LILY'S PROMISE BOOK REVIEW

Saturday

I have always been interested in World War 2 and the Holocaust, even more so since I visited Auschwitz in 2017 and saw some of the horrors that went on there for myself.

Ever since then I have watched a lot of documentaries and films about the Holocaust and have started reading a lot more about it too.

I am also an avid TikTok user, and when Lily Ebert and her great-grandson, Dov, came up on my 'For You' page, I couldn't stop watching their videos. If you have TikTok, I'd definitely recommend watching Lily Ebert's videos here.

In these videos, Lily talks about her experience as a survivor of Auschwitz (along with other camps) and answers a lot of questions that she gets.

Lily is a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor, she was sent to Auschwitz when she was 20 along with her family who were all from Hungary.

The book

In the book, Lily describes her experiences all the way from prior to being taken to Auschwitz, to her life after the war up until 2020.

As aforementioned, I have consumed a lot of narratives around Auschwitz and the Holocaust so I am very aware of some of the brutality and awful things that happened to people. But reading this from a real-life Holocaust survivor, I could feel the emotion that Lily was putting into the book, having experienced it herself.

Related: 5 reasons why books still matter

The book was structured in years, each chapter was a different year of Lily's life and she went into a lot of the details about the atrocities she experienced - which can't have been easy to do.

Due to the topics discussed in the book, sometimes reading it can be quite difficult and upsetting. But when I was feeling this, I had to remind myself that I was reading it from a place of privilege. It is so shocking to me, all the awful things that happened in the Holocaust, but none of that has happened to me and I, along with everyone, need to be educated about it.

In terms of the structure of the book, I really liked the way it was in chronological order over the different years of Lily's life and I liked that Dov (Lily's great-grandson) had written a few parts in it too. Most of the book is from Lily's perspective but Dov explains how they created TikTok and wrote the book. He also explains a bit about how he thought Lily was feeling writing the book.

Should you read this book?

Yes! I would recommend this book to anyone. I believe that we all need to know about the Holocaust and do as much learning about it as we possibly can. Reading Lily's promise, along with watching her TikTok videos is a great way to do this.

A lot of the documentaries out there are really helpful, and they have been constructed by historical experts, but oftentimes, they weren't actually there to experience it. Lily was there, she saw it, she felt it.

Related: My experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Have you read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If not, add it to your list ASAP.

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SIX THE MUSICAL REVIEW

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived!

Recently, I went with my mum and grandma to watch Six the musical at the Mayflower in Southampton. This was a Christmas present from my mum and we had a great time.

If you're not familiar with Six, it is a musical about Henry the 8th's six wives where they kind of take back the narrative as their own.

It started at 4pm, so we went for lunch in Red Dog Saloon, and did some shopping beforehand.

The musical

The musical itself was not as long as others I'd seen, and there was no interval which was quite good if you don't like to sit for too long.

Our seats were near the back of the stalls in row YY, but we still had a clear view of the stage.

One of my favourite things about the musical was the outfits! The costume department score a 10/10 on that one.

The singing and dancing of each of the queens was so impressive too, all 6 of them were amazing. Incidentally, the 6 queens were the only characters in the musical, the only other people that were on stage with them were the musicians.

Related: RuPaul's Drag Race UK Season 2 Tour review

The storyline went chronologically about each queen, they would all tell their story and have a solo. This way, they were all the leading lady and they were reclaiming the narrative. This is because when most people think of the 6 wives, they think of them because they were Henry the 8th's wives.

Now, after watching the musical, I feel like they are way more important figures in history than just being wives of a king. Especially a king that beheaded them, divorced them, and all sorts of other evil things.

Should you watch Six in a theatre near you?

Yes! I would definitely recommend booking Six in a theatre near you when you can. It was educational because now I know which queen was beheaded, divorced, etc - great pub quiz knowledge! It was also funny, and very VERY entertaining with great vocals and dancing.

There were lots of families there with young children, although there were a lot of innuendos, I feel like these would probably go over the children's heads making it funny for adults and suitable for children.

If anyone needs me, I will be listening to the soundtrack until further notice. Warning: the songs WILL get stuck in your head.

Related: 9 to 5 the musical at the Mayflower

What's the best musical you've seen?

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PRETTY LITTLE LIARS BOOK REVIEW

So as you may know from my recent Comfort TV Shows blog post, one of my favourite TV shows to watch over and over is Pretty Little Liars. This is pretty much because I started watching it as a teen and grew up watching it.

Related: My top 10 comfort TV shows

I have only recently started getting into reading, I had to read at uni so I didn't really want to read for fun in my free time too. So after watching all the PLL series over and over, I thought why not try reading the books?

At first, I was only going to read the first one just to see what it was like in comparison to the TV show, and here I am a whole series later.

Pretty Little Liars Book Series

Image from Rotten Tomatoes.

The PLL book series was written by Sara Shepard and there are a total of 16 books in the main series. Yes, I read them all pretty recently.

I don't want to give too many spoilers in case any of you would like to read them after this but what I will say is that it is so different from the series.

The first couple of books are a little similar to the first episodes in season 1 but after that, the stories get so different with all kinds of different characters that weren't in the series. For example, Caleb is such a huge character in the series but he's not even in the books at all.

The massive difference is what made me enjoy the books so much because there were so many twists and turns that I didn't expect so it was great to be able to experience those again because I can't with the series now really as I've watched it so many times.

Related: 5 reasons why books still matter

In terms of more differences, I feel like, in the book Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily are heightened versions of themselves. Like their personalities are way more dramatic in the book than what we see in the series.

As the books came out first, and then it was made into a TV show it felt like I had kind of done it back to front by watching the series first. But it was interesting to see the original bits in the book that I could tell the producers had based scenes off of.

It was also interesting to see how they changed storylines in the series. Throughout the books, each chapter is from the different perspectives of each liar. For example, one chapter will be based on Emily, and the next will be about Aria, etc. Therefore, the story kind of went a bit slower because everything was so in detail, but it's not like that with TV so they had to add so much more into the storylines.

Should you read the Pretty Little Liars books?

If you are like me and you loved the series, I would definitely recommend reading the books. I know they are primarily aimed at teens but it doesn't make it unenjoyable for young adults. And, the books are quite short so you can get through them quite quickly. I think I read the last one in 3 days because I wanted to see how it ended so badly.

Also, it is the same but different. It's still the Pretty Little Liars we know and love but so different and it's so interesting to see how their lives differ from the book to the series. Also the whole A storyline is quite different and A is a completely different person. I'm not going to tell you who it is though!

There are 16 books so it is quite a lot to get through but it's good as like a background series that you keep coming back to when you don't know what else to read. I think they took me about 6 months to read and I read some others along the way too.

Related: Books I read in 2021

Have you watched Pretty Little Liars or read the books?

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3 NIGHTS IN CORFU, GREECE

I am currently writing this through my tears from holiday blues. OK, I'm not really crying but I am NOT happy about being back from my holiday. If you follow my Instagram, you can probably tell because all I'm posting are holiday pictures, and I don't plan to stop any time soon.

I recently went to Corfu with five of my friends from uni and had the best time! Not only was it just an amazing time anyway, but my last summer holiday abroad was in 2019, and because of Covid I haven't been able to go on another one until now, which made it even more special and I feel like I appreciated it so much more. It really is a privilege to be able to travel and I can't wait to travel more whenever I can - it's my favourite thing to do.

Traveling to Corfu

We traveled to Corfu on a Thursday morning from Gatwick Airport and our flight was at 8:25am. In true Lauren Kenny style, we got to the airport 3 hours early but there have been so many staff shortages at the moment you never know how long it's going to take! And we wanted to sit down and have breakfast (and a beveragini). Luckily, there weren't any major queues, just a short delay to our flight which was fine.

The flight time on the way out was about 2 hours and 30 minutes, and on the way back it was around 3 hours and 5 minutes. I may be wrong but I feel like Corfu is the closest Greek Island to travel to from the UK? If not, one of the closest.

We landed in Corfu after 3pm I think because of the 2-hour time difference there, but our transfer to the airport was quite short so we still had some pool and sun time when we got there.

The hotel

The hotel we stayed in was called Aeolos Beach Resort, which I would really recommend. It is a 4-star, all-inclusive hotel with a main buffet restaurant, and 2 a la carte restaurants. From pretty much every part of the hotel, you can see the sea too, I could never get tired of the stunning views. The rooms were good, the staff were really nice and I couldn't fault anything.

It was about a 20-minute bus or taxi journey to Corfu Town too, so definitely worth visiting if you stay there.

Related: 10 European cities you need to visit

Day 1

So I have already told you about traveling there and getting some pool time on Day 1. After that, we all got ready in our rooms and went for dinner in the a la carte restaurant on the beach which we had booked prior to our stay.

The menu is quite small but had really great options. As there were 6 of us, they pretty much brought out all of the starters for us to share which included tomato and mozzarella, prawn risotto and octopus, maybe some bread too. Weirdly, the octopus was so nice even though I don't normally like it. I think it's because there were no tentacles on it and they are what makes me cringe.

For the mains you could choose between a range of dishes including lamb, beef, chicken, etc, it was mainly meat dishes. I had the beef which fell apart. Then for dessert, you could either choose cheesecake or fruit salad so I had the fruit.

After dinner, we went for some drinks at the main bar and they had some live music in the entertainment area. Because it was our first night with "free" all-inclusive drinks, we may have got a bit carried away, some of us more than others but no naming names ;).

Day 2

On day 2 we got up and had our first buffet breakfast which was really nice. I get a bit apprehensive about the buffet food at all-inclusive hotels, depending on where you go it can be hit and miss, but all the food we had was great.

After that, we had a chilled day by the pool, then got ready to go to Corfu town in the evening when it was a bit cooler.

Corfu town is really pretty and reminded me a lot of Italy with the architecture and the various gelato stalls dotted about. There is a harbour there too where we went at sunset and got some really stunning pictures.

We had our dinner in the town at a restaurant we kind of picked at random because we were getting a bit angry (mainly me) and it was close to where we were. Sadly I can't remember what the restaurant is called but it was on the square close to the harbour and next to a big red church.

This restaurant is everything you want when you eat in Greece. They gave us lots of starters to share again, which included 2 huge loaves of bread, tzatziki (my fave), saganaki, and greek salad. It was literally so much food I can't even tell you but it was so nice and I couldn't stop eating it.

For the main (which I really struggled to eat after all the starters) I had chicken souvlaki which was really simple but so nice! Some of the other girls had gyros and moussaka too.

For all that food and a couple of bottles of wine, we paid about 35 euros each which was so good for the amount we got and the excellent service.

Day 3

On day 3, AKA the best day, we went on our boat trip. The 6 of us booked a private yacht which was about £55 each and so worth it! It was a 4-hour trip, and they do have longer ones in Corfu for cheaper, but as we only had 4 days we didn't want to use a whole day up on the boat.

As part of the trip, you get 2 swim stops at various points around the island and they give you snorkels too, there were some fish but not loads. On our second swim stop, we did see an abandoned boat at the bottom of the sea which was pretty cool.

You also get a sandwich, crisps, and salad platter around lunchtime and as many drinks as you want. They had white wine, beer, water, and then soft drinks like coke.

It was literally like being in a film it was just so nice I can't even explain it to you!

Then we got back in the afternoon and went to lie by the pool again, and in the evening we went for our first dinner in the main buffet. Again, I found the buffet food so nice. I think it was a Chinese-themed night, so I had the crispy duck which was amazing, and pretty much had tzatziki with every meal.

After that, we sat down at the entertainment bit again and made the most of the all-inclusive drinks. One thing I will say about the drinks is that the wine wasn't very nice, but there were some good cocktails, especially the frozen ones.

Day 4

Day 4 was traveling home day which was very sad, but our flight wasn't until 22:45 so we pretty much had the whole day before we had to leave the hotel.

Check-out was at 11am so we all just put some money into paying for one of the rooms to be extended so we could use it and shower before leaving which was 60 euros (10 euros each).

I feel like this was the day I went full ham on the buffet making the most out of the all-inclusiveness before leaving. The dinner that night at the buffet was Italian themed which was also good.

We got picked up at 8 to go to the airport which didn't take long at all because we were quite close. Sitting by the pool, you could see the planes taking off and landing really low which I thought was pretty cool.

Our flight going home was delayed by about an hour again, the reason for both delays was just shortages of staff on the ground at both airports, so bear that in mind if you are traveling soon.

I am in two minds about flying home that late because I didn't get home until 4am, so I was really tired and needed the next day off work to recover, but also we got 4 pretty much full days instead of 3 so it has pros and cons.

Related: A week in Sorrento

Overall

We definitely had a 10/10 time and I can't fault anything about the hotel, except maybe the all-inclusive wine but that's just me being picky and there are plenty of other nice drinks. The food, views, weather and location were all great.

Incidentally, we actually saw Arrdee the rapper at our hotel and he was staying there. Famous people go there, you heard it here first. Although now I am telling everyone at home none of them know who he is so aren't finding it that exciting. I am not sure how I know, to be honest, I don't listen to his music but seeing a famous person who has been on Radio 1 added to the excitement.

Have you been to any Greek Islands, where would you recommend for me next?

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LILY'S PROMISE BOOK REVIEW