Reading Update: The Duchess

As I settled into my bed sheets to update you all on my reading progress, I couldn't help but feel a mix of emotions about the latest installment in "The Duchess" series. Despite my initial excitement and enthusiasm for this romance novel, I found myself growing increasingly frustrated with the development of the story. Specifically, the tension between the hero and heroine, which had been expertly crafted throughout the series, began to dissipate in its 50th chapter.

It became apparent that the animosity between the two characters was still palpable, but their actions betrayed a certain level of familiarity and understanding. The scene where they fell into bed together seemed almost... convenient. I couldn't help but feel that this moment had been robbed of its potential by the author's decision to have the tension break so early on in the story. It's as if the author was afraid to let the relationship simmer for a bit longer, allowing the reader to fully invest in their emotional journey.

On the other hand, I must admit that I did enjoy the banter between the duke and his wife, Sarah. Their sparring match at the country estate was quite entertaining, and it was clear that they had a deep understanding of each other despite not having been together for an extended period. It's this duality of their relationship that has piqued my interest in reading more about their backstory.

As I continued reading, I couldn't help but think about how the author's use of sci-fi and historical romance elements added an unpredictable layer to the story. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't – but in this case, I'm not sure if it's going to pay off or not. Nevertheless, I shall persevere and see where this tale takes me.

But for now, I must take a break and move on to another book that has been waiting patiently in the wings. "All Roads Lead Here" by Mariana Zapata is next on my agenda, and I'm excited to dive into its world of rugby, romance, and character-driven storytelling. While it's not going to happen tonight, rest assured that I'll be back with more updates soon – just don't expect me for the first week of January, as I'll be taking a well-deserved break.

In the meantime, I want to thank you all for your continued support. Your enthusiasm and engagement mean the world to me, and I'm grateful to have such a wonderful community behind me. Until next time, when I'll be back with more thoughts on "The Duchess" series (or maybe not – we'll see!), stay tuned for my December wrap-up video, where I'll be sharing my honest review of all the books that weren't part of the secret tbr series. It's going to be a fun one!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel i hope you all are having a fantastic day whenever you have decided to click on this video today is december 27th and i am obviously just chilling i have been reading books for some of my other like secret tbr planned content for chanmus and now i'm just ready to take it easy and read some stuff for fun granted the books that i'm reading for videos right now are actually pretty exciting i got a couple of books off of hold from my library and i am excited to try them so the two things that i'm really trying to finish today that i will be vlogging about are all systems read by arthur wells this is a science fiction book it's like the first in the murderbot series i feel like it seems like a very unlikely pick for me but since i had such a good time reading project hail mary recently i feel like this is something that i want to pick up the audiobook's only three hours and since i listen to things on three-time speed it's only gonna take me an hour to get through so it doesn't feel like much of an investment to to read this one and then i also want to read the day of the duchess by sarah mclean mclean sarah mclean and uh this is a marriage in trouble historical romance and i started the other day i had such strange feelings about it but i'm just so intrigued like i definitely need to know what's happening are you gonna say hi you want to make your appearance like you always do but i'm excited to give this one a try and get deeper into it because well i'm normally not into second chance romances and i've had pretty much no luck with marriage and trouble books i just there's something about this one that i'm liking the tension is pretty sexy i'm only six percent into the audiobook but like i'm here for it how long is that one it's an 11 hour audio book i have like nine hours left so three hours i probably won't finish that one today realistically but i want to get far enough so i can tell you how i feel it was one of my favorite star predictions for 2022 so if i can knock that out before the year even starts i mean we're in a good spot so i'm gonna do that i'll probably do some stuff around the house and like listen to the audiobooks while i clean because i don't know about you but for me getting everything squared away for the new year like i'm gonna put my trees away before the first i'm going to clean i'm gonna organize i've already kind of started that today and did something that i would like to continue on i just i love a good fresh start in the new year i know like you can literally fresh start any time you want uh but something is just so delightful about january 1st so i'm gonna get cracking on that i have some like sad abandoned just jackets on my floor that i need to put on some books and or recycle so i'll do that as well obviously i'm just a bucket full of energy today do you like my paint stain shirt okay i'm gonna go i'll update you once i've like kind of started in on all systems red i think that's the first thing i'm gonna do it appears that i'm hellbent on the bad lighting today and you know what i don't care i just cleaned out my bedside table drawer and put in organizers for it i feel like i've conquered the world if you need a sign to go and organize or declutter one of your drawers or an area of your house that's just been annoying you just go do it you can do it i believe in you finished this book murderbot whatever i didn't love it i'll be honest it's like a three-star read for me if that i just i feel like people hyped this up and made it sound so exciting but i'll be honest like it was not that exciting to me i feel like if you're gonna have a story with like artificial intelligence or someone who's supposed to just have like one mission and then they actually have you know like conscience and stuff like that's exciting but that person or that character or whatever needs to be interesting enough to carry the story and i just didn't feel like murderbot had enough personality to carry the story oh i said it it just is what it is that's just how i felt i didn't feel like the plot was very interesting or inventive either so unpopular opinion i think my foray into sci-fi has come to a close at least temporarily you know like i read project kill mary i read this book and i think i'm good for a long time now on sci-fi what i have started however and uh i still don't know if i'm enjoying is the day of the dutches by sarah mclean i've been listening to this while i vacuumed my floors and oh my god i feel like i just vacuumed but the entire vacuum was full just from vacuuming my bedroom so wow i guess an additional pet really dies up the ante with pet hair i mean there's five pets in here and we both have hair uh hayden and i both have hair on our heads i don't know why i'm explaining this let's talk about the book okay let's talk about the book we have the duke of haven and we have his wife sarah all we know is that she had a really tragic and sad miscarriage she's no longer able to have children and they are estranged whenever she is unfortunately having this miscarriage she goes to her husband and asks like him to help her out we know that they're kind of estranged at this point and we see that like really heartbreaking scene and we see sarah's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law and then we get present day when we have sarah going to haven and being like hey i want a divorce and he's like yeah i'm not doing that like i'm not granting you this divorce and she's like i want the divorce and what's gonna happen i don't know i mean clearly they're not gonna get divorced because it's a romance right like they can't get divorced right now we're i don't know i feel like the timeline of this is sort of like strange to me some of the flashbacks i feel like are kind of random and put in weird places but i'm still invested we have right now present day sarah is talking to her american friend male friend about this business venture that i think they're doing together it's like a pub that has entertainment or something like that which is you know super hip and modern and very american so she wants to be able to own it solely by herself which is why she wants to get a divorce she's been doing it in her husband's name but he doesn't know about it obviously and she wants this to be her own which you know we love a woman in business i guess i'll keep reading this and update you as i go so sorry like this come on fashion baby just fed the boys sorry if you can hear smacking they're eating their wet food yes teddy's done and wants to say hello you're beautiful this is the biggest cat i've ever had hello he's eight months old he almost weighs as much as nugget who's nine okay so we're finally getting the plot of this book figured out uh our main character sarah is obviously wanting to get a divorce from her husband her husband doesn't want to grant her to the divorce and his way of like trying to get her back is suggesting that sarah come to the family home essentially find him a new wife for six weeks she's going to remain there he's going to invite other women there and she is going to kind of like vet whoever comes and like you know find the perfect replacement for her i guess and he thinks that in doing this he can find a way to win her back little does he know that sarah's bringing all of her sisters with her and i'm sure that they're going to help sarah get this divorce right also the duke thinks that the guy that's working with sarah at the lake tavern or whatever that she's trying to get ownership of the duke thinks that that's her lover and i think he was trying to get sarah away from him so i don't know this book is definitely connecting with me i didn't know that it i didn't think that it would to be honest because again like marriage and trouble but something about the way it's written makes me really believe in both of the characters and i just feel like the angst and the passion is definitely there i think had anyone else tried to write this story i don't know if it would have been believable to me or something that i was rooting for it is so clear that both the hero and the heroine are still into each other and especially the hero like he's definitely still planning for her he knows he's messed up in the past and we're getting snippets from their courtship and seeing where things went wrong so far all we're all we're seeing is that our heroine sort of trapped him into marriage it wasn't really her intention but her mom was scheming and was trying to like get her to marry this man because she's like if you don't marry a guy you're gonna sully the family name because i know that you've been kind of sneaking around with the duke and he doesn't want to marry you obviously if he's just sneaking around with you i'm gonna get you with someone else but i guess her mom took matters into her own hands and is kind of forcing the duke to marry sarah or i guess that's how it was it's not like she's trying it it happened i think that was like a misunderstanding and i don't think it was ever fully solved you know i don't think they ever communicated which is frustrating like i get that miscommunication's a trope and like i usually actually like it which i don't know i'm starting to find it's not that big of a deal but i don't know if i will love it in this case so i don't know they just arrived at the country home and were understanding things i guess i'm gonna keep reading i think i'm gonna try to update you at like the 50 or 70 work and then i'm gonna put sheets on my bed and go to sleep so i know thrilling content from yours truly but at least i'm reading in this one you know i think we're making progress and yes the last two videos not the last two videos but the last two planned content secret tbr videos are ones that i think you're really going to enjoy one of which is really long and um is one of my favorite videos that i've made this year so i think i'm gonna you know excuse myself of this vlog but uh yeah i'm gonna keep reading i will be back one more time okay so i'm 50 into the day of the dutchess and i'm still enjoying it but i feel a little upset because the tension in my opinion has already been broken and it's obvious that there's still animosity between both parties but also they fell in bed together at this 50 mark and i'm like you had such a good thing going like you've had such a good thing going with this tension and with like the reveals and with the flashbacks in the backstory but like i don't know i just feel like i don't know i don't know i don't know this could go really well from here on out or it could be something that just falls apart and i have no idea what camp it's gonna fall into which is frustrating like the sisters i like the kind of sparring that the duke and sarah have been doing in front of the guests at his country estate i think it's fun and it's so clearly obvious that they know each other pretty well despite not having been together for that long like they've been together for a while but they were separated for like three years so i don't know i don't know but today i feel like we really did explore the duality of chan i read some sci-fi and i read some historical romance and i like that you just don't know what you're gonna get here i mean it's mostly romance let's be honest but you know sometimes i switch it up most of the time it's unsuccessful but sometimes i switch it up i think that's where i'm going to leave it here tonight i am going to finish this book at some point it's not going to be tonight though i have to read all roads lead here by mariana zapata i'm like 89 percent into the book i need to finish it off and then move on to the next book that i'm reading for this other video so thriving over here you can expect a december wrap-up though i think i'm going to talk about all of the books that i've read that weren't for secret tbr videos the random books that i've read for vlogs i'll do a wrap up on those look forward to my thoughts on this come january at some point i will say and i don't know if i've already said this i'm taking a week off in january the first week of january so i'll be absent for about seven days but then i'll be back with my wrap up and all that other stuff so it's clearly not the end of the month you're gonna get another video tomorrow but then i'll be gone for a week so anyway love you all so much thanks so much for watching and until tomorrow youhello welcome back to my channel i hope you all are having a fantastic day whenever you have decided to click on this video today is december 27th and i am obviously just chilling i have been reading books for some of my other like secret tbr planned content for chanmus and now i'm just ready to take it easy and read some stuff for fun granted the books that i'm reading for videos right now are actually pretty exciting i got a couple of books off of hold from my library and i am excited to try them so the two things that i'm really trying to finish today that i will be vlogging about are all systems read by arthur wells this is a science fiction book it's like the first in the murderbot series i feel like it seems like a very unlikely pick for me but since i had such a good time reading project hail mary recently i feel like this is something that i want to pick up the audiobook's only three hours and since i listen to things on three-time speed it's only gonna take me an hour to get through so it doesn't feel like much of an investment to to read this one and then i also want to read the day of the duchess by sarah mclean mclean sarah mclean and uh this is a marriage in trouble historical romance and i started the other day i had such strange feelings about it but i'm just so intrigued like i definitely need to know what's happening are you gonna say hi you want to make your appearance like you always do but i'm excited to give this one a try and get deeper into it because well i'm normally not into second chance romances and i've had pretty much no luck with marriage and trouble books i just there's something about this one that i'm liking the tension is pretty sexy i'm only six percent into the audiobook but like i'm here for it how long is that one it's an 11 hour audio book i have like nine hours left so three hours i probably won't finish that one today realistically but i want to get far enough so i can tell you how i feel it was one of my favorite star predictions for 2022 so if i can knock that out before the year even starts i mean we're in a good spot so i'm gonna do that i'll probably do some stuff around the house and like listen to the audiobooks while i clean because i don't know about you but for me getting everything squared away for the new year like i'm gonna put my trees away before the first i'm going to clean i'm gonna organize i've already kind of started that today and did something that i would like to continue on i just i love a good fresh start in the new year i know like you can literally fresh start any time you want uh but something is just so delightful about january 1st so i'm gonna get cracking on that i have some like sad abandoned just jackets on my floor that i need to put on some books and or recycle so i'll do that as well obviously i'm just a bucket full of energy today do you like my paint stain shirt okay i'm gonna go i'll update you once i've like kind of started in on all systems red i think that's the first thing i'm gonna do it appears that i'm hellbent on the bad lighting today and you know what i don't care i just cleaned out my bedside table drawer and put in organizers for it i feel like i've conquered the world if you need a sign to go and organize or declutter one of your drawers or an area of your house that's just been annoying you just go do it you can do it i believe in you finished this book murderbot whatever i didn't love it i'll be honest it's like a three-star read for me if that i just i feel like people hyped this up and made it sound so exciting but i'll be honest like it was not that exciting to me i feel like if you're gonna have a story with like artificial intelligence or someone who's supposed to just have like one mission and then they actually have you know like conscience and stuff like that's exciting but that person or that character or whatever needs to be interesting enough to carry the story and i just didn't feel like murderbot had enough personality to carry the story oh i said it it just is what it is that's just how i felt i didn't feel like the plot was very interesting or inventive either so unpopular opinion i think my foray into sci-fi has come to a close at least temporarily you know like i read project kill mary i read this book and i think i'm good for a long time now on sci-fi what i have started however and uh i still don't know if i'm enjoying is the day of the dutches by sarah mclean i've been listening to this while i vacuumed my floors and oh my god i feel like i just vacuumed but the entire vacuum was full just from vacuuming my bedroom so wow i guess an additional pet really dies up the ante with pet hair i mean there's five pets in here and we both have hair uh hayden and i both have hair on our heads i don't know why i'm explaining this let's talk about the book okay let's talk about the book we have the duke of haven and we have his wife sarah all we know is that she had a really tragic and sad miscarriage she's no longer able to have children and they are estranged whenever she is unfortunately having this miscarriage she goes to her husband and asks like him to help her out we know that they're kind of estranged at this point and we see that like really heartbreaking scene and we see sarah's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law and then we get present day when we have sarah going to haven and being like hey i want a divorce and he's like yeah i'm not doing that like i'm not granting you this divorce and she's like i want the divorce and what's gonna happen i don't know i mean clearly they're not gonna get divorced because it's a romance right like they can't get divorced right now we're i don't know i feel like the timeline of this is sort of like strange to me some of the flashbacks i feel like are kind of random and put in weird places but i'm still invested we have right now present day sarah is talking to her american friend male friend about this business venture that i think they're doing together it's like a pub that has entertainment or something like that which is you know super hip and modern and very american so she wants to be able to own it solely by herself which is why she wants to get a divorce she's been doing it in her husband's name but he doesn't know about it obviously and she wants this to be her own which you know we love a woman in business i guess i'll keep reading this and update you as i go so sorry like this come on fashion baby just fed the boys sorry if you can hear smacking they're eating their wet food yes teddy's done and wants to say hello you're beautiful this is the biggest cat i've ever had hello he's eight months old he almost weighs as much as nugget who's nine okay so we're finally getting the plot of this book figured out uh our main character sarah is obviously wanting to get a divorce from her husband her husband doesn't want to grant her to the divorce and his way of like trying to get her back is suggesting that sarah come to the family home essentially find him a new wife for six weeks she's going to remain there he's going to invite other women there and she is going to kind of like vet whoever comes and like you know find the perfect replacement for her i guess and he thinks that in doing this he can find a way to win her back little does he know that sarah's bringing all of her sisters with her and i'm sure that they're going to help sarah get this divorce right also the duke thinks that the guy that's working with sarah at the lake tavern or whatever that she's trying to get ownership of the duke thinks that that's her lover and i think he was trying to get sarah away from him so i don't know this book is definitely connecting with me i didn't know that it i didn't think that it would to be honest because again like marriage and trouble but something about the way it's written makes me really believe in both of the characters and i just feel like the angst and the passion is definitely there i think had anyone else tried to write this story i don't know if it would have been believable to me or something that i was rooting for it is so clear that both the hero and the heroine are still into each other and especially the hero like he's definitely still planning for her he knows he's messed up in the past and we're getting snippets from their courtship and seeing where things went wrong so far all we're all we're seeing is that our heroine sort of trapped him into marriage it wasn't really her intention but her mom was scheming and was trying to like get her to marry this man because she's like if you don't marry a guy you're gonna sully the family name because i know that you've been kind of sneaking around with the duke and he doesn't want to marry you obviously if he's just sneaking around with you i'm gonna get you with someone else but i guess her mom took matters into her own hands and is kind of forcing the duke to marry sarah or i guess that's how it was it's not like she's trying it it happened i think that was like a misunderstanding and i don't think it was ever fully solved you know i don't think they ever communicated which is frustrating like i get that miscommunication's a trope and like i usually actually like it which i don't know i'm starting to find it's not that big of a deal but i don't know if i will love it in this case so i don't know they just arrived at the country home and were understanding things i guess i'm gonna keep reading i think i'm gonna try to update you at like the 50 or 70 work and then i'm gonna put sheets on my bed and go to sleep so i know thrilling content from yours truly but at least i'm reading in this one you know i think we're making progress and yes the last two videos not the last two videos but the last two planned content secret tbr videos are ones that i think you're really going to enjoy one of which is really long and um is one of my favorite videos that i've made this year so i think i'm gonna you know excuse myself of this vlog but uh yeah i'm gonna keep reading i will be back one more time okay so i'm 50 into the day of the dutchess and i'm still enjoying it but i feel a little upset because the tension in my opinion has already been broken and it's obvious that there's still animosity between both parties but also they fell in bed together at this 50 mark and i'm like you had such a good thing going like you've had such a good thing going with this tension and with like the reveals and with the flashbacks in the backstory but like i don't know i just feel like i don't know i don't know i don't know this could go really well from here on out or it could be something that just falls apart and i have no idea what camp it's gonna fall into which is frustrating like the sisters i like the kind of sparring that the duke and sarah have been doing in front of the guests at his country estate i think it's fun and it's so clearly obvious that they know each other pretty well despite not having been together for that long like they've been together for a while but they were separated for like three years so i don't know i don't know but today i feel like we really did explore the duality of chan i read some sci-fi and i read some historical romance and i like that you just don't know what you're gonna get here i mean it's mostly romance let's be honest but you know sometimes i switch it up most of the time it's unsuccessful but sometimes i switch it up i think that's where i'm going to leave it here tonight i am going to finish this book at some point it's not going to be tonight though i have to read all roads lead here by mariana zapata i'm like 89 percent into the book i need to finish it off and then move on to the next book that i'm reading for this other video so thriving over here you can expect a december wrap-up though i think i'm going to talk about all of the books that i've read that weren't for secret tbr videos the random books that i've read for vlogs i'll do a wrap up on those look forward to my thoughts on this come january at some point i will say and i don't know if i've already said this i'm taking a week off in january the first week of january so i'll be absent for about seven days but then i'll be back with my wrap up and all that other stuff so it's clearly not the end of the month you're gonna get another video tomorrow but then i'll be gone for a week so anyway love you all so much thanks so much for watching and until tomorrow you\n"