Hello, friends, and welcome or welcome back to Vlogmas.
I love saying that.
I love being able to say welcome to Vlogmas.
It feels really great.
As you can tell by the title, I'm finally doing another reading-related video.
I have been wanting to make another book-related vlog or video for some time now, but the truth is, over the past four months, I want to say I have been in the for a while to the point where I don't think I'm gonna reach my Goodreads reading goal this year, which is another topic.
And I'm kind of disappointed to admit that, but at the same time I just haven't been like able to read or get back into reading.
It feels like you know that feeling when you're reading and you can tell you're reading, like you're aware of the fact that you are just looking at words on a page.
That's been me lately every time i pick up a book.
My goal in this video is to get through reading three books, and i know that might not sound like a lot if you are a big reader, but that will be more than i have read in the past four months combined for me.
So i'm just really trying to break out of this slump and i figured what better way to do that than to, number one, make a video about me reading, which will hold me accountable, but also, number two, read some festive and holiday themed books to get me into the holiday spirit.
I'm gonna be so honest.
I literally just typed christmas in the library catalog search bar and i saved and tried to reserve whatever books were available.
So that is my strategy.
But i guess we will see how that method works out for me when it comes time for me to review and rate these books.
At the time that i'm filming this, it's currently monday, november 24th, so we will see how long it takes for me to get through reading three books.
I've actually already started one already that i borrowed on libby, the libby app, and i've just been reading it on my ipad.
I started it this morning.
It is called you're not ready for this murder on the christmas express.
What a title.
You really know what you're getting yourself into.
I am 20 through reading this book and I've only started it just this morning, so I'd say we're off to a decent start.
I will say I went into this book completely blind other than the title.
I had no idea what the plot was going to be about.
As you've probably guessed, it's about these strangers that get together on a plane from London to Edinburgh, I want to say or somewhere in Scotland.
I honestly should know.
I've started reading the book, but it's kind of blurry what their destination is.
But I know for a fact they're traveling from London to somewhere in Scotland and making a few stops along the way.
And you kind of get glimpses and like this little teaser of a murderer that has happened on the train.
But I would say where I'm at right now in the story.
It's still somewhat unclear what exactly the specific details of the murder is.
I feel like a lot of you know, thriller or mystery books will use that formula of already flashing forward to future events where the crime has happened.
So that way you kind of get to piece things together as you're reading the present timeline.
But this one is kind of confusing because you get an interaction in the prologue that kind of foreshadows a murder and then you get this one chapter so far from the killer's perspective.
That is very vague and it's just narrator omniscient point of view describing the fact that the killer is getting on this train to murder someone, but you don't know specifically who, why or what.
Anyways, i feel like i'm giving you a very confusing um summary of where i'm at in the book and that's because i am a little bit confused, to be honest, about what's happening.
I feel like this light is maybe a little bit intense.
Let me dim it.
I'm only on chapter nine, but I already have a few thoughts and opinions formed on the story and the plot so far, but I wanna wait a little bit longer and wait until I'm further in the story to confirm those and share them with you.
Christmas on the Murder Express is, no, oh my gosh.
Murder on the Christmas Express is the first book I'm gonna be reading obviously, and I will be checking back in once I've made a little bit more progress to give you my thoughts.
I was not expecting this.
It has been quite a while since my last update and I am honestly embarrassed to admit that it has been a week and a half since I last picked up my book and read.
The truth is, I don't know what I was thinking starting a reading vlog in the middle of finals.
But, lo and behold, I had to put reading on pause for a little while, just focus on getting through my finals.
And then, now that I am finally on winter break, I am rejoicing in the fact that I have loads of time to read.
So I want to say before I had to take a break from reading, I got through about the first 45 of Murder on the Christmas Express.
And ever since picking the book back up this morning, I'm now at 73%.
So it's honestly proving to be a very quick read.
I will say the first 30 was quite slow and I did find myself having a hard time getting into the story.
I also specifically had a hard time empathizing with some of the characters, specifically Meg, the main character that ends up being murdered.
And that's not a spoiler you find out, you know about this in the very first chapter.
So do not worry, She's like a well-known influencer and reality tv star and I feel like the way she's portrayed is super One-dimensional and superficial and of course the author does like attempt a little bit to give the character more depth, But all in all she's just very like one-dimensional and cliche.
I actually highlighted some quotes because I was reading along and I just like rolled my eyes at these sentences.
This is in chapter five when like, her and her boyfriend enter the train and to describe her entrance it says she had little spatial awareness at the best of times, but when carrying fancy shopping bags she had no chance.
I mean, like I don't know, I just read that and I was like okay, this is a little bit reductive.
This is about her getting ready to start a live stream, and whenever she does a live, she has to promote these products.
So she's getting ready and it says she had to be Insta-ready gram-fabulous, TikTok-tastic and every other ridiculous PR phrase that had been thrown her way.
I get that this is kind of poking fun and making a jab at the fact that even the character herself realizes how superficial her career is.
I don't know if it's just me and the books I've been reading, or maybe like the movies I've been watching, but I feel like I see this stereotypical cliche of the influencer girlfriend showing up more and more.
And especially in thrillers, I feel like it's easy to reduce that character to like a helpless, innocent victim. and i'm just like not falling for that i don't know i was just like a little bit disappointed and i had a hard time empathizing with her because the character was not really a fully fleshed person in my perception i feel like after the first 30 of the story i was able to like kind of get into it and look past that will say and i don't know if this is just because i haven't really been reading consistently for a while and i'm just coming out of a reading slump so maybe the fact that i haven't been reading as much is just affecting my ability to remember characters names but after 20 of the book i was still confused as to which character was who and i ended up just writing a list of everyone's name on my phone and just that way i was able to identify which character was who and like what their purpose was in the story because especially in murder mysteries there's like a lot of characters involved and a bunch of different suspects so i was just having a hard time honestly remembering character names but now all is good honestly making that list helped me a lot one more thing that i think made it a bit harder for me to get into the story at first was the fact that i feel like sometimes big pieces of information were just like revealed in a sentence and i was like oh okay this is like a very important piece of background information about this character and their past that you're just like giving us in a introductory sentence but i guess that only really happened like a few times it just caught me off guard because usually i'm used to having to like piece together the main character's past and history myself through like context clues rather than just having it said to me straight up as for where i'm at in the story right now i am 73 in so i have a little i think under 100 pages left on my ipad to read and i definitely think i can finish reading the book tonight and i want to be able to finish it because i just like am in a mood to binge read right now those are all my updates for now i'm gonna get back to reading and hopefully next time i see you i'll have finished the book Hi friends, I am back with another reading update because I actually ended up finishing Murder on the Christmas Express and have since started another book.
But first, of course, my full thoughts and review.
To be honest, I finished reading Murder on the Christmas Express on Sunday night.
It is now Tuesday.
And I feel like I already forgot a lot of what happened in the book.
And that kind of shows you how involved I was in the story.
I will say I kind of already touched on this last time I was giving you guys my thoughts, but I thought the first, like 30 40, was quite slow.
And then afterwards it kind of picked up from there and i was a lot more interested.
But then i feel like something kind of similar happened once i reached about like 80 to 85 of the book and obviously things start picking up because you start like uncovering things about the murder, which i did end up kind of being able to guess and foresee what was going to happen.
And that's considering the fact that i also was not that involved in the story.
So i thought it was kind of interesting that i was able to guess the ending, even though i wasn't really trying that hard.
I feel like to me reaching the end of the book was kind of anti-climactic.
And not only that, but also one thing that i was thinking to myself while reading and i did notice a lot of other people pointing out in the reviews was that i wasn't sure what like, the tone of the book was supposed to be.
On the one hand, you have these people trapped in a train on christmas eve and it's like festive and a little bit cozy, but it's still like a mystery.
But then there's also these mentions of very triggering, sensitive things that are obviously a lot more serious, and I felt like sometimes I wasn't sure where we were in between those two very different tones.
And then obviously it's like Christmas at the same time, so it's like supposed to be festive, but then all these very dark things are being talked about.
So it was a little bit tricky to like know how to feel as a reader sometimes.
And I think that kind of contributed to the fact that I wasn't always able to connect with the story or with the characters.
That being said, like it wasn't terrible.
I don't think I would necessarily recommend it, but I also don't think I would discourage you from reading it.
You pick the book up.
I would just say like, go into it, maybe taking my review into consideration, and just know a little bit about what you're getting yourself into, because I think I went into it unsure.
I didn't know if it was gonna be like a cozy fun mystery or if it was gonna be like more of a thriller, and even now, having read it, I feel like I'm still a little bit unsure.
I think the fact that it was also very much echoing to Agatha Christie.
I was like kind of expecting that more, but then wasn't that, because obviously who can write agatha christie?
But agatha christie and the ending it didn't leave me necessarily unsatisfied, but i just wasn't blown away as much as i've been by other mystery books or thrillers.
So, all this to say, i ended up rating the book 325 stars, first book officially done.
I will say I was feeling pretty proud of myself after finishing that book, because this is the first book I finished in months.
And if it weren't for this video, I might have quit after the first 30, but I'm glad I pushed through and finished it.
And I did end up starting another one since then, and that is Let It Snow.
As it states on the cover here, these are three different holiday romances.
And I wanted to pick this up because I saw that it was actually turned into a movie that I do remember seeing whenever that came out.
I think it was like maybe two years ago, maybe more.
Honestly, my concept of time is kind of non-existent, but I remember seeing the movie and I didn't know it was based off a book and I kind of forgot most of the plot of the movie other than like a few details.
And I thought, once I finished reading this, I could also have a movie night and rewatch the film.
I'm currently on chapter eight, so i'm 73 pages into the first story, called the jubilee express.
Basically, in this first story we're following our main character, jubilee yes, her name is jubilee who's just having like pretty much the worst christmas eve you could ever have, when her train gets stuck in the snowstorm and she decides to venture out and still try to make the most out of her Christmas Eve.
This is like the second book in a row that I read about a train getting stuck in a storm.
But so far this has been the perfect cozy holiday read.
I will probably be binge reading this because it's finally winter break and I can do that.
So here we go, book number two, Let It Snow.
Feeling alone, kind of misty, Waiting now reading.
Let it snow this morning and i don't know what it is about this book.
Maybe it's the fact that it's three different stories or just the overall pacing of it, but i feel like it was so easy for me to get into and every time i picked it up it felt like i was flying through the pages like the next thing i knew i'd read 100 pages in one sitting, which was a great confidence boost, especially because i've been in a reading slump.
And, as i think i mentioned when i was introducing this book, it is a series of three interconnected stories that take place in the town of Gracetown.
And it's Christmas Eve.
There's a big storm that comes and kind of shuts everyone indoors.
All of the streets are covered in snow, making it really impossible for people to get outside.
And yet we're following these three different stories where the characters have to brave the storm and have to venture out for whatever purpose.
I'm really not the best at giving synopses, and the fact that there's three stories in this one makes it even more challenging, so i'm just gonna read the back of the book for you guys.
It says an ill-timed storm on christmas eve buries the residents of grace town under multiple feet of snow and causes quite a bit of chaos.
One brave soul ventures out into the storm from her stranded train and sets off a chain of events that will change quite a few lives over the next three days.
One girl takes a risky shortcut with an adorable stranger, three friends set out to win a race to the Waffle House and the fate of a teacup pig falls into the hands of a lovesick barista.
See, if I tried to sum that up, it would not sound nearly as poetic or as coherent.
All the stories feel a little bit like fantastical or unexpected, I guess you could say, but I feel like that is where the holiday magic comes in and it just makes everything work.
This is a no way competition, but i do think that the first story out of the three was my favorite to read.
It was just like a perfect cozy holiday romance in my opinion.
It was short and sweet, it was very wholesome and i just really liked it.
So i feel like, going from that to the other stories, it was hard to beat, not to say i didn't enjoy the other stories.
I just think they didn't really connect with me as much like.
The second story is all about this group of friends that ends up going to a waffle house because their friend works there and he's like I'm like trying to summarize this to the best of my ability but basically the train that gets stranded has a bunch of cheerleaders on the train and then they decided to also go to the Waffle House.
And so the guy working at the Waffle House calls his group of friends and is like, you guys have to come.
There's a bunch of cheerleaders at the Waffle House.
And so the story is all about them like facing the storm and trying to get to the Waffle House to basically hang out with a bunch of cheerleaders.
And saying that out loud, like it sounds kind of ridiculous because it kind of is.
But I think that story in particular just felt a little bit dated.
In the group of friends, there is a girl who's a little bit more of a tomboy.
And I like how she at some point calls out the guys on...
The fact that they're just going to crazy lengths to hang out with a bunch of cheerleaders, and also just the fact that they're making these cheerleaders seem really superficial and dumb.
So obviously that was all in the back of my mind as I was reading that story, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it.
In the third story.
What I found kind of interesting is that you're following this kind of unlikable character, in the sense that she's very self-absorbed and all of her friends and everyone around her is kind of telling her like hey, you're being really selfish.
So through this big quest where she has to pick up a pig for her friend.
Yes, I know, again this sounds ridiculous, but if you read the book it makes sense.
She has to pick up a pig for her friend.
It's her Christmas gift and she kind of learns to be less self-absorbed.
I don't know if it's because I took a screenwriting course this semester, so we were kind of taught about The storytelling structure and how the character has to, like undergo a transformation in the story.
But it made me look at the end of the story with a bit more of a critical eye.
And at the end of the story There's a moment where the character finally realizes how self-absorbed she's been and is ready to make a change.
And the way it's described is just as a shift.
It says because something shifted inside of me, big shift like an avalanche, and I could no longer resist it.
The feeling inside of me was so big and I was so small.
I think the fact that this is obviously a collection of short stories and each author kind of has a limited amount of pages that they can use to write about the character's transformation kind of justifies the fact that the character's like big aha moment is just explained in this very obvious paragraph.
But that kind of took me out of the story a little bit.
I was like, what do you mean a big shift?
All in all, I think I'm gonna end up reading this a 3.5 out of five.
Even though it was a bit ridiculous at times, I feel like you just have to go with it.
And all in all, this was a short and sweet, wholesome and festive read.
So that is my review on Let It Snow, which brings me to my last and final book for this video, which I just started this morning.
It is Rack the Halls by Tessa Bailey.
So far I've only read the prologue and the first chapter, so I'm really not far into it whatsoever.
But I think I'm actually gonna audio book this one, partly because I have a few things I need to catch up on today.
So it will be a good opportunity for me to do that, all the while making some progress in terms of reading, and i feel like i forget that audiobooks exist, but if you're in a slump they're always great to kind of help you make progress faster.
I will check back in with a summary and my thoughts once i've made a bit more progress into the book, but i'm just going to get to listening for the next few hours probably Now.
It's cold outside.
So as it turns out, I ended up DNFing Wreck the Halls.
I got through about 30 of the audio book and as I was listening, I just quickly realized it was not the book for me, which could have easily been avoided had I just looked up the story.
But I decided to go into it blind and now I'm facing the consequences of that.
I did end up starting another book, but before that I'll tell you why.
Wreck the Halls just wasn't for me.
Our main two characters, Beat and Melody, are both children of former rock stars in all their lives.
They've kind of lived in the shadow of their moms, and they've always grown up being asked by the press and the media whether or not they think day their moms will be able to put their differences aside and and get the band back together the book opens with melody and beat's first meeting and their first encounter that's really stuck with them throughout their lives but over the years even though that first interaction made a really strong impression on both of them they just kind of lost contact and never really got back together but now years later you are following the characters all grown up and at a time where our main male character beat is actually considering reuniting both of their moms to get the band back together so that's pretty much the setup and the premise for the story and on top of that their attempt at reuniting both their moms and getting the band back together is part of this big reality tv show or like live stream and one thing i did not know about the story is that it kind of follows the insta love love at first sight kind of trope which in romance books i just have a hard time really buying into some of the reviews are describing it as a second chance romance but to me it can't really be a second chance romance if they only met once like granted maybe that first encounter in that first meeting left a really strong impression but that still that wasn't a romance like that was just them meeting and now years later like you're calling that a second chance i don't know i would just find myself listening to the audiobook and then i would just cringe or be like taken out of the story so i just made the executive decision to put that book on hold and to pick up another one and i have never been more glad for that because the book i ended up picking up is so good so far it is holiday romance by catherine walsh and i've seen so many people read and talk about this book this holiday season or like this december in holiday romance you're following molly and andrew both of whom grew up in ireland but moved to chicago and now they have this kind of tradition every year to fly back home for christmas together currently in our present timeline it's the 10-year anniversary of their little tradition when a big snowstorm grounds their flight and they have to basically adjust to make it home in time for christmas so the story is alternating between the present timeline where they're trying to problem solve and get home in time for christmas along with previous slides that they've taken together over the years so far i've mostly been listening to the audiobook but i also have the epub version downloaded on my ipad so i've been kind of switching between the two yesterday night there was a power outage so i didn't really have anything else to do other than read and it was just so fun like i feel like reading this book feels like watching a rom-com and that's like the best thing ever when that happens and i'm reading a romance book because it means i'm really getting lost in the story it's not high stakes in any way but i'm like still involved in what the characters are experiencing and i'm rooting for them and the banter again is just so good that i'm like audibly laughing at the audiobook as i'm listening to it i currently have two hours and 20 minutes left to the audiobook although i am listening to it on two times speed so whatever half of that is is what i have left so i really think i can finish the book today and i really want to because i also want to get this video up so bad i've been sitting here on my computer all day working on a video so i am in dire need of some fresh air and just to not look at a screen for a little bit and it's also been snowing all day so i figured it might be fun to go for a little walk listen to the audiobook and then once i come home i can finish the book and hopefully give you guys my thoughts i'm gonna go bundle up and get ready for my walk before the sun officially sets and i'll be back to share my thoughts hopefully soon I literally just finished reading Holiday Romance like two minutes ago, but I love that book so much.
And I'm so glad I'm ending this video with that book because I think I'm gonna rate it 4.5 out of 5.
I really liked it.
The dialogue and the banter was really good.
I loved both characters so much.
And I also love how the story evolved.
Like we were always moving and there was always something happening.
Obviously, the romance plays a big role in the story and it's a big part of the plot that you're following.
But besides that, the characters are still fully fleshed out, without their love story being like the only thing of substance happening in their lives, if that makes sense.
And it feels so good ending the year and ending this video with a high rating.
I mean, hopefully I can read another book before New Year's.
I've just made my peace that there's no way I can reach my Goodreads reading goal, which was 40 books.
I think i've read like 26 books by now.
Oh well honestly, i'm happy with that.
I'm just happy because i feel like this video actually did work in getting me out of a reading slump and after finishing that book immediately i'm just itching to pick up another book and that's a great feeling.
So i hope you enjoyed this video.
I really had a fun time filming it, even though it took much longer than anticipated here.
I was thinking i could film this video in like a week and get it up, and it would be one of the first videos i would have posted as part of vlogmas, but now It's definitely one of the later ones.
But I really wanted to see this video through and get to the end and finish reading three books, because that was the goal I set for myself.
I cannot tell you how accomplished I feel having finished those three books.
I know it's not a huge amount, but seeing as I have not read much at all these past few months, it just feels really great.
I'm going to wrap up this evening and wrap up this video by finally watching Let Us Know, because I still have not gotten around to watching that.
And I did say that I wanted to watch that in this video.
So I will not let my promise go unfulfilled.
