September Wrap Up _ 2021

**September 2023 Book Reviews: A Deep Dive into Sam’s Reading Month**

*Introduction*

In a recent video, "Sam" shared their reading experiences from September 2023. The month turned out to be exceptional for Sam, who managed to read and review several books across various genres. Reflecting on the speed at which September flew by, Sam humorously noted how it felt like just two days. This article delves into each book discussed in the video, providing a comprehensive look at Sam’s thoughts and experiences.

*1. "A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor" by Hank Green*

The first book on Sam’s list is *A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor*, the second installment in Hank Green’s Carl’s duology. Sam had previously reviewed the first book, which was a science fiction story about a robot discovered by a YouTuber, leading to global events involving alien robots.

**The Second Book in the Duology**

In this sequel, Sam found that the book excelled in wrapping up the duology cohesively, especially when read as part of the complete series. The narrative employed multiple perspectives effectively, enhancing character development and plot depth. While Sam appreciated the audiobook format with its multi-actor narration, they felt a disconnect from the story despite the improved character depth.

**Themes and Personal Reflections**

Sam highlighted the book’s exploration of internet celebrity culture and science themes, praising Green’s research and storytelling skills. Despite some narrative issues, Sam rated the duology as a whole at four stars, commending its thought-provoking elements while acknowledging areas needing refinement.

*2. "Rule of Wolves" by Leigh Bardugo*

Next up was *Rule of Wolves*, the second book in the King of Scars duology and part of the Grishaverse universe. This title follows characters from *Six of Crows*, focusing on Nikolai, Nina, and Zoya.

**Comparison to the First Book**

Sam expressed disappointment with the first book but found this installment much stronger. The story regained its balance with compelling world-building and magic system details, which had been lacking previously. Sam praised the character arcs and narrative pacing but criticized the handling of multiple antagonists, feeling they lacked impact.

**Critique and Call to Action**

Sam urged Bardugo to conclude the Grishaverse’s Ravkin saga, expressing a desire for closure. Despite reservations, Sam rated *Rule of Wolves* four stars, acknowledging its improvements while reiterating their overall skepticism about the duology's necessity.

*3. "A Psalm for the Wildbuilt" by Becky Chambers*

Becky Chambers’ *A Psalm for the Wildbuilt*, the first novella in an adult sci-fi series, was a standout for Sam. Known for her optimistic approach to science fiction, Chambers crafted a touching story centered around a monk undergoing a mid-life identity crisis.

**Themes of Identity and Purpose**

The protagonist transitions from a garden monk to a "traveling therapist," embarking on a mission that leads them into contact with sentient robots. Sam lauded the book’s exploration of identity, productivity, and balance, describing it as an uplifting story. The inclusion of a non-binary character was particularly praised for its authenticity.

**Representation and Style**

Sam appreciated Chambers’ diverse character portrayals and her hopeful narrative style. Rating the novella five stars, Sam expressed excitement for the series continuation, calling it a "warm hug" read.

*4. "The Glass Magician" by Caroline Stevener*

Set in early 20th-century New York, *The Glass Magician* follows Thalia, a stage magician discovering real magic amidst mysterious creatures like solitaires and traitors.

**World-Building and Character Dynamics**

Sam found the historical fantasy blend engaging but criticized sparse world-building. While the stage magic elements were enjoyable, Sam felt the plot lacked depth and unresolved elements. Despite these issues, Sam appreciated the book’s potential as a series concept, awarding it 3.75 stars.

*5. "Eight Perfect Hours" by Leah Luis*

Leah Luis’ *Eight Perfect Hours* is an adult contemporary romance centered on Noel, returning from a college reunion and stranded in a snowstorm, where she meets a mysterious man, Eli.

**Themes of Grief and Relationships**

Sam highlighted the book’s exploration of grief through Noel’s relationships with her late best friend, family, and ex-partner. The narrative skillfully intertwined themes of faded lovers and serendipitous connections, resonating deeply with Sam.

**Representation and Literary Merit**

The inclusion of anxiety was particularly well-handled, making it relatable for those familiar with the condition. Praiseworthy character development and a touching romance led Sam to rate this book five stars, hailing it as one of their favorites of the year.

*6. "The Chosen and the Beautiful" by Myrnie Nevo*

This historical fantasy retells *The Great Gatsby* through Jordan Baker’s perspective, adopting a Vietnamese adoptee character navigating New York’s magical underworld.

**Cultural and Thematic Shifts**

Sam found the reimagined story intriguing but noted pacing issues and a lack of world-building. Despite these challenges, Sam appreciated its queer representation without explicit labels and its unique twist on a classic narrative, awarding it 3.5 stars.

*7. "The Love Hypothesis" by Ali Hazelwood*

Lastly, *The Love Hypothesis* features Olive, a PhD student devising a fake dating plan for her friend, leading to an unexpected romance with a curmudgeonly professor.

**Themes of Relationships and Identity**

Sam enjoyed the fake dating trope but found some elements overdone, such as repetitive descriptions of the male lead. Despite these issues, Sam praised the nuanced portrayal of demisexual characters and the realistic depiction of anxiety, awarding it 4.5 stars for its heartfelt narrative.

*Magical Readathon Wrap-Up*

Sam also reflected on their participation in a readathon, discussing how many of their September reads aligned with the event’s challenges. Though they fell short of completing all assigned books, Sam celebrated their progress and engagement with the reading community.

*Conclusion*

September proved to be a fruitful month for Sam, offering a diverse array of reads that sparked reflection and enjoyment. From optimistic sci-fi to heartfelt romances and intricate fantasy, each book provided unique insights and entertainment. Sam invites readers to share their September experiences in the comments, fostering a community of shared literary exploration.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's sam and today we're going to talk about the books that i read in september september was actually a great reading month for me um i didn't really realize that until i was writing all the books down because september flew by so far i know we say it like every month but honestly like what happened to september it was like literally two days like i i don't know what happened so i couldn't even really realize that all these books were read in september and that i enjoyed most of them the first book that i finished in september was a beautifully foolish endeavor by hank green this is the second book in the carl's duology i mentioned the first book last month because that's when i read it but it is a uh science fiction adult science fiction duology first contact story in the first book a main character of that book discovers uh this robot on the street of new york and she thinks it's an art installation and does a viral youtube video about it and then discovers that these robots have popped up simultaneously all across the world and they they're they're aliens so this is the second book so i can't go much into it but it is told in multiple pov and it does a really good job of wrapping up the whole duology i do recommend this duology as read as one continuous story i kind of feel like that's how most duologies are i listened to this whole duology on audiobook and this book definitely fills in some of the issues i have with the first book but it's still not perfect i enjoyed the audiobook and the narration there's multiple different actors which is always nice but i still wasn't fully connected to the story and the characters they were definitely more fleshed out than in the first book but i still wasn't like super connected it was one of those books that i enjoyed it when i was reading it when i put it down i didn't really care that much to pick it back up but i do love what hank green did with it a lot of the themes that he talked about of internet celebrity and some of the science stuff and just like how well crafted and well researched it was and again the themes that he was talking about i really enjoyed so still gave this 4 out of 5 stars i would say the whole duology is like a four-star duology so overall really enjoy what this did this duology was the household book club pick for the last couple of months so we did a duology discussion on my channel i will link that video on the screen for more of our in-depth thoughts about this series the next book that i finished was rule of wolves by leigh bardugo oh finally you guys probably already know i read this because i did do a full review and discussion so i will link the review on the screen this is the second book in the king of scars duology and it follows a lot of the characters that were in the grishaverse as well as a little bit of like six of crows the main characters in here are nikolai nina from six of crows and zoya and this is following the events of um the kooka kingdom and king of scars and all of that it's just the continuation of the grishaverse stuff this book i did like a lot more than i liked the first book in this duology the first book in this duology really disappointed me so i went in with much lower expectations for this book which i do think helped me out but i did overall find the stories to be much better in here the characters felt like a little bit more like themselves um it feels like it got its world building and like the magic system back on track because there were some things that just kind of went off the rails in the first book for me a little bit but i still ultimately feel like this duology did not have to happen and i will continue to say that and scream that from the rooftops even as a huge grocery verse will i read any grisha first book she comes out with yes i am part of the problem however this this did not need to happen in my opinion i do think that the ending and the way everything wrapped up was really nice and i do hope that she just leaves it um i would say the weakest part of this book was the amount of antagonists there's like five different antagonists and all of them feel pretty weak to me like none of them felt very threatening so at all points like i never really feel like a character's in any kind of danger at this point i feel like she has so many sort of like fan favorites that a lot of them have really big plot armor so i never feel a sense of danger about any of the characters and all of that but the way that everyone's arcs wrapped up i do feel like was really good in this and there were some twists that i definitely saw coming and some other ones i was like oh didn't see that as much and i'm okay with it so yes while i have a lot of complaints about this series and this book still this one was way better and i just want her to just leave it be just leave the grisha verse alone and not even the grishavers leave rafka alone leave the ravkin characters alone if you want to go into the shoe area if you want to go back to ketterdam if you want to go to like the wandering isles and some of the other places we haven't seen pl have at it just leave this alone and also please continue ninth house so we know what's happening there but anyway like i said there's a full review and discussion where i go into all my in-depth thoughts about that but this one was 4 out of 5 stars for me i enjoyed it then i read a psalm for the wild built by becky chambers this is the first novella and what's going to be an adult novella sci-fi series but i don't know a lot about it because this it just started but this is a hope punk series which means that it's a more optimistic view of the future this is becky chambers she did the wayfarer series and this is kind of her style of sci-fi where it's not grim and dark like most sci-fi that comes out now it's more like what if humans learned from their mistakes and it's sort of nice even though do i really think it's realistic no because i'm a pessimist but it's nice it's nice to see and this falls main character who is a monk and originally they're a garden monk and then they sort of have this like identity crisis and don't really know what they want to do with their lives and become a t monk which is essentially a traveling therapist in this world which i love and they are traveling around and then eventually kind of have this little mission that they want to go on so they end up wandering into the woods and they discover well they are discovered by a robot and robots have not existed alongside humans in quite some time because robots many many years ago became sentient and just wandered into the woods and they sort of had a pact like you won't come near us we won't come near you like leave us be and the humans were like cool and they haven't been seen so they've kind of turned into myth and so our main character is approached by this robot and was like what do you need and everything kind of goes from there this is a wonderful little warm hug of a story it covers themes of like identity crisis and who are you and productivity and what does productivity mean and and work and balance and just it's just just who are you so it's basically like a mid no quarter life crisis i guess cause i would say that our characters in their like late 20s maybe also her character is non-binary which is a nice touch but she does a really good job becky chambers does a really good job with uh diversity and and gender and stuff in her books which i really like so i adored this super cute looking forward to the rest of the novella series gave it 5 out of 5 stars really enjoyed it then i read the glass magician by caroline stevener this is a standalone i think it's an adult fantasy but i also saw reviews that said it's young adult i'm pretty sure it's adult and this follows the main character of thalia who is a stage magician around the beginning of the 1900s and she discovered that she has actually some real magic so in this world there's like some world building things about there's different types of people solitaires traitors and forgetting the other ones silvestri but someone that isn't really explained i'll get to that in a second and she discovers that she might be somebody who can basically shapeshift and so that throws her into a whole new world of like magic and danger and things like that this was enjoyable on a really quick read but was not perfect by any means the world building like i mentioned is very sort of spotty and you don't really get a lot explained about like the different kinds of people and magic and that continues through into the end even with like plot stuff so there's a lot of plot points for a standalone novel that are just not explained not tied up at all whatsoever and i liked our characters it definitely felt like almost a magical sort of prestige or one of those like movies that came out you know 10 or so years ago that they did a lot of like stage magic movies and it felt very much like that that sort of historical fiction fantasy blend which was kind of fun so i liked this but it could have definitely been stronger i had a really fun idea and foundation and i actually wish that there would have been more time maybe a longer book maybe a series whatever where we actually got some of this stuff more fleshed out so i gave this 3.75 stars then i read eight perfect hours by leah luis this is a standalone adult contemporary romance this fall's main character of noel and she is coming home from a college reunion this is a british novel so she is whatever she went to school when she was like 17 18 they had a reunion tenure she she's coming back from that ends up getting stuck in a snowstorm after the just mess that was that event and ends up meeting this guy who's actually an american heading to the airport they're both stuck on the highway and they end up spending eight hours together kind of bonding and then go their separate ways thinking they're never going to meet up again and things keep happening with our lives keep kind of intersecting and everything kind of goes from there so this isn't just a lovely happy rom-com there are some heavy triggers in here we have death of a best friend death of a family member mentions of suicide and then a stroke both of those deaths happen in the past and happened off page but they are heavily talked about and this definitely is a bit of a grief story but a grief story you know many years down the line and some of that kind of stuff so some heavier topics there but i loved this this had so many elements that speak to me as far as romance tropes and things and what this had that i think it did really well is this sort of like faded lovers trope without it being too woo-woo like without it being too like magical feeling but just kind of like very matter of fact of the universe wants these two people to meet in some way and there was all these like really cool connections and things that had happened and i really enjoy stories like that so highly pulled for these characters but not only that everybody in the story felt very fleshed out there are like her friends and family and it's only told from her perspective which sometimes it doesn't work but it did hear like i didn't really need his perspective but you get everybody just feeling really fleshed out she even has this previous relationship that ties into this whole grief thing um that she was with this person for like nearly 10 years and it just kind of goes over these themes of like sometimes people are with you for a certain time in your life and um sometimes you grow apart or you grow in different directions or whatever and just a lot of things that it talked about were so so good also there is a theme of anxiety as well in a number of the characters and you can tell that either this author has anxiety or she just heavily researched it in a positive way because so many times you see anxiety not actually being depicted realistically in books this both the anxiety and the treatment that the characters were getting for it was accurate as somebody who has anxiety and is also a therapist so i really loved this and just pulled for them and it just it just hit so many beats that i really love because that's a trope like that faded kind of thing is a trope that i really like i highly enjoyed this and i gave it five out of five stars my favorite romances of the whole year then i read the chosen and the beautiful my nevo this is a standalone adult historical fantasy kind of it's a retelling of the great gatsby but it doesn't follow like i mean it kind of follows a story but it is taking the character of jordan baker who is a minor character in the great gatsby this like flapper character and in this story she is a i believe either like via i think she's vietnamese but doesn't tell you until later um she's a vietnamese woman who was adopted as a child and is a part of the story so instead of getting the you know nick carraway kind of story you get hers so in addition to the great gatsby type stuff that we are familiar with if you read that novel in like high school or something you get more of like her storyline like it doesn't just follow the great gatsby stuff this also takes place in a magical setting so it's the same setting of like you know new york and everything but there are like demons and uh magic and things and like different kinds of really interesting magic in the background of this as well this was definitely interesting but for such a short story it did take me a while to read it because i wasn't super connected to the characters and i do wish the actual world building and the magic and stuff had actually been more fleshed out similar to the other story that i talked about earlier with the glass magician that stuff was so cool and we just didn't get enough of it and it still kind of circled back to the gatsby stuff and the gatsby stuff i just find really boring um but the magic stuff was so cool so those added elements were nice and this book is really queer everyone in this book is queer pretty much everyone this book is like probably buy but they never give labels so that's a new twist so i did enjoy this wouldn't necessarily call it like a must read but if you do like classics and you do sort of like this time period like the flapper era and things like that and want to give this a try still good i would say 3.5 stars and the last book that i read this month was the love hypothesis by ali hazelwood this is a book that's been getting a ton of hype i got it off the net galley and it came out earlier um in september but this is an adult contemporary romance standalone and this was a character of olive and she is a phd student and one of her friends wants to sort of like date an ex of hers that she didn't really even care about like she doesn't even know why she dated him and they heard like the friend and the ex sort of like hit it off and she wants them to actually be together so she's like i need to devise this like fake dating plot and so she tells her friend that she's going on a date then she sees her friend at the labs and she just ends up turning into the hallway and kissing the first guy that she sees and this ends up being one of the teachers one of like the 10 year teachers who's only like in his 30s she's like in her mid-20s he's in his early 30s and they are not enemies because they don't really know each other but he's seen as being like a really mean like nasty teacher who like tears people dissertations apart and just like is curmudgeony um so she kisses him and then they end up getting in this like fake dating plotline because he's like actually i do need your help too because they've frozen my like funds for grants and stuff because stanford that's where they're at thinks that i'm going to like leave and go somewhere else so if they think i'm dating someone they're not going to think of a flight risk anymore and so like yes let's do this let's help each other out so they start fake dating i really liked this there are trigger warnings in here for sexual harassment as well as mentions of death of a parent that happened before the book started but like i said i really dug this um this was a really fun fake dating plot line i just i pulled for them i got the bone ache which you guys know the bone ache is me like really feeling for a couple and i just i really i liked it but i will say there were some things that weren't perfect i did know before going into this that this author was in fandom before mostly star wars and like star trek but was a fan of like the reylo ship now whatever you feel about the relay relationship whether you hated it loved it whatever i don't think that that's gonna have any impact on this actual story for you it is not this is not relo um but i was hesitant even as somebody that liked that couple in the movies i haven't thought about them since movies ended so i'm not a raylo i just was like whatever we're not going to go on this path again but i'm always skeptical now of like fan fiction authors because i've been burned before and this tread the line where they're like enough nods to like oh i kind of see where this might have originally come from like i don't know if she had a story kind of like this that was more reylo e but i can kind of see this come from i do think that like the main character like the main the guy um i feel like she was describing adam driver like the whole time which actually kind of worked for me because some of the descriptions i was like oh i know the face that that guy would make but there were a couple of tropes of things that i didn't like so much i love the fake dating trope but there were things like her describing how tall and big he was like all the time in comparison to how like small that olive was at one point we even have her like talking about like oh how skinny and like sucked in my stomach is i'm like oh my god stop so that's really annoying i was overlooking it later on as the book went on but especially at the beginning it's very like beat you over the head also olive is like one of those very oblivious characters of like everyone can see that you two are into each other because obviously fake dating that's obviously what happens and you just don't and that's a little bit and there was a little bit of like some almost sickly sweet things happening at the end that i i just don't happen to love but overall i really liked this this was almost a five star for me it was a 4.5 also olive is demisexual we love to see that kind of representation you rarely see demisexual characters and romances at all i really liked the friends i really liked the science element i really liked their dynamic it was really sweet because again it's not an enemies to lovers like he is seen as a curmudgeony dude and he is kind of curmudgeony but like heart of gold and he's not actually like mean to people he's just like a scientist um so i really adored it i think it is worth the hype i don't know 4.5 stars so if we're looking at this from the magical readathon wrap up which i forgot to mention at the beginning of this that i did magical readathons let's see how far i got shall we so for the end translated rule of wolves for the ash thorne tree i did a song for the wild built for ruin of the sky i did the glass magician and for the obsidian falls i did the chosen and the beautiful and then there was another one that i left out i forgot and i don't think i wrote it down but someone mentioned it to me in the comments of my uh video tbr video the one of them was like read a standalone like i said i don't have a written down because i didn't put it in my original but that would have been one of my romance books so i mean do i have yeah a five-star prediction i didn't do because i couldn't have predicted that and these are gonna be five stars and then the book with the school set oh ooh book with the school setting was the love hypothesis so could i count that i got to the academy no because i wouldn't have passed the tower rumination yeah maybe i did i don't know maybe i cheat maybe maybe i'll go around um because i like almost i almost got it i was only one book down if i didn't go in order i just couldn't read my 500 page five star prediction which if you watched my tome topple tbr i moved that to my tome topple tbr so it'll still happen i'm saying i got all the way i almost got all the way i almost got there so that is it for my september wrap up and magical readathon wrap up comment below let me know how your reading month was if you've read any of these books and what you thought of them thank you all for watching i'll see all you guys soon bye youhey guys it's sam and today we're going to talk about the books that i read in september september was actually a great reading month for me um i didn't really realize that until i was writing all the books down because september flew by so far i know we say it like every month but honestly like what happened to september it was like literally two days like i i don't know what happened so i couldn't even really realize that all these books were read in september and that i enjoyed most of them the first book that i finished in september was a beautifully foolish endeavor by hank green this is the second book in the carl's duology i mentioned the first book last month because that's when i read it but it is a uh science fiction adult science fiction duology first contact story in the first book a main character of that book discovers uh this robot on the street of new york and she thinks it's an art installation and does a viral youtube video about it and then discovers that these robots have popped up simultaneously all across the world and they they're they're aliens so this is the second book so i can't go much into it but it is told in multiple pov and it does a really good job of wrapping up the whole duology i do recommend this duology as read as one continuous story i kind of feel like that's how most duologies are i listened to this whole duology on audiobook and this book definitely fills in some of the issues i have with the first book but it's still not perfect i enjoyed the audiobook and the narration there's multiple different actors which is always nice but i still wasn't fully connected to the story and the characters they were definitely more fleshed out than in the first book but i still wasn't like super connected it was one of those books that i enjoyed it when i was reading it when i put it down i didn't really care that much to pick it back up but i do love what hank green did with it a lot of the themes that he talked about of internet celebrity and some of the science stuff and just like how well crafted and well researched it was and again the themes that he was talking about i really enjoyed so still gave this 4 out of 5 stars i would say the whole duology is like a four-star duology so overall really enjoy what this did this duology was the household book club pick for the last couple of months so we did a duology discussion on my channel i will link that video on the screen for more of our in-depth thoughts about this series the next book that i finished was rule of wolves by leigh bardugo oh finally you guys probably already know i read this because i did do a full review and discussion so i will link the review on the screen this is the second book in the king of scars duology and it follows a lot of the characters that were in the grishaverse as well as a little bit of like six of crows the main characters in here are nikolai nina from six of crows and zoya and this is following the events of um the kooka kingdom and king of scars and all of that it's just the continuation of the grishaverse stuff this book i did like a lot more than i liked the first book in this duology the first book in this duology really disappointed me so i went in with much lower expectations for this book which i do think helped me out but i did overall find the stories to be much better in here the characters felt like a little bit more like themselves um it feels like it got its world building and like the magic system back on track because there were some things that just kind of went off the rails in the first book for me a little bit but i still ultimately feel like this duology did not have to happen and i will continue to say that and scream that from the rooftops even as a huge grocery verse will i read any grisha first book she comes out with yes i am part of the problem however this this did not need to happen in my opinion i do think that the ending and the way everything wrapped up was really nice and i do hope that she just leaves it um i would say the weakest part of this book was the amount of antagonists there's like five different antagonists and all of them feel pretty weak to me like none of them felt very threatening so at all points like i never really feel like a character's in any kind of danger at this point i feel like she has so many sort of like fan favorites that a lot of them have really big plot armor so i never feel a sense of danger about any of the characters and all of that but the way that everyone's arcs wrapped up i do feel like was really good in this and there were some twists that i definitely saw coming and some other ones i was like oh didn't see that as much and i'm okay with it so yes while i have a lot of complaints about this series and this book still this one was way better and i just want her to just leave it be just leave the grisha verse alone and not even the grishavers leave rafka alone leave the ravkin characters alone if you want to go into the shoe area if you want to go back to ketterdam if you want to go to like the wandering isles and some of the other places we haven't seen pl have at it just leave this alone and also please continue ninth house so we know what's happening there but anyway like i said there's a full review and discussion where i go into all my in-depth thoughts about that but this one was 4 out of 5 stars for me i enjoyed it then i read a psalm for the wild built by becky chambers this is the first novella and what's going to be an adult novella sci-fi series but i don't know a lot about it because this it just started but this is a hope punk series which means that it's a more optimistic view of the future this is becky chambers she did the wayfarer series and this is kind of her style of sci-fi where it's not grim and dark like most sci-fi that comes out now it's more like what if humans learned from their mistakes and it's sort of nice even though do i really think it's realistic no because i'm a pessimist but it's nice it's nice to see and this falls main character who is a monk and originally they're a garden monk and then they sort of have this like identity crisis and don't really know what they want to do with their lives and become a t monk which is essentially a traveling therapist in this world which i love and they are traveling around and then eventually kind of have this little mission that they want to go on so they end up wandering into the woods and they discover well they are discovered by a robot and robots have not existed alongside humans in quite some time because robots many many years ago became sentient and just wandered into the woods and they sort of had a pact like you won't come near us we won't come near you like leave us be and the humans were like cool and they haven't been seen so they've kind of turned into myth and so our main character is approached by this robot and was like what do you need and everything kind of goes from there this is a wonderful little warm hug of a story it covers themes of like identity crisis and who are you and productivity and what does productivity mean and and work and balance and just it's just just who are you so it's basically like a mid no quarter life crisis i guess cause i would say that our characters in their like late 20s maybe also her character is non-binary which is a nice touch but she does a really good job becky chambers does a really good job with uh diversity and and gender and stuff in her books which i really like so i adored this super cute looking forward to the rest of the novella series gave it 5 out of 5 stars really enjoyed it then i read the glass magician by caroline stevener this is a standalone i think it's an adult fantasy but i also saw reviews that said it's young adult i'm pretty sure it's adult and this follows the main character of thalia who is a stage magician around the beginning of the 1900s and she discovered that she has actually some real magic so in this world there's like some world building things about there's different types of people solitaires traitors and forgetting the other ones silvestri but someone that isn't really explained i'll get to that in a second and she discovers that she might be somebody who can basically shapeshift and so that throws her into a whole new world of like magic and danger and things like that this was enjoyable on a really quick read but was not perfect by any means the world building like i mentioned is very sort of spotty and you don't really get a lot explained about like the different kinds of people and magic and that continues through into the end even with like plot stuff so there's a lot of plot points for a standalone novel that are just not explained not tied up at all whatsoever and i liked our characters it definitely felt like almost a magical sort of prestige or one of those like movies that came out you know 10 or so years ago that they did a lot of like stage magic movies and it felt very much like that that sort of historical fiction fantasy blend which was kind of fun so i liked this but it could have definitely been stronger i had a really fun idea and foundation and i actually wish that there would have been more time maybe a longer book maybe a series whatever where we actually got some of this stuff more fleshed out so i gave this 3.75 stars then i read eight perfect hours by leah luis this is a standalone adult contemporary romance this fall's main character of noel and she is coming home from a college reunion this is a british novel so she is whatever she went to school when she was like 17 18 they had a reunion tenure she she's coming back from that ends up getting stuck in a snowstorm after the just mess that was that event and ends up meeting this guy who's actually an american heading to the airport they're both stuck on the highway and they end up spending eight hours together kind of bonding and then go their separate ways thinking they're never going to meet up again and things keep happening with our lives keep kind of intersecting and everything kind of goes from there so this isn't just a lovely happy rom-com there are some heavy triggers in here we have death of a best friend death of a family member mentions of suicide and then a stroke both of those deaths happen in the past and happened off page but they are heavily talked about and this definitely is a bit of a grief story but a grief story you know many years down the line and some of that kind of stuff so some heavier topics there but i loved this this had so many elements that speak to me as far as romance tropes and things and what this had that i think it did really well is this sort of like faded lovers trope without it being too woo-woo like without it being too like magical feeling but just kind of like very matter of fact of the universe wants these two people to meet in some way and there was all these like really cool connections and things that had happened and i really enjoy stories like that so highly pulled for these characters but not only that everybody in the story felt very fleshed out there are like her friends and family and it's only told from her perspective which sometimes it doesn't work but it did hear like i didn't really need his perspective but you get everybody just feeling really fleshed out she even has this previous relationship that ties into this whole grief thing um that she was with this person for like nearly 10 years and it just kind of goes over these themes of like sometimes people are with you for a certain time in your life and um sometimes you grow apart or you grow in different directions or whatever and just a lot of things that it talked about were so so good also there is a theme of anxiety as well in a number of the characters and you can tell that either this author has anxiety or she just heavily researched it in a positive way because so many times you see anxiety not actually being depicted realistically in books this both the anxiety and the treatment that the characters were getting for it was accurate as somebody who has anxiety and is also a therapist so i really loved this and just pulled for them and it just it just hit so many beats that i really love because that's a trope like that faded kind of thing is a trope that i really like i highly enjoyed this and i gave it five out of five stars my favorite romances of the whole year then i read the chosen and the beautiful my nevo this is a standalone adult historical fantasy kind of it's a retelling of the great gatsby but it doesn't follow like i mean it kind of follows a story but it is taking the character of jordan baker who is a minor character in the great gatsby this like flapper character and in this story she is a i believe either like via i think she's vietnamese but doesn't tell you until later um she's a vietnamese woman who was adopted as a child and is a part of the story so instead of getting the you know nick carraway kind of story you get hers so in addition to the great gatsby type stuff that we are familiar with if you read that novel in like high school or something you get more of like her storyline like it doesn't just follow the great gatsby stuff this also takes place in a magical setting so it's the same setting of like you know new york and everything but there are like demons and uh magic and things and like different kinds of really interesting magic in the background of this as well this was definitely interesting but for such a short story it did take me a while to read it because i wasn't super connected to the characters and i do wish the actual world building and the magic and stuff had actually been more fleshed out similar to the other story that i talked about earlier with the glass magician that stuff was so cool and we just didn't get enough of it and it still kind of circled back to the gatsby stuff and the gatsby stuff i just find really boring um but the magic stuff was so cool so those added elements were nice and this book is really queer everyone in this book is queer pretty much everyone this book is like probably buy but they never give labels so that's a new twist so i did enjoy this wouldn't necessarily call it like a must read but if you do like classics and you do sort of like this time period like the flapper era and things like that and want to give this a try still good i would say 3.5 stars and the last book that i read this month was the love hypothesis by ali hazelwood this is a book that's been getting a ton of hype i got it off the net galley and it came out earlier um in september but this is an adult contemporary romance standalone and this was a character of olive and she is a phd student and one of her friends wants to sort of like date an ex of hers that she didn't really even care about like she doesn't even know why she dated him and they heard like the friend and the ex sort of like hit it off and she wants them to actually be together so she's like i need to devise this like fake dating plot and so she tells her friend that she's going on a date then she sees her friend at the labs and she just ends up turning into the hallway and kissing the first guy that she sees and this ends up being one of the teachers one of like the 10 year teachers who's only like in his 30s she's like in her mid-20s he's in his early 30s and they are not enemies because they don't really know each other but he's seen as being like a really mean like nasty teacher who like tears people dissertations apart and just like is curmudgeony um so she kisses him and then they end up getting in this like fake dating plotline because he's like actually i do need your help too because they've frozen my like funds for grants and stuff because stanford that's where they're at thinks that i'm going to like leave and go somewhere else so if they think i'm dating someone they're not going to think of a flight risk anymore and so like yes let's do this let's help each other out so they start fake dating i really liked this there are trigger warnings in here for sexual harassment as well as mentions of death of a parent that happened before the book started but like i said i really dug this um this was a really fun fake dating plot line i just i pulled for them i got the bone ache which you guys know the bone ache is me like really feeling for a couple and i just i really i liked it but i will say there were some things that weren't perfect i did know before going into this that this author was in fandom before mostly star wars and like star trek but was a fan of like the reylo ship now whatever you feel about the relay relationship whether you hated it loved it whatever i don't think that that's gonna have any impact on this actual story for you it is not this is not relo um but i was hesitant even as somebody that liked that couple in the movies i haven't thought about them since movies ended so i'm not a raylo i just was like whatever we're not going to go on this path again but i'm always skeptical now of like fan fiction authors because i've been burned before and this tread the line where they're like enough nods to like oh i kind of see where this might have originally come from like i don't know if she had a story kind of like this that was more reylo e but i can kind of see this come from i do think that like the main character like the main the guy um i feel like she was describing adam driver like the whole time which actually kind of worked for me because some of the descriptions i was like oh i know the face that that guy would make but there were a couple of tropes of things that i didn't like so much i love the fake dating trope but there were things like her describing how tall and big he was like all the time in comparison to how like small that olive was at one point we even have her like talking about like oh how skinny and like sucked in my stomach is i'm like oh my god stop so that's really annoying i was overlooking it later on as the book went on but especially at the beginning it's very like beat you over the head also olive is like one of those very oblivious characters of like everyone can see that you two are into each other because obviously fake dating that's obviously what happens and you just don't and that's a little bit and there was a little bit of like some almost sickly sweet things happening at the end that i i just don't happen to love but overall i really liked this this was almost a five star for me it was a 4.5 also olive is demisexual we love to see that kind of representation you rarely see demisexual characters and romances at all i really liked the friends i really liked the science element i really liked their dynamic it was really sweet because again it's not an enemies to lovers like he is seen as a curmudgeony dude and he is kind of curmudgeony but like heart of gold and he's not actually like mean to people he's just like a scientist um so i really adored it i think it is worth the hype i don't know 4.5 stars so if we're looking at this from the magical readathon wrap up which i forgot to mention at the beginning of this that i did magical readathons let's see how far i got shall we so for the end translated rule of wolves for the ash thorne tree i did a song for the wild built for ruin of the sky i did the glass magician and for the obsidian falls i did the chosen and the beautiful and then there was another one that i left out i forgot and i don't think i wrote it down but someone mentioned it to me in the comments of my uh video tbr video the one of them was like read a standalone like i said i don't have a written down because i didn't put it in my original but that would have been one of my romance books so i mean do i have yeah a five-star prediction i didn't do because i couldn't have predicted that and these are gonna be five stars and then the book with the school set oh ooh book with the school setting was the love hypothesis so could i count that i got to the academy no because i wouldn't have passed the tower rumination yeah maybe i did i don't know maybe i cheat maybe maybe i'll go around um because i like almost i almost got it i was only one book down if i didn't go in order i just couldn't read my 500 page five star prediction which if you watched my tome topple tbr i moved that to my tome topple tbr so it'll still happen i'm saying i got all the way i almost got all the way i almost got there so that is it for my september wrap up and magical readathon wrap up comment below let me know how your reading month was if you've read any of these books and what you thought of them thank you all for watching i'll see all you guys soon bye you\n"