Reading Experience: A Mixed Bag of Emotions and Regrets

I started this reading challenge with high hopes and an open mind, eager to dive into new stories and authors. However, as I progressed through the books, I found myself experiencing a mix of emotions, from disappointment to satisfaction. In this article, I'll share my thoughts on each book, including my favorite and least favorite, and how they made me feel.

One of the first books that stood out was "On the Hawk" by Maggie Stiefvater. While I appreciate its unique storyline, I couldn't help but feel that it didn't quite live up to my expectations. It felt like a book that existed solely for the sake of existing, rather than being a well-crafted story with depth and character development. Despite this, I'm glad I read it, as it taught me that sometimes, even if a book doesn't resonate with you, it can still be valuable in other ways.

The next book on my list was "Fountains of Silence" by Ruta Sepetys. This historical fiction novel had me hooked from the start, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the experiences of the protagonist, Maria. The book's educational value was significant, and I appreciated how it made me want to learn more about history and culture that I'm not familiar with. However, I do regret buying this book, as it wasn't really my usual genre, but I'm glad I took a chance on it.

My next review is for "There Will Come a Darkness" by Paul Kingsnorth. Unfortunately, this fantasy novel didn't live up to my expectations. It felt like a familiar tale with some unoriginal twists and turns. The lack of depth in the characters and world-building made it hard for me to become invested in the story. However, I do think that other readers might enjoy this book, especially those who appreciate diverse casts of characters.

The DNF (Did Not Finish) of my list was "The Strange and Beautiful Stars" by Ashley Poston. This novel has been on my shelf for years, but unfortunately, it didn't capture my attention when I finally read it. The writing style felt off-putting to me, and the story itself left me feeling unsettled and disappointed. If you're a fan of this author or enjoy science fiction, you might find this book appealing; however, it wasn't for me.

Last but not least, there's "Honest Delusions" by Nora Roberts. This romance novel was an interesting read, despite my initial hesitation to purchase it. The story had some enjoyable moments, and I appreciate how it explored themes of identity and relationships. However, I did regret buying this book overall, as it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

A Lesson Learned: Purchasing Books Without Hype

One of the most valuable lessons I took away from this reading experience is that purchasing books solely based on hype or preconceived notions can be a recipe for disappointment. In the future, I plan to be more mindful of my book purchases and choose titles that truly interest me. This means reading reviews, checking out author interviews, and seeking recommendations from friends and fellow readers.

Additionally, I've come to appreciate the value of reading books within my comfort zone, even if they're not necessarily "highly rated" or widely popular. Sometimes, exploring new genres or themes can lead to unexpected discoveries and growth as a reader. I'll continue to prioritize finding books that resonate with me, rather than trying to fit into a specific category or following the latest trends.

Final Thoughts

As I wrap up this reading challenge, I'm left with mixed emotions – some disappointment, but also satisfaction and gratitude for the experience. While not every book was a success, each one taught me something about myself as a reader and helped shape my tastes. If you're considering purchasing books solely based on hype or preconceived notions, take heed: it's okay to be cautious and read reviews before committing to a purchase. And if you're feeling uncertain about a title, don't hesitate to abandon ship – there are plenty of wonderful books out there waiting for you.

In conclusion, this reading challenge has been a unique and enlightening experience, forcing me to confront my own biases and preferences as a reader. While not every book was a triumph, I'm grateful for the journey and look forward to continuing to explore new stories and authors in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel in today's video i'm going to be reading five books that i regret buying i feel like the title of this video was pretty self-explanatory at the beginning of this year i sat down and i looked at my physical tbr really hard heart to heart with myself about the books that i have purchased in the past and about the fact that i deeply regret purchasing i would say more than half of the books that i physically own and i am writing those wrongs this year by reading the majority of the books that i physically own and uh you know figuring out if all of these are poor purchases or if maybe there are some gems among the muck so in this video i'm going to be reading five of the books that i physically own and seeing if i truly deeply regret buying these books if there are redeeming qualities in some of these books if you want to see my initial video kind of going through i want to say like 30 books that i regret buying i'll leave a link in the description down below uh today obviously i'm only reading five of those books but uh they run the gamut when it comes to genre and i just i i'm excited to do this i'm excited to endeavor on this path i really think that there are going to be some books that end up surprising us so the five books i'm going to be reading for this video are number one on solutions by noir roberts this is a book about a magician her falling in love or something like that i ended up picking this book up initially because i was going to do a video where i read books that i knew very little about i decided to ditch that video idea but i am going to be reading this book and we're going to see if it's any good next up we have there will come a darkness this is a why fantasy that i had heard was sapphic and that's solely the reason i picked it up will it actually be safic will this be a book that i enjoy i don't know we're going to find out next up we have fountains of silence by rita petties this is a why a historical fiction why i decided that i wanted a historical fiction book on my shelves a book that i purchased i'm pretty sure last year that was another one of those books that i picked up for a video i was like ooh what if i read some historical fiction and like see if i like this i don't like historical fiction okay uh so that purchase was dumb i regret those purchases and uh we're gonna see if this is any good and if this purchase was really uh that regrettable next up we have the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender this is a book that was really really hyped on youtube a couple of years ago i said a couple of years ago many a year ago by some of the bigger creators in this space and it's a book that i probably wouldn't have picked up on my own had i not heard it hyped but i think this is kind of a magical story set in a contemporary setting about a girl with wings or something like that i don't know much more than that i've heard that it is kind of a sweeping family saga as well and then lastly we have called down the hawk by maggie seafatter this is a why a fantasy story again set in a contemporary setting a little bit magical i know there's a word for it but i can't for the life of me think of what that word is and this is a continuation kind of spin-off series kind of of the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater i really liked the raven boys that like those first initial three books were great the fourth one didn't end great and i've heard that this series kind of picks up where the last left off but i kind of wish that like that one had just been the wrap up so will this one be good will i stay firm in my regret of buying it i'm not quite sure we're gonna find out here in this video today so let's go ahead and hop into the vlog portion of this video so i've picked up my first book for this video i'm 40 into call down the hawk by maggie stiefvater despite initially regretting picking this book up and uh you know purchasing it in the first place i'm actually not hating it and i feel like i have lots of thoughts and feelings so call down the hawk is the first book in a new i want to say trilogy and it's supposed to be sort of a continuation of the raven boys series uh a spin-off but also kind of a continuation i will be honest with you whenever i heard that this book was coming out i wasn't that excited about it i definitely bought into the hype that's why i own the book in the first place and while i did really enjoy the raven boys uh as a series ultimately really disappointed in that fourth book because it didn't answer all of the questions that i felt like needed to be answered to wrap up the series as a whole i feel like this book is actually answering a lot of the questions that were left lingering in that fourth book and while i wish to be honest that all those questions had been answered in that fourth book and that there wasn't another series i'm actually not upset about reading this so this book obviously follows ronan and his two brothers i want to say declan and matthew for some reason i want to call him max but i'm pretty sure his name's matthew ronan at the beginning of this story is kind of trying to figure out what to do with his life um as the people around him are kind of figuring out what they're doing everybody seems to have a plan he doesn't really have one ronan is obviously one of the main characters in that first series if you don't really know anything about that series i don't think i'll be spoiling anything but be kind of talking about the other series so ronan at the beginning of the story ends up going and visiting adam his boyfriend and i think that's been the most interesting thing to me so far is seeing the interactions between ronan and adam and seeing how adam at harvard is really a different person but how he is i think leaning into the person he's always wanted to be now that he's out from underneath the shadow of his wealthier and maybe more successful outwardly friends it's really interesting seeing how that is contrasting with ronan who seems to be kind of stuck in the past especially with a lot of the dreaming i guess that he has going on ronan is again trying to kind of figure out his life and he's also dealing with the consequences of being a dreamer being a dreamer in the context of this world means that when you have a dream at night you typically bring things back from the dream world you can dream people you can dream animals uh just a ton of different things and this can be sort of detrimental to the dreamers and to the people around them right like waking up to a bed full of live crabs maybe not the best thing ever the book as a whole i think is trying to do a thing where it's answering some questions and also raising new questions the i think general crux of the book beyond these sort of like interpersonal struggles or uh internal struggles i guess of the characters of each of the separate lynch brothers idea that dreamers are a class of people ronan is not the only person who dreams neither is his father instead there are a bunch of different people who have different sorts of dreams and bring different things back from their dreams and there is like a whole host of people an organization of people who are trying to eliminate dreamers because they i don't know why we're trying to eliminate dreamers to be honest i haven't really understood that until this point but we're getting the pov of someone who is in leagues with i guess the dreamer assassins and we're also getting the pov of another dreamer so there's a lot of new point of views here and initially i won't lie i was a little bit confused what was going on i was like i don't really understand what the happening i did pull up summary of the story not a summary but like a but a chapter by chapter kind of summary to kind of re-explain some things that i already read and that really really helped so now i feel like i'm really enmesh in the world and definitely get what's going on the writing is typical maggie stiefvater i will say the writing is definitely a double-edged sword in that it is really beautiful prose and i'm appreciating a lot of the metaphor included but at the same time it is not helping when the subject matter of the story is a little bit ephemeral having this writing that feels a little bit flowery is kind of making it difficult to understand like what's happening versus like what's a dream and like what the actual plot of the book is once i googled i was like oh that's what's happening okay i'm also in kind of a weird situation because on the one hand i can appreciate that this book is answering questions the other hand i do regret buying this book because i don't think for me personally it was necessary to continue on with the series and to figure out what's happening to these characters i mean it's nice to revisit characters that i do enjoy and i don't think that the plot of this book is stupid or not well done so i guess that's good but i'm just kind of like did this need to exist and do i need to be reading it despite it being good i don't know i was fully expecting this one and fountains of silence fountain of silence to be the two books that i was like really not into and this one's actually going pretty well i don't see myself reading this less than three stars which is really good in my books for a book i regret buying i'm not hating it last night i ended up finishing call down the hawk and uh this was a three star read which i think is good all things considered i will say my enjoyment of the story definitely started going down at the 50 mark simply because it ended up becoming a little too convoluted for my taste the whole idea of the series is really focused on dreams and the weird that comes out of dreams yes i appreciate that it's a little bit grounded in reality in the sense again there is this like group of people trying to bring down these dreamers but the majority of the end of the book is a wild ride of confusing twists and turns and i think if you're someone who really really loves the writing of maggie stiefter i think you'll really enjoy this book i think this is definitely her i don't want to say strongest work to date but it definitely showcases her strength which is her writing she's really good at crafting these interesting complex worlds i think and in really getting you to feel a sense of place and to feel what's going on around your characters maybe not emotionally but in terms of the i guess scenery and and the weird things that happen in the dream so it's a tough one for me because on the one hand i i think i do regret buying it ultimately but on the other hand i'm not actually upset that i read this and i'm glad that i actually gave this series a chance i won't be continuing on with the series because i don't really care that much about this particular plot line and this continuation of the story however i can appreciate that it is not unnecessary let's move on to something that is really really taking me by surprise in a positive way fountains of silence this book is set in spain after the second world war and it follows a cast full of characters dealing with the fallout from world war ii admittedly i don't know that much about spain in general as a country and their history but i especially specifically don't know very much about the fascism i guess you could say that this country was facing after that world war so this book follows our two main characters i would say there's some other additional characters the two main characters are daniel and julia and julia at the start of the story is working at a hilton hotel and she is living with her sister i think her sister's husband and they are trying to save up so they can go and move to i want to say the countryside or something and really have better lives because they are living pretty much in poverty and just trying to make it through in these sort of shitty circumstances that they're being dealt immediately being dropped into this world i was i say world as if this is something that didn't happen immediately we're dropped into this time and this place and admittedly i was super ignorant about what spain was like after you know world war ii and immediately i was like okay i'm interested i really want to see where this goes then we get introduced to daniel who is a boy from texas and he dreams of being a journalist his experience in his lens is that of um kind of a privileged boy his family i want to say are like oil barons pretty wealthy family pretty well to do his mom is spanish his father i don't think is but they come to spain for a couple of different reasons and daniel while he's there is making his mission to take pictures to win a journalism competition to hopefully win a prize which would be money to allow him to go to journalism school instead of going to texas a m to learn um oil stuff so daniel and julia cross paths because daniel is staying at the same hotel that julia works at and he kind of gets to see what spain is really like through julia's eyes additionally we have a third character who i honestly can't remember the name of but she is a girl working at an orphanage and we are finding out that things that are happening at this orphanage are definitely not good i don't think the children are being abused but i think that children in spain are being kidnapped from their families kind of sold off to the highest bidder and or sold off to these proper spanish families and every part of this book is interesting to me i don't know why i thought that i wouldn't like this i mean i do but i don't it's kind of reminding me in some ways of four wins by kristin hannah in that it is a time period that i'm quite unfamiliar with and i want to continue reading not because no offense i care that much about the plight of these characters but because i want to learn more about this time period and the things that were happening to people in this time period not to say that adding a personal human touch with main characters is a bad thing but for me what really draws me in is again this time period that i just really don't think about much and i didn't really learn much even in my history classes want to keep reading this book i had plans today actually to read another book to finish a romance and and post a video tomorrow but instead all i want to do is finish this book and i couldn't be more surprised frankly and liking this book i would be surprised if i rated the slower than like a four star which i never thought i'd say about a why a historical fiction book but something about it's compelling i will say my only real critique of this book the only thing that i'm not absolutely loving is the fact that at times especially at the beginning of the book it feels like we are being read a textbook rather than being put in the shoes of our main characters and i do think it's nice seeing the world through the lens of characters that you can relate to because that's i think a really good way to experience history and to really like empathize and understand what people are going through but i think at the beginning of the story you're kind of like getting weird glimpses into people's lives and it doesn't feel like actual personal experience it just feels like um you're reading yeah like a textbook that's irritating and i do sometimes get like flashbacks or like glimpses into that sometimes the writing can fall back into that but for the most part i am i am rooting for the characters even if like i'm not amazed by the characters um i care enough about them to see what happens i am curious to see if daniel you know gets into his journalism program i am hoping that julia gets to have the life she deserves and i'm hoping that this girl in the orphanage uncovers some and is able to make meaningful change probably won't happen but like i'm hoping so i'm gonna continue reading this book i'm gonna finish it and i will update you tomorrow morning on it i finished the fountains of silence last night and this was really phenomenal i ended up giving it four stars and i'm kind of surprised honestly these first two books have taken me by surprise in the best possible way and this one really i think might be the standout of the entire video which is kind of astounding to me as i definitely predicted this to be like the worst one or the one that i was going to like the least but the elements of this book came together so beautifully it's exactly the kind of way that i like the story to be told if that makes sense so the book kind of starts out and i think i talked about it a little bit with a few different characters we have daniel we have anna not julia i don't know why i kept calling her julia there is a character named julia in the story um i think she is the sister of anna anyway we have a bunch of different characters doing a bunch of different random things and as the story kind of like comes together and reaches a peak we realize that all of these characters are tied to this one specific thing which is um specifically the lost children i don't know what the name like the official name is i guess of these children who were kidnapped by the political party at the time but essentially i cannot remember the names of two political parties i know one of them was the republicans they're the ones that were out of favor and then there was like the fascists right the fascists end up kidnapping the children of the republicans and selling them their people i guess selling them to the fascists selling them to americans selling them to just other people in general the story really heavily deals with that and at the beginning of the story you really think it's just going to be a story about fascism in general a story about franco's regime but it really does evolve into something that definitely focuses heavily on this one particular topic which is these children wow i i mean it just came together so well it was very well done and you do end up really growing to care about the characters my only real critique of the story to be honest is that i think i don't want to say focused on the wrong people but i would have liked to see a more satisfying conclusion at the end of the book we realized that there were some like twins essentially separated at birth and it would have been really cool to get to see those twins reunited i don't know if that would have been like too cheesy to end the book but i feel like that would have been a really nice conclusion wrap up to the story i didn't actually end up caring that much about daniel and anna's relationship like i mean it was nice seeing them you know get together but i really cared more about like the surrounding cast of characters so i think that was just like a me thing i mean this book just doesn't mean by surprise i think if you don't know anything about spain in this time period and you are willing to like step outside of your comfort zone and pick up historical fiction or why a in general i think this is really well done yeah i'm pleased to finish this i think that uh this is not a book that i would have picked up off of my shelves very willingly kind of regret buying it i don't know if i'll keep it on my shelves because i don't see myself revisiting it but it was really fantastic so i'm not i'm really not upset that i i read it and i learned something new so i mean that's all i can really ask for the next book that i have started is one that i thought that i had a bigger chance of liking i'm not enjoying so i feel like this this video is just telling me maybe i just don't know my tastes as well as i think that i do but i'm like 20ish percent into there will come in darkness and this book is kind of taking me by surprise for some reason i thought this was saffic and i don't know why i necessarily thought that uh it definitely is giving me a male male relationship vibes not female females so like whatever it's fine i'm not too upset about it it is queer at the very least um this story follows five different characters and they are all dealing with the fallout of like different things in their kingdom and lives i don't even really know how to like describe this book i mean i'm getting exhausted thinking about it because i'm exhausted reading it because i don't really care about it that much okay um so i'm not gonna get into the details because it would spoil the book in general and i just feel like i'm not good at talking about fantasy right and i think that's uh probably because i'm not a fantasy review channel but this book follows five different characters we have hassan who i believe is the prince of this kingdom but someone else is like usurped the throne so he's not really in charge at the moment we also have a chick who murders people with their blood so that her sister can stay alive or something like that we have a guy who is a gambler we have uh some other characters i can't remember the names of right at this very moment oh we have a guy who's like kind of um part of an in order i don't know if it's like a military order or if it's like a religious order i can't really tell it seems like maybe a mix of both a lot going on i feel like i'm getting info dumped a lot of things is my issue i feel like i'm not invested in any of the characters and granted i'm only 20 in maybe all girls really like the characters but i don't think that's the case i really feel like i am bored mix of crows didn't feel info dumpy like this and i think that's what this book is typically compared to because it is a multi i was gonna say dual pov multi-pov story but um not loving it uh and i really don't see myself updating you multiple times about this book to be honest i i think i'm just gonna like try to speed through it and like pray it improves okay my friends many developments i have finished there will come a darkness and i have also just dnf'd another book as if i've dnf'd any books up until this point i dnf'd book so that means we only have one book left which is mind-blowing and also exciting let's talk about the things first okay there will come a darkness i was massively disappointed by i think for me i expected a different book going into this and i don't know what other book i was thinking of when i purchased this book but for some reason i was thinking this was going to be sapphic i thought this was going to be like enemies to lovers and or like a little science fictiony so i'm definitely i was definitely thinking of a different book when i picked this one up that just goes to show being a little bit more strategic with buying the books is smart right like i i was just buying things based off of hype and not even really looking at the synopsis before buying books so do i regret buying this one massively it's not that this book was terrible it's that this book really is not something that is new or exciting i think it definitely is a book that a lot of people could enjoy and it's certainly one that is following i would say this slightly newer trend in the y fantasy space i don't know if it's like the newest trend because i'm not really keeping up with y fantasy at the moment but it really feels like a few other books that i've read in some ways this kind of reminds me of cannot remember the name of the book but i will insert a picture of it right here it kind of reminds me of that just in a different setting if you liked that book i think you actually might like this one too if you want to like hire fantasy world so i briefly touched on what this book is about and i'll try i guess to kind of like talk a little bit about it um so we can move on but basically in this world there are a population of people called the grace and they are people with powers and the big bad the villain in this world wants to i guess eliminate the people who do have powers there's also prophets that have abandoned the people now there's going to be some sort of like age of darkness unless this person who is foretold in the final prophecy like comes to save the world in some ways it kind of reminds me of the stormlight archive series by brandon sanderson and also kind of reminds me of again that kind of popular white fantasy book right here that i think a lot of people enjoyed i think my issue here is that i felt like it was kind of info dumpy it didn't really feel like anything new and i didn't really love any of the characters i kind of liked the female assassin what's her name like afira or something like that overall this is just not really my kind of book i say that as if i'm not going to be picking up six of crows for a reread in september but i just feel like for me yea fantasy kind of all seems to run together and i think that's not necessarily uh the fault of the genre or anything i think that authors write to whatever is most marketable and i think that a lot of why a readers would like a story like this it's just not really for me i'm a romance reader we get it moving on to the book that i dnf'd the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender i'll insert a picture of the actual cover right here um wow i really wanted to give this an honest shot i started reading it physically and actually i really like the typeface in this book i think it's actually kind of pretty but i wasn't really drawn in by the words on the page themselves right i decided to pick up the audiobook instead an audiobook totally pleasing listening experience like very fine to listen to i was fully tuned in i was playing tetris on my computer which is like focus mode for me like i am paying attention i'm not scrolling instagram i'm not getting distracted i am paying attention to this book i wish i weren't to be honest this book is really bizarre it is supposed to be this kind of like sweeping family saga at the beginning of the story we have our main character eva being born and she is born with a full set of bird wings and everybody's like oh this is so bizarre this is so weird and we get thrown into the past where we get to learn the history i want to say of her great grandmother or great-great-grandmother we get to see some of her family members dying in sort of tragic and mysterious ways we get to see kind of the weird workings i guess you could say of love and sex that's really where my issue with this book lies this is a why a contemporary novel to my knowledge actually you know what let me fact check according to goodreads it is a young adult book let me know if this book was marketed incorrectly or if i'm missing something but from my knowledge to my knowledge this is technically a why a title not only do i not really care obviously about a sweeping family saga that's obviously that's just not my thing it's not my thing it's never been my thing it will never probably be my thing kind of callous ways that people die in this book that was upsetting to me and the way that sex was talked about was so weird to me i have read many a y a title in my day i am old the handling of sex in this book is bizarre to me it does not feel like a why a title and it's not like this book is overly graphic it's not like this book is one that is addressing sexual assault head-on and is trying to like teach a moral um sort of lesson about that either it's just i i can't put into words how strange it is i had to dnf this book at the point and this is not even like the first weird uh circumstance this happens if the characters i guess his mother passes away when he is quite young he stays in bed with her deceased corpse for a few days until it starts smelling which is weird and then he immediately goes and like works on a farm or something and since he looks older than he really is um you know he's able to get jobs and like sustain himself but then he is essentially come on to by the owner of the establishment the the woman that owns the place that he's staying and he's like oh my god i'm 13 don't do this it feel gross obviously clearly the way that those scenes are handled in this book really felt out of pocket to me uh and again maybe i'm missing something but i feel like i was promised with this book magical tale that's like a little bit heartbreaking i was picturing something like a million jones by emily henry something where it's like star-crossed lovers and you know they couldn't be together because she has these weird wings or something like that with some sort of family trauma in the background right but that's not really how the story is told it just felt like trauma for the sole purpose of trauma in in this book multiple times over for multiple characters multiple generations i guess you could say that that's the point of the book or i haven't gotten to the point of the book yet but this i feel like was another circumstance where too much time has passed since purchasing this book incorrectly assumed certain things about a story before going into it and then i'm left ultimately disappointed when picking it up and it doesn't live up to the expectations or the summary that i have of the book in my head and i feel like this happens quite often and i think it's not only something that is tied to whether or not i regret buying a book or buying a book without really reading the synopsis i think sometimes a book can be talked about so many times by so many different people on the internet before we get to it that we have again these expectations in our head of what this book is going to be and maybe sometimes that's unfair or the explanations that people are giving are not incorrect but are leading us into a false sense of what the book is actually about and how we're going to feel about it and i think that that is definitely definitely the case with this one this is a book that i have had on my tbr since 2017 since before even starting a youtube channel i'm pretty sure that i bought this off of the recommendation of hannah because i think that she really enjoys this book and i'm not saying that her recommendation was poor and that she shouldn't recommend this book but it was something that i wasn't expecting personally and i feel like the things that i didn't like about this book are things that aren't talked about often i feel like i have heard that salt is definitely a part of the story but i just didn't expect it to pop up in the way that it did yeah i don't know i just like also i'm not really in the market for a sad story so i guess that's on me and like my taste in books but i feel very confident in dnfing this book i sincerely um do regret purchasing this book even when i did purchase this i think i knew that this wasn't my kind of story but it was like okay like maybe this is outside of my comfort zone and other people again like it and like i recommended it and i trust these people but sometimes we need to trust ourselves i think is the lesson here being said um i shouldn't trust myself because i'm picking up honest delusions by nora roberts next this is the final book for this video the final book that i regret buying and you know what i'm gonna take the half price book sticker off of this so we can really put a gander at this beautiful cover with this butterfly she is something i didn't get much of an opportunity to read last night but i have been flying through honest illusions this morning obviously i'm in my pj's so i'm moving a little slowly in other parts of my life but it's fine because i've gotten 170 pages into this 500 page book roxy is our heroine and our hero is luke and i for some reason thought this was only going to be a single pov story it was all going to be from roxy's point of view but the majority of the beginning of this book is actually luke's point of view and how he comes into roxy's life in the first place so roxy is the daughter of like this world i say world renowned of this pretty talented magician named max he has a woman in his life named lily who also travels with him and his daughter roxy and roxy is learning the tricks of the trade also max is a jewel thief that's kind of how he keeps his life afloat and or like has investments going so that his daughter can go to college and things like that the start of the story we meet luke luke is a little boy who ends up meeting roxy and her dad at this carnival they are traveling they own the carnival apparently and this is one of the places that max ends up doing his magic routines and luke is a little boy trying to pickpocket people at the carnival uh he ends up getting caught by backs and max ends up taking him under his wing and ends up basically adding him to the family he's a few years older than roxy i want to say he's like 12 at the start of the story and we get to kind of see the life of these traveling people through the eyes of a young boy they do end up landing back in new orleans which is where i think their like home base is but they you know travel often to perform these magic shows and um it's kind of heartwarming actually seeing how luke enters into the family and how he gets taken under max's wing gets mothered by lily and basically gets the life that he always really deserved he was abused growing up and so it's nice seeing him start to trust people there are people that come in and out of the lives of the magicians there's a guy named sam who comes into everybody's life and he's kind of a bad guy and that's their first run-in with being scammed themselves even though they are scammers at this point in the book we are aged forward and luke and roxy are i think like 17 and 20 or something like that and we are becoming privy to the fact that there might be a little bit of a life with derek situation going on we've had one encounter actually just stopped at the encounter between roxy and luke there's definitely this like built up sexual tension there they definitely have some feelings for each other unexplored feelings and i don't know how i feel about that aspect of the book the writing up until this point has been surprisingly good the prologue of this book was in the present day where we have roxy like having her own show and luke comes to visit her and there's this like dramatic moment and i was like okay is this book gonna be as corny as that opening so far despite the subject matter it hasn't been that corny it has a nice found family theme i like getting to see these two um grow up i don't know it's it's tough because i like seeing them grow up together but i'm also like i'm supposed to root for them romantically i mean it was a different time when this book was written it was like 1992. but you know what's wild to me this was a book of the month selection 1992. i didn't know that book of the month had been around since the 1920s but that's um very very fascinating and apparently this was up to snap for book of the month so i don't know i don't know what i don't really know what to say about this story except for i'm enjoying it it's definitely something that i wouldn't have picked up on my own but it is something that definitely feels like a traditional romance i think this is kind of reminding me in some ways of that kristen becca richie series that also focuses on like a cirque du soleil sort of situation i think the close quarters close proximity definitely is uh fun definitely fun to explore i i don't think childhood friends to lovers is necessarily bad but i do think it's a little strange having max call the kids his kids i mean roxy and luke don't call each other like brother and sister or anything but max is like oh my two children so i don't know i don't know this book is so silly okay let me grab it so you can actually see what i'm talking about lest you forget that we're reading a book about a magician and her con man man okay so roxanne and luke have officially gotten together and no one seems to be like concerned about this if anything everybody's like really excited for them they're like surrogate mother lily lily isn't roxanne's mother by the way roxanne's mom died of appendicitis a while ago lily is like super jazzed that they're having sex on this cruise ship part of their traveling i guess led them to perform on a cruise ship and it's there that they like run into sam again sam just like keeps popping up in random circumstances and it's like okay sure these people kind of they didn't even do do sam wrong sam's the guy that they like kind of took under their wing and he betrayed them or whatever like one of the random people that has like come to like be in the carnival or whatever we scammed some of max and luke and roxanne's like friends and so they kicked sam out whatever so sam keeps coming back into their lives and uh he like threatens luke a lot so anyway they're on this cruise ship and sam is there with his like new wife and they're like oh cool we can like scam them out of money luke eventually starts getting blackmailed by sam and he ends up disappearing during one of these like jewel heists and this is kind of a problem because roxanne's pregnant with his baby and what i'm assuming is gonna happen is that like she has this kid he has no idea and then like years later he comes back and like that's where we're picking up the prologue like the prologue she's mad at him it doesn't want anything to do with him and so i'm like at part three of this book and it seems like that's what it is his five-year vanishing act was over so he abandoned his girlfriend and the baby for five years granted i don't think he knew she was pregnant but like i don't know what is it with him in blackmailers he gets blackmailed by someone else earlier in the story and i know that he had kind of like a rough upbringing and he doesn't want the world to know about it because like he has a reputation for himself or whatever so he ends up paying like his ex stepped out like 50 000 over the course of a year or something to like make sure he doesn't you know get found out then i guess sam's kind of doing the same thing i don't know man like making idiotic decisions my good my good sir like let's let's try to make smarter ones and i can't imagine that lily and max are too pleased with the fact that their surrogate son has left their daughter behind um and their grandkid i don't know to see what happens but i don't think this is as like fun as i thought that it was going to be it's definitely too long like this book is 500 pages and i feel like even though it is sort of like the sweeping saga and we get a lot of insight into the like different aspects of their lives i feel like i would have preferred it if it were some flashbacks to the past and then sub in the present day and not just like so much time i don't know it's just too long and now we only have like this much of the book for there to be this like satisfying conclusion and i just don't feel like i'm gonna be very satisfied with this guy who abandons again his girlfriend child it's like even if you didn't know she was pregnant you'll have had unprotected sex this entire time i didn't see mention of condoms so anyway i'll finish it and let you know how i don't know how to feel about this book i feel like i haven't really been you know saying oh i think this is gonna be a three or four i don't know i don't know because this book is kind of weird but like it's fine it's not great i don't know the sex scenes are kind of cringy but i do like the way norah roberts builds sexual attention it's definitely a slow burn because they didn't get together until like i don't know a while into this longest book so no this one's weird this one's real weird finishing out a video on my pajamas it does sound like something i would do okay i finished honest delusions i don't know this was a really weird one just in general i mean i knew it was a weird book going into it cover the description it being like a 90s romance this romance is older than me too wow okay interesting what to say what what to feel what to think i think my issue is that um well this man left his wife or not wife his girlfriend and um unborn child that's kind of not great even if he didn't know about the child but i think my bigger issue is that whenever he comes back into their lives she acts like nothing really happened and he proposes like a way to get back at the guy who like blackmailed him um by basically blackmailing him blackmailing him i don't know framing him for something luke and roxanne end up teaming up to put a bunch of stolen jewels into sam's house and to frame sam for it i think he's running for like senator or president or something like that of tennessee but they basically ruined this guy's life which i mean is fair since he kind of up no i just feel like things wrapped up a little too nicely and at the end of the book everything is very chummy and we have the son nathaniel the like little four-year-old calling dad daddy even though uh he hasn't been in his life for very long it felt like a lot of things were a little too convenient and i guess that was kind of just the name of the book in general like if you read this book everything still feels very convenient a little bit cheesy and i mean it was an enjoyable read i wasn't upset about this i definitely took it by surprise but i do think that i regret this purchase i mean in some ways i'm glad that i read it because like i feel like i haven't actually finished nora roberts before tried to read some of her other books and just haven't gotten through them um but this one was like interesting i would be interested to pick up more from her in the future so i don't know how i feel about this video in general um this is definitely one of the strangest i read fives i've ever done in terms of uh maybe subject matter also just outcome so i guess let's like briefly go through the books and i'll kind of like tell you my final thoughts so the first book that we read was called on the hawk by maggie stiefvater even though i don't think this book really needed to exist i do think it was kind of a fresh and new story in this universe and while i do deeply regret buying this book i am not mad that i read it and i think that's kind of the running theme here kind of the same thing with fountains of silence this book i genuinely enjoyed i gave it four stars it was a really good time maybe not a good time it was very educational and i'm glad that i read it though i do regret buying it because i'm not really a historical fiction girly i do think this book kind of makes me want to jump outside of my comfort zone more often though especially when it comes to books with subject matters that i don't typically read about because i did learn something i do find this book was valuable to me and while i probably won't be keeping any of the books that i read for this video this one i could maybe see myself keeping the next book that i read i think was easily my least favorite there will come a darkness this is why a fantasy book that i really thought that i was going to enjoy but sadly um it just it wasn't really for me and i think that's just because this book felt like a lot of other whitey fantasies i've read before and it felt a little bit too service level a little too shallow for me being said i don't think this is a bad book and i do think that other people might really enjoy this one especially since i think there are a good diverse cast of characters we have some queer characters as well which is pretty nice overall this just like wasn't this wasn't for me next the the dnf here the strange and beautiful stars of a lavender this one i am glad that i read because i have owned it for forever at this point but this is not a book that i would recommend to people i don't really see the value in it granted i didn't finish it so maybe there is value um later on maybe this is a book that really connects with people but i feel like the way this book was written just wasn't really that appropriate for a y audience and it just left me feeling deeply unsettled so wouldn't really recommend it then lastly we have honest delusions by nora roberts this one again like three stars it was interesting it was something i regret buying it i will be unhauling it you know it is what it is now i don't know that there was really a point to this video except for sometimes you buy books sometimes you regret buying those books and yet sometimes i guess they turn out teaching you important lessons about your reading taste and how you should purchase books in the future i feel like going forward i will not be purchasing books that i would just pick up at random for a video concept that i may or may not carry out i will not be picking up books based purely on hype say as if i didn't purchase magnolia parks recently i'm gonna do better okay i have been doing better i haven't really bought books this year so you know i think some lessons have been learned i am going to continue to read my physical backlist to maybe punish myself a little bit for uh my poor decisions anyway um hopefully this is in some way entertaining i i am actually feeling pretty positive about this experience i hope that comes off in the footage even if some of the books weren't great um i had a good time doing this i am i'm surprised at the outcome here but um thanks so much for watching love you so much and until next timehello welcome back to my channel in today's video i'm going to be reading five books that i regret buying i feel like the title of this video was pretty self-explanatory at the beginning of this year i sat down and i looked at my physical tbr really hard heart to heart with myself about the books that i have purchased in the past and about the fact that i deeply regret purchasing i would say more than half of the books that i physically own and i am writing those wrongs this year by reading the majority of the books that i physically own and uh you know figuring out if all of these are poor purchases or if maybe there are some gems among the muck so in this video i'm going to be reading five of the books that i physically own and seeing if i truly deeply regret buying these books if there are redeeming qualities in some of these books if you want to see my initial video kind of going through i want to say like 30 books that i regret buying i'll leave a link in the description down below uh today obviously i'm only reading five of those books but uh they run the gamut when it comes to genre and i just i i'm excited to do this i'm excited to endeavor on this path i really think that there are going to be some books that end up surprising us so the five books i'm going to be reading for this video are number one on solutions by noir roberts this is a book about a magician her falling in love or something like that i ended up picking this book up initially because i was going to do a video where i read books that i knew very little about i decided to ditch that video idea but i am going to be reading this book and we're going to see if it's any good next up we have there will come a darkness this is a why fantasy that i had heard was sapphic and that's solely the reason i picked it up will it actually be safic will this be a book that i enjoy i don't know we're going to find out next up we have fountains of silence by rita petties this is a why a historical fiction why i decided that i wanted a historical fiction book on my shelves a book that i purchased i'm pretty sure last year that was another one of those books that i picked up for a video i was like ooh what if i read some historical fiction and like see if i like this i don't like historical fiction okay uh so that purchase was dumb i regret those purchases and uh we're gonna see if this is any good and if this purchase was really uh that regrettable next up we have the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender this is a book that was really really hyped on youtube a couple of years ago i said a couple of years ago many a year ago by some of the bigger creators in this space and it's a book that i probably wouldn't have picked up on my own had i not heard it hyped but i think this is kind of a magical story set in a contemporary setting about a girl with wings or something like that i don't know much more than that i've heard that it is kind of a sweeping family saga as well and then lastly we have called down the hawk by maggie seafatter this is a why a fantasy story again set in a contemporary setting a little bit magical i know there's a word for it but i can't for the life of me think of what that word is and this is a continuation kind of spin-off series kind of of the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater i really liked the raven boys that like those first initial three books were great the fourth one didn't end great and i've heard that this series kind of picks up where the last left off but i kind of wish that like that one had just been the wrap up so will this one be good will i stay firm in my regret of buying it i'm not quite sure we're gonna find out here in this video today so let's go ahead and hop into the vlog portion of this video so i've picked up my first book for this video i'm 40 into call down the hawk by maggie stiefvater despite initially regretting picking this book up and uh you know purchasing it in the first place i'm actually not hating it and i feel like i have lots of thoughts and feelings so call down the hawk is the first book in a new i want to say trilogy and it's supposed to be sort of a continuation of the raven boys series uh a spin-off but also kind of a continuation i will be honest with you whenever i heard that this book was coming out i wasn't that excited about it i definitely bought into the hype that's why i own the book in the first place and while i did really enjoy the raven boys uh as a series ultimately really disappointed in that fourth book because it didn't answer all of the questions that i felt like needed to be answered to wrap up the series as a whole i feel like this book is actually answering a lot of the questions that were left lingering in that fourth book and while i wish to be honest that all those questions had been answered in that fourth book and that there wasn't another series i'm actually not upset about reading this so this book obviously follows ronan and his two brothers i want to say declan and matthew for some reason i want to call him max but i'm pretty sure his name's matthew ronan at the beginning of this story is kind of trying to figure out what to do with his life um as the people around him are kind of figuring out what they're doing everybody seems to have a plan he doesn't really have one ronan is obviously one of the main characters in that first series if you don't really know anything about that series i don't think i'll be spoiling anything but be kind of talking about the other series so ronan at the beginning of the story ends up going and visiting adam his boyfriend and i think that's been the most interesting thing to me so far is seeing the interactions between ronan and adam and seeing how adam at harvard is really a different person but how he is i think leaning into the person he's always wanted to be now that he's out from underneath the shadow of his wealthier and maybe more successful outwardly friends it's really interesting seeing how that is contrasting with ronan who seems to be kind of stuck in the past especially with a lot of the dreaming i guess that he has going on ronan is again trying to kind of figure out his life and he's also dealing with the consequences of being a dreamer being a dreamer in the context of this world means that when you have a dream at night you typically bring things back from the dream world you can dream people you can dream animals uh just a ton of different things and this can be sort of detrimental to the dreamers and to the people around them right like waking up to a bed full of live crabs maybe not the best thing ever the book as a whole i think is trying to do a thing where it's answering some questions and also raising new questions the i think general crux of the book beyond these sort of like interpersonal struggles or uh internal struggles i guess of the characters of each of the separate lynch brothers idea that dreamers are a class of people ronan is not the only person who dreams neither is his father instead there are a bunch of different people who have different sorts of dreams and bring different things back from their dreams and there is like a whole host of people an organization of people who are trying to eliminate dreamers because they i don't know why we're trying to eliminate dreamers to be honest i haven't really understood that until this point but we're getting the pov of someone who is in leagues with i guess the dreamer assassins and we're also getting the pov of another dreamer so there's a lot of new point of views here and initially i won't lie i was a little bit confused what was going on i was like i don't really understand what the happening i did pull up summary of the story not a summary but like a but a chapter by chapter kind of summary to kind of re-explain some things that i already read and that really really helped so now i feel like i'm really enmesh in the world and definitely get what's going on the writing is typical maggie stiefvater i will say the writing is definitely a double-edged sword in that it is really beautiful prose and i'm appreciating a lot of the metaphor included but at the same time it is not helping when the subject matter of the story is a little bit ephemeral having this writing that feels a little bit flowery is kind of making it difficult to understand like what's happening versus like what's a dream and like what the actual plot of the book is once i googled i was like oh that's what's happening okay i'm also in kind of a weird situation because on the one hand i can appreciate that this book is answering questions the other hand i do regret buying this book because i don't think for me personally it was necessary to continue on with the series and to figure out what's happening to these characters i mean it's nice to revisit characters that i do enjoy and i don't think that the plot of this book is stupid or not well done so i guess that's good but i'm just kind of like did this need to exist and do i need to be reading it despite it being good i don't know i was fully expecting this one and fountains of silence fountain of silence to be the two books that i was like really not into and this one's actually going pretty well i don't see myself reading this less than three stars which is really good in my books for a book i regret buying i'm not hating it last night i ended up finishing call down the hawk and uh this was a three star read which i think is good all things considered i will say my enjoyment of the story definitely started going down at the 50 mark simply because it ended up becoming a little too convoluted for my taste the whole idea of the series is really focused on dreams and the weird that comes out of dreams yes i appreciate that it's a little bit grounded in reality in the sense again there is this like group of people trying to bring down these dreamers but the majority of the end of the book is a wild ride of confusing twists and turns and i think if you're someone who really really loves the writing of maggie stiefter i think you'll really enjoy this book i think this is definitely her i don't want to say strongest work to date but it definitely showcases her strength which is her writing she's really good at crafting these interesting complex worlds i think and in really getting you to feel a sense of place and to feel what's going on around your characters maybe not emotionally but in terms of the i guess scenery and and the weird things that happen in the dream so it's a tough one for me because on the one hand i i think i do regret buying it ultimately but on the other hand i'm not actually upset that i read this and i'm glad that i actually gave this series a chance i won't be continuing on with the series because i don't really care that much about this particular plot line and this continuation of the story however i can appreciate that it is not unnecessary let's move on to something that is really really taking me by surprise in a positive way fountains of silence this book is set in spain after the second world war and it follows a cast full of characters dealing with the fallout from world war ii admittedly i don't know that much about spain in general as a country and their history but i especially specifically don't know very much about the fascism i guess you could say that this country was facing after that world war so this book follows our two main characters i would say there's some other additional characters the two main characters are daniel and julia and julia at the start of the story is working at a hilton hotel and she is living with her sister i think her sister's husband and they are trying to save up so they can go and move to i want to say the countryside or something and really have better lives because they are living pretty much in poverty and just trying to make it through in these sort of shitty circumstances that they're being dealt immediately being dropped into this world i was i say world as if this is something that didn't happen immediately we're dropped into this time and this place and admittedly i was super ignorant about what spain was like after you know world war ii and immediately i was like okay i'm interested i really want to see where this goes then we get introduced to daniel who is a boy from texas and he dreams of being a journalist his experience in his lens is that of um kind of a privileged boy his family i want to say are like oil barons pretty wealthy family pretty well to do his mom is spanish his father i don't think is but they come to spain for a couple of different reasons and daniel while he's there is making his mission to take pictures to win a journalism competition to hopefully win a prize which would be money to allow him to go to journalism school instead of going to texas a m to learn um oil stuff so daniel and julia cross paths because daniel is staying at the same hotel that julia works at and he kind of gets to see what spain is really like through julia's eyes additionally we have a third character who i honestly can't remember the name of but she is a girl working at an orphanage and we are finding out that things that are happening at this orphanage are definitely not good i don't think the children are being abused but i think that children in spain are being kidnapped from their families kind of sold off to the highest bidder and or sold off to these proper spanish families and every part of this book is interesting to me i don't know why i thought that i wouldn't like this i mean i do but i don't it's kind of reminding me in some ways of four wins by kristin hannah in that it is a time period that i'm quite unfamiliar with and i want to continue reading not because no offense i care that much about the plight of these characters but because i want to learn more about this time period and the things that were happening to people in this time period not to say that adding a personal human touch with main characters is a bad thing but for me what really draws me in is again this time period that i just really don't think about much and i didn't really learn much even in my history classes want to keep reading this book i had plans today actually to read another book to finish a romance and and post a video tomorrow but instead all i want to do is finish this book and i couldn't be more surprised frankly and liking this book i would be surprised if i rated the slower than like a four star which i never thought i'd say about a why a historical fiction book but something about it's compelling i will say my only real critique of this book the only thing that i'm not absolutely loving is the fact that at times especially at the beginning of the book it feels like we are being read a textbook rather than being put in the shoes of our main characters and i do think it's nice seeing the world through the lens of characters that you can relate to because that's i think a really good way to experience history and to really like empathize and understand what people are going through but i think at the beginning of the story you're kind of like getting weird glimpses into people's lives and it doesn't feel like actual personal experience it just feels like um you're reading yeah like a textbook that's irritating and i do sometimes get like flashbacks or like glimpses into that sometimes the writing can fall back into that but for the most part i am i am rooting for the characters even if like i'm not amazed by the characters um i care enough about them to see what happens i am curious to see if daniel you know gets into his journalism program i am hoping that julia gets to have the life she deserves and i'm hoping that this girl in the orphanage uncovers some and is able to make meaningful change probably won't happen but like i'm hoping so i'm gonna continue reading this book i'm gonna finish it and i will update you tomorrow morning on it i finished the fountains of silence last night and this was really phenomenal i ended up giving it four stars and i'm kind of surprised honestly these first two books have taken me by surprise in the best possible way and this one really i think might be the standout of the entire video which is kind of astounding to me as i definitely predicted this to be like the worst one or the one that i was going to like the least but the elements of this book came together so beautifully it's exactly the kind of way that i like the story to be told if that makes sense so the book kind of starts out and i think i talked about it a little bit with a few different characters we have daniel we have anna not julia i don't know why i kept calling her julia there is a character named julia in the story um i think she is the sister of anna anyway we have a bunch of different characters doing a bunch of different random things and as the story kind of like comes together and reaches a peak we realize that all of these characters are tied to this one specific thing which is um specifically the lost children i don't know what the name like the official name is i guess of these children who were kidnapped by the political party at the time but essentially i cannot remember the names of two political parties i know one of them was the republicans they're the ones that were out of favor and then there was like the fascists right the fascists end up kidnapping the children of the republicans and selling them their people i guess selling them to the fascists selling them to americans selling them to just other people in general the story really heavily deals with that and at the beginning of the story you really think it's just going to be a story about fascism in general a story about franco's regime but it really does evolve into something that definitely focuses heavily on this one particular topic which is these children wow i i mean it just came together so well it was very well done and you do end up really growing to care about the characters my only real critique of the story to be honest is that i think i don't want to say focused on the wrong people but i would have liked to see a more satisfying conclusion at the end of the book we realized that there were some like twins essentially separated at birth and it would have been really cool to get to see those twins reunited i don't know if that would have been like too cheesy to end the book but i feel like that would have been a really nice conclusion wrap up to the story i didn't actually end up caring that much about daniel and anna's relationship like i mean it was nice seeing them you know get together but i really cared more about like the surrounding cast of characters so i think that was just like a me thing i mean this book just doesn't mean by surprise i think if you don't know anything about spain in this time period and you are willing to like step outside of your comfort zone and pick up historical fiction or why a in general i think this is really well done yeah i'm pleased to finish this i think that uh this is not a book that i would have picked up off of my shelves very willingly kind of regret buying it i don't know if i'll keep it on my shelves because i don't see myself revisiting it but it was really fantastic so i'm not i'm really not upset that i i read it and i learned something new so i mean that's all i can really ask for the next book that i have started is one that i thought that i had a bigger chance of liking i'm not enjoying so i feel like this this video is just telling me maybe i just don't know my tastes as well as i think that i do but i'm like 20ish percent into there will come in darkness and this book is kind of taking me by surprise for some reason i thought this was saffic and i don't know why i necessarily thought that uh it definitely is giving me a male male relationship vibes not female females so like whatever it's fine i'm not too upset about it it is queer at the very least um this story follows five different characters and they are all dealing with the fallout of like different things in their kingdom and lives i don't even really know how to like describe this book i mean i'm getting exhausted thinking about it because i'm exhausted reading it because i don't really care about it that much okay um so i'm not gonna get into the details because it would spoil the book in general and i just feel like i'm not good at talking about fantasy right and i think that's uh probably because i'm not a fantasy review channel but this book follows five different characters we have hassan who i believe is the prince of this kingdom but someone else is like usurped the throne so he's not really in charge at the moment we also have a chick who murders people with their blood so that her sister can stay alive or something like that we have a guy who is a gambler we have uh some other characters i can't remember the names of right at this very moment oh we have a guy who's like kind of um part of an in order i don't know if it's like a military order or if it's like a religious order i can't really tell it seems like maybe a mix of both a lot going on i feel like i'm getting info dumped a lot of things is my issue i feel like i'm not invested in any of the characters and granted i'm only 20 in maybe all girls really like the characters but i don't think that's the case i really feel like i am bored mix of crows didn't feel info dumpy like this and i think that's what this book is typically compared to because it is a multi i was gonna say dual pov multi-pov story but um not loving it uh and i really don't see myself updating you multiple times about this book to be honest i i think i'm just gonna like try to speed through it and like pray it improves okay my friends many developments i have finished there will come a darkness and i have also just dnf'd another book as if i've dnf'd any books up until this point i dnf'd book so that means we only have one book left which is mind-blowing and also exciting let's talk about the things first okay there will come a darkness i was massively disappointed by i think for me i expected a different book going into this and i don't know what other book i was thinking of when i purchased this book but for some reason i was thinking this was going to be sapphic i thought this was going to be like enemies to lovers and or like a little science fictiony so i'm definitely i was definitely thinking of a different book when i picked this one up that just goes to show being a little bit more strategic with buying the books is smart right like i i was just buying things based off of hype and not even really looking at the synopsis before buying books so do i regret buying this one massively it's not that this book was terrible it's that this book really is not something that is new or exciting i think it definitely is a book that a lot of people could enjoy and it's certainly one that is following i would say this slightly newer trend in the y fantasy space i don't know if it's like the newest trend because i'm not really keeping up with y fantasy at the moment but it really feels like a few other books that i've read in some ways this kind of reminds me of cannot remember the name of the book but i will insert a picture of it right here it kind of reminds me of that just in a different setting if you liked that book i think you actually might like this one too if you want to like hire fantasy world so i briefly touched on what this book is about and i'll try i guess to kind of like talk a little bit about it um so we can move on but basically in this world there are a population of people called the grace and they are people with powers and the big bad the villain in this world wants to i guess eliminate the people who do have powers there's also prophets that have abandoned the people now there's going to be some sort of like age of darkness unless this person who is foretold in the final prophecy like comes to save the world in some ways it kind of reminds me of the stormlight archive series by brandon sanderson and also kind of reminds me of again that kind of popular white fantasy book right here that i think a lot of people enjoyed i think my issue here is that i felt like it was kind of info dumpy it didn't really feel like anything new and i didn't really love any of the characters i kind of liked the female assassin what's her name like afira or something like that overall this is just not really my kind of book i say that as if i'm not going to be picking up six of crows for a reread in september but i just feel like for me yea fantasy kind of all seems to run together and i think that's not necessarily uh the fault of the genre or anything i think that authors write to whatever is most marketable and i think that a lot of why a readers would like a story like this it's just not really for me i'm a romance reader we get it moving on to the book that i dnf'd the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender i'll insert a picture of the actual cover right here um wow i really wanted to give this an honest shot i started reading it physically and actually i really like the typeface in this book i think it's actually kind of pretty but i wasn't really drawn in by the words on the page themselves right i decided to pick up the audiobook instead an audiobook totally pleasing listening experience like very fine to listen to i was fully tuned in i was playing tetris on my computer which is like focus mode for me like i am paying attention i'm not scrolling instagram i'm not getting distracted i am paying attention to this book i wish i weren't to be honest this book is really bizarre it is supposed to be this kind of like sweeping family saga at the beginning of the story we have our main character eva being born and she is born with a full set of bird wings and everybody's like oh this is so bizarre this is so weird and we get thrown into the past where we get to learn the history i want to say of her great grandmother or great-great-grandmother we get to see some of her family members dying in sort of tragic and mysterious ways we get to see kind of the weird workings i guess you could say of love and sex that's really where my issue with this book lies this is a why a contemporary novel to my knowledge actually you know what let me fact check according to goodreads it is a young adult book let me know if this book was marketed incorrectly or if i'm missing something but from my knowledge to my knowledge this is technically a why a title not only do i not really care obviously about a sweeping family saga that's obviously that's just not my thing it's not my thing it's never been my thing it will never probably be my thing kind of callous ways that people die in this book that was upsetting to me and the way that sex was talked about was so weird to me i have read many a y a title in my day i am old the handling of sex in this book is bizarre to me it does not feel like a why a title and it's not like this book is overly graphic it's not like this book is one that is addressing sexual assault head-on and is trying to like teach a moral um sort of lesson about that either it's just i i can't put into words how strange it is i had to dnf this book at the point and this is not even like the first weird uh circumstance this happens if the characters i guess his mother passes away when he is quite young he stays in bed with her deceased corpse for a few days until it starts smelling which is weird and then he immediately goes and like works on a farm or something and since he looks older than he really is um you know he's able to get jobs and like sustain himself but then he is essentially come on to by the owner of the establishment the the woman that owns the place that he's staying and he's like oh my god i'm 13 don't do this it feel gross obviously clearly the way that those scenes are handled in this book really felt out of pocket to me uh and again maybe i'm missing something but i feel like i was promised with this book magical tale that's like a little bit heartbreaking i was picturing something like a million jones by emily henry something where it's like star-crossed lovers and you know they couldn't be together because she has these weird wings or something like that with some sort of family trauma in the background right but that's not really how the story is told it just felt like trauma for the sole purpose of trauma in in this book multiple times over for multiple characters multiple generations i guess you could say that that's the point of the book or i haven't gotten to the point of the book yet but this i feel like was another circumstance where too much time has passed since purchasing this book incorrectly assumed certain things about a story before going into it and then i'm left ultimately disappointed when picking it up and it doesn't live up to the expectations or the summary that i have of the book in my head and i feel like this happens quite often and i think it's not only something that is tied to whether or not i regret buying a book or buying a book without really reading the synopsis i think sometimes a book can be talked about so many times by so many different people on the internet before we get to it that we have again these expectations in our head of what this book is going to be and maybe sometimes that's unfair or the explanations that people are giving are not incorrect but are leading us into a false sense of what the book is actually about and how we're going to feel about it and i think that that is definitely definitely the case with this one this is a book that i have had on my tbr since 2017 since before even starting a youtube channel i'm pretty sure that i bought this off of the recommendation of hannah because i think that she really enjoys this book and i'm not saying that her recommendation was poor and that she shouldn't recommend this book but it was something that i wasn't expecting personally and i feel like the things that i didn't like about this book are things that aren't talked about often i feel like i have heard that salt is definitely a part of the story but i just didn't expect it to pop up in the way that it did yeah i don't know i just like also i'm not really in the market for a sad story so i guess that's on me and like my taste in books but i feel very confident in dnfing this book i sincerely um do regret purchasing this book even when i did purchase this i think i knew that this wasn't my kind of story but it was like okay like maybe this is outside of my comfort zone and other people again like it and like i recommended it and i trust these people but sometimes we need to trust ourselves i think is the lesson here being said um i shouldn't trust myself because i'm picking up honest delusions by nora roberts next this is the final book for this video the final book that i regret buying and you know what i'm gonna take the half price book sticker off of this so we can really put a gander at this beautiful cover with this butterfly she is something i didn't get much of an opportunity to read last night but i have been flying through honest illusions this morning obviously i'm in my pj's so i'm moving a little slowly in other parts of my life but it's fine because i've gotten 170 pages into this 500 page book roxy is our heroine and our hero is luke and i for some reason thought this was only going to be a single pov story it was all going to be from roxy's point of view but the majority of the beginning of this book is actually luke's point of view and how he comes into roxy's life in the first place so roxy is the daughter of like this world i say world renowned of this pretty talented magician named max he has a woman in his life named lily who also travels with him and his daughter roxy and roxy is learning the tricks of the trade also max is a jewel thief that's kind of how he keeps his life afloat and or like has investments going so that his daughter can go to college and things like that the start of the story we meet luke luke is a little boy who ends up meeting roxy and her dad at this carnival they are traveling they own the carnival apparently and this is one of the places that max ends up doing his magic routines and luke is a little boy trying to pickpocket people at the carnival uh he ends up getting caught by backs and max ends up taking him under his wing and ends up basically adding him to the family he's a few years older than roxy i want to say he's like 12 at the start of the story and we get to kind of see the life of these traveling people through the eyes of a young boy they do end up landing back in new orleans which is where i think their like home base is but they you know travel often to perform these magic shows and um it's kind of heartwarming actually seeing how luke enters into the family and how he gets taken under max's wing gets mothered by lily and basically gets the life that he always really deserved he was abused growing up and so it's nice seeing him start to trust people there are people that come in and out of the lives of the magicians there's a guy named sam who comes into everybody's life and he's kind of a bad guy and that's their first run-in with being scammed themselves even though they are scammers at this point in the book we are aged forward and luke and roxy are i think like 17 and 20 or something like that and we are becoming privy to the fact that there might be a little bit of a life with derek situation going on we've had one encounter actually just stopped at the encounter between roxy and luke there's definitely this like built up sexual tension there they definitely have some feelings for each other unexplored feelings and i don't know how i feel about that aspect of the book the writing up until this point has been surprisingly good the prologue of this book was in the present day where we have roxy like having her own show and luke comes to visit her and there's this like dramatic moment and i was like okay is this book gonna be as corny as that opening so far despite the subject matter it hasn't been that corny it has a nice found family theme i like getting to see these two um grow up i don't know it's it's tough because i like seeing them grow up together but i'm also like i'm supposed to root for them romantically i mean it was a different time when this book was written it was like 1992. but you know what's wild to me this was a book of the month selection 1992. i didn't know that book of the month had been around since the 1920s but that's um very very fascinating and apparently this was up to snap for book of the month so i don't know i don't know what i don't really know what to say about this story except for i'm enjoying it it's definitely something that i wouldn't have picked up on my own but it is something that definitely feels like a traditional romance i think this is kind of reminding me in some ways of that kristen becca richie series that also focuses on like a cirque du soleil sort of situation i think the close quarters close proximity definitely is uh fun definitely fun to explore i i don't think childhood friends to lovers is necessarily bad but i do think it's a little strange having max call the kids his kids i mean roxy and luke don't call each other like brother and sister or anything but max is like oh my two children so i don't know i don't know this book is so silly okay let me grab it so you can actually see what i'm talking about lest you forget that we're reading a book about a magician and her con man man okay so roxanne and luke have officially gotten together and no one seems to be like concerned about this if anything everybody's like really excited for them they're like surrogate mother lily lily isn't roxanne's mother by the way roxanne's mom died of appendicitis a while ago lily is like super jazzed that they're having sex on this cruise ship part of their traveling i guess led them to perform on a cruise ship and it's there that they like run into sam again sam just like keeps popping up in random circumstances and it's like okay sure these people kind of they didn't even do do sam wrong sam's the guy that they like kind of took under their wing and he betrayed them or whatever like one of the random people that has like come to like be in the carnival or whatever we scammed some of max and luke and roxanne's like friends and so they kicked sam out whatever so sam keeps coming back into their lives and uh he like threatens luke a lot so anyway they're on this cruise ship and sam is there with his like new wife and they're like oh cool we can like scam them out of money luke eventually starts getting blackmailed by sam and he ends up disappearing during one of these like jewel heists and this is kind of a problem because roxanne's pregnant with his baby and what i'm assuming is gonna happen is that like she has this kid he has no idea and then like years later he comes back and like that's where we're picking up the prologue like the prologue she's mad at him it doesn't want anything to do with him and so i'm like at part three of this book and it seems like that's what it is his five-year vanishing act was over so he abandoned his girlfriend and the baby for five years granted i don't think he knew she was pregnant but like i don't know what is it with him in blackmailers he gets blackmailed by someone else earlier in the story and i know that he had kind of like a rough upbringing and he doesn't want the world to know about it because like he has a reputation for himself or whatever so he ends up paying like his ex stepped out like 50 000 over the course of a year or something to like make sure he doesn't you know get found out then i guess sam's kind of doing the same thing i don't know man like making idiotic decisions my good my good sir like let's let's try to make smarter ones and i can't imagine that lily and max are too pleased with the fact that their surrogate son has left their daughter behind um and their grandkid i don't know to see what happens but i don't think this is as like fun as i thought that it was going to be it's definitely too long like this book is 500 pages and i feel like even though it is sort of like the sweeping saga and we get a lot of insight into the like different aspects of their lives i feel like i would have preferred it if it were some flashbacks to the past and then sub in the present day and not just like so much time i don't know it's just too long and now we only have like this much of the book for there to be this like satisfying conclusion and i just don't feel like i'm gonna be very satisfied with this guy who abandons again his girlfriend child it's like even if you didn't know she was pregnant you'll have had unprotected sex this entire time i didn't see mention of condoms so anyway i'll finish it and let you know how i don't know how to feel about this book i feel like i haven't really been you know saying oh i think this is gonna be a three or four i don't know i don't know because this book is kind of weird but like it's fine it's not great i don't know the sex scenes are kind of cringy but i do like the way norah roberts builds sexual attention it's definitely a slow burn because they didn't get together until like i don't know a while into this longest book so no this one's weird this one's real weird finishing out a video on my pajamas it does sound like something i would do okay i finished honest delusions i don't know this was a really weird one just in general i mean i knew it was a weird book going into it cover the description it being like a 90s romance this romance is older than me too wow okay interesting what to say what what to feel what to think i think my issue is that um well this man left his wife or not wife his girlfriend and um unborn child that's kind of not great even if he didn't know about the child but i think my bigger issue is that whenever he comes back into their lives she acts like nothing really happened and he proposes like a way to get back at the guy who like blackmailed him um by basically blackmailing him blackmailing him i don't know framing him for something luke and roxanne end up teaming up to put a bunch of stolen jewels into sam's house and to frame sam for it i think he's running for like senator or president or something like that of tennessee but they basically ruined this guy's life which i mean is fair since he kind of up no i just feel like things wrapped up a little too nicely and at the end of the book everything is very chummy and we have the son nathaniel the like little four-year-old calling dad daddy even though uh he hasn't been in his life for very long it felt like a lot of things were a little too convenient and i guess that was kind of just the name of the book in general like if you read this book everything still feels very convenient a little bit cheesy and i mean it was an enjoyable read i wasn't upset about this i definitely took it by surprise but i do think that i regret this purchase i mean in some ways i'm glad that i read it because like i feel like i haven't actually finished nora roberts before tried to read some of her other books and just haven't gotten through them um but this one was like interesting i would be interested to pick up more from her in the future so i don't know how i feel about this video in general um this is definitely one of the strangest i read fives i've ever done in terms of uh maybe subject matter also just outcome so i guess let's like briefly go through the books and i'll kind of like tell you my final thoughts so the first book that we read was called on the hawk by maggie stiefvater even though i don't think this book really needed to exist i do think it was kind of a fresh and new story in this universe and while i do deeply regret buying this book i am not mad that i read it and i think that's kind of the running theme here kind of the same thing with fountains of silence this book i genuinely enjoyed i gave it four stars it was a really good time maybe not a good time it was very educational and i'm glad that i read it though i do regret buying it because i'm not really a historical fiction girly i do think this book kind of makes me want to jump outside of my comfort zone more often though especially when it comes to books with subject matters that i don't typically read about because i did learn something i do find this book was valuable to me and while i probably won't be keeping any of the books that i read for this video this one i could maybe see myself keeping the next book that i read i think was easily my least favorite there will come a darkness this is why a fantasy book that i really thought that i was going to enjoy but sadly um it just it wasn't really for me and i think that's just because this book felt like a lot of other whitey fantasies i've read before and it felt a little bit too service level a little too shallow for me being said i don't think this is a bad book and i do think that other people might really enjoy this one especially since i think there are a good diverse cast of characters we have some queer characters as well which is pretty nice overall this just like wasn't this wasn't for me next the the dnf here the strange and beautiful stars of a lavender this one i am glad that i read because i have owned it for forever at this point but this is not a book that i would recommend to people i don't really see the value in it granted i didn't finish it so maybe there is value um later on maybe this is a book that really connects with people but i feel like the way this book was written just wasn't really that appropriate for a y audience and it just left me feeling deeply unsettled so wouldn't really recommend it then lastly we have honest delusions by nora roberts this one again like three stars it was interesting it was something i regret buying it i will be unhauling it you know it is what it is now i don't know that there was really a point to this video except for sometimes you buy books sometimes you regret buying those books and yet sometimes i guess they turn out teaching you important lessons about your reading taste and how you should purchase books in the future i feel like going forward i will not be purchasing books that i would just pick up at random for a video concept that i may or may not carry out i will not be picking up books based purely on hype say as if i didn't purchase magnolia parks recently i'm gonna do better okay i have been doing better i haven't really bought books this year so you know i think some lessons have been learned i am going to continue to read my physical backlist to maybe punish myself a little bit for uh my poor decisions anyway um hopefully this is in some way entertaining i i am actually feeling pretty positive about this experience i hope that comes off in the footage even if some of the books weren't great um i had a good time doing this i am i'm surprised at the outcome here but um thanks so much for watching love you so much and until next time\n"