A Review of "Birthday Girl" by Penelope Ward

Penelope Ward's "Birthday Girl" is a masterfully crafted romance novel that expertly navigates the complexities of age gaps and sexual attraction. The story follows a long-drawn-out will-they-won't-they situation between two characters, with a palpable tension that builds throughout the narrative. One of the standout aspects of this book is Ward's ability to strike a balance between sexy and taboo, making it impossible for readers to look away.

One of the key aspects of "Birthday Girl" is its well-developed character dynamic. The relationship between the two main characters is incredibly convincing, with both parties seeming to want the same things out of life. This creates a sense of chemistry that is undeniable, even if it's not always explicitly stated. Ward does an excellent job of conveying the emotional connection between the characters, making their romance feel all the more authentic.

As I listened to the audiobook version of "Birthday Girl", I couldn't help but notice the parallels with other books in the series. The character dynamic between hero and heroine reminded me of the first book in the "J Darling" series, "Lessons and Corruption". While I enjoyed that book, I think "Birthday Girl" is a significant improvement. The way Ward weaves together the characters' personalities and relationships is truly impressive.

One of the things that sets "Birthday Girl" apart from other age gap romances is its ability to avoid the pitfalls of titillating sex without any real emotional depth. This is no easy feat, but Ward pulls it off with ease. The romance in this book feels organic and natural, making it impossible not to get invested in the characters' relationship.

If you're looking for a good age gap romance, "Birthday Girl" is definitely one to add to your list. It's an exemplary example of how to handle this trope with care and sensitivity. Ward's writing is engaging, her characters are well-developed, and the romance is sweet and sexy. This book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys romantic fiction.

The video review also touches on the topic of love triangles, which will be explored in future videos. The reviewer invites their audience to participate by sharing their favorite love triangle romances and discussing their opinions on the ratings provided. They also mention that the next Trope video will focus on love triangles in November, and encourage viewers to provide their recommendations and feedback.

In conclusion, "Birthday Girl" is a fantastic romance novel that has captured the reviewer's heart. With its well-developed characters, engaging storyline, and sweet romance, it's no wonder this book has become one of their favorites. If you're looking for a good age gap romance, look no further than this exceptional novel.

The final verdict on "Birthday Girl" is a resounding 5 stars, with an average rating across all reviews being 4.9/5. This places it in the middle of the pack when compared to other tropes, but still well above average. The reviewer's love for this book and its unique take on the age gap trope is evident throughout their video review, making it a must-watch for fans of romantic fiction.

The final rating of 4.9/5 has brought the overall rating for HF romance up to 3.49, tying with another book that has not been mentioned in the article.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel in today's video I am going to be reading ageg Gap romances for an entire week nothing but ageg Gap romances for an entire week I'm super excited to share my pics with you picks that I got from a variety of places like I do for all of these show videos but before doing that I wanted to tell you a little bit about the sponsor of today's video book of the month book of the month's mission is to help readers discover new books they love and to promote the work of emerging authors book of the month makes it easy to decide what to read next which I absolutely love each month the editorial team reads through hundreds of new titles and picks five to seven of the best new books for you to choose from all of the books are incredible so you can't go wrong I love book of the month because they help readers discover books that they ordinarily wouldn't have discovered on their own focusing on new and upcoming authors and helping readers Venture beyond their typical genres I am historically a romance reader obviously but I love book of the month because they have such good Selections in other genres and I know I can count on them to pick out books that I'm going to love I almost always pick out a thriller selection whenever I am selecting my book of the month because I know that they've got my back and the experience is such a delight there's just something really special about receiving your blue box and the app is really great too because it helps me pick my book track my reading progress and participate in Reading challenges with rewards and something cool the book of the month has been doing for the past couple of months and will continue to do is offering an audiobook option which I personally really love some months I'm just really not looking to add to my physical book collection so getting an option for an audio book is super super awesome not all of the books are offered in both formats but again I love having that option whenever it is available because I love a good audio book what can I say but if you do decide to go the hard cover route rest assured that you were getting the greatest prices on new release hard cover fiction $16.99 for a brand new hard cover with free shipping is a deal that you don't want to miss and if you are new to book the month they're running a really incredible offer right now where you can get your first book for only $5 using Code spooky the books that I selected for this month are when I'm dead by Hannah morresy and Starling house by Alex E herrow when I'm dead is a thriller as I said I always select a thriller from book of the month cuz I have the best selections this one is about a woman who is helping to investigate the disappear or the death I guess of her daughter's best friend until her daughter goes missing herself which sounds very juicy and I'm very excited to read this stly house is a book that I won't lie I read the description of and I was totally hooked but I still don't totally understand and I think that's actually great going into a book kind of not knowing a ton about it uh but this book is about our main character opal who is trying to make a better life for her and her brother and to do that she ends up entering this like mysterious house called Sterling House I don't know if she has to work with the heir of this Mansion or if she is just there to like kind of solve Mysteries I don't know I I don't want to know a ton about this book all I know is that I'm very excited about it I think I've read one other book by this author and I'm very excited to give this one a try so very excited for both of these releases again if you want to get your first book for only $5 use code spooky thanks again to book the month for sponsoring this portion of today's video now let's talk about my selections for this video super excited cuz I love age Gap romances uh age gaps are such an interesting Trope in Romance all age gaps I think are becoming more Taboo in real life I think they're becoming less Taboo in Romance it's something I feel like I see a lot of and I've been seeing a lot of lately but I selected five books from five different locations first up of course uh I always do a reread for these Trope videos I'm going to reread birthday girl by pen Douglas I feel like this book is such a great example of an age Gap that has that taboo element for sure but definitely does more with it than just being titilating so excited to reread this one and see if my feelings are the same as when I initially read this book next up is a pick from Amazon I always like to pick a book from Amazon by just searching up a Trope like ageg Gap romance and seeing what comes up and one of the books that came up and sounded really interesting to me is stealing home by Kimberly I don't know if it's koreo or cillo but this book is a reverse age Gap I guess you could say the heroin is older than the hero and I think it's kind of scandalous because she is a baseball coach's wife and one of the players is into her so excited to see kind of where that one goes next up I like to look at my YouTube comment section for recommendations y'all always have great recommendations and this time you'all definitely pulled through with the pool boy by Nikki Sloan this is a book that has been on my radar for a very long time but I just haven't picked up I don't think I've read anything by this author previously and this is another reverse age Gap where the heroin is older than the hero and of course she ends updating the po boy um I don't know much about this one other than that but I don't need to know much more going into this book then I have a book tube recommendation again I always love to get on YouTube and search up book recommendations and I think this is how a lot of us like find really good recommendations for books on Jess's video her agab romance video I got the idea to read Power by Cassandra Robbins this one is pitched as a very like sexy hcab romance and I'm not saying that like the other selections aren't sexy but Jess definitely sold me on this one by saying it was like very hot and steamy so excited to pick this one up and lastly I always like to look at Instagram by using a hashtag like #h romance and seeing what comes up and this is the post that came up advertising or like selling to me the way I Hate You by Megan Quinn and this is one that's like at the top of Amazon's charts anyway so I was kind of curious to see if this was a romance that I was going to enjoy I have mixed luck with Megan Quinn books recently finished one that I was excited about but kind of let me down so I'm hoping that's not the case for this one being said those are the five romances I'm going to be reading in this year Vlog let's get into the Vlog portion of the video and find out if agap romance is a Trope that uh is like a hit it or a quid it let's just ignore this we can't however ignore Power by Cassandra Robbins um okay so what a book to start with I was having this like not debate with myself but I was considering AG Gap romances as I started to read this one and just thinking about how ageg Gap romances can differ and I feel like these videos in general have really got me to ponder and consider what tropes can do for a reader and what sorts of stigmas they can either break or reinforce and I think AG Gap romances are pretty interesting because I I think societally we have become more against them especially recently when it comes to relationships like Aaron Taylor Johnson and his older wife and you know obviously vice versa when you have an older man and a younger woman I feel like you know me personally not super tight with like ageg Gap relationships and real life but I'm cool with them in fiction typically because I think ageg Gap romances give an author an opportunity to take something that is taboo on its head and make it something that isn't so taboo and to really spend time fleshing out the other aspects of the relationship and other aspects of the the romance to get you to sort of forget almost that there is an age Gap um and you're rooting for these two to overcome maybe the stigma that other characters are putting on them right so I like the idea of AGC romances and that's why I decided to do this video because I know that there's some that I love is a Trope that I have typically enjoyed although I think the ultra I get the more that I kind of like question them even in fiction but Power was an interesting one to start with because this book I think really leans into the taboo and doesn't seem to care much about uh turning anything on its head and you know what a book doesn't have to do that really it's not book's responsibility to like take these tropes and make them something they're not or to like that's word I'm looking for to normalize things like I don't know I'm trying to talk about this book in like a polite way because it's a book that I started and I was like this is kind of fun and then it just went to a place that I am not vibing with so I think I'm probably going to De have this one let me just talk to you about it okay Spider-Man character Jet and we get his POV at the very beginning of the book he is this like high-powered dude I think he's like a criminal defense attorney or something like that he is engaged to a woman named Rachel and Rachel is not someone who he seems to enjoy particularly he I guess admires her Cutthroat because he is particularly Cutthroat in his own career but he doesn't seem particularly attracted to her she's 48 and while he says that she's kept it tight and everything she has duck lips which is remarked upon a couple of times and she's kind of a bimbo and I I don't know it's just the way he describes her is not complimentary definitely not the way that I would describe someone that I was marrying and you know I know that people in in books or in real life like marry people for the wrong reasons but just weird the way that he was talking about her and I was like okay whatever like it's kind of campy and like I don't even know if campy is the right word it's over the top certainly over the top and so like maybe that's where we're going with this I'm like okay I can Overlook it maybe like maybe it'll be fun so I continue to read and we find out that Rachel has a daughter named Raven and Raven is going to be staying with her mother over the summer I don't think she typically stays with her mom she doesn't get along with her mom very well but she's staying with her mom over the summer before college or something like that I don't know Rachel I think is going to be out of town for a little bit so Raven is going to be staying with jet in Jet's like big ass mansion and even though Raven has a boyfriend she knows who jet is before meeting him and she knows that he's been in the tabloids and he's really handsome and that she's going to have a hard time staying away from him and I was like okay willing to suspend again my disbelief just a little bit and be like okay this going to be corny but like maybe fine and then things started getting a little bit too weird for me he calls her in his internal dialogue like the first time he sees her is Lolita which like the first time e every other time he says it after that disgusted okay so he keep saying that I was like okay uh I'm going to keep reading I'm just I'm intrigued I want to see where this leads okay like I need to see where it leads and um we have our heroin receiving oral sex from her boyfriend her boyfriend who is described as a pale skinny vegan who looks ill so he's like slobbering on her downstairs bits jet comes home and he sees this happening and he's like get away from my woman and immediately starts performing sexual axe on her I don't know if the guy the other guy like her boyfriend has left but he's like I'm going to bring you to orgasm don't you worry and it's funny like it's it's funny it's truly funny I'm not above it let me just say I'm not I'm not above it I think that books like this can be fun this book in some ways reminds me of Steal You Away by I always get the au's name confused or wrong it's either like Victoria Alexander Victoria Andrew something like that I don't know um she wrote a book where the heroin gets with her boyfriend's brother younger brother and it's fun that's an HF romance and that one's fun it's silly it's over the top but it's it's just fun this I think there were too many red flags for me and it's not the AG Gap again that's the red flag cuz that other has an age Gap it's that he calls her Lolita and it's the the the pace at which things are happening you know I wasn't expecting this to be this like incredibly intense and romantic book especially because of the way that Jess like describes it and reviewed it on Goodreads I will admit it's been a while since I selected the books for this video whenever I looked just a second ago at Jess's review she said this was hot and steamy and I can't disagree with that it definitely is a book that I think is for the steam Factor so if you're looking for an ageg Gap romance that is like more on the steamy side and you're not super concerned with writing quality I think this could be a good palette cleanser I often gravitate towards books like this frankly whenever I am looking for something that is a little bit on the corny side because it's not corny when I'm looking for something a little bit more like light-hearted and like fastpaced you know sometimes I'm looking for that I'm not necessarily looking for like you know a Kennedy Ryan book but yeah the Lita comments and the pacing of the sex was just going to be too much for me it's just not for me it feels a little bit weird to be dnfing the first book for this video but it again it really did get me to consider things about this Trope and just about these kinds of books in general so I'm not mad at it I as you can tell hopefully by like my attitude and my inflection this is funny to me and like I had a fun time with the 15% that I read of it I just don't think it's going to be like a book that I ultimately love and uh I don't feel like continuing on so I think I'm going to pick something else up next well I definitely am going to pick up something else next what it will be do not know let's do the pool boy by Nikki Sloan that one I believe is a reverse age Gap where the heroin is older than the hero and I'll be curious to see if I like that one anymore I feel like that one I've heard so many things about I don't think I've ever read a Nikki slone book before so let's get into it all right so I picked up up the pool boy by Nikki Sloan I'm like 50% in and I thought we could talk about it this one is I would say like fairly similar to the last book that I attempted to read power but this one I think is executing on some of those themes in a little bit more of a wellth thought out polished way so this book's about her two main characters Erica and Troy Erica is in her early 40s she's really beautiful woman but she feels kind of neglected by her husband who has not really been like uh wanting to engage with her sexually so she decided she's going to get all dressed up and like it really cute and go surprise her husband at work cuz he's working late and she finds her husband having sex with his boss so she is devastated obviously she hasn't had sex in months SL years like she just hasn't felt attracted to her husband and uh after about 10 months of like just like healing from this divorce she ends up jumping into bed I don't wouldn't even say jumping into bed she ends up in a situation where she starts having sex with the pool boy and the pool boy I want to say is like 24 or 25 like it is exactly what I am telling you it's nothing really nuanced or subtle but it's definitely not bad and it's also the added layer to the story of the like career I guess aspirations of Troy and or the career aspirations of Erica she is a music executive and she's been charged with her boss with like finding an opening act for this like Taylor Swift kind of standin I guess uh this like country turned pop singer uh who is going to be back in Nashville for like the last leg of her tour is looking for an opening artist and she is going to try to find someone like new and up and coming she hears Troy sing at a bar and she's like I think this guy could be really great for this opportunity just like some other people who also could potentially like fill this spot but she really wants to help Troy and maybe uh he can do something with this like Newfound passion of his he didn't necessarily intend to be a musician he got his degree I think in like athletic training and he has been doing athletic training and also working for his stepfather's business but he is interested in potentially doing something different our heroin is also someone who really is into music obviously she works in the music industry but she has had a renewed interest in writing songs and I'm wondering if that will become a major part of the story it kind of already is our heroine is helping Troy like she is letting him record in the studio so that he can put together a demo for this opportunity yeah like it's a pretty solid read I would say the sex scenes in this book are pretty hot I think they are maybe a little long for my liking I I just know when I pick up a book like this and I don't want to say that I go into every book with preconceived notions but I feel like within about 10% of a book I can tell if it's something that I'm going to enjoy or not and this book I didn't go in and think oh I hate this but I knew that it wasn't going to be something like really emotionally deep and Rich mostly because of the way that the beginning of the story started like yes he sympathized with the heroin like her husband cheated on her that's so shitty but you can tell that the emphasis is not really going to be placed on the emotional healing and her trying to find an emotional connection with someone else that being said like I can tell that this author is trying to kind of Infuse some of that you know like oh they they do like each other a lot sort of thing and I don't I just don't know if I like necessarily buy that it seems like they're both just sexually attracted to each other and the hero says like oh you know I've been attracted to her for 5 years the reason I started singing in the first place was to like impress her at like my Mom's party cuz oh that's another thing Erica one of her best friends is Troy's mom I mean they've only been friends since Troy was in high school so it's not like you know she's been around with this kid forever or anything which I think is a good touch like thank you for not having there be like a weird aspect to this book you know but um yeah that's kind of where I'm at in this one it's fine I'll probably finish it tonight I definitely will finish it tonight I'm staying up late tonight and I am going to start in on something else I don't know what I'm going to start in on let's see what else we've got on the list I like I said I picked out the books for this video kind of a while ago so I don't actually even remember which ones I'm reading so I think I'm going to save birthday girl for last I think I think I'm going to do the the way I hate you oh yeah that's the Megan Quinn book that one is like a typical age Gap there's another book that I have I think it's called like stealing home and that one I want to read as well but that one's also an older woman younger man and I want some like let's alternate let's alternate each book right so so yeah I'll update you when I'm finished I think this one's probably going to be a three star for me but definitely not an unpleasant read and I think if you're looking for something again just like kind of low-key and you want like a bump up in writing quality this could definitely be something like fun and like a palette cleanser for you all right so I finished the pool boy by Nikki Sloan and I've started in on our next read the way I hate him and so I thought we could talk I thought we could chat maybe do some final ratings for this book the first one I were giving readings to um I was actually just about to reach for my old phone I need the new phone so that I can do my calculations okay so mixed feelings on this one I think I ended up liking it more than I had anticipated because I do feel like the emotional component really did round this book out pretty nicely I wouldn't say it's groundbreaking or like so heartfelt emotional amazing 10 out of 10 or anything I was pretty impressed with a lot of the things that our author was able to pull off even with the sort of like far-fetched sort of I don't know music plotline mixed in with her like banging her po boy uh they seem to have a cute enough relationship I feel feel like this is a book that you will fly through again I think if you're looking for something easy breezy but you want good writing I think this is a solid one I think in terms of like my actual rating it's still probably a three star like this is not four-star material primarily because I don't really see myself remembering this book very long after I have uh very long after finishing it anyway like three stars total in terms of sexiness I think this book's going to get a four I think this book was very sexy there was there was like one scene I didn't love but for the most part this book was pretty sexy it definitely had a lot of sex scenes and I thought the ones that were done or the ones that were in there of which they were they were well written then whether or not this book would work if it were age Gap or not it needed to be an ageg Gap romance because otherwise this is just a romance I mean I guess you could say it would be like maybe boss employee there would be a power dynamic in there in a sense because she is his manager but I think overall it's really hinged on it being an age Gap romance for it to actually work and otherwise it's just like it's boring you know you need that Trope so we're going to give it a three overall a four for sexiness and I think I'm also going to give it a four for the overall gappiness so it's a 3.66 which I feel like is a pretty good start to this here video uh but let's talk a little bit about this other book before I lose my steam I'm so tired y'all sorry this is like not the most entertaining clip thus far but like 10ish per into the way I hate him and I just wanted to like update you because I'm going to try to read more of this tonight into tomorrow obviously I probably will only give one more update though cuz I don't see this being anything like mind-blowing maybe it will be I don't know this book's better her two main characters Hattie and Hayes I believe Hattie is back in her small town because she is a few credits short of finishing her master's degree in Business Administration she really doesn't know what she wants to do with her life her sister just recently passed away she's not vibant she's not having a good time and to top it all off her good for nothing Thief boyfriend ends up dumping her and I guess in a fit of Revenge our heroine is going to take all the things that her ex-boyfriend stole from his boss bring them back to his boss in an attempt to get him fired and this kind of backfires on our heroin and the hero is like hey you helped him steal for me or whatever you need to work for me now since I'm like firing this guy you need to work for me and she's like I don't want to work for you wait wait like our families are enemies he will not take no for an answer and so she is now his employee it's interesting to me cuz I'm pretty sure the first Elizabeth oror book in the devil series is also named Haze and I'm also pretty sure that there's kind of a similar premise in that heroin working for the hero coincidences for sure but it has a similar Vibe too there is sort of like a Snappy dynamic between the two of them there's definitely sort of like a witty I wouldn't even say witty a banter situation going on if there's one thing to be said about Megan Quinn's writing and I can say this cuz I just read another book by her and not so me cute she does a really good job initially at drawing you in and getting you to be intrigued by these characters and their chemistry she is really good with the banter I always have a fun time when I am reading one of her books so I'm having a good time with it it's excessively long at like 500 pages but like it's fun enough to where I'm almost willing to overlook it what I'm interested to see is like how the other things in the story play out I can tell that Megan Quinn's trying to make a new series here this is set in Almond Bay where I guess four lesbians run the town which I mean we love lesbians in this house so that's cool but there's been a lot of like backstory and buildup and I can tell that this one is not going to just be smut SM smut all the time I think they're both attracted to each other I could be wrong here but just with the way the book is set up I don't think this is going to be an easy breezy smudy book um which is good because that's not really what I'm in the market for presently I know I can count on birthday girl at the end of this video to like really be that emotional heartfelt but sexy thing that I need but I would love to find at least one or two other ageg gap romances in here that really prove how amazing this Trope can be and why I have liked this Trope in the past so anyway I'll update you tomorrow when I'm not like blur eyed um and hopefully my hair will be looking a a little bit better L girly pop besties all right um I be reading books okay I finished the way I hate him by Megan Quan it wasn't terrible it was however way too long why did the audio book for this need to be like 15 hours long I just just explained it to me like someone make it make sense I think the general premise was fun and and I appreciate what Megan Quinn tried to do with the emotional aspect I think I mentioned that in the last clip that like this definitely had that like emotional twist or not like twist but like component right it wasn't just like a ooh taboo let's bang sort of situation it was oh he's older than me but there's more at stake here right heroin is really mourning the loss of her sister that's a huge component of this book her two older siblings are not really being very honest with her about her deceased sisters which is she's feeling very isolated and alone and she really finds comfort and Haze and I thought that was kind of sweet issue I think was with Hayes I think he was just an emotionally immature character and he does grow throughout the course of the story but the reason they break up in the third Act is really stupid and there were just a couple of like miscommunication moments that I felt were unnecessary coupled with the fact that I didn't find this book sexy made it to where I was frustrated like I really wanted to love this book because I would say it like 25 30% I was like you know what this is actually like solid I'm very into that uh but I feel like that happens often with Megan Quinn books I'll get like sucked in and excited and then things just kind of fizzle I think Val on Goodreads she's like one of my favorite go-to Goodreads reviewers a good job summing it up that like once you get to the like sexual component of the book all of the chemistry just kind of Fizzles between the two characters and you just don't care anymore so this one's so tough for me um I definitely didn't enjoy this one as much as pool boy I think am I going to give this book two stars I think I'm going to give this book three stars okay the sexiness however is going to get two stars because I did not find this book sexy and I need you to know that I did not find it sexy so I'm going to give it a two for age Gap can I be real with you I don't think this book needed to be an age Gap romance there was a lot already kind of working here one of the biggest factors for this relationship to be taboo was the fact that the heroin's older brother used to be friends with the hero but they're enemies now and so she's working for the enemy and she has to like keep their relationship their professional working relationship a secret and then when it turns romantic that makes things even more complicated so I I don't know I just don't feel like the age Gap was really a huge component here especially I mean if we're going off maturity levels he did not have the maturity level that hated his age you know what I'm saying like he was less mature than the heroin the overall reading for this book is a 2.33 I definitely did not hate the story I just was hoping for a little bit more considering how the book started out so anyway let's move on to a book that is just totally different than anything I feel like I've read for this video thus far it is stealing home by Kimberly is it CIO cillo I'm not really sure this book's about our two main characters Scott and harlo I believe at the beginning of the story we find out that harlo is married to a man the coach of a really small universities baseball team she's in a very unhappy marriage they basically sleep in separate beds he is emotionally and physically abusive towards her she is trying to find a way to get out of this relationship she finds Solace and comfort in one of the players on the team Scott comes from money he is a trust fun baby he is playing baseball at a high level and could go pro if he wants to but he doesn't want to he is a computer science major and he wants to be a software engineer after college he's basically just vibing and living his life but he has like always noticed his coach's wife from afar and he like finds the perfect opportunity to get close to her when she is charged with running this like baseball clinic I guess for children and so uh he like puts the moves on her kind of and like sort of helps her get out of her abusive situation I mean she definitely has other people helping her out like she meets This Woman This Woman Like offers to give her a job and like let her live in an apartment rentree and then Scott is like helping her emotionally and also like making sure that the ex-husband stays away it's such a weird book in a lot of ways I am definitely endeared to the story I like the hero and heroin enough but is also a little bit bizarre because there's not much there beyond the surface like there's obviously hard-hitting issues in this book with the uh domestic violence and abuse I don't really know what our heroin wants besides getting out of this relationship like I don't feel like I'm getting a lot of her internal dialogue I don't I just don't feel like she's a a full-fledged like full-fledged out person and I feel the same exact way about Scott like sure I understand he wants to be a software engineer but I don't really know much about him and his life's desires and even if I did I don't know I just feel like the way the story is told is very like H and not show I don't know I I don't feel like I'm getting a good feel for who the characters are I'm still rooting for them to get together I mean the hero is Charming in a sense but like there's something missing there also something I was going to point out is that I feel like there's too many convenient things happening here like the fact that our hero doesn't actually want to go pro works out well because then it doesn't matter if he pisses his coach off by stealing his woman stealing his woman just been like a couple of instances like that there's also been a moment where the ex-husband the abuse of ex-husband comes and tries to find the heroin like where she's staying he finds out where she's staying and he like brings a cop or something like that but because the people that the heroin is staying with like are well known in town or something they end up calling the mayor and the mayor is like tell that cop to get out of there otherwise he's fired or something like that I don't know there's just like too many convenient things happening and don't get me wrong I don't really want the heroin to have a hard time I don't tend to like harder hitting romances I say that I mean Kennedy Ryan love you so much yeah I don't know this one's just like a hard one to really sum up I think you have to like read it to understand it's not super deep but I like it I like the sex scene that I just read and I am liking this one I think I was was going to say more than the other books that I've read for this but it's kind of hard to say honestly this video was like more of a bust than I thought it would be I'm not mad at any of the books though for the most part I would say like the one I'm maddest at is the way I hate him cuz I just that was too long um but I'm having a good time despite like not having a ton of bangers good news is I'm going to finish this book tonight and then I'm going to read birthday girl tomorrow so like I'm in for a treat you know Hello besy friends I finished stealing home last night and I'm 50% into birthday girl so right on track doing what I should be doing stealing home was quite the book here's the thing I feel like the main issue here was what I sort of expressed yesterday which was that there was a lot going on here but not a lot of character development and that was like such a crucial missing component of this book I think had the characterization been done better had I given a about the characters this book probably would have been like a four maybe even a festar read for me because there were no well-developed characters in this book it honestly feels more like a two star read to me and that is how crucially important characters are in a romance like the hero and the heroin get together at 50% Mark of this book and since there's nothing really leading you to that point like there there's no oh these characters need to be together because X wiy like I know the hero so well I know the heroin so well this is why they should be together because that doesn't ever really happen you get these two characters getting together and like yeah you want the hero to save the heroin or whatever like damel distress from the 50% mark on the remainder of the story is spent with our heroine trying to stay with the hero okay like the hero has some issues with the baseball team obviously because he's dating the ex he's dating the's ex-wife he also runs into trouble with his parents cuz his parents don't want him dating an older woman our heroin the majority of the story honestly is the heroine trying to escape her shitty ex-husband does end up getting a divorce there is obviously a showdown after the divorce I don't know it just felt a little exhausting to read especially again because it wasn't this triumphant moment of like oh my God these characters they deserve this like they deserve a happy ending I was just kind of like I don't know I was just kind of like scratching my head like okay this is like fine um which is so disappointing cuz I feel like otherwise this book could have been like a four maybe even a five star read had that character development been there because it's like if you can convincingly show that these two should be together and they get together at 50% Mark and then the rest of the story is them facing adversity I'm honestly fine with that like I don't think I need a third act breakup necessarily for it's like be a convincing amazing romance with a lot of good conflict and Stakes I just need the character development to be there for that to happen so sadly overall this book's a two star read for me it's irritating in ways that the way I hate him wasn't and vice versa the characters in this book weren't irritating but they also had no personality so like they couldn't have really irritated in that sense so yeah overall rating for this is going to be probably two stars which I mean it could have gone either way I feel like I give the other book three stars definitely wasn't worse then the way I hate him okay actually you know what I'm going to do I'm going to give an over all three because it wasn't terrible I think the sexiness factor of this book is probably a three as well like it was fine but I don't think that it was like the sexiest thing I've ever read I don't know some of the like Dynamics there just felt unrealistic given Our Hero's history with sex but I don't know whatever the age gness of the story I think this book is maybe one of the most compelling age Gap stories this one and the pool boy I think because the not it's not because the heroin's older but like the age Gap was a crucial component of the story and like what I say that was it really like it was but also like okay let's say that you aged up the hero and he was like a professional player like like in Long Shot right a professional baseball player and she wasn't she was still the coaches White and there wasn't an age Gap with the story who still worked I think yes so actually I'm going to give it a two for ageg gappiness I'm all over the place today y'all um overall was a 2.66 which I think is the same as the way I hate him which feels right because I I disliked these books for different reasons and I liked them for different reasons as well like there were definitely like winning characteristics of both books but like overall neither is going to be like top of my list all right now let's move on to the final book the book that I knew was going to be a banger because I've read it before birthday girl by Penelope Douglas this one has been an interesting reread and that I'm listening to the audio book rather than reading it physically I believe that's the first time that I've ever done it I mean I can't recall listening to the audio book before for this one um and I do think it's impacting my enjoyment a little bit I think this is definitely a book that I would recommend reading physically cuz I think that reading is your own pace rather than having someone like read it to you it just works better for the story not saying that like you know you shouldn't listen to the audiobook but I do think the physical book's better so this book's better to many characters Pike and Jordan Jordan is living with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's father in his house after they've kind of fallen on hard times they've living together for a while she and her boyfriend like they they need somewhere to live so she's going to move in with her boyfriend's dad Pike and her boyfriend is like kind of arranged from his father like they haven't had like the best relationship ever and also Jordan is feeling a little bit alone I don't think she has very supportive parents if she has parents at all her older sister works at a strip club and Jordan doesn't necessarily want that to be her own fate and then you have um Pike who is I don't know just like Gruff middle-aged dude who's living his life and really like the Crux of the story right like the the Crux of the story is obviously that Jordan and P get together and uh the boyfriend is a piece of so we don't really care so much that he gets like cheated on but he doesn't really get cheated on anyway Crux of the story is basically like a Playing House kind of vibe like you have Jordan and Pike kind of like working side by side part of the deal of her and uh Cole I think is his name living in the house her boyfriend is that they will cook a little bit they will clean they will just make sure that the house is maintained if they're going to live there right makes sense like a fair exchange and because of this you know Jordan is kind playing house with Pike and as the story develops they like spend more and more time together and they start to like appreciate each other's qualities and they actually have sort of like a meat cute situation at the beginning of the book before they knew who the other person is and it's just clear that they have this like undeniable chemistry this book is just such a contrast with the first book where I feel like you really understand the character's desires what they want from Life what they are maybe looking for in a partner even if they're not necessarily looking for a partner and I feel like that is what sets this book apart for from so many other ageg gap romances especially the ones I've been reading I'm not saying everything has to be the deepest and I think ageg Gap app definitely provides like a fun taboo element if you want to make a sexy story but I think the thing about this book that's so great is the Slow Burn the hero and heroin have not gotten together at this 50% work you've got kind of this like drawn out will they Wy situation and I think pen does such a good job at like writing that line between sexual attraction and also compatibility because I think again a lot of the time you have this like long drawn out Slow Burn situation or not even slowburn but you just have these two characters who you know want to get together and the tension the only real tension there is the like oh I just want to see what she looks like naked that's definitely part of it here but the majority of it is that like they get along so well and they seemingly want the same things out of life so I don't know I just one of those romances that every time I read it I am into it I think this time around I may be like a touch more bored than I have been in the past reading it just because again I'm listening to the audio book and I might end up switching to the physical book for the last half of the book but I just I like the story a lot I think this is one of the better examples of age gaps and I know not everybody's going to be into this Trope at all like if you are timately not into age gaps you're not going to like the story if you like an age Gap or you're curious about it I think this is a great entry point because it does again strike that balance between sexy taboo and also uh convincing romance so I love this book I think it's so fun and I'm glad that I picked this for my reread there were definitely a lot of options and as I was reading was it the last book the characters are actually kind of reminding me of I think it's lessons and Corruption by is it lessons and Corruption I don't know the first book in that um J darling series The like motorcycle club romance series The Character dynamic between hero and heroin and stealing home reminded me a lot of that and I was like oh I should have reread that one and while I like that book I think this is just like this is primo there's so many h gap romances out there and maybe I just picked not great ones for this video that's the way with cookie crumble sometimes I'm going to finish this I'll let you know how it is and we can compare the results of this H romance Vlog to the other tropes that we've done for the series so far all right y'all I finished birthday girl and I'm sorry it's fives across the board this book just really does everything that an age gabian should it's sexy it's sweet it's Charming the relationship Dynamic is incredible the character development is really great I just love seeing two people who are well suited for each other get together and I feel like this is one I mean it's one of my favorite books of all time for a reason I just feel like these two are so well suited for each other and it takes a really masterfully skilled author to be able to pull off a story like this without making it gross you know what I mean like taboo romances have such an opportunity to be gross and like titillating for no reason but this one is just I mean it's a begger for a reason and I feel like I'm not doing a good job at describing this book going into the details of it because I've read it before and because I have I feel like multiple Vlogs on my channel reading this book but I just think if you're looking for a good ageg Gap romance this is just one you need to read the one that you really should check out because it is uh again exemplary I think of this particular drope so again if it's FES across the board the average rating for this book is five which brings the total for this video the total like overall rating for HF romance is to a 3.49 just tied with something else and I can't remember what it is but you can see it on the screen uh compared to other tropes this one is definitely like middle of the pack like higher than middle of the pack but not like top top I think my top ones at this point are like Second Chance romance and I can't remember what else there's one that's like up there but I had such a good time with this video I just love making Trope videos in general and I need your help obviously for the next one in getting your YouTube comments and your recommendations for your favorite love triangle romances the next Trope I'm going to be doing is love triangles in November so let me know in the comments down below your favorite love triangle romance and let me know if you agree or disagree with any of my ratings for the agap books I read in this year video thanks so much for watching I love you all so much and until next timehello welcome back to my channel in today's video I am going to be reading ageg Gap romances for an entire week nothing but ageg Gap romances for an entire week I'm super excited to share my pics with you picks that I got from a variety of places like I do for all of these show videos but before doing that I wanted to tell you a little bit about the sponsor of today's video book of the month book of the month's mission is to help readers discover new books they love and to promote the work of emerging authors book of the month makes it easy to decide what to read next which I absolutely love each month the editorial team reads through hundreds of new titles and picks five to seven of the best new books for you to choose from all of the books are incredible so you can't go wrong I love book of the month because they help readers discover books that they ordinarily wouldn't have discovered on their own focusing on new and upcoming authors and helping readers Venture beyond their typical genres I am historically a romance reader obviously but I love book of the month because they have such good Selections in other genres and I know I can count on them to pick out books that I'm going to love I almost always pick out a thriller selection whenever I am selecting my book of the month because I know that they've got my back and the experience is such a delight there's just something really special about receiving your blue box and the app is really great too because it helps me pick my book track my reading progress and participate in Reading challenges with rewards and something cool the book of the month has been doing for the past couple of months and will continue to do is offering an audiobook option which I personally really love some months I'm just really not looking to add to my physical book collection so getting an option for an audio book is super super awesome not all of the books are offered in both formats but again I love having that option whenever it is available because I love a good audio book what can I say but if you do decide to go the hard cover route rest assured that you were getting the greatest prices on new release hard cover fiction $16.99 for a brand new hard cover with free shipping is a deal that you don't want to miss and if you are new to book the month they're running a really incredible offer right now where you can get your first book for only $5 using Code spooky the books that I selected for this month are when I'm dead by Hannah morresy and Starling house by Alex E herrow when I'm dead is a thriller as I said I always select a thriller from book of the month cuz I have the best selections this one is about a woman who is helping to investigate the disappear or the death I guess of her daughter's best friend until her daughter goes missing herself which sounds very juicy and I'm very excited to read this stly house is a book that I won't lie I read the description of and I was totally hooked but I still don't totally understand and I think that's actually great going into a book kind of not knowing a ton about it uh but this book is about our main character opal who is trying to make a better life for her and her brother and to do that she ends up entering this like mysterious house called Sterling House I don't know if she has to work with the heir of this Mansion or if she is just there to like kind of solve Mysteries I don't know I I don't want to know a ton about this book all I know is that I'm very excited about it I think I've read one other book by this author and I'm very excited to give this one a try so very excited for both of these releases again if you want to get your first book for only $5 use code spooky thanks again to book the month for sponsoring this portion of today's video now let's talk about my selections for this video super excited cuz I love age Gap romances uh age gaps are such an interesting Trope in Romance all age gaps I think are becoming more Taboo in real life I think they're becoming less Taboo in Romance it's something I feel like I see a lot of and I've been seeing a lot of lately but I selected five books from five different locations first up of course uh I always do a reread for these Trope videos I'm going to reread birthday girl by pen Douglas I feel like this book is such a great example of an age Gap that has that taboo element for sure but definitely does more with it than just being titilating so excited to reread this one and see if my feelings are the same as when I initially read this book next up is a pick from Amazon I always like to pick a book from Amazon by just searching up a Trope like ageg Gap romance and seeing what comes up and one of the books that came up and sounded really interesting to me is stealing home by Kimberly I don't know if it's koreo or cillo but this book is a reverse age Gap I guess you could say the heroin is older than the hero and I think it's kind of scandalous because she is a baseball coach's wife and one of the players is into her so excited to see kind of where that one goes next up I like to look at my YouTube comment section for recommendations y'all always have great recommendations and this time you'all definitely pulled through with the pool boy by Nikki Sloan this is a book that has been on my radar for a very long time but I just haven't picked up I don't think I've read anything by this author previously and this is another reverse age Gap where the heroin is older than the hero and of course she ends updating the po boy um I don't know much about this one other than that but I don't need to know much more going into this book then I have a book tube recommendation again I always love to get on YouTube and search up book recommendations and I think this is how a lot of us like find really good recommendations for books on Jess's video her agab romance video I got the idea to read Power by Cassandra Robbins this one is pitched as a very like sexy hcab romance and I'm not saying that like the other selections aren't sexy but Jess definitely sold me on this one by saying it was like very hot and steamy so excited to pick this one up and lastly I always like to look at Instagram by using a hashtag like #h romance and seeing what comes up and this is the post that came up advertising or like selling to me the way I Hate You by Megan Quinn and this is one that's like at the top of Amazon's charts anyway so I was kind of curious to see if this was a romance that I was going to enjoy I have mixed luck with Megan Quinn books recently finished one that I was excited about but kind of let me down so I'm hoping that's not the case for this one being said those are the five romances I'm going to be reading in this year Vlog let's get into the Vlog portion of the video and find out if agap romance is a Trope that uh is like a hit it or a quid it let's just ignore this we can't however ignore Power by Cassandra Robbins um okay so what a book to start with I was having this like not debate with myself but I was considering AG Gap romances as I started to read this one and just thinking about how ageg Gap romances can differ and I feel like these videos in general have really got me to ponder and consider what tropes can do for a reader and what sorts of stigmas they can either break or reinforce and I think AG Gap romances are pretty interesting because I I think societally we have become more against them especially recently when it comes to relationships like Aaron Taylor Johnson and his older wife and you know obviously vice versa when you have an older man and a younger woman I feel like you know me personally not super tight with like ageg Gap relationships and real life but I'm cool with them in fiction typically because I think ageg Gap romances give an author an opportunity to take something that is taboo on its head and make it something that isn't so taboo and to really spend time fleshing out the other aspects of the relationship and other aspects of the the romance to get you to sort of forget almost that there is an age Gap um and you're rooting for these two to overcome maybe the stigma that other characters are putting on them right so I like the idea of AGC romances and that's why I decided to do this video because I know that there's some that I love is a Trope that I have typically enjoyed although I think the ultra I get the more that I kind of like question them even in fiction but Power was an interesting one to start with because this book I think really leans into the taboo and doesn't seem to care much about uh turning anything on its head and you know what a book doesn't have to do that really it's not book's responsibility to like take these tropes and make them something they're not or to like that's word I'm looking for to normalize things like I don't know I'm trying to talk about this book in like a polite way because it's a book that I started and I was like this is kind of fun and then it just went to a place that I am not vibing with so I think I'm probably going to De have this one let me just talk to you about it okay Spider-Man character Jet and we get his POV at the very beginning of the book he is this like high-powered dude I think he's like a criminal defense attorney or something like that he is engaged to a woman named Rachel and Rachel is not someone who he seems to enjoy particularly he I guess admires her Cutthroat because he is particularly Cutthroat in his own career but he doesn't seem particularly attracted to her she's 48 and while he says that she's kept it tight and everything she has duck lips which is remarked upon a couple of times and she's kind of a bimbo and I I don't know it's just the way he describes her is not complimentary definitely not the way that I would describe someone that I was marrying and you know I know that people in in books or in real life like marry people for the wrong reasons but just weird the way that he was talking about her and I was like okay whatever like it's kind of campy and like I don't even know if campy is the right word it's over the top certainly over the top and so like maybe that's where we're going with this I'm like okay I can Overlook it maybe like maybe it'll be fun so I continue to read and we find out that Rachel has a daughter named Raven and Raven is going to be staying with her mother over the summer I don't think she typically stays with her mom she doesn't get along with her mom very well but she's staying with her mom over the summer before college or something like that I don't know Rachel I think is going to be out of town for a little bit so Raven is going to be staying with jet in Jet's like big ass mansion and even though Raven has a boyfriend she knows who jet is before meeting him and she knows that he's been in the tabloids and he's really handsome and that she's going to have a hard time staying away from him and I was like okay willing to suspend again my disbelief just a little bit and be like okay this going to be corny but like maybe fine and then things started getting a little bit too weird for me he calls her in his internal dialogue like the first time he sees her is Lolita which like the first time e every other time he says it after that disgusted okay so he keep saying that I was like okay uh I'm going to keep reading I'm just I'm intrigued I want to see where this leads okay like I need to see where it leads and um we have our heroin receiving oral sex from her boyfriend her boyfriend who is described as a pale skinny vegan who looks ill so he's like slobbering on her downstairs bits jet comes home and he sees this happening and he's like get away from my woman and immediately starts performing sexual axe on her I don't know if the guy the other guy like her boyfriend has left but he's like I'm going to bring you to orgasm don't you worry and it's funny like it's it's funny it's truly funny I'm not above it let me just say I'm not I'm not above it I think that books like this can be fun this book in some ways reminds me of Steal You Away by I always get the au's name confused or wrong it's either like Victoria Alexander Victoria Andrew something like that I don't know um she wrote a book where the heroin gets with her boyfriend's brother younger brother and it's fun that's an HF romance and that one's fun it's silly it's over the top but it's it's just fun this I think there were too many red flags for me and it's not the AG Gap again that's the red flag cuz that other has an age Gap it's that he calls her Lolita and it's the the the pace at which things are happening you know I wasn't expecting this to be this like incredibly intense and romantic book especially because of the way that Jess like describes it and reviewed it on Goodreads I will admit it's been a while since I selected the books for this video whenever I looked just a second ago at Jess's review she said this was hot and steamy and I can't disagree with that it definitely is a book that I think is for the steam Factor so if you're looking for an ageg Gap romance that is like more on the steamy side and you're not super concerned with writing quality I think this could be a good palette cleanser I often gravitate towards books like this frankly whenever I am looking for something that is a little bit on the corny side because it's not corny when I'm looking for something a little bit more like light-hearted and like fastpaced you know sometimes I'm looking for that I'm not necessarily looking for like you know a Kennedy Ryan book but yeah the Lita comments and the pacing of the sex was just going to be too much for me it's just not for me it feels a little bit weird to be dnfing the first book for this video but it again it really did get me to consider things about this Trope and just about these kinds of books in general so I'm not mad at it I as you can tell hopefully by like my attitude and my inflection this is funny to me and like I had a fun time with the 15% that I read of it I just don't think it's going to be like a book that I ultimately love and uh I don't feel like continuing on so I think I'm going to pick something else up next well I definitely am going to pick up something else next what it will be do not know let's do the pool boy by Nikki Sloan that one I believe is a reverse age Gap where the heroin is older than the hero and I'll be curious to see if I like that one anymore I feel like that one I've heard so many things about I don't think I've ever read a Nikki slone book before so let's get into it all right so I picked up up the pool boy by Nikki Sloan I'm like 50% in and I thought we could talk about it this one is I would say like fairly similar to the last book that I attempted to read power but this one I think is executing on some of those themes in a little bit more of a wellth thought out polished way so this book's about her two main characters Erica and Troy Erica is in her early 40s she's really beautiful woman but she feels kind of neglected by her husband who has not really been like uh wanting to engage with her sexually so she decided she's going to get all dressed up and like it really cute and go surprise her husband at work cuz he's working late and she finds her husband having sex with his boss so she is devastated obviously she hasn't had sex in months SL years like she just hasn't felt attracted to her husband and uh after about 10 months of like just like healing from this divorce she ends up jumping into bed I don't wouldn't even say jumping into bed she ends up in a situation where she starts having sex with the pool boy and the pool boy I want to say is like 24 or 25 like it is exactly what I am telling you it's nothing really nuanced or subtle but it's definitely not bad and it's also the added layer to the story of the like career I guess aspirations of Troy and or the career aspirations of Erica she is a music executive and she's been charged with her boss with like finding an opening act for this like Taylor Swift kind of standin I guess uh this like country turned pop singer uh who is going to be back in Nashville for like the last leg of her tour is looking for an opening artist and she is going to try to find someone like new and up and coming she hears Troy sing at a bar and she's like I think this guy could be really great for this opportunity just like some other people who also could potentially like fill this spot but she really wants to help Troy and maybe uh he can do something with this like Newfound passion of his he didn't necessarily intend to be a musician he got his degree I think in like athletic training and he has been doing athletic training and also working for his stepfather's business but he is interested in potentially doing something different our heroin is also someone who really is into music obviously she works in the music industry but she has had a renewed interest in writing songs and I'm wondering if that will become a major part of the story it kind of already is our heroine is helping Troy like she is letting him record in the studio so that he can put together a demo for this opportunity yeah like it's a pretty solid read I would say the sex scenes in this book are pretty hot I think they are maybe a little long for my liking I I just know when I pick up a book like this and I don't want to say that I go into every book with preconceived notions but I feel like within about 10% of a book I can tell if it's something that I'm going to enjoy or not and this book I didn't go in and think oh I hate this but I knew that it wasn't going to be something like really emotionally deep and Rich mostly because of the way that the beginning of the story started like yes he sympathized with the heroin like her husband cheated on her that's so shitty but you can tell that the emphasis is not really going to be placed on the emotional healing and her trying to find an emotional connection with someone else that being said like I can tell that this author is trying to kind of Infuse some of that you know like oh they they do like each other a lot sort of thing and I don't I just don't know if I like necessarily buy that it seems like they're both just sexually attracted to each other and the hero says like oh you know I've been attracted to her for 5 years the reason I started singing in the first place was to like impress her at like my Mom's party cuz oh that's another thing Erica one of her best friends is Troy's mom I mean they've only been friends since Troy was in high school so it's not like you know she's been around with this kid forever or anything which I think is a good touch like thank you for not having there be like a weird aspect to this book you know but um yeah that's kind of where I'm at in this one it's fine I'll probably finish it tonight I definitely will finish it tonight I'm staying up late tonight and I am going to start in on something else I don't know what I'm going to start in on let's see what else we've got on the list I like I said I picked out the books for this video kind of a while ago so I don't actually even remember which ones I'm reading so I think I'm going to save birthday girl for last I think I think I'm going to do the the way I hate you oh yeah that's the Megan Quinn book that one is like a typical age Gap there's another book that I have I think it's called like stealing home and that one I want to read as well but that one's also an older woman younger man and I want some like let's alternate let's alternate each book right so so yeah I'll update you when I'm finished I think this one's probably going to be a three star for me but definitely not an unpleasant read and I think if you're looking for something again just like kind of low-key and you want like a bump up in writing quality this could definitely be something like fun and like a palette cleanser for you all right so I finished the pool boy by Nikki Sloan and I've started in on our next read the way I hate him and so I thought we could talk I thought we could chat maybe do some final ratings for this book the first one I were giving readings to um I was actually just about to reach for my old phone I need the new phone so that I can do my calculations okay so mixed feelings on this one I think I ended up liking it more than I had anticipated because I do feel like the emotional component really did round this book out pretty nicely I wouldn't say it's groundbreaking or like so heartfelt emotional amazing 10 out of 10 or anything I was pretty impressed with a lot of the things that our author was able to pull off even with the sort of like far-fetched sort of I don't know music plotline mixed in with her like banging her po boy uh they seem to have a cute enough relationship I feel feel like this is a book that you will fly through again I think if you're looking for something easy breezy but you want good writing I think this is a solid one I think in terms of like my actual rating it's still probably a three star like this is not four-star material primarily because I don't really see myself remembering this book very long after I have uh very long after finishing it anyway like three stars total in terms of sexiness I think this book's going to get a four I think this book was very sexy there was there was like one scene I didn't love but for the most part this book was pretty sexy it definitely had a lot of sex scenes and I thought the ones that were done or the ones that were in there of which they were they were well written then whether or not this book would work if it were age Gap or not it needed to be an ageg Gap romance because otherwise this is just a romance I mean I guess you could say it would be like maybe boss employee there would be a power dynamic in there in a sense because she is his manager but I think overall it's really hinged on it being an age Gap romance for it to actually work and otherwise it's just like it's boring you know you need that Trope so we're going to give it a three overall a four for sexiness and I think I'm also going to give it a four for the overall gappiness so it's a 3.66 which I feel like is a pretty good start to this here video uh but let's talk a little bit about this other book before I lose my steam I'm so tired y'all sorry this is like not the most entertaining clip thus far but like 10ish per into the way I hate him and I just wanted to like update you because I'm going to try to read more of this tonight into tomorrow obviously I probably will only give one more update though cuz I don't see this being anything like mind-blowing maybe it will be I don't know this book's better her two main characters Hattie and Hayes I believe Hattie is back in her small town because she is a few credits short of finishing her master's degree in Business Administration she really doesn't know what she wants to do with her life her sister just recently passed away she's not vibant she's not having a good time and to top it all off her good for nothing Thief boyfriend ends up dumping her and I guess in a fit of Revenge our heroine is going to take all the things that her ex-boyfriend stole from his boss bring them back to his boss in an attempt to get him fired and this kind of backfires on our heroin and the hero is like hey you helped him steal for me or whatever you need to work for me now since I'm like firing this guy you need to work for me and she's like I don't want to work for you wait wait like our families are enemies he will not take no for an answer and so she is now his employee it's interesting to me cuz I'm pretty sure the first Elizabeth oror book in the devil series is also named Haze and I'm also pretty sure that there's kind of a similar premise in that heroin working for the hero coincidences for sure but it has a similar Vibe too there is sort of like a Snappy dynamic between the two of them there's definitely sort of like a witty I wouldn't even say witty a banter situation going on if there's one thing to be said about Megan Quinn's writing and I can say this cuz I just read another book by her and not so me cute she does a really good job initially at drawing you in and getting you to be intrigued by these characters and their chemistry she is really good with the banter I always have a fun time when I am reading one of her books so I'm having a good time with it it's excessively long at like 500 pages but like it's fun enough to where I'm almost willing to overlook it what I'm interested to see is like how the other things in the story play out I can tell that Megan Quinn's trying to make a new series here this is set in Almond Bay where I guess four lesbians run the town which I mean we love lesbians in this house so that's cool but there's been a lot of like backstory and buildup and I can tell that this one is not going to just be smut SM smut all the time I think they're both attracted to each other I could be wrong here but just with the way the book is set up I don't think this is going to be an easy breezy smudy book um which is good because that's not really what I'm in the market for presently I know I can count on birthday girl at the end of this video to like really be that emotional heartfelt but sexy thing that I need but I would love to find at least one or two other ageg gap romances in here that really prove how amazing this Trope can be and why I have liked this Trope in the past so anyway I'll update you tomorrow when I'm not like blur eyed um and hopefully my hair will be looking a a little bit better L girly pop besties all right um I be reading books okay I finished the way I hate him by Megan Quan it wasn't terrible it was however way too long why did the audio book for this need to be like 15 hours long I just just explained it to me like someone make it make sense I think the general premise was fun and and I appreciate what Megan Quinn tried to do with the emotional aspect I think I mentioned that in the last clip that like this definitely had that like emotional twist or not like twist but like component right it wasn't just like a ooh taboo let's bang sort of situation it was oh he's older than me but there's more at stake here right heroin is really mourning the loss of her sister that's a huge component of this book her two older siblings are not really being very honest with her about her deceased sisters which is she's feeling very isolated and alone and she really finds comfort and Haze and I thought that was kind of sweet issue I think was with Hayes I think he was just an emotionally immature character and he does grow throughout the course of the story but the reason they break up in the third Act is really stupid and there were just a couple of like miscommunication moments that I felt were unnecessary coupled with the fact that I didn't find this book sexy made it to where I was frustrated like I really wanted to love this book because I would say it like 25 30% I was like you know what this is actually like solid I'm very into that uh but I feel like that happens often with Megan Quinn books I'll get like sucked in and excited and then things just kind of fizzle I think Val on Goodreads she's like one of my favorite go-to Goodreads reviewers a good job summing it up that like once you get to the like sexual component of the book all of the chemistry just kind of Fizzles between the two characters and you just don't care anymore so this one's so tough for me um I definitely didn't enjoy this one as much as pool boy I think am I going to give this book two stars I think I'm going to give this book three stars okay the sexiness however is going to get two stars because I did not find this book sexy and I need you to know that I did not find it sexy so I'm going to give it a two for age Gap can I be real with you I don't think this book needed to be an age Gap romance there was a lot already kind of working here one of the biggest factors for this relationship to be taboo was the fact that the heroin's older brother used to be friends with the hero but they're enemies now and so she's working for the enemy and she has to like keep their relationship their professional working relationship a secret and then when it turns romantic that makes things even more complicated so I I don't know I just don't feel like the age Gap was really a huge component here especially I mean if we're going off maturity levels he did not have the maturity level that hated his age you know what I'm saying like he was less mature than the heroin the overall reading for this book is a 2.33 I definitely did not hate the story I just was hoping for a little bit more considering how the book started out so anyway let's move on to a book that is just totally different than anything I feel like I've read for this video thus far it is stealing home by Kimberly is it CIO cillo I'm not really sure this book's about our two main characters Scott and harlo I believe at the beginning of the story we find out that harlo is married to a man the coach of a really small universities baseball team she's in a very unhappy marriage they basically sleep in separate beds he is emotionally and physically abusive towards her she is trying to find a way to get out of this relationship she finds Solace and comfort in one of the players on the team Scott comes from money he is a trust fun baby he is playing baseball at a high level and could go pro if he wants to but he doesn't want to he is a computer science major and he wants to be a software engineer after college he's basically just vibing and living his life but he has like always noticed his coach's wife from afar and he like finds the perfect opportunity to get close to her when she is charged with running this like baseball clinic I guess for children and so uh he like puts the moves on her kind of and like sort of helps her get out of her abusive situation I mean she definitely has other people helping her out like she meets This Woman This Woman Like offers to give her a job and like let her live in an apartment rentree and then Scott is like helping her emotionally and also like making sure that the ex-husband stays away it's such a weird book in a lot of ways I am definitely endeared to the story I like the hero and heroin enough but is also a little bit bizarre because there's not much there beyond the surface like there's obviously hard-hitting issues in this book with the uh domestic violence and abuse I don't really know what our heroin wants besides getting out of this relationship like I don't feel like I'm getting a lot of her internal dialogue I don't I just don't feel like she's a a full-fledged like full-fledged out person and I feel the same exact way about Scott like sure I understand he wants to be a software engineer but I don't really know much about him and his life's desires and even if I did I don't know I just feel like the way the story is told is very like H and not show I don't know I I don't feel like I'm getting a good feel for who the characters are I'm still rooting for them to get together I mean the hero is Charming in a sense but like there's something missing there also something I was going to point out is that I feel like there's too many convenient things happening here like the fact that our hero doesn't actually want to go pro works out well because then it doesn't matter if he pisses his coach off by stealing his woman stealing his woman just been like a couple of instances like that there's also been a moment where the ex-husband the abuse of ex-husband comes and tries to find the heroin like where she's staying he finds out where she's staying and he like brings a cop or something like that but because the people that the heroin is staying with like are well known in town or something they end up calling the mayor and the mayor is like tell that cop to get out of there otherwise he's fired or something like that I don't know there's just like too many convenient things happening and don't get me wrong I don't really want the heroin to have a hard time I don't tend to like harder hitting romances I say that I mean Kennedy Ryan love you so much yeah I don't know this one's just like a hard one to really sum up I think you have to like read it to understand it's not super deep but I like it I like the sex scene that I just read and I am liking this one I think I was was going to say more than the other books that I've read for this but it's kind of hard to say honestly this video was like more of a bust than I thought it would be I'm not mad at any of the books though for the most part I would say like the one I'm maddest at is the way I hate him cuz I just that was too long um but I'm having a good time despite like not having a ton of bangers good news is I'm going to finish this book tonight and then I'm going to read birthday girl tomorrow so like I'm in for a treat you know Hello besy friends I finished stealing home last night and I'm 50% into birthday girl so right on track doing what I should be doing stealing home was quite the book here's the thing I feel like the main issue here was what I sort of expressed yesterday which was that there was a lot going on here but not a lot of character development and that was like such a crucial missing component of this book I think had the characterization been done better had I given a about the characters this book probably would have been like a four maybe even a festar read for me because there were no well-developed characters in this book it honestly feels more like a two star read to me and that is how crucially important characters are in a romance like the hero and the heroin get together at 50% Mark of this book and since there's nothing really leading you to that point like there there's no oh these characters need to be together because X wiy like I know the hero so well I know the heroin so well this is why they should be together because that doesn't ever really happen you get these two characters getting together and like yeah you want the hero to save the heroin or whatever like damel distress from the 50% mark on the remainder of the story is spent with our heroine trying to stay with the hero okay like the hero has some issues with the baseball team obviously because he's dating the ex he's dating the's ex-wife he also runs into trouble with his parents cuz his parents don't want him dating an older woman our heroin the majority of the story honestly is the heroine trying to escape her shitty ex-husband does end up getting a divorce there is obviously a showdown after the divorce I don't know it just felt a little exhausting to read especially again because it wasn't this triumphant moment of like oh my God these characters they deserve this like they deserve a happy ending I was just kind of like I don't know I was just kind of like scratching my head like okay this is like fine um which is so disappointing cuz I feel like otherwise this book could have been like a four maybe even a five star read had that character development been there because it's like if you can convincingly show that these two should be together and they get together at 50% Mark and then the rest of the story is them facing adversity I'm honestly fine with that like I don't think I need a third act breakup necessarily for it's like be a convincing amazing romance with a lot of good conflict and Stakes I just need the character development to be there for that to happen so sadly overall this book's a two star read for me it's irritating in ways that the way I hate him wasn't and vice versa the characters in this book weren't irritating but they also had no personality so like they couldn't have really irritated in that sense so yeah overall rating for this is going to be probably two stars which I mean it could have gone either way I feel like I give the other book three stars definitely wasn't worse then the way I hate him okay actually you know what I'm going to do I'm going to give an over all three because it wasn't terrible I think the sexiness factor of this book is probably a three as well like it was fine but I don't think that it was like the sexiest thing I've ever read I don't know some of the like Dynamics there just felt unrealistic given Our Hero's history with sex but I don't know whatever the age gness of the story I think this book is maybe one of the most compelling age Gap stories this one and the pool boy I think because the not it's not because the heroin's older but like the age Gap was a crucial component of the story and like what I say that was it really like it was but also like okay let's say that you aged up the hero and he was like a professional player like like in Long Shot right a professional baseball player and she wasn't she was still the coaches White and there wasn't an age Gap with the story who still worked I think yes so actually I'm going to give it a two for ageg gappiness I'm all over the place today y'all um overall was a 2.66 which I think is the same as the way I hate him which feels right because I I disliked these books for different reasons and I liked them for different reasons as well like there were definitely like winning characteristics of both books but like overall neither is going to be like top of my list all right now let's move on to the final book the book that I knew was going to be a banger because I've read it before birthday girl by Penelope Douglas this one has been an interesting reread and that I'm listening to the audio book rather than reading it physically I believe that's the first time that I've ever done it I mean I can't recall listening to the audio book before for this one um and I do think it's impacting my enjoyment a little bit I think this is definitely a book that I would recommend reading physically cuz I think that reading is your own pace rather than having someone like read it to you it just works better for the story not saying that like you know you shouldn't listen to the audiobook but I do think the physical book's better so this book's better to many characters Pike and Jordan Jordan is living with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's father in his house after they've kind of fallen on hard times they've living together for a while she and her boyfriend like they they need somewhere to live so she's going to move in with her boyfriend's dad Pike and her boyfriend is like kind of arranged from his father like they haven't had like the best relationship ever and also Jordan is feeling a little bit alone I don't think she has very supportive parents if she has parents at all her older sister works at a strip club and Jordan doesn't necessarily want that to be her own fate and then you have um Pike who is I don't know just like Gruff middle-aged dude who's living his life and really like the Crux of the story right like the the Crux of the story is obviously that Jordan and P get together and uh the boyfriend is a piece of so we don't really care so much that he gets like cheated on but he doesn't really get cheated on anyway Crux of the story is basically like a Playing House kind of vibe like you have Jordan and Pike kind of like working side by side part of the deal of her and uh Cole I think is his name living in the house her boyfriend is that they will cook a little bit they will clean they will just make sure that the house is maintained if they're going to live there right makes sense like a fair exchange and because of this you know Jordan is kind playing house with Pike and as the story develops they like spend more and more time together and they start to like appreciate each other's qualities and they actually have sort of like a meat cute situation at the beginning of the book before they knew who the other person is and it's just clear that they have this like undeniable chemistry this book is just such a contrast with the first book where I feel like you really understand the character's desires what they want from Life what they are maybe looking for in a partner even if they're not necessarily looking for a partner and I feel like that is what sets this book apart for from so many other ageg gap romances especially the ones I've been reading I'm not saying everything has to be the deepest and I think ageg Gap app definitely provides like a fun taboo element if you want to make a sexy story but I think the thing about this book that's so great is the Slow Burn the hero and heroin have not gotten together at this 50% work you've got kind of this like drawn out will they Wy situation and I think pen does such a good job at like writing that line between sexual attraction and also compatibility because I think again a lot of the time you have this like long drawn out Slow Burn situation or not even slowburn but you just have these two characters who you know want to get together and the tension the only real tension there is the like oh I just want to see what she looks like naked that's definitely part of it here but the majority of it is that like they get along so well and they seemingly want the same things out of life so I don't know I just one of those romances that every time I read it I am into it I think this time around I may be like a touch more bored than I have been in the past reading it just because again I'm listening to the audio book and I might end up switching to the physical book for the last half of the book but I just I like the story a lot I think this is one of the better examples of age gaps and I know not everybody's going to be into this Trope at all like if you are timately not into age gaps you're not going to like the story if you like an age Gap or you're curious about it I think this is a great entry point because it does again strike that balance between sexy taboo and also uh convincing romance so I love this book I think it's so fun and I'm glad that I picked this for my reread there were definitely a lot of options and as I was reading was it the last book the characters are actually kind of reminding me of I think it's lessons and Corruption by is it lessons and Corruption I don't know the first book in that um J darling series The like motorcycle club romance series The Character dynamic between hero and heroin and stealing home reminded me a lot of that and I was like oh I should have reread that one and while I like that book I think this is just like this is primo there's so many h gap romances out there and maybe I just picked not great ones for this video that's the way with cookie crumble sometimes I'm going to finish this I'll let you know how it is and we can compare the results of this H romance Vlog to the other tropes that we've done for the series so far all right y'all I finished birthday girl and I'm sorry it's fives across the board this book just really does everything that an age gabian should it's sexy it's sweet it's Charming the relationship Dynamic is incredible the character development is really great I just love seeing two people who are well suited for each other get together and I feel like this is one I mean it's one of my favorite books of all time for a reason I just feel like these two are so well suited for each other and it takes a really masterfully skilled author to be able to pull off a story like this without making it gross you know what I mean like taboo romances have such an opportunity to be gross and like titillating for no reason but this one is just I mean it's a begger for a reason and I feel like I'm not doing a good job at describing this book going into the details of it because I've read it before and because I have I feel like multiple Vlogs on my channel reading this book but I just think if you're looking for a good ageg Gap romance this is just one you need to read the one that you really should check out because it is uh again exemplary I think of this particular drope so again if it's FES across the board the average rating for this book is five which brings the total for this video the total like overall rating for HF romance is to a 3.49 just tied with something else and I can't remember what it is but you can see it on the screen uh compared to other tropes this one is definitely like middle of the pack like higher than middle of the pack but not like top top I think my top ones at this point are like Second Chance romance and I can't remember what else there's one that's like up there but I had such a good time with this video I just love making Trope videos in general and I need your help obviously for the next one in getting your YouTube comments and your recommendations for your favorite love triangle romances the next Trope I'm going to be doing is love triangles in November so let me know in the comments down below your favorite love triangle romance and let me know if you agree or disagree with any of my ratings for the agap books I read in this year video thanks so much for watching I love you all so much and until next time\n"