just treat Vicious as a standalone. It was so disappointing and the writing was whack. Like, I don't understand how V.E. Sharp can go from like Vicious, also the writing and like Adi LaRue was pretty good. Vengeful, the pacing, mm-mm. The writing, mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. Like, it just was bad. It just wasn't good. It just wasn't good. You can try to sell it to me, but I won't agree. I'm gonna make a big statement here. I'm gonna make a big statement here. Arch Enemies by Marissa Mayer, the second in the Renegade series is a better superhero book than Vengeful. Why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave? The next book is another easy, easy style for me. I don't even need to work for this. I don't even need to work for this. Normal People by Sally Rooney. I don't think I've really spoken about this much because I read it like years ago, way before I had my channel. So like, I don't know what receptionist has in the US, but in the UK, this was like it. For a long time, everyone read this. Like, I'm pretty sure a big proportion, particularly like women in their 20s and 30s have read this book in the UK. It was it. I hated it. Now, this is another easy sale because it has the BBC adaptation that everyone loves. You will not catch me watching it. Like, I'm pretty sure my enemy, the killer. I'm pretty sure my enemy has heard of it. So it's like an easy sale for me. I don't even need to work on this. The reason they're gonna be disappointed and the reason that I was disappointed was that I did not come here to read a book where these two characters are just fucking idiots the whole time. No, it's true. It's true. I have never been more irritated. The whole... The whole book is this couple who basically, I think they meet each other in like sixth form. They're like 16. They start going out then. And then like throughout university and their early adult life, they're kind of like coming back together and passing again and coming back together and passing again. And like, they are so fucking stupid. They are literally some of the most stupid characters that ever read. I was so irritated. I was like, you guys need to talk to each other. It was miscommunication. Like the trope miscommunication is this book. Like, that's all it is. Is them not speaking to each other and explaining their feelings. I'm like, let's just talk even just a little bit. We don't have to sit down and talk through all our feelings. Just give each other a hint about what you desire. Like, it was just... It was just so annoying. And the ending irritated me even further because some people were like, oh my God, it's so beautiful. It's like so much of characters. I'm like, where? Where do you see that? Because I don't. So I really want my enemy to suffer with this one. And then the last book I'm gonna recommend to my enemy is If We Were Villains by Emil Rio. Now, I very rarely write notes with videos, but like today I just felt like it. So I wrote some notes. The other ones, you know, I wrote like a few like bullet points. This one, I wrote Annoying People, Fuck Them, I Hate Them, Worst Characters Ever. That was it. That's what I wrote for this. This is this dark academia, murder mystery book about these like theater students who hate each other but kind of like all fancy each other and wanna fuck. And they are literally the most annoying characters I've ever read. Well, I just said that about normal people. Here's the thing, I can take annoying characters. I can take, in fact, I love like unlikeable characters but you gotta give me something. These characters, you're theater students. Give me something. They gave me nothing. Where's the flavor? Where's the flavor in this? They gave me nothing. They were so boring, so boring. And like the plot didn't go anywhere. It was just a bad book in my opinion. But people love it. People love dark academia. I can sell it on that. I can sell it by being like, listen, you wanna read more dark academia? Read if we were villains. It's like the secret history. It's not like the secret history. The secret history is like 200 times better but they can believe it's like the secret history. So that's it in the studio. I get that it was a bit weird but I actually kind of like, it felt a bit cathartic. Like wanting to give the horrible reading experiences I had with these books to someone else. I actually had a lot of fun filming this. Even this was weird. Let me know down below what books you would recommend to your enemy. We can make a little list about the books we're gonna give to our arch enemies. And if you got to the end of this video, comment like the smirking face emoji, like we're sneaky bitches. Comment that emoji if you've gotten to the end. And as always, thank you so much for watching and I will see you very, very soon. Bye.