I Let Magical Readathon Choose What I Read For Shelve It or Scrap it Episode 23 ✨ 2025

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]So 2025 is now over and yet the horrors persist. And by horrors, I of course mean the stack of books still on the floor of my library after 2 years of shove it or scrap it, the vlog project where I try and get these stacks of books onto my shelves or scrapped into my unhole pile. The good news is that I've actually made progress this year.

[00:00:19]And so we only have 42 books left in the stacks, which is 29 books less than at the start of 2025. But I've now decided that this stack is our final boss of shelvad or scrapit. And to beat it by the end of the year, each month I'm going to divide the amount of books in stacks by the amount of months left of the year to determine how many books I'm going to have to remove from the stacks per episode. So that hopefully by the end of 2026, every book in the stacks will either find a home on my shelves or be headed into my scrap pile. In episode 23, I shelled four books and I scrapped five. And we will be starting episode 24 with 35 books in the stacks.

[00:01:03]Hello my guys. Welcome to episode 24 of Shel It or Scrap It, the vlog series on my channel where I try and get these stacks of books behind me onto my shelves through any means possible.

[00:01:15]usually through a process of reading them and then deciding whether I'm going to be shelving them or scrapping them into my unhole pile. So, if this is your first encounter with Sheld or Scrapit, then congratulations. You have 23 episodes to catch up on. So, I will leave the entire Sheld or Scrapit playlist down below for you to peruse at your leisure. But for those of you who are regulars here, guys, it's magical readathon month. So, you know exactly what that means. And if you don't, let me tell you. So, the magical readathon is my favorite readathon on this platform. I have been participating in this for like seven years, pretty much the entire time that I have had a channel. And I will of course link the announcement video down below in case you guys want to get involved or prepare yourself for the next round of magical readathon, which will be in September.

[00:02:04]But this is a DND magic school readathon that is created by G over at Book Roast, where she provides a magical curriculum.

[00:02:12]So, you need to pick your calling, which is your magical career. As always, I am training to be a demonologist. Each calling comes with a list of subjects that you need to pass. And then you can consult your syllabus to see what the prompts are, what books you need to read. We're actually not even one week into April, where I'm starting this video. And I have already read two of the six books that I need to read this month, and I am about a quarter of the way through a third. So, in this episode, I am aiming to wrap up all of the books that I have to read to achieve my calling for magical readathon and then also potentially just fulfill a couple of more prompts to meet my requirements for this video. What are those requirements, you may ask? Well, as we discussed in the last episode for 2026, every month I'm going to be dividing the amount of books that we have in the stacks by the amount of remaining months that we have in the year. And that is the minimum amount of books that I have to remove from the stacks per episode. So if you include the month that we're in, which is April, we have nine months left of the year.

[00:03:16]And we have 35 books in the stacks, which can I get a round of applause because that is exactly the same amount of books that we ended episode 23 on. So 35 divided by 9 is just short of four.

[00:03:29]36 divided by 9 is exactly four. So, I'm going to be aiming to read slash remove four books from the stacks in this episode. Apologies for the light as well. It is quite early in the morning.

[00:03:42]I don't normally film this early, so the sun has normally moved around a little bit and evened itself out, but I'm a little jet-lagged, which is actually great because I'm on a UK time zone and I'm sleeping at night. I'm awake throughout the day, but I've just shifted to be awake a couple of hours earlier than I normally would. So, everything I do in a day is happening a couple of hours earlier. as well, which is why we're here right now. But let us find out what we are going to be reading to start us off. Because it's magical readathon month, I have already talked about a couple of the books or all of the books that I'd like to read for the readathon in my April TBR video, but that did include some of the books that we would be reading specifically for shelvor scrapit. So, I think the most obvious one that I assigned to my TBR directly from the stacks is for elemental studies. The course focus this month is temperature controls. And the prompt is to read a temperature word in the title, eg cold, warm, etc. And for that one in my TBR, I did select a book from the stacks, which is Cold Wire by Chloe Gong. This one is a pretty recent fairy loop book. Is it an adult? It's a YA. The reason I'm so excited about this is because recently, I think maybe over the last 6 months or so, Fairloop have been including page overlays with their YA book boxes. I like to add them as I'm reading the book, not beforehand. So, I haven't had the opportunity, I don't think I've read any of the most recent Fairy Loot YA books, so I haven't had the opportunity to actually make use of any of the overlays. And I think overlays are so pretty. and this is going to be the first time I actually get to add them, which is very exciting.

[00:05:22]So, this one is from the December 2025 YA box. I think it's a little bit of a dystopian, which is another prompt that I think we're going to be covering in this video. So, I mean, yay, considering that's not one of my favorite subg genres. But this one in particular, this is one of the fantastical synopsies that is going completely over my head without much context. So this is set in a world where there is a cold war between two powerful nations and the orphans of one of those particular nations are the people who suffer the cost and they have to enroll in the military academy. So our main character is one of these orphans and she is doing well for herself until one of these count's most wanted anarchists frames her for assassinating a government official. So she then has to cooperate with him or go down for treason. And then we follow another character who is close to graduating but then is ordered to infiltrate another one of the countries in virtual reality. So these two are tearing through the same country on separate courses. That was I admit a terrible synopsis. I am so sorry but I'll be honest that went right over my head which happens a lot. I've talked about this before, but if it's something that's fantastical or sci-fi or whatever, sometimes I literally cannot process and summarize it unless I have some context of the world from actually reading the book myself. So, I'm sure I will come back in 100 or so pages and be able to give you guys a better idea of what this book is actually about. So, I'm just getting ready to start my book while I wait for my career vlog to export. And I brought my overlays down from upstairs, so I'm ready. And on the spoiler card, it tells you where in the book each of the overlays goes. So, very excitingly, the first overlay goes on chapter one. So, it says meeting in a dark corridor, which is indeed this one.

[00:07:21]This feels like this is it doesn't, but it does also kind of feel like annotating, but without actually annotating, you know, cuz I'm putting things inside of the book. anything to scratch my annotation itch. I have a couple of books lined up that I'd like to annotate, but I'm not going to be reading them until at least next month.

[00:07:38]So, overlays it is. I know a lot of people don't like overlays. I think they look really cool. So, I'm very happy.

[00:07:45]I'll check in with you guys at chapter 3 when it's time to put overlay to it. So, very sadly, I don't think I'm going to be continuing on with Cold Wire by Chloe Gong. I feel like I've come to this place where I'm super reluctant to dnf things again because I just haven't been dnfing this year. I think the only book that I've dnfed was for an episode of Shadow or Scrap It. I think it was Sword Catcher by Cassandra Cla. And in comparison to last year, I think I was dnfing like two to three books a month.

[00:08:14]So now I'm in this place again where I feel really bad if I decide that I don't want to continue on with a book. This, I feel, is especially sad for me because it is the second Khloe Gong book that I've dnfed. And previously, I assumed that Khloe Gong was an author that I was really going to enjoy. I mean, Khloe Gong is an incredibly popular author to start off with. I remember when These Violent Delights was released and everybody loved it. It was like one of the hottest books of the year. And that is actually the book that I DNFED. I can't remember whether it was last year or I think it was last year. And I also unholdled Immortal Longgins by Khloe Gong because I read it for the episode of Shel It or Scrap It where I had to read books by authors where I owned more than one book from them and I hadn't read from them before and if I didn't like the book I was reading then I had to unhaul everything I had by the author. So, Immortal Longings also left my collection. And when I received Cold Wire, I was like, "Okay, I will give Chloe Gong a second chance cuz she's so well-loved." And honestly, there's nothing wrong with this book. I did really struggle to lock myself into this one. So, I have been listening to the audio book at the same time as reading along. And honestly, that is the only way that I could focus on this because I just don't think I find Khloe Gong's writing especially engaging for me. I felt the same way about These Violent Delights where I just really struggled to want to pick up the book, but also to stay engaged with the book when it was in my hands. This one was a little bit easier for me when I did pick up the audio book because that obviously keeps you locked in. You can't just put the book down and wander off when it's still playing in your ears. And throughout the course of me reading this, I made it 112 pages into it. 114. I'm up to chapter 8.

[00:09:58]Throughout the course of what I read of this, I was not enjoying it while I was reading it. I wasn't not enjoying it while I was reading it. I kind of was just reading it, you know? I didn't have positive or negative feelings. And then last night I did read a couple of chapters and I was like, why am I reading this though? Like the level of enjoyment, the level of engagement is just really not there for me. And as sad as it is, as much as I would like to love Chloe Gong, it's quite apparent that I don't and I can't really force that. So, you know, along the ethos of only reading books that I'm excited about this year, Cold Wire is unfortunately going to be hitting my unh hall stack. really unfortunate as well because yesterday I filmed my R fantasy bingo TBR. This is one of the books that I included in that TBR and now I'm pretty sure that this well I can't say for sure but this video might go up before that one. So that one is now like lowkey a little bit out of date but what can you do? It was an easy prompt anyway so I can definitely replace it. I will give you a little bit of information on this one though if you guys are interested in picking it up because like I said I don't think that it was necessarily doing anything wrong. I was just really struggling to feel engaged with this one. You know what? It's actually like kind of interesting in terms of the synopsis and there is a part of me that's intrigued about where certain elements of it are going to go, but it's the execution that I I just feel like wasn't doing anything for me.

[00:11:21]But this is following two characters who are from the same country. These are kind of adjacent countries. They're separated by water, but they are at war and they are fighting for power. So the main characters are from Medulo Medulo I think that's how they pronounced it in the audio book and they are orphans and they live in a different country called Atawa and Atawa uses orphans from that other country to fill their army and fight against the country. So, our two main characters are both orphans, and just because they're from this other country, they are wards of the state, which means that they are forced to attend a military academy, they're also charged for the privilege of that. And they end up like racking up all of this debt for things that they didn't choose.

[00:12:06]Like, they have to pay for a military academy that they're forced to attend and then they have to perform a mandatory military service undercover typically in this other country because obviously they blend in really well. So, one of our main characters is somebody who is in the academy. She's part of the military and she is really good at her job. You know, she does everything without question. And one day, she's framed for the murder of a senator by this renowned terrorist so that he can kidnap her and make her help him in one of his missions. The other character that we follow is the daughter of a senator. So, she should be afforded a little bit more privilege because of that, but she still has all of this debt and all of this mandatory service that she has to perform. And she gets her first posting as somebody who needs to go undercover. But the posting that she's been given is a little bit unusual. And it's also a double posting, which is rare, where she has to team up with the son of the headmaster of her academy. The thing that's a little bit more interesting about this to me is the way that the orphans are used by the country that they live in that they I guess pledge their allegiance to to forcibly fight against the country of their birth that they actually have no ties to, no loyalty to. They're kind of just like used as foder by this country that is supposed to provide them citizenship. And the discussions that obviously are going to arise from that.

[00:13:31]We also have a lot of discussions about AI in here because they built this virtual world called up country which is to replace the regular world because it's not a great place to live. Like there's been pandemics, there's pollution, like in some cases the air is poisonous. And so everybody kind of exists more up country in this virtual world. And it's actually more the virtual space that these two countries are fighting for because the more power they hold within this virtual space, the more power they hold in real life because real life is now this virtual space. So those topics I think were interesting. The narrative and the way that we were going to explore those topics not so interesting to me. But I do really think well I don't think there's anything wrong with Khloe Gong's writing at all. I wouldn't say it's bad writing. It just really doesn't work for me. So, Cold Wire I am sadly going to be putting down. This does put me in a little bit of a pickle though because I'm not going to use my DNF scroll for magical readathon so that I can count a DNF as a book for the prompt. I am actually going to try and pick another book that fulfills this prompt. But the problem is that it is a little bit of a specific one. I am just going to check the exact wording of it. Book with a temperature word in the title. So things like cold and warm. So it says temperature word and originally because of the examples given as well my original thoughts were of course cold, warm, hot, cool. All of which I probably have at least one book that has one of those words in. But then I realized you could also have things like burning, freezing. But then my brain gets confused with like weather words and also fire words. I don't know if I have anything in here that has any of those in it cuz I do definitely have things on my shelves. The question is though whether that's going to help in terms of what we're trying to do here because what if I read it and put it back then it doesn't count towards the four books that I have to remove from the stacks per episode. When I say my brain keeps getting confused with like fire words and weather words and confusing them with temperature words. I just saw Dawn of the Fire Bird and I was like, "Oh my god, it's got fire in it." But fire is hot. It's not something that you would necessarily use to describe hot. You describe something as burning hot. So, I feel like burn and burning would work, but fire I don't feel like is the one. I mean, we do have one here. Is it a book that I want to tackle right now? No. The one in question is The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. I don't want to get into a Mark Lawrence series right now, especially because I've learned recently that all of Mark Lawrence's books are somewhat connected, which kind of makes sense based on some little inklings that I picked up in Prince of Thorns and what I know about the Book of the Ancestor series cuz I've read two books in that. So, I kind of want to go back and reread the Book of the Ancestor before I move on. I'm not pursuing the Prince of Thorns books, but I still want to get like as most of the connectivity out of that as possible.

[00:16:25]And then I feel like I would be shelving that cuz I do own the whole series. And where would that put us? In trouble is where that would put us. Especially cuz I'm looking at where that would go and it's not good. I do have a book on my cart that is an arc that is now overdue.

[00:16:40]So I feel like that would be a good option. Let me just take you over there.

[00:16:43]So these are all of my current arcs.

[00:16:46]These are the ones that I still have to come that are still released. And these are the ones that are overdue. So, this one I actually think I picked this one up kind of unsolicited. Like, it wasn't my choice to get this one and I might actually unhaul it cuz I'm not sure I want to read it. Let me know if you have read The Book of Blood and Roses. And I mean, if you really enjoyed it, I might give it a try. But the book that would fulfill the prompt over here is Hot Desk by Laura Dickman. This one was released in January this year, although I think it was released towards the end of last year in the US. And it's a pretty quick, I'm assuming, contemporary romance. So, I had a quick look upstairs at my romance shelves because I felt like that would be a easy place or the most likely place I would find a word like hot in the title. Unfortunately, I did not have any luck. Just having a quick look at some of the books I have behind me here, but oh no, I just saw The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix, which has been here forever. So, it would be great to read that and get that off my TBR, but I don't know. I'm a super pedantic person, so using the word burn isn't my preference. If I can use words like cold, cool, warm, and hot, I mean like icy would count. I feel like it's just not exact enough for me and it would really annoy my brain if I went down that route. So, considering I do have a book that better fits the criteria of this prompt, I have decided to go with Hot Desk by Laura Dickman. And what that means is because this came from my TBR cart, if I do shelf this, it's not going to be going back on my cart. So, I can fill the gap that we've made there immediately. Unfortunately, because the shelf or the section of the cart that it came off is the place where I store my arcs, that does mean that the only thing that we have that can replace it is Happy Ending by Chloe Lee, which is actually a book that I swapped into the stacks for this episode because it is on my magical readathon TBR. It's an easy prompt to replace, just obviously this arc is for this month, so being able to prioritize it and get on my TBR was a win. I guess I'll just have to work that out inside of this episode. And you know what? Let's not even talk about the fact that Starside is not in a slot. It's just balancing on top. We just don't talk about that. We're also not going to talk about the fact that I just filmed my unboxing yesterday and I received two more arcs. And I am going to be reading Hot Desk by Laura Dickman, which I picked up at the Penguin Michael Joseph Siren summer party last year. The reason why I was interested in this one is because it is an office rivals to lovers kind of story like The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, which is my favorite contemporary romance of all time in case you didn't know. I feel like after years of not really talking about that book, I've been mentioning it in literally every video recently. But this one is two rival editors, one career making opportunity, one shared desk. And that's pretty much all of the information that I have because the back of this one is just a like email inbox with some of the things that they kind of message each other. I was keeping this in mind for a different prompt magical readathon as well because there is one, not one that I need, but if I was fulfilling extra ones. There's one for a book with unusual formatting. And this has a bunch of mixed media like text messages and email conversations in it as well. But it does also, of course, perfectly fit for this prompt, which is one that I do actually need for my career, and I'm pretty sure I have other books with unusual formatting on my shelves I can use if I do get to that other prompt. I will say I don't think the average rating on this is great, but I am still willing to give it a try because it's very reminiscent of something that I love. I just hope that it doesn't try to copy the thing that I love too much where it just tries to do the same thing again, and that I can enjoy the tropes in here because I've enjoyed them before, but then this is still like its own thing. It feels like the hating game meets flat share because we have the office rivals to lovers thing, but then also the fact that they share a desk.

[00:20:53]So, we'll see. I have accidentally read a little bit more of this than I anticipated with her bringing you guys an update because I am 200 pages into this now. I'm past the halfway point.

[00:21:06]But honestly, I was contemplating dnfing this quite frequently throughout the first 100 pages. And while I feel like I'm past that point now, I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it. I'm not not enjoying it. I feel like I come in and out of it with this book. But something that I very quickly remembered when I started it is that this is more of a contemporary than it is a romance. I'm pretty sure somebody mentioned that in my comments when I hauled this because I literally thought this was just a rivals to lovers office romance kind of deal.

[00:21:40]but it's actually surrounding a dead author's estate and these two editors are trying to win the estate for their publishing companies. So, this is set shortly after COVID where everyone is going back to work. However, you know, office working conditions have changed over recent years. So, a lot of people work from home. A lot of people do hybrid work. So, they're in the office for 3 days and then they're at home for 2 days. And this is following two people who are essentially hybrid working. So Rebecca has the desk on Monday and Tuesday and Ben has the desk on Wednesday and Thursday. Something that is surprising me about this book actually is that it has a touch of Evelyn Hugo in it and I'm really interested to see how that develops throughout the second half of this book because an influential author has died.

[00:22:28]He is a male author who was writing in I think like the the 70s 80s. So a lot of his work at this point is a little bit insensitive, sexist, a tad on the problematic side. And both of these editors are trying to win this estate for their publishing houses cuz they both work for different imprints that work under the same like umbrella company. There is a difference between them though and I feel like Ben is ruffling my feathers because of this as Rebecca has been personally requested by the widow of the deceased author to come in and look at the work and kind of pitch why it should be sold to her. Now, I do feel like the widow has an ulterior motive. In fact, I know that she does because it turns out that she actually knows Rebecca's mother. And this is all kind of a ploy to get Rebecca's mother's attention because they were best friends in the ' 70s when they both worked for the same publication and they haven't spoken in years. Ben, on the other hand, has been building up a friendship with the dead author's son. So, he tries to worm his way into the estate through that route. these two who are sharing the same desk. I don't think they necessarily know that they're both going for the same estate, but they do keep leaving each other very crossed signal kind of messages on post-it notes on their desk. And that is the only joy that I'm really getting from this book because of the misunderstanding that they're coming to. Like right in the very first chapter of this book, Rebecca finds a cactus on the desk and she's like, "Wow, that's a weird plant to have on your desk. I wonder why he's put it there." And then he turns up to work on Wednesday and he's like, "Damn, like why's Rebecca got a cactus and is she going to water it?" So they start making barbed comments about this cactus without being overly aggressive cuz they want to remain professional, but also kind of being like, "What's your deal with the cactus?" But the cactus actually seemingly belongs to neither of them. And it's that kind of like mixed signals messaging that I'm really enjoying about this. We do have a third perspective in here though, which is what is really given the Evelyn Hugo vibes. Obviously, we have that setup of Rebecca has been specifically requested to deal with this by the widow of this author and she has no idea why until she turns up and she thinks that maybe her mother has something to do with it. But then we actually follow her mother in the ' 70s when she's friends with the author's no widow and also a bunch of other people who are in the industry at the same time. So, at this point, I'm just really trying to kind of piece together what the whole point of this thing is. And also, I do know it's going to turn romantic at some point, but honestly, I've got 150 pages left. They haven't even met. I think he's caught one glimpse of her on a Zoom call and he thought that she's attractive, but he still doesn't know who she is. And so, I don't feel like anything, if it does try to go too heavily down that romance route, I feel like it's going to end up feeling a little bit rushed. But now that I do know or I have remembered that this is more along the contemporary lines, I'm actually kind of more open to see where it's going because at the beginning of this I was getting incredibly frustrated with it quickly because I do find it unnecessarily wordy. There is a writing style that I sometimes associate with books about publishing or journalism where everything just feels so pretentious.

[00:25:41]And I feel like this is walking a very tight line in that regard where I do feel like some parts of it are a little bit too pretentious and I really just could care less. And sometimes it pulls me in with the humor a little bit. I wouldn't say I'm laughing out loud, but maybe it gets a smirk out of me. Who knows? So, I'm kind of teetering on what side of the line I feel like this falls at the minute. It's also incredibly dialogueheavy. And one of the things that I like the least about this is that it introduced like so many characters that are irrelevant in like the first chapter. Like Rebecca goes to work and it's like oh Sandra never unmutes herself which is a recurring joke at this point. But then there's this random guy that she knows in the office. She has her boss who runs the publishing company. There's her mom. There's her sister I think. Or is it her best friend? There's just so many side characters. And then the frustrating thing is is that we then move to Ben's perspective and he works in the same office with a whole bunch of different people and he definitely has a sister and he then gets a part-time job in a pub where you have the regulars and the woman that runs the pub and then you get to Jane who's Rebecca's mom's perspective and everybody in that perspective is from the 1970s and how am I supposed to keep track of all of these people who play a tiny mostly irrelevant part of this story or only serve as the punch line of a recurring joke. So, I think if this was solidly just a contemporary romance, I would be so over it because obviously with a contemporary romance, you don't necessarily know how the characters get to where they're going, but you know where they're going.

[00:27:16]Like, you know what the end point of the story is going to be because this is going along the contemporary fiction a little bit more. I'm a little bit more in the dark about what direction this plot is going to take. And that has made me more reluctant to give up on this one because there is some curiosity there about what the actual point of this whole thing is. So I finished Hot Desk by Laura Dickman and unfortunately I didn't love it. I feel like this tried to do too much at once. And I mean to be honest it did at its core only try to attempt two things. But in my opinion I don't feel like those two things necessarily had to be together in the same book. And at times I really wondered why they are. And I do feel like there's potentially an issue with the marketing of this one because it reads like the synopsis, which I did find one. There's one in the inside dust jacket, but it reads like a contemporary romance synopsis. It says, "The flat share meets the office by way of Norah Efron in this sparkling novel about two rival editors in competition for the career opportunity of a lifetime while forced to share the same desk." It also talks about how they have this like passive aggressive battle with Post-it notes and how that escalates. And the only thing that oh hey baby the only thing that actually hints at the core plot of this book is the last line that says when secrets about the lion emerge they are forced to ask what role do they want to play in his legacy. The comments on one of my videos are the only things that gave me a tip off that this was going to be more of a contemporary fiction story than it is a like romcomy romance. It does still very much have a humorous tone to it. But then the main point of this book, I feel, is that past timeline that we get from Rebecca's mother and what is going on, like what happened in her past with this author that is influencing the present day and Rebecca and Ben's kind of humorous battle to be the person that wins this estate for their publishing house. However, the things that happened in the 80s are not funny. Like, this book deals with serious topics. It deals with sexual assault, sexism, power imbalances within the office and the way that women were forced to relinquish their ambitions and their dreams, but also the ways that women were forced to submit to men both personally and professionally. And while you have this current running through the entire book that does intersect the timelines, you also have this pointless contemporary office rivals to lovers story, which at the page 200 mark, as I said, they hadn't even met. It was around page 250 by the time they'd actually physically interacted and said more than like four lines to each other. And yet, this book ended on a sex scene. I just don't get it. I just don't understand. I feel like this book should have been one or the other. I don't know why it had to be a romantic story when you consider like the real part of the plot. The the fact that this is both a contemporary fiction and a romance, but not in that it's one cohesive story that is both of those things. It's that there are two separate stories going on here. One is a contemporary fiction, one is a romcom.

[00:30:31]And I don't know why they exist in the same book. And then do you remember all of those side characters I was talking about where I felt we had way too many of them introduced into every perspective which made the beginning of this book feel like very very cluttered.

[00:30:46]At the end we had a series of news articles wrapping up what happened to all of these random side characters that I barely even remembered the names of and had forgotten about by this point.

[00:30:59]Like I don't care how their story ends.

[00:31:01]They literally formed random little anecdotes throughout the book that I wouldn't even say was a recurring thread. It's almost like this is part of a series of interconnected standalones and all of these people have their own book. That is kind of how they were mentioned in here. like I'm supposed to know and care who these people are when realistically the time is not dedicated to them enough for me to really care and for them to be anything more than just a kind of supporting character that gives the main characters some backstory and make them feel fully fleshed out like the side characters were just props in this book so why did I then have to read like five news articles about how they were doing at the end of this book don't get it so I did give this a very low three stars. I think because I did enjoy the story line that we had that ran from like the I think it was the 80s, the very early 80s and then connected with the present day timeline. Although the execution of it wasn't the most riveting thing I'd ever read, I wanted to know what happened to Rebecca's mother to cause her not to talk to her friend for around 40 years. So that was kind of my driving force to pull me through this.

[00:32:14]But that is, I would say, probably the only thing that I enjoyed about it. And I would be very surprised if there weren't books out there that executed this type of story line much better than this one did. So, I'm pretty sure that we can say with conviction that this is going to be a scrap and then we can move on to pick our next book from the stacks. So, I now have two books to read for this video and two prompts left for magical readathon. So, I have been fulfilling them in order at this point.

[00:32:43]You don't have to. There's no significance to reading the books in order. It's just the way that I've been working down the list. But I do think I'm going to skip over the next one that we have. I'm going to be aiming for shape-shifting this time. The course focus is volume modification and the prompt is flip a coin. If it lands on heads, read a book under 400 pages. If it lands on tails, read a book over 400 pages. Now, I would typically flip the coin in this video, but I did already do that in my TBR. And the book that I had in for this prompt is happy ending, which is the one that we have now shelved on my TBR car. It landed on head, so I had to read a book under 400 pages. And I'm going to be sticking with that. But I'm not going to be reading Happy Ending anymore cuz that's now over there. And I do still need to read it soon cuz it's an ARC for this month. But it's not in the stacks. So I feel like I might as well pick one from here while it's such an easy prompt to fill. And I'm sure there's plenty of books in here that are under 400 pages cuz that's not an incredibly small number. But there's a book here that's quite short. I don't know yet. You can just about see it. I have wanted to read it since I hauled it towards the end of last year. And I'm taking this as the perfect opportunity to do so. So this one is 200, no 302 pages. So well within the parameters of this prompt. I'm actually surprised it's that thick cuz I feel like it looks thinner. And this was one of the books that was sent to me in my welcome package when I became an ambassador for Bloomsbury Archer, which is Bloomsbur's fantasy imprint. So, thank you so much to Bloomsbury Archer for sending this one my way. It wasn't on my radar until it arrived on my doorstep, but it sounds so good. It is historical fantasy, which doesn't always work for me, but given the direction of this and also the time period, I feel like it's something I can really get into. Also, sorry if you can hear Carmi snoring because I can hear her. She's awake, but I can hear her rumbling behind me. So, this starts off in 1592, and one of our two female main characters is the daughter of a secret alchemist who is destined to bring disaster to those around her. Our other main character is Miriam, who is a creature born of shadow. It says, "Forged by the dark art, she's doomed to exist for eternity and destined to be alone, consuming souls for sustenance."

[00:35:00]So when these two meet, Miriam offers Cibil a bargain that she will grant Cibil reincarnation and the chance to change her fate in exchange for her soul, which causes these two to continuously meet across centuries. So because of the length of this and the focus, I feel like I don't want to jinx myself or expect too much, but I feel like the pros in here has potential to be really beautiful. It reminds me of kind of like The Invisible Life of Adi Laroo meets something like the Winter Nightight trilogy by Katherine Arden.

[00:35:34]I'm really intrigued about the themes of fate, reincarnation. I don't think I've read a book that executes the trope in a way that I have adored or I don't think I don't know if I've read a book with this trope at all, but I do love the idea of soulmates that keep meeting in every life. And this one, while it seems like there's going to be a little bit of bitterness there, like within The Invisible Life of Addy Laroo, where Addy makes a bargain and it turns out to be not exactly what she wanted and leads her into a life of incredible loneliness. I do feel like we're maybe going to have some romantic undertones in here and also themes of inevitability that keep bringing these two together.

[00:36:13]So, I actually have Sprint starting in about 90 minutes. and teaming up with Win from Literary Diversions to do some sprints over on Patreon. I have some things to post out, but aside from that, I am just going to settle in and do some reading this afternoon. And as this is quite a short one, I'm hoping to make quite a dent in it. And I'm very enthusiastic about this one, I really hope I love it. I am 110 pages into As Many Souls as Stars, and I was right about this one, guys. I'm having a really good time. I've just reached the end of the first time period, which is 1592. And something I didn't really think about with this being set in the late 1500s, is that it does intersect with the timeline of witch hunting in the UK. This one is set in Ipsswitch or near Ipsswitch. I guess that is the biggest settlement in this area. And our main character comes from a magical family where the firstborn child is always a witch. However, the firstborn daughters are cursed. So her father is the current witch of the family and he does not really have a relationship with his daughter because in his mind he failed to do the right thing when she was a baby which would be to kill her to stop this curse from taking root and taking a hold on his family. So while he couldn't save her out of love for the fact that she was his child that also inhibits him from actually having a relationship with her. Sibil is however very close to her mother up until the point where her mother becomes pregnant with her second child which they're hoping is going to be a son and the child does turn out to be stillborn which drastically alters Sibil's mother's mental state and she kind of retreats into her bedroom where her father is constantly drugging her to keep her calm. So eventually Cibil comes of an age where she then becomes the head of this family because gender doesn't matter in this regard and she is struggling to kind of keep it together.

[00:38:11]She's a woman so things are expected of her in terms of where she can and can't go with or without a chaperone and eventually fingers start to be pointed towards her when the witch hunts are gaining popularity. So our secondary character in here is called Miriam, but that is only because that is the identity that she has assumed. She is a creature born of shadow and darkness.

[00:38:36]She is not anything in particular. She's not an angel. She's not a devil. She's not a demon. She is just this dark shadowy entity. And she eats souls because she does not have one. So she makes bargains with mortals that often work in her favor because the mortals aren't clever enough to be particular about their words. And when Miriam meets Cibil, she has the brightest soul that she has ever seen. And so she knows that she has to devour it. However, Sibil has no desire to make a bargain with Miriam.

[00:39:07]And Miriam just cannot take this. She's never been denied in her life. Nothing she can offer Sibil is good enough. So she keeps trying and trying and trying until Syibbil's back is against the wall. The witch hunters are coming for her and Miriam is her only escape. So they make a deal that will allow Sibil to live again. She will be allowed the same lifespan that she has. So in her next life, she is once again going to die at 23 years old. and she would like to be reborn again into the role of the cursed firstborn daughter of her family so that she has the opportunity to break this curse amongst the firstborn daughters so that going forward they can be free of this burden and the deal that she makes with Miriam is that if she doesn't succeed well's soul which is already the brightest one that Miriam has ever seen is then going to be twice as strong because it is going to meld with the soul of who she will become in this next life. So if she fails, Miriam will get to consume her soul, which will then be twice as powerful. And if she succeeds, which is very unlikely, then Miriam will leave her to her mortality.

[00:40:17]This one, as I anticipated, is very nicely written as well, which you guys know writing style is the most important thing for me, and I really feel like that's helping me to sink into this one.

[00:40:27]I feel like it has a really great rich atmosphere and it's kind of saturated with this feeling of not only I guess melancholy but also longing because Sibil is just trying her best. She's living in this world that is stacked against her and still she's trying to do the right thing that serves her but also protects her family. And even as she's coming to the end of her first life, as the witch hunters are closing in around her, her first thoughts are for her mother and protecting her mother. Also, when she asks to be reincarnated, when she literally has no hope left and no options, instead of just asking for a chance at a better life, which is offered to her, like all of her problems solved, like she gets an opportunity to live outside of the bones of this cursed daughter role. she actually chooses this life again so that she can make it better for the women in her family who are going to come after her. So, I'm really excited to see where this is going to go from this point because I'm like a third of the way through the book now and we've only just hit the end of the first timeline. Obviously, in the synopsis, it lays out the fact that this is going to be a relationship between these two that spans centuries and the next timeline I'm getting into is 1762.

[00:41:47]So, I'm wondering, actually, this is intermission 1762. So, I'm wondering if this is going to be a short section of the book before we dive into a different timeline because I'm wondering like how many perspectives, like how many eras we're going to pop up in in this book with the amount of pages that we have left and the fact that we're still like 300 years before modern times. I had a bit of a cozy reading afternoon, which I'm carrying into a cozy reading evening. And so I only have about 100 pages left of as many souls as stars. And I'm here with some more comparisons because I do still feel like it definitely has elements of The Invisible Life of Addy Laroo and also The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. But I would like to add two more books into the mix. The first being Diary of Blood by ST Gibson.

[00:42:42]Especially with I feel like the atmosphere and also this element of having a partner in the relationship that nobody really likes. It's different. It's very very different.

[00:42:54]There are themes of abuse within here like just in general as well. But the relationship that we have between Miriam and Syibil is I don't want to say it's necessarily romantic. I feel like on Miriam's behalf, it's a little bit obsessive. Like she's seeing this soul that is so bright that she cannot have.

[00:43:13]And so she is desperate to claim it, especially because Syibil is so resistant to her and she can't really seem to offer her. Like it takes her a long time to offer her something that she actually wants and is willing to make a trade for. But because Miriam is enamored by her, she makes concessions that she wouldn't ever make for any other mortals. And then from Cibil's perspective, we see that she does desire Miriam, but she also doesn't like Miriam and what Miriam is. Now, I thought that this was going to be a little bit of a reclamation of power, especially because we're following female protagonists in a time period that doesn't treat women favorably. So, I thought we were going to see Cibil maybe turn to the dark side a little bit and embrace Miriam's darkness and the relationship that they've kind of forged and this whole like shadowy magical element in an effort to kind of rage against society that is forcing these women into their current positions. Especially because the only reason why Cybil is cursed is because she is female. The female line of this family are the ones that fill the balance for the men. For the men to be all powerful and to be able to channel this incredibly powerful magic, the sacrifice that the family has to make is that the firstborn daughters are cursed. So, they're essentially what foots the bill of this power exchange that was made by their ancestors. And that kind of element that we have going on, I don't know that Cibil is going to go that way. the way that we're kind of feeling now. I think that she is very drawn to Miriam and she has a lot of desire for Miriam, but she doesn't appreciate the fact that Miriam goes around eating souls essentially, which you know what, valid. But that kind of element reminds me a lot of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E.

[00:45:02]Schwab. And I feel like if you enjoyed that book, but like me did not appreciate the modern perspective that we got, then you may enjoy this one.

[00:45:12]These two remind me a lot of the two characters that I loved in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil because I'm very hit or miss with V. Schwab. Some of her books I've loved and some I really disliked. That one for me was difficult because I loved the perspective of Maria. Lotty was okay. She wasn't my favorite, but I feel like she added more to the story than the third perspective, which is the most modern perspective of Alice, who I did not like at all. So having a story that is reminiscent of the best parts of burial bones in the midnight soil and doesn't have currently any of the elements of what I didn't like about it is definitely working in my favor. So I finished Asy Souls as stars and I did thoroughly enjoy this one. I think that the comparison to Bury Our Bones and the Midnight Soil still stands as this is a story that is very romantic in nature. It hinges on a lot of romantic feelings between our two main characters or four main characters depending on how you look at it. But I would definitely not call this a romance. And I am somebody who loves stories that are romantic. I love romance to be included in the stories I consume, no matter what medium they are.

[00:46:26]thought I do sometimes get a little bit weary of the romance genre because you know it's always a done deal which I didn't realize when I first started reading romance but I do believe for a book to be categorized as a romance it has to either end in a happily ever after or a happy for now and sometimes that level of shity is just a little bit boring for me because I love to consume all love stories. I love to consume ones that end happily with people riding off into the sunset. I adore love stories that end in tragedy. And you know what?

[00:46:58]I actually also really enjoy love stories that involve people being toxic and messy to each other. I love all versions of love and all versions of love stories, but sometimes for me I feel like it is a little bit more interesting when you have a romantic story that does not necessarily mean that we are following two people who are going to live perfect happy lives together. And that is the kind of love story that this was for me. I also do really like that it did feel reminiscent of Burial Bones in the Midnight Soil because I enjoyed that book. I enjoyed a lot about that book, but I really hated the perspective of Alice. I thought that she was borderline unnecessary and for the part that she actually played within the plot. So, I really enjoyed that with this. I read a story that was very reminiscent of especially the beginning, like the first half of Burial Bones in the Midnight Soil, but without all of those parts that really got on my nerves. I do wish that this was a little bit longer, which is always my complaint with shorter books. We do go through three iterations of Sibil's life in this one. I do feel like it could have been expanded upon. We could have had more reincarnations. The plot could have been fleshed out a little bit more. And just as somebody who loves more, who loves to spend a lot of time in a book, I feel like it would have hit a little bit harder for me that way. But still, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend it for fans of all of those series or standalone novels that I've talked about while I've been reading this one. I actually want to look up this author as well cuz I haven't read anything by her or really heard of anything by her, I think.

[00:48:33]Although looking at her author photo, she looks familiar interestingly, but it says in her bio that she's a writer of historical fiction, fantasy, and romance. So, I want to look into what other books she's published because I did enjoy this one so much. And I'm actually finding for somebody who doesn't like historical fiction and always says like, "Oh, you know, historical fantasy kind of boring for me sometimes, I actually do think I really like historical fantasy when it's in certain time periods or when it has a certain focus to the narrative. But I just find it really interesting.

[00:49:04]Although I couldn't pinpoint for you what specific elements a historical fantasy would have to contain for me to love it. I do know, as I mentioned before, that I really like that time period where folklore is kind of dying out and Christianity is coming in and you have the parallel between the two and the way people treat the two. But aside from that, like I couldn't tell you what exactly it is I like when I like historical fiction. But it looks like it might be a subg genre that I actually may pursue in the future, which I honestly never saw coming. But because I enjoyed Asy Souls as stars so much, I am going to be shelving this one. I do think that this is a book where in 6 months to a year, I could decide that I don't really need to keep this on my shelves anymore. But for now, I had a good enough time with this one that I would like to hold on to it a little bit longer. I did give it four stars, so it's not one of my new favorite books of all time, but I think tonally, atmospherically, writing style, had a really good time with this one. So, we'll just keep hold of it for a little bit longer. Where are we going to put it, though? That is the question. The next prompt for magical readathon, my final prompt for magical readathon, actually, which I can't believe I'm almost done this early into the month.

[00:50:13]We're like just past the halfway point.

[00:50:15]And my last prompt is for law. The course focus is ancient speculative law and the prompt is to read a book that is a dystopia or a utopia. So, I do have a book that is in the stacks selected for this one, but obviously as we're going to be shelving as many souls as stars, I'll see if I can find a dystopian on my shelves. I think we're going to go and try and shove this upstairs. But I'm not too hopeful actually because dystopia is not one of my favorite genres. But also it's not a super it's having its moment again I feel with things like the silver elite which I don't really have much interest in because I didn't love dystopian the first time around. There were series that I enjoyed within the genre but as a genre not my favorite.

[00:51:01]And also Daggermouth has just been released. I think it's been picked up by a traditional publisher. So that's going to be redistributed soon. also has glowing reviews. But aside from those two, I can't really think of any standout dystopians from recent years.

[00:51:14]So, it's not the kind of thing that I've seen frequently in things like subboxes.

[00:51:18]So, we'll go up and we'll see what I can find, but I'm not sure I'm going to find anything. So, I've had a quick glance over these shelves, and while I am like 90% sure that something here is going to be like dystopian or utopian, but I'm just not aware of it. There's nothing that is obviously jumping out at me. But I do have this bag, which as you guys know, I do have, I think, five of these bags now that do also keep TBR books in.

[00:51:47]And this is one that specifically has my thrillers in because I worked with Book of the Month for a couple of years. So, I amassed a ton of hardback thrillers.

[00:51:55]So, I put them all in here just so they were together. But, this is obviously dwindling cuz I'm no longer collecting hardback thrillers. And 95% of the thrillers and mystery books that I read, I do unhaul after reading. So, I have quite a significant gap in this now, but I don't have anything to fill it with.

[00:52:13]So, I thought we could maybe take something like one of the book of the month books that's something like literary fiction off here and put that into the bag because obviously eventually this bag is going to be empty so I need to start refilling it with something else so that we can shelf as many souls as stars. So, I think this the author is Natasha Seagull. So, it's going to be going right down here. My only criteria for the bags is that I don't put books that I've read in there.

[00:52:40]They're all unread. So, we would have to take something from Book of the Month off this higher shelf.

[00:52:48]And I'm happy, I think, for now to go with Kier by Vishnavi Patel, which is a like historical, I'm pretty sure, literary leaning fantasy. So, can drop that in the bag, which means we can move these guys along a bit. This one is quite a tight shelf, but hopefully there's now enough space for dark and hollow star. I mean, literally only just. And then down here, we can put as many souls of stars. There is a little bit of space there, but I don't think there's room for another book at all.

[00:53:22]What's this one? I'm pretty sure that this isn't dystopian. No, this is like Gothic, dark academia. And on that note, let's go back downstairs and find a dystopian book to read. So, this is what we currently have left in the stacks. I was looking cuz I did a quick Google when I was upstairs and I didn't realize that to cage a wild bird by Brooke Fast is a dystopian romance. I do have that, but I think it's on the little bedside table shelf in the spare bedroom upstairs. I did think that it might be down here, but alas, it is not, which is fine because the book that I had on my TBR for this prompt was Poster Girl by Veronica Roth. So, realistically, if I wanted to, I could go upstairs and pop this on the shelf in exchange for Teage a Wild Bird and read that instead. But I do think I'm going to be sticking with Poster Girl because I've actually had it a lot longer. And of the two, I actually think that this is the one that I'm more 50/50 about. So, it's one that I would like to get to just to figure out if it's for me or not. So, Veronica Roth is obviously the author of Divergent. know when I was saying back in the day there were a few dystopian series that I enjoyed. Unfortunately, Divergent was not really one of them, which is why this book has not been a super high priority for me. And actually, considering the popularity of the Divergent series, I feel like nothing Veronica Roth has published since has hit even close to the same heights that Divergent did. So, I'm not expecting the most from this one. But, it is actually quite a short book. It might actually be shorter than As Many Souls as stars, is only 267 pages. I wonder if it's a standalone. I'm actually really not sure. It has a lot to do with eyes, which is a little bit scary. And this cover, this is a Fairy Loot exclusive. I think it's just a different colorway, but it always reminds me of Nicole Richie, and I just can't get that out of my head. This one was actually as well for the adult fantasy fairy loot box where the actual theme was dystopia. So, 100% fits for magical readathon. This is a world that was controlled by the delegation and their slogan was what's right is right. And there was an ocular implant, I'm assuming that everybody had it, that tracked every word and every action rewarding or punishing by a rigid moral code. So then there was a revolution and the delegation fell and its most important members were locked up and our main character was the poster girl for the delegation. So whether she actually aligns with that ethos, I guess we'll find out. But I think it's been 10 years since she was imprisoned and an old enemy comes to her with a deal.

[00:55:56]Sounds interesting enough, I mainly just worry about this because I haven't really loved Veronica Roth in the past and of all of the different little niches of the sci-fi genre, Dystopia isn't my favorite. But saying that, Scythe by Neil Schustman I have read in more recent years and that's one of my favorite series of all time. That one is a utopian, but as we know, all utopians are actually dystopians. Good morning, guys. It is 6:15 a.m. and I am on my way out on this fine Saturday morning for record store day and I do have my Kindle with me. I checked on Libby last night cuz I knew that I was coming out super early in the morning to see if I could get an ecopy of Poster Girl because I'm going to be stood in this queue outside the record store for 2 hours. And I did indeed manage to load it onto my Kindle. So, my plan for the next couple of hours when we arrive is just to stand there and read, but I'm already like a 100 pages into this book. And so, I think that there is a good chance that I'm either going to finish it in the queue or get very close to doing so. So, I need to give you guys an update on this. I am going to keep it brief cuz obviously not the best circumstances for a vlog update right now. But, I am actually surprisingly very much enjoying this one. I need to check if it is actually a standalone because I'm not sure at the minute. I haven't seen a sequel as far as I'm aware, but that doesn't mean that there's one out there that I just have missed. But this one is of course a dystopian story and it's following this girl called Sonia who I think she's actually like 26 or 27 now. And she was the poster child for the delegation which was this oppressive regime where you would earn money by doing good things for people. So if you saw somebody crying and you gave them your handkerchief, you would actually earn money or like a Bitcoin kind of currency from doing that and it would rank you like amongst everybody else in the world and you can then obviously like spend the money on things that you need to survive. Sonia's family actually were part of the government for the delegation. Her father worked there. And so when this system collapsed, herself and her family were all put into this community that was created. It's kind of like a prison or an area for all of the people associated with the delegation to live so that the rest of society can like reform and they are out of the way with the harmful ideas. It stops them from being in like a legitimate prison because a lot of them are like families.

[00:58:18]Some of them were children, but obviously they're not afforded the same privilege and like rights as regular citizens. So Sonia has been in this place for like 10 years. All of her family are dead now. She's had a couple of boyfriends, also all dead. And there has been a current initiative that was petitioned for by somebody outside. I think it's called the Aperture, the place where they live. And somebody outside petitioned for the children of the delegation to be released because they were kids like when all of this stuff was going down. So, is it really fair that they're imprisoned for the rest of their lives just because they grew up in families that were important to this regime? So all of these children had been released into the world to live normal lives. However, Sonia was a little bit too old when everything went down to be included as one of these children. And on top of that, she was actually the kid that posed for the photograph that was the poster for this entire regime. So her face was plastered across the world with all of these slogans. And so, not only can she not be free because of her age, but also because she's incredibly recognizable, cuz she was the face of government propaganda that everybody saw everywhere, like literally every single day of their lives. So, one day, somebody from her past who she considers an enemy, it's somebody who converted.

[00:59:35]When the regime she was a part of fell, this guy converted to the enemy side, which is now, I guess, the good side.

[00:59:42]And he comes to visit her and tells her that he has a mission. And if she achieves it, then she will win her freedom. So the mission that she has is that she has to find this missing girl because the delegation had a strict one child per household rule. There were certain privileged people that could petition against this rule and Sonia's family actually she has a second child herself. So her family were an exception to the rule. But if anybody else like a normal person, a normal family had a second child. as soon as the government found out about it, they would take that child and rehome them to families that couldn't have children. And the way that this entire world is policed is that they have implants in their brain so that the government can essentially use their eyes to see everything. So there's no hiding. And that essentially encouraged the citizens of the world to do the police work. Like they would turn in their family members, their neighbors for bad behavior and they would earn coin and earn points for it. So Sonia is tasked with finding one of these children who was rehomed. And typically there is a lot of documentation that goes along with this. Like it's a completely legal process. So there would be adoption records for every child. But this one child called Grace is the only kid that was rehomed in this way that they haven't been able to find to put her back with her original family. And Sonia thinks that it's this kind of useless mission that they've sent her on so that they can be seen as being benevolent, be seen as giving her a chance because, you know, it's not her fault that her family just happened to be in the government. It's not her fault that as a child, she was put in the role of this poster child. But she actually doesn't think there's any hope of finding this child. So, it's just like a useless mission. So, the government can say that they tried, but she obviously like doesn't think she's going to succeed. I'm actually surprised. The first couple of chapters I wasn't super interested, like I wasn't getting engrossed. But since then, I've actually had a really good time with this. I'm finding it really interesting, really engaging. I've flown through the first 100 pages. I am a little bit wary knowing that this is potentially a standalone with it just being 250 pages as well. I don't know if there's a sequel and it also isn't very long. So, I'm hoping that it can bring itself to a conclusion. Well, because I mean 250 pages for a full story, especially when where I'm up to now 100 pages in, this seems to be progressing at the pace of like a regular length novel or like the first book in a series. I just hope that this can continue to be as engrossing as it currently is, but also wrap everything up nicely. Saying that though, I am about to jump on my phone immediately and find out if there is any more to this series so that I know kind of what to expect for the next 150 pages. I am genuinely shocked by how much I enjoyed Poster Girl by Veronica Roth. I think it's actually my favorite book that I've read in this vlog, which is wild actually. But going into this, I don't think I knew that it would have such a strong mystery plotline almost like thriller adjacent actually with how everything kind of comes together because our main character Sonia is in pursuit of this missing child, Grace Ward. And there are actually so many threads in this book that I am shocked that they all managed to come together.

[01:02:58]Even ones that I'd kind of forgotten about along the way, like little loose ends that I thought maybe were just there to flesh out the backstory of our character or add a little bit of extra dimension. Everything came to a close at the end and wrapped up neatly, which I loved because this is only 270 pages.

[01:03:17]So, I was obviously, like I've mentioned, I was a little bit worried about that because short books always have me a little nervous. Like, I'm always nervous when I get a short book because I'm like, what if it doesn't deliver the depth or the intricacy or the complexity that I require to enjoy a book? But this one proves that you don't need a beefy page count to deliver a well-rounded, enjoyable, engrossing, interesting story. So, I am very impressed by this.

[01:03:49]Who knew that in 2026 I would be becoming a Veronica Roth fan girl? And you know what? I am actually definitely more enthusiastic about picking up more from Veronica Roth in the future. Now, not the new Divergent book, though, which I have seen has just been announced, I'm pretty sure, at BookCon.

[01:04:06]That um will not be for me. I will not be reading that one. But I know that Veronica Roth has actually written quite a lot. In the front of this book, it only has chosen ones. It actually doesn't have Divergent. And I'm wondering if Chosen Ones is Veronica Roth's only other adult story up until this point. You know what? Actually, the first book in the Divergent series was fine. It was the sequels where it really went downhill and I didn't read four because at that point I really didn't care. And honestly, I still don't. But Chosen Ones is about heroes. Actually, I don't know if that one is a standalone, but there is some praise for it at the back. It doesn't have a synopsis, but it says they were the chosen ones. Saving the world made them heroes. Saving it again might destroy them. And it does also say that it is the bestselling adult debut from Veronica Roth. So, maybe I'll pick that up in the future.

[01:04:59]I'll also look into Veronica Roth and see what she has published kind of since 2022. I do think at this point I'll probably stay away from her. Ya, but I'm very interested in picking up further adult releases from Veronica Roth, especially if any of them have a more mystery centered plotline because I didn't know going into this that this was something I would love. I guess there is kind of precedence. There's books like this that I am interested in like Dark Matter by Blake Croach. That's kind of like a sci-fi thriller, right?

[01:05:30]And I do actually really like sci-fi horror. So, it does kind of make sense that dystopian mystery would be something that I liked. I think I just went into this thinking, oh, Veronica Roth, it's going to be like dystopian romance, you know, in the same vein as Divergent. And because it was something different, I actually enjoyed it. So, that doesn't mean that we're going to be shelving this one. It is supposed to be the last book of this vlog. But, I actually have a gap on my bookshelf that Wolf Song by TJ Cloon came out of. This has been on my TBR for a few months and so I've just left the gap open for it in case I wanted to keep it after I've read it. I am listening to the audio book of this though. I'm almost 200 pages into it. And at this point, I'm having an okay time with it. And I think that is because I'm listening to the audio book.

[01:06:15]I think that if I was reading this physically, I would have hit my limit with this book a long time ago cuz there is a lot of things in here that I'm not enjoying. So, I don't think this is going to go back on my shelf when I finished it. I think this is going to be a goner. So, I'm going to go take this upstairs. And we've had some um developments upstairs actually since the last time you were up there, which maybe you'll see when we go. I'm going to go shelf this on the bookcase upstairs. And I have a TJ Cloon book up there that I think I'm going to bring down to put where Woolong went, which is Hey babes.

[01:06:48]Hello. Thank you. Which is where the rest of my TJ Cloon books live. Oh my god, look how much room we have for activities. Now, we got rid of the bed this weekend. This room is no longer a spare room. I am very excited for what this room is going to be, but it's going to take I think I want to do it quickly, but I think it's still going to take around a month to turn it around. We took a little bit of the wallpaper off the walls just to kind of see what the plaster was like underneath. And, you know, it's not great. I have seen much worse though in this house. So, I think that we can work with it and turn this room into a more usable space. What that does mean though is that this bookcase is going to go into retirement. So many bookcases have come down and gone up throughout the course of Shelvados Scrapit, which is wild because I actually don't think prior to that any of the bookcases had been packed away in this house. But for us to get all of the wallpaper off and start working on this room, I am of course going to be boxing up these books, which is probably going to cause problems for us cuz this is the main bookcase of hardbacks that we work with when we're rearranging stuff. But speaking of that, let's get Poster Girl sheld. Veronica Roth should be hanging out on this shelf. We have Lexi Ryan here, Maria Rowski, and then we have a Treacherous Swans by AB Pinac. And you know what this Oh, this is a really tight shelf actually.

[01:08:20]So, this is really going to benefit from having a slimmer book on it. So, A Treacherous Swans by AB Porac is the one that I'm going to be taking out. And Poster Girl is going to slot perfectly in that gap. That was such a good choice. I now have this bag of books, which typically lives on top of this bookcase. And in here I have the fairy loot edition of In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Cloon. And in its place, I'm going to be putting A Treachery of Swans. And then this one hopefully should slot right in there. In the Lives of Puppets is also one of the books that I have in the stacks. It's one of the books that I accidentally have two copies of. I like to keep hold of both copies just as insurance in case I love a book so much that it becomes like the next thing I want to collect. I actually don't really foresee that happening within the lives of puppets, but you know, just in case.

[01:09:19]So, I want to prioritize that one sometime soon cuz realistically, two books, two copies of the same book taking up space in my house. Not ideal when I have other books floating around that could also be taking up that space.

[01:09:33]So, hopefully we'll get to read that very soon in a future episode. But we are about to draw this episode to a close. I have achieved my goal. We are ending this episode with 31 books in the stacks, which is exactly four less than we started with. So for this episode, four books were attempted. Three of those four books were completed. And two of the completed books I actually shelved, which I feel like it's been a little while since I've enjoyed books enough to shelve them. I don't feel like we do a lot of shelving these days. This one I did expect to like. Honestly, I was hoping for five stars from Ass. I wanted it to impact me a little bit more than it did, but I definitely still enjoyed it. I really liked the writing style and it's a constant struggle for me to find writing styles that actually really engaged me. So, finding a book that actually did that is enough for it to earn a place on my shelves. And then this one, honestly, I would have predicted this as if not a DNF, then definitely a book that I would have ended up scrapping after reading it. I am so shocked by how much I enjoyed this one. I'm shocked that this is the best book that I read in this episode. Even when I put it on my April TBR for Magical Readathon, this was one of the ones that I selected as a book that I felt like I should give a try because I didn't foresee it being a book that I loved enough to care that much about it.

[01:11:01]And here we are. my favorite book of the episode. So, of the books that we scrapped, there are, of course, also two of those. This is a book that definitely I could have done without read, and I definitely should have DNFed this. The outcome of the mystery was not really worth having to slog through everything else. I still think this book is very confused, and I'm glad that this one is going to be Leaving My Home. And Coldwire by Khloe Gong was our only DNF of this episode. My second DNF of the year. I am really sad that I don't like Khloe Gong as well because I feel like I've only heard amazing things about her as a person and I want to support good people. This is why I struggle with meeting authors these days when I haven't read anything by them because I've met so many like wonderful, lovely people and then not enjoyed their books and I feel bad about it. Thankfully, I haven't actually met Khloe Gong, but everything that I've heard about her, she's the sweetest person. So, I'm really sad that seemingly her books are not for me. This is two DNFs now in two genres from Chloe Gong. So, I feel like it really is time for me to call it quits here. So, that does conclude episode 24, I think we're on, of Shelvador Scrappet. And actually, I can reveal to you guys what I'm going to be doing for episode 25 because I've been wanting to get back to basics with how we select the books for a little while just because I feel like when I have a theme like magical readathon, I already kind of go in with a expectation of what I'm going to read. So going into this episode, like I knew which books in the stacks fulfilled the prompt, so I knew what my options were if I hadn't already narrowed it down to a specific book in my TBR. And with the exception of swapping like Cold Wire for Hot Desk, that's the only really surprising thing that we had in this episode. And as I've said a million times, one of the things that I love the most about Shelvados Grabbit is the spontaneity. I have such a rigid TBR outside of this. I like that I get a handful of surprises in my month when we do this. So, I am going to just be using a random number generator to select the books that we read for the next episode. I anticipate it is going to be around 4 again, but I'm just excited to bring that spontaneity back a little bit before we move on to another theme for episode 26. So, do stay tuned for that if you are at all interested.

[01:13:17]The next vlog on my channel is going to be another ultimate book video where I do some book shopping, read one of my most anticipated releases of the year, which I'm so excited about, and also a couple of other bookish related things.

[01:13:30]So, if that does sound interesting to you, then please stay tuned for that as well. But aside from that, guys, I do hope you've enjoyed this vlog if you've made it this far. If you have, please don't forget to like if you liked it and subscribe if you want to. And I'll see you guys next week. Bye.

[01:13:46]about your friend like chocolate.

[01:13:49]You say you go when nobody knows. with guns hidden under our petty co. We're never going to quit. No, we're never going to quit it. No.