**A Month of Reading: Discovering New Favorites and Nostalgic Delights**

I recently completed reading four books, each one a unique and captivating experience that transported me to different worlds and time periods. As I reflect on my reading journey, I'm reminded of the importance of finding the right book at the right time. Sometimes, it's a matter of personal preference, but other times, it's about being in the right mindset or mood to appreciate a particular story.

My first book of the month was _The Bear and the Nightingale_ by Katherine Arden. This rich historical fantasy set in 15th-14th century Russia absolutely captivated me. I want to say that this is roughly the time period where our main character, Vassa, lives in a kind of enclosure near the wilderness. Her father is like the lord, and there's a small town, but they all live in this wooden enclosure near the edge of the woods. The winters here are long and painful, even to read about them so much that the townspeople spend most of their time huddled around the hearth to stay warm. When they do venture out, they also spend a lot of their time listening to the stories of old – the folklore that has been present in the land for as long as anyone can remember.

However, after Vassa's mother passes away and her father remarries a woman who is very orthodox, she starts trying to rid the town of any remnants of the old religion. She tries to get rid of all the folklore, which puts the town in grave danger by an evil outside force. It's up to Vassa to save the day, and I must say that I was completely enthralled by this story. The author, Katherine Arden, does a masterful job of capturing the atmosphere of Russian landscape, and I could literally feel the cold in my bones as I read about it. On top of that, the plot is centered around Russian lords, Russian history, and Russian folklore – all of which are some of my favorite things.

I also appreciated how the author tried to stay true to the historical context, capturing the sentiment and feelings of the time period in a way that feels authentic. The characters' reactions and behaviors were also expertly crafted to reflect what would be appropriate in this time period. I found myself completely swept up in Vassa's story, and it was deeply enriching. It had a fairy tale element that drew me in completely, and I couldn't stop reading as the pages flew by.

If you're a fan of historical fantasy or just looking for a compelling read, I highly recommend _The Bear and the Nightingale_. It's a beautifully written novel that will transport you to another world – 4.5 out of 5 stars.

**A Nostalgic Reread: Rediscovering Everlast**

My next book was _Everlast_ by Neil Schusterman, which I initially read for the first time in middle school. It's a reread for me now, and going into it, I wasn't sure what to expect. The story follows two main characters who have passed away and find themselves awake in a place called Everlost – a kind of in-between world where only children can exist.

As I delved deeper into the story, I began to uncover the secrets of this world, meet new characters, and start to understand the purpose of Everlast. Neil Schusterman does an incredible job of crafting multiple perspectives and adding a level of intensity and mystery that makes you feel like you're right there in Everlost. There's always this eerie feeling that something is off – that true reality can't be trusted.

I must say that I really, really loved _Everlast_. It was a thrilling ride from start to finish, and I flew through the pages. The world-building is one of Neil Schusterman's strengths as an author, and he has a knack for creating unique worlds that feel both familiar and yet completely new. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read this book – it's a must-read for anyone who loves fantasy or is just looking for a compelling story.

I'm giving _Everlast_ 4.25 out of 5 stars – I just can't wait to dive into the next books in the Skin Jacker trilogy.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's reagan and today i'm here to do my may wrap up and this video is being sponsored in part by disney book group now for the month of may i almost read a total of six books but i didn't quite finish that last one before june first hit me though i did read a total of five and all of them i really really enjoyed so i'm super pumped to talk about them so without further ado let's just go ahead and dive right into the video the first two books i'm going to talk about are my current obsession that i just haven't stopped talking about since i read them and that is an ember in the ashes and the sequel a torch against the night the first two books to the uh ember in the ashes series by stop it to hear i read both of these books this month absolutely fell in love with the story the world the characters and i'm highly anticipating the release of the next book in june but ugh these books were just incredible starting first with an ember in the ashes this is a roman inspired fantasy novel one of our main characters is named leia and she is part of the scholar class which was basically conquered by the current ruling class she basically spends her days just trying to keep her head down trying to stay out of trouble as any type of treason or defiance is met with death in this world however one day when her brother is arrested for treason she gets involved with the rebel group and becomes a spy in exchange for help of breaking him out of jail we also follow our main character elias who is an elite soldier a part of this like intense uh training school where basically kids are trained from an incredibly young age to be elite silver masks and basically the empire's way of crushing any said defiance he hates it however and these two characters lives cross paths but not in the way you would expect this book is about magic hope fighting for a better day it has such emotional impact and also just the plot and the characters are just incredible i mean not only does this book keep you on the edge of your seat but both of these characters has such intense journeys that you just get caught up in everything that's going on you'll laugh you'll cry you'll feel so much i just love this fantasy series so much i gave the first book a 5 out of 5 stars and after i uh read that i immediately picked up a torch against the night which is the sequel and i have to say i loved this book just as much as the first one again the characters are just so incredibly dynamic and the relationships are so much more complex than you assume from the synopsis this isn't just like a boy meets girls different worlds their love clashes in the middle no no no this is not a love centered first fantasy story this is a people in character centered first and it's just so incredibly gripping i flew through the second one i absolutely loved it it literally just like keeps me up i just think about this series so much it's amazing and i also gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars as well after that i immediately jumped into the perusetopia book club pick of the month for the month of may and this month we are reading the trials of apollo book three the burning maze by rick riordan and i loved this book as well i have a full non-spoiler review of this which i'll leave linked down below but this series is just amazing it follows our main character apollo who's been cast out of olympus by zeus been turned into a preteen boy who's not nearly as strong as apollo once was as a god however apollo has kept all of his arrogance and entitlement um even though he is now a weak little demigod we follow apollo as he makes new friends and also runs into old characters to basically solve the oracle crisis which is another kind of like roman centered villain which was so great but the fantastic thing about this story throughout the novels is we get to see apollo grow more and more human and gain more and more empathy for the demigods he's always interacted with throughout his very long life but now that he is one and gets to see the impact of all of these quests have on these characters you see him slowly become more and more human and as a character arc and development it's just such a great thing to read not to mention the cameos of old past characters are always so great but the integration of new characters are some of my absolute favorites meg um apollo's kind of sidekick in the story is one of my top five favorite rick riordan characters of all time that being said this third novel really upped the ante both in emotional stakes and plot stakes i mean things happen in this book that i honestly can say i never expected rick roy orton to go there i was emotionally drained after reading this this was intense and it really delved pretty deeply into the aftermath of quests and the emotional fallout and the impact of going through something so traumatic uh has on these characters and i just thought it was such a great story i loved it so much favorite book of the series so far 5 out of 5 stars after basically flying through three amazing books at the beginning of the month i did fall into a bit of a reading slump and it was it was hard i was picking up a lot of things i wasn't getting into them i had a very difficult week and a half there where everything just couldn't compare to the first three books i read that month but then i picked up the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden and absolutely fell in love this is a rich historical fantasy set in the wilderness of russia i want to say like 15th 14th century russia that's our main character vassa who lives in this kind of enclosure near the wilderness her father is kind of like the lord and there's a small town but they all live in this like wooden enclosure near the edge of the woods and the winters here are long and they are painful even to read so they spent a lot of times and doors huddled around the hearth to stay warm and when they do this they also spend a lot of their time listening to the stories of old the folklore that has been present in the land for as long as anyone can remember however after vasa's mother passes away and his father remarries a woman who is very very orthodox and she basically passes her time trying to rid the town of any remnant um of the religion of old she tries to get rid of all folklore when she starts to do this the town becomes incredibly endangered by an evil outside force and it's up to vaccia to basically save the day this novel it was so fantastic for so many different reasons first and foremost the atmosphere of the story was just incredible the wilderness setting the cold i literally felt in my bones when i was reading it like i can't even describe it to you but the author can write like a russian landscape so well i mean on top of the fact that the plot of this is centered around russian lords and russian history and russian folklore like i have a pretty i'm gonna buy into that pretty easily because that is some of my favorite things of all time and i also had the nod to the author i felt like she really tried to stay true to the historical context like obviously this book is not a history novel but it really i feel like she really tries to capture the time period and also the sentiment and the feelings and also what would be appropriate in this time period and try to reflect that into characters reactions and characters behaviors and i really appreciated that throughout this novel our main character vasya was a wonderful joy to read she was spunky she had fire and she just was just trying to try her best and it was just so good i loved this book so much it was deeply enriching it had this fairy tale element where you just were completely captured into the story it had maybe a bit of a slow start in the beginning but then there was just this steady increase in pace until you just were flipping the pages i could not stop reading this novel i loved it so much 4.5 out of 5 stars so good and the final book i completed this month was everlast by neil schusterman this is the first book in the skin jacker trilogy by neil susterman in a reread for me i initially read this book for the first time in middle school so that was a long long time ago and going into the story i very very did not remember anything that happened this follows our two main characters who at the beginning of the story have passed away and they find themselves awake in a place called everlost which is this kind of in between place between life and death and only children can exist here and they basically are trying to go through this world and essentially find their way back to life or find where they need to get going to as we follow these main characters we begin to uncover the secrets of this world meet a lot of very very interesting characters neil schusterman does a fantastic job with writing so many things obviously he's one of my favorite authors but he does such a great job like crafting such interesting worlds that are so unique but also so grounded in our reality anyway i really really loved this first book i flew through it i can't wait to read the next couple books in the series i liked it more i feel like now than i did as a kid um and yoshi shuman just has an amazing way of writing multiple perspectives and adding like a level of intensity and mystery like you're in a place you feel like it's right but there's just always this for this eerie feeling that your true stream can inject in any place you're like this appears to be paradise but i don't buy it so i loved this book and i'm giving it a 4.25 out of 5 stars can't wait to read book 2 in this trilogy loved it guys those are all of the books i read in the month of june let me know down below some books you read recently as i would love to know and i'll see you guys soon with another video soon goodbyehey guys it's reagan and today i'm here to do my may wrap up and this video is being sponsored in part by disney book group now for the month of may i almost read a total of six books but i didn't quite finish that last one before june first hit me though i did read a total of five and all of them i really really enjoyed so i'm super pumped to talk about them so without further ado let's just go ahead and dive right into the video the first two books i'm going to talk about are my current obsession that i just haven't stopped talking about since i read them and that is an ember in the ashes and the sequel a torch against the night the first two books to the uh ember in the ashes series by stop it to hear i read both of these books this month absolutely fell in love with the story the world the characters and i'm highly anticipating the release of the next book in june but ugh these books were just incredible starting first with an ember in the ashes this is a roman inspired fantasy novel one of our main characters is named leia and she is part of the scholar class which was basically conquered by the current ruling class she basically spends her days just trying to keep her head down trying to stay out of trouble as any type of treason or defiance is met with death in this world however one day when her brother is arrested for treason she gets involved with the rebel group and becomes a spy in exchange for help of breaking him out of jail we also follow our main character elias who is an elite soldier a part of this like intense uh training school where basically kids are trained from an incredibly young age to be elite silver masks and basically the empire's way of crushing any said defiance he hates it however and these two characters lives cross paths but not in the way you would expect this book is about magic hope fighting for a better day it has such emotional impact and also just the plot and the characters are just incredible i mean not only does this book keep you on the edge of your seat but both of these characters has such intense journeys that you just get caught up in everything that's going on you'll laugh you'll cry you'll feel so much i just love this fantasy series so much i gave the first book a 5 out of 5 stars and after i uh read that i immediately picked up a torch against the night which is the sequel and i have to say i loved this book just as much as the first one again the characters are just so incredibly dynamic and the relationships are so much more complex than you assume from the synopsis this isn't just like a boy meets girls different worlds their love clashes in the middle no no no this is not a love centered first fantasy story this is a people in character centered first and it's just so incredibly gripping i flew through the second one i absolutely loved it it literally just like keeps me up i just think about this series so much it's amazing and i also gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars as well after that i immediately jumped into the perusetopia book club pick of the month for the month of may and this month we are reading the trials of apollo book three the burning maze by rick riordan and i loved this book as well i have a full non-spoiler review of this which i'll leave linked down below but this series is just amazing it follows our main character apollo who's been cast out of olympus by zeus been turned into a preteen boy who's not nearly as strong as apollo once was as a god however apollo has kept all of his arrogance and entitlement um even though he is now a weak little demigod we follow apollo as he makes new friends and also runs into old characters to basically solve the oracle crisis which is another kind of like roman centered villain which was so great but the fantastic thing about this story throughout the novels is we get to see apollo grow more and more human and gain more and more empathy for the demigods he's always interacted with throughout his very long life but now that he is one and gets to see the impact of all of these quests have on these characters you see him slowly become more and more human and as a character arc and development it's just such a great thing to read not to mention the cameos of old past characters are always so great but the integration of new characters are some of my absolute favorites meg um apollo's kind of sidekick in the story is one of my top five favorite rick riordan characters of all time that being said this third novel really upped the ante both in emotional stakes and plot stakes i mean things happen in this book that i honestly can say i never expected rick roy orton to go there i was emotionally drained after reading this this was intense and it really delved pretty deeply into the aftermath of quests and the emotional fallout and the impact of going through something so traumatic uh has on these characters and i just thought it was such a great story i loved it so much favorite book of the series so far 5 out of 5 stars after basically flying through three amazing books at the beginning of the month i did fall into a bit of a reading slump and it was it was hard i was picking up a lot of things i wasn't getting into them i had a very difficult week and a half there where everything just couldn't compare to the first three books i read that month but then i picked up the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden and absolutely fell in love this is a rich historical fantasy set in the wilderness of russia i want to say like 15th 14th century russia that's our main character vassa who lives in this kind of enclosure near the wilderness her father is kind of like the lord and there's a small town but they all live in this like wooden enclosure near the edge of the woods and the winters here are long and they are painful even to read so they spent a lot of times and doors huddled around the hearth to stay warm and when they do this they also spend a lot of their time listening to the stories of old the folklore that has been present in the land for as long as anyone can remember however after vasa's mother passes away and his father remarries a woman who is very very orthodox and she basically passes her time trying to rid the town of any remnant um of the religion of old she tries to get rid of all folklore when she starts to do this the town becomes incredibly endangered by an evil outside force and it's up to vaccia to basically save the day this novel it was so fantastic for so many different reasons first and foremost the atmosphere of the story was just incredible the wilderness setting the cold i literally felt in my bones when i was reading it like i can't even describe it to you but the author can write like a russian landscape so well i mean on top of the fact that the plot of this is centered around russian lords and russian history and russian folklore like i have a pretty i'm gonna buy into that pretty easily because that is some of my favorite things of all time and i also had the nod to the author i felt like she really tried to stay true to the historical context like obviously this book is not a history novel but it really i feel like she really tries to capture the time period and also the sentiment and the feelings and also what would be appropriate in this time period and try to reflect that into characters reactions and characters behaviors and i really appreciated that throughout this novel our main character vasya was a wonderful joy to read she was spunky she had fire and she just was just trying to try her best and it was just so good i loved this book so much it was deeply enriching it had this fairy tale element where you just were completely captured into the story it had maybe a bit of a slow start in the beginning but then there was just this steady increase in pace until you just were flipping the pages i could not stop reading this novel i loved it so much 4.5 out of 5 stars so good and the final book i completed this month was everlast by neil schusterman this is the first book in the skin jacker trilogy by neil susterman in a reread for me i initially read this book for the first time in middle school so that was a long long time ago and going into the story i very very did not remember anything that happened this follows our two main characters who at the beginning of the story have passed away and they find themselves awake in a place called everlost which is this kind of in between place between life and death and only children can exist here and they basically are trying to go through this world and essentially find their way back to life or find where they need to get going to as we follow these main characters we begin to uncover the secrets of this world meet a lot of very very interesting characters neil schusterman does a fantastic job with writing so many things obviously he's one of my favorite authors but he does such a great job like crafting such interesting worlds that are so unique but also so grounded in our reality anyway i really really loved this first book i flew through it i can't wait to read the next couple books in the series i liked it more i feel like now than i did as a kid um and yoshi shuman just has an amazing way of writing multiple perspectives and adding like a level of intensity and mystery like you're in a place you feel like it's right but there's just always this for this eerie feeling that your true stream can inject in any place you're like this appears to be paradise but i don't buy it so i loved this book and i'm giving it a 4.25 out of 5 stars can't wait to read book 2 in this trilogy loved it guys those are all of the books i read in the month of june let me know down below some books you read recently as i would love to know and i'll see you guys soon with another video soon goodbye\n"