I'm gonna wrap this vlog up in a boring way so I will do that tomorrow and then I'll edit and upload this video. It's a Sunday, I really should have done this like before. This video is getting posted but um I'm gonna finish this and I'll be back okay.

So last night I finished Treasure and I have to say I think this is my favorite book that I've read for this whole video. Which is so interesting since this is a book that I didn't intend to read for this video. I was supposed to read How to Find a Princess, and yeah this was just a very happy little surprise.

I am going to give all of the credit though to Minerva from Minerva Reads. This is a book that was on my radar because of her. A lot of my sapphic romance radar is all based on Minerva's goodreads. I feel like I'm constantly finding stuff that I'm interested in reading because of her. So I'll leave a link to her channel down below if you want some more good sapphic recommendations.

But Treasure was just so satisfying. Like I have not read a novella that feels that complete in such a long time. I want to say this was probably a little longer than a lot of novellas but it had everything that I personally want. It had a satisfying romance, it had really good smut, and everything was just perfect. Like there's no I don't have any complaints about it. There wasn't anything that I really would have changed.

And when the story concluded it felt like it was in a very healthy place. I don't know. I just feel like with novellas you either get just a lot of smut and no story or you get a story that doesn't have like a good conclusive ending. And in this book, you totally did. So 10 out of 10. Like it was so good. And um probably my favorite novella I've read this year in general but definitely my favorite book that I've read for this particular vlog.

So if you're looking for a good sapphic novella please pick up Treasure. It was so good. But with that, I am finished with this video. I have read five and a half um sapphic stories and I've had such a good time doing this. I want to do this again hopefully soon and or just do a better job at like sprinkling in some queer reads into my regular reading.

Umm I feel like I've done a pretty decent job this year at reading a little bit more diversely but I have definitely been slacking um in the queer story department. So I definitely need to kind of pick that up if you want any more kind of sapphic recommendations I'll leave a couple in the description down below.

I have done this video before. This is like my first one I read five videos it was like a female-female romance uh wreck video and I ended up privating that one because I just wasn't super happy with the way that I spoke about certain things. So I'm just gonna leave like the recommendations from that video in the description.

Basically, I privated it because I was super focused back in 2019 on making sure that everything was own voices and I think that that was a little bit harmful because I don't think that people necessarily have to be openly queer to be able to write queer stories but I do feel like it was a little limiting the way that I was like speaking about the own voices component of the books.

So I just don't talk about books like that anymore. So I just didn't want that to like be on my channel but I definitely stand by the recommendations still. So I will also leave in the description of this video a couple of posts from Becky Albertalli. I feel like she has made some really good informative like graphics i guess you could say on how we speak about uh queerness and stories.

And it's interesting to look at. I feel like a lot of the discourse over the past couple of years has been about you know ensuring that we read only own voices stories but when it comes to queer books that's a little bit limiting because it can be kind of gatekeeping and it also forces queer people to come out maybe before they're ready.

She does a really good job at addressing some of those like questions and critiques people have of queer books that seem to be authored by like straight people. So anyway, I just thought it was interesting or something that's been like on my mind and is part of the reason I provided my video. You know like I don't want to contribute to that gatekeeping all of that.

I had a really good time making this video and I hope you guys maybe got some good recommendations from it. But I love you all so much. Thanks so much for watching and until next Sunday you\\n

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel today i'm going to be doing another i read 5 video and this time i'm going to be reading 5 sapphic romances super excited to be doing this i feel like i have been slowly collecting a list of women love women female female sapphic stories that i have just been dying to read and while i could just pepper them into other reading vlogs i wanted to have them in one place so if you were on the lookout for a really good female female wlw romance you could find them all in one place so in this video i'm going to be reading a few different books some worked out for me some didn't full disclosure i read all of these already and i don't know it's just gonna be a fun time reading some sapphic goodness so i ended up actually reading six books because one of these books was a dnf and i just wanted to make sure that there were at least five books that i fully completed in this video uh so let me just let you know what we're going to be reading first up we have one last stop by casey mcquisten how could i do a sapphic reading vlog and not include this book i was highly anticipating this book and uh you can hear all my thoughts about it in this vlog next up we have tristick's venom by penelope douglas also a book that was hotly anticipated by me and apparently by y'all too because i've gotten comments on almost every video that i've posted since this book has come out asking where the reading vlog is for this book and uh it's right here next up we have the hellions waltz by olivia wait this is one again that was really anticipated by me i think i put this in my most anticipated reads video for 2021 and honestly i am so excited to share my thoughts about it with you next we have how to find a princess by alyssa cole this was so exciting to me because we've got a sort of like bodyguard romance situation and we also have like a anastasia retelling going on so i had to read that one for this video then we have treasure by rebecca weatherspoon this is obviously a sapphic novella it is smutty it is fun and i will tell you all about it in this video i know how many times can i say that and then lastly we have it being hospitable by mika james this is another smutty novella i included two novellas in this video because i've been reading a lot more smudgy novellas and what better place to put them than in a romance reading vlog right so without further ado let's get into the vlog portion of this video and you can find out all my thoughts on these safik wlw ff reads okay so we're starting the vlog out in my car because it's sunday in the suburbs which means everybody is mowing their goddamn lawn so i decided to hop in my car to update y'all on trist six venom and i am about 12 percent and i don't know how i feel to be honest with you i definitely want to attempt to read this all in one day and give y'all my thoughts and feelings as i go but this book is not what i expected and i'm a little bit sad about it it's not terrible or anything it's just not the format that i thought it was going to be if that makes sense so this story is an enemies to lovers story about clay and olivia clay is kind of the little rich girl has a bad relationship with her parents you know like poor little rich girl kind of situation she is captain of sports team i cannot remember if it was like field hockey lacrosse whatever she is the captain of the team that olivia is also on olivia's from the wrong side of the tracks she lives with her like five older brothers they live in this like kind of i want to say swamp area but it's in florida they live in this like little area with a bunch of other people who are a little bit poorer and clay bullies olivia that's kind of the story so far um where to begin this story is just like strangely set up i think compared to other books by penelope douglas this one i would say definitely tries to throw you in headfirst and i don't think that's necessarily a terrible technique to have especially if you're going to kind of reveal things as the story goes along but i feel like we were given very little context going into this book about clay and olivia's relationship and why they're attracted to each other now they haven't gotten together yet in any sort of like sexual sense but we can tell there's that sexual tension there and both of the characters seem to have these feelings for each other that they don't want to admit because you know they hate each other but we're not given any background on that if that makes sense like i feel like i was thrown into the middle of a story or at least like the fifth or sixth chapter of a story i'm kind of like okay but why like why is clay such an to olivia like i'm not really understanding the context i guess for this kind of rivalry we have found out i guess that olivia wants to go to dartmouth and get a theater degree that her brothers don't really want her to get because you know whatever and then we have clay who is just trying to kind of like get by be a good girl she's got her debutante ball coming up which is like a thing i guess again i'm not really understanding why the characters a are attracted to each other and b like where the rivalry is really coming from i don't know if i'm doing this book any justice or if i'm making any sense but i will say i'm just i'm left feeling strange reading this book i think that's also trying to do too much at the same time so we have an interaction between olivia and this boy at school who's like into clay and he says that he will allow olivia to have the starring role in this play if she has sex in front of him with another girl and i don't know if it's implied that that girl is going to be clay or not but that's a deal that is kind of at play we also we're finding out like 12 into this book that there are developers trying to develop land and they're gonna come and take olivia's swamp from her and her family so she needs to fight that somehow too i don't know i really i um i don't know how many times can i say i don't know i'm not eloquent but i just know that this book is not exactly what i wanted i wanted more context i wanted it to be more angsty enemies to lovers granted i'm not that far into the story i should withhold my judgment it's just not the way that i wanted the story to open i feel like credence had a similarly strange opening but again we got more context for i can't even remember her name the main character in that book we have more context for why she was the way she was why she was interacting with the men the way that she was because of stuff that went on with her family and i guess technically you could say that we're getting some context for olivia and clay but not actually their relationship and like why they hate each other so how many times can i say the same thing over and over uh i think i am done updating y'all but i am looking forward to where the story goes because i'm already getting hints that the sexual chemistry is there between olivia and clay like regardless of whether i feel like i understand their relationship at all i do think the sex is gonna be hot which like that's really what i'm looking for here i just feel like so often with female female romances we get like very soft like you know and i don't want that i don't want that this week i'm gonna see if we can avoid that this week hopefully penelope douglas will deliver it this week and or today i am gonna head home i'm gonna continue reading i'll update y'all as i read we're gonna have a great day together okay i'm gonna keep it brief because my camera is apparently about to die but i'm not liking this book i'm 50 in and i'm so disappointed i was so excited for a female female romance from penelope douglas my queen but it seems like her latest few releases are just not really my cup of tea and i think i have pinpointed exactly why that is it's not because she goes too far with the enemies to lovers or bully aspect of romance i actually don't find this to be like that abhorrent in terms of like bullying although i know that a lot of reviews said they were really turned off by that for me i don't like all of the extra that she is adding to romances now i know some people really like a lot of plot and a lot of side characters and a lot of other things to sink your teeth into that's just not really my thing and i think that's why punk 57 worked so well for me in comparison to this book it was two characters who were really really into each other had this bullying situation going on but it was really about them like thinking back to that story i can't think of a whole lot of side characters besides like maybe a best friend here or there this story is just so heavy on the savior town aspect on the you know trying to get into the right college aspect hiding the romance from the friends and having this like really douchey guy being a love interest kind of not really for clay there's just so many parts to this story that i'm just not liking and when it comes to you know the sex scenes and the chemistry between clay and olivia like that is definitely there and i think as a romance it's successful but as a story that i would revisit it's not and that's so sad it's been really difficult to push myself to read this book i think it's a little bit on the long side for what it is i just find myself wanting to skim unless it's like an intimate moment between clay and olivia like i just really don't care about olivia's brothers i don't care about clay's home life and that really sucks to say because i was so excited for this book i think i'm gonna finish it at some point probably not immediately i was hoping to do this vlog like in the course of a week and that's just not happening right now i have too much other going on and on top of that i just like have not been super compelled to pick this up which is so sad because you know i really do like penn's writing but you know not every story can be for everyone and i am assured that i can find a really good female female romance in this vlog even if it's not this book i really thought this would be the one but it's shaping up to not be that way and that's okay i'm gonna go ahead and finish this up at some point and i will be back and let you know when i do and then we can start on some other female female romances but i just thought i would check in with you now so i can get this book over with at some point i finished for six venom two weeks ago and i was wearing a different shirt when i was actually trying to tell y'all how i felt about it but i i can't find the clip so i'm gonna try my best to tell y'all why i did not like this book but to be honest with you it's been it's been a second it's been a second since i finished it and i've kind of forgotten about it so okay everything that i said previously stands i do think that in many ways the romance went in a direction that i enjoyed however i didn't care about any of the other that was happening and i did end up skimming a lot of this book which i just don't do with penelope douglas books so i feel like i'm pretty disappointed that i had to do that i honestly couldn't really tell you what happened for the like savior town aspects of the story yeah i don't know i just felt like this book was just a little too all over the place for me and i feel like it really could have used a little bit more editing and not that the writing was terrible or that there were like a ton of grammatical mistakes i just feel like the plot of this book wasn't particularly tight i think she was trying to do too many things at once and it just didn't work for me and honestly some of the conflicts in the book being wrapped up too quickly also kind of frustrated me like clay being worried that her mom would be mad if she found out that clay liked girls and then the mom wasn't even mad at all okay so why was clay homophobic towards olivia then make it make sense i don't know i didn't like it i didn't like it it sucks that sucks i i don't know what else to say i've had a couple of y'all comment on my most recent video asking when this vlog is coming and i like i'm a little bit scared to share it but that's just like my honest opinions and if you liked this book i am so happy for you and i think a lot of people will like this book especially if you like a good bully romance and you like a full cast of characters i think you're gonna like this i just personally prefer a little bit more focus on the romance and just a little bit more coherence in storytelling so i have started another book that i will briefly tell you about and then i'm gonna go um weed my front beds just homeowner things i'll probably update y'all out there uh when i get further into this book but i'm about 20 into i can't remember the name of the book but it's a historical romance and it is called the hellions waltz i talked about this as one of my like most anticipated romances of the year and i did highly anticipate it and i am enjoying it i can't remember the name of either the characters because that's where i'm at you know today today's been an interesting day just all around the story is about this one girl i want to say her name sophie she is the daughter of a piano maker and she personally tunes the pianos but her dad recently got swindled so they have to kind of move to a small town so they can kind of like escape their past and escape this like embarrassment and hopefully move on from this and while she is there she meets a lady who she might have a thing for who she might think is cute hearing her internal thoughts about this woman i think it's maddie i want to say sophie and maddie i could be completely wrong on these names she meets this woman and this woman is trying to unionize like weavers she's a weaver herself i believe like silk weaving and she wants to break up this monopoly i think it's just this one guy who is very much like he has a hold on the industry where they're at our girl is not happy with this she's trying to do some shady to make this union happen right so she's kind of like a robin hood esque person but our girl sophie she has a thing for this girl because like oh she's cute and i like her her smokey accent like she's got a great voice but i think she's a swindler and my dad got swindled and i try to avoid that so i don't know how to feel about this lady that's kind of where we're at and i'm liking it i'm liking the kind of bisexual representation pansexual representation we might be getting from miss sophie and then i think i mean i think the other girl likes girls i mean it's a female female romance like they both like each other right but i like it i like a good historical romance and i like it when it's female female i liked the first book in the series and this one's pretty good i will say if you read the first one and you didn't like how technical it was with like the astronomy you might not like this one because it is a little bit technical with the weaving i guess and like the music side of things uh it's clear that our author definitely does research into the industries or the kind of like topics of interest of the women in the stories so if you're not interested in what the women are interested in it might bore you i learned a lot more about weaving that i really cared to learn but i'm willing to overlook it because the book's cute so i'm not gonna lie i don't know where the story's going i'm 25 in but hayden is not home right now so my goal is to finish this story and then read a some muddy little novella that everybody seems to love it is called being hospitable by mika james and i'm excited about it ever like all of my friends have given this one five stars so i think what i'm gonna do is just update y'all when i'm finished with this book and just let you know whether i recommend it or not and then we can read some smut together that's what we're gonna do i know it seems like i don't really know what's going on and i think that's that is true the intro is going to make it seem like i know what's going on but just just know that i don't usually i have the books picked out before i start a video this time i thought i did and then i found some stuff for my library that i was interested in reading so i'm kind of just making this up as i go along all right i'm gonna go okay so i finished the hellions waltz i know i said that i was gonna update y'all after i finished as i was weeding or after i weeded my beds but i looked disgusting and sweaty so i'm back nearly a week later to tell you how i felt about it and frankly i thought it was pretty goddamn hot this book was unexpectedly smutty had just such a refreshing air about it now i have read historical fiction in the past with female female relationships and as much as i want to love them obviously they're kind of steeped in oppression because you know women couldn't really be together back in the day and i'm not saying that that was entirely not present in this book but it was much less present than it has been in other historical romances i've read and i appreciate that so we have sophie and maddie finally getting together as the story carries on and i loved how open they were with each other about their sexual desires i loved how even though sophie is supposed to be this like inhibited character with a lot of you know pent-up emotion she is ready to tell maddie what she wants from her and i found that really hot i also liked that sophie's family was like pretty cool with her dating a woman like there just wasn't really a huge issue there which i thought was really cool and i liked how the kind of villainy was uncovered in the story i liked that everything kind of came to a nice close at the end frankly i think if you're looking for something with really good sex scenes and you've always wanted to read historical romance with a female female or woman loves woman sort of relationship i think you should give this one a go honestly 10 out of 10 i really enjoyed this one i will say the plot was not exactly the most groundbreaking thing ever and i did skim a little bit of it just to get to the hot scenes but overall it was a success i've moved you into my boudoir because we're about to get smutty i have just started being hospitable by mika james and already twenty percent and i am into it very into it this is giving me all of the best friend's little sister realness in a female female setting and why is it just so much better i think i talked about in my tropes i hate video that i really don't like brothers best friend romances and this is not a brother's best friend romance it's a best friend's sister romance but similar concept like those always kind of irk me this one's good though it is instantly good it is instantly sexy we're already getting the sexy vibes from the very beginning and i'm into it so our main character kiki is a very successful career woman her best friend's little sister has just graduated college has a kick-ass internship and needs to stay with kiki for a while kiki has always kind of had a thing for charlotte in a i know she's straight we're probably never gonna get together sort of way but charlie has a thing for kiki as well and kiki is just unaware of it i think this is going to be kind of a forced proximity sexy little thing going on i don't know no sex has happened yet but like i i'm excited and i think i'm going to try to give you as many updates as i can in the next like 40 minutes of this audiobook it's very short but i've already invested and i'm ready to see where this thing goes okay i know i said i was gonna update as i read for it being hospitable but it turned out not to be the kind of story that i needed to give constant updates on and i think that makes a lot of sense given how short it is i just expected it to be like over the top and have a lot of things that i needed to comment on but that just wasn't the case which isn't to say again that this book wasn't hot or good because it definitely was let's talk about it i think that this was one of the more successful smutty novellas that i've read i feel like i am finally finding somebody at novellas that really have captured my interest i think a lot of the ones that i've read in the past like jessica kane and those kinds of ones they don't really do it for me like they're just they're not complete stories and i mean i know it's challenging to develop a good romance in a short amount of time but i feel like i'm finally finding ones that i like i've been really reading a lot of alexandria house lately and i love her stuff so this was i would say similar in that like there was definitely backstory but there was a lot of smuttiness but the conclusion felt like satisfying enough i don't know it was good i liked seeing charlie and kiki's dynamic unfold and get to see them kind of explore some of their passionate interests if you will together i don't know what else to say that i'm being very vague and probably not doing this book justice but i would recommend it i got it at my library which kind of surprised me but if you're lucky hopefully it is available at your library as well i would i don't know i don't usually rate smut but i think i would give this like three and a half or four stars i will say the one thing that i wanted more of was a more like conclusive ending with regard to charlie's brother because like that was supposed to be the conflict but it didn't really feel like a conflict other than that that like i mean it was a really really good read and i understand why so many people like this one so the next thing that i'm going to read is how to find a princess via lissa cole i'm really excited about this one i've heard kind of mixed reviews about it but it is like an anastasia retelling which sounds good as and i'm very into so i'm excited about this one it's a full-length book so i will give you updates as i read but that's what i'm starting in on tomorrow and i'm just ready to keep reading sapphic goodness you know okay hopefully i can avoid interruption by my many cats less excited than when i last talked to y'all about this book i just feel like the characters are a little bit strange okay so the story is about makeda who recently lost with her job and her girlfriend and she has had to move into her grandmother's bed and breakfast i believe and she's just kind of struggling right now she doesn't really know where she wants the direction of her life to go and she is kind of rudely interrupted or woken up one day by a agent i guess we're gonna call her beznaria and she is trying to find the long-lost um heir to this throne the throne of her country and she has always or her family has always protected the the throne and protected the people who were on the throne and so you know there's been no royal i think for a while or i don't know this is kind of a confusing story i'm not gonna lie beznauria ends up seeking out makeda and it's like hey i think you're the princess your grandmother said that she thinks that you're royal and i came to follow up on that claim and so it's their kind of romance i guess i think my issue with this book is that makeda is characterized at the beginning of this book as being kind of a doormat she has been over by every girlfriend she's ever had she lost her job because she was not someone who was good at standing up for herself and yet she is kind of a to bezanaria at the beginning of the book she has no desire in being a princess she is very grumpy this is giving me grumpy sunshine vibes and yet i feel like the wrong character is grumpy i think it would have made more sense to have beznaria be kind of grumpy and like not believe that makeda is actually the princess and then makeda just be kind of happy to be there i don't know i just i'm not liking their relationship dynamic or the characters i think i like beznaria i think her personality and um attitude is really nice like i like her uh character but i don't like the personality traits of them in regards to a romance together if that makes any sense i don't think it does but i'm kind of struggling right now with this book because it's a really slow paced and and b i don't really feel like these characters fit well together i just don't understand um the characterization i guess especially of makita so i'm not loving this and i was reading some reviews which i should really stop doing as i'm like in the middle of books although i will say i don't think it sways my opinion um either way i think a lot of people didn't like this book because of the pacing and i'm feeling that same way too i'm not feeling the chemistry between the characters and nothing's really happening and this is a pretty long book so i don't know i'm hoping that it kind of like picks up the 50 mark maybe maybe not i'll try to update you at 50 and then at the end but this book is due like very soon so i need to get this read i'll try to update you as i can though um but yeah i'm a little i'm a little sad okay i'm 50 in and i think i'm gonna dnf this book i feel like life is too short to read books that i don't really enjoy i feel like if i continued on with this book it would probably end up being a two star read i'm just not gelling with these two characters i feel like i'm really just in the mood for a delightful rom-com and i'm not getting rom-com vibes from this it's not super serious but it's also not funny i don't like that there's this kind of forced proximity situation but the characters are increasingly at each other's throats i just it's not it's not really a vibe it's not something i'm enjoying i'm not saying this is a bad book or that it's not a book that you might enjoy but i don't think this is like the strongest romance out there so not loving it and i think it's just time for me to dnf it also let's do back at my library very soon so maybe i'll just like return it early and let someone get a head start on it i do think however i am going to read two books after this one so that it will be like five full books that i have read to you know completion that sounds weird i want to read five full books i don't want to have like a dnf in here like i mean i dnf'd this book but i'm gonna i'm gonna compensate for it and i'm gonna read like a smutty novella after i end up reading one less stop by casey mcquest and that's the one that i'm gonna start in on next i'm sad that this one didn't work out for me but you know what it's fine we're moving on okay so i am 25 into one last stop by casey mcquisten and i'm actually really enjoying this one i didn't really know what to expect my one of my close friends got an arc of this book and immediately told me that it wasn't as good as red white and royal blue and that they were really disappointed with it and i've heard very mixed reviews since the book has been published so i had no idea what to expect going into this and whether or not this was going to be something that really did it for me and i'm not sure that it has yet i mean i'm only 25 in but so far i am really enjoying jane and august so august is new to new york and she is trying to kind of figure out her life she has transferred from college to college trying to find her place because she's never really felt at home she has an interesting relationship with her mom her mom is trying to solve the cold case of her uncle's murder i believe or disappearance disappearance this has really bogged down the relationship between august and her mom like her mom is very much constantly trying to research constantly trying to get august into it august is like i don't have any friends because of this like i need to make a life for myself so she goes out on her own and she's landed in new york she is going to a college brooklyn college is that the name of it trying to figure out her life and in the meantime she is living with some strangers who she quickly befriends i would say that's the strongest part of the book so far i love august's relationship with the three people she lives with i believe it's two guys and a girl and they all just have really fun personalities and i like seeing like a good found family in a story i feel like casey mcquestion is really good at writing that you definitely have that in red white and royal blue and in this book you definitely have that as well we haven't gotten super far into the romance component of this book yet which i'm fine with i'd like a good slow burn and that's kind of how red white and royal blue was as well we have august writing the subway every day to get to her job but she memorizes the route of this girl that she's into her name's jane and she's had a couple of interactions with her and honestly that's pretty much the long and short of it at this moment we have gotten to i believe the end of the synopsis of the book not that i've read the synopsis of the book i just kind of know what it's about given all of the buzz about it you know the story is about this girl who is from the past jane is not from you know present day and i guess the subway is the only place she lives manifests i don't really know we haven't actually gotten the details yet but august has figured out that jane is not from 2000 whatever and that is why she probably can't go on dates because august has asked jane out on dates before says yes and then says no or like she just never shows up that kind of thing it's interesting so far i liked the kind of research component that august did try to do a seance with her roommates she kind of thought that jane might be a vampire so i'm curious to see more interactions between the two of them because as of right now like i am invested in seeing where this relationship goes even though it's like at the very beginning stages so i do think that casey has been successful in the story and i'm liking it i'm liking it so far i feel like it's a lot easier to get into than how to find a princess was so i'm hoping it's smooth sailing ahead and that the romance is very like steamy and fun but i'll get y'all again at like 50 once i get further but so far so good okay so i'm at the 50 mark and one last stop by casey mcqueston and things have heated up quite a bit since we last spoke and i think i'm fully invested in this story which is so good to hear because i really just feel like both for this video and other videos that i'm working on right now i've been starting books getting really excited about them and then they sort of start to fall apart at the 50 mark which sucks because you were you know looking to become invested and you just can't uh but this one i am invested in i don't have much to say to be honest at this 50 mark but i am finally starting to see the fruits of the labor that august has put into getting to know jane and getting to like solve where she came from nothing satisfying and nothing that i will actually tell you because i don't want to spoil anything in this book but i will say that a certain sexual scene that happened on the subway was very sexy and i really appreciated it i was curious to see like what the steam levels would be for this book but i am not disappointed and it's funny i actually i'll address it here because i can you know i posted my six steamy summer romance recommendations video recently and i got a lot of replies from people saying that certain books weren't very steamy whatever and for me it's not about like how explicit the content is it's what feelings the book elicits in me a book could have like raunchy sex scene after raunchy sex scene and still not be steamy to me like that doesn't really i don't know determine how hot i think a book is but if a book is well crafted and gets you to like have that lead up and there's only like one sex scene in the book but the sex scene was like very anticipated and the payoff is hot like to me that's always going to trump a really smutty book that doesn't doesn't really um have the context there does that make sense i don't know this book i wouldn't say like the sex scene was super explicit or that there's going to be a ton of them but it felt appropriate it felt sexy and i'm enjoying the book so i'm in a good place i'm happy i'm gonna work on finishing this book though because i have other i have to do for other videos so i'll update y'all probably from my car later today when i'm done okay so i am not in my car and it is actually many days later but i am finished with one last stop by casey mcquisten i wanted some time away from reading this book to kind of evaluate my feelings and sum up all of the ways in which this book wasn't perfect for me but the longer i wait i feel like the less clear everything gets i did not dislike this book i just don't think it was a perfect romance for me i feel like if i were to rate it just based on gut feeling i'd probably give this book about three stars i do feel like it had a decently satisfying conclusion but some stuff that happened in the 75 mark pointed to other issues that i had throughout the book like it just kind of showed me hey you know those things you had an issue with they're gonna continue and this is why you are not gonna love this book so i'll try to articulate some of that right now i don't know that i'll do an excellent job i think my main issue with this book is that it is a book that happens in one particular location and while i love a good forced proximity trope it's not really a forced proximity book you just have a romance that's happening in one kind of stagnant place and while this does lead to some fun sexy times and some adventurous sex i just feel like the romance itself kind of needed a little bit more context maybe it's just me being a little bit too practical but the entire time i was reading i was considering the fact that august and jane like how are they actually gonna work in the real world when jane is from the 70s i just don't understand how they're going to work and we actually never really got to see that i don't want to spoil too much of the book but the majority of the story is spent on the subway and figuring out how to get jane off the subway and that's fantastic and i do think that it led to an interesting plot in that regard i just don't think that for a romance it really left me with any sort of feelings of yes this is going to work in the real world and i know that like august tried to educate jane on you know what 20 whatever this book is set in 2019 2020 whatever that looks like i don't know i don't know i just feel like it was a little bit too isolated for me i wanted more and in general i think i just wanted more romantic relationship development i really liked like i told y'all earlier those sex scenes i thought they were good i thought they were fun but i feel like there was a lot of insta love going on and on the other hand we had august who is trying to kind of figure out her life and she's growing as a person and i kind of wanted those two things to like intersect more and i don't fully feel like they did i don't know if i'm making any sense i think i'm just trying to like articulate exactly what didn't work and honestly sometimes that isn't entirely tangible sometimes you just have a feeling about a book and you're like this was good but it just like it wasn't my favorite and that's how i feel about this story it was solid it was good i think casey mcqueston is a kick-ass writer and i'm so excited to read their ya debut which just got announced but this story just wasn't perfect for me and that's okay um i do appreciate a lot of what this book did i really really like a lot of the queer history that it's baked in and i do think this is a worthwhile read for you just as a romance this wasn't like my perfect romance but let us carry on and finish this vlog off right with a smutty novella treasure by rebecca weatherspoon i am going to head downstairs probably and read it downstairs and i can update you as we go i know i didn't do that on being hospitable i'm hoping to actually do that on treasure have some fun okay so i am 10 into treasure and i'm really enjoying it it is already kind of heating up already kind of spicy which i guess one would expect given that this is a short sweaty novella it's about our two main characters alexis and treasure i think treasure's real name is trisha but alexis is going to a strip club with her sister for her sister's bachelorette party and alexis meets treasure and gets some private dances and things get very hot and heavy there's no sex that happens but you can tell that they're both kind of into each other honestly i expected for some reason the story to all take place in the course of a night that's not actually what happens only the first chapter is there this like bachelorette party scene and now we are taken into just like everyday life so i'll be interested to see like where the story goes i think that alexis is in college and she's younger than i thought that she was going to be i think she's like 19 or 20 maybe and i don't really know much about treasure slash i think trisha um i don't really know much about her life except for she is trying to pay for her tuition and also make sure that her kids are taken care of so i don't know i think there's gonna be a little bit more depth to the story than i had previously anticipated so so far so good i'm enjoying it the first chapter was really hot so if that's any indication i think that we are in for a good time i'll keep you posted oh do you want to come film with me hi okay i don't know why this is so orange but i'm like 50 into treasure and this is not at all what i expected but in the best possible way it is what i would consider a smiley novella kind of but it's so much more than that it is about trisha and alexis and their relationship so i think i kind of hinted at it but both of the girls are in college and they actually end up in the same computer science class and that is how their relationship kind of like carries on and it's definitely more of a noodle story than i thought it would be i really thought that like i said this was just going to be smutty one night stand novella and it's definitely not that so alexis is dealing with some mental health issues she has a history of self-harm and she is trying to make a fresh start for herself in college and part of that is kind of falling into this relationship with georgia she's like really into her and then trisha i don't think i set her story up correctly but she is a stripper she is also trying to get her degree i think in computer science the money that i i said that she was trying to like save up for kids it's not for her own children it's for her mom's foster kid so she was like helping her mom i guess so they're both pretty young i think trish is 20 and alexis is 18 and honestly their relationship is just really wholesome i love the way the story is written i feel like it's not trying too hard and i feel like the text conversations and just the dialogue in general between tricia and alexis is really spot on and just like witty and fun and i'm loving it i don't this is really good unexpectedly good i mean i knew i would like it because a lot of my friends have given this book five stars but i was just expecting something completely different than what it is and i like that i love being surprised so i think i'm going to wrap this up and give y'all my final thoughts tomorrow morning i'm just getting kind of tired and i don't want to um like wrap this vlog up in a boring way so i will do that tomorrow and then i'll edit and upload this video it's a sunday i really should have done this like before this video is getting posted but um i'm gonna finish this and i'll be back okay so last night i finished treasure and i have to say i think this is my favorite book that i've read for this whole video which is so interesting since this is a book that i didn't intend to read for this video i was supposed to read how to find a princess and yeah this was just a very happy little surprise i am going to give all of the credit though to mina from mina reads this is a book that was on my radar because of her a lot of my sapphic romance radar is all based on mina's goodreads i feel like i'm constantly finding stuff that i'm interested in reading because of her so i'll leave a link to her channel down below if you want some more good sapphic recommendations but treasure was just so satisfying like i have not read a novella that feels that complete in such a long time i want to say this was probably a little longer than a lot of novellas but it had everything that i personally want it had a satisfying romance it had really good smut and everything was just perfect like there's no i don't have any complaints about it there wasn't anything that i really would have changed and when the story concluded it felt like it was in a very healthy place i don't know i just feel like with novellas you either get just a lot of smut and no story or you get a story that doesn't have like a good conclusive ending and in this book you totally did so 10 out of 10 like it was so good and um probably my favorite novella i've read this year in general but definitely my favorite book that i've read for this particular vlog so if you're looking for a good sapphic novella please pick up treasure it was so good but with that i am finished with this video i have read five and a half um sapphic stories and i've had such a good time doing this i want to do this again hopefully soon and or just do a better job at like sprinkling and sapphic reads in my regular reading um that's definitely something that i need to work more on i feel like i've done a pretty decent job this year at reading a little bit more diversely but i have definitely been slacking um in the queer story department so i definitely need to kind of pick that up if you want any more kind of sapphic recommendations i'll leave a couple in the description down below i have done this video before this is like my first i read five video it was like a female female romance uh wreck video and i ended up privating that one because i just wasn't super happy with the way that i spoke about certain things so i'm just gonna leave like the recommendations from that video in the description basically i privated it because i was super focused back in 2019 on making sure that everything was own voices and i think that that was a little bit harmful because i don't think that people necessarily have to be openly queer to be able to write queer stories but i do feel like it was a little limiting the way that i was like speaking about the own voices component of the books so i just i don't i don't talk about books like that anymore so i just didn't want that to like be on my channel but i definitely stand by the recommendations still so i will also leave i'm reading a lot of things today i'll also leave in the description of this video a couple of posts from becky albertalli i feel like she has made some really good informative like graphics i guess you could say on how we speak about uh queerness and stories and it's interesting to look at i feel like a lot of the discourse over the past couple of years has been about you know ensuring that we read only own voices stories but when it comes to queer books that's a little bit limiting because it can be kind of gatekeeping and it also forces queer people to come out maybe before they're ready she does a really good job at addressing some of those like questions and critiques people have of queer books that seem to be authored by like straight people so anyway i just thought it was interesting or something that's been like on my mind and is part of the reason i provided my video you know like i don't want to contribute to that gatekeeping all of that to say i had a really good time making this video and i hope you guys maybe got some good recommendations from it but i love you all so much thanks so much for watching and until next sunday youhello welcome back to my channel today i'm going to be doing another i read 5 video and this time i'm going to be reading 5 sapphic romances super excited to be doing this i feel like i have been slowly collecting a list of women love women female female sapphic stories that i have just been dying to read and while i could just pepper them into other reading vlogs i wanted to have them in one place so if you were on the lookout for a really good female female wlw romance you could find them all in one place so in this video i'm going to be reading a few different books some worked out for me some didn't full disclosure i read all of these already and i don't know it's just gonna be a fun time reading some sapphic goodness so i ended up actually reading six books because one of these books was a dnf and i just wanted to make sure that there were at least five books that i fully completed in this video uh so let me just let you know what we're going to be reading first up we have one last stop by casey mcquisten how could i do a sapphic reading vlog and not include this book i was highly anticipating this book and uh you can hear all my thoughts about it in this vlog next up we have tristick's venom by penelope douglas also a book that was hotly anticipated by me and apparently by y'all too because i've gotten comments on almost every video that i've posted since this book has come out asking where the reading vlog is for this book and uh it's right here next up we have the hellions waltz by olivia wait this is one again that was really anticipated by me i think i put this in my most anticipated reads video for 2021 and honestly i am so excited to share my thoughts about it with you next we have how to find a princess by alyssa cole this was so exciting to me because we've got a sort of like bodyguard romance situation and we also have like a anastasia retelling going on so i had to read that one for this video then we have treasure by rebecca weatherspoon this is obviously a sapphic novella it is smutty it is fun and i will tell you all about it in this video i know how many times can i say that and then lastly we have it being hospitable by mika james this is another smutty novella i included two novellas in this video because i've been reading a lot more smudgy novellas and what better place to put them than in a romance reading vlog right so without further ado let's get into the vlog portion of this video and you can find out all my thoughts on these safik wlw ff reads okay so we're starting the vlog out in my car because it's sunday in the suburbs which means everybody is mowing their goddamn lawn so i decided to hop in my car to update y'all on trist six venom and i am about 12 percent and i don't know how i feel to be honest with you i definitely want to attempt to read this all in one day and give y'all my thoughts and feelings as i go but this book is not what i expected and i'm a little bit sad about it it's not terrible or anything it's just not the format that i thought it was going to be if that makes sense so this story is an enemies to lovers story about clay and olivia clay is kind of the little rich girl has a bad relationship with her parents you know like poor little rich girl kind of situation she is captain of sports team i cannot remember if it was like field hockey lacrosse whatever she is the captain of the team that olivia is also on olivia's from the wrong side of the tracks she lives with her like five older brothers they live in this like kind of i want to say swamp area but it's in florida they live in this like little area with a bunch of other people who are a little bit poorer and clay bullies olivia that's kind of the story so far um where to begin this story is just like strangely set up i think compared to other books by penelope douglas this one i would say definitely tries to throw you in headfirst and i don't think that's necessarily a terrible technique to have especially if you're going to kind of reveal things as the story goes along but i feel like we were given very little context going into this book about clay and olivia's relationship and why they're attracted to each other now they haven't gotten together yet in any sort of like sexual sense but we can tell there's that sexual tension there and both of the characters seem to have these feelings for each other that they don't want to admit because you know they hate each other but we're not given any background on that if that makes sense like i feel like i was thrown into the middle of a story or at least like the fifth or sixth chapter of a story i'm kind of like okay but why like why is clay such an to olivia like i'm not really understanding the context i guess for this kind of rivalry we have found out i guess that olivia wants to go to dartmouth and get a theater degree that her brothers don't really want her to get because you know whatever and then we have clay who is just trying to kind of like get by be a good girl she's got her debutante ball coming up which is like a thing i guess again i'm not really understanding why the characters a are attracted to each other and b like where the rivalry is really coming from i don't know if i'm doing this book any justice or if i'm making any sense but i will say i'm just i'm left feeling strange reading this book i think that's also trying to do too much at the same time so we have an interaction between olivia and this boy at school who's like into clay and he says that he will allow olivia to have the starring role in this play if she has sex in front of him with another girl and i don't know if it's implied that that girl is going to be clay or not but that's a deal that is kind of at play we also we're finding out like 12 into this book that there are developers trying to develop land and they're gonna come and take olivia's swamp from her and her family so she needs to fight that somehow too i don't know i really i um i don't know how many times can i say i don't know i'm not eloquent but i just know that this book is not exactly what i wanted i wanted more context i wanted it to be more angsty enemies to lovers granted i'm not that far into the story i should withhold my judgment it's just not the way that i wanted the story to open i feel like credence had a similarly strange opening but again we got more context for i can't even remember her name the main character in that book we have more context for why she was the way she was why she was interacting with the men the way that she was because of stuff that went on with her family and i guess technically you could say that we're getting some context for olivia and clay but not actually their relationship and like why they hate each other so how many times can i say the same thing over and over uh i think i am done updating y'all but i am looking forward to where the story goes because i'm already getting hints that the sexual chemistry is there between olivia and clay like regardless of whether i feel like i understand their relationship at all i do think the sex is gonna be hot which like that's really what i'm looking for here i just feel like so often with female female romances we get like very soft like you know and i don't want that i don't want that this week i'm gonna see if we can avoid that this week hopefully penelope douglas will deliver it this week and or today i am gonna head home i'm gonna continue reading i'll update y'all as i read we're gonna have a great day together okay i'm gonna keep it brief because my camera is apparently about to die but i'm not liking this book i'm 50 in and i'm so disappointed i was so excited for a female female romance from penelope douglas my queen but it seems like her latest few releases are just not really my cup of tea and i think i have pinpointed exactly why that is it's not because she goes too far with the enemies to lovers or bully aspect of romance i actually don't find this to be like that abhorrent in terms of like bullying although i know that a lot of reviews said they were really turned off by that for me i don't like all of the extra that she is adding to romances now i know some people really like a lot of plot and a lot of side characters and a lot of other things to sink your teeth into that's just not really my thing and i think that's why punk 57 worked so well for me in comparison to this book it was two characters who were really really into each other had this bullying situation going on but it was really about them like thinking back to that story i can't think of a whole lot of side characters besides like maybe a best friend here or there this story is just so heavy on the savior town aspect on the you know trying to get into the right college aspect hiding the romance from the friends and having this like really douchey guy being a love interest kind of not really for clay there's just so many parts to this story that i'm just not liking and when it comes to you know the sex scenes and the chemistry between clay and olivia like that is definitely there and i think as a romance it's successful but as a story that i would revisit it's not and that's so sad it's been really difficult to push myself to read this book i think it's a little bit on the long side for what it is i just find myself wanting to skim unless it's like an intimate moment between clay and olivia like i just really don't care about olivia's brothers i don't care about clay's home life and that really sucks to say because i was so excited for this book i think i'm gonna finish it at some point probably not immediately i was hoping to do this vlog like in the course of a week and that's just not happening right now i have too much other going on and on top of that i just like have not been super compelled to pick this up which is so sad because you know i really do like penn's writing but you know not every story can be for everyone and i am assured that i can find a really good female female romance in this vlog even if it's not this book i really thought this would be the one but it's shaping up to not be that way and that's okay i'm gonna go ahead and finish this up at some point and i will be back and let you know when i do and then we can start on some other female female romances but i just thought i would check in with you now so i can get this book over with at some point i finished for six venom two weeks ago and i was wearing a different shirt when i was actually trying to tell y'all how i felt about it but i i can't find the clip so i'm gonna try my best to tell y'all why i did not like this book but to be honest with you it's been it's been a second it's been a second since i finished it and i've kind of forgotten about it so okay everything that i said previously stands i do think that in many ways the romance went in a direction that i enjoyed however i didn't care about any of the other that was happening and i did end up skimming a lot of this book which i just don't do with penelope douglas books so i feel like i'm pretty disappointed that i had to do that i honestly couldn't really tell you what happened for the like savior town aspects of the story yeah i don't know i just felt like this book was just a little too all over the place for me and i feel like it really could have used a little bit more editing and not that the writing was terrible or that there were like a ton of grammatical mistakes i just feel like the plot of this book wasn't particularly tight i think she was trying to do too many things at once and it just didn't work for me and honestly some of the conflicts in the book being wrapped up too quickly also kind of frustrated me like clay being worried that her mom would be mad if she found out that clay liked girls and then the mom wasn't even mad at all okay so why was clay homophobic towards olivia then make it make sense i don't know i didn't like it i didn't like it it sucks that sucks i i don't know what else to say i've had a couple of y'all comment on my most recent video asking when this vlog is coming and i like i'm a little bit scared to share it but that's just like my honest opinions and if you liked this book i am so happy for you and i think a lot of people will like this book especially if you like a good bully romance and you like a full cast of characters i think you're gonna like this i just personally prefer a little bit more focus on the romance and just a little bit more coherence in storytelling so i have started another book that i will briefly tell you about and then i'm gonna go um weed my front beds just homeowner things i'll probably update y'all out there uh when i get further into this book but i'm about 20 into i can't remember the name of the book but it's a historical romance and it is called the hellions waltz i talked about this as one of my like most anticipated romances of the year and i did highly anticipate it and i am enjoying it i can't remember the name of either the characters because that's where i'm at you know today today's been an interesting day just all around the story is about this one girl i want to say her name sophie she is the daughter of a piano maker and she personally tunes the pianos but her dad recently got swindled so they have to kind of move to a small town so they can kind of like escape their past and escape this like embarrassment and hopefully move on from this and while she is there she meets a lady who she might have a thing for who she might think is cute hearing her internal thoughts about this woman i think it's maddie i want to say sophie and maddie i could be completely wrong on these names she meets this woman and this woman is trying to unionize like weavers she's a weaver herself i believe like silk weaving and she wants to break up this monopoly i think it's just this one guy who is very much like he has a hold on the industry where they're at our girl is not happy with this she's trying to do some shady to make this union happen right so she's kind of like a robin hood esque person but our girl sophie she has a thing for this girl because like oh she's cute and i like her her smokey accent like she's got a great voice but i think she's a swindler and my dad got swindled and i try to avoid that so i don't know how to feel about this lady that's kind of where we're at and i'm liking it i'm liking the kind of bisexual representation pansexual representation we might be getting from miss sophie and then i think i mean i think the other girl likes girls i mean it's a female female romance like they both like each other right but i like it i like a good historical romance and i like it when it's female female i liked the first book in the series and this one's pretty good i will say if you read the first one and you didn't like how technical it was with like the astronomy you might not like this one because it is a little bit technical with the weaving i guess and like the music side of things uh it's clear that our author definitely does research into the industries or the kind of like topics of interest of the women in the stories so if you're not interested in what the women are interested in it might bore you i learned a lot more about weaving that i really cared to learn but i'm willing to overlook it because the book's cute so i'm not gonna lie i don't know where the story's going i'm 25 in but hayden is not home right now so my goal is to finish this story and then read a some muddy little novella that everybody seems to love it is called being hospitable by mika james and i'm excited about it ever like all of my friends have given this one five stars so i think what i'm gonna do is just update y'all when i'm finished with this book and just let you know whether i recommend it or not and then we can read some smut together that's what we're gonna do i know it seems like i don't really know what's going on and i think that's that is true the intro is going to make it seem like i know what's going on but just just know that i don't usually i have the books picked out before i start a video this time i thought i did and then i found some stuff for my library that i was interested in reading so i'm kind of just making this up as i go along all right i'm gonna go okay so i finished the hellions waltz i know i said that i was gonna update y'all after i finished as i was weeding or after i weeded my beds but i looked disgusting and sweaty so i'm back nearly a week later to tell you how i felt about it and frankly i thought it was pretty goddamn hot this book was unexpectedly smutty had just such a refreshing air about it now i have read historical fiction in the past with female female relationships and as much as i want to love them obviously they're kind of steeped in oppression because you know women couldn't really be together back in the day and i'm not saying that that was entirely not present in this book but it was much less present than it has been in other historical romances i've read and i appreciate that so we have sophie and maddie finally getting together as the story carries on and i loved how open they were with each other about their sexual desires i loved how even though sophie is supposed to be this like inhibited character with a lot of you know pent-up emotion she is ready to tell maddie what she wants from her and i found that really hot i also liked that sophie's family was like pretty cool with her dating a woman like there just wasn't really a huge issue there which i thought was really cool and i liked how the kind of villainy was uncovered in the story i liked that everything kind of came to a nice close at the end frankly i think if you're looking for something with really good sex scenes and you've always wanted to read historical romance with a female female or woman loves woman sort of relationship i think you should give this one a go honestly 10 out of 10 i really enjoyed this one i will say the plot was not exactly the most groundbreaking thing ever and i did skim a little bit of it just to get to the hot scenes but overall it was a success i've moved you into my boudoir because we're about to get smutty i have just started being hospitable by mika james and already twenty percent and i am into it very into it this is giving me all of the best friend's little sister realness in a female female setting and why is it just so much better i think i talked about in my tropes i hate video that i really don't like brothers best friend romances and this is not a brother's best friend romance it's a best friend's sister romance but similar concept like those always kind of irk me this one's good though it is instantly good it is instantly sexy we're already getting the sexy vibes from the very beginning and i'm into it so our main character kiki is a very successful career woman her best friend's little sister has just graduated college has a kick-ass internship and needs to stay with kiki for a while kiki has always kind of had a thing for charlotte in a i know she's straight we're probably never gonna get together sort of way but charlie has a thing for kiki as well and kiki is just unaware of it i think this is going to be kind of a forced proximity sexy little thing going on i don't know no sex has happened yet but like i i'm excited and i think i'm going to try to give you as many updates as i can in the next like 40 minutes of this audiobook it's very short but i've already invested and i'm ready to see where this thing goes okay i know i said i was gonna update as i read for it being hospitable but it turned out not to be the kind of story that i needed to give constant updates on and i think that makes a lot of sense given how short it is i just expected it to be like over the top and have a lot of things that i needed to comment on but that just wasn't the case which isn't to say again that this book wasn't hot or good because it definitely was let's talk about it i think that this was one of the more successful smutty novellas that i've read i feel like i am finally finding somebody at novellas that really have captured my interest i think a lot of the ones that i've read in the past like jessica kane and those kinds of ones they don't really do it for me like they're just they're not complete stories and i mean i know it's challenging to develop a good romance in a short amount of time but i feel like i'm finally finding ones that i like i've been really reading a lot of alexandria house lately and i love her stuff so this was i would say similar in that like there was definitely backstory but there was a lot of smuttiness but the conclusion felt like satisfying enough i don't know it was good i liked seeing charlie and kiki's dynamic unfold and get to see them kind of explore some of their passionate interests if you will together i don't know what else to say that i'm being very vague and probably not doing this book justice but i would recommend it i got it at my library which kind of surprised me but if you're lucky hopefully it is available at your library as well i would i don't know i don't usually rate smut but i think i would give this like three and a half or four stars i will say the one thing that i wanted more of was a more like conclusive ending with regard to charlie's brother because like that was supposed to be the conflict but it didn't really feel like a conflict other than that that like i mean it was a really really good read and i understand why so many people like this one so the next thing that i'm going to read is how to find a princess via lissa cole i'm really excited about this one i've heard kind of mixed reviews about it but it is like an anastasia retelling which sounds good as and i'm very into so i'm excited about this one it's a full-length book so i will give you updates as i read but that's what i'm starting in on tomorrow and i'm just ready to keep reading sapphic goodness you know okay hopefully i can avoid interruption by my many cats less excited than when i last talked to y'all about this book i just feel like the characters are a little bit strange okay so the story is about makeda who recently lost with her job and her girlfriend and she has had to move into her grandmother's bed and breakfast i believe and she's just kind of struggling right now she doesn't really know where she wants the direction of her life to go and she is kind of rudely interrupted or woken up one day by a agent i guess we're gonna call her beznaria and she is trying to find the long-lost um heir to this throne the throne of her country and she has always or her family has always protected the the throne and protected the people who were on the throne and so you know there's been no royal i think for a while or i don't know this is kind of a confusing story i'm not gonna lie beznauria ends up seeking out makeda and it's like hey i think you're the princess your grandmother said that she thinks that you're royal and i came to follow up on that claim and so it's their kind of romance i guess i think my issue with this book is that makeda is characterized at the beginning of this book as being kind of a doormat she has been over by every girlfriend she's ever had she lost her job because she was not someone who was good at standing up for herself and yet she is kind of a to bezanaria at the beginning of the book she has no desire in being a princess she is very grumpy this is giving me grumpy sunshine vibes and yet i feel like the wrong character is grumpy i think it would have made more sense to have beznaria be kind of grumpy and like not believe that makeda is actually the princess and then makeda just be kind of happy to be there i don't know i just i'm not liking their relationship dynamic or the characters i think i like beznaria i think her personality and um attitude is really nice like i like her uh character but i don't like the personality traits of them in regards to a romance together if that makes any sense i don't think it does but i'm kind of struggling right now with this book because it's a really slow paced and and b i don't really feel like these characters fit well together i just don't understand um the characterization i guess especially of makita so i'm not loving this and i was reading some reviews which i should really stop doing as i'm like in the middle of books although i will say i don't think it sways my opinion um either way i think a lot of people didn't like this book because of the pacing and i'm feeling that same way too i'm not feeling the chemistry between the characters and nothing's really happening and this is a pretty long book so i don't know i'm hoping that it kind of like picks up the 50 mark maybe maybe not i'll try to update you at 50 and then at the end but this book is due like very soon so i need to get this read i'll try to update you as i can though um but yeah i'm a little i'm a little sad okay i'm 50 in and i think i'm gonna dnf this book i feel like life is too short to read books that i don't really enjoy i feel like if i continued on with this book it would probably end up being a two star read i'm just not gelling with these two characters i feel like i'm really just in the mood for a delightful rom-com and i'm not getting rom-com vibes from this it's not super serious but it's also not funny i don't like that there's this kind of forced proximity situation but the characters are increasingly at each other's throats i just it's not it's not really a vibe it's not something i'm enjoying i'm not saying this is a bad book or that it's not a book that you might enjoy but i don't think this is like the strongest romance out there so not loving it and i think it's just time for me to dnf it also let's do back at my library very soon so maybe i'll just like return it early and let someone get a head start on it i do think however i am going to read two books after this one so that it will be like five full books that i have read to you know completion that sounds weird i want to read five full books i don't want to have like a dnf in here like i mean i dnf'd this book but i'm gonna i'm gonna compensate for it and i'm gonna read like a smutty novella after i end up reading one less stop by casey mcquest and that's the one that i'm gonna start in on next i'm sad that this one didn't work out for me but you know what it's fine we're moving on okay so i am 25 into one last stop by casey mcquisten and i'm actually really enjoying this one i didn't really know what to expect my one of my close friends got an arc of this book and immediately told me that it wasn't as good as red white and royal blue and that they were really disappointed with it and i've heard very mixed reviews since the book has been published so i had no idea what to expect going into this and whether or not this was going to be something that really did it for me and i'm not sure that it has yet i mean i'm only 25 in but so far i am really enjoying jane and august so august is new to new york and she is trying to kind of figure out her life she has transferred from college to college trying to find her place because she's never really felt at home she has an interesting relationship with her mom her mom is trying to solve the cold case of her uncle's murder i believe or disappearance disappearance this has really bogged down the relationship between august and her mom like her mom is very much constantly trying to research constantly trying to get august into it august is like i don't have any friends because of this like i need to make a life for myself so she goes out on her own and she's landed in new york she is going to a college brooklyn college is that the name of it trying to figure out her life and in the meantime she is living with some strangers who she quickly befriends i would say that's the strongest part of the book so far i love august's relationship with the three people she lives with i believe it's two guys and a girl and they all just have really fun personalities and i like seeing like a good found family in a story i feel like casey mcquestion is really good at writing that you definitely have that in red white and royal blue and in this book you definitely have that as well we haven't gotten super far into the romance component of this book yet which i'm fine with i'd like a good slow burn and that's kind of how red white and royal blue was as well we have august writing the subway every day to get to her job but she memorizes the route of this girl that she's into her name's jane and she's had a couple of interactions with her and honestly that's pretty much the long and short of it at this moment we have gotten to i believe the end of the synopsis of the book not that i've read the synopsis of the book i just kind of know what it's about given all of the buzz about it you know the story is about this girl who is from the past jane is not from you know present day and i guess the subway is the only place she lives manifests i don't really know we haven't actually gotten the details yet but august has figured out that jane is not from 2000 whatever and that is why she probably can't go on dates because august has asked jane out on dates before says yes and then says no or like she just never shows up that kind of thing it's interesting so far i liked the kind of research component that august did try to do a seance with her roommates she kind of thought that jane might be a vampire so i'm curious to see more interactions between the two of them because as of right now like i am invested in seeing where this relationship goes even though it's like at the very beginning stages so i do think that casey has been successful in the story and i'm liking it i'm liking it so far i feel like it's a lot easier to get into than how to find a princess was so i'm hoping it's smooth sailing ahead and that the romance is very like steamy and fun but i'll get y'all again at like 50 once i get further but so far so good okay so i'm at the 50 mark and one last stop by casey mcqueston and things have heated up quite a bit since we last spoke and i think i'm fully invested in this story which is so good to hear because i really just feel like both for this video and other videos that i'm working on right now i've been starting books getting really excited about them and then they sort of start to fall apart at the 50 mark which sucks because you were you know looking to become invested and you just can't uh but this one i am invested in i don't have much to say to be honest at this 50 mark but i am finally starting to see the fruits of the labor that august has put into getting to know jane and getting to like solve where she came from nothing satisfying and nothing that i will actually tell you because i don't want to spoil anything in this book but i will say that a certain sexual scene that happened on the subway was very sexy and i really appreciated it i was curious to see like what the steam levels would be for this book but i am not disappointed and it's funny i actually i'll address it here because i can you know i posted my six steamy summer romance recommendations video recently and i got a lot of replies from people saying that certain books weren't very steamy whatever and for me it's not about like how explicit the content is it's what feelings the book elicits in me a book could have like raunchy sex scene after raunchy sex scene and still not be steamy to me like that doesn't really i don't know determine how hot i think a book is but if a book is well crafted and gets you to like have that lead up and there's only like one sex scene in the book but the sex scene was like very anticipated and the payoff is hot like to me that's always going to trump a really smutty book that doesn't doesn't really um have the context there does that make sense i don't know this book i wouldn't say like the sex scene was super explicit or that there's going to be a ton of them but it felt appropriate it felt sexy and i'm enjoying the book so i'm in a good place i'm happy i'm gonna work on finishing this book though because i have other i have to do for other videos so i'll update y'all probably from my car later today when i'm done okay so i am not in my car and it is actually many days later but i am finished with one last stop by casey mcquisten i wanted some time away from reading this book to kind of evaluate my feelings and sum up all of the ways in which this book wasn't perfect for me but the longer i wait i feel like the less clear everything gets i did not dislike this book i just don't think it was a perfect romance for me i feel like if i were to rate it just based on gut feeling i'd probably give this book about three stars i do feel like it had a decently satisfying conclusion but some stuff that happened in the 75 mark pointed to other issues that i had throughout the book like it just kind of showed me hey you know those things you had an issue with they're gonna continue and this is why you are not gonna love this book so i'll try to articulate some of that right now i don't know that i'll do an excellent job i think my main issue with this book is that it is a book that happens in one particular location and while i love a good forced proximity trope it's not really a forced proximity book you just have a romance that's happening in one kind of stagnant place and while this does lead to some fun sexy times and some adventurous sex i just feel like the romance itself kind of needed a little bit more context maybe it's just me being a little bit too practical but the entire time i was reading i was considering the fact that august and jane like how are they actually gonna work in the real world when jane is from the 70s i just don't understand how they're going to work and we actually never really got to see that i don't want to spoil too much of the book but the majority of the story is spent on the subway and figuring out how to get jane off the subway and that's fantastic and i do think that it led to an interesting plot in that regard i just don't think that for a romance it really left me with any sort of feelings of yes this is going to work in the real world and i know that like august tried to educate jane on you know what 20 whatever this book is set in 2019 2020 whatever that looks like i don't know i don't know i just feel like it was a little bit too isolated for me i wanted more and in general i think i just wanted more romantic relationship development i really liked like i told y'all earlier those sex scenes i thought they were good i thought they were fun but i feel like there was a lot of insta love going on and on the other hand we had august who is trying to kind of figure out her life and she's growing as a person and i kind of wanted those two things to like intersect more and i don't fully feel like they did i don't know if i'm making any sense i think i'm just trying to like articulate exactly what didn't work and honestly sometimes that isn't entirely tangible sometimes you just have a feeling about a book and you're like this was good but it just like it wasn't my favorite and that's how i feel about this story it was solid it was good i think casey mcqueston is a kick-ass writer and i'm so excited to read their ya debut which just got announced but this story just wasn't perfect for me and that's okay um i do appreciate a lot of what this book did i really really like a lot of the queer history that it's baked in and i do think this is a worthwhile read for you just as a romance this wasn't like my perfect romance but let us carry on and finish this vlog off right with a smutty novella treasure by rebecca weatherspoon i am going to head downstairs probably and read it downstairs and i can update you as we go i know i didn't do that on being hospitable i'm hoping to actually do that on treasure have some fun okay so i am 10 into treasure and i'm really enjoying it it is already kind of heating up already kind of spicy which i guess one would expect given that this is a short sweaty novella it's about our two main characters alexis and treasure i think treasure's real name is trisha but alexis is going to a strip club with her sister for her sister's bachelorette party and alexis meets treasure and gets some private dances and things get very hot and heavy there's no sex that happens but you can tell that they're both kind of into each other honestly i expected for some reason the story to all take place in the course of a night that's not actually what happens only the first chapter is there this like bachelorette party scene and now we are taken into just like everyday life so i'll be interested to see like where the story goes i think that alexis is in college and she's younger than i thought that she was going to be i think she's like 19 or 20 maybe and i don't really know much about treasure slash i think trisha um i don't really know much about her life except for she is trying to pay for her tuition and also make sure that her kids are taken care of so i don't know i think there's gonna be a little bit more depth to the story than i had previously anticipated so so far so good i'm enjoying it the first chapter was really hot so if that's any indication i think that we are in for a good time i'll keep you posted oh do you want to come film with me hi okay i don't know why this is so orange but i'm like 50 into treasure and this is not at all what i expected but in the best possible way it is what i would consider a smiley novella kind of but it's so much more than that it is about trisha and alexis and their relationship so i think i kind of hinted at it but both of the girls are in college and they actually end up in the same computer science class and that is how their relationship kind of like carries on and it's definitely more of a noodle story than i thought it would be i really thought that like i said this was just going to be smutty one night stand novella and it's definitely not that so alexis is dealing with some mental health issues she has a history of self-harm and she is trying to make a fresh start for herself in college and part of that is kind of falling into this relationship with georgia she's like really into her and then trisha i don't think i set her story up correctly but she is a stripper she is also trying to get her degree i think in computer science the money that i i said that she was trying to like save up for kids it's not for her own children it's for her mom's foster kid so she was like helping her mom i guess so they're both pretty young i think trish is 20 and alexis is 18 and honestly their relationship is just really wholesome i love the way the story is written i feel like it's not trying too hard and i feel like the text conversations and just the dialogue in general between tricia and alexis is really spot on and just like witty and fun and i'm loving it i don't this is really good unexpectedly good i mean i knew i would like it because a lot of my friends have given this book five stars but i was just expecting something completely different than what it is and i like that i love being surprised so i think i'm going to wrap this up and give y'all my final thoughts tomorrow morning i'm just getting kind of tired and i don't want to um like wrap this vlog up in a boring way so i will do that tomorrow and then i'll edit and upload this video it's a sunday i really should have done this like before this video is getting posted but um i'm gonna finish this and i'll be back okay so last night i finished treasure and i have to say i think this is my favorite book that i've read for this whole video which is so interesting since this is a book that i didn't intend to read for this video i was supposed to read how to find a princess and yeah this was just a very happy little surprise i am going to give all of the credit though to mina from mina reads this is a book that was on my radar because of her a lot of my sapphic romance radar is all based on mina's goodreads i feel like i'm constantly finding stuff that i'm interested in reading because of her so i'll leave a link to her channel down below if you want some more good sapphic recommendations but treasure was just so satisfying like i have not read a novella that feels that complete in such a long time i want to say this was probably a little longer than a lot of novellas but it had everything that i personally want it had a satisfying romance it had really good smut and everything was just perfect like there's no i don't have any complaints about it there wasn't anything that i really would have changed and when the story concluded it felt like it was in a very healthy place i don't know i just feel like with novellas you either get just a lot of smut and no story or you get a story that doesn't have like a good conclusive ending and in this book you totally did so 10 out of 10 like it was so good and um probably my favorite novella i've read this year in general but definitely my favorite book that i've read for this particular vlog so if you're looking for a good sapphic novella please pick up treasure it was so good but with that i am finished with this video i have read five and a half um sapphic stories and i've had such a good time doing this i want to do this again hopefully soon and or just do a better job at like sprinkling and sapphic reads in my regular reading um that's definitely something that i need to work more on i feel like i've done a pretty decent job this year at reading a little bit more diversely but i have definitely been slacking um in the queer story department so i definitely need to kind of pick that up if you want any more kind of sapphic recommendations i'll leave a couple in the description down below i have done this video before this is like my first i read five video it was like a female female romance uh wreck video and i ended up privating that one because i just wasn't super happy with the way that i spoke about certain things so i'm just gonna leave like the recommendations from that video in the description basically i privated it because i was super focused back in 2019 on making sure that everything was own voices and i think that that was a little bit harmful because i don't think that people necessarily have to be openly queer to be able to write queer stories but i do feel like it was a little limiting the way that i was like speaking about the own voices component of the books so i just i don't i don't talk about books like that anymore so i just didn't want that to like be on my channel but i definitely stand by the recommendations still so i will also leave i'm reading a lot of things today i'll also leave in the description of this video a couple of posts from becky albertalli i feel like she has made some really good informative like graphics i guess you could say on how we speak about uh queerness and stories and it's interesting to look at i feel like a lot of the discourse over the past couple of years has been about you know ensuring that we read only own voices stories but when it comes to queer books that's a little bit limiting because it can be kind of gatekeeping and it also forces queer people to come out maybe before they're ready she does a really good job at addressing some of those like questions and critiques people have of queer books that seem to be authored by like straight people so anyway i just thought it was interesting or something that's been like on my mind and is part of the reason i provided my video you know like i don't want to contribute to that gatekeeping all of that to say i had a really good time making this video and i hope you guys maybe got some good recommendations from it but i love you all so much thanks so much for watching and until next sunday you\n"