Hey guys, it's Kirsti. Welcome back to my
channel and welcome to another weekly
wrap up. This one is for the 2nd
through the 8th of April and this
week I read a total of ten books and
3,892 pages, which is ridiculous. The first
book that I finished this week was a
reread, and that is Openly Straight by
Bill Konigsberg. So this book is a
contemporary YA book that tells the
story of a boy named Rafe who is openly
gay in Boulder, Colorado. And then for
whatever reason, he decides that he wants
to go to this elite all-boys boarding
school in New England, and when he goes
there, he decides that he is just going
to not tell people that he's gay, because
he's sick of being "the gay kid" and he
just kind of want people to see him as
Rafe and not as his sexuality. So it's
not so much that he goes back into the
closet, it's just that he doesn't really
answer any questions and he just lets
people assume that he's straight. Except
then he gets there and he meets this boy
Ben and there's this incredible
connection between the two of them and,
like, Ben's definitely straight and Rafe
is pretending to be straight, but things
start to happen between them. So it's a
very complicated book in that, like, Rafe
is lying about his sexuality by omission
and he doesn't quite know how to process
his feelings about Ben and everything is
a little bit up in the air at times. The
first time that I read this book, I was
like "I feel like I would have liked this
more if I hadn't just read and loved
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda like
five million times". And yes, there are
a lot of similarities between the two
books. The difference is that this is an
Own Voices book. Rafe has quite a similar
voice to Simon in the lot of ways. He has
a very supportive female best friend
back home in Boulder, his parents are
incredibly supportive. I did actually
enjoy this book more on reread than I
did the first time around, but Rafe is
definitely, like, a whiny character a lot
of the time. I really loved his voice
in this book, I love the relationship
between him and Ben and the way that
that progresses and the way they're both
very uncertain a lot of the time, but I
did very very much enjoyed this
book, I think I liked it more on reread
than I did the first time around, so I
enjoyed this one a lot and I gave it
4 stars. The second book that I read
this week is Honestly Ben, also by
Bill Konigsberg, which is the second
book in this series. There is a 0.5
in between which is Openly,
Honestly, I read that a few weeks ago. So
this one has basically just come out and
it is the long anticipated sequel which
is told from Ben's
perspective, and it picks up pretty much
immediately where the first book left
off. So this book is basically Ben
trying to process his feelings about
Rafe and not knowing what to do because
he's always thought that he was straight.
And now suddenly he's attracted to this
boy and he doesn't know what that means
and add in the fact that Rafe has been
lying to him basically the whole time
that they've known each other, like, he
just doesn't quite know where he's at.
And it's him sort of working through
all this kind of stuff, and meeting this
girl, Hannah, and not really knowing
where that relationship is going because
of the feelings that he has for Rafe. And
I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as
I liked Openly Straight. I think a big
part of the problem that I had with this
book is the way that bisexuality is
handled. Ben very much when he's working
through his feelings is very much saying "No
no no, I'm straight, I'm straight, I'm
straight." And various people in the
course of the story will say to him "Hmm,
are you maybe bisexual?" and he's like "No
no no, I'm definitely straight!", because in
his mind, being bisexual is being equally
attracted to girls and guys. And people
will say to him "Well, that's not entirely
what it is..." but he still just rejects it
out of hand because that's not how he
sees bisexuality. And so that I found
incredibly frustrating. Like, I understand
why it was done, but it ended up that the
book was very much a "gay for you" sort of
a thing and not a "Hey, guess what? I'm
bisexual, I've worked through it, I
understand that bisexuality is a spectrum." So,
like, that annoyed me. But Bill
Konigsberg writes such amazing secondary
characters. Like, all the secondary
characters in these books are so strong
and so vivid and I want basically all of
them to have their own stories because
their stories are just so compelling, and
the rest of the diversity in this
series is handled incredibly well. So I
didn't like this one quite as much as I
liked the first one, but I did still
really really enjoy it and I liked the
way that the story played out. I ended up
giving this one 3.75
stars. The third book that I read this
week is actually a DNF and that is Why
We Broke Up by Daniel Handler,
illustrated by Maira Kalman. I had issues
with this book. I thought that I was
going to really enjoy this one because,
like, it's a YA contemporary and I'm
typically trash for YA contemporaries.
It's the story of a sixteen-year-old girl
named Min who breaks up with her
boyfriend, Ed. And she decides that she's
going to basically write him this
incredibly long letter
about why they broke up and deliver it
to his house with a box of stuff that
was meaningful during their relationship
and that kind of tells the story of
their relationship leading to why we
broke up through this box of stuff. Now I
had a problem with this on page one,
because these kids dated for a whopping
five weeks. The fact that she had this,
like, massive box of stuff when they dated
for 5 weeks, I'm just like "Um. What?" I also
was not a fan of the writing style, I
didn't particularly like the characters,
I just mostly found this boring. The art
in it is really juvenile a lot of the
time and I didn't like that either, so
the art wasn't adding anything to the
story. I made it to page, like, 87? 89?
Somewhere around there, and I was just
bored. I didn't care. I skim read the
ending to find out what happens and I'm
glad I DNFed this one. So I think on
Goodreads I gave this 2 stars, but it
was a DNF. The fourth book that I
finished this week was Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty. I was pleasantly
surprised by this book. I read The
Husband's Secret last year and did not
love it, so I was a little bit hesitant
going into this one. But I really really
enjoyed this book. So it's set at a
primary school in Sydney and it's
basically telling the story of these
mothers whose children are in prep - or
kindergarten as it's known in New South
Wales. So it's the story of them and the
friendships that develop and their lives over
the months leading up to this particular
tragic event. So this book is actually
surprisingly funny a lot of the time.
Like, it's very very dark humour but it is
an incredibly funny book. It deals with a
lot of very very serious topics
including sexual assault and domestic
violence. There is a *lot* of discussion
about domestic violence in the story. But
I really enjoyed the way that, like, school
parent politics and all of that side of
things was depicted, because as a school
employee? Uh, yeah. That... that stuff is hella
accurate. I also liked that at the end of
a lot of the chapters, it had these kind
of a little, like, excerpt things from
other various sort of background
characters in the story, giving their
opinions on what has happened with this
tragic event, and what was happening at
particular points in the story. Those
were just really funny and added
something to the story in that it's giving
you almost this, like, outsider's point of
view and it just... I don't know, it just
worked really really well for me. I
really really enjoyed this one, I was
pleasantly surprised by it and I gave it
4 stars. The fifth book that I
finished this week is The Stars
Are Legion by Kameron Hurley. This is an
adult sci-fi book, and it's kind of a
weird sci-fi book. It's set in a world
where there are no male characters
whatsoever. Like, every single character
on the page for the duration of the book
is female. There are no men in existence
in this universe, and so that was pretty
stinking cool. It's set in a world that
is dying, basically. And so there are all
these sort of warring groups of people
trying to take control and trying to get
control of this one world that will let
them break out of this particular
section of the universe? Or something
like that? And there is a lot in this
book to do with being female and a lot
in this book to do with giving birth. But
in this world, women obviously - because
there's no men - women spontaneously
become pregnant and they don't always
give birth to a child. They give birth to
something that the world needs. So
sometimes it will be a child, because the
world needs that particular child. And
sometimes it will be, like, a living cog
that is born quite small and then grows
and then sort of rolls off into the
forest on its own to go and, like, work
somehow in the backblocks of the world
or something? I don't even know. It's a
very strange book a lot of time. It's
also a very gory book. Like, there's
obviously a lot in the story about, you
know, giving birth and all of the stuff
that goes along with that. But it's also
a very violent book a lot of the time.
Like, people, when they die on this world,
are recycled in some way and so in some
cases that means they're basically, like,
thrown down a trash chute and get eaten
by monsters. In some societies, they have
a funeral feast which means they
literally eat the dead. And so there's a
lot of violence and gore around that
kind of stuff. But also this is basically
the story of the main character
travelling from the, like, recycling plant
sort of a world with the creepy monsters,
travelling from that level of this world
back through the levels to where she
came from to take back her society,
basically. And to get between these
various levels, you sort of have to climb
up these umbilical cord sort of things
and then, like, hack your way through
arteries and stuff like that. So there is
a lot of gore in this story. It did not
affect me nearly as much as I
anticipated it
would. I'm usually quite squeamish about
that kind of stuff but, like, I didn't
honestly notice a lot of that stuff as
it was happening. There is also a lesbian
relationship in this book. Obviously. Like,
every relationship in this book is a
lesbian relationship because there are
no dudes anywhere... But there is a lesbian
relationship in this book and that is an
Own Voices relationship. So I liked the
characters, I liked the world even though
it was super weird and took me forever
to get my head around how it all worked,
I did it end up very much enjoying this
one and I gave it 3.5 stars. Book number
six this week is Beard Science by Penny
Reid. This is the third book in the
Winston Brothers series, which is a
series of contemporary adult romance
novels that follows the brothers in one
family. And they live in Tennessee and
they all have beards and basically
each book is one of them getting their
happily ever after story. And it follows
Cletus Winston - yes, Cletus is like the
worst name ever for a male love interest,
but there you have it. So it follows Cletus
as he falls in love this girl Jenn, who's
known in their small town as the Banana
Cake Queen. She is incredibly naive, she
works for her parents who own this
bakery. They don't pay her at all for the
like 80+ hours a week that she puts
in at their bakery, and they've made her
the face of their company. But she never
actually says anything to her parents
about how she feels about this whole
thing and just...oh my God, Jenn drove me
nuts a lot of the time because, like, girl.
You're 22. You need to get your shit
together. I do like these books, they are
a lot of fun. This one, so far, has been the
weakest of the series for me and I think
a lot of that has to do with Cletus as a
character. I liked him very very much as
a secondary character in the first
couple of books, but being the lead there
is a lot about his personality and about
the way that he goes about things that I
was just like "Yeah. Not really loving
this right now..." He is very possessive as,
like, all of the guys in the series are.
There's a lot of possessiveness in the
romance side of things, but for some
reason with Cletus, it was just grating
more than it was with the others. And so
yeah. I enjoyed this book but I didn't
love it. I'm definitely going to keep
reading the series as they come out
because I'm intrigued by the
relationship that comes up in the final
book in the series. But this one fell
pretty flat for me and I ended up giving
it 3 stars. After I finished Beard
Science, I decided i needed some kind of,
like, trashy romance palate cleanser
thing, and so I picked up My Lady
Quicksilver by Bec McMaster, which is
the third book in the London
Steampunk series. It's set in a world where
basically the nobility are all vampires
of some description, and they very much
control the rest of the population and,
like, you pay regular tax but you also
pay a tax in blood. And so each of these
books follows a different romantic
relationship coming together, but there's
also this overarching political plot
where basically this group of blue blood
vampire-y people are trying to bring
down the Prince Regent who has control
over the Queen and this world. And
basically they're trying to give humans
more rights. So that side of the story i
really really love. I love the world that
Bec McMaster has created. I love these
sort of dystopian elements that flow
through it. I love the steampunk elements
that flow through it. This particular
romantic relationship I wasn't so keen
on. I mean, I still liked it. But there is
a lot in this particular story that I
was just like "Yeah, this isn't really
working for me..." Basically, it is the
romance between the head of kind of the
police force in this world and this
woman who is what's known as a humanist,
so she is like basically an underground
freedom fighter for human rights sort of
stuff and so she's known as Mercury. And
she decides that she's going to disguise
herself to become his secretary to
find out where her brother is. And then
she decides that she's going to seduce
him in, like, both of these personas. So
that was kind of weird to start with, but
it was also weird that he literally never
notices that he's repeatedly making out
with the same woman but, like, in
different identities or something? So,
like, that side of the story just didn't
really work for me. It seemed a little
bit dumb and...yeah. So I liked this book, I
liked the politics stuff that's happening
the background. Less so the romance in this
one. I ended up getting this one 3 stars. And
the second that I finished that one I
picked up the fourth book in that series,
which is Forged by Desire also by Bec
McMaster, obviously. And this one I
actually really really enjoy the romance that
comes up in the story. I still love the,
obviously, background politics stuff as I
said, but the romance in this one is a
lot stronger for me. It's between one of,
like, two female vampires in this
universe and the guy that she's been
secretly in love with for a million
years, who is the kind of second in
command of the guy from book
three. And so it's kind of him
realising "Oh shit, we're more than
friends, I have all these feelings for
her, I don't quite know how to process
them". And it's not only that, but it's her
working through a whole lot of trauma
that happened in her past and so she is
an incredibly strong female
character and so that side of it, I
really liked because a lot of the time
in these books, as I said, there is a lot
of, like, male possessive bullshit going
on with the romantic relationships. But
in this one, because she's a vampire and
because they're on more of an equal
footing and because they have been
friends for like 10 years and they've
been partners for ten years in terms of
like being police-y type of people,
they've been doing that together for 10
years, so they know each other incredibly
well and so it feels like a far more
equal footing when the romance comes
into the story. So I liked this one a lot
and I ended up giving it 3.75 stars.
The ninth book that I finished this week
is Girl About Time, which is otherwise
known as Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier, which
is translated from German by Anthea Bell.
So this is a YA time-travel novel, so
I guess it's kind of sci-fi, kind of
historical fiction. And basically this
girl Gwen comes from a family of
time travellers and it has always been
expected that her very slightly older
cousin would be the one in their
generation who has the time travel gene,
but LOL NOPE, it's Gwen. I did enjoy this
one, but it took a really really long
time for the story to get going. I think
probably the first, like, half to
two-thirds of the book is set up stuff.
So it's setting up Gwen as a
character, it's setting up her family,
it's setting up the idea that she can
time travel because she spontaneously
time travels for very very brief periods
of time once or twice and then, like, the
last chunk of the book is where it
really starts to get into the action and
it starts to get into her time travelling
with a purpose. So I did enjoy that last
third, but the first chunk of the book
was just such a struggle to get through
because it felt incredibly slow and, like,
there wasn't a lot of purpose to most of
what was happening and it just, it... It was
unnecessarily slow, I felt. I gave this
one 3 stars. And the final book
that I finished this week is The One
Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr. It is
a YA contemporary about a 17 year old
girl named Flora who has not been able
to make a new memory since she was 10
years old because of some kind of brain
issue thing. And so she cannot make new
memories. Then one day, she kisses her best
friend's boyfriend and
she remembers it the next day, and
she's like "Holy shit, this has completely
changed my life. Maybe I'm getting better?".
And so it's kind of her going on this
journey of discovery about herself and
about her brain injury and all of this
kind of thing. First of all, as I said,
Flora was 10 when this issue came up
with her brain and so for all intents
and purposes, she still thinks that she
is 10. Like, she had to write on her hand
multiple times a day "You are 17" and
she'll look at that and she'll remember
it for like an hour or so and then she
forgets again. And so she basically
thinks that she's 10 when she kisses
this 19 year old boy. So that made me
very uncomfortable. I also did not like
her best friend Paige who, obviously, is
very upset by the fact that her best
friend has kissed her boyfriend. But the
way that Paige handled that was really
really frustrating. Basically, it ends up
that Flora's parents have to go overseas
for some reason and Paige has promised
that she will stay in the house with
Flora and make sure she's fine. She
decides that because she;s so angry at
Flora, she's not going to stay in the
house. She's gonna basically leave her to
fend for herself and check in once a day
and, like, dude. Maybe don't do that! I also
had a problem with this book in the fact
that there are a lot of things that
Flora can do that I don't think a 10
year old would be able to do. The one
that stood out the most to me is that
she can shave her legs and her underarms
and, like, show me a 10 year old who can
do that shit without cutting the crap
out of their legs and I will be very very
impressed. Flora also has the shittiest
parents I think I have ever come across.
Like, they have good reason for doing
what they're doing, but holy hell. But I
think the biggest problem I had with this is
that a huge part of story revolves
around her older brother, Jacob, first of
all not being well and that's the reason
why her parents go away. But it revolves
around him, like, being really supportive
of her and keeping secrets from their
parents about her because he thinks
that's the right thing to do. And, like,
that's great. But literally everything
that he does happens off the page. He is
in the hospital basically, and so it
happens via email and via text messages
and stuff like that and I just found
it so incredibly frustrating that the
one person who is supportive of Flora
for the duration of the book is not once
on the page in real life. I had a lot of
problems with this
book. I did not like this book. I kind of
wanted Flora to be eaten by polar bears
in Norway. Sadly, she was not. I gave this
book 2 stars. So there you have it, friends. That
is all the books that I finished this
week. If you have read any of them and
you have thoughts on them, please let me
know down in the comments, I would
love to talk about them with you. Thank
you guys so much for watching, I love all your
faces and I will see you on Wednesday.
Bye guys.
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