Hey guys, it's Olivia here from Olivia's
Catastrophe and today I'm here to give
you my December wrap-up. So I've been
traveling for a full month and a half
which meant that my reading definitely
took a toll. However, I finished eight
books and quite a lot of them were
either books I was very anticipating or are
very hyped. And there's one lesser known
book. So two five stars,
a lot of disappointments - let's get into
it! The first but I have to talk about is
A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid
Kemmerer. However, this is the ARC copy
and it's got this like weird gate thing
going on so don't mind me closing the
gate. But you know what book I'm talking
about. So A Heart So Fierce and Broken is the
sequel to A Curse so Dark and Lonely. And
it was one of my most anticipated reads
for January 2020, so it's coming out this
month. And it was a new favourite for me. I
gave it five stars just like I gave the
first book. So instead of spoiling you
for the series I'll tell you what the
first book is about. And it is on my
best books of 2019 list so I'm sorry if
you're hearing this for the second time.
But the first book follows Harper who is
a really kind, strong-willed girl. And she
has cerebral palsy which affects one of
her legs. And yes, that disability rep is
kind of a theme in the book and it is
discussed and mentioned and talked about.
And she is dragged into this fantasy
world by a guardsman called Grey who
hops over into our reality as we know it
every month? Term? Season?? To steal a girl
back into this fantasy world because
he's hoping one of them will break the
curse. And the curse is that the prince
in his realm turns into a monster every
single season. It sounds like a
stereotypical Beauty and the Beast
retelling with disability rep -- which it
is. But at the same time it's definitely so
so so much more. In this fantasy world
one of the things that I really love is
that we get to see how royals
consequences truly do affect the
people. And in this book in particular it
goes in a bit of a different direction
than the first one because instead of
focusing on the same characters, it
switches to some new ones. One of them
was a perspective I was very very much
looking forward to. It was Grey's
perspective, as Grey  was my favourite
character and my book crush from the
first book. I was very very pleased to be
following him. But he is there along with
some new characters who stole my heart
and made me want to love them forever
and protect them forever. And the main
theme that I found in this book that
really struck me was about how in war
there are no good guys, and in war there is
no winning. And this one you really get
to see that from different perspectives
good people can look bad and bad people
can look good and all in all we just all
look so bad because we're doing
treacherous things to other people. There
are consequences for our actions and
choices in war and it's just painful all
round. I don't want to say much more because I
know a lot of people are anticipating
this one but if you haven't tried the
series you definitely should. This sequel,
I will say, is not focused on disability
rep because we're not as focused on
Harper as we were before. But we do have
a gay side couple who are kind of
mentioned a lot in this book. But other than
that it's not quite the rep from the
first book. Then I read Infinity Son by
Adam Silvera
and that was also my other most
anticipated read for January 2020. However, it was a flop. In Infinity Son we
follow Celestials and specters.
Celestials are people who have
natural-born powers and specters are
people who drink the blood of creatures
and humans so that they can take on these
powers. And that is frowned upon and pretty
bad. There's a big war going on between
the Celestials and specters. And Emi,l
who is a brother who doesn't want to
have any powers, ends up with powers.
Whereas his twin, Brighton, who really
wants powers doesn't get and. You kind of
get dragged into the war and it just
follows them. Yeah, this was a mess. I feel
like fantasy is just not Adam Silvera's
forte. The biggest problem with this was
that everything was poorly executed. The
characters were poorly done. They felt
very 2D and they had very stereotypical
goals. The plot was a bit predictable and
even plot points and like, plot twists,
kept repeating. So it felt repetitive. And
then the one at the end was very
predictable and a bit ridiculous. I felt like
the romance itself was ridiculous. And kind of not developed enough.
And yeah, all of these characters just
filled out stereotypes. It wasn't written
very well. The world-building was poor. There was just nothing I really liked
about this book. Oh, there was one thing! There was a moment where male body image
was discussed and self-consciousness. And I liked that it was about Emil who
is a male character because we don't
have enough attention on
self-consciousness that male people feel
about their bodies. You also have a lot
of LGBT+ characters. The romance in this
one is gay. It's Adam Silvera.
But yeah, not his best. So I just wanna
briefly mention that I reread Twilight.
I usually Twilight every year and I
saved it till December. It was just as
fun as always. I can't believe that I
always find something new about this
series that I didn't notice the first
time around. But yeah, it was hilarious!
Edward's mood swings give me whiplash. Still love Bella, still love Jasper, still
love Carlisle and the gang. It's just iconic. So iconic. I have a
defense for Twilight video. It's pretty
old now but I'll link it up there anyway,
and down below. Moving on I read Crown of
Midnight by Sarah J Maas. And this is me
just continuing the series for the first
time. So the first book follows Celaena,
who is an assassin and she gets
dragged into this quest... this competition
which is hosted by the king. And they
hire all of these like, criminals. And
they're gonna fight it out to become the
Kings assassin and if she does become
the Kings assassin for two years she could
win her freedom. That's the premise of
the first book. However, I have been told
that the books kind of generally veer
off course from that very quickly and
this book proved that. It does veer
off course from that pretty quickly. I
like this one more than the first one.
Maybe it's because of how much Chaol
is featured in this and I am Team Chaol. I
actually really liked Chaol's storyline
the most because he made some mistakes,
he has to make some very important
choices, and he kind of messes up and is
trying to think about things... and rethink who
he is loyal to, And I love a loyal
character. And he's got loyalties to
quite a few people and they kind of
contradict each other. A lot of politics
is coming to this I like politics in my
fantasy. However, I still feel like the
writing could be better and I still feel
like the fantasy elements are just not
explained
enough at all. And the world-building is
just... it's not enough for how much
they're messing with the fantasy
elements. Then we're going to talk about
a trilogy and I read the entire Lord of
the Rings trilogy last month. I actually
listened to these on audiobook. So first
up we have the Fellowship of the Ring.
Then you have The Two Towers and lastly
you have the Return of the King. In this
one it's about Frodo and Frodo is given
this ring which has this great power. But
the power is so strong that he needs to
destroy this ring. However, there were
also these leaders who crave this ring
and crave that power. So they're kind of
trying to dodge the bad guys and
complete their quest. And this Fellowship
is formed to protect Frodo along this
quest. I didn't like the Fellowship of the
Ring. I thought it was very boring and
that's literally my number one word for
that book: boring. It was slow-paced. It
was travel-y. They just face obstacles
and then had to overcome them. And I felt
like those obstacles weren't even that
great. Then we moved on to The Two Towers
and I liked this one
marginally more than the first one. The
first part was much the same as the
first one where it was quite boring. But
in the second part a character who was my
favourite character in The Hobbit makes
the appearance. Which is Gollum. And also
I started to feel affinity towards Samwise because I like a loyal character.
And he was just being so supportive and
encouraging and cute that like, how can
you not like Samwise? And then by
the Return of the King I was actually
enjoying this series because the first
part was full of action was exciting. And
then we also had Sam just being the--basically the unsung hero of the
series, and really cute. And Gollum being
his usual creepy self. and then it kind
of fell apart a little bit. It
resolved a bit too easily. And then the
last part of the book just drags and is
too much epilogue... and it gets a bit
boring. But at the same time I was
feeling bittersweet because it was the
end of the series. And between reading
the second book and the third book i
watched the first movie and all of the
Hobbit movies. And as I like the films I
have to admit it might have influenced
my opinion of the third book a little.
But well, last but not least I have to
tell you about The Space We're In by
Katja Balen. And this is another new
favourite for me. I rated it
5 stars and oh my goodness guys, you need
to read this one!
So this one follows Frank and Max. Frank
is a ten year old boy and he is an older
brother to Max, a five year old boy
with autism. Now, Max's autism is quite
severe. It manifests in not being able to
hear very loud noises, some colours are
painful to him. He can only eat certain
foods and therefore he needs a lot of
extra love, care and attention. his dad
works and his mum is quite strung out
trying to care for both of these boys at
home. She doesn't have time to do her own
art anymore which was her major hobby
and Frank is kind of struggling with all
of his emotions because he loves his
younger brother Max. Of course he does!
But at the same time he is also a child
who needs love, care and attention too. So
they've got that struggle going on. And
then tragedy strikes for family and it's
about them all trying to cope with it. There are so many things I loved about
this book and I'm going to just list
them quickly here for you. The first one
is that it shows that parents aren't
perfect - which is very important in
middle grade. Yhe second one is that I
feel like it handles the themes of being
an older sibling to someone who needs
some extra care and support very very
well in a way that children can
understand, but also adults can learn
from. Thirdly, it does get very dark. It
deals with grief and sadness and pain
and so many emotions that I had tears in
my eyes while I was reading this book.
But it handles it all very well and it's
beautifully written and balanced. It's
also got some very lovely illustrations
in here done by Laura Carlin. And then
lastly, the friendship group in this one. Like, the two friends are side characters
but the way that they support Frank and
the way that they respect Frank's lifestyle
and family was just!! Even the adult
friends in this one!! Like. all the
friendships just warmed my heart so much. This book is heartwarming. This book is
heart destroying. And it was really really
powerful. I don't think I'm communicating
how important it is that you read this
book, but please do. And there you guys
have it! I had quite a fantasy filled
month with a lot of ups and downs, but
that is it for my 2019 reading year. 
I did manage to finish off the year with
180 books. Very happy and very excited to
see what I'm going to be reading in 2020!
Please let me know in the comment
section down below what was your
favourite read in the month of December? Or what was your worst read in the month
of December? Give this video a thumbs up
if you enjoyed it, hit the subscribe button if
you want to see more and don't forget to
hit that bell to be updated every time I
have a new video. And I'll see in the
next one.
Goodbye!
 
