alright I'm a little late to this video but booktubeathon, read-a-thon, wrap up:
let's go. the first book I read for the booktubeathon this year was Genuine
Fraud by E Lockhart and this I guess fulfilled the challenge of hyped book,
though a lot of these books could. I basically just really wanted to read
this. I don't really want to explain what Genuine Fraud is, I mean, it's about a
person who is a genuine fraud and it's kind of a mystery. it's a murder mystery.
it's got a lot of weird stuff going on, but as with We Were Liars, for instance, I
think it's better to go in this into this one with very little expectations
or knowledge on what's gonna happen because it's just kind of a wild journey.
I think lovers of We Were Liars will really like this book it's got that same
sort of unreliable narrator going on, or maybe untrustworthy narrator is a better
way to describe the one in this book, it has the same not quite linear structure
and page turning intrigue and loss for words ending. it doesn't have the same
emotional impact that I feel like We Were Liars does, but I'm pretty sure I tore
through it just as furiously as i tore through we were liars and it's fun. it's
not great. but it's fun. the next book is another hyped book a book with a person
on the cover and a book about someone who's quite different from me and that
is Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Nic Stone is amazing, I met her at Book Expo and I
thought I think she's just awesome. she's so much fun and this story is great. the
only blurb my arc here really gives is"Justyce is a good kid, an honor student,
on his way to Yale, so why is he the one in handcuffs?" At the start of this novel,
you have a situation where he's trying to help his drunk white girlfriend off
the road and like he's being a good ex-boyfriend and a cop sees him and
thinks that he's drugged the girl and basically he gets arrested for helping
and it's this really awful situation and he is traumatized from it and the rest
of the book kind of deals with the aftermath of that, as well as tons of
other situational daily racism he faces. what I really liked is that toxic
relationships are called out, like his best friend is constantly telling him
that his ex-girlfriend is not worth it and she's toxic and unhealthy and I love
that. especially you don't see a lot of guys calling out their other guy friends,
really. I feel like it's a lot more common for
girls to do that, but I love like bros who care for their other bros. I think that's
awesome, you don't see that a lot. I love the classroom discussions that go on
this book. I love discussions on allyship and
where to make your voice known and where to amplify other voices and things like
that. I just think it's such a short novel and I think it does so much good.
I'm sure this is going to be tied in a lot with The Hate U Give and I do
think it gives another side of The Hate U Give. This comes out- oh, I should say
Genuine Fraud comes out in September, I'm not sure on the exact date but I'll put
it on the screen now. this comes out in September, this comes out October. I think
it's mid October again I'll put it on the screen. pre-order it, it's so good. the
next book was another one that I really loved. I did not love it at the start, but
I grew to really love it and that is Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone.
this another book about character who's different from me and that is because
Samantha in this story has purely obsessional OCD and also really bad
anxiety that kind of manifests differently than my own. this is a story
about a girl in high school who again has purely obsession OCD and she's
friends with all the popular girls and so she's always had to hide that from
everyone around her. she often gets really consumed by the darkness inside
of her head and it's overwhelming and she has to take a step back from
everything. at the start of a new school year she kind of gets drawn in to this
poetry reading club and she grows to find a family there and also a romance
and it's really great. I say that confusedly because the first half of the
book I was kind of frustrated. she's friends with all these quote unquote
popular girls and they're all just really mean and I I never understand why
like, our main characters when you read from the perspective of main character
who clearly doesn't like their friends or, just, doesn't
understand why their friends are so mean but continues to be friends with them
and I get in high school it's hard you kind of fall into these groups and
especially when she has all these other problems going on with her life, it's
easy to just stay with people who love and support her even though they don't
know her whole story. I get that, but I was just like why do you like these
awful people? why were you ever friends with them?
because they sound like they've been bad from the start. it's just about kind of
finding an outlet that makes you feel like you're most yourself,
gives you somewhere to channel all of your feelings and emotions and
experiences, and it's really great. I love that. I love when people kind of find
their second homes and second families with other people and find love and
passion in certain activities, so I think that was a great element. there were a
lot of like big twists in this that were pretty wild, that I didn't see coming. I
actually got a lot of similar vibes to Made You Up by Francesca Zappia, so if
you liked that one I recommend trying out this one. I really liked it and I
can't wait to read more from Tamara Ireland Stone cause I did like her
writing. the next book I read was a book that I bought because of the cover more
or less, I picked it up because of the cover and then I read the summary and I
thought it sounded great, but look at this beautiful cover I'm in love it's so
gorgeous. and also it's blurbed on the front by
Paul Beauty who wrote The Sellout, which i really liked and read that earlier
this year so I basically knew this was gonna be great and it's about someone
who's different for myself, so multiple challenges. it follows our main character
Thandi, or Thandi, I'm not entirely sure I'm pronunciation, I got mixed feedback
when I tried to look it up, but it's T-H-A-N-D-I, and it's a story of her. she's
mixed-race, her mother is a coloured South African and her father is a
light-skinned african-american so it deals a lot with race and also not
really knowing your place cause when you're mixed-race it's kind of hard to
know which, you know, which group you're more- your closest to, I suppose, and she
deals a lot with that. she's very aware of her privilege because of the fact
that she is lighter skinned and she also is very aware of her multicultural
background and that's really explored. you follow her on her journey from
childhood to adulthood as she navigates what it means to be a black woman in
America and but also kind of a light-skinned woman in South Africa and
how different those experiences are. it deals with the loss of a loved one and
motherhood and love this is a story ultimately I feel like about grief. I
feel I think at the front half of the novel it's a lot more about race and
what that means. this is not a biographical novel, but it does closely
follow her own life, so I kind of feel like it balances that in a really
interesting way. it does deal with grief. if you are grieving over a parent, it
might be quite a hard one to read, but it is beautiful so I will
mention that. the next book I read was my read entirely outside challenge and that
is Unboxed by Non Pratt. Unboxed is he story of four teenagers in England who come
together after a few years apart, following the death of one of the best
friends. in the past they had put together a time capsule and hid it at
their old school and after the death of one of their friends they decide to
excavate it? Unbury it? it's not buried really but they decide to find it and
reopen it together again. this is another story about grief it's really quite sad.
it's very short and like the margins and font are quite big. this is actually, I
think, the book that I wrote in for bought because of the cover, because I knew
nothing about it, I just bought it because I thought it was gorgeous. this
was a very short but very emotional novel. again, it talks a lot about grief
and losing a loved one especially when you're so young and that that loved one
you lost was kind of one of the people really keeping them together. her name is
Millie and she was really the glue of their relationship. she was the one who
constantly kept in contact with everyone even when I everyone moved away and it's
just kind of what it means to these people coming out of that. the main
narrator in this book is also a lesbian which is really cool because I didn't
expect that going into it and it wasn't hugely talked about but it was something
that she was dealing with, like coming out, and things like that. It talks about
toxic relationships and kind of the effects that toxic relationships and
constantly being in them has on people. there's a lot about family. it does it
does a lot in a very short amount of pages. I thought it was really sweet. this
is the first Non Pratt book I've read, but I think I'll be reading more. the next
book was an audiobook that I listened to and is All American Boys by Brandon
Kiely- Brendon Kieley and Jason Reynolds. All American Boys is told from the
perspective of two different boys, one black and one white, and kind of just
explores the differences between them. right at the start of the book, the main
character who is black is in a convenience store and this weird
situation happens where basically the police police come in and think he's
stealing a bag of chips and they beat his ass for it. the main white character
witnesses the whole event and also knows the cop very well. the cop has been like
a brother to him since his father passed away so it's it's really hard because it
follows the white character knowing that this is
wrong, but also knowing that this is his family and not sure where to stand on
that and it's a really interesting book. essentially, it's just the story of
Rashad and Quinn discovering that racism is so prevalent whether or not they want
to admit it or see it. it's about police brutality and risking
everything to change the world, or at least change your community, for the
better and it's it's incredible. it's so good.
I think the audiobook was done really well, it was told with two different
narrators between the two boys perspectives, which is really interesting.
and yeah, it's great. I feel like in 2017 this should be required reading. what I
really like about All American Boys, as opposed to a Dear Martin or a THUG, for
instance, is that it doesn't focus on like the court case as a whole. what it's
mostly focusing on is the community that these boys live in and how the community
itself is changing, not so much about the repercussions for the cop himself, which
I feel like made the book a little less stressful, because it's like when you
read THUG or read Dear Martin, it's just-- you get so angry about it and this one
you get really angry, but then you also feel comforted by the fact that so many
people are learning and growing because of the situation, so I did like that
element. I thought it was a nice, different take on it, so I super
recommend it. also I don't mean to just like, lump together all these stories
about police brutality, I just happened to be talking about them both
this week anyway. the next book I read is Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan and
this is a story it's narrated by a generation of gay men who died because
of AIDS. they look down upon teenagers in modern-day and see the same conflicts
that they had to go through and narrate. it's kind of like a like a Greek chorus
kind of narration over the differences that they face. I didn't find myself
super connected with any of these boys in the story, like the specific stories,
but I did feel myself rooting for them. this deals with sexual assault and
homophobia. I like that it showed healthy relationships, but also unhealthy
relationships, and fear, but also love, and change. it dealt with coming out and
whether or not you should come out, or in certain situations, things like that. the
stories all felt really real and authentic. I think this is a great read
for people who are gay or heterosexual, adults, or teenagers, whatever.
it's so beautifully written. David Levithan-- The Realm of Possibility by
David Levithan was one of my favorite books growing up and this is no different. He has
beautiful writing. while I didn't connect to the characters as much, I think this
is such an important, great book. my camera battery is dying so I'm gonna try
and talk about this really quickly. this is the last book that I technically
started, this is my eighth book that I technically started during the
booktubeathon, so I'm gonna talk about here and that's You Know Me Well by
David Levithan and Nina Lacour this takes place during Pride Week in San
Francisco and it's these two characters, or I guess a few characters who all go
to the same high school but they're not really friends until they like meet up
at this bar and then they have this wild week where all these things happen. I
don't even know how to explain it, it's basically it's just a really fun story
about friendship, and love, and falling out of love, and finding the people who
are right for us and also talking a lot about chosen families. Kate and Mark are
the two point of views it's told between it's just the story of the two of them
finding each other at the right time and helping each other through this wild
time in their lives during Pride and talking about like their futures and
things they love. I think they're both like junior/seniors so they're all
thinking about what's next. it's fun, I didn't love it. I didn't love their
writing as much as I usually love writing between both of these authors,
but it was a good time. I think I gave it like 3.5 stars, so it's fun. I
like- I like to have read all of their works, so I'm glad I read it and that's
it! I completed all of the challenges. actually, no I didn't complete all the challenges
cause I technically finished the last two books a day late but that's just because
I had tons going on during the booktubeathon, so I would have completed
them if I had like three days I was solidly booked, so I consider it a win,
even though I finished technically like 12 hours late, but whatever it was a
great time. thank you for coming to my Twitter sprints, if you were there! I had
so much fun hosting a Twitter sprint. like, that was the most fun I've had in a
very long time, like talking to so many people about reading, it was awesome and
that's all for me! my camera is gonna die, so I'll see you next time, bye!
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