**Book Review: Rockstar Romance**

The author's latest release is a rockstar romance that has left many readers feeling flat and emotionless. The story follows Taylor Swift-like protagonist, Riley, who recently went through a divorce from a guy she had been with for just three months. Despite the brevity of their relationship, everyone assumes that the best track off of this album is about that guy, but it's actually about her college relationship.

Riley wants to set the record straight and correct the misinformation by contacting her college sweetheart, Max. She asks him to come on tour with her and sing together, or play piano while she sings into his eyes, making people assume that this is about him because it is. Initially, Max is hesitant, wanting to prove to his family that his life isn't pathetic, as he dreams of taking care of his parents' retirement community. His parents own the community where he grew up, and he wants to show them that he's more than just a dreamer.

Max eventually agrees to go on tour with Riley, and the book follows their journey together. However, despite the excitement of being on tour with someone, many readers felt disconnected from the characters and their emotions. The writing in this book was not as visceral or emotional as it was in the author's previous work, which is a shame because the author has proven themselves to be skilled at crafting compelling stories.

**The Challenges of Second Chance Romances**

Second chance romances can be incredibly challenging to write, especially when trying to convince readers that two characters who have a past should be together in the future or present. To make this work, authors need to give readers convincing reasons why these characters should be together, which is something that this book struggled with.

The story relied heavily on flashback chapters to explain Riley and Max's past relationship, but even those felt lacking in depth. The present-day interactions between the two characters were limited, and when they did happen, they lacked the spark and banter that readers expect from a romance novel. One thing that could have made this book more interesting is if Riley had met someone new in college, spent just a couple of days with them, and then asked them to come on tour. She would have gotten to know them better on tour and figure out if it was true love.

Instead, the story assumed that their past relationship automatically meant they were meant to be together, which didn't feel convincing to many readers. Even in theory, some people might believe that love can conquer all, but this book didn't make it feel real or tangible. The characters' personalities just didn't gel, and there were no meaningful conversations between them to make their relationship feel authentic.

**A Mixed Bag of January Reads**

January has been a mixed bag of reads for the author, with some books standing out as particularly enjoyable. However, others felt like they fell flat. While this rockstar romance wasn't the worst thing the author has ever read, it was definitely not the best. With only two or three stars, it's clear that this book didn't quite live up to expectations.

On the other hand, some books from January have left a lasting impression on the reader. Despite feeling hopeful about the year ahead, there were also moments of disappointment and frustration with certain reads. Overall, the author is excited to see what other genres they can explore in the coming months, including a video featuring a genre that they've never read before.

**Reading Challenges and TBRs**

The author has been working hard to stay on pace with their reading challenge for the year, despite a slow start to January. By the 26th day of the month, they had read an impressive 26 books, which is a feat they're eager to repeat in February. If you have any recommendations for five-star reads that the author needs to check out, please let them know. Thanks for watching, and until next time, stay bookish!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel and welcome to the first wrap up of the New Year I'm going to be talking about all the books that I read in the month of January and I honestly could not be more excited to be doing this video I feel like I have this reinvigorated love for reading which was something that I was trying to like reignite in the new year and I feel like I'm off to such a good start this month has surprised me I've read a lot of things in different genres not all of which I'll be talking about in this wrap-up because I don't like being repetitive and I also don't like spoiling upcoming videos but I'm going to be talking about 10 of the 27 books that I read in the month of January like I said this month surprised me I had some real gems and a variety of genres yeah I'm excited to talk about them like looking at the list of the things that I have to talk to you about I think all of these pretty much are romance or Thrillers but I did read some Memoirs some non-fiction some historical fiction uh but those are going to be featured in another video so I'm not going to talk about them here that being said I feel like we should just get into it I feel like we should just talk about all of the books that I read in the month of January all 10 of these for the most part are gems I say that some of them are actually terrible but you know a mixed bag is always fine first up we have check and mate by Miss Ali Hazelwood so this book I was not expecting to pick up because it is a young adult book and I'm going to be honest with you I just kind of steer clear of young adult in general even though I'm trying to kind of get into new genres or kind of ReDiscover my love for genres besides romance I just really still avoid ya I just feel like it's not targeted at my age demographic not to say that you can't read young adult books if you are older or younger or whatever but I just personally don't tend to connect with them that being said check and mate by Ali Hazelwood is a book that I feel like kind of skews more new adult SL adult romance which really surprised me when picking this one up this book's about her two main characters mallerie and Nathan mallerie at the beginning of the book is a character who I really sympathized for and was really excited to see her journey she used to be a chess Prodigy taught by her father and we learned that there was some sort of falling out something happened with her dad he's no longer around and now mallerie is responsible for taking care of her family which isn't the most exciting thing for a teenage girl to be doing she's in her senior year of high school school and actually I think at the beginning of the book she graduates so this is like post High School which again kind of gives it that new adult feel but mallerie is working at a garage doing like oil changes tune-ups that sort of thing to make ends meet to support her family her mom has arthritis and she used to have I can't remember exactly what kind of career but she had a very fulfilling career is no longer able to really do that because of her arthritis that makes it pretty debilitating for her to do things she's also taking care of her two little sisters I just felt so bad for mallerie honestly at the beginning of this book I was curious to see how things would change and how her heart and her mind might be opened up to the possibilities of life because at the beginning of the book she isn't intending to go to college even though she's really intelligent and probably would really benefit from University and after kind of a series of events she is pulled back into the world of Chess so that she can perhaps win some money after she has fired from her job at the garage when she is entering the world of Chess she ends up I believe beating Nolan at the beginning of the book did I say Nathan did I say mallerie mallerie and Nolan is that actually his name that doesn't feel right it doesn't matter let's be real but the hero of This Book Is So Charmed by Valerie and is so taken by her personality her confidence and her skill in chess when other people seem to be intimidated by it he kind of takes her under his wing in a sense encourages her to do things that she might not do otherwise and I just really liked their relationship I felt like this was one of Ali hazelwood's most grounded books and I would love to see more of this kind of writing from her and some of her future work as well because I think that the way that she made the story more than just the romance was really well handled like I thought it was really well crafted and it just made story feels so much more grounded than some of her other stuff don't get me wrong I love her adult romance too but I think this book felt the most real of all of her stories and I would love for her to bring some of that back to the adult romance sphere so I don't know I really like this one I give it four stars it wasn't my perfect romance but again I think that's partially because it's ya I don't want to like penalize a book because of the genre that it's in but I feel like the way that this book wrapped up was also just a little Hasty for me and I would have preferred maybe just a little bit more resolution of the romance between the two main characters again this is like a ya romance so it is kind of kind of more about the heroin kind of like discovering herself but I don't know it's like kind of a mixed bag kind of a a double-edged sword because I did really like that but I also wanted more resolution of the romance so anyway really enjoyed this one and would really recommend it if you haven't picked it up already don't let the ya fool you oh God an author that maybe should have stayed just writing ya the blonde identity by Ali Carter a book that I picked up for a video that I have since scrapped is about a woman who wakes up with amnesia she doesn't know who she is where she is she's like in an Alleyway and she's helped up by a not Secret Service guy but he is uh what did I say a secret operative yeah he's some sort of secret operative he knows that the person that he's helping is not the person he normally helps it's this person's twin sister instead the girl who wakes up an Alleyway is not an operative but the twin sister is and this guy's like how did you get to Paris how did you wind up in this Alleyway do you know who you are she's like no I don't know who I am and it's interesting to me that like he knows the twin sister but he doesn't know the heroine or like doesn't even know of her name it's interesting basically they are running from someone because everybody else thinks that she is her twin and we don't know where the twin is and that's like part of the story it was really chaotic from start to finish like you go into this book and you you know that the heroin has Amnesia like you understand that that's part of the plot line but it made it sort of impossible for it to be a functioning romance I just I'm not sure how you successfully pull off a memory loss Romance I'm sure they exist leave comments in the comment section down below I would love to know if there are any just amazing memory loss books this one I just don't think really worked because the heroin is trying to figure out who she is throughout the course of the story her name what she wants out of life what her career is and yet she's falling for this guy who she thinks is handsome I guess there was no real relationship development besides being in close quarters with this guy who's like trying to save you for being murdered and like sure I suppose you could say that's romantic but it wasn't enough to carry the entire story and by the end of the book she's trying so hard to be I don't want to say introspective but to be like heartfelt and romantic and everything feels really overwrought given like the situations that the characters have been through up until this point it was corny I gave it two stars didn't enjoy it and this is one of the reasons why I'm not doing that video I was going to do a video where I compare the winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards with the winners of the Amazon best romances of 2023 but the ones that I've read for that I have not enjoyed and looking at the other books that are on that list like the Lucy Square book from this year I just don't I don't I'm not going to do that video so thanks I guess Ali Carter for that just not not for me a book that really was delightful and is a really really good debut romance is Forget Me Not by I believe Julie SoDo this one is about her two main characters Emma and Elliot Emma is short for amarillis and Emma is a wedding planner and she's got a big break essentially this lesbian influencer is going to get married in I believe like LA or wherever the this book is set and Emma is in charge of doing the wedding planning she's gotten like rave reviews from all of her friends and she was like recommended to this couple by someone she knows I believe she's recently kind of struck out on her own she used to work for a rival not a rival wedding planner but like a different wedding planner who was much older and kind of controlling and now AMA is kind of I don't want to say floundering but she is trying to work on this wedding that is much bigger in scope than anything she's ever done before and one of the only stipulations of this like contract is that the couple really wants to use Emma's ex's floral company Elliot is a florist he's really really talented with his designs and they just insist that they have to use him so she's having to work with an ex while also trying to I guess gain confidence in her skills as a wedding planner I mean she knows that she's the but also it's tough when it's like a completely new thing that she's trying out this really high scale like high-profile event and this book is really really heavy on the wedding planning so if you don't like that aren't interested in that you might not like this book I loved the idea of this book and I liked a lot of the execution but it wasn't perfect and that's okay cuz it was a debut I ended up giving this book four stars for reference I really enjoyed I would say the like confidence building that Emma went through as the story carried on surprisingly the thing that I liked the least about this romance was the romance but I don't think that'll be everyone's experience there're sort of this like enemies to lovers kind of situation or like scorned lover situation where I believe Emma broke up with Elliot and he is still feeling kind of burned because he really loved her and so it's a it's a complicated romance you do have like flashbacks to their like short-lived romance in the past and like how they are kind of mending their relationship in the present I think the only thing that was really missing from this book for me was more emphasis spent on the present I feel like so much of the present day chapters were spent with the wedding planning itself and it could have been such a beautiful device to get these two working in close contact right and like having that be what sort of Sparks their romance and I guess in a sense like they did work closely together but that wasn't my experience reading the book I didn't feel like there was enough like actual conversation between them in the present day chapters and I'm notoriously picky about that kind of thing so take from this what you will I feel like almost all my friends gave this five stars I really like this and I I am really curious to see what this author does in the future so four stars on that one a book that I didn't love quite as much was Big Little Lies by lean morti I feel like so many people love this I'm reading this for a list video that is going to be coming in March God willing it's a long list video so I don't know if I'll be able to get through all the books fingers crossed I will big little lies I tried to read this a few years ago and it didn't work for me so I dnfed it and said you know what I'm cool just like watching the show at some point I never watched the show I mean I think I watched like one episode but where to begin this book set in Australia the premise I guess of the book is that a murder has occurred and we're trying to figure out what led up to this murder happening we don't know who died but we just know that at a school function for like these adults children it was like an adults only event someone died and we're trying to figure out how that happened here's my issue is like if I'm reading a mystery thriller I want to be thrilled I want the mystery to be more of a question mark I want the thrilling moments to feel like shock and awe and nothing in this book really surprised me instead unfortunately we are left just reading mostly a woman's story of being domestically abused by her husband I'm not saying that that's not important it certainly is like I I know that for a lot of people this was like maybe their first introduction into reading that sort of thing in a book and maybe it was really powerful for them not my first rodeo reading domestic violence in books and I'm not saying it was handled poorly necessarily in this book I just don't know that this particular domestic Thriller was the proper place for that I don't know if that makes makes any sense I didn't like the characters I felt like the drama here was a little bit silly besides the domestic violence obviously that's not silly and ultimately I just I wanted more it just like wasn't a satisfying read I'm going to leave it at that two stars another two star read the last for a while kind of business or pleasure by Rachel ly Solomon I don't know whether to call it quits with this author or not I think she has published three books one of which I enjoyed one I thought was kind of mid and then this one I kind of actively disliked this one is about our two main characters who I conveniently oh didn't write the names down of although I do know the heroin name is Chandler which I actively hated okay basically she is commissioned to ghost write the Memoir of this teen star he was the star on a CW sort of like teen paranormal drama right like let's say he's like Paul Wesley or something like that so she's going to write his Memoir goate his Memoir so she like follows him around all these fan conventions to try to get to know him so she can write something genuine it wasn't good oh wait I totally forgot a huge component of this book she has sex with this man pretty early on in the story after kind of like a family in her own personal life or like professional life in her ghost riding life she a stranger from a bar and it's terrible sex even though he's really hot and then she finds out later who he is and that she's actually going to be helping write his Memoir or ghost write his Memoir and she lets him know hey dick game Trash I just wanted to let you know like now we're going to have a professional working life together and this has been plaguing me and I just really needed to let you know that your dick game is trash and he's like okay um thanks for letting me know I guess and so in exchange I guess for her writing him his Memoir she's also going to like train him in the art of sexual pleasure and like how to please a woman I don't know how this is like really a fair exchange but I guess she gets some munchin from him in exchange but it's like is that really that great if it's going to be bad like half the time I don't know this book was not my favorite I feel like the Romantic relationship development was sincerely lagging which is actually kind of sad given that the sex scenes in this book were surprisingly hot I didn't think that teaching someone how to be good at sex would be hot but it was nice it was like nice to read I just think that the like romantic relationship development was just not there at all and I also felt like Chandler's development e it feels weird my own name out loud like that it sounds like I'm talking in the third person Chandler's development was just not there she was I guess trying to get out of the ghost writing game so that she could write her own novels or something like that but she was too scared to do it and she needs encouragement and I guess by the end of the book she does it but it doesn't really feel that triumphant I don't know it's just not not for more two stars about to have two backtack festar bangers all right so I need you to strap in buckle up first up we have the fake out by Stephanie Archer this is the first Stephanie Archer book that I have truly enjoyed the first book in the series I think it gave two stars I felt like it was too smudy not enough for a ship development the fake out had me giggling and kicking my feet you need to pick this book up it's about Hazel and Rory and it has such a I don't want to say typical fake dating setup but essentially Hazel is a physiotherapist for a hockey team and Rory is one of the hockey players and they used to date I think in like high school or something like that or maybe he had a crush on her and they didn't date something like that I don't it doesn't really matter it's not relevant he is like approaching her and he's like you know what I I finally have to ask you out cuz I think you're hot like I just want to do it and she's like no I don't think so so until she finds out that her ex has been traded to this team and she is going to be the physiotherapist for him and so she doesn't look pathetic she's going to date Rory and kind of make her ex jealous she doesn't want to get the ex back but she just wants to get him off her back he is like just the kind of vindictive ex that no one really wants who is just like kind of constantly teasing you and making you feel crazy this just starts a beautiful fake dating relationship the banter between Hazel and Rory is amazing if you like a reverse gry Sunshine you're really going to like this cuz Hazel is definitely very feisty and Rory is defin very sweet and I feel like their relationship to development was just so organic and nice there are a fair amount of sex scenes in this book as well but I didn't feel like I was overwhelmed with sex scenes I feel like the development was just there I mean it was it was just so fun to read they have like their own I don't to say special language but he has a fun nickname for her he gets her like this little figurine there's just so many sweet little moments and if you've been craving something that feels easy to read but also romantic I think this is a really good one to pick up I just loved this and I'm very excited to read more from Stephanie Archer now because after a couple of strikeouts I was just unsure about this author but one of my patrons encouraged me to read this book or said it was really great and I was like you know what I'll give it a go and it slapped okay loved it next we have on the same page by Haley Cass okay I feel like I have preconceived notions about saffic romances I'm just going to put it out there I think I've said this multiple times in videos I just always think they're going to be too sweet and too tender and that they're they're not going to be sexy and like angsty in the way that I want because a lot of the early ones that I have read or have read in the past felt like that like a little too typical saffic like historical movie you know what I mean like the longing glances the like touch of hand but like they never get to actually consumate their love like I don't like that that's not what I want okay just give me a contemporary romance that's a effect that's what I'm looking for this book did that and so much more this is probably going to be one of my favorite books of the Year mhm certainly is this book's about Riley and Giana and they were roommates in high school no not high school what they were roommates in college now into the future they both have successful careers Riley Works in television she is trying to get this like I guess news station up and running for younger people because news at this point at least like news media that is televised tends to be targeted towards an older age demographic and righty really wants to have her own show own program for younger people she doesn't want to be on camera but she hires someone to Anchor the show and she's like writing things for it and yeah I don't know I just I really liked that that she had like her own career she was really passionate about and I cared about it by the end of the book and then we have Giana who is an influencer who I believe mostly like reviews makeup or something like that her parents are I believe a model and an actor and they don't really play a very active part in her life so Riley and Giana just from the start you can tell how special their friendship is and how much they lean on each other they really do have their own language and just like their own way of interacting and it's so fun to just watch that unfold and then you get this incredible kind of bombshell flashback chapter with the two girls in college really learning how their friendship came to be and realizing they weren't fast friends to put it lately the character development in this book is out of this goddamn world I just want to hug this author for putting forth such an interesting and compelling romance like the Romantic component is really amazing but the character development especially on the part of Gian wow like I don't want to spoil it but wow and then in the present day there's this kind of like snafu that feels very fanfictiony where one of the women is gifted something by the other and there's this sort of like miscommunication and the woman who is gifted the gift is like wait does my friend have a crush on me wait I might have a crush on my friend has this like delightful semi- miscommunication thing going on not an annoying miscommunication but just like you're just dying for the other person to kind of tell the other person that they like each other the sex is incredibly hot and I just wanted them to be together I wanted them to like get married and have babies okay I just did I loved this book ah you got to pick it up if you have not picked this book up I'm sure most of you haven't you need to pick it up I read it for a video and sure I didn't need to include it in this wrap up but I I needed to talk about it again cuz I love this book so much I need to read more of this author's back list and I need you to pick it up please please please it's on K unlimited of course and it just blew me away I I gushed about it in the video where I let Amazon kind of like choose my romances but I chose this one and I did a damn good job you need to go read this book okay just read it a book that you shouldn't read actually to switch gears is the husband's Secret by lean morard I did not like this book to put it lightly it was not a favorite of mine I disliked this one even more than I disliked bill little eyes Okay so this one is more interesting on the surface because we have three women we're seeing how their lives intersect one woman her husband is cheating on her so she takes her young son and flies to Sydney to live with her mom while while she is there she enrolls her son into this Catholic school and she kind of gets involved a little bit in like this secret I guess that's going on let me tell you the other women's points of view so and kind of understand what's going on there's also another woman whose husband travels a lot and she finds a letter addressed to her in her husband's things and it says something like to Cecilia in the event of my death and she's like um what the is this and she asks him about it and he says please don't open that and it's a whole thing and we're like okay what is the husband's secret hence the title of the book and then we have Rachel who is kind of going through it a little bit because her son and daughter-in-law and Grandson are going to be moving to the states and after the murder of her 17-year-old daughter many years ago she rightfully doesn't really like being apart from her family like she just wants to enjoy the time she has with the people around her her husband is deceased as well so it's like her whole family is basically leaving her anyway all of these three women's lives intersect because of the husband's secret I won't lie like I didn't know what the husband's secret would be and I guess once it was revealed I was like oh okay that makes a lot of sense and now I understand how the women are connected but I didn't like the sort of auxiliary sort of accessory moments of the story namely the woman who gets cheated on okay she gets cheated on by her husband and her husband is around with her cousin her cousin who is like her best friend AKA sister like they're homies and they all kind of work together at this company that they founded and they've been having an emotional affair for about a year they haven't been sleeping together but an emotional affair after the cousin loses a lot of weight and is now beautiful in the eyes of her cousin there were so many things about this book that I just didn't like I didn't like the ending of this book I didn't really like the message of this book but I especially didn't like the enormous amount of fat phobia good God it was painful to read I was already kind of like having a bad body image couple of days and reading this book was incredibly I hate to say triggering but basically Fat's not a bad word right but it depends on the context and it depends on how it's used and the way that I believe her name is Tess was just constantly throwing out that word and saying like oh I always thought my cousin would be pretty if she lost all this weight oh you know she's so disgusting but like her eyes are so beautiful what the are you going on about you sound insane and like a total that wasn't the word I was going to say but we're trying to keep it PG is I hated this book and it's for that list video that I'm doing in March so I'm talking about the books that I'm reading as I go in these wrap-ups I hated it two stars let's move the on okay three books that were all kind of mid okay I hate to I hate to be that person but we got to do it love redesigned by Lauren Asher this one let me down I'm so sad about it it was about Julian and Dalia Julian ends up buying this Victorian Mansion in his hometown and he is going to fix it up him and his construction company and who has recently come to town but his college Crush Dalia Dalia ended up dating Julian's roommate Oliver Dalia and Oliver have recently parted ways because of some of the details of the prap that he put forth before they got married or were going to get married they didn't end up getting married dollia is kind of upset her and Julian team up to kind of work on this house together because Dalia had a TV show with her ex where she did like interior design so yeah they're going to team up on this Victorian Mansion together that wasn't really much of the story to be honest though was them like teaming up this book I guess was unlike forget me not because you do have less emphasis on the thing that the book's actually supposed to be which is the design portion of the book um and more I guess relationship development I had a couple issues with this book my main one is that at the beginning of the story you need to play the groundwork I think for what character growth is going to take place right we have our heroine who is reeling from the news that she got which is that she is infertile which that's a thing that I'm going to talk about later that really pissed me off but she's dealing with infertility which hey been there done that not fun but she's unwilling to sort of like even say in her her internal dialogue what she's dealing with and so it always just gets kind of pushed to the Wayside pushed to the back and it's like okay sure you're going to get in this romantic relationship that's not going to heal you though you need to deal with the things that you have going on so that was kind of annoying and then same with Julian he was mad at Dalia because of the way that they had a kiss in college and then she ended up dating his roommate okay looks bad I guess Julian's dealing with his I guess resentment towards Dalia but like not really internally and so it makes for kind of a weird Romance when you know these characters have baggage but they're unwilling to really talk about it until like the 70% Mark of the book and I'm not saying they need to spill their G to their hero or heroin but we need to know as an audience what they're dealing with so that we can watch them grow from it otherwise it's just boring also I don't think that the way that they handled their relationship was great I didn't love that they were hooking up so much and not talking about their feelings I don't know that's just like a personal issue of mine the biggest issue no it's not the biggest issue but it was something that I really didn't enjoy was the handling of do's infertility as someone with infertility I'm not sensitive necessarily to it being in books I just wanted to be handled correctly and Dalia's diagnosis is not dominish tarian Reserve or endometriosis or PC or really anything that could actually cause you to not be able to have children she took a genetic test that told her that she is a carrier for a recessive gene I made sure to go back and look in the book to make sure that that's what she was talking about then that's kind of what I've gathered correct me if I'm wrong but that's pretty much what it said and she doesn't want to pass on whatever she has to her child now if you know anything about being a carrier for recessive gene that means that your partner also has to be a carrier for that same recessive gene for your child to have a 25% chance of having that genetic disorder and you know what could potentially solve that for you IVF I'm not saying everyone needs to do IVF or that it is not valid to be concerned about being a carrier for something that's not like a diagnosis of infertility and correct me like correct me if I'm wrong I don't want to invalidate anyone I'm not saying that that's not a totally valid thing or totally valid reason to do IVF but that doesn't mean that you were incapable of having a child and I'm not saying you like shouldn't grow your family a different way if you feel so compelled but I just don't know that that's like what I would be using if I were an author to say that my character has infertility I don't know I don't want to offend anybody right I'm not saying these things aren't valid or that you shouldn't be concerned if you're a carrier for something if you want to be concerned that's fine but but that doesn't mean that you can't have a kid two stars didn't enjoy that very much or did I give it three stars I don't know it was fine it was a fine book it just like wasn't a favorite book it doesn't matter what the reading is really let's talk about don't want you like a best friend by Emma Albin this is a historical romance that looks like a ya and it kind of felt like ya even though I think this is supposed to be an adult romance books about Beth and Gwen Beth's mom has recently put it on Beth's shoulders that she needs to get married right she needs to a rich man so that they're not destitute because the dad died when she's out in society she meets this girl named Gwen and Gwen is fabulous she's blonde and she doesn't give a about finding a man because her father who is single is isn't encouraging her to necessarily and there's a big difference between having a single parent who is a dad versus a mom right in historical times so Gwen doesn't feel compelled she can kind of live laugh love her life away and Beth and Gwen team up basically because they're like wait neither of us want to get married and our parents seem to have a past together what if we parent trapped them and then we wouldn't have to marry isn't that fabulous okay and through this process they get close and through this process Gwen makes out with Beth because she's like I actually have the hots for you and I don't I don't like guys at all and Beth's like this is actually pretty tight we definitely need a Parent Trap our parents and I believe they succeed and they live happily ever after except for it was just not really that The Parent Trap aspect of this book was compelling but so much time was spent on it that I don't think enough time was spent on Beth and Gwen's relationship development it's like Gwen discovers that she likes Beth makes out with her and then Beth's like oh my God wait yes yes let's get together and it didn't feel like a natural progression of where their relationship was I just felt like the characters felt pretty immature too it just like really wasn't for me which is such a bummer because I had such a banger of a safic romance to read this month I was really hoping that this one would be another one that I could recommend like wholeheartedly and readily but it just didn't work for me this is this author's debut so maybe more of her books in the future will be more well suited for what I'm into but this just like wasn't wasn't executed in the way that I like and then lastly a book that I read for my patreon book club my monthly book club was the breakup Tour by Emily wiberly an Austin siegeman broka said it right the first time which never happens this book's about our two main characters Riley and Max Riley is kind of a stand in for Taylor Swift this book is dedicated to swifties so it's pretty clear that Riley is supposed to be a standin for Taylor and she writes a breakup album each song dedicated to a different man now the men are not named but everyone can kind of guess which song is about which person and she recently just got a divorce from a guy who she had been with for not very long like 3 months I think and everyone assumes that the best track off of this album is about that guy but it's actually about her College relationship she really wants to I guess throw people off of her scent not even throw people off her scent but like correct the I guess misinformation so she contacts Max who is her College sweetheart and she's like hey would you come on tour with me and we can like sing longingly into each other's eyes or like you can play piano and I'll sing into your eyes and people will assume this is about you because it is about you and initially he's like no but he wants to I suppose prove to his family that like his life isn't pathetic because he really only dreams of like taking care of this retirement community I guess that his parents own and like are retiring from I don't know they're like your life's pathetic please please go on tour with this woman and so he does this one I really wanted to like I love Taylor Swift obv obviously and I really love the idea of a rockstar romance most Rockstar romances I with heavily this one I think was kind of a fail from the beginning everything just felt very flat and emotionless which is not really what you want from a romance I just didn't connect with the writing which is odd because I felt like the writing in the first book from this author Duo was just so visceral and so emotional and in this book I didn't really feel that way I felt very disconnected from the characters and their emotions and that was definitely furthered by the fact that I don't think Max and Riley really had a lot of on page time together I've said it once and I'll say it a million times second chance romances are incredibly challenging because you're trying to convince me that two characters who have a past should be together in the future or in the present you need to give me really compelling flashback chapters and or you need to give me really convincing present day reasons why they should be together and I just didn't feel like any of those reasons were present sure they went on tour together but most of the book just felt like a lot of filler and a lot of fluff there was no fun banter between the two of them which I felt like was a missed opportunity I actually think that this book could have been better and more interesting if Riley had like met someone let's say in college and spent like a a couple of days with them and didn't really get to know them and they were kind of like a wh if situation you know and then she asked that person to come on tour and then she got to know them on tour and figure out that this is like true love instead they just assume that it's true love because they've been together before and even though they've been separated by a decade like they should still be together that doesn't really make sense to me you know I'd love to believe that love conquers all and I guess in theory that could work but I just don't really understand how their personalities gelled together there were no conversations had by these two characters like really ever except for him trying to convince her that she that love can last just wasn't was not what I wanted it to be I think I'd give this like two or three stars it was not the worst thing I've ever read motionless romance is like never going to be a five star I think we can all agree on that so those are the books that I read in the month of January as you can see it was sort of a mixed bag again some of the books that I didn't talk to youall about in this video were also a mixed bag some were five star summer two stars I've had an interesting reading month but overall it feels hopeful like I'm excited for this year ahead I'm excited to see what other genres I can explore I'm doing a video in February where I read from a genre that I like never read from so I'm very excited and looking forward to that that I'm just excited and I hope you are too let me know in the comments down below what your favorite books of January were I'm always looking for stuff to add to my TBR I'm really looking to stay on Pace with my reading challenge for the year as well for a few days there the amount of books read for me was the same as the day that it was so like 26 books on the 26th day of January and I want to get back to that cuz it makes me feel good okay so if you have any like amazing Five Star reads that I just like have to read let me know but thanks so much for watching this video I love you so much and I'll see you in the next onehello welcome back to my channel and welcome to the first wrap up of the New Year I'm going to be talking about all the books that I read in the month of January and I honestly could not be more excited to be doing this video I feel like I have this reinvigorated love for reading which was something that I was trying to like reignite in the new year and I feel like I'm off to such a good start this month has surprised me I've read a lot of things in different genres not all of which I'll be talking about in this wrap-up because I don't like being repetitive and I also don't like spoiling upcoming videos but I'm going to be talking about 10 of the 27 books that I read in the month of January like I said this month surprised me I had some real gems and a variety of genres yeah I'm excited to talk about them like looking at the list of the things that I have to talk to you about I think all of these pretty much are romance or Thrillers but I did read some Memoirs some non-fiction some historical fiction uh but those are going to be featured in another video so I'm not going to talk about them here that being said I feel like we should just get into it I feel like we should just talk about all of the books that I read in the month of January all 10 of these for the most part are gems I say that some of them are actually terrible but you know a mixed bag is always fine first up we have check and mate by Miss Ali Hazelwood so this book I was not expecting to pick up because it is a young adult book and I'm going to be honest with you I just kind of steer clear of young adult in general even though I'm trying to kind of get into new genres or kind of ReDiscover my love for genres besides romance I just really still avoid ya I just feel like it's not targeted at my age demographic not to say that you can't read young adult books if you are older or younger or whatever but I just personally don't tend to connect with them that being said check and mate by Ali Hazelwood is a book that I feel like kind of skews more new adult SL adult romance which really surprised me when picking this one up this book's about her two main characters mallerie and Nathan mallerie at the beginning of the book is a character who I really sympathized for and was really excited to see her journey she used to be a chess Prodigy taught by her father and we learned that there was some sort of falling out something happened with her dad he's no longer around and now mallerie is responsible for taking care of her family which isn't the most exciting thing for a teenage girl to be doing she's in her senior year of high school school and actually I think at the beginning of the book she graduates so this is like post High School which again kind of gives it that new adult feel but mallerie is working at a garage doing like oil changes tune-ups that sort of thing to make ends meet to support her family her mom has arthritis and she used to have I can't remember exactly what kind of career but she had a very fulfilling career is no longer able to really do that because of her arthritis that makes it pretty debilitating for her to do things she's also taking care of her two little sisters I just felt so bad for mallerie honestly at the beginning of this book I was curious to see how things would change and how her heart and her mind might be opened up to the possibilities of life because at the beginning of the book she isn't intending to go to college even though she's really intelligent and probably would really benefit from University and after kind of a series of events she is pulled back into the world of Chess so that she can perhaps win some money after she has fired from her job at the garage when she is entering the world of Chess she ends up I believe beating Nolan at the beginning of the book did I say Nathan did I say mallerie mallerie and Nolan is that actually his name that doesn't feel right it doesn't matter let's be real but the hero of This Book Is So Charmed by Valerie and is so taken by her personality her confidence and her skill in chess when other people seem to be intimidated by it he kind of takes her under his wing in a sense encourages her to do things that she might not do otherwise and I just really liked their relationship I felt like this was one of Ali hazelwood's most grounded books and I would love to see more of this kind of writing from her and some of her future work as well because I think that the way that she made the story more than just the romance was really well handled like I thought it was really well crafted and it just made story feels so much more grounded than some of her other stuff don't get me wrong I love her adult romance too but I think this book felt the most real of all of her stories and I would love for her to bring some of that back to the adult romance sphere so I don't know I really like this one I give it four stars it wasn't my perfect romance but again I think that's partially because it's ya I don't want to like penalize a book because of the genre that it's in but I feel like the way that this book wrapped up was also just a little Hasty for me and I would have preferred maybe just a little bit more resolution of the romance between the two main characters again this is like a ya romance so it is kind of kind of more about the heroin kind of like discovering herself but I don't know it's like kind of a mixed bag kind of a a double-edged sword because I did really like that but I also wanted more resolution of the romance so anyway really enjoyed this one and would really recommend it if you haven't picked it up already don't let the ya fool you oh God an author that maybe should have stayed just writing ya the blonde identity by Ali Carter a book that I picked up for a video that I have since scrapped is about a woman who wakes up with amnesia she doesn't know who she is where she is she's like in an Alleyway and she's helped up by a not Secret Service guy but he is uh what did I say a secret operative yeah he's some sort of secret operative he knows that the person that he's helping is not the person he normally helps it's this person's twin sister instead the girl who wakes up an Alleyway is not an operative but the twin sister is and this guy's like how did you get to Paris how did you wind up in this Alleyway do you know who you are she's like no I don't know who I am and it's interesting to me that like he knows the twin sister but he doesn't know the heroine or like doesn't even know of her name it's interesting basically they are running from someone because everybody else thinks that she is her twin and we don't know where the twin is and that's like part of the story it was really chaotic from start to finish like you go into this book and you you know that the heroin has Amnesia like you understand that that's part of the plot line but it made it sort of impossible for it to be a functioning romance I just I'm not sure how you successfully pull off a memory loss Romance I'm sure they exist leave comments in the comment section down below I would love to know if there are any just amazing memory loss books this one I just don't think really worked because the heroin is trying to figure out who she is throughout the course of the story her name what she wants out of life what her career is and yet she's falling for this guy who she thinks is handsome I guess there was no real relationship development besides being in close quarters with this guy who's like trying to save you for being murdered and like sure I suppose you could say that's romantic but it wasn't enough to carry the entire story and by the end of the book she's trying so hard to be I don't want to say introspective but to be like heartfelt and romantic and everything feels really overwrought given like the situations that the characters have been through up until this point it was corny I gave it two stars didn't enjoy it and this is one of the reasons why I'm not doing that video I was going to do a video where I compare the winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards with the winners of the Amazon best romances of 2023 but the ones that I've read for that I have not enjoyed and looking at the other books that are on that list like the Lucy Square book from this year I just don't I don't I'm not going to do that video so thanks I guess Ali Carter for that just not not for me a book that really was delightful and is a really really good debut romance is Forget Me Not by I believe Julie SoDo this one is about her two main characters Emma and Elliot Emma is short for amarillis and Emma is a wedding planner and she's got a big break essentially this lesbian influencer is going to get married in I believe like LA or wherever the this book is set and Emma is in charge of doing the wedding planning she's gotten like rave reviews from all of her friends and she was like recommended to this couple by someone she knows I believe she's recently kind of struck out on her own she used to work for a rival not a rival wedding planner but like a different wedding planner who was much older and kind of controlling and now AMA is kind of I don't want to say floundering but she is trying to work on this wedding that is much bigger in scope than anything she's ever done before and one of the only stipulations of this like contract is that the couple really wants to use Emma's ex's floral company Elliot is a florist he's really really talented with his designs and they just insist that they have to use him so she's having to work with an ex while also trying to I guess gain confidence in her skills as a wedding planner I mean she knows that she's the but also it's tough when it's like a completely new thing that she's trying out this really high scale like high-profile event and this book is really really heavy on the wedding planning so if you don't like that aren't interested in that you might not like this book I loved the idea of this book and I liked a lot of the execution but it wasn't perfect and that's okay cuz it was a debut I ended up giving this book four stars for reference I really enjoyed I would say the like confidence building that Emma went through as the story carried on surprisingly the thing that I liked the least about this romance was the romance but I don't think that'll be everyone's experience there're sort of this like enemies to lovers kind of situation or like scorned lover situation where I believe Emma broke up with Elliot and he is still feeling kind of burned because he really loved her and so it's a it's a complicated romance you do have like flashbacks to their like short-lived romance in the past and like how they are kind of mending their relationship in the present I think the only thing that was really missing from this book for me was more emphasis spent on the present I feel like so much of the present day chapters were spent with the wedding planning itself and it could have been such a beautiful device to get these two working in close contact right and like having that be what sort of Sparks their romance and I guess in a sense like they did work closely together but that wasn't my experience reading the book I didn't feel like there was enough like actual conversation between them in the present day chapters and I'm notoriously picky about that kind of thing so take from this what you will I feel like almost all my friends gave this five stars I really like this and I I am really curious to see what this author does in the future so four stars on that one a book that I didn't love quite as much was Big Little Lies by lean morti I feel like so many people love this I'm reading this for a list video that is going to be coming in March God willing it's a long list video so I don't know if I'll be able to get through all the books fingers crossed I will big little lies I tried to read this a few years ago and it didn't work for me so I dnfed it and said you know what I'm cool just like watching the show at some point I never watched the show I mean I think I watched like one episode but where to begin this book set in Australia the premise I guess of the book is that a murder has occurred and we're trying to figure out what led up to this murder happening we don't know who died but we just know that at a school function for like these adults children it was like an adults only event someone died and we're trying to figure out how that happened here's my issue is like if I'm reading a mystery thriller I want to be thrilled I want the mystery to be more of a question mark I want the thrilling moments to feel like shock and awe and nothing in this book really surprised me instead unfortunately we are left just reading mostly a woman's story of being domestically abused by her husband I'm not saying that that's not important it certainly is like I I know that for a lot of people this was like maybe their first introduction into reading that sort of thing in a book and maybe it was really powerful for them not my first rodeo reading domestic violence in books and I'm not saying it was handled poorly necessarily in this book I just don't know that this particular domestic Thriller was the proper place for that I don't know if that makes makes any sense I didn't like the characters I felt like the drama here was a little bit silly besides the domestic violence obviously that's not silly and ultimately I just I wanted more it just like wasn't a satisfying read I'm going to leave it at that two stars another two star read the last for a while kind of business or pleasure by Rachel ly Solomon I don't know whether to call it quits with this author or not I think she has published three books one of which I enjoyed one I thought was kind of mid and then this one I kind of actively disliked this one is about our two main characters who I conveniently oh didn't write the names down of although I do know the heroin name is Chandler which I actively hated okay basically she is commissioned to ghost write the Memoir of this teen star he was the star on a CW sort of like teen paranormal drama right like let's say he's like Paul Wesley or something like that so she's going to write his Memoir goate his Memoir so she like follows him around all these fan conventions to try to get to know him so she can write something genuine it wasn't good oh wait I totally forgot a huge component of this book she has sex with this man pretty early on in the story after kind of like a family in her own personal life or like professional life in her ghost riding life she a stranger from a bar and it's terrible sex even though he's really hot and then she finds out later who he is and that she's actually going to be helping write his Memoir or ghost write his Memoir and she lets him know hey dick game Trash I just wanted to let you know like now we're going to have a professional working life together and this has been plaguing me and I just really needed to let you know that your dick game is trash and he's like okay um thanks for letting me know I guess and so in exchange I guess for her writing him his Memoir she's also going to like train him in the art of sexual pleasure and like how to please a woman I don't know how this is like really a fair exchange but I guess she gets some munchin from him in exchange but it's like is that really that great if it's going to be bad like half the time I don't know this book was not my favorite I feel like the Romantic relationship development was sincerely lagging which is actually kind of sad given that the sex scenes in this book were surprisingly hot I didn't think that teaching someone how to be good at sex would be hot but it was nice it was like nice to read I just think that the like romantic relationship development was just not there at all and I also felt like Chandler's development e it feels weird my own name out loud like that it sounds like I'm talking in the third person Chandler's development was just not there she was I guess trying to get out of the ghost writing game so that she could write her own novels or something like that but she was too scared to do it and she needs encouragement and I guess by the end of the book she does it but it doesn't really feel that triumphant I don't know it's just not not for more two stars about to have two backtack festar bangers all right so I need you to strap in buckle up first up we have the fake out by Stephanie Archer this is the first Stephanie Archer book that I have truly enjoyed the first book in the series I think it gave two stars I felt like it was too smudy not enough for a ship development the fake out had me giggling and kicking my feet you need to pick this book up it's about Hazel and Rory and it has such a I don't want to say typical fake dating setup but essentially Hazel is a physiotherapist for a hockey team and Rory is one of the hockey players and they used to date I think in like high school or something like that or maybe he had a crush on her and they didn't date something like that I don't it doesn't really matter it's not relevant he is like approaching her and he's like you know what I I finally have to ask you out cuz I think you're hot like I just want to do it and she's like no I don't think so so until she finds out that her ex has been traded to this team and she is going to be the physiotherapist for him and so she doesn't look pathetic she's going to date Rory and kind of make her ex jealous she doesn't want to get the ex back but she just wants to get him off her back he is like just the kind of vindictive ex that no one really wants who is just like kind of constantly teasing you and making you feel crazy this just starts a beautiful fake dating relationship the banter between Hazel and Rory is amazing if you like a reverse gry Sunshine you're really going to like this cuz Hazel is definitely very feisty and Rory is defin very sweet and I feel like their relationship to development was just so organic and nice there are a fair amount of sex scenes in this book as well but I didn't feel like I was overwhelmed with sex scenes I feel like the development was just there I mean it was it was just so fun to read they have like their own I don't to say special language but he has a fun nickname for her he gets her like this little figurine there's just so many sweet little moments and if you've been craving something that feels easy to read but also romantic I think this is a really good one to pick up I just loved this and I'm very excited to read more from Stephanie Archer now because after a couple of strikeouts I was just unsure about this author but one of my patrons encouraged me to read this book or said it was really great and I was like you know what I'll give it a go and it slapped okay loved it next we have on the same page by Haley Cass okay I feel like I have preconceived notions about saffic romances I'm just going to put it out there I think I've said this multiple times in videos I just always think they're going to be too sweet and too tender and that they're they're not going to be sexy and like angsty in the way that I want because a lot of the early ones that I have read or have read in the past felt like that like a little too typical saffic like historical movie you know what I mean like the longing glances the like touch of hand but like they never get to actually consumate their love like I don't like that that's not what I want okay just give me a contemporary romance that's a effect that's what I'm looking for this book did that and so much more this is probably going to be one of my favorite books of the Year mhm certainly is this book's about Riley and Giana and they were roommates in high school no not high school what they were roommates in college now into the future they both have successful careers Riley Works in television she is trying to get this like I guess news station up and running for younger people because news at this point at least like news media that is televised tends to be targeted towards an older age demographic and righty really wants to have her own show own program for younger people she doesn't want to be on camera but she hires someone to Anchor the show and she's like writing things for it and yeah I don't know I just I really liked that that she had like her own career she was really passionate about and I cared about it by the end of the book and then we have Giana who is an influencer who I believe mostly like reviews makeup or something like that her parents are I believe a model and an actor and they don't really play a very active part in her life so Riley and Giana just from the start you can tell how special their friendship is and how much they lean on each other they really do have their own language and just like their own way of interacting and it's so fun to just watch that unfold and then you get this incredible kind of bombshell flashback chapter with the two girls in college really learning how their friendship came to be and realizing they weren't fast friends to put it lately the character development in this book is out of this goddamn world I just want to hug this author for putting forth such an interesting and compelling romance like the Romantic component is really amazing but the character development especially on the part of Gian wow like I don't want to spoil it but wow and then in the present day there's this kind of like snafu that feels very fanfictiony where one of the women is gifted something by the other and there's this sort of like miscommunication and the woman who is gifted the gift is like wait does my friend have a crush on me wait I might have a crush on my friend has this like delightful semi- miscommunication thing going on not an annoying miscommunication but just like you're just dying for the other person to kind of tell the other person that they like each other the sex is incredibly hot and I just wanted them to be together I wanted them to like get married and have babies okay I just did I loved this book ah you got to pick it up if you have not picked this book up I'm sure most of you haven't you need to pick it up I read it for a video and sure I didn't need to include it in this wrap up but I I needed to talk about it again cuz I love this book so much I need to read more of this author's back list and I need you to pick it up please please please it's on K unlimited of course and it just blew me away I I gushed about it in the video where I let Amazon kind of like choose my romances but I chose this one and I did a damn good job you need to go read this book okay just read it a book that you shouldn't read actually to switch gears is the husband's Secret by lean morard I did not like this book to put it lightly it was not a favorite of mine I disliked this one even more than I disliked bill little eyes Okay so this one is more interesting on the surface because we have three women we're seeing how their lives intersect one woman her husband is cheating on her so she takes her young son and flies to Sydney to live with her mom while while she is there she enrolls her son into this Catholic school and she kind of gets involved a little bit in like this secret I guess that's going on let me tell you the other women's points of view so and kind of understand what's going on there's also another woman whose husband travels a lot and she finds a letter addressed to her in her husband's things and it says something like to Cecilia in the event of my death and she's like um what the is this and she asks him about it and he says please don't open that and it's a whole thing and we're like okay what is the husband's secret hence the title of the book and then we have Rachel who is kind of going through it a little bit because her son and daughter-in-law and Grandson are going to be moving to the states and after the murder of her 17-year-old daughter many years ago she rightfully doesn't really like being apart from her family like she just wants to enjoy the time she has with the people around her her husband is deceased as well so it's like her whole family is basically leaving her anyway all of these three women's lives intersect because of the husband's secret I won't lie like I didn't know what the husband's secret would be and I guess once it was revealed I was like oh okay that makes a lot of sense and now I understand how the women are connected but I didn't like the sort of auxiliary sort of accessory moments of the story namely the woman who gets cheated on okay she gets cheated on by her husband and her husband is around with her cousin her cousin who is like her best friend AKA sister like they're homies and they all kind of work together at this company that they founded and they've been having an emotional affair for about a year they haven't been sleeping together but an emotional affair after the cousin loses a lot of weight and is now beautiful in the eyes of her cousin there were so many things about this book that I just didn't like I didn't like the ending of this book I didn't really like the message of this book but I especially didn't like the enormous amount of fat phobia good God it was painful to read I was already kind of like having a bad body image couple of days and reading this book was incredibly I hate to say triggering but basically Fat's not a bad word right but it depends on the context and it depends on how it's used and the way that I believe her name is Tess was just constantly throwing out that word and saying like oh I always thought my cousin would be pretty if she lost all this weight oh you know she's so disgusting but like her eyes are so beautiful what the are you going on about you sound insane and like a total that wasn't the word I was going to say but we're trying to keep it PG is I hated this book and it's for that list video that I'm doing in March so I'm talking about the books that I'm reading as I go in these wrap-ups I hated it two stars let's move the on okay three books that were all kind of mid okay I hate to I hate to be that person but we got to do it love redesigned by Lauren Asher this one let me down I'm so sad about it it was about Julian and Dalia Julian ends up buying this Victorian Mansion in his hometown and he is going to fix it up him and his construction company and who has recently come to town but his college Crush Dalia Dalia ended up dating Julian's roommate Oliver Dalia and Oliver have recently parted ways because of some of the details of the prap that he put forth before they got married or were going to get married they didn't end up getting married dollia is kind of upset her and Julian team up to kind of work on this house together because Dalia had a TV show with her ex where she did like interior design so yeah they're going to team up on this Victorian Mansion together that wasn't really much of the story to be honest though was them like teaming up this book I guess was unlike forget me not because you do have less emphasis on the thing that the book's actually supposed to be which is the design portion of the book um and more I guess relationship development I had a couple issues with this book my main one is that at the beginning of the story you need to play the groundwork I think for what character growth is going to take place right we have our heroine who is reeling from the news that she got which is that she is infertile which that's a thing that I'm going to talk about later that really pissed me off but she's dealing with infertility which hey been there done that not fun but she's unwilling to sort of like even say in her her internal dialogue what she's dealing with and so it always just gets kind of pushed to the Wayside pushed to the back and it's like okay sure you're going to get in this romantic relationship that's not going to heal you though you need to deal with the things that you have going on so that was kind of annoying and then same with Julian he was mad at Dalia because of the way that they had a kiss in college and then she ended up dating his roommate okay looks bad I guess Julian's dealing with his I guess resentment towards Dalia but like not really internally and so it makes for kind of a weird Romance when you know these characters have baggage but they're unwilling to really talk about it until like the 70% Mark of the book and I'm not saying they need to spill their G to their hero or heroin but we need to know as an audience what they're dealing with so that we can watch them grow from it otherwise it's just boring also I don't think that the way that they handled their relationship was great I didn't love that they were hooking up so much and not talking about their feelings I don't know that's just like a personal issue of mine the biggest issue no it's not the biggest issue but it was something that I really didn't enjoy was the handling of do's infertility as someone with infertility I'm not sensitive necessarily to it being in books I just wanted to be handled correctly and Dalia's diagnosis is not dominish tarian Reserve or endometriosis or PC or really anything that could actually cause you to not be able to have children she took a genetic test that told her that she is a carrier for a recessive gene I made sure to go back and look in the book to make sure that that's what she was talking about then that's kind of what I've gathered correct me if I'm wrong but that's pretty much what it said and she doesn't want to pass on whatever she has to her child now if you know anything about being a carrier for recessive gene that means that your partner also has to be a carrier for that same recessive gene for your child to have a 25% chance of having that genetic disorder and you know what could potentially solve that for you IVF I'm not saying everyone needs to do IVF or that it is not valid to be concerned about being a carrier for something that's not like a diagnosis of infertility and correct me like correct me if I'm wrong I don't want to invalidate anyone I'm not saying that that's not a totally valid thing or totally valid reason to do IVF but that doesn't mean that you were incapable of having a child and I'm not saying you like shouldn't grow your family a different way if you feel so compelled but I just don't know that that's like what I would be using if I were an author to say that my character has infertility I don't know I don't want to offend anybody right I'm not saying these things aren't valid or that you shouldn't be concerned if you're a carrier for something if you want to be concerned that's fine but but that doesn't mean that you can't have a kid two stars didn't enjoy that very much or did I give it three stars I don't know it was fine it was a fine book it just like wasn't a favorite book it doesn't matter what the reading is really let's talk about don't want you like a best friend by Emma Albin this is a historical romance that looks like a ya and it kind of felt like ya even though I think this is supposed to be an adult romance books about Beth and Gwen Beth's mom has recently put it on Beth's shoulders that she needs to get married right she needs to a rich man so that they're not destitute because the dad died when she's out in society she meets this girl named Gwen and Gwen is fabulous she's blonde and she doesn't give a about finding a man because her father who is single is isn't encouraging her to necessarily and there's a big difference between having a single parent who is a dad versus a mom right in historical times so Gwen doesn't feel compelled she can kind of live laugh love her life away and Beth and Gwen team up basically because they're like wait neither of us want to get married and our parents seem to have a past together what if we parent trapped them and then we wouldn't have to marry isn't that fabulous okay and through this process they get close and through this process Gwen makes out with Beth because she's like I actually have the hots for you and I don't I don't like guys at all and Beth's like this is actually pretty tight we definitely need a Parent Trap our parents and I believe they succeed and they live happily ever after except for it was just not really that The Parent Trap aspect of this book was compelling but so much time was spent on it that I don't think enough time was spent on Beth and Gwen's relationship development it's like Gwen discovers that she likes Beth makes out with her and then Beth's like oh my God wait yes yes let's get together and it didn't feel like a natural progression of where their relationship was I just felt like the characters felt pretty immature too it just like really wasn't for me which is such a bummer because I had such a banger of a safic romance to read this month I was really hoping that this one would be another one that I could recommend like wholeheartedly and readily but it just didn't work for me this is this author's debut so maybe more of her books in the future will be more well suited for what I'm into but this just like wasn't wasn't executed in the way that I like and then lastly a book that I read for my patreon book club my monthly book club was the breakup Tour by Emily wiberly an Austin siegeman broka said it right the first time which never happens this book's about our two main characters Riley and Max Riley is kind of a stand in for Taylor Swift this book is dedicated to swifties so it's pretty clear that Riley is supposed to be a standin for Taylor and she writes a breakup album each song dedicated to a different man now the men are not named but everyone can kind of guess which song is about which person and she recently just got a divorce from a guy who she had been with for not very long like 3 months I think and everyone assumes that the best track off of this album is about that guy but it's actually about her College relationship she really wants to I guess throw people off of her scent not even throw people off her scent but like correct the I guess misinformation so she contacts Max who is her College sweetheart and she's like hey would you come on tour with me and we can like sing longingly into each other's eyes or like you can play piano and I'll sing into your eyes and people will assume this is about you because it is about you and initially he's like no but he wants to I suppose prove to his family that like his life isn't pathetic because he really only dreams of like taking care of this retirement community I guess that his parents own and like are retiring from I don't know they're like your life's pathetic please please go on tour with this woman and so he does this one I really wanted to like I love Taylor Swift obv obviously and I really love the idea of a rockstar romance most Rockstar romances I with heavily this one I think was kind of a fail from the beginning everything just felt very flat and emotionless which is not really what you want from a romance I just didn't connect with the writing which is odd because I felt like the writing in the first book from this author Duo was just so visceral and so emotional and in this book I didn't really feel that way I felt very disconnected from the characters and their emotions and that was definitely furthered by the fact that I don't think Max and Riley really had a lot of on page time together I've said it once and I'll say it a million times second chance romances are incredibly challenging because you're trying to convince me that two characters who have a past should be together in the future or in the present you need to give me really compelling flashback chapters and or you need to give me really convincing present day reasons why they should be together and I just didn't feel like any of those reasons were present sure they went on tour together but most of the book just felt like a lot of filler and a lot of fluff there was no fun banter between the two of them which I felt like was a missed opportunity I actually think that this book could have been better and more interesting if Riley had like met someone let's say in college and spent like a a couple of days with them and didn't really get to know them and they were kind of like a wh if situation you know and then she asked that person to come on tour and then she got to know them on tour and figure out that this is like true love instead they just assume that it's true love because they've been together before and even though they've been separated by a decade like they should still be together that doesn't really make sense to me you know I'd love to believe that love conquers all and I guess in theory that could work but I just don't really understand how their personalities gelled together there were no conversations had by these two characters like really ever except for him trying to convince her that she that love can last just wasn't was not what I wanted it to be I think I'd give this like two or three stars it was not the worst thing I've ever read motionless romance is like never going to be a five star I think we can all agree on that so those are the books that I read in the month of January as you can see it was sort of a mixed bag again some of the books that I didn't talk to youall about in this video were also a mixed bag some were five star summer two stars I've had an interesting reading month but overall it feels hopeful like I'm excited for this year ahead I'm excited to see what other genres I can explore I'm doing a video in February where I read from a genre that I like never read from so I'm very excited and looking forward to that that I'm just excited and I hope you are too let me know in the comments down below what your favorite books of January were I'm always looking for stuff to add to my TBR I'm really looking to stay on Pace with my reading challenge for the year as well for a few days there the amount of books read for me was the same as the day that it was so like 26 books on the 26th day of January and I want to get back to that cuz it makes me feel good okay so if you have any like amazing Five Star reads that I just like have to read let me know but thanks so much for watching this video I love you so much and I'll see you in the next one\n"