I recently participated in the Owls Read-a-Thon, which took place in April. I read nine books during this period and enjoyed every single one of them. One of the books that stood out to me was "The Invisible Library" by Genevieve Cogman. This book was the first in a series of five and it follows the story of Irene Adler, also known as the "Spider Woman," who is a skilled thief and librarian. The book takes place in various locations throughout history, including ancient Egypt, Renaissance Italy, and Victorian England. I found the world-building to be fascinating and the characters to be well-developed and complex.

Another book that I enjoyed was "Pride" by Ibz Boy. This modern retelling of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" takes place in Brooklyn and follows the story of a young woman named Elizabeth, who is a black Haitian woman with Caribbean Dominican roots. The main character's love interest, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is a wealthy African-American man who moves into her neighborhood. I was excited to read this book because it offered a fresh take on one of my favorite classic novels. I loved how the author updated the characters and setting to make them more relatable and relevant to modern readers.

However, not all of the books that I read were to my liking. One of the books that I struggled with was "Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare. This book is the first in a popular series of urban fantasy novels, but it didn't hold up well for me. The story follows Clary Fray, a young woman who discovers that she is not an ordinary human being. I found the world-building to be complex and overwhelming, and the characters to be somewhat one-dimensional.

I also read "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black, which was another urban fantasy novel that didn't quite live up to my expectations. The story follows Jude Duarte, a human girl who is caught up in the world of faeries. I loved the premise of the book, but I found the characters and plot to be somewhat predictable.

One of the books that I did enjoy was "The Star-Touched Queen" by Roshani Chokshi. This fantasy novel tells the story of Maya, a young girl who is destined to marry the prince of a mythical kingdom. I loved the beautiful writing style and the lush world-building in this book. The characters were well-developed and complex, and the plot was engaging and suspenseful.

Another book that I enjoyed was "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton. This fantasy novel takes place in a lush, tropical world where magic is based on beauty. The story follows Camellia Beauregard, a young woman who is chosen to be the Belle, the queen's personal beauty and companion. I loved the unique world-building and the strong female characters in this book.

As for the Muggle Studies Elle challenge, I read "Pride" by Ibz Boy as part of this challenge. As mentioned earlier, this modern retelling of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" takes place in Brooklyn and follows the story of a young woman named Elizabeth. I loved how the author updated the characters and setting to make them more relatable and relevant to modern readers.

In addition to these books, I also read two other books that were part of the Muggle Studies Elle challenge: "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang and "Red, White, and Royal Blue" by Casey McQuiston. Both of these books were highly acclaimed and offered unique perspectives on fantasy and romance.

One of the challenges of reading nine books in a short period is finding time to read and review each book thoroughly. I found myself having to juggle multiple projects at once, including writing articles and creating videos for my YouTube channel. However, I was determined to complete the read-a-thons and make the most of my time.

Overall, I was pleased with the books that I read during the Owls Read-a-Thon. While not all of them were to my liking, I enjoyed many of the stories and characters. I am proud of myself for completing nine books in a short period and making progress on my reading goals.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's Sam and this is my April wrap-up not only is it my April wrap-up but it's also my metrical readathon owls edition wrap-up as well as my tome Topol wrap-up a lot of things happen in April April was my best reading month so far if you count like how many books read is like how good the reading month is and that's just what I'm saying today it's not necessarily what I think all the time but you know I'm trying to get my TBR DOM as you know so creating a lot of books in a month is good for me about 46% of all of the books that I read so far this year were read in April your girl did good so since I did so much in April reading wise there's a lot of like overlap and multitasking of books so I will tell you what each book did for me as far as what I was reading it for as we go through this as well so the first book that I read this month was the calculating stars by Mary Robinette Kowal this is a book I actually read on audio this was for the Astronomy owl and is also one of the booktube SFF Award nominees for the science fiction category this is the first book in an adult historical science fiction series so this takes place in I think the 1950s or 1960s and this is in an alternate history where there is a giant meteor almost apocalyptic event that wipes out a lot of the East Coast United States and sets a lot of global things into action and so there is a more important space race going on and in this story you follow a Jewish America and main character who is a lady scientist and she wants to be a lady astronaut so this follows her story what is going on in the world science fiction wise and kind of their quest to get into space so that if there is this apocalyptic event on earth they will be safe and then all of the social and political things happening with her and her friends trying to be lady astronauts I love this audiobook this I definitely recommend to read on audio the narrator is actually the author and she's won awards for her narrating of books and such so I definitely recommend that what I really liked about this was the realism of it so there are some harder hitting topics there is some racism both towards people of color and towards alma who is Jewish along with her family and there's also some talk of sexual assault or sexual harassment and there's also talk of mental health such as anxiety medicine and suicidal ideation and talk of suicides there's number of trigger warnings in here but I really enjoyed Elmas main character as I mentioned there is talk of anxiety in here basically they say like how almost all the world is anxious but there is still this stigma against it at all so against taking medication and Elma is somebody who has an anxiety disorder and has panic attacks so she was just a great character she also is married to another scientist and they have a really great loving relationship the only thing that I didn't like about that sometimes is towards the end I kind of got sick of the repetition of the fact that like every time the characters were having sex they were throwing space and rocket innuendos at one another and I'm like okay this is cute the first couple times you guys did it but like do you really talk about rockets and make space puns like every time you have sex like you do you but like so anyway I really enjoyed this I think this is a duology I know there's at least a second book I don't know if there's more than that and I gave this a 4 out of 5 stars the second book I read was Slayer by Kirsten white this was for herbology Elle and everybody talked about this I have done a full review on this which I will link on the screen I also was involved in the podcast talking about this this is a book that's part of a new series that takes place in the buffy universe following the events of the show but also some of the comics and it follows a main character who's actually part of the Watchers if you are familiar with the show and she is supposedly the very last layer I did not like this I gave this book 1.5 stars a point 5 just being for the fact that I did like hearing things about like Buffy characters and like the Buffy world and everything but this main character was a lot of things that I just don't like in my main character she's pretty naive but she's also just oblivious to everything going around around her also most of the plot just hinges on miscommunication between all the characters and all the characters not really talking for any good reason and our main character also hates Buffy which I think makes sense of her character but is a pretty poor choice if you're writing a series that really has to be read by people who spent 7 seasons with Buffy and know why she made the decision she made so overall I don't think of it this book that's really for me and I will not continue with this series at all the next book I read was vengeful by ve Schwab this was for the potions owl this was also a booktube SF Award nominee for the fantasy know for the science fiction category and was my April book pick for patreon so every month my patreon supporters get to vote in a poll and a book that I'll read and review that month and this was chosen for April so if you are interested in voting in my TBR and really participating in my channel and deciding things that I'll do I will leave my patreon on the screen I have a read a full review and discussion on this so I will link that on the screen this is the sequel to vicious which is many people's favorites this lot of favorites for me as well when I read vicious within the last six months I believe and a vicious to me could have been a standalone I go into depth in my review but I felt like this really missed the mark I am really sick of how the Guru Schwab writes female characters and tears them down and then is like I'm so good about writing people I care just I go into it in my review but this just had pacing issues I didn't like how most of the characters were throwaway I didn't like how I can feel where the plot was going and it wasn't as tight of a plot as vicious was like vicious was so good in every way and this was a lot more meandering and wasted a lot of the book doing things just to get certain characters together and I could see what it was doing and yeah so I still enjoyed reading this this is still fast paced I still like the world I like some of the character interactions and such there's still some really good characters in here but I gave this three point five to three point seven five stars enjoyable but does it need to be a series I don't think so then tome top will start it so all these books are tome Topol books as well as whatever else that they qualify us so the first book i read for tome Topol was a foundry side by robert jackson Bennett this is also my charms owl this is the first book in an adult fantasy series that follows her main character of Sasha and she is a thief but she has some special abilities in which in this world there are different magics where you kind of inscribe magic into an object and it makes it do other things so it's kind of like that's the version of technology that's magic and its called striving and that's how you control objects and such she is able to listen to not only those kinds of objects but then any object really so if she's climbing a wall she knows where all of the like marks where she can climb a bar if there's a loose spot or anything like that so pretty powerful ability for a thief to have she doesn't really know why she has this ability and she was test butt and she isn't asked to go and steal some package but just not look at what she's stealing and everything kind of goes from there this book was so much fun I obviously got an arc of this last year when it first came out and put it off because I figured I was gonna like it but I just wanted to have the time to love it and I really enjoyed so much about this I have a review coming up for this so look forward to that but this was so enjoyable in every way I love the world the world is so much fun in the city that this takes place in there are a bunch of merchants houses and they control all that magic that I talked about like they have the people that can make that magic that everyone else outside of those houses lives basically in squalor and the setting for this just was like so atmospheric the magic was so cool also the band of characters that you get to follow seem like they're gonna be trophy but they aren't like they are based on cool tropes that like a lot of people enjoy but instead of following those tropes to the tee they are their own unique complex spin and the plot was very fast-paced as well I highly enjoyed this and I gave it 5 out of 5 stars this was also a booktube SFF Award nominee for the fantasy category another book for Tom Topol that I read was muse of nightmares by Laini Taylor this also fits the care of magical creatures category for the owls and is a booktube SFF Award nominee this is a pretty popular series on booktube so i'm not going to go into it because this picks up right after the first book strange the dreamer and if you know anything about that then you know kind of where that picks up I was not a huge fan of strange dreamer I liked it but I didn't love it as much as the rest of booktube seems to so I was very about going into this book I just didn't really feel like reading it and for some reason I didn't pick up the physical copy thankfully I liked the audiobook version so this I listened to an audio and I was having a much better time with it this I'm also doing a review on so look forward to that but I just enjoyed the plot of this more I really like Helene e-tailer dives into war and trauma and I didn't focus as much for me on the romance elements of it which was a lot of what I had a problem with in the first book so while that was still present it was easier for me to just kind of ignore in favor a lot of the other world things that are going on really like the worlds that Laini Taylor creates an allure that she creates and her really good focus on war and trauma and especially in this book recovery from trauma so I definitely enjoyed this still because of someone like the romance stuff and whatever wasn't quite 5 out of 5 stars for me but this was four out of five stars and I did like it better than strange the dreamer then my last book I read during tome Topol was obsidian by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman this was also the arrhythmia CL and this is the third book in the illuminate trilogy so again this picks up after the events of the first two books I am going to be doing a review on this book as well I loved illuminae so much I gave it 5 out of 5 stars is very unexpected for me I was very connected to it Gemini I found to be a bit of a disappointment and obsidian continued to be a disappointment so this book I was very little about it was still fun fast paced and I could read about two days based on the format and just everything but I found that it repeated a lot of the same things that happened in the first two books so I continued to use a lot of like tricks and twists that we've already seen so I knew what they were gonna do with them so I wasn't really on the edge of my seat or really connected to the characters anymore I also don't love how some of the characters are written I feel like there's a certain level with some of the characters of like hey there are fellow youth because this is being written by an adult and you could just be like that that's not how kids even kids in the future in space would act it's like this is how kids behind America in like 2008 like it was just a lot of that and yeah I just was really disappointed in this conclusion I thought that this was gonna maybe make up for gemenon kind of go back to what I loved about illuminae but unfortunately illuminae was so unique and fun and I enjoyed the character so much and then the next two books were so similar that it wasn't new and interesting and unique anymore so I gave this one 2.5 out of 5 stars I enjoyed it at times like it was still kind of fun but I've forgotten about it since I don't feel like it really had enough time and it just used a lot of the same things like I said so there's a lot of things that really annoyed me about it so I'll be doing like I said a full review on this coming up later the next book I read was thirsty by Madeline Miller this was for the ancient runes owl and this was also a booktube SFF Award nominee and this is a retelling or an expansion of the story of Cersei who is one of the challenges that Odysseus faces in the Iliad on his way back home to Ithaca but you don't really know much about Cersei in that story and in this it really expands her story she is the daughter of a Titan she therefore is a Titan herself they kind of use Titan and God interchangeably and that's kind of found like Greek mythology works too because there were guys that were Titans and then they birth other gods and those guys like condemned the Titans and all the wars that all the stuff because there's all this stuff going on in Greek mythology metal and Miller also wrote the song of Achilles so she just really likes that time period and that history and those myths and I don't know why I put this one off because she does it just as well in this book she really expands on all the people that Circe might have come in contact with all the different guys she's really good about showing how like manipulative and evil a lot of the gods are and the background of our stories and like who makes history and what is told and she does really good job about morally great characters but not in a way where you feel like the morally gray characters are patting themselves on the back too much and just the complexity of people and tragedy her books are like very tragic and even going them to me like I know this is gonna be tough but you're like you keep waiting for something good to happen but I loved this I'm very attached to Circe as a character I want to be in the Witch of I aya but not live her life but I really enjoy like a lot of the lines that were set about femininity and womanhood and all of this stuff it's so good I'm gonna be doing a full review on it I don't know if going to be able to articulate just much I really did enjoy this book and how much I enjoyed the story I also really recommend the audiobook the narrator's really beautiful voice and really well-done and just really like evoked that feeling of this character and the thing she was going through so obviously after all my gushing you guys know it I gave it a five out of five stars and if you're keeping track you will have noticed that all of the books that I have read for the fantasy category for the booktube SFF awards so there's the adult fantasy that's gray sister by Marc Lowrance Foundry side by Robert Jackson Bennet and Cersei by Madeline Miller I've rated all of them five stars so when it comes to award shows season I'm not sure what I'm gonna do the next book that I read was unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner and this is for the divination owl as well and this follows two characters who are on in this new world this new alien planet in the future earth is facing a crisis that like global warming and all this environmental crises and this alien planet has been revealed as a place that might have the answers to Earth's crisis well one of the characters if there is a bit of a like thief Tomb Raider scavenger whatever you would want to call her and she is there to collect tech in order to make money the other character is a scholar and he is there to study the place and they end up having to team up as an unlikely parent everything goes on from there I almost towards the beginning of this dnf'd it I was going to give a hundred pages and I ultimately did but the first hundred pages were really the first like seventy I just was not really feeling it the story was taking a long time to get to where it needed to go and I was really more in it for like the tomb raiding space elements and this book and this is just kind of indicative of the Amie Kaufman megan's but there's other stuff that I've read everyone only one other book but they tend to write these like space romances and there's a lot of focus on the romance and these two characters who just met looking each other and saying thinking how hot the other one is and it's just like is it really that time right now like is this really appropriate timing for that so I found that to be really annoying but once I got to like that the fun puzzles and the like tomb raiding elements that was a lot of fun and it was a really quick read so fun in that way in space and yeah but ultimately I just wasn't really hooked by this I end up giving it two point five out of five stars like right dead in the middle again like some of the other books I've read this month I didn't love it I didn't hate it but I don't think I'll be continuing with the series because of where it left off I feel like the things that I was enjoying about this book aren't going to continue in the second book and this is a duology so I'm kind of an interested I don't plan on continuing with a series then the last book that I read this month was pride by Ibiza boy and this was also for the muggle studies Elle and this is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice that takes place in Brooklyn and the entire cast are people of color mostly mixed-race our main character are like Elizabeth character is a black Haitian but I want to say some Caribbean Dominican so in this story it takes place in Brooklyn and the rich family like mr. Darcy and mr. Bingley are really two brothers part of an african-american family that are wealthy that move into her part of Brooklyn and everything kind of goes from there interests so as a Pride and Prejudice fan this was interesting to read through and see the Pride and Prejudice beats see how different things were switched around and modernized or made more appropriate for these characters and their personalities so that was really fun and it was a quick read and you're set kind of watching the tension everything as the story went along I feel like the second half I didn't enjoy as much I felt like some of the characters were a little inconsistent and I honestly feel like these characters didn't have enough time this is a fairly short book and it follows a lot of the major beats of the story but there's a lot of like plot things that you don't really get to sit with in the story and you don't really get like the significance of and they're kind of a lot more simple I found this retelling to be more simple than I was expecting it to be also the like Lizzy Darcy relationship is a little bit different and that could be cool to some people but for me I was like this doesn't really make sense for like these characters and they're like attraction and I felt like with Lizzy and Darcy there is that kind of like slow burn slowly over time learning to like each other I kind of fell like the Lizzy character hated the Darcy character although up to the end for the most part and still was like against them being together really even in the end so I was like I don't I don't understand like what's going on here so ultimately I also gave this two point five stars because I didn't love it but I didn't hate it there's parts that I found enjoyable it's really fun to read Pride and Prejudice retellings I think this was a lot of fun I liked that this was a diverse retelling so especially for people that want to see more diversity in Pride and Prejudice or would like to see themselves in prejudice I think this is definitely a book that I would recommend but for me I think it needed more time with the things that it was trying to say and for its characters to kind of flourish a bit more so those are all of the books that I read for all the readathons at all of April so I read nine books for the owls which means I got no standing but I noticed I was going over everything the two careers that I picked potentially neurologists I think it was and mind medic I didn't get enough owls for either of those in the right categories but I still got an outstanding just based on number of books read but just the combinations of things that I read happen to not quite work out I think I would have been able to get it if I didn't dnf1 book i dnf'd one of the contemporary books that I was reading but to potentially pick back up but maybe not just wasn't really feeling it if I had to push through that one maybe but I think I also really just ran out of time so nine books total for the whole month and for the owl's read-a-thon three of those also four tome topple and five of those were booktube SFF Award nominees so I was doing all the multitasking with my reading this month and I'm very proud of myself and I hope that that carries over into May so comment down below let me know how your reading month in April went let me know if you participate in any of these readathons as well and how you did and all that so thank you all for watching else the other guys soon byehey guys it's Sam and this is my April wrap-up not only is it my April wrap-up but it's also my metrical readathon owls edition wrap-up as well as my tome Topol wrap-up a lot of things happen in April April was my best reading month so far if you count like how many books read is like how good the reading month is and that's just what I'm saying today it's not necessarily what I think all the time but you know I'm trying to get my TBR DOM as you know so creating a lot of books in a month is good for me about 46% of all of the books that I read so far this year were read in April your girl did good so since I did so much in April reading wise there's a lot of like overlap and multitasking of books so I will tell you what each book did for me as far as what I was reading it for as we go through this as well so the first book that I read this month was the calculating stars by Mary Robinette Kowal this is a book I actually read on audio this was for the Astronomy owl and is also one of the booktube SFF Award nominees for the science fiction category this is the first book in an adult historical science fiction series so this takes place in I think the 1950s or 1960s and this is in an alternate history where there is a giant meteor almost apocalyptic event that wipes out a lot of the East Coast United States and sets a lot of global things into action and so there is a more important space race going on and in this story you follow a Jewish America and main character who is a lady scientist and she wants to be a lady astronaut so this follows her story what is going on in the world science fiction wise and kind of their quest to get into space so that if there is this apocalyptic event on earth they will be safe and then all of the social and political things happening with her and her friends trying to be lady astronauts I love this audiobook this I definitely recommend to read on audio the narrator is actually the author and she's won awards for her narrating of books and such so I definitely recommend that what I really liked about this was the realism of it so there are some harder hitting topics there is some racism both towards people of color and towards alma who is Jewish along with her family and there's also some talk of sexual assault or sexual harassment and there's also talk of mental health such as anxiety medicine and suicidal ideation and talk of suicides there's number of trigger warnings in here but I really enjoyed Elmas main character as I mentioned there is talk of anxiety in here basically they say like how almost all the world is anxious but there is still this stigma against it at all so against taking medication and Elma is somebody who has an anxiety disorder and has panic attacks so she was just a great character she also is married to another scientist and they have a really great loving relationship the only thing that I didn't like about that sometimes is towards the end I kind of got sick of the repetition of the fact that like every time the characters were having sex they were throwing space and rocket innuendos at one another and I'm like okay this is cute the first couple times you guys did it but like do you really talk about rockets and make space puns like every time you have sex like you do you but like so anyway I really enjoyed this I think this is a duology I know there's at least a second book I don't know if there's more than that and I gave this a 4 out of 5 stars the second book I read was Slayer by Kirsten white this was for herbology Elle and everybody talked about this I have done a full review on this which I will link on the screen I also was involved in the podcast talking about this this is a book that's part of a new series that takes place in the buffy universe following the events of the show but also some of the comics and it follows a main character who's actually part of the Watchers if you are familiar with the show and she is supposedly the very last layer I did not like this I gave this book 1.5 stars a point 5 just being for the fact that I did like hearing things about like Buffy characters and like the Buffy world and everything but this main character was a lot of things that I just don't like in my main character she's pretty naive but she's also just oblivious to everything going around around her also most of the plot just hinges on miscommunication between all the characters and all the characters not really talking for any good reason and our main character also hates Buffy which I think makes sense of her character but is a pretty poor choice if you're writing a series that really has to be read by people who spent 7 seasons with Buffy and know why she made the decision she made so overall I don't think of it this book that's really for me and I will not continue with this series at all the next book I read was vengeful by ve Schwab this was for the potions owl this was also a booktube SF Award nominee for the fantasy know for the science fiction category and was my April book pick for patreon so every month my patreon supporters get to vote in a poll and a book that I'll read and review that month and this was chosen for April so if you are interested in voting in my TBR and really participating in my channel and deciding things that I'll do I will leave my patreon on the screen I have a read a full review and discussion on this so I will link that on the screen this is the sequel to vicious which is many people's favorites this lot of favorites for me as well when I read vicious within the last six months I believe and a vicious to me could have been a standalone I go into depth in my review but I felt like this really missed the mark I am really sick of how the Guru Schwab writes female characters and tears them down and then is like I'm so good about writing people I care just I go into it in my review but this just had pacing issues I didn't like how most of the characters were throwaway I didn't like how I can feel where the plot was going and it wasn't as tight of a plot as vicious was like vicious was so good in every way and this was a lot more meandering and wasted a lot of the book doing things just to get certain characters together and I could see what it was doing and yeah so I still enjoyed reading this this is still fast paced I still like the world I like some of the character interactions and such there's still some really good characters in here but I gave this three point five to three point seven five stars enjoyable but does it need to be a series I don't think so then tome top will start it so all these books are tome Topol books as well as whatever else that they qualify us so the first book i read for tome Topol was a foundry side by robert jackson Bennett this is also my charms owl this is the first book in an adult fantasy series that follows her main character of Sasha and she is a thief but she has some special abilities in which in this world there are different magics where you kind of inscribe magic into an object and it makes it do other things so it's kind of like that's the version of technology that's magic and its called striving and that's how you control objects and such she is able to listen to not only those kinds of objects but then any object really so if she's climbing a wall she knows where all of the like marks where she can climb a bar if there's a loose spot or anything like that so pretty powerful ability for a thief to have she doesn't really know why she has this ability and she was test butt and she isn't asked to go and steal some package but just not look at what she's stealing and everything kind of goes from there this book was so much fun I obviously got an arc of this last year when it first came out and put it off because I figured I was gonna like it but I just wanted to have the time to love it and I really enjoyed so much about this I have a review coming up for this so look forward to that but this was so enjoyable in every way I love the world the world is so much fun in the city that this takes place in there are a bunch of merchants houses and they control all that magic that I talked about like they have the people that can make that magic that everyone else outside of those houses lives basically in squalor and the setting for this just was like so atmospheric the magic was so cool also the band of characters that you get to follow seem like they're gonna be trophy but they aren't like they are based on cool tropes that like a lot of people enjoy but instead of following those tropes to the tee they are their own unique complex spin and the plot was very fast-paced as well I highly enjoyed this and I gave it 5 out of 5 stars this was also a booktube SFF Award nominee for the fantasy category another book for Tom Topol that I read was muse of nightmares by Laini Taylor this also fits the care of magical creatures category for the owls and is a booktube SFF Award nominee this is a pretty popular series on booktube so i'm not going to go into it because this picks up right after the first book strange the dreamer and if you know anything about that then you know kind of where that picks up I was not a huge fan of strange dreamer I liked it but I didn't love it as much as the rest of booktube seems to so I was very about going into this book I just didn't really feel like reading it and for some reason I didn't pick up the physical copy thankfully I liked the audiobook version so this I listened to an audio and I was having a much better time with it this I'm also doing a review on so look forward to that but I just enjoyed the plot of this more I really like Helene e-tailer dives into war and trauma and I didn't focus as much for me on the romance elements of it which was a lot of what I had a problem with in the first book so while that was still present it was easier for me to just kind of ignore in favor a lot of the other world things that are going on really like the worlds that Laini Taylor creates an allure that she creates and her really good focus on war and trauma and especially in this book recovery from trauma so I definitely enjoyed this still because of someone like the romance stuff and whatever wasn't quite 5 out of 5 stars for me but this was four out of five stars and I did like it better than strange the dreamer then my last book I read during tome Topol was obsidian by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman this was also the arrhythmia CL and this is the third book in the illuminate trilogy so again this picks up after the events of the first two books I am going to be doing a review on this book as well I loved illuminae so much I gave it 5 out of 5 stars is very unexpected for me I was very connected to it Gemini I found to be a bit of a disappointment and obsidian continued to be a disappointment so this book I was very little about it was still fun fast paced and I could read about two days based on the format and just everything but I found that it repeated a lot of the same things that happened in the first two books so I continued to use a lot of like tricks and twists that we've already seen so I knew what they were gonna do with them so I wasn't really on the edge of my seat or really connected to the characters anymore I also don't love how some of the characters are written I feel like there's a certain level with some of the characters of like hey there are fellow youth because this is being written by an adult and you could just be like that that's not how kids even kids in the future in space would act it's like this is how kids behind America in like 2008 like it was just a lot of that and yeah I just was really disappointed in this conclusion I thought that this was gonna maybe make up for gemenon kind of go back to what I loved about illuminae but unfortunately illuminae was so unique and fun and I enjoyed the character so much and then the next two books were so similar that it wasn't new and interesting and unique anymore so I gave this one 2.5 out of 5 stars I enjoyed it at times like it was still kind of fun but I've forgotten about it since I don't feel like it really had enough time and it just used a lot of the same things like I said so there's a lot of things that really annoyed me about it so I'll be doing like I said a full review on this coming up later the next book I read was thirsty by Madeline Miller this was for the ancient runes owl and this was also a booktube SFF Award nominee and this is a retelling or an expansion of the story of Cersei who is one of the challenges that Odysseus faces in the Iliad on his way back home to Ithaca but you don't really know much about Cersei in that story and in this it really expands her story she is the daughter of a Titan she therefore is a Titan herself they kind of use Titan and God interchangeably and that's kind of found like Greek mythology works too because there were guys that were Titans and then they birth other gods and those guys like condemned the Titans and all the wars that all the stuff because there's all this stuff going on in Greek mythology metal and Miller also wrote the song of Achilles so she just really likes that time period and that history and those myths and I don't know why I put this one off because she does it just as well in this book she really expands on all the people that Circe might have come in contact with all the different guys she's really good about showing how like manipulative and evil a lot of the gods are and the background of our stories and like who makes history and what is told and she does really good job about morally great characters but not in a way where you feel like the morally gray characters are patting themselves on the back too much and just the complexity of people and tragedy her books are like very tragic and even going them to me like I know this is gonna be tough but you're like you keep waiting for something good to happen but I loved this I'm very attached to Circe as a character I want to be in the Witch of I aya but not live her life but I really enjoy like a lot of the lines that were set about femininity and womanhood and all of this stuff it's so good I'm gonna be doing a full review on it I don't know if going to be able to articulate just much I really did enjoy this book and how much I enjoyed the story I also really recommend the audiobook the narrator's really beautiful voice and really well-done and just really like evoked that feeling of this character and the thing she was going through so obviously after all my gushing you guys know it I gave it a five out of five stars and if you're keeping track you will have noticed that all of the books that I have read for the fantasy category for the booktube SFF awards so there's the adult fantasy that's gray sister by Marc Lowrance Foundry side by Robert Jackson Bennet and Cersei by Madeline Miller I've rated all of them five stars so when it comes to award shows season I'm not sure what I'm gonna do the next book that I read was unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner and this is for the divination owl as well and this follows two characters who are on in this new world this new alien planet in the future earth is facing a crisis that like global warming and all this environmental crises and this alien planet has been revealed as a place that might have the answers to Earth's crisis well one of the characters if there is a bit of a like thief Tomb Raider scavenger whatever you would want to call her and she is there to collect tech in order to make money the other character is a scholar and he is there to study the place and they end up having to team up as an unlikely parent everything goes on from there I almost towards the beginning of this dnf'd it I was going to give a hundred pages and I ultimately did but the first hundred pages were really the first like seventy I just was not really feeling it the story was taking a long time to get to where it needed to go and I was really more in it for like the tomb raiding space elements and this book and this is just kind of indicative of the Amie Kaufman megan's but there's other stuff that I've read everyone only one other book but they tend to write these like space romances and there's a lot of focus on the romance and these two characters who just met looking each other and saying thinking how hot the other one is and it's just like is it really that time right now like is this really appropriate timing for that so I found that to be really annoying but once I got to like that the fun puzzles and the like tomb raiding elements that was a lot of fun and it was a really quick read so fun in that way in space and yeah but ultimately I just wasn't really hooked by this I end up giving it two point five out of five stars like right dead in the middle again like some of the other books I've read this month I didn't love it I didn't hate it but I don't think I'll be continuing with the series because of where it left off I feel like the things that I was enjoying about this book aren't going to continue in the second book and this is a duology so I'm kind of an interested I don't plan on continuing with a series then the last book that I read this month was pride by Ibiza boy and this was also for the muggle studies Elle and this is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice that takes place in Brooklyn and the entire cast are people of color mostly mixed-race our main character are like Elizabeth character is a black Haitian but I want to say some Caribbean Dominican so in this story it takes place in Brooklyn and the rich family like mr. Darcy and mr. Bingley are really two brothers part of an african-american family that are wealthy that move into her part of Brooklyn and everything kind of goes from there interests so as a Pride and Prejudice fan this was interesting to read through and see the Pride and Prejudice beats see how different things were switched around and modernized or made more appropriate for these characters and their personalities so that was really fun and it was a quick read and you're set kind of watching the tension everything as the story went along I feel like the second half I didn't enjoy as much I felt like some of the characters were a little inconsistent and I honestly feel like these characters didn't have enough time this is a fairly short book and it follows a lot of the major beats of the story but there's a lot of like plot things that you don't really get to sit with in the story and you don't really get like the significance of and they're kind of a lot more simple I found this retelling to be more simple than I was expecting it to be also the like Lizzy Darcy relationship is a little bit different and that could be cool to some people but for me I was like this doesn't really make sense for like these characters and they're like attraction and I felt like with Lizzy and Darcy there is that kind of like slow burn slowly over time learning to like each other I kind of fell like the Lizzy character hated the Darcy character although up to the end for the most part and still was like against them being together really even in the end so I was like I don't I don't understand like what's going on here so ultimately I also gave this two point five stars because I didn't love it but I didn't hate it there's parts that I found enjoyable it's really fun to read Pride and Prejudice retellings I think this was a lot of fun I liked that this was a diverse retelling so especially for people that want to see more diversity in Pride and Prejudice or would like to see themselves in prejudice I think this is definitely a book that I would recommend but for me I think it needed more time with the things that it was trying to say and for its characters to kind of flourish a bit more so those are all of the books that I read for all the readathons at all of April so I read nine books for the owls which means I got no standing but I noticed I was going over everything the two careers that I picked potentially neurologists I think it was and mind medic I didn't get enough owls for either of those in the right categories but I still got an outstanding just based on number of books read but just the combinations of things that I read happen to not quite work out I think I would have been able to get it if I didn't dnf1 book i dnf'd one of the contemporary books that I was reading but to potentially pick back up but maybe not just wasn't really feeling it if I had to push through that one maybe but I think I also really just ran out of time so nine books total for the whole month and for the owl's read-a-thon three of those also four tome topple and five of those were booktube SFF Award nominees so I was doing all the multitasking with my reading this month and I'm very proud of myself and I hope that that carries over into May so comment down below let me know how your reading month in April went let me know if you participate in any of these readathons as well and how you did and all that so thank you all for watching else the other guys soon bye\n"