 hello hello welcome to this week's vlog my name is Laura and this is my channel Laura's Little Library vlog theme is shapeshifters um i believe it technically goes by a different name i have fun names for each of the weeks of the vlogs and for some reason i'm not using them except in the video titles but oh well so this is beast mode this week is beast mode it is focused around shapeshifters primarily werewolves but if i didn't find werewolf books i would just do regular shapeshifters of any kind but i did find werewolf books so i just got home and there are a few things that i need to do i need to finish editing the vlog that's supposed to grow up today normally i like to go i like them to go up thursday morning but there was just so much editing i did not get it done yesterday so my top priority will be getting that vlog up and then i have to take some pictures for my part-time virtual job which is really fun and then that's pretty much all i need to do like take a shower and then i can start reading for today which is really exciting the first book that i'm going to start with is called hound of god and this is by steve mc elliston and this is one of the books i picked up at that new local bookstore this is a local author um which is really cool i haven't really read a lot of like specifically local authors and my copy is signed which is really cool so i'll be starting with this one it's the smallest um and i'm really excited to read it i'm kind of hoping i can get it done today depending on how long editing and working is but i think i think i definitely have a good chance of getting this done today if i don't get distracted so that's the goal that's the plan nice and simple i'm gonna get to it all right it is just past seven o'clock i've done quite a few things my video for today it's so seven o'clock and my video is finished editing and it's uploading and it says it has an hour and 41 minutes left so in like an hour and a half two hours i'll have a new video up it will be up thursday it'll just be thursday night sorry about how late it is i'm gonna try not to do that again but it just felt like i needed to capture wednesday's content of like actually reading the book and enjoying it and displaying it i also realized so obviously it's a very long vlog if it took me this long to add it but i also realized i never watched like a halloween movie or like spooky season movie uh last week because i'm trying to add the movies based on their themes um to you know to the vlogs and there weren't any like dark academia movies that i've been like looking forward to watching um so if you have any suggestions put them down below uh otherwise yeah so we're just gonna move on to shapeshifter completely i am going to start hand of god as i'm waiting for this to upload and that's kind of what my plans are for the rest of the night so i'll update you after i've done some reading and can give you some initial impressions update time so it is 9 30 at night i've been reading hand of god i've reached page 62 and i'm dnfing it i cannot stand this book there is i'm sorry to be so harsh i really really wanted to like this book but i cannot find a single thing that i like about it it's not very long and i really wanted to like it because it's local author but i cannot force myself to read this i i hate dnfing books i will always try and push through if i can if you look on my good reads there are only four other books that i've dnfed and most of them aren't like true dnfs most of them are now it's just not the time i'm still interested in finishing it i'm still interested in reading it but life got busy or you know i the audiobook expired and i just haven't been able to get it back for whatever reason but i am truly dnfing this i hate okay i feel like hate is a strong word but it takes me to hate something in order to dnf it uh as you can tell i'm very passionate about this the characters are flat and feel like not real human beings there is no emotion behind anything that's happening um and literally the description of the character does not match the cover which is stupid the formatting of the book is wacky and distracting this feels like a second draft rather than a final draft like the writing is terrible there are so many sentences i just could not i had such a hard time with um it feels like a self-published book but it's not it went through publishing and the author is worked 25 years in editing and publishing so i don't understand why this book is so terrible i'm not interested in the plot at all i read the last chapter because that's the last thing i try and do in order to save a book and it was a cruddy ending so i there is nothing i liked about this there there were very you got the beginning description of the main character and then you didn't get any other description out of other characters none of places nothing basically if you don't live in st paul or minneapolis you have no idea what it looks like i live in st paul and there is even a church that he mentioned that i know exactly where that church is i have been there multiple times and it just but he constantly is like st paul st paul st paul and i'm like i get it you're local but and there are quite a few trigger warnings for this book as well so on page four is the murder of a cat which it's a werewolf it makes sense but there is also rape miscarriage abuse as well as a domestic partner abuse so if you do pick up this book um just just be aware of those there may be more trigger warnings that i don't know because there is no information about this book on goodreads or storygraph other than its generic summary um so just know that trigger warnings are unknown there were no reviews on goodreads except for my one star review so that's great for the book um yeah there's there's just so much and there are even plot holes already that i was coming across and things that just did not were not that like no like now so yeah i just there is nothing that intrigued me to keep reading the book there is nothing that i liked about it and i'm not going to force myself to read it i'm not going to force myself to finish it because i do that so often and it puts me in a slump or you know so i just hit my head with the book um i am not a fan i'm very disappointed and yeah so that now being said i've obviously still got time tonight so i am going to pick up red wolf and get started on this uh because i want to read something good i'm sorry i feel like i'm being so mean but it's it's my honest opinion it's my honest review so please don't hate me for hating something again you could pick it up and honestly love it and if that's the case good for you um i'd be very happy for you but it's just i can't stand so i am going to start on red wolf and i'm really excited to read this um yeah i don't know how far i'll make it tonight because i did start watching booktube videos oh the other thing i was gonna update is that my my vlog is up at 9 30 at night my vlog for dark academia is up i have shared links to it in my twitter and books to gram and if you're not following me on those or tick tock or like good reads or any of those bookish social sites look down below i have all of my handles down below so you can follow me where i post regular updates on the books that i am reading and anything bookish and at this point most things haku as well but i mean haku is a tortoise he doesn't really do much but anytime he does do something interesting or adorable it'll be on there haku is the tortoise for those of you who don't know we just got him a few weeks ago and if you have watched the vlog that i just put up well now just put up put up about a week ago at this point um you get to see him explore outside and i loved it and he obviously loved it so anyway yeah i have my first dnf of the reading extravaganza my first one star so hopefully the other two books that i pick up will be good i've heard a little bit of buzz about this on youtube really not a lot though and i've heard absolutely nothing about curses the third book that i have picked up for this so it's definitely going to be an interesting reading week but i'm really excited for it and i don't want to say i have high hopes but in comparison to hound of god anything is a high hope so i'm just gonna get started on this i'll unless i make significant progress i probably won't update you tonight and i'll just update you tomorrow it's literally like two minutes later i just realized that i actually have a really exciting bonus content for you that will already be out by the time this video goes up um but so bonus content on top of my extra videos i on october 1st will have released an interview with an author i know i was so excited it's my first time interviewing an author it was so much fun it was great it's a 15 minute interview um so it's it's not like one of those really long ones and we talk about her new book where the briar sleep which i have a copy of on my bookshelf i should go get it got it all right i got it her book where the briar sleep it came out this past july i love this book it's such an amazing victorian uh ghost story um i would highly recommend picking it up especially the spooky season um so i had an interview with her about this book the inspiration behind it her life growing up in a haunted house essentially where this novel takes place and just learning about her writing process and getting sneak peeks at potential future works um but don't worry the entire interview is spoiler free so if you haven't read the book you don't have to worry about spoilers at all um so yeah that was really exciting that's going up on october 1st which as a filming is tomorrow i'm literally like uploading it right now but so i did that and then i decided that you know i just don't feel like reading um like reading is great obviously i love it but i think tonight i just need to chill and kind of not focus my brain so much so i've decided to watch my movie of the week for um the theme and y'all are gonna laugh at me because the movie i have chosen is the boy who cried werewolf the neglodian movie with victoria justice i watch i am a creature of habit so when i find certain movies within a genre that i don't watch all year round i will gravitate to those movies like i will watch hocus pocus every year halloween town movies every year you know like just all the classics i watch over and over again and so this year so my werewolf movie that i watch is the boy who cried werewolf and i'm gonna watch that tonight so there you go feel free to laugh at me but yeah i still watch like kids movies like that but it's just fun and it's nostalgic and i enjoyed so that's probably what i'm gonna do today i probably won't read so i'll catch up with you tomorrow about actual reading we love waking up at six am to go to work on a saturday sunday morning and yeah again i haven't vlogged much the past couple days because i haven't been reading too much i i did start red wolf by the way uh you saw the clip of that and i'm enjoying it so far i'm only like 20 pages in but i it's very like strong little red riding head vibes but i just i know she's gonna turn into the wolf like i'm pretty like i'm pretty sure it doesn't say that in like the description but i'm just expecting it to happen so i think it'll be very interesting um but i i'm loving it so far and there's a very clear um main love interest at the very beginning and i am suspicious of them i have no reason to be but i am so that's kind of what we're at today we're gonna do a really really fun activity and i'll try and vlog as much as i can but i am very shy about vlogging in public especially at events like this so but let's go see what i did film it's sunday night and i'm very sad to report that i have not really done much reading in red wolf i started it a couple pages in i enjoy it i just haven't been in a sit down and read type of mood lately but hopefully i will get a bunch of reading done tomorrow but as you saw we went to a convention today that's right we went to the twin cities convention it is the first time they post they have done this convention so it was very small very new uh but it was a lot of fun with lots of cosplay it was amazing um and i actually bought some books so there was a local author who had self published her own trilogy as well as an additional book and i that looked really interesting and the author was just so lovely um so i bought all of her books yep the first book in her trilogy is the hunt of the gremolkin and the author is danie swanson she is so wonderful so sweet she gave me a discount on all the books because i bought them all so this is the first in the trilogy it is about the witch um in irish mythology which if you know me if you've been to my channel before you know i have such a huge thing for irish mythology like i love all mythology but irish it's about irish mythology specifically is i love it so the gremolkin is a cat-like creature from irish mythology who may or may not steal your soul um but anyways the witch makes up wakes up in the middle of the woods and has no idea who she is what's going on what's happened um so yeah i am really excited to read this i've already read the first chapter and i think it's gonna go a lot better than the last local self-published author that i read look at it you had a god couldn't do it um but i think this is gonna be so much better so much cooler um just much more down my alley and just much better writing already within the first couple of pages such a beautiful natural aesthetic and atmosphere has been set up and i love it so much already this might be an amazing fall read just gonna say so this is the first one the second one in the trilogy is lily quinn and the gremolkin so it's a continuation and then and she she told me about how she builds in her world um in each novel um i don't always remember exactly how but i know that you do get to travel around the world and then the last one in the trilogy is the circle of owls and i believe that has to deal with the secret society and it's the finale and then the standalone companion novel or the anthology um is the winding woods and so she said you don't need to read the trilogy in order to read this book however there are nods and little references to the characters from the trilogy in there so i would like to read the trilogy first so i can pick up on all the little nods and mentions but you don't need to so i i bought all of her books and that's the only thing i bought from con um but yeah so i am super excited to read these these are about to bounce to the top of my two-year uh once i finish my spooky season reading extravaganza so yeah so i bought these and i am super excited late on sunday night so i'm gonna go to bed and hopefully tomorrow will be a much more interesting reading day i would love to goals my goals would be to read a chunk of red wolf tomorrow and hopefully finish it earlier on tuesday so then tuesday i can start curses and then i can finish curses wednesday-ish which i know is pulling it close again and i didn't like doing that last week but oh well um but i also i know i haven't hold for the audiobook for curses um so it would be so much easier if i could get that before the end of the week but i don't know it's at any time within the next two weeks so i might just have to read it without the audiobook which is fine it'll just be a little slower but i still think i can do it i just need to actually sit down and read but also fun fact i actually did some writing today which is exciting because i've been really wanting to get back into writing i do have a novel that i am attempting to write it started off as a school uh writing project and i want it to be something a little bigger just for fun um so i will be participating in nano rimo this year you know it's kind of an early call but the ac just kicked on so i'll probably end the clip there then uh yeah i'll catch up with you more tomorrow when i have more inside update this vlog because i did an update for quite a while again it's tuesday morning so i wasn't updating the vlog because i wasn't doing any reading i just kind of fell into a oh i was watching all these good tv shows so i'd rather watch those and like read the book big mistake because last night i finally started like seriously reading red wolf and i got 115 pages into it and i am loving this so far i i love the aspects of little red writing hood the atmosphere and the setting with the dark wood and the little village is one of the cutest but also spookiest it's really nice because the village is like this small everyone knows everyone everyone else where they live they live in little cottages with the town square in the middle like i i love that vibe it's such a small town like old and i love it but then you have uh the dark woods and that is just creepy eerie things are crawling after you there are monsters everywhere but can you see them no and then there's grandma's uh cabin in the dark wood on property that she protects and i love that i love it so much it's this perfect balance of cozy fall and spooky season read and it's it's hitting all the right notes for me and then on top of that i love the characters i love the little relationship that our main character adela has with her younger sister sofia and her mom and the love interest is actually one i am enjoying um mostly because it's actually like the book has them actually showing time together and saying hey you know they actually do like each other because they spend time together so uh my day is going to be not hopefully is busy i'm probably going to do a lot of listening to this as i do other things like cleaning so that's kind of the plan not too much not too involved but just just to read this book so i can get started on curses and finish the week okay hello it's tuesday afternoon it's a little past three and i can finally give you a good reading update in fact so good that it's probably not but i finished red wolf so i meant to stop and like give my thoughts part way through but i didn't because i didn't want to stop because i wanted to just keep reading so yeah this is a really good book i'm giving it four point five out of five stars i loved the atmosphere and the setting i think were the strongest in this book it was amazing and i love the characters as well there was there's a little bit of a love triangle which i am not a fan of love triangles but i felt like this one wasn't too bad like i didn't really hate it per se because i feel like with love triangles both of the traditionally guys are such jerks to everyone the girl included and that did not happen and there were just other things that typical love triangles do that bug me but that weren't quite in this book so it was okay it was okay um just also had the very much the kind of ending that i like so i won't spoil it but i will say i i much prefer endings that aren't long and drawn out like the action ends and then it kind of just keeps going i don't like that but i like to this ending uh yeah phenomenal red little red riding hood retelling with the werewolf twist i loved it i am so happy i read it and oh my word and i was like and the little influences of french in there too just made it seem like such a cozy little village and they're like oh he built my cottage so that when i marry him we have a place to live and i'm like oh that's so cute that's so precious so plus her mom owns a bakery so like all the warm cozy vibes in a bakery i just i loved it so yeah i would highly recommend if you love retellings if you love fantasy if you just need a cozy fall slash winter read i can see how this would be good in winter because it's it takes it's it happens right after the big freeze so it's kind of more at the beginning of winter and like the cover is very white but it had just such a cozy atmosphere that i think it would be good during fall or winter so now that i've given my little mini review of this that means i can move on to the last book in this reading vlog curses by lish mcbride and i'm a little nervous about this one purely because um it's a little chunky and i still haven't gotten the audiobook for it but i need to finish it kind of around midday tomorrow i would really love so we'll see i'll get started on it very quickly right now though i realized i never actually finished watching the boy who cried a werewolf i've got 11 minutes and 24 seconds left in the film so i'm gonna watch the last 10 minutes of this film and then hopefully i will start reading curses and i believe curses is going to be a um like a reverse beauty in the beast retelling where she is turning into a beast and he needs to and i need to fall in love basically um so i it's gonna be interesting i'm a little nervous but yeah i'm gonna watch this film take a short break from reading and then hopefully i can make really good progress on it i would love to be halfway through it but i also know that if i start watching this movie there's a very good chance i will get distracted by other movies tv shows or booktube because one of my favorite booktubers also just uploaded a video and i want to watch it so yeah i'll update you later hopefully it'll be a reading update but i'm not promising anything all right so it is wednesday morning and i'm going to close out the vlog here um so basically what i'm doing is well first off i'm still trying to upload my video for yesterday um basically what's been happening is the device i've been filming things on has been uploading things really really slowly so i can't i've spent almost 24 hours now trying to get the clips that i filmed yesterday um uploaded so that i can email it to myself or upload it to google drive or get it so that they're from this device onto my computer and no i don't have a cord that would do that for me um so that video is late but as soon as uh i get all the clips onto my computer i will edit them very quickly and upload it to youtube as soon as possible i fear the same thing may happen for this video because this video will be longer but um what it might be longer um so i'm i am trying to post it on thursday but that's why i'm ending the vlog now wednesday morning is so that i can spend all the wednesday trying to upload these clips so hopefully i can have them uploaded in time for me to edit and upload to youtube so anyway that's that i've decided that curses this book so i read the prologue and i liked it and i it's got one of those like map family maps so you can know who everyone is how they're related and who they are and whatnot at the beginning and i feel like that combined with how thick the book is and how i just don't it's not calling my name at the moment but i think it's because i'm a little intimidated by it just with the idea of oh i would need to finish it today but i don't have but i'm still on hold for the audiobook and i have a lot of other things i need to do today so i'm going to put this book on pause because if i don't if i try and sit here and physically read it all day uh i feel it might put me in a slump or it might burn me out and we're only halfway through this extravaganza so i don't want to be in a slump or to be burned out so i so i'm just gonna leave it at that i dnf'd hound of god because it was terrible but i got a good chunk through that one i read red wolf i gave it 4.5 out of five stars i loved it i don't quite know why i'm not giving it five stars um i think it just didn't quite have enough for me but it's not something i can express in words yet because i still very much loved it i may bump it up to five stars who knows um and then i'm putting a pause on curses until later when i have time or i actually feel like it and another reason i really don't want to burn out especially right now is because this next week is ghosts and i am so excited for my ghost books i've got four of them yeah i've got four of them two middle grades one graphic novel and the first book in a trilogy so i'm really excited to start reading those and so i honestly might start reading them today rather than tomorrow just because i still want to read today i just don't want to try and read a chunky book in a day so i might start next week's vlog in a few minutes or i might get some things done first but yeah so i'm closing out the vlog thank you so much for watching if you liked it give it a thumbs up make sure you subscribe so that you can watch all my other vlogs i have almost somewhat been going up on thursdays as they should but i do release other videos during the week should be on tuesdays but as i described earlier not always so subscribe and hit the bell so that you notified when it actually does upload um otherwise feel free to comment down below uh if you know of any good werewolf or shape-shifting books or any ghost books to add on for next week um but yeah thank you all so much for watching and i will see you in the next one until then i wish you happy spooky reading