You know how I occasionally have pretty stupid ideas? Well today is one of those days, because
today I want to take you back to 2014 when Kylie and Kendall Jenner decided to release a fictional
dystopian book and I think we as a society just kind of collectively agreed to just ignore it. Like,
if we don't think about it, it's not happening. And I don't know a single person who has read
this book... so i'm going to. In fact I might be the only person to ever read this book because it was
really hard to find a copy of. So, anyway, after a lot of searching I've got the goods... or the bads...
We'll find out. Kylie and Kendall did have a ghostwriter whose name is Mary Sloan.
However, the funniest thing to me is that Kylie and Kendall did a press tour to promote this book and
quite clearly hadn't read a page of it -- like, honestly, go girls give us nothing. So,
in fact, just by making this video I would have read more of this book than Kylie and Kendall
have themselves... just take a minute to let that sink in. So the blurb basically describes how it's,
like, a dystopian society and it's a story about two girls called Lex and Livia. One is incredibly
privileged and lives in the clouds and the other one lives below the earth's surface.
"Brought together by danger, they meet and they realise that they both have an identical
unexplained mark" -- so I'm calling it now: they're sisters. I would put money on that being the plot
twist of this book --
I think Stevie Wonder could see that coming and he's blind.
So i'm kind of getting the vibe that it's intended to be a kind of millennial 1984 -- Kylie and Kendall, if you're watching, that's a book. But i'm thinking this one could be more 1980-poor, if you see what
I did there. Anyways, we will see. Welcome to the video, subscribe if you're new, and let's
go! [Intro] On tonight's program ladies and gentlemen we have something that's going to make you sick...
Aalso today's video is very kindly in partnership with my besties -- the Lex to my Livia, the Kendall to
my Kylie -- it is, of course, Skillshare! Yes I did make a presentation. If you are a creative or curious
person then Skillshare has been designed for you -- specifically you! There are -- wait for it -- hundreds of
fascinating classes, for example "writing fiction: five exercises to craft a compelling plot" and, you
know, maybe -- uh -- Kylie and Kendall could, uh, benefit from taking this one. And you know what's even
better? The first -- are you guys done? -- the first 1000 of you to click the link down below will get a
free trial of Skillshare premium membership! I hope that worked. And after that it's just 10 dollars a month so
why not get started today and learn a new skill or cultivate one that you already have? Thank you
Skillshare! Okay so I'm about 14 pages in and I'm already mad. It's an incredibly irrational thing to
be mad about, but I'm still mad. Basically this book is set in the fictional city of Indra -- however, when
things are referred to as being "from Indra" or "of Indra" they're referred to as "Indrithian"... "Indrithian"?
Where does the "-ithian" bit come from? Like, from Cuba = Cuban, from Slovakia = Slovak, from Venezuela
= Venezuelan, from Sri Lanka = Sri Lankan. Why would it be Indrithian? Anyway, that is so irrelevant
but it's not a strong start. Also, before I started ranting, the actual reason I turned the camera on
was to tell you that I looked on Goodreads, right. And Goodreads is basically like a book
social media, and the top comment about this book is "I only want to read this so that i can have the
satisfaction of saying that Kim's sex tape had a better plot and a more powerful climax". So, um,
I'm just gonna-- i'm just gonna leave you with that. So, I've reached the 50 page mark
and nothing has happened yet! The setting is a far-future society where the world is burning
and so people have created this kind of dome in the earth's crust. There's a hierarchical society
where the privileged people live up in the clouds on these kind of little islands and then based
on class you desend lower and lower and lower until you get to "rock bottom" -- which, I have to say,
I do think that's actually quite clever, because like they live in the rocks and it's the bottom
tier so, like, rock bottom -- that's quite- that's quite good. Credit where credit's due, that's quite good.
But then again maybe that says more about how low my expectations were for this book. In the book we
have two parallel narratives going on, so we have Lex who is an orphan and she lives one layer
above rock bottom. Then, on the other hand, we have Livia who is very, very privileged. She lives on a
little island in the clouds and all we really know about Livia is that she's a horse girl.
Like that's- that's her one character trait, is that she just loves horses. Oh and the fact that
her parents are dead -- conveniently the same as Lex's! The book is written in really short
snappy sentences which basically just makes every page feel like it takes ages to read. Aside from
that there hasn't really been much of a plot so far. It's mostly world-building at this point. If I
had a dollar for every irrelevant detail this book has given so far, I would be on the Forbes list
next to Kylie. There's just so many random terms being introduced all the time, like I'm really
having to focus to take it all in. Okay, I've made it to page 100 and nothing has happened still! I
mean the two girls are definitely sisters. They're living these, like, parallel lives. So Lex, who is the
poor girl, is at army academy and the popular girls are being mean to her. And then Livia is
at etiquette training and the popular girl is being mean to her. I mean the author -- who isn't
Kylie or Kendall -- really just said "copy and paste". Like, there's such little difference between their
two narratives that you basically just read the same thing twice in excruciating detail. Like, what
is the point of this? I've seen more points on a circle! So Livia's privileged life at the etiquette
school is basically Bridgerton but just in 3005. They have to wear corsets and their waists are
cinched from the age of like six, so it's basically Kardashian boot camp. I'm honestly waiting for the
evil mastermind behind all this to just be Kris Jenner. But the most bizarre detail of all is, like,
part of their training program is that they have to stand on a platform 60 feet up in the air. They
get spun around for a whole hour and they stand on it and pose, and apparently that makes them sexy to
men? Like, yes, nothing makes me want to wife someone up more than seeing them do a Total Wipeout course!
I'm getting hot under the collar just thinking about it. "I'm spinning around" is a Kylie lyric
but it's Kylie Minogue... not Jenner. I don't know if the ghostwriter just got confused about, um,
who she was working for for a minute there. Also, in this world, surgery is like a huge thing, so they go
to a place called Rejuvenation Island where you can go and have alterations made to your body. So,
you know, it's nice that they included a bit that Khloe Kardashian would enjoy. She would have a
season ticket. Like that place literally does exist and it's called LA! Another kind of random detail
is that they have a thing called the Archive and the Archive exists basically so that people can
watch back their memories by inserting a cartridge into their wrist, kind of like a human Nintendo DS...
except not anywhere near as fun as Nintendogs or Cooking Mama. I kind of feel like they needed
to just pick one of those details and run with it, like is this a book about surgery
and body image? Is it a book about the Archives and memory control and governments having that
information of your data? Or is it a book about class and privilege? Like, I don't think the author
even knows. Kylie and Kendall definitely don't know! Instead they kind of just included all
of it into this massive clusterf*ck of a book and it makes no sense at all, and I do not want to read
anymore. Okay, so some time has passed. I went to my co-working space, which is just an office
that I use when I need to focus, because my brain just kept wandering from this, like, I did not want
to read it. Okay, POV: you're at your office, you're working hard. You look up. Someone has sat opposite
you -- it's me, I'm reading this book. What do you do? However, I have now finished the book, and this was
the least rewarding book I have ever read because the plot doesn't go anywhere. And I'm going to try
to explain it to you but bear with me because it's- it's so dumb. So Lex, who is the less privileged of
the two, is at army camp and she meets a boy called Kane who she kisses like one time. When they have
their final assessment they have to go down to Rock Bottom and basically they just go and attack
these random innocent people who are just minding their business just living in Rock Bottom. They're
just poor and ugly, like they haven't done anything wrong! So when they get down to Rock Bottom it
says they're all "dancing [...] horrible disfigured bodies writhing together" -- that just sounds like
a university night out! The people in Rock Bottom are just vibing.
I think it sounds really fun at Rock Bottom. I would like to go to Rock Bottom.
And it's just never explained why they're randomly killing these people... they're just poor and ugly! Kendall and Kylie just let some of us be poor
and ugly, okay? Anyway, um, all the army trainees go down to Rock Bottom and Lex and Kane do all the
work just like any group project, and they graduate with flying colours because they have successfully
killed the poor, dancing people. And how well each person does in this final assessment determines
where in the army ranks they end up, so it's kind of like UCAS. So much to unpack there, so little
sense is being made, but while all of that is going on Livia is at etiquette school and it's time for
her Emergence Ball, which is basically where she'll find her husband because apparently in the future
we just become a Jane Austen novel. So it's the day of the Ball, she's sent up on her 60-foot platform,
and she's spinning around... I imagine to the sound of Body by Megan Thee Stallion. And all the boys are
like "damn girl, what's your BBM pin" but she doesn't fancy any of them, because she's not like other
girls. Horse girl over here only has eyes for her horse, so she breaks free from the Ball. She runs
to the stable to be with her horse and there's a mystery man in the stable. That man is Kane -- Lex's
man! And this is where it just becomes an absolute sh*tshow, so just bear with me. After one line
of dialogue, Livia -- privileged horse girl -- kisses Kane. But this is exactly what Kane wanted because --
wait for it -- he has come to assassinate Livia! He is holding a lethal pill in his mouth which he
spits into her mouth when she kisses him and, to me, this seems like quite a time-sensitive way
of assassinating someone, because -- like -- you've got to be pretty confident in your game that after
one line of dialogue Livia would want to kiss him. Like, that is- that's next level confidence.
So, yeah, Kane got his position in the army and for some reason one of his jobs is to assassinate the
horse girl, but why would he want to kill this random girl who only has interest in horses?
We don't know! We- I've read the whole book! I've finished the book, and it's never explained again.
I mean he's not even a good assassin -- she spits it out! It doesn't even work. This man had one job. Kane
is tackled to the ground by the Ball security because he's literally tried to kill the girl
the Ball has been arranged for, and -- plot twist -- Lex in her army position has managed to watch the
whole thing unfold on a screen, and she basically decides that she is angry at Livia... the person who
was nearly killed. Like, that's her conclusion: it's Livia's fault. There's some serious victim
blaming going on here, like Lex? It's not Livia's fault that your man just tried to kiss and kill
her! Just have a hot girl summer and move on! She decides that she needs to go and save her assassin
boyfriend and in the process beat the sh*t out of Livia. So she goes to Livia's island, they have
a big fat fight. They don't know why, the reader doesn't really know why, and while they're kind
of in a brawl this is when they realise that they have identical marks on their irises, which has not
been mentioned at all up until this point, and we're on page 200! Bear in mind we already know
all of this from the blurb! They then decide their best next move would be to team up and go and save
the f*ckboy from jail even though he pumped and dumped Lex and then literally tried to kill Livia.
Is this the standard for men? Like, when people say "nice guys finish last" is this-- is this what they
mean? So, long, long, long, long, long, story short, they break Kane out of prison and then he just isn't
really mentioned for the rest of the story, like he's there -- he's there for the next 100 pages -- but
he just doesn't say anything, and for some reason no-one thinks to ask him why he tried to kill
Livia. Like, that's just not a priority right now. And the end of the book is even more of a hot mess
because they're basically on this huge massive mission but there's no end-goal and it's not clear
what they're actually trying to do, what they're trying to achieve, or who the good guys or the
bad guys even are. At least 20 random characters die and for what? So Lex can get d*ckholed by a man
who hasn't even spoken to her since she broke him out of prison? Girl, have some self-respect!
Also she says "I'll get Kane out of prison even if it kills us both"... why? Like, why? Honestly at
this stage forget Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it's Keeping Up with the Plot! Ultimately, they end
up using the Archive technology to watch back Livia's father's memories so that she can watch
the moment that she was born and, lo and behold, it's not just her who pops out! There's also
a baby Lex! They're sisters, they're twins! I called it -- I knew it! I literally called that before I even
picked up the book! And it's left very open-ended, like, the end of this book is what really should
have been the middle of the book. Just an absolute car-crash -- much like the rest of the book, though, so
at least it's consistent. And I think there is a sequel but I will not be reading it. I mean, even
the ghostwriter didn't sign on for book two -- like, even she gave up with the plot. But I did want to
share with you some particularly dumb moments from the final few pages. So, firstly, when they have to
jump through a pipe and a man tells a bunch of women "it'll be just like childbirth" as if
as if he would know. When Lex meets someone from Rock Bottom and she says that she's "never seen
anything so disgusting as a man with hair all over his face" and I was like
-- me and my beard are feeling called out here! That one stung, I'm not gonna lie, and then the final
thing that I thought was just awful: There's this super unnecessary comment about hairstyles and how
all the people in Rock Bottom have dreadlocks or braids which feeds into that ridiculous idea that
black hairstyles are less professional or less desirable than white ones, and that is bad but
that's particularly outrageous coming from the queens of cultural appropriation. So, I would say
this book belongs in Rock Bottom, if Rock Bottom didn't sound like such a vibe! But I never want to
look at it ever again. None of the characters were likeable or developed, none of their relationships
made any sense. Lex and Livia being sisters was just obvious. The writing style was fine,
it's just the plot made no sense. In fact there just wasn't really a plot -- it was just like they
had a list of things they wanted to include and the author just wrote it all in one sitting and
didn't edit it at all. And that was a strong contender for the worst book I've ever read.
I wanted to give them a chance but it was- it was awful. There we go, there's my conclusion. Thank you
so much for watching this video, I hope you have a wonderful day! You can subscribe if you're new and
give this video a thumbs up. Love you loads, don't read that book and, uh, i'll catch you next time!
[Outro] In case i don't see you good afternoon good evening and good night