it's mid-year and these books were mid | biggest disappointments so far

[00:00:00]Jeez. Oh my gosh, should I just make a part two with my actual the books I actually liked? Should I really just make this about disappointments? Yeah.

[00:00:06]Oh god. Hi, my name is Vanessa and I have had a very bad reading year. And I really want to post I really have been wanting to make book videos on the internet and post them and talk to people about books, but I haven't been wanting to read. And how does that work?

[00:00:19]So I've been kind of feeling like that dog in that comic that's like no take only throw about playing fetch. I have read 20 books plus the DNF that I will be talking about. It's my channel, I can do what I want. That's really not great shape for me, but I have more going on this year than last year. I think it's all good things. I just miss actually feeling immersed in reading. Let's start with my disappointments. That's the juicy stuff. Here is the real tea on this video. I earnestly was going to make a video that was like my biggest disappointments, but also my biggest surprises so far. And it was going on way too long and I'm not about to make an hour-long video. I wanted to do a shorter one today. And it unintentionally kind of makes me look like a click bait hater because I I don't necessarily love to make videos that are fully about stuff I don't like necessarily. But due to time constraints, I only had time to talk about my disappointments. I feel like I'm going to be very fair when I'm talking about this book these books.

[00:01:13]Like all love all respect all love and respect. That yeah, that's just how it shook out for this video. I don't think I'm going to like rank these cuz I don't really know how to qualify what is a bigger disappointment or not. One of my recent disappointments and I literally talked about this in my most recent video, but it was how to survive in the woods. This is a thriller book about this woman who gets into a relationship with a really abusive man. And she is kind of formerly like a girl boss. Like she owns her own wellness business and she kind of finds some strange comfort in this very strict abusive situation.

[00:01:46]And you get flashbacks to like how she grew up with her dad who was a survivalist and had a lot of rules in their household. And so you can kind of like put the pieces together for how she ended up at this point. She's also sort of in this entanglement with her current abusive husband and then his ex-girlfriend, Taylor, and they kind of all have affairs going on with each other, but they're all keeping secrets from each other in a way. And this book is pretty character-driven and more of a slow-burn thriller, but on the back of the book it is promising this story about surviving in the woods or using these skills that she learned growing up to evade a dangerous situation, and that does not happen till like 60% into the book. Largely the book is sort of just we are stuck in the main character's point of view, and most of the pages of this book are from her inner monologue talking about her experience growing up and every single thought and feeling she had in the past and also now with her current husband in this entanglement, which I guess on the surface would be very interesting to me. I tend to like slow-burn thrillers. I tend to like character-driven stories, and I do find stories about enmeshed abusive relationships to be really like interesting, and on the surface it's like find some of the conversations here interesting, but the way it's written, everything that you the author would like you to think about this main character and and to take away from this book and what it's speaking to you about abuse and about rigidity and rules and and um her survivalist father and all these sorts of dynamics is just laid out pre-chewed for you by the author. Just pages and pages and pages and pages. And my brain was just like aching for like, "Please let me do some of the heavy lifting." Like I I I want to discern for myself at some point, and I really struggle with books that I think are a little bit too on the nose or like like hitting you over the head. And this is how that book was to read. My understanding is this author is more like an article writer rather than like a novelist necessarily. this might be a day new debut novel for this author, and unfortunately I just think it reads that way. That's just my personal opinion. I think that she could definitely improve.

[00:03:49]The pages aren't like transporting me.

[00:03:51]They're not like transforming me in any way. It's kind of just laying itself out to me in a in a very dull way. So, I thought that the thriller part when they actually get to the wilderness would be a lot more interesting than it actually is. Honestly, like the mystery of it or like what's going to happen? What's all going to go wrong? It says that there's like this crazy twist in the woods just kind of fell flat. Like it wasn't really that interesting. It was quite predictable. And I felt like the way that she got out of that situation was really really rushed at the end of the book, but also was like way too convenient. So, on a plot level also, it just kind of didn't grip me in any way.

[00:04:23]So, that was What is it even called?

[00:04:25]Damn it. Like I'm already forgetting.

[00:04:27]It's one of those books where I'm already forgetting um details about it.

[00:04:30]How to survive in the woods. Next disappointment. And it's like is this a disappointment cuz like my expectations like where do you expect them to be? Was Death Valley. Again, I have an entire hour-long video about this that I think it's pretty fun if you want to go watch it. Okay, the disappointment isn't that I thought this would be a good horror romance book because this book is a Donner Party Dark Romance zombie book.

[00:04:50]My disappointment is because I thought when I picked up the Donner Party Dark Dark Romance book that it was going to be set in the Donner Party times. I thought that that would be a lot more interesting. It did end up being super hilarious and ridiculous in its own way that made it like worth it for me to recap on the internet, but I was like actually disappointed that it didn't actually take place like in the 1800s like stuck in that mountain. Now, granted it did take place in present day, but they were still stuck in that mountain and there were still flesh-eating humanoids, but they weren't like people people doing cannibalism. I can kind of see how people were disappointed by that. And honestly, I was too actually. You know, you can actually take a ridiculous premise like this and make it like a good book. I think it was fun for what it was. For a book like this that's like the premise is about like this girl who's looking for her missing sister who was obsessed with the Donner Party and then goes into the Rocky Mountains and she has to hire a moody mysterious like might be involved in organized crime tracker cowboy to like take her and find her.

[00:05:48]and they just find a bunch of zombies up there and they're constantly getting plucked off one by one kind of feel.

[00:05:52]That is actually fun. I think though you can do a horror romance and still sell me on the romance with a silly situation like that. Also, this just wasn't a good romance and I kind of feel like the way this was written is it was supposed to be in the driver's seat and it kind of wasn't. They're immediately super attracted to each other like pretty much 24 hours after they meet each other they're like, I'd do anything for you like I have to survive for you. Like I'm going to get us through this because I see a future with you and it was like, you two barely know each other.

[00:06:20]Actually, you like quadruple barely know each other cuz they are hiding so many secrets from each other which I guess is an interesting like tension building thing, but anytime they had like a conflict because of the secrets that one of them is hiding from the other person, it would just be resolved like three scenes later because they they like had sex with each other in a cabin while there's like zombies knocking on the door and their friends are all dying. It was just like, oh my god, come on like we can't even really do like a slow burnish kind of one book slow burn in this. Like, come on. Like, we're it's still a romance book at the end of the day. It was still like fun in a way. It just is like that's not going to make my best books of the year at all. Number three is a book I have not talked about yet. I will probably reiterate this in my next wrap up cuz I'll include it, but I read Morsel which I put on my most anticipated books of the year list. I'm trying to like slowly make my way through those. There are like a couple where I've seen reviews where I'm like, maybe not. But Morsel generally had pretty good reviews, I think. If you know my channel, I do love like folk horror. I especially love like Americana folk horror. So when I saw this was an Appalachian folk horror about a woman who works for this sort of hoity-toity cool company and she's a little bit in love with her boss and her boss sends her out on like this special assignment to go kind of scope out these houses in rural Appalachia and then her tires get slashed and she starts seeing figures out in the tall trees. Oh, you know I was down for that. I was so excited about that. Debatably, this was actually my most anticipated read of the year.

[00:07:42]So, I'm really, really disappointed about this one. Kind of like three pages in due to the writing style, I was like, "No, it's one of these ones." This is like the type of writing style that I personally, on a personal level, don't really like. It's kind of got that quirky millennial like humor in it.

[00:07:57]Like, in a sort of T. Kingfisher way.

[00:07:59]Like, I understand why this is compared to T. Kingfisher's book, especially since T. Kingfisher does write a lot of Appalachian folk horror books that I really do enjoy and has a very specific sense of humor that is really fun. But, I just think T. Kingfisher is actually funny. This just sort of felt a little bit too quirked up millennial for me and sort of ended up pulling me out of a lot of the horror moments and made it hard for me to sympathize with the main character in some cases. This book also has a lot of commentary kind of about work culture and hustle culture and and and especially coming from an underprivileged background and then being thrust into a situation where you are with all of these people who never really had to contend with living paycheck to paycheck and how if there was like a an emergency, how that would just put you out for the rest of your life. And our main character has to kind of ingratiate herself with these people, but they kind of see through her in a way and it's I understand what this book was trying to do. And the reason I understand it is cuz it was so overt, again, hitting your you over the head, pre-chewed messaging. And it's a novella. Like, I really feel like we could have allowed some moments to really just sit or be a little bit more ambiguous. And I've said before, but I think that what works best with an Appalachian folk horror or like there's a creature in the woods kind of thing is when you allow your audience to build up the fear in their own imagination. Like, just through mere eeriness. It's like you're not showing anything to them necessarily. They their brains are like piecing together in these like primal fear ways all of the worst case scenarios. And I think that's what builds tension in a folk horror book.

[00:09:33]And this book kind of just didn't sit in any moment necessarily. And it was just a lot again a lot of inner inner monologuing from our main character about her life circumstances that are honestly really upsetting, but also it just felt like, "Okay, do you just want to kind of like spout a bunch of like Tumblr posts at me, or are we telling like a folk Appalachian folk horror story that has like subtext about work culture in America and Appalachian poverty and things like that?" Like are we like it just felt like there was this very plot-driven, not very scary horror stuff going on, and then it was like interrupted by these super on-the-nose messages about all of that, and it just like did not mix well. The ending was a little bit ridiculous to me, and it it just I don't know. I just I was so disappointed cuz I was looking forward to it so much. But obviously, I think this author has a lot of great ideas, and I could see them developing into someone whose stories I would really want to pick up. So it was just this one was a miss for me. I'm sorry, but I'm going to talk about my DNF. I know some people are like, "Why would you talk about a DNF or review a DNF? Like you DNF'd it." Obviously, it could have been that this book finished in a brilliant way, and I just missed it, and I would have changed my opinion. But the bit that I read annoyed me enough where I just don't think that I would have, okay? Of course, I'm talking about Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan. And again, I did talk about this in my recent wrap-up. I think this was one of my top five most anticipated releases of the year. This was marketed as a grim dark historical fantasy retelling of the Beast of Gévaudan from France, which I love grim dark historical retellings of folklore. And I go out for werewolves like you wouldn't believe. If you put a werewolf story in my lap, I will read that. I was excited out of my mind for this release. But then as I'm reading it, and it was like the more I read it, the more it felt like I was just sinking into quicksand, and I was like, "Oh, this is a slog. Like I don't want to continue reading this." Because the premise of it as like a grim dark historical horror is a little bit of a miss market. This book is again actually quite like a humorous book. It has this tongue-in-cheek kind of sarcastic sense of humor. And I mentioned my wrap-up, but there are these like breakaways as if the narrator is speaking in present day about the events of this book in the past. So, the present day narrator telling the story of this past timeline would sometimes make jokes about like the internet and cell phones and it just really took me out of what I thought this book was going to be. So, I do take some blame in the way of like I think there was a little bit of an expectations mismatch on my part, but that doesn't really change the fact that I didn't actually really like the book that I got regardless anyway. We have our main character who is a man who has clearly lived like a supernatural amount of time because he has a demon inside of his head that eats human souls essentially and it gives him like magical hm like abilities in some way.

[00:12:16]So, he has lived a very very very long time and he is very acquainted with like a small little group of demons that he knows and has a very special relationship with the demon in their head. I do love stories when someone has an entity in their head that they build a dynamic with. 30 years ago there was a hunt for this werewolf that was rampaging through French villages and our main character was called to kind of lead this search essentially. They do not end up finding the beast ultimately, but he did end up developing a very deep amorous relationship with that man who employed him to do this. It was sort of this torrid secret love affair. Now, in the present day the beast is back. So, our main character is called once again and is having to kind of relive these feelings for this other man. So, on the surface like that seems very interesting. It is a little second chance romance each rope in a in a way and I just don't know how I feel about that, but I think the way the reason it didn't really work for me is the main character just sort of pondering his feelings for that other character were kind of at the forefront of this book and the werewolf I felt a little bit took a backseat and in those circumstances I think it could make a really interesting love story, but a lot of the emotional work with that couple happened a little quickly in the past timelines. It so never really felt like I as the reader who is inside the main character's head understood fully why he was so in love with this man. Like the this character that he was in love with was I think a little bit of a nothing burger. Like we didn't really get to know his personality very much. So I just didn't totally feel that romantic connection. And so since so many pages were spent on this relationship, I was just like can we just get back to the werewolf plot? Or can we at least make that romance flashier for me to really care, but I just couldn't. The other part and I mentioned this in my wrap-up was that I kind of felt like this book was a little weird about women and girls. And I read and liked other books that were weird about women and girls. I think if there is a problematic element in a book, I don't necessarily always like completely cancel it out right altogether depending on what the content is. But this just grated on me enough where I was like I got to stage where I was like okay, that's enough. I can't do this anymore. One of the other main characters in this book is this succubus or I think she might actually be an incubus. This incubus demon character.

[00:14:30]Um so you know, as an incubus she uses her allure to kind of seduce men and then eat their souls when they are like falling asleep. Obviously, it's objectively bad to seduce people against their will. But it is important to note that that incubus character was literally enslaved to the main character. And I kind of felt like at least at the point that I read in this book that weird dynamic between this grown man and this you know, woman presenting demon was never really fully I don't know like rectified or explained in a way that made me comfortable.

[00:15:03]Especially because he spends the entire book and this is a main character. This incubus character is like a main character. Like we get her point of view. So you do end up empathizing with her to some extent. But the main male character is just hurling insults at her, but like they're like gendered slurs. Like all of the gendered slurs you can imagine. He that's how he would speak to her on a regular basis and it was just so disturbing to me especially because this enslaved demon woman was actually doing a lot of like plot propelling work on his behalf. And I personally did find the breakaways where we we were in her point of view to be the most compelling honestly. So, the way that he was talking about her didn't sit right with me especially cuz there was a double standard. The demon that I talked about that's inside the main male character's head is also like eating souls and doing demonic stuff and the character like adores this one inside of his head. But for some reason he has smoke for the incubus character who is functionally doing the same thing but just through different means. They're both demons, they're both doing bad things, but I did not appreciate the double standard and the very real gendered slurs that were being thrown at her. So, overall I don't know. I see why people really love this one. I have mutuals whose taste I love and I will continue to take the recommendations who love this book, but the plot didn't work for me, the tone didn't work for me, the romance was I just felt disconnected from it and I didn't really like the women stuff. Like that was really weird I thought. So, yeah, Red Winter by Karen Sullivan. I have a little bit of an in between one where I'm like there are some elements of this book that disappointed me so greatly but then there are other elements that were successful and so I kind of just want to put it in between here and that is Immortal Dark. Again, a lot of my mutuals love this one and I really see why because I thought it was like such a blast of a sort of like campy vampire academy type fantasy book. I'll give you the reasons why I thought it was successful. I thought this was wildly entertaining. Like I just think that this sort of YA style of writing is just like eating popcorn. Like once you start you just can't stop. It's like that sort of entertainment value I think. I just I really adore that. And this also takes place at this vampire academy for these old like ancient families that come from this very prestigious line of Ethiopian black vampires which is so cool and I loved all of the cultural elements around that. I'm typically sort of anti-dark academia cuz I think it's just like a Pinterest board and not actually like a book genre, but I do feel like this book captured that Pinterest board pretty well, so I liked all of that, too. I loved the romantic subplot in this. I said I was going to read it because I really love enemies to lovers, and I really want the beef to be serious between the enemies to lovers characters. Like I I want there to be a good reason why they have a disdain for each other. I want to see in action how they are put off by each other. I want a slow build between like trust and empathy and then like care and I just want everything like that, and I do feel like this was very thoughtful in that way. One thing that enemies to lovers does often that really annoys me is it gives too much information to the reader about typically the main male character in a heterosexual enemies to lovers in this case. They give too much information to the reader about what the main male love interest, who's supposed to be like moody and mysterious or like kind of crass or kind of brash or whatever, about how he is misunderstood and about how his intentions are being kind of twisted. And I think if we are in a main female character's point of view, if I know so much more than the main female character does about what his actual intentions are, then for most of the book when she's pissed off at the love interest and she's just like, "Oh my gosh, he he's he's so evil." Like all this stuff, I just end up feeling like, "Okay, well, I know actually what his intentions are." And so you just kind of look like a little insolent and a little bit pathetic and complainer, and I'm kind of waiting for you to catch up. And that's a little bit frustrating as a reader, I think. This book doesn't do that. I forgot to kind of set up like the scene for you. So our main character is looking for her sister, and the way that she's going to find her is by entering into this uh like secret vampire college that her family is a part of. Like they're one of the noble families, and each family kind of has vampires that are like parts of the houses as well. Like they aren't servants or anything, but they kind of imbue the houses with power. Her family is mostly now dead, so it's kind of like just her and her sister who is missing, and they have one vampire, and his name is Susenyos, and he's this sort of like alluring, very hot, attractive, but like definitely up to something vampire, and she is convinced that he is the one who took her sister. Does that make sense?

[00:19:31]I'm literally not making I'm not my best work explanation-wise today, and I'm aware of that, okay? So she thinks that this man is the antagonist of her life currently, and they live in a house together. It's like close proximity, and he has his own motivation for not actually telling her the truth of what happened. So as the reader for most of the book, when you're in Kidane's head, you're like, he is up to something. Like you believe that this man is capable of doing something really, really, really bad. And so it kind of makes the beef in the like, oh, but how are they going to get past this, you know, moral conundrum that they're in with each other feel as the reader like, oh, it's like legitimate, you know what I mean? And a lot of enemies-to-lovers don't do that, and this one did. So I actually think this book is very successful on an enemies-to-lovers level. The reason it was simultaneously a book that disappointed me was sort of like the lore of this world. Once again, it's based off of this really fascinating concept of Ethiopian folklore. I can tell that this author had like a lot of really cool ideas for how vampires function in this world, in this society, and how that connects to this little academic setting. There was so many rules and so much lore. I just kind of felt like the way that that lore was introduced was I've said before, but very like bloated feeling because it kind of just felt like every new chapter there was a new law that was introduced that was sort of just laid on top of the other laws of the vampires. And instead of it all kind of feeling like it all coincides, and like this law, it kind of sets a culture up for this law, and like that culture kind of weaves itself together and feels lived in, it just feels stacked on top of each other. And then it ends up feeling very, very very and I just feel like if we took out maybe like three of the vampire lore elements that were introduced in this book and focused much more deeply on on a just a handful of them and how that was influencing culture and language and interactions in this academic setting and and sort of the view that these students have of each other. If we just like went down further with only a few laws instead of having like 20 different laws at every given moment that are just sort of appearing out of nowhere, it would have felt like a much more lived-in world, And our main character at the beginning of the book finds this little journal from one of her aunts that sort of just outlines all of the rules of this world. So, anytime there is a new rule introduced in the book, it's like we are immediately just like given sort of like a wall of text about what all that means and what the implications are and how that works for it. And some of the rules kind of didn't really make sense for me and felt like they just existed in the context of the book to get Susi and Yos and Kidon into these kind of racy, sultry, sexy situations. thing like I warn people about with this book cuz I have recommended it to people cuz I feel like this is a very recommendable book, especially for enemies to lovers, dark academia, vampires. I think it hits a lot of criteria for people, so I recommend it a lot, but I do always warn that this book is marketed as YA, but it really feels like NA, like new adult. It takes place like on a collegiate level and I kind of feel like it would be better suited in the adult section just because of how sexual this book does get at times. It is half faded black, but half is really teetering. I think that is a little bit uncomfortable when I would like remember like, "Wait, this is Why is this in the YA section?" But it was jarring because then the actual writing style itself did feel very YA, like a little bit more toned down, a little bit more simplistic and straightforward. So, I just sort of felt like tonally it was sort of jarring sometimes. So, so that's my half half, Immortal Dark. I I this video to also have my favorites of the year so far, but it's gone on way too long, so we're not going to do that. Please let me know what your disappointments were for the year. I'm messy, I would love to hear.

[00:23:09]And have a great rest of your day. Bye.