**The Reylos Story: A Fanfiction Review**

I just finished reading this extremely dialogue-heavy fanfiction story about Draco and Reylo, and I have to say it was an interesting experience. The author has decided that now that these bad guys were trying to get into Hermione's laboratory, everyone needs 24/7 supervision, so she's moved into Malfoy's house, which is the one place on Earth where no one would expect her to be. As a result, we're dealing with this situation, and it's been good.

The story has been quite slow, with pages of dialogue that are like quips back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I feel like I could have had a little bit less of that, but I was warned that this would be a very long drawn out thing. It's just extremely dialogue-heavy, so...but yeah, I'll catch up with you later. I'm going to go get my body broken with my Pilates class in a month and a half, okay, bye!

I know we're 75% of the way through, and it's happening! I have to talk to myself for a second, ignore me. I have to talk to you guys tomorrow - it's very late but I finished it, and I thought the second-to-last chapter could have been skipped. There was a warning for non-smutty people that I could have skipped it, and that was the longest smut scene I've ever read in my entire life. I wish I had that time back to be honest, but I'll talk to you tomorrow. It's tomorrow, so let's chat.

Your girl has read fanfiction, and I had a great time honestly. So overall, the story - I thought it was really good until we got to them getting together and it became very smutty - wasn't my cup of tea whatsoever, but I thought that actually like that it had a great plot, I think like I've said a couple times in this video it could be reworked just a teeny bit, and it could stand fully on its own as its own little fantasy romance.

I do think that for some reason, it's the Reylos that we've seen make so many jumps to like the traditionally published world where you kind of have to squint (sometimes you don't) to see where the inspirational material comes from. But yeah, this one was just cute. It was just this typical like bodyguard kind of forced proximity roommate stuff going on that just worked and I just really appreciated the focus on like Draco is so obsessed with Hermione's brain - and her butt - but like specifically her brain.

I liked the freedom that fanfiction seems to have with humor and being a little bit less concerned with the plot - so like we had an author's note, a chapter note, that literally said like ignore the plot holes - just a warning there's going to be a ton of plot holes. And that's okay because readers, especially I think readers of fanfiction where you are searching so specifically for a piece of work to scratch a specific itch, you will read anything as long as it kind of gives you scenarios and it doesn't really matter if there are plot holes.

So I appreciated that kind of freedom to it and I do think the humor in this wasn't so much for me but I kind of appreciated like I don't typically read that anymore like I usually only hear this kind of humor when I'm watching like funny vloggers talk or funny booktubers talk about books, so it was kind of refreshing to just see it on the page.

There was definitely - I have to stop Slack I'm getting, okay apologies to anyone who has trauma related to the Slack notification sound - there was specifically one scene where Malfoy has to kind of relieve himself, he jacks off in his room.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh my God it's on Goodreads? Holy -Okay it isn't what you think!I'm so into this...New year, new me.We're going to read fanfic. This is not going to become a thing - I can guarantee you, this is not  going to become a thing. I have never, even when I was deep in fandoms that had a strong fanfiction  community, I have never been a fanfiction girly. This is a one and done. I am just so intrigued  by this one particular story, you're going to come along for the ride with me okay?Let's dive in. Let me set the scene for you a little bit - so one of my dear friends who has the  most eclectic taste (also I just got back from - I like sped walked home and it's a blustery winter  day so if I look a mess I am a mess okay) I have a friend who has an incredibly eclectic taste in  books. She will read classics and then turn around and she will read fanfic and she posted  one recently and I was like first of all the cover is like lowkey beautiful and so I was like tell me  more, and so Grandma learned how to go on AO3 and download the PDF to put it on my Kindle. I did thething, I did it, here I am and here we are. It is on my Kindle. I need to figure out how to - I'm  going to change the font size and everything but I am reading Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordealof Being in Love. Look at that cover though okay. So we are not acknowledging the original piece  of work but I will be engaging with fanmade work and I just kind of need to read this. So I don't  know anything about it. I had another friend one day deeply explain AO3 to me. I understand it, I  appreciate it, it's just not my thing so I didn't even like look up - OMG it's on Goodreads holy...I don't even understand, like how many pages is it? Does it - it counts by words so I don't know  what that means. How long will I be reading this? This is on AO3, which is Archive of Our Own - It is  Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love by isthisselfcare. Some of the  tags that we have: Reckless overuse of the author's favorite tropes, oblivious idiots,  late stage pining, what is pining if not denial persevering, no first names we die like men, do  not look too closely at the plot you will only hurt yourself, scandalous ankle touching, misuse  of whirlpool baths, graphic depictions of competent women, Crookshanks will fight God or  become him - what?! - human on mushroom violence, nuns. Tell me that that is not the perfect book.It says Hermione straddles the Muggle and magical worlds as a medical researcher and healer about to  make a big discovery. Draco is an auror assigned to protect her from forces unknown, to both of  their displeasure. Features hyper competent fiery Hermione and lazy yet dangerous Draco - slowburn199,548 words, 36 chapters - it has like 50,000 Kudos, over 2 million hits and like I said it  has a Goodreads and on gGodreads it has over 12,000 ratings, 4.57 stars. Does this give - oh no  the author is still isthisselfcare. That's amazing. Oh I guess Goodreads does have - Goodreadshas fanfic on it? Like that's a normal thing? Oh so as you can see this is not my  world. Okay we're scrolling away, we're scrolling, we're scrolling away. I'm going tostart it so as I said I need to change the formatting because look at that...so I need to  figure out how to make my text bigger. Speaking of formatting, while Cari in the past struggles  with her Kindle, I would like to give a shout out to the sponsor of this video which is Squarespace.I have used used Squarespace myself personally for almost 5 years, probably more than that. They  are a wonderful place to host any kind of online presence, whether that is a blog or a shop. They  have incredibly easy free templates that you can use to make your website look wonderful.  They have a great analytics section to help you understand what your audience is looking  for, they have email subscription lists, really whatever you want to do online, it's so easy.  So if you want you can go to squarespace.com right now and play around with all the tools  and set up your your website for free and then when you're ready to launch it to the public  you can go to squarespace.com /caricanread and get 10% off of your first website or domain. I will  leave my website down below so you can take a look as well um but yeah thank you so much to  Squarespace as always and let's go check on The Struggle Bus that is my past self. Oh my  God I can't - shut up - okay am I going to just go blind? No guys it's 576, almost 600 pages but  the font is this big. I'm just going to do it or should I try and read it - here let me look at my  iPad that probably isn't charged. Let's see if I can do something about it here. Can yeah like look- don't you just want to pick that up and read it? So it's not much better on here. I can kind  of zoom in...yeah okay we're reading it on the iPad because no way in hell, no so I'm gonnacharge this for a sec and we're going to begin. But shall we start with just the first line? I have no  idea - all I know is that my friend said it was a fun time, a romp. As a man of means, Draco Malfoycould have chosen to live a life of leisure, political meddling and casual blackmail like  his father before him. However his acquittal by the Wizengamut was accompanied by strong  recommendations that young Mr Malfoy strive for such laudable pursuits as the Common Good,  altruism and redemption in the public eye. So after a few years of sewing his wild oats and  many great curses on the continent, Draco has returned to London where he made short work of  the Auror training program - 3 years down in one and a half if you please - and joined that noble  office. Draco had been strategic in his choice of career path of course. Being an Auror offered  just enough heroics for positive coverage in the news and just enough Ministry sanction murders to  keep him interested in the job. And so our opening scene - a Monday morning sometime in January...it's a  Monday morning in January guys!!! I was looking for my phone, you're right there. Sound the alarm! It isMonday January 8th. I have chills. Fate, Kismet. Okay so excuse me. A Monday morning sometime in January  amidst the graying cubicles of the Auror office, Tonks was doing out the month's Class A  assignments to her top Auror like a vindictive Father Christmas. It continues from there. I'm  -I can't, I'm i,n I'm in. Oops uhoh - thank you so much for being on this journey with me. I am  so excited and here we go! Okay so Malfoy gets to pick what case he has out of the remaining cases  because he was a good boy on the last case and his options are option one: a wizard accused of  inappropriate acts with trolls, a real delight for the senses that one. Or option two: a request fromthe minister for a protection of a high-profile target. Inappropriate acts? repeated Draco pulling  the folders towards himself. Draco made the mistake of opening the troll folder - he closed  it again with a strangled sound of disgust. I'll take the protection assignment. Yeah I'm so into  this. Okay the reason Hermione needs protection is because she's been doing research and and  she found she had some scientific breakthrough that she still needs to test but the minister of  magic thinks that people aren't going to be happy about it because it affects a certain part of the  population and I think it's either going to be that she can give magic to other people like to  Muggles - so she's either going to erase Muggles or she's going to do something House Elfy. But  I'm only on page three so who knows, but that I just wanted to put that out there as my guessYeah that's my guess.Pkay I don't know, I withdraw my statements. I don't know what Hermione has cooked  up we'll have to see okay. Thank heavens there is artwork so the 576 pages of small text  is slightly less but it's good so far. I can't even tell you how far along I am - oh 3%! Good!Okay it isn't what you think. Yes I have encountered the word mate and I panicked but it's  just that like he's trying to use a tracking ring on her so that he doesn't have to be around her  all the time and it will like notify him if she feels stressed or panicked or whatever but he  has to wear the matching ring and it technically was like they are a pair of wedding rings but he  has like made it very clear that it is not that. But yeah the panic that shot through my  veins seeing that. So basically I feel like you could read this without having any background  knowledge of the original series that shall not be named but it does give you like lovely little  bits of character that like character background - but just this....a disjointed ginger muppet.Hi everyone I have moved - 12% update, it's really good guys like I'm enjoying  this thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly - this also just includes a lot of locations of  like mythical...well I suppose just myths in the UK. And it comes with photos of the places and I just  think it adds a little something to the story and I'm reading slowly  because I just paused for work so I'm only 15% of the way through but I am totally committed  to this. It's very much just like well hold on... I can talk to you this way. It's very much just  like the kind of grumpy - well I wouldn't it's not grumpy and sunshine but it's very much  like a bodyguard trope. They're both just so perplexed by each other and I just think it's  great this thisisselfcare - hats off to you. It's just a good story! We continue!Oh I'm enjoying this.Good morning, we are continuing our quest to finish this book. I am 41% of the  way through. It is snowing so hard today so we are not going outside. So yeah I stopped at 41  percent which according to my iPad - I am on Page 239 of 585 and I stopped when I got the  note that says, it starts with a chapter note and it does start with this fic is not for the  short or medium-term gratification seekers but rather for the masochists who like to suffer. If  that's you, then please read on and let us suffer together. So I feel like the energy, the pacing is  still good but there are definitely many scenes in this where I was sort of getting  bored, where I was sort of like let's cut to the chase because there has been nothing. There was  even like a potential for a only one bed Trope but then Herione's really good at Transfiguration  so she just like whips up a bed you know? So yeah this is definitely slowburn. I do think  that like some of their banter is like the humor is not 100% my style but like I still  think it's funny and I still stand by the fact that like this could be reworked so easily to  not have any connection to the book that we are not talking about you know? The world within  that book is not necessarily revolutionary in any sense so I think that with just like a few  word changes, this could truly be its own magical world and we understand the characters  so easily. I love it, I love that Harry and Ron are just dumbasses like just let it be known.  We know that Hermione is like the hbic and I love it for her, I love that she is just like  an incred - like so much of it is just her being really intelligent and like so competent in her  work and Draco just watching her being like damn it yeah she is really smart and really impressive  and I love that. So I'm having a jolly good time. I do think like trying to read it like a  traditional work where I would just read it in one go it is a little much because I do think  it is like drawing it out so much but I understand if you were maybe reading this chapter by chapter  or you're more used to having that kind of fanfic style where it does get long- winded because you  just want to be reading stuff in this world, I get it. Like I said it's not - I've read worse  in like traditionally published work in terms of pacing and drawing out the plot and they're  doing it intentionally, like the writer knows what they're doing so anyway I'm going to dive in and  and continue. I might finish it maybe tomorrow, we'll see, let's go back.Crookshanks killing Ron.Just a note on like the writing style - I love this writing style when it's consistently  capitalizing nouns. I just love - I'm enjoying this so thoroughly. I know I've said it a million  times but I'm having such a great time like they're just such idiots, they're so stupid.  We just learned what she's working on to cure and it's a good one, it's a good one Hermione. Okay I'mat 67% and I'm only stopping - I have 10 chapters left - I'm only stopping because I'm going to have  to go to a class in about an hour and I feel like I want to read the last 30% all in one  go if I can so what has happened? It's been very slowburn but like I said we found out what Hermione  is working on, her cure, which I think is really clever and really good. But as expected the whole  reason why Draco is even watching her, it finally happened that the baddies, the bad guys have  caught wind of what she's trying to do and want to stop her so Draco had to rescue her as these  bad guys were trying to get into her laboratory and everyone has decided that now she needs 24/7  supervision and so she has moved into the one place on Earth where no one would expect her  to be which is Malfoy's house and so we're just dealing with that and it's been good.  Like I said it's been quite slow. I think that for me just the the back and forth - like there  are just pages of dialogue and they're just like quips back and forth back and forth back and forth  and I feel like I could have had a little bit less of that but I was warned that this would  be a very long drawn out thing. It's just extremely dialogue heavy so...but yeah I'll catch up with  you later. I'm going to go get my body broken w/ my pilates class in a month and a half okay bye!Guys we are 75% of the way through and it'shappening!I'm going to talk to myself for a second, ignore me. I have to talk to you guys tomorrow - it's very  late but I finished it and I thought the second to last chapter could have been skipped. There  was a warning for the non smutty people that I could have skipped it and that was  the longest smut scene I've ever read in my entire life and I wish I had that time  back to be honest but I'll talk to you tomorrow. It's tomorrow so let's chat. Your girl has read afanfic and I had a great time honestly. So overall the story - I thought that it was really  good until we got to them getting together and it became very smutty - wasn't my cup of tea  whatsoever but I thought that actually like that it had a great, it had a good plot I think like  I've said a couple times in this video it could be reworked just a teeny bit and it could stand  fully on its own as its own like little fantasy romance. I do think that like for some reason  it's the Reylos that we've seen make so many jumps to like the traditionally published  world where you kind of have to squint (sometimes you don't) to see where the inspirationalmaterial comes from. But yeah this one was just cute. It was just this typical like bodyguard kind  of forced proximity roommate stuff going on that just worked and I just really appreciated the  focus on like Draco is so obsessed with Hermione's brain - and her butt - but like specifically her brain.And I liked the freedom that fanfiction seems to have with humor and being a little bit less  concerned with the plot - so like we had we had an author's note, a chapter note, that literally said  like ignore the plot holes - just a warning there's going to be a ton of plot holes. Andthat's okay because readers, especially I think readers of fanfiction where you are searching  so specifically for a piece of work to scratch a specific itch, you will read anything  as long as it kind of gives you scenarios and it doesn't really matter if there are plot holes.  So I appreciated that kind of freedom to it and I do think the humor in this wasn't  so much for me but I kind of appreciated that like I don't typically read that anymore  like I usually only hear this kind of humor when I'm watching like funny vloggers talk  or funny booktubers talk about books so it was kind of refreshing to just see it  on the page like there was definitely - I have to stop Slack I'm getting, okay apologies to anyone  who has trauma related to the Slack notification sound - there was specifically one scene whereMalfoy has to kind of relieve himself, he jacks off in his room - there was a sentence that was  like \"millions of potential Malfoy heirs were spilled on the floor\" or something and I was just like what?!  Things that I wouldn't have, I feel like I wouldn't have normally read that but I would have  maybe in like a retelling done by a booktuber have maybe heard that so it was just like I don't know  weird to call that refreshing but yeah it just felt a little more free, a little more fun, like it  was kind of the writer knew that the people they were writing for just wanted what they wanted you  know? And they delivered and I yeah, I don't know, I just I just loved it. I will say though that like  the smut was not for me so I think that for a lot of people that's like the payoff and so the  book kind of ends with just a lot of smut scenes and so I was kind of like...is this how the book's  going to end?! But luckily there is like an end chapter plus an epilogue that gives us the  lovey-dovey stuff that I appreciated so overall am I a fanfiction girly? No. Do I appreciate it and  understand it a little bit more? Yes. I think that even just the chapter notes were so funny  so yeah I fully get it - I just don't know if it's really for me. I have too many other  things to be reading but it was not a waste of my time. A couple of those chapters were but most  of it wasn't. So yeah I had a good time, it definitely was like my friend said, she promised  me a romp, it was a romp. That was Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love. I just  really loved the Potter and Weasley slander like they were - they're just so dumb. Hermione deserve somuch better and yeah I completely approve of the Draco Hermione pairing. My camera just fell  that was almost a disaster - so I'm going to hand this off to Cari from the past or the future,  where are you girl? I'm right here calm down. I would like to give a shout out to the sponsor  of this video - once again thank you to Squarespace, like I said I've been using Squarespace for years  I highly recommend them as we are entering this new year, new you, new website perhaps. So all that  information will be in the description box but you can use my code caricanread - go to squarespace.com / caricanread and you can get 10% off of your first website or domain - thank you to Squarespace and I  will see you guys later. I actually, in between reading this book and now I read another book that  I think had it been a fanfic, I would have let a lot of things slide. There were gaping plot holes  and I very upset about it but I have no qualms about the plot holes in this book so yeah I  am, I come out of this video a changed woman and I thank you so much for joining me. Don't - don't  put any recommendations in the comment section.  This is not going to be a thing I can't do thisguys. But I will see you guys next time okay. Thank you always and see you then!\n"