 Hey guys it's Julia and welcome back to my channel and for today's video I'm going to be doing my December 2017 reading wrap-up talking about all the books that I've read in the month of December. Basically this month I've read a total of around 16 books, which I think I had a pretty good balance of adult, YA, middle grade, some poetry in there. So I'm very excited to talk to you guys about all these books, so let's jump right into it. This book I have here to talk about is This Boy is a Rainbow by Sam Payne. This is a poetry collection that is about love and heartbreak and it's about an LGBT relationship. It's so nicely written like I could compare it to milk and honey. I personally didn't love milk and honey, but like with it the formatting is similar to milk and honey with the illustrations and things like that. And when I first read it I read an ER copy, so it's officially out now, but I definitely recommend checking it out if you guys like poetry. I think it's a really good collection and I'm really excited to see what other people think of it. Well, the way it's formatted and I really really liked it and I gave it around a 3.75. There was like a triggering self-harm image in this book, but I think that was removed in the final copy. I really like the collection if you're a fan of poetry or you like male-male relationships. I think you'd be interested in this one. So I gave this a 3.75 out of 5. Next up here I've read Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds and this book has been floating around a lot. It's actually a book written in verse, which I didn't know until I picked it up on e-book up from my library. I've just been hearing about it, seeing it around. I didn't know what it was about, but basically it is about this boy whose brother just gets killed and he's obviously going through a lot of things after that and there's gangs in this book and it deals with African-American people and gangs and just how these just so it just deals with so many important things and basically it's about the boy who is going to go down he's going down the elevator to get to the bottom floor to kill the person who killed his brother and as he goes down the floor is he gets surprised so long the way if that makes sense. It's a really interesting book. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's like I enjoyed it. That's about it. Like I think it did what it was supposed to and I thought it was really interesting. It was really fast. I remember reading it in the car on the way to a funeral so it deserves the hype it's been getting and if you're interested in a book written in verse that has more of like a solid story arc then definitely check this one out. I gave it a 3.75 out of 5. Next up here I read Star Girl by Jerry Spinelli, which I didn't know what to expect. I basically heard it's just about this girl who's very different from everybody else. She she's a nonconformist basically. She stands out in her elementary school and things like that. That's all I really heard about this book. I would say just going into it that way. It was a lot different than I was expecting. It was really strange but it was kind of like whimsical at times on basically a very weird book and there's this boy who's very fascinated by her and then once they kind of get to know each other he doesn't want to be seen with her and it's like oh my god and like Star Girl was like so special and like I don't know. I really love the message of this in a middle grade book specifically that it's okay to stand out and things like that. I liked it. It wasn't my favorite. I listened to the audiobook of it but I ended up giving this a read of 3.5. So if you're looking for a middle grade book look into some reviews. Maybe this one will be something that piques your interest but it's a quick short read. So yes. Oh I forgot to mention I read every single book on my monthly TBR. I'm so proud. The next book here that I read is What's a Girl Gotta Do by Holly Bourne. This is the third book in the Spinster Club trilogy which this is a trilogy about three best friends and they have this Spinster Club group where they talk about feminism and things like that and it's just a really good like mature YA series that talks about boys and feminism and relationships and just like personal growth within teenagers and things like that. So this book follows Lottie and her feminist revolution. So basically for is it a week? I don't know how long it is. But first I think it's for a month. For a certain period of time she has to call out every sexist thing she sees and every sexist thing she sees. So like there's no rules and they're documenting this whole thing. She's kind of causing like a little chaos in her school because all the boys are like why the hell are like they're making fun of her because of her initiative to do stuff like this and that really sucked. But the thing I liked about this book was obviously the feminism components. There is Lottie is definitely not my favorite character not because of the whole sexism component but because she I just don't like her personality as much as the other girls. My favorite is obviously still Evie. So definitely this book does have trigger warnings for OCD and anxiety from another main character from another side character in this book and it also has trigger warnings for sexual assault within this book and just yeah. Definitely if you like this trilogy like keep going with it, but it wasn't my favorite but I still really liked it. I love Holly Bourne's writing and the characters and things like that. So I gave this one around like a four star rating. I think I would lower it a little bit to like a 3.75, but yes. Quickly speeding through these two. I read Misled and Cherished. They're gonna be on screen for like a flash second because they're like smut covers. Oh my god, I'm killing something. Oh my god, the Wendigo poor babes. Quickly these were both just steamy romances. I was disappointed by both. I gave one one star and the other one two star. But I was bored, so I just read them. Watching my reading vlogs, you know, I read this book and I was kind of surprised by how much I liked it. It's called Barathe by Sylvia Day. This is like an erotica adult romance book. So keep that in mind, but it's basically about it's very much like 50 shades just without BDSM and Written Better. So this is basically about a girl who goes into a company for like an interview just like kind of how 50 shades starts and the guy who owns it. It's like, oh my god, I didn't know he owned the building. I didn't know he owns the corporation and they're just very synestic connection. There's a lot of sexual angst, a lot of sexual tension. It's very much like 50 shades in the way that it starts out. Not like heavy BDSM, so don't worry about that. But they're, and it's like also like 50 shades with like the elevator scenes where the elevator closes up, okay. Yeah, but I like this book. Like I thought it was well written for smut and I thought it had like an interesting storyline. I finished this in a day. Like I started it in the morning in school and like if you looked at me in class I was just there on my phone like yes because I it was so addicting and I just liked the writing, the relationship, and yeah. So if you're looking for something like that, I would suggest that I give it like a 3.75 out of 5. I read Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Miracle. So this is a holiday romance book and it has stories from the three of them and they all kind of intertwine in the end. But basically this is like my third or fourth time rereading this. I reread every winter more for nostalgic reasons because just it reminded like I read every winter like yeah, but I noticed some things I didn't like. Like I noticed some things that made me dock my raining down than the last times I've read it which basically in John Green's story. I don't think I was looking for it in the past but there was just a lot of like, because I didn't like in John Green's story, just a lot of things that weren't addressed and like a lot of things that bothered me and just certain lines that bothered me and yeah. That bothered me. So John's story bothered me. The last story was okay. I just like how they intertwine. The first story is still my favorite. Like if I were to give the first story a rating it'd be like five stars. I love the first story so much. So if you're gonna read it, just read the first story or read them all, whatever. I don't know. So I did dock my raining down a little bit. I still really enjoy this read, especially the first story, but it was like knocking this down from I think it was I was out of four 3.75 to 3.5 now. So, yes. This book I read here is my new crush gate to me. This is by Shani Petroff and basically this book is another YA fun holiday romance story. It's basically about a girl named Charlie and she wants this dude. Oh, she forms a plan through a secret Santa to get this dude basically. Not like to fall in love with her, whatever, for them to go on a date, the whole sort of thing and she gets help from another guy that knows him really well and then obviously I think you can guess kind of what happens. It says it on the back of the book anyways. Obviously this was super predictable, but it was super fun and light and I like the romance and I like Charlie as a character that she really stood out from like the average female protagonist. She in like contemporary, she basically loved organizing, she loved planning, she stepped to her schedule. Like she was very like structured in that way which tended to bother a lot of people, but I could really relate and just how she was like I'm not leaving it up to fate. Like I'm gonna go get it if I want it. Like I'm gonna I'm gonna go pursue someone I'm interested in and stuff like that and I'm not just gonna sit back kind of thing, which I could relate to those aspects a lot. So I ended up giving this like a 3.75 out of five stars. If you're looking for a cute romance, like a holiday romance read, definitely check this one out. So next up here, I read Illustrated Poems by Scott C. Menner and basically this is a book that is full of poems and illustrations, calligraphy. It's absolutely a stunning book if I do same so myself. I talked about it a lot in a reading blog, but basically it's just about a whole bunch of things. They're very short poems, but a lot of them were really nice. They like rhymed. The illustrations like some of the illustrations, like some of the poems were basic, like just a few of them were like eh, but most of them I absolutely love. The illustrations were for the most part absolutely stunning and I love how illustrators from all over the world got together to put this together and I think it's just super special in that account. The only kind of flaw with this was like the calligraphy in some of them. It's not legible. Like there's a few where it's not very legible. So if you're worried about you can't read cursive or calligraphy, then this might be a little bit hard for you to read. At times like there was just a few at the end, which I'm pretty good at reading calligraphy and cursive, but there was a few at the end where I just had a little bit of trouble, which isn't a big deal, but I would have liked to be able to read it more clearly if you know what I mean. So yeah, but this was a solid collection. I gave this one a 3.75 out of five stars. Next up here I read The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand. This is basically all I know is like I went into this book just knowing that it's a Christmas carol retelling, which part of me would suggest going into it into it that way, but it's just so much more than that. It's about a girl who's essentially a Scrooge and she gets the whole visit of the ghost of past, present, and future and she fails the whole thing. Like she doesn't have the happy ending that most people do, so basically she now becomes the ghost of Christmas past and she has to do these visits for other people. But this corporation in New York City that does this and it is so good. Like I am so impressed. One, I love Cynthia Hand's writing. It's absolutely beautiful and Cynthia Hand also wrote the last time we say goodbye, which is her like YA contemporary, dark contemporary book, which I loved when I read it. But this was so special, like the characters, the romance, the storyline, the way it was all fleshed out, and there was even some little like twists kind of in it, like some little like points where I was like, oh damn, like I didn't see that. Um, so I just loved it so much. I would highly recommend it. I gave it around a 4.5 out of 5 stars. Definitely a solid read. Like I did not want this to end. The next five reads I read before Cram- like for Cramathon that cuts into January, so there is a few more books that I'm reading for the readathon, but these are the five that I ended up finishing in December. Starting off, we have Crenshaw by Catherine Applegate. This is about an imaginary friend who is a cat and he is just with this boy who is going through a lot of hard times with his family and this cat is just there for him, and it's about imaginary friends and friendship and all that sort of stuff and magic. It's really beautiful. I think I still enjoyed the one and only I've been a lot more than this, but this was still good. Like it was good, but it wasn't great. Like all these books were like around a 3 star rating for me. They just weren't great, but like it was good, but not great. I ended up giving this aim around a 3.25 out of 5 stars. Next up, I read Wendy's Button Box by Stephen King and um, Richard Chesmar. I thought this girl who received a button box from a very mysterious man and the story kind of goes on from there. It's kind of strange. Some people say it's creepy. Like it's just a little book. It was interesting. I might make a review on it if you guys want to see it just because I tend to review most Stephen King books I read. There are a lot of trigger warnings for this though. There's some trigger warnings for suicide and just weight issues and things like that, so just keep that in mind. But I just thought it was okay. Like it was just okay. Like I think I gave it like 3.25 out of 5. This one was a disappointing one for me and that is Anna Happy New Year by Holly Bourne, which I love the trilogy so much, but this really left. Basically this is the 3.5 in the series and we follow all of the characters, so alternating perspectives of them on New Year's Eve and a party they're at. Basically I really didn't like this. Basically like all it's about is these characters, but they're all drunk. They're just not themselves and I get that's like a realistic portrayal of like some teenagers who are going to go to parties or not going to feel great, but it's about like relationships. It's about their relationships and like just the story kind of intertwining with them all in the end and like at the end of this book they had like at the start of this book they hadn't seen each other for a long time and there's just so much conflict and drama and it was just too drama heavy for me. Like I don't like I don't know why this was written. Like I love these characters but like eh eh so I give this 3 stars. Next up here I read a really strange book and that is The Nest by Kenneth Opel. I had a boy in his family life and their mother just gave birth to another son and he's not doing the greatest so he's very small. He's like in the hospital staying there extra time and this is about our main character and how he kind of feels some neglect and how he just you really just see how family issues can affect a child and this does have trigger warnings for OCD and anxiety but this is then about these wasps and this nest and basically the constant behind this is they like see him in his dreams. It's just really weird. It's good though like if you're gonna read it like go into it just knowing that but it's it's strange but there was a lot of things I liked about it like a lot of messages like about perfection and about how perfection isn't ideal and it's not always what it seems and things like that so I ended up giving this one like a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I think it's a solid middle grade book pretty strange but it was solid. Lastly I read Nerve by Gian Ryan. Quickly you complete dares and you have to film them so someone films them for you so you can either be a player or watch her and it's just like this online community and you do a bunch of dangerous things and oh my god you can get partnered with people and stuff like that so we follow our main character V who is very innocent and like her friends are kind of being sassy with her and blah blah blah and she joins the game. She kind of pushes her other best friend of the curb and meets this guy and they compete together and it's a lot. Like there's a lot going on in this book. I don't know how I felt like this was fun. That's it. Like it was fun and fast and interesting. A lot of dots didn't like connect though. Like there was a lot of plot holes but if you're looking just for a fun fast read and you own it pick it up. Like I've watched the movie prior to this so the movie was kind of better but it was just a fun fast read. So if you're interested in it check it out. I gave it three stars. Let's have it. Those were all the books that I read in the month of December. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below. If you're new here be sure to click the subscribe button and click the notification bell to be updated for when I post new videos and all this sort of stuff and I'll see you all very soon with a new video. Bye.