come with me on holiday to italy ☀️ reading vlog

Hello friends! Welcome to my holiday vlog in Palermo in Sicily and Italy. Me and Tom went here for a week and we saw amazing places, ate amazing food and I also read quite a bit, so it's a reading vlog and taking you along with me on holiday, so I hope you enjoy it! Okay, so in terms of footage from the first day, this is all we have. This is where we stayed, they had a little book exchange thing there and this was our room. I never filmed a room tour, so this is just the video that Tom sent our family, but it was a really nice room, just saying we really enjoyed staying here. And then this was a park we discovered right by where we were staying and it had these crazy trees. I've never seen trees like it, they were massive and they had like branches that then also grew out the ground. They were just amazing. We often came into this park every day before we had dinner and just had a little walk around and look at the trees, but yeah, they were huge and they had all this hanging down stuff, but then they also were like roots, but they're also branches. It was just crazy. So yeah, we really enjoyed having a walk around this park for an evening and then after dinner we would often go to the marina, which was right by where we were staying as well. And I mean look at that sunset, it was so gorgeous. We loved walking along here as well, this was one of our favourite places to come of an evening. But yeah, it was just so beautiful, look at that sunset. I mean, it doesn't get much better than this. When we came here on this first night, we knew we were going to have a fun time. But yeah, let's just get into the actual start of me filming the holiday, which starts the next day. Hello friends, we're on holiday. So hello, this is my holiday vlog. We are on holiday in Palermo in Sicily and I thought I'd bring you along with me. So we arrived yesterday, but yesterday was more of just like an unpacking day and getting situated. So today's our first full day and we're going to the beach. I've got my swimming cosy on, but I thought I would quickly tell you, quickly, because I'm not, I'm not bringing my camera to the beach. We are going to film on phones, but I'm scared of getting my camera stolen. But I thought I would show you what books I brought with me, because this is also a reading vlog, because I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done this holiday. Okay, if you watched this month's TBR Cluedo, you know, I picked two books for me to read on holiday and I bought both of those. We've got No Filch and Other Lies by Crystal Maldonado. This is like a YA contemporary about this main protagonist who is kind of like a catfish on Instagram, or like lies about her identity. I fake and act like other people, so. So you do that a lot? I do that a lot and I'm good at it. Then we have got what I'm most excited for, Kari Soto's Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. So yeah, this is set in the 90s, we're following Kari Soto, who was a world-famous tennis player, the most prolific female tennis player ever, but then her record gets equaled as she decides to come out of retirement. Then I thought, oh you know what, I need to bring a third book, at least, because those won't take me long to get through. And I got my patrons to vote on a few different picks, and they picked A Picture of Murder, which is a Lady Hardcastle mystery. This is actually probably going to be my audiobook, I have the audiobook downloaded, so it'll be like when I'm getting ready and stuff that I'll listen to this. We're here for a week, so quite a lot of time to get reading done. This is my favourite cozy mystery series, we're following Lady Hardcastle and her maid Flo as they get up to solving murders, basically, in this small quaint English town. And then I thought, that might be what I read, that might be what I read, but I thought I'll bring a fourth book just in case. So I've bought Someone in Time, which is an anthology, which is all stories about like time travel and romance. Very strange. We've got stories by Seanan McGuire, Alex E. Harrow and Theodora Goss, who are three of my favourite authors. And there's other authors that I've always wanted to discover in here. So there are books. I'm actually already 100 pages into No Filters and Other Lies. I read this on the plane yesterday. I'm 100 pages into this. Basically, the way this has always been pitched is like a catfish on Instagram, I'm lying online for clout because she wants followers or something. Or she has this famous Instagram and then gets found out. But I'm 110 pages in and that has only just begun, like the catfishing has only just begun. And it's more that she took pictures of her friend and her friend is very, like, conventionally attractive. She loves the pictures so much, she wants to post them and then... I'm zoning this out. She wants to post them and then she posts one of them and it gets, well, she's drunk and it gets loads of likes and her account blows up and she thinks, oh, I could carry on doing this. It's kind of the point I'm up to. I'm enjoying it. I'm not enjoying it as much as Fat Chance Charlie Vega, which is this author's first book. I feel like I don't read a lot of YA contemporary anymore because it's always verging on cringey and that was kind of like my initial reaction to this. But actually, as I go on, there's a lot of interesting elements to this. Like, she doesn't, our main character doesn't live with her parents, even though they live a block away. They left her with her grandparents when she was a baby. You know, she is in kind of relationships, situationships that she's in because she wants to feel loved. The amount of validation that she gets from Instagram and places her self-worth on that is interesting. A lot of interesting discussions. Her friend is an ex-beauty YouTuber who quit because she started talking about how, like, I got so obsessed with the metrics and the views and I'm like... Wait, is this ******* clear about us? But yeah, I'm enjoying it more. I'm probably going to finish this today at the beach, so I'll give you more thoughts once I've read it all. But yeah, this is like the perfect holiday book because it's so easy to get through. Okay, so today we've got a lot planned. We've got a food tour this morning where we're going to go around some of the food markets and try different local food. Then we're going to do our first proper exploring of Palermo. Because we went to the beach yesterday, we haven't really got into the main bit. So we're going to go to some of the churches and stuff we want to go visit. And then this evening, we're going to go to the football stadium and go for a tour of the football stadium. So I'll take you along with me. I have not finished No Filter and Other Lies yet, but I think I'll finish it today. So hopefully I'll be able to tell you what I think of it tonight. My family knows about this. You know what is this? You don't know? This is something called cupuzza. Have you never heard about cupuzza? It's the local zucchini, guys. We call it long zucchini. I don't want to touch it because it's a rice ball. It's breaded. Inside the rice is yellow. Why? Okay, things didn't go to plan. We had the food tour and then we got really tired. So we came back, had a nap. And now this evening, we have come to the botanical gardens to have a look around. This is one of the things we're most excited to come see. So yeah, still no more being done because the tour was from like 11 till 3, the food tour. And we went back and had a nap. And now it's like 6ish and we are here. So we're gonna have a look around. Okay, we're in the bathroom because this has some of the best lighting, but I just realized it's going to be really echoey. So we'll see how this is. So morning, it's the next day. And I thought I'd let you know I finished No Filter and Other Lies just now. And I was a little disappointed. What happened? Is he all right? No, I'm not going to cry. Okay, what happened? Maybe I'll cry. I don't know. I'm going to give it three stars. I just found this erring more on the side of cringey YA. And that's so weird to me because I really felt like with Kristen Madonado's debut, I didn't feel like that. And I was like, wow, I found the gal. You know what I mean? I found the YA contemporary that I love. But there was just so many phrases in this that I was like, like, it would say like, he's my MF best friend, or like, where was the bit where they're at like a campfire? So she's at a campfire with a girl that she likes. She like meets the girl's best friend who's not like very trusting of her. And she goes, I'm surprised by how truly kind of welcoming this group is. I mean, aside from Vanessa, who is giving me some well deserved side eye. Respect. I prefer really not to, not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble. In big trouble. Firstly, why is the side eye well deserved? We haven't established that. And then respect. I didn't love it. I just didn't love it. I didn't feel attached to any of the kind of romantic relationships that were in this. I found, you know, the whole idea around the cat fishing. This is a minor spoiler. So like skip ahead to like 20 seconds if you don't want to hear. But like for a big proportion of the ending, because obviously, you know, going into this, the cat fishing is going to go wrong, right? She's going to be caught out of using this girl that she works with photos for this, her own, like this new Instagram where she pretends to be her. You know, it's going to go wrong. She basically decides like this point on not to like post any more photos. She knows she should delete it, but she just never deletes it. Like she could just like there's months where she's like, yeah, I'm going to delete it at some point. I'm going to delete it. Like girl, it's just so annoying. So yeah, I just didn't love this. I probably will give maybe Chris Amadeo stuff a go in the future, but maybe I'll end up listening to just the audio book rather than buying physical editions. I will say I love the friendships in this and particularly the relationships she has with her grandparents. Her grandparents are the ones who raised her and I loved that relationship and the discussions around, you know, the difficulties with her parents. I found that a really interesting perspective that I've never really read from before. Like the idea that her parents are literally just down the street, but they had left her with her grandparents and she was young and she's never really had a relationship with them. I really liked that part of the storyline. That was kind of it. So today we were supposed to go to a town nearby called Cefalu. We'd already bought the train tickets, but then we watched some more videos and we're like, we originally planned to go there to swim again, but because we'd be doing sightseeing, I didn't really want to wear my swimsuit underneath my clothes the whole day and there's nowhere to get changed. I'm not really a type of person to just strip on the beach. So we've decided to actually just go back to Mondello in a couple of days, the beach that we went to earlier because we loved it so much. So yeah, we're not going to Cefalu anymore. The train tickets were more expensive. It's not like buying train tickets and not using them in the UK, which is unthinkable. They weren't that expensive. So we're actually going to do some sightseeing today, which we haven't done. We haven't ticked off a lot of the major places that we want to go see. So we're going to go into the city centre again and go exploring. And then tonight I am going to start Karisoto is Back, which I'm so excited for. It has to be a five star. It has to be. It has to be a five star. I'm very excited. So let's go explore some places, churches, theatres, stuff like that. Okay, let's go. So this is the Teatro Massimo, which is the third largest theatre in Europe. And we just came along for a tour of it. We thought we'd just be getting a normal tour, but something we didn't know was actually that the orchestra was practicing in there when we went to the tour. So I'm going to be quiet and let you listen to what we encountered when we walked in. And then we went to visit the Palermo Cathedral as well, which was pretty special also. We're going to climb to the roof. We forgot that we've got to climb to the roof. Oh God. Where are the lifts? Good morning. You're once again very precariously balanced on the hair dryer. So I thought I'd update you and let you know that I am now about 90 pages into Karisoto is Back. Right, here's the thing. The book opens up with us meeting Kari and her dad, watching this new tennis player like in the 90s, who was about to beat Kari's record for the amount of, is it slams? I don't know, like wins of major tournaments. And Kari decides to come out of retirement with her dad as her coach to win another slam to prove she's the best, basically. But then it goes back to the next like 70 pages right at the start of the book into Kari's childhood and her winning all of the tournaments back in the day. I'm just not sure that worked best for the pacing of the book. It made me think of how in Malibu Rising, we learn all about the cast's childhood, but the chapters would alternate. And I feel like that works a lot better because the present day story kept moving, whereas it felt like we just spent 80 pages getting all like the background information as to why Karisoto is the way she is, why she's seen as the battle axe and cold, why she's so focused on just winning and having to be the best. It felt like, it was like, okay, you have to know this before we move on with the story, which I wasn't 100% into. Don't say that. Mona, don't ever say that. But I'm still enjoying it. Now we're in the present day and I'm enjoying it a lot more already, even though it's only been like 10 pages. I just felt like it was a weird pacing decision when she'd already done what she'd done with Malibu Rising and it worked so well. So I don't know. There's a lot of pressure on it because I'm worried it's going to be my first Taylor Jenkins read that's not a five star, but like that's for the end of the world. I don't know. And I think Karisoto is like, I knew this from reading Malibu Rising, if you read that you know she's a difficult character to be the main character because she's difficult to kind of like. She's purposely difficult to like. That's kind of the whole thing about her, you know, she barely got as many sponsorships as her counterparts, even though she was the most successful tennis player because she wasn't likeable. So it's an interesting main character for a Taylor Jenkins read to go for. And I think I would have enjoyed it more if we'd alternated at the start rather than having just going back in time. I don't know. Today, this morning, we're going to go to the catacombs and then we're going to go back in, because that's a bit out of the city, and then we're going to come back into the main city and we're going to go to some more churches and the Norman Palace, I think. So, yeah, very excited. I'm hoping it's going to be a bit less hot today. I haven't already told you guys, it's been so hot and humid. I think like 80% humidity or something. So it's been really hot. So I'm hoping it'll be a little bit, a little bit less. So I'm hoping it'll be a little bit less hot today, but let's go. Hi, apologies if this is a strange angle. There's not many good places in this flat that have good lighting and I don't have my tripod with me. So I have to like put you on things. Also ignore all the mess in the back. There's only a small wardrobe here with like one clothes drawer. So Tom's had to put all his clothes on there. Anyways, we went back to the beach today. I didn't film any of it because it was literally the same, we're in the same exact place as we were earlier in the week. But we had such a good time. I got a bit of a, I mean, I didn't think I, I didn't think that was possible for me. I mean, I know it's red at the moment, but I mean, the waves were so strong. So when we went last time, it was just still water. But today we had so much fun, like massive waves were coming. We have to like jump with the waves. It was so much fun. And I read the whole of Kari Soto sitting there on the beach. I had so much fun. So I was 90 ish pages in about that. And I read just all of that sitting on the beach and okay. Firstly, I just want to say this is the perfect book to read on the beach. I could not have wanted anything else to sit there and read on the beach. It was, it captivated me. It drew me in. It was just exactly what I needed. And you all want to hear the rating. I know you do. And I'm going to give it five stars. It just feels right. For the first half, I was like, oh, I don't know. Technically this is probably like a 4.5. If we're being truthful, I think it's my least favourite out of the kind of new era Taylor Jenkins reads that I've read. But I still really, I just had a great time reading it. So if you don't know, in this we're following Kari Soto. I think I've told, have I told you that already? She's a tennis player who comes back to try and reclaim her record for most slams. I think I told you that. You know, Kari is a very interesting character. When you read Malibu Rising, you don't really like her. I knew it was the point going into this, but you really, over the course of this book, get to understand her and understand her and her dad's relationship is a massive part of this. You know, I think Taylor Jenkins read is very good at having complex characters that have a lot of layers to them whilst also making it so readable. There was this quote in the, I have the Waterstones edition and it says like exclusive content. It's just like a four page letter from Taylor Jenkins. Nothing particularly, you know, out of the ordinary, but she says, uh, years ago when I first got the idea to try my hand at fiction, I told anyone who had listened that all I wanted to do, my highest goal was to entertain. Yes, I'd like to write something that matters. Yes, I have a lot to say, but I believe with my whole body that the stories that had had the greatest impact on my life did so not just because of what they taught me or how they changed me, but because they found me at a time in which I needed to forget my own troubles for a moment. And I just thought it was like, it's crazy that this work that obviously had spent, you know, probably like almost two years on or something ridiculous a year, months and months and months of her life, I read in one day, you know, practically like a late morning into afternoon and enjoyed it so much and just devoured it. Isn't that crazy? And it makes it seem so effortless. And for a book to seem effortless, it has to have months and months and months of work behind it in order for you to read it effortlessly in an afternoon. So I just loved it. I really did. It's my least favourite. I feel like it doesn't like, it doesn't feel as full a story perhaps as her other ones. But you know, this was written in the pandemic. And I feel like I've been having that feeling with a lot of authors where I've perhaps read older books from them. And then the books that are coming out now, which were written in the pandemic, they all feel a bit like we were all struggling. So I just feel like I can excuse it. But you know, the way this book looks at the way that women are meant to behave and be nice in society, I really enjoyed. I mean, my favourite part was probably Carrie and her dad's relationship. It has a lot of ******* tennis, by the way, like a lot of tennis. I find tennis incredibly boring. I know Wimbledon's like a big British thing, but I couldn't give less of a ****. Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave? But I loved reading about the tennis. Like, I mean, that's a skill. I feel like I've just got to give it five stars based on that. I never thought I'd enjoy reading about tennis. Because the sport I could see most is football or soccer. God, it's Clue or Cluedo all over again. You know, I watch football most every week, but that's like a team sport. And the idea of following a sport where it's all on that one person is their success. I feel like it makes the stakes higher and it makes the person more motivated because it's all on you. It's not anyone else. When you're out there, it's all on you. So I really enjoyed that aspect. I really liked the tennis. I think I often enjoy reading stuff that would have seemed mundane to me. I often think of the example of In Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, which is nonfiction essays. My favourite chapter is not the ones on like, I mean, I loved all of it. It's a five star, one of my favourite essay collections ever. But not the, not the ones on the subjects that I am interested in. But it's the one about how much she loves Scrabble. I have heard some criticism about Terjean has read writing another Hispanic main character when she's been criticised about elements of her portrayal in the past. So, you know, I would recommend going and reading Own Voices reviews for that. And yeah, it is my least favourite out of the four. I'm not going to lie to you. It is my least favourite. I feel like it's not quite as successful, but it kept me entertained and happy and engrossed for the time I was there. And it's probably a 4.5 if we're being picky, but I'm giving it a five. So it's currently Sunday evening. We fly back Tuesday morning. So I'm going to focus on really trying to finish A Picture of Murder. Tomorrow we have to pack. So I have the audiobook. So I'll I did start the audiobook on the plane here, but I didn't read much. I have no thoughts. I probably read like 20 pages of that. Yeah, we're going to focus on A Picture of Murder for the end. I probably will read half of it and then I'll finish it on the plane home. I do not think I'll be getting to someone in time, unfortunately, but I do hope to get to it soon because I don't read a lot of anthologies and it interests me. So anyways, I know this vlog hasn't been the best because the holiday has been kind of like go, go, go, go, go, go. I haven't had a lot of chances to sit down and chat about the books, but this one I actually wanted to talk about, whereas No Fortune Otherwise was kind of a big disappointment for me and I just didn't really have any thoughts other than it was a bit cringe. So anyways, let's hope we have good luck with this one, where I've given this series so far four, five, four stars. This is the fourth one. So let's hope for another five if the trend continues. Okay. Hi, I'm back home. So I think I last spoke to you on the Sunday night. Monday we went and filmed a few of the bookshops that I had in that bookshop tour video that I did and then we came back and packed and just like ate at the same place we've been eating a lot. Got the ice cream that I got every night. I don't know which, it was like I think the most recent ice cream that you saw, the one that's like vanilla-y, it was caramello. It was this caramel ice cream with this thick caramel sauce on top. I had that every night. I'm not gonna lie to you. No, I don't think you understand. I'm obsessed. Sometimes lunch and dinner. So yeah, and then early Tuesday morning we travelled home. So I did finish A Picture of Murder on the plane. I pretty much read the whole thing on the plane. I didn't really read anything on the Monday. I literally read the whole thing on the plane. And you know, this is like the fourth in the series, so you don't need to hear much about it from me. But for those of you who are interested in my thoughts in the series, this is my least favourite in the series so far, but not by much. I gave it a 3.5, which is still a good rating. I think it could have been hurt by the fact that this is set in late October, and it was very atmospheric. It's very Halloween-y. And I think I actually should have read it around then, because I think that could have helped. Whereas I was reading it in the sun, or in this hot-ass plane with all these people around me, and it just didn't really fit mentally with what I'd just been experiencing. But I just didn't find the mystery as compelling. So basically, this cast of actors come to stay with Lady Hardcastle and Flo, and they have like this show they show, like a moving picture that they show, called The Witch's Downfall, which there's protesters outside protesting against the moving picture. So you're like, is one of them going to be involved? And the actors start turning up dead in ways that echo their film. And I just felt like it was pretty obvious what was going on the whole time. I still loved the writing, I still loved Lady Hardcastle's and Flo's relationship. I still, yeah, I still enjoyed it, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as the other ones in the series. But I think it would have been a four had I read it in like, October, and it been more like, cosy, creepy. I just like, it wasn't the right vibe. Whereas these two were the right vibe, but obviously I didn't love No Filter and Otherwise. We're just gonna forget about it, okay? We're just gonna pretend it doesn't exist. We are going to pretend we didn't hear that. But Carrie Soto's Back was an absolute win for me. I loved it so much. I've been thinking about it a lot since I read it, and like, it's a five. We're giving it a five. I had a really good time. I almost cried reading it. Tell you the truth, it just gets me. Anyways, these are the three books that we read. Obviously Picture of Murder was just kind of like, a fun, quick audiobook to read on the plane home. But I'm happy with reading three books in a week, even though I was on holiday, and it was like, a busy holiday. It wasn't like, the cruise that I went on, where I read all murder mysteries on the cruise. I actually only read two books on that holiday, but it felt like a holiday that was easier to read on. Whereas this holiday felt like, apart from the days that we went to the beach, where I think I read a lot, there wasn't much time for reading. So I'm pretty happy that I read the three books. Let me know what you thought of any of these, if you've read them, which ones you're most excited to read. Thank you guys so much for watching this vlog. I hope you enjoyed it. I know that my check-ins were more sporadic than usual throughout books, but that's because, you know, we were hidden everywhere. It wasn't always easy to film a check-in when I got to a certain point in a book. So I hope you still enjoyed this vlog. I hope you enjoyed coming with me on holiday. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye!