**Book Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak**

As I delved into the world of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I couldn't help but feel that this story was going to be vastly different from the rest of my reading experience. The book had been described as a fairly cute and upbeat story, with a twist that would take it down a darker and more scandalous path. However, upon embarking on this journey, I found myself facing a stark contrast between the lighthearted beginning and the explicit content that followed.

The Book Thief follows the story of a young girl named Liesel Meminger as she navigates the tumultuous years of World War II. The narrative jumps forward in time, with each chapter focusing on a different character's journey through the war. What sets this book apart is its unique blend of literary fiction and historical nonfiction. Zusak weaves together stories of love, loss, and survival, all set against the backdrop of one of the most significant events in modern history.

One of the aspects that drew me to this book was the idea of mortality and the way it affects individuals. The story is full of poignant moments that explore the human experience of death, loss, and grief. However, as I progressed through the book, I found myself becoming increasingly disconnected from the characters. I didn't find them particularly likable, which isn't a requirement for me when reading a novel, but in this case, it made it difficult to become invested in their stories.

The writing was decent, with Zusak's unique narrative voice and poetic prose creating a sense of atmosphere that drew me into the world of the story. However, there were several aspects of the book that I found off-putting. The inclusion of anti-Romani slurs by the characters made me uncomfortable, as did the graphic depictions of sex scenes, particularly when they were directed towards one character who was gay. These elements felt out of place in a literary fiction novel and detracted from my overall experience.

Despite these issues, there were moments where Zusak's writing truly shone. The exploration of mortality and its effects on individuals was both poignant and powerful. One particular passage stood out to me as particularly well-written, as it tackled the theme of knowing one's own death in a way that felt both authentic and thought-provoking.

Ultimately, I found The Book Thief to be a predictable novel with themes that, while well-intentioned, didn't quite live up to my expectations. The book's focus on mortality and the human experience made for some poignant moments, but these were often overshadowed by more graphic content and problematic elements. Overall, I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

**Immortal List by Chloe Benjamin**

I recently had the opportunity to read Immortal List by Chloe Benjamin, an adult literary fiction novel that explores the concept of mortality through four siblings who visit a fortune-teller as children. The story follows each character's journey until their deaths, with the reader getting glimpses into their lives and struggles.

This book was led to me by a friend who had passed away a year ago, and I wanted to give it up for them. I was initially drawn in by the premise of death and knowing one's own mortality, but as I progressed through the book, I found myself struggling to connect with the characters.

The writing was decent, with Benjamin creating a sense of atmosphere that drew me into the world of the story. However, I didn't find the characters particularly likable, which made it difficult for me to become invested in their stories. The novel explores themes of death, loss, and grief, but these were often overshadowed by more trivial concerns.

One aspect that did stand out to me was the inclusion of trigger warnings, including death of a parent, death of a sibling, HIV, substance use, abuse, suicide, gun violence, disordered eating, anorexia, OCD, hypochondria, and anti-Romani statements. I found these elements to be off-putting, particularly as they felt like unnecessary details that detracted from the narrative.

The writing was often predictable, with themes that felt familiar but unoriginal. The concept of knowing one's own death was explored in a way that felt both authentic and thought-provoking, but this was often overshadowed by more graphic content and problematic elements.

Ultimately, I found Immortal List to be a disappointing novel with themes that didn't quite live up to my expectations. The writing was decent, but the characters were unlikable, and the inclusion of trigger warnings felt unnecessary. Overall, I would give this book 2 out of 5 stars.

**The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin**

I recently finished reading The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin, a novel that explores the lives of four siblings who grow up together in a family marked by tragedy and loss. The story follows each character's journey until their deaths, with the reader getting glimpses into their lives and struggles.

The writing was engaging, with Conklin creating a sense of atmosphere that drew me into the world of the story. I found myself becoming increasingly invested in the characters' stories as the novel progressed. However, I did find some aspects of the book to be off-putting, particularly the inclusion of graphic content and problematic elements.

One aspect that stood out to me was the exploration of mortality and its effects on individuals. The novel is full of poignant moments that explore the human experience of death, loss, and grief. However, I did find some aspects of the book's approach to these themes to be unoriginal and predictable.

Ultimately, I found The Last Romantics to be a well-written but ultimately disappointing novel. While Conklin's writing was engaging, the characters were sometimes unlikable, and the inclusion of trigger warnings felt unnecessary. Overall, I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe fact that I'm filming in my basement right now at night would have had a childhood me shook it hey guys it's Sam and this is my March wrap-up it goes without saying but I'm still gonna say it anyway because it's absolutely true March lasted approximately 84 years like the books that I read the beginning of March I almost don't remember because it felt so long ago and I actually read 10 books in March I had a really good reading month and even the first half of the month I wasn't even reading that much so I don't really know how this happened well I read a lot of romance books about half and half but still 10 books so this might be long let's get into it the first book that I read March was a road by any other name by Sarah McLean this is an adult historical romance that is a Hades and Persephone retelling I highly enjoyed this I went into it very skeptical because hate is Persephone retellings with me lately have just been like so disappointing I mean for years I've been disappointing I have yet to find ones that are like really good for me and this one would make the list in the future when I have a long enough list to compile to tell you about good was this follows two characters from noble families the male character has been disgraced because he actually lost all of his fortune in a gambling debt and now this has happened I think eight years later or something again the beginning of the month have been a long time ago and he has really related wealth by being the owner one of the co-owners actually of a really popular gambling den has called the fallen angel so there's a lot of like underworld vibes there and he's obviously the Hades character and then the Persephone character is also from a noble family she's going to be married off and she has really been turning down marriages for a while because she just doesn't want a marriage that isn't a marriage of love and these two characters actually knew each other as children which was what made this so good so this had all of the elements of like the Hades Persephone myth but twisted for a historical setting and made it less little because obviously the original myth is like not great for a female empowerment but for this one they had a pre-existing knowing of each other there's a lot of agency with the Persephone character and how she has a lot of spunk and spark and fights back and wants to be a part of this like gambling underworld and they both really love each other but don't realize that they still have feelings for each other and all of that was so good the sex scenes were good and it was just it was just a delight it was a delight there were a few things that made it not quite a five star in that the main guy character is a little bit alpha male II and that isn't a problem for you because I'm okay with alpha males as long as it really done well but he does get into like a lot of fights but their fights with his other friends that are like organized so that he can get his like anger out I don't know but some of that was just a little like okay whatever so I end up really enjoying this I gave us four out of five stars and this is actually part of a series and the series follows the rest of the men in this gambling ring of owners and stuff and I will probably read all of them because they seem good the next book that I picked up was the flatshare by Beth O'Leary this is an adult contemporary romance that follows two characters who are sharing a flat but they are sleeping in it at different times of day so Leon is the one that actually has the flat and he is a hospice nurse and so he only needs the flat to sleep during the day because he works the night shift tiffy recently had a breakup with an emotionally abusive boyfriend and she needs a place to stay but only needs it at nighttime because she is working everything during the day and they start developing an unlikely friendship through post-it notes that they leave for each other throughout the house because they haven't had any contact with each other this does have some triggers of dealing with an emotionally abusive relationship stalking and a sibling that's in prison otherwise this is a very cute kind of like rom-com feeling book the romance actually isn't the main part of the story this is really about these two characters what's going on in their lives and then how they're interacting and how their past could have crossed even when their past literally aren't crossing but they are two characters that do really support each other I would have liked to have seen more of their romance but ultimately like I said it's almost more of like a rom-com a chiclet type book because you don't have the romance as a front and center which is more what I expected I gave this 3.75 out of 5 stars then we have the will in the wilds by Charlie and Homburg this is a standalone fantasy story I'm honestly not sure if this would be classified as y-a or adult but it follows our main character of enna and she lives besides this magical forest and in this forest these creatures called wildlings which are essentially like sort of demons or like monsters from another dimension they come into the forest and that's kind of where they like hunt people and they just are part of that forest but not really a part of the rest of the world her mother was killed by these creatures she knows how dangerous they are but one kind ends up hunting her and so she ends up making a deal with another one that deal includes a kiss freely given and part of her soul goes into that creature and he's a little bit more like humanoid and obviously like very handsome and so that binds him both to her and to helping her but also to the human world but the human world also eats away at him and if he dies she will die so they have this like magical bond thing going on this was a really fun premise but ultimately just was a little lacking for me I found the world-building to be kind of weak we don't really know a lot about it and things there's pretty convenient and it's honestly pretty slow for what it is it's a shorter book but it kind of drags a bit and I feel like there could have been some more action in there and some more things going on and there just aren't and I kind of found things pretty predictable as well there is a lot of inste love with this which I forgive is because of this like magical bond thing but ultimately I just didn't really bond to the characters and I did find interesting because the wildling is attractive but he is actually very like animalistic he has like horns and a tail and I think like goat legs or something I forget and throughout the story he does get a little more human based on being more in the human world but still I thought that was an interesting take because we do have a lot of these like romances with like monster boyfriends that look very human and he very much does not but again I didn't find it very engaging and it wasn't bad but it wasn't really good either so I end up giving this 2.5 out of 5 stars then we have a thousand letters by Stacey Hart this is an adult contemporary romance that is a Jane Austen's persuasion retelling so years ago our two main characters were dating they were in love as teenagers and they were going to get married and then the male character was going away to the army and he asked the female character to marry him earlier than they had planned because I had always planned to get married and due to her family she said no and asked him to wait and at that point he said that he did not want to and he left and now he is back years later and his father is actually dying and the female character is best friends with his sister and is a really big part of their family so they are having to interact with each other a lot everything is kind of going from there again Jane Austen's persuasion there are ton of triggers in here so I'm going to read them off for my good reader of Rio so I don't forget any of them death of apparent cancer seizures 9/11 IEDs or war violence and emotional abuse from a family so this book was just fine I got the aches and the pining that I wanted out of it because the reason that I read persuasion retellings is because the angst is so good and I do really like good angst and a second chance romance I did find the male main character to be pretty annoying and that you just wanted to shake him he just messes up a lot and doesn't really get held accountable like the characters are saying they're holding him accountable but they kind of don't and so I found him hard to like and then the female character is almost too nice to the point that I'm like get a backbone so that kind of juxtaposition he they aren't necessarily mean to each other they have moments where they are because of all the stuff that's happened between them but it's not that he's like mean to her anything but like she's such a doormat and then all of the other side characters for the most part are just very big caricatures like particularly her family are really awful in a way that's like so I don't say unrealistic but it's like so over-the-top and a lot of things are just really over the top with us even just like I said the amount of like triggers in here there's just a lot of themes that that book was trying to cover and almost not enough time for all of them there is a lot of like misunderstanding and characters not using their words so if you're against that romance you're probably not going to like this but there is a lot of angst and the prose is pretty good but the characters can be overly gushy sometimes too but if you want a lot of angst this does have it I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars I then reread fury worn by Claire Legrand this is the first book in the Imperium trilogy which follows two characters who are in the same world but one thousand years apart so the first one is rial and she is being tested to see if she is one of the magical Queens that are prophesied because she has powers over basically all of the elements in this world and then a thousand years later we have Ileana who is living in a world and is basically an assassin for the Empire which is this evil empire that has taken over and she doesn't really know about her history and she is coming in contact with a lot of the political things going on and it's really following both of those characters and kind of how their stories intersect over time I reread this because I really want to get to the second book Kings probably in May because April is really already accounted for with my owls TBR but I really wanna go to the second book so I reread this on audio I actually enjoyed it I would say even more on audio because the first time I read this I really loved and connected to reality and I still do but I didn't really like Eliana story and I kind of felt just very disconnected from it I found her kind of annoying I found her much more relatable or just I just connected with her more with the audio for some reason so I really am invested in both of their stories now going into Kings Bane so I'm excited about that and I gave this again the same as I gave it the first time four out of five stars then we have some day in Paris by Olivia Lara this is an adult historical romance so this takes place from the 50s through the 70s and follows two characters who meet as children in a museum when the lights are out and don't really get to see each other but have this really deep connection I think they're like 15 at the time and then they do exchange letters for a while but then lose track of each other but it shows them over 20 years kind of missing each other and coming together and sort of being faded because the main female character has this sort of mystical this is the only fantastical element while all the women in our family supposedly have dreams about their soulmates and they only ever have like one love and so she is having dreams about somebody and that's what leads her to him and everything kind of goes from there there are a few trigger warnings with this one as well with a plane crash a miscarriage and a possible hint of a suicide so this book I found really frustrating I actually requested this off of net galley so I was sent this via eBook by the publisher and this has been a book that I've listed in my most anticipated releases videos leading up to this because I was so excited for it potentially because I do love a good like soulmates reconnecting over time kind of book this reminded me a lot in the synopsis kind of of one day in December by Josie silver which was in my favorite books of last year not the historical part but just the like instant connection and then reconnecting and stuff I just really tend to like that kind of things Time Traveler's Wife that kind of stuff and this just did not execute for me at all the pacing of this was very off so we would spend a lot of time in certain parts of their lives and then not others we spent a lot of time with them as kids and that was just kind of off-putting because I've gotten to this to read an adult romance not to have two kids pining for each other's teenagers and then the moments of them reconnecting are actually so drawn-out and few and are between that they're not actually reconnecting they're like constantly ships in the night missing each other which is fine for a while but has to have pay off and I honestly feel like this just did not have the payoff also the book just really hinges on this like soulmate bond through this dreaming thing and doesn't really have the characters obviously like interacting at all throughout the years and for this kind of trope to work for me you have to have the characters interacting and you have to have them building on this bond even if it is infrequently over the years and this just didn't have that it hinged more on this like magical bond thing which I don't like that kind of soulmate bond like there has to be something that builds on that foundation every single possible obstacle gets thrown in this characters way in a way that just started become like very unbelievable also I had complaints about how the historical setting was done again it supposed to be from like the 50s to the 70s and I always forgot that because there was no references to like how people were dressing how what was going on in the world like anything like that there was nothing to say that this wasn't taking place in present days my brain kept saying it was present day even though I knew that it wasn't there was no reference to the historical part of it and then these side characters were also particularly awful and kind of irredeemable but then the book would like try to redeem them by just like saying something random about it and be like and then they're fine like the characters and the way they reacted the side characters didn't make sense because of a lot of ways that the side characters were awful and you're like okay so why are you friends with them then it was just so disappointing for me because I do really love this trope so this had the soulmate bond this had the missed opportunity missed connection ships in the night kind of stuff but ultimately just was very disappointing to me and I gave it 1 point 5 out of 5 stars I didn't give it a 1 I think because there was a couple moments that kind of pulled at me like when they do sort of like find each other I still I still love that kind of situation but oh it was like so enraging for me so yeah 1.5 5 stars then I read chain of gold by Cassandra Clare I've already done a full spoiler free review as well as a gush for this I'll link that on the screen this is the first book in a new trilogy within Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter world and this follows the Infernal Devices which was set in Victorian London I believe this is an Edwardian London and it follows all of those characters kids now so there's like 12 characters in this book for the sake of keeping this brief because I know this videos are to be very long and I'm not close to being done with all the books that are this month this was just a fun ride I go into these books not really caring about the plot and the like demon-hunting plot and all of that stuff I really just want the characters and this always has a cast of characters that are just like likeable and fun and sometimes trophy but that's exactly what I want I don't want a masterpiece I said in my review of this that this is like a trashy CW TV show everyone is pretty everyone's in love there's a good backdrop of a magical setting and that kind of pushes people together and that's what I go into these four I gave this 3.75 out of 5 stars for being a ton of fun does this need to be edited and probably at least 100 pages shorter absolutely there's too many characters and Cassandra Clare wants all of our characters to be main characters I don't need to be but ultimately I enjoy most of the characters I enjoyed the actual real main characters because you as a reader know who the main characters are supposed to be and I enjoy the side characters and I enjoy everyone loving each other and land a kiss and I hope that they do kiss in the future then we have black-powder war by Naomi Novik this is the third book in the Temeraire series which is a adult historical fantasy series with the Napoleonic Wars time period except with us dragons and our main character of Lawrence was a Navy officer who bonded with a dragon after he hatched from the egg which is just a circumstance that he didn't want to be in and didn't expect himself in and now he's part of the aerial corps in the Napoleonic Wars for Britain like I said this is a third book so I can't go much into the plot but I read the second book a while ago I think like over a year ago and I wasn't sure how I felt about continuing with the series because I didn't really care for that second book it was long and drawn-out and all that but my patreon stood vote on this book for my book for March because every month my patreon supporters get to vote in a poll for a book I will read and review that month so this review is coming up next week but this was fun again I got back into the world the things I really liked about the first book we're back the bond between the dragons and their trainers is very cute there's some more like war machination things happening which I didn't think that I'd like because I don't tend to like military fantasy but I did like it here and there's a lot of like political things happening and there's additions of new types of dragons which I find very intriguing as well but just a little kind of like found military family is very cute here and the dragon bonds are adorable oh and the dragons can talk which makes them delightful little characters as well they're not little they're actually big tumors the size of a barn so I end up enjoying getting back into this world I do plan to continue with this series and I gave this one 3.5 out of 5 stars I then read get a life Chloe brown by Talia Hobart this is an adult contemporary romance and follows our main character of Chloe at the beginning of the book she almost gets hit by a car during a walk by a drunk driver and so she decides that she doesn't want to die being like lame is kind of what she says like she doesn't want to have a boring life so she makes a list of things that she was to do this includes moving out and doing some other like fun sort of like bucket list E but not quite bucket list he just liked getting a life like she wants to get a life and she is a disabled woman she does have a chronic illness and fibromyalgia so that does have an impact on everything kind of going on with her and how she views life and how she views relationships and stuff because she said a lot of people in her life who haven't understood that then we have a love interest of red who's more of a like rough-and-tumble type looking guy but is a sweet innocent being inside I'm actually gonna do a full review for this I don't want to go like completely into all the details but I just read this a few days ago so I'm still feeling like gushy about it and he's the superintendent in her new building and they immediately have tension and banter and they think they both hate each other but obviously they don't and everything kind of goes from there this does have a trigger warning of recovering from an abusive relationship in the part of red so that was interesting because usually you see abusive relationships from the female characters perspective and this was a male character that had an abusive relationship but I really enjoyed this this was so fun and cute I love Talia Hibbert's writing style and it was just like a fun banter II hate to love read and the characters as they grew to know each other better and become like friends and he's obviously helping her with her list and things like that and I just really enjoyed everything about that it was very sweet they really understand each other and it's a book that does show how characters can support each other and be really in love without being codependent because I think a lot of books do kind of fall into this like codependency and there's a lot of statements in here about these characters being individuals and wanting to be individuals but also wanting to be in each other's lives and help each other but not in a codependent kind of way so I really enjoyed that the thing that kind of brought us a little bit down for me is two things I mentioned this in my review with books and romance books in particular romance books only get stars for me if they have like a really visceral reaction for me so I could love romance books like I do really love this book and is one of my favorite romances but I don't give romances five stars unless I have like a visceral like in my body feelings I mean you might get this and if you do have the same thing comment below and let me know but I need to have like butterflies of my own stomach like feeling the feelings of these characters like sometimes like with angst like this is gonna sound so weird if you don't experience this but like my bones will like ache like if I 5 just like the tension like it just it hurts me like it actually physically hurts me like I will just I'll feel it I'll feel the love feelings in my own chest or like I'll kick my feet because I'm just so like excited about the couple so I have to have that to make it a five star but this is like a 4.5 honestly like this is so close I just didn't quite have that I think that kept me from it we're two things one the characters think about each other a lot in sexual ways which I've mentioned before something that I it kind of takes me out of the story because I personally don't have attraction in that way where I'm thinking about people like sexually like all the time so I just don't really like relate to this it was better than other romance books that I've read because it made it a little more like jokey and really was in line with a tone which was great but then the opposite of that was actually some of the sex scenes some of the sex scenes got like pretty look I call him like raunchy or smutty cuz some people are gonna be like smut readers are gonna be like that was nothing girl and I get that but for me it was just a little bit more over the top in a way that felt jarring from the rest of the story because the rest of story is like fairly cute and upbeat and then they would have these sex scenes that were like really more in like the scandalous like smutty side of things and the characters would like say like talk really like dirty and it was just like this feels so different from the rest of it so that part just kind of threw me off so because of that I end up giving this four point five I think out of five stars I really did enjoy it I plan on reading more Talia hipper and I plan on continuing this series because she's going to be writing about I think all of the main characters sisters there's two more sisters so I think she'll be writing about them so those will be books that I do plan to read my future and lastly I read the immortal list by Chloe Benjamin this is an adult literary fiction story that has a slight tinge of like magic magical realism so basically it follows four siblings back in the I think starts with a 70 I want to say when they first encountered this and they go to a fortune-teller and she tells them supposedly the days they are going to die and then it follows each character basically until their deaths and you get to see kind of what happens and everything that is the only fantastical element and it's never quite proven if that's a real part of it or not and this was a book that was actually led to me by a friend who passed away a year ago so I have kept this on my shelf after she died and I wanted to Rita and everyone to really give it up but I held on to it for that reason and it was interesting that I was reading a book about death and knowing your own death with this backdrop I'm holding onto it because of a friend who had recommended and lent it to me so listen this mostly on audio but I did read the last portion of it because I was getting down to the wire for the end of March and I wanted to finish in March but the thing with this is this is kind of your typical literary fiction so there are some trigger warnings I should bring that out right now so we have death of a parent death of a sibling HIV substance use / abuse suicide gun violence disordered eating / anorexia OCD / hypochondria and anti Romani statements by the characters so I mentioned that listen to an audio because I feel like I was very disconnected from these characters I didn't find them particularly likeable which isn't something that I need to have my characters like be likeable but I just was finding that I wasn't really connecting to their stories at all and I think for this book to work for you you have to be like connected to these characters and care about them and I just didn't the writing was decent but again there are some things in there that I just found very off-putting so there are some anti Romani statements in here that are made by the characters because they do find out that the fortune-teller was Romani character so they use some slurs for the Roma people and that was just really never corrected by the narrative the main characters are Jewish so there is a lot of talk of like faith and faith versus the mysticism of like that culture and things like that but it still wasn't corrected at all in any way and then the other thing that I found off-putting about the writing was one of the characters is gay and he and his like time period is portrayed in a way that there's a lot of sex scenes that are like fairly graphic or just like depictions of like sex and stuff that's a little bit more graphic for a literary fiction like I would expect it more like a romance or something but it for Laura fiction was more graphic and he was the only character that had these like graphic sex scenes which just again rubbed me the wrong way because it just made it seem like okay this character is gay and therefore gonna be promiscuous and it was just just rub me the wrong way there were a few lines in here that I found decent because I was talking about death and like knowing your own death and his death like a real thing and some of these kinds of things that were very pointed but those were few and far between and I ultimately found this like pretty predictable like the themes of what you would expect from characters knowing their own death were all there so I just kind of found it very predictable for a premise that could have been very interesting I end up giving this 2 out of 5 stars who so that is it for all the books that I read in March comment down below let me know if you've read any these books and what you've thought of them and also what your favorite book that you read last month was so thank you all for watching and I'll see you guys soon bye youthe fact that I'm filming in my basement right now at night would have had a childhood me shook it hey guys it's Sam and this is my March wrap-up it goes without saying but I'm still gonna say it anyway because it's absolutely true March lasted approximately 84 years like the books that I read the beginning of March I almost don't remember because it felt so long ago and I actually read 10 books in March I had a really good reading month and even the first half of the month I wasn't even reading that much so I don't really know how this happened well I read a lot of romance books about half and half but still 10 books so this might be long let's get into it the first book that I read March was a road by any other name by Sarah McLean this is an adult historical romance that is a Hades and Persephone retelling I highly enjoyed this I went into it very skeptical because hate is Persephone retellings with me lately have just been like so disappointing I mean for years I've been disappointing I have yet to find ones that are like really good for me and this one would make the list in the future when I have a long enough list to compile to tell you about good was this follows two characters from noble families the male character has been disgraced because he actually lost all of his fortune in a gambling debt and now this has happened I think eight years later or something again the beginning of the month have been a long time ago and he has really related wealth by being the owner one of the co-owners actually of a really popular gambling den has called the fallen angel so there's a lot of like underworld vibes there and he's obviously the Hades character and then the Persephone character is also from a noble family she's going to be married off and she has really been turning down marriages for a while because she just doesn't want a marriage that isn't a marriage of love and these two characters actually knew each other as children which was what made this so good so this had all of the elements of like the Hades Persephone myth but twisted for a historical setting and made it less little because obviously the original myth is like not great for a female empowerment but for this one they had a pre-existing knowing of each other there's a lot of agency with the Persephone character and how she has a lot of spunk and spark and fights back and wants to be a part of this like gambling underworld and they both really love each other but don't realize that they still have feelings for each other and all of that was so good the sex scenes were good and it was just it was just a delight it was a delight there were a few things that made it not quite a five star in that the main guy character is a little bit alpha male II and that isn't a problem for you because I'm okay with alpha males as long as it really done well but he does get into like a lot of fights but their fights with his other friends that are like organized so that he can get his like anger out I don't know but some of that was just a little like okay whatever so I end up really enjoying this I gave us four out of five stars and this is actually part of a series and the series follows the rest of the men in this gambling ring of owners and stuff and I will probably read all of them because they seem good the next book that I picked up was the flatshare by Beth O'Leary this is an adult contemporary romance that follows two characters who are sharing a flat but they are sleeping in it at different times of day so Leon is the one that actually has the flat and he is a hospice nurse and so he only needs the flat to sleep during the day because he works the night shift tiffy recently had a breakup with an emotionally abusive boyfriend and she needs a place to stay but only needs it at nighttime because she is working everything during the day and they start developing an unlikely friendship through post-it notes that they leave for each other throughout the house because they haven't had any contact with each other this does have some triggers of dealing with an emotionally abusive relationship stalking and a sibling that's in prison otherwise this is a very cute kind of like rom-com feeling book the romance actually isn't the main part of the story this is really about these two characters what's going on in their lives and then how they're interacting and how their past could have crossed even when their past literally aren't crossing but they are two characters that do really support each other I would have liked to have seen more of their romance but ultimately like I said it's almost more of like a rom-com a chiclet type book because you don't have the romance as a front and center which is more what I expected I gave this 3.75 out of 5 stars then we have the will in the wilds by Charlie and Homburg this is a standalone fantasy story I'm honestly not sure if this would be classified as y-a or adult but it follows our main character of enna and she lives besides this magical forest and in this forest these creatures called wildlings which are essentially like sort of demons or like monsters from another dimension they come into the forest and that's kind of where they like hunt people and they just are part of that forest but not really a part of the rest of the world her mother was killed by these creatures she knows how dangerous they are but one kind ends up hunting her and so she ends up making a deal with another one that deal includes a kiss freely given and part of her soul goes into that creature and he's a little bit more like humanoid and obviously like very handsome and so that binds him both to her and to helping her but also to the human world but the human world also eats away at him and if he dies she will die so they have this like magical bond thing going on this was a really fun premise but ultimately just was a little lacking for me I found the world-building to be kind of weak we don't really know a lot about it and things there's pretty convenient and it's honestly pretty slow for what it is it's a shorter book but it kind of drags a bit and I feel like there could have been some more action in there and some more things going on and there just aren't and I kind of found things pretty predictable as well there is a lot of inste love with this which I forgive is because of this like magical bond thing but ultimately I just didn't really bond to the characters and I did find interesting because the wildling is attractive but he is actually very like animalistic he has like horns and a tail and I think like goat legs or something I forget and throughout the story he does get a little more human based on being more in the human world but still I thought that was an interesting take because we do have a lot of these like romances with like monster boyfriends that look very human and he very much does not but again I didn't find it very engaging and it wasn't bad but it wasn't really good either so I end up giving this 2.5 out of 5 stars then we have a thousand letters by Stacey Hart this is an adult contemporary romance that is a Jane Austen's persuasion retelling so years ago our two main characters were dating they were in love as teenagers and they were going to get married and then the male character was going away to the army and he asked the female character to marry him earlier than they had planned because I had always planned to get married and due to her family she said no and asked him to wait and at that point he said that he did not want to and he left and now he is back years later and his father is actually dying and the female character is best friends with his sister and is a really big part of their family so they are having to interact with each other a lot everything is kind of going from there again Jane Austen's persuasion there are ton of triggers in here so I'm going to read them off for my good reader of Rio so I don't forget any of them death of apparent cancer seizures 9/11 IEDs or war violence and emotional abuse from a family so this book was just fine I got the aches and the pining that I wanted out of it because the reason that I read persuasion retellings is because the angst is so good and I do really like good angst and a second chance romance I did find the male main character to be pretty annoying and that you just wanted to shake him he just messes up a lot and doesn't really get held accountable like the characters are saying they're holding him accountable but they kind of don't and so I found him hard to like and then the female character is almost too nice to the point that I'm like get a backbone so that kind of juxtaposition he they aren't necessarily mean to each other they have moments where they are because of all the stuff that's happened between them but it's not that he's like mean to her anything but like she's such a doormat and then all of the other side characters for the most part are just very big caricatures like particularly her family are really awful in a way that's like so I don't say unrealistic but it's like so over-the-top and a lot of things are just really over the top with us even just like I said the amount of like triggers in here there's just a lot of themes that that book was trying to cover and almost not enough time for all of them there is a lot of like misunderstanding and characters not using their words so if you're against that romance you're probably not going to like this but there is a lot of angst and the prose is pretty good but the characters can be overly gushy sometimes too but if you want a lot of angst this does have it I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars I then reread fury worn by Claire Legrand this is the first book in the Imperium trilogy which follows two characters who are in the same world but one thousand years apart so the first one is rial and she is being tested to see if she is one of the magical Queens that are prophesied because she has powers over basically all of the elements in this world and then a thousand years later we have Ileana who is living in a world and is basically an assassin for the Empire which is this evil empire that has taken over and she doesn't really know about her history and she is coming in contact with a lot of the political things going on and it's really following both of those characters and kind of how their stories intersect over time I reread this because I really want to get to the second book Kings probably in May because April is really already accounted for with my owls TBR but I really wanna go to the second book so I reread this on audio I actually enjoyed it I would say even more on audio because the first time I read this I really loved and connected to reality and I still do but I didn't really like Eliana story and I kind of felt just very disconnected from it I found her kind of annoying I found her much more relatable or just I just connected with her more with the audio for some reason so I really am invested in both of their stories now going into Kings Bane so I'm excited about that and I gave this again the same as I gave it the first time four out of five stars then we have some day in Paris by Olivia Lara this is an adult historical romance so this takes place from the 50s through the 70s and follows two characters who meet as children in a museum when the lights are out and don't really get to see each other but have this really deep connection I think they're like 15 at the time and then they do exchange letters for a while but then lose track of each other but it shows them over 20 years kind of missing each other and coming together and sort of being faded because the main female character has this sort of mystical this is the only fantastical element while all the women in our family supposedly have dreams about their soulmates and they only ever have like one love and so she is having dreams about somebody and that's what leads her to him and everything kind of goes from there there are a few trigger warnings with this one as well with a plane crash a miscarriage and a possible hint of a suicide so this book I found really frustrating I actually requested this off of net galley so I was sent this via eBook by the publisher and this has been a book that I've listed in my most anticipated releases videos leading up to this because I was so excited for it potentially because I do love a good like soulmates reconnecting over time kind of book this reminded me a lot in the synopsis kind of of one day in December by Josie silver which was in my favorite books of last year not the historical part but just the like instant connection and then reconnecting and stuff I just really tend to like that kind of things Time Traveler's Wife that kind of stuff and this just did not execute for me at all the pacing of this was very off so we would spend a lot of time in certain parts of their lives and then not others we spent a lot of time with them as kids and that was just kind of off-putting because I've gotten to this to read an adult romance not to have two kids pining for each other's teenagers and then the moments of them reconnecting are actually so drawn-out and few and are between that they're not actually reconnecting they're like constantly ships in the night missing each other which is fine for a while but has to have pay off and I honestly feel like this just did not have the payoff also the book just really hinges on this like soulmate bond through this dreaming thing and doesn't really have the characters obviously like interacting at all throughout the years and for this kind of trope to work for me you have to have the characters interacting and you have to have them building on this bond even if it is infrequently over the years and this just didn't have that it hinged more on this like magical bond thing which I don't like that kind of soulmate bond like there has to be something that builds on that foundation every single possible obstacle gets thrown in this characters way in a way that just started become like very unbelievable also I had complaints about how the historical setting was done again it supposed to be from like the 50s to the 70s and I always forgot that because there was no references to like how people were dressing how what was going on in the world like anything like that there was nothing to say that this wasn't taking place in present days my brain kept saying it was present day even though I knew that it wasn't there was no reference to the historical part of it and then these side characters were also particularly awful and kind of irredeemable but then the book would like try to redeem them by just like saying something random about it and be like and then they're fine like the characters and the way they reacted the side characters didn't make sense because of a lot of ways that the side characters were awful and you're like okay so why are you friends with them then it was just so disappointing for me because I do really love this trope so this had the soulmate bond this had the missed opportunity missed connection ships in the night kind of stuff but ultimately just was very disappointing to me and I gave it 1 point 5 out of 5 stars I didn't give it a 1 I think because there was a couple moments that kind of pulled at me like when they do sort of like find each other I still I still love that kind of situation but oh it was like so enraging for me so yeah 1.5 5 stars then I read chain of gold by Cassandra Clare I've already done a full spoiler free review as well as a gush for this I'll link that on the screen this is the first book in a new trilogy within Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter world and this follows the Infernal Devices which was set in Victorian London I believe this is an Edwardian London and it follows all of those characters kids now so there's like 12 characters in this book for the sake of keeping this brief because I know this videos are to be very long and I'm not close to being done with all the books that are this month this was just a fun ride I go into these books not really caring about the plot and the like demon-hunting plot and all of that stuff I really just want the characters and this always has a cast of characters that are just like likeable and fun and sometimes trophy but that's exactly what I want I don't want a masterpiece I said in my review of this that this is like a trashy CW TV show everyone is pretty everyone's in love there's a good backdrop of a magical setting and that kind of pushes people together and that's what I go into these four I gave this 3.75 out of 5 stars for being a ton of fun does this need to be edited and probably at least 100 pages shorter absolutely there's too many characters and Cassandra Clare wants all of our characters to be main characters I don't need to be but ultimately I enjoy most of the characters I enjoyed the actual real main characters because you as a reader know who the main characters are supposed to be and I enjoy the side characters and I enjoy everyone loving each other and land a kiss and I hope that they do kiss in the future then we have black-powder war by Naomi Novik this is the third book in the Temeraire series which is a adult historical fantasy series with the Napoleonic Wars time period except with us dragons and our main character of Lawrence was a Navy officer who bonded with a dragon after he hatched from the egg which is just a circumstance that he didn't want to be in and didn't expect himself in and now he's part of the aerial corps in the Napoleonic Wars for Britain like I said this is a third book so I can't go much into the plot but I read the second book a while ago I think like over a year ago and I wasn't sure how I felt about continuing with the series because I didn't really care for that second book it was long and drawn-out and all that but my patreon stood vote on this book for my book for March because every month my patreon supporters get to vote in a poll for a book I will read and review that month so this review is coming up next week but this was fun again I got back into the world the things I really liked about the first book we're back the bond between the dragons and their trainers is very cute there's some more like war machination things happening which I didn't think that I'd like because I don't tend to like military fantasy but I did like it here and there's a lot of like political things happening and there's additions of new types of dragons which I find very intriguing as well but just a little kind of like found military family is very cute here and the dragon bonds are adorable oh and the dragons can talk which makes them delightful little characters as well they're not little they're actually big tumors the size of a barn so I end up enjoying getting back into this world I do plan to continue with this series and I gave this one 3.5 out of 5 stars I then read get a life Chloe brown by Talia Hobart this is an adult contemporary romance and follows our main character of Chloe at the beginning of the book she almost gets hit by a car during a walk by a drunk driver and so she decides that she doesn't want to die being like lame is kind of what she says like she doesn't want to have a boring life so she makes a list of things that she was to do this includes moving out and doing some other like fun sort of like bucket list E but not quite bucket list he just liked getting a life like she wants to get a life and she is a disabled woman she does have a chronic illness and fibromyalgia so that does have an impact on everything kind of going on with her and how she views life and how she views relationships and stuff because she said a lot of people in her life who haven't understood that then we have a love interest of red who's more of a like rough-and-tumble type looking guy but is a sweet innocent being inside I'm actually gonna do a full review for this I don't want to go like completely into all the details but I just read this a few days ago so I'm still feeling like gushy about it and he's the superintendent in her new building and they immediately have tension and banter and they think they both hate each other but obviously they don't and everything kind of goes from there this does have a trigger warning of recovering from an abusive relationship in the part of red so that was interesting because usually you see abusive relationships from the female characters perspective and this was a male character that had an abusive relationship but I really enjoyed this this was so fun and cute I love Talia Hibbert's writing style and it was just like a fun banter II hate to love read and the characters as they grew to know each other better and become like friends and he's obviously helping her with her list and things like that and I just really enjoyed everything about that it was very sweet they really understand each other and it's a book that does show how characters can support each other and be really in love without being codependent because I think a lot of books do kind of fall into this like codependency and there's a lot of statements in here about these characters being individuals and wanting to be individuals but also wanting to be in each other's lives and help each other but not in a codependent kind of way so I really enjoyed that the thing that kind of brought us a little bit down for me is two things I mentioned this in my review with books and romance books in particular romance books only get stars for me if they have like a really visceral reaction for me so I could love romance books like I do really love this book and is one of my favorite romances but I don't give romances five stars unless I have like a visceral like in my body feelings I mean you might get this and if you do have the same thing comment below and let me know but I need to have like butterflies of my own stomach like feeling the feelings of these characters like sometimes like with angst like this is gonna sound so weird if you don't experience this but like my bones will like ache like if I 5 just like the tension like it just it hurts me like it actually physically hurts me like I will just I'll feel it I'll feel the love feelings in my own chest or like I'll kick my feet because I'm just so like excited about the couple so I have to have that to make it a five star but this is like a 4.5 honestly like this is so close I just didn't quite have that I think that kept me from it we're two things one the characters think about each other a lot in sexual ways which I've mentioned before something that I it kind of takes me out of the story because I personally don't have attraction in that way where I'm thinking about people like sexually like all the time so I just don't really like relate to this it was better than other romance books that I've read because it made it a little more like jokey and really was in line with a tone which was great but then the opposite of that was actually some of the sex scenes some of the sex scenes got like pretty look I call him like raunchy or smutty cuz some people are gonna be like smut readers are gonna be like that was nothing girl and I get that but for me it was just a little bit more over the top in a way that felt jarring from the rest of the story because the rest of story is like fairly cute and upbeat and then they would have these sex scenes that were like really more in like the scandalous like smutty side of things and the characters would like say like talk really like dirty and it was just like this feels so different from the rest of it so that part just kind of threw me off so because of that I end up giving this four point five I think out of five stars I really did enjoy it I plan on reading more Talia hipper and I plan on continuing this series because she's going to be writing about I think all of the main characters sisters there's two more sisters so I think she'll be writing about them so those will be books that I do plan to read my future and lastly I read the immortal list by Chloe Benjamin this is an adult literary fiction story that has a slight tinge of like magic magical realism so basically it follows four siblings back in the I think starts with a 70 I want to say when they first encountered this and they go to a fortune-teller and she tells them supposedly the days they are going to die and then it follows each character basically until their deaths and you get to see kind of what happens and everything that is the only fantastical element and it's never quite proven if that's a real part of it or not and this was a book that was actually led to me by a friend who passed away a year ago so I have kept this on my shelf after she died and I wanted to Rita and everyone to really give it up but I held on to it for that reason and it was interesting that I was reading a book about death and knowing your own death with this backdrop I'm holding onto it because of a friend who had recommended and lent it to me so listen this mostly on audio but I did read the last portion of it because I was getting down to the wire for the end of March and I wanted to finish in March but the thing with this is this is kind of your typical literary fiction so there are some trigger warnings I should bring that out right now so we have death of a parent death of a sibling HIV substance use / abuse suicide gun violence disordered eating / anorexia OCD / hypochondria and anti Romani statements by the characters so I mentioned that listen to an audio because I feel like I was very disconnected from these characters I didn't find them particularly likeable which isn't something that I need to have my characters like be likeable but I just was finding that I wasn't really connecting to their stories at all and I think for this book to work for you you have to be like connected to these characters and care about them and I just didn't the writing was decent but again there are some things in there that I just found very off-putting so there are some anti Romani statements in here that are made by the characters because they do find out that the fortune-teller was Romani character so they use some slurs for the Roma people and that was just really never corrected by the narrative the main characters are Jewish so there is a lot of talk of like faith and faith versus the mysticism of like that culture and things like that but it still wasn't corrected at all in any way and then the other thing that I found off-putting about the writing was one of the characters is gay and he and his like time period is portrayed in a way that there's a lot of sex scenes that are like fairly graphic or just like depictions of like sex and stuff that's a little bit more graphic for a literary fiction like I would expect it more like a romance or something but it for Laura fiction was more graphic and he was the only character that had these like graphic sex scenes which just again rubbed me the wrong way because it just made it seem like okay this character is gay and therefore gonna be promiscuous and it was just just rub me the wrong way there were a few lines in here that I found decent because I was talking about death and like knowing your own death and his death like a real thing and some of these kinds of things that were very pointed but those were few and far between and I ultimately found this like pretty predictable like the themes of what you would expect from characters knowing their own death were all there so I just kind of found it very predictable for a premise that could have been very interesting I end up giving this 2 out of 5 stars who so that is it for all the books that I read in March comment down below let me know if you've read any these books and what you've thought of them and also what your favorite book that you read last month was so thank you all for watching and I'll see you guys soon bye you\n"