WEEKLY READING VLOG _ mass market madness & more cookies

### Weekly Reading Vlog Discussion and Book Reviews

#### Introduction

This week’s reading journey was filled with intriguing book discussions, personal reflections on reading habits, and a deep dive into various genres. The transcription provided offers a detailed account of the thoughts, feelings, and insights shared during a weekly reading vlog. This article aims to capture the essence of those discussions, providing a comprehensive overview of the books explored, the challenges faced while reading, and the personal growth experienced through literature.

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#### Weekly Reading Vlog: Books Discussed

##### 1. **"My Fake rake" by Eva Lee Abèle**

The discussion began with "My Fake Rake" by Eva Lee Abèle, a historical romance novel that was met with mixed feelings. The premise involves Grace, a woman who attempts to transform her friend Sebastian into a rake, only to find herself falling for him instead. However, the majority of the book focuses on Grace’s efforts to woo another man, leaving little room for character development between Grace and Sebastian.

- **Challenges**: The book was described as uncomfortable to read, with Grace’s lack of social grace and her relentless pursuit of a reluctant man causing frustration. Her actions were often perceived as unlikable, making it difficult to fully engage with the story.

- **Conclusion**: Despite its potential, "My Fake Rake" fell short due to pacing issues and character development problems. The experience highlighted the importance of well-crafted characters and clear narrative focus in historical romance.

##### 2. **"Scandal of the Year" by Laura Lee Kirk**

The conversation shifted to "Scandal of the Year," a book that captivated the reader with its juicy opening involving a divorce court scene. The heroine, Julia, found herself entangled in a web of secrets and scandals, leading to a complex exploration of her relationships and past.

- **Strengths**: The banter and dialogue were praised for their resemblance to Loretta Chase’s signature style, offering a fresh perspective on historical romance with its focus on a divorcee navigating societal norms.

- **Challenges**: The protagonist’s unlikable traits and the manipulation involved in her plotline left room for improvement. However, the chemistry between Julia and Aidan kept readers engaged.

##### 3. **"Magnolia Parks" by Bethany Griffin**

"Magnolia Parks," a contemporary young adult novel, was another topic of discussion. The book explores themes of toxic relationships, secrets, and self-discovery through the lens of its flawed protagonist.

- **Strengths**: The story’s raw honesty and exploration of complex relationships were noted as strengths.

- **Challenges**: The pacing and writing style were criticized for being overly dense and difficult to parse. The protagonist’s behavior was often seen as unbearable, raising questions about the book’s execution.

##### 4. **"Yours Undone" by Theresa Mei Medeiros**

The transcription also touched on "Yours Undone," a historical romance novel that intrigued the reader with its damaged hero and unique premise.

- **Strengths**: The damaged hero trope was appreciated, offering depth and complexity to the narrative.

- **Conclusion**: The book’s accessible writing style and intriguing plotline were highlighted as reasons to continue reading it.

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#### Personal Reflections on Reading

##### 1. **Reading Challenges**

The discussion revealed struggles with certain books, such as "Magnolia Parks," which left the reader questioning its execution. This experience emphasized the importance of balance in storytelling—where raw honesty should not overshadow clarity and coherence.

##### 2. **Genre Preferences**

The conversation touched on preferences for historical romance versus contemporary young adult fiction. While historical romance offered escapism and well-crafted worlds, contemporary fiction provided a raw look at real-life issues, making it equally compelling.

##### 3. **Book Selection and Regrets**

There was a reflection on book selection and the occasional regret of purchasing books that did not meet expectations. This led to a discussion about relying on reviews and personal interests when curating reading lists.

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#### Cookie Review: Crumble Cookies

The weekly vlog also included a fun segment on crumble cookies, offering a lighthearted break from book discussions. The review featured four types of cookies:

1. **Fry Bread**: Warm, buttery, and cinnamon-sugar topped, it reminded the reviewer of cinnamon toast crunch.

2. **Oreo-Filled Cookie**: Creamy and rich, this cookie was a favorite due to its texture and chocolate-forward flavor.

3. **Red Velvet Pie Cookie**: A unique twist on the classic red velvet flavor, though somewhat divisive in taste.

4. **Strawberry Shortcake Cookie**: Sweet and reminiscent of childhood treats, it left a lasting impression despite its simplicity.

The cookies were rated based on texture, flavor, and overall appeal, with the Oreo-filled cookie emerging as the clear winner.

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#### Conclusion

This week’s reading vlog was a blend of literary exploration, personal reflections, and culinary delights. The discussions highlighted the importance of character development, narrative clarity, and genre preferences in shaping a reader’s experience. While some books left room for improvement, others offered fresh perspectives and compelling storytelling.

The journey through these books and the subsequent cookie tasting underscored the joy of reading and the shared experiences it brings. As the week concludes, the excitement for future reads and more culinary adventures remains palpable.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel and welcome to the start of another weekly reading vlog i am so happy to have you here with me this week is going to get interesting i have so much stuff i want to get done i feel like last week the weekly reading vlog was not great the reason for that is because i was chilling i got pretty much no reading done except for what was required for the planned tbr content and this week my friends i am going to get stuff read i have quite a bit of stuff on my currently reading shelf on goodreads i am going to plug in my airpods clean my house get stuff done get some of my new art on the walls get my office decluttered i have many things to accomplish this week but specifically i have very many things to accomplish today mondays are my slow day at work so that means i have a lot of time between things to kind of i don't know get done get done we will so i'm going to go ahead and start time lapsing and i will be checking things off my to-do list as i do sorry i have you know given you a whole rundown on what i'm doing but i think it's better if you just visualize see what a mess my life currently is tell me babe where are you going prairie when it goes is in the life i had a vision in the dark of premonitions tell me babe what are we gonna is pick me up and put me down hello my loves i am in the passenger seat and you know what that means we're going to be doing a crumble cookie review whenever hayden gets out of this long ass line the flavors this week looked so good i'm very excited about it but i thought i would update you on my reading and also like all the stuff i got done yesterday you saw what i got done but i feel so good about it it's so nice starting my week and like getting getting all of the things done that i need to get done wow gotta love living in texas so many trucks to pass by my car but i didn't get much reading done yesterday which is a shame but i did finish forbidden promises which was a book that i was reading in the last vlog i kind of talked about it a little bit ended up being a three-star read for me but it did kind of spur my interest in the rest of the things that i'm going to be reading for this weekly reading vlog this is like a mass market paperback romance that i was sent from harlequin a couple of years ago i made a video reading like five mom rom books i called them so basically just like mass market romances not not historicals necessarily but like basically harlequin books and i didn't really uh give those books the most favorable reviews but harley quinn reached out to me and was like hey uh we have some stuff that might be more your speed and so they sent me two books that were definitely for a younger age demographic which was really cool and forbidden promises is one of them i didn't love this book but i actually had a really good time with it so i kind of don't care that it wasn't perfect i ended up giving it three stars but our main character india who at the start of the story is having to come back to her family's home i can't remember exactly why she had to go back home but her family owns a tobacco company in i think north carolina her older brother i think is running for like senator or something like that i'm actually not entirely sure like what office of government he's running for but he's running for office of government he's gonna propose to his like very recent girlfriend and so the family's kind of up in arms about this there's also the older sister who wants to be the ceo of the company take over from their dad her dad's kind of a hard ass he's going to marry his mistress it's kind of all giving dynasty vibes which i really liked because it's this like rich black southern family i don't know the vibes the vibes were definitely excellent i liked the soapy feel of it but i feel like the romance between india and her sister's ex-husband like it wasn't as developed as i really wanted it to be which is kind of disappointing because i really i was rooting for them like i love a forbidden relationship and i mean how juicy is it to like go after your sister's ex-husband but ultimately the romance wasn't like that well developed and the ending was sort of weird too like i definitely end up together but it's more like a happy for now rather than a true happily ever after and with it being so soapy i wanted it to be a true happily ever after especially since though it's a series they're not going to be doing multiple books for each couple if that makes sense um but i would be interested to read more in the series i really want to know what happens to the older sister who's like wanting to be the ceo and who's kind of like messy and maybe kind of a little bit drinks too much um her name's elena and i kind of want to like read her story so i might pick up more books in the series in the future so i guess hats off to harlequin for like kind of nailing my taste in books which is like kind of melodramatic over the top written for a younger audience so i finished that one and it kind of i don't know i was looking at my shelves and i really desperately for these weekly reading vlogs i need to get back into reading the books on my shelves not that i haven't been doing that but i was really staring down the barrel of my tbr and i was like i need to figure out ways to creatively read these books in these weekly reading vlogs so it's fun and zesty and interesting i think this week i'm going to try and read as many mass-market paperback romances as i can i have quite the variety i have like old-school historicals i have newer historicals i have old contemporaries one of them no actually i'm reading this for a different video this week one of them is actually about a female magician more to come on that i think you'll probably you will see that video before this one but if you haven't seen my i read five books i regret buying go and watch that the book i'm talking about is honest illusions by nora roberts but i have so many mass market romances and i just want to get through them and they're all kind of like color coordinated they're all like orange pink and yellow and i don't know aesthetically it just sounds nice i'm gonna read those this week i think the first one actually that i'm going to pick up one that i conveniently got an audio audiobook for because i'm going to need that this week because i'm trying to read for that books i regret buying video as well i have yours until dawn by theresa medeiros checked out but i also have my fake rake by eva lee abele oh no this one i think this is sort of like a he's sort of a nerd historical romance that makes sense he's not a rake fake right she's like turning him into a rake so he's like more or something and then she wants to him i think is the premise so looking forward to that things that i'm reading i think that's pretty much it i do need to finish emerald blaze and maybe i'll like mention but at some point though it doesn't really fit in the mass market romance like thumbnail that i'm envisioning in my head honestly half of these vlogs is just me figuring out like what the thumbnail is going to be um oh let's get serious here i did start magnolia parks today i'm telling you this now because i want to give you a little bit of like a cookie crumb sprinkle if you're watching this uh the vlog that's going to include magnolia parks i don't think is going to be until like mid-september so i'll give you a little a little sprinkle here i'm like 60 pages into this book and boy i have thoughts i wouldn't say it's bad it's just so hard to parse through and to understand this lady this writer she was like okay i'm gonna throw five or six men at you you need to keep them apart you need to understand their relationships you also need to understand why this chick is like hanging out with all of them you're also going to try to figure out why this woman has this man sleep in her bed all the time but they're not actually together but they're in love okay but he cheated on her but there's like a lot of other stuff going on and i'm just like i like angst don't get me wrong but i i'm feeling a lack of realism big time and like it's not supposed to be realistic it's like gossip girl sat in london like i get it but i think what's like kind of me up right now besides the writing which is genuinely the first chapter was a wreck in my head like i could not get through it why is this guy so obsessed with her she seems kind of irritating to be honest and i'm not saying that like flawed characters you know shouldn't exist she seems kind of unbearable and he's like he has 20 22 22 tattoos all dedicated to her and yet he cheated on her and yet they're not together and like it's not giving chuck and blair to me though that is a toxic relationship as well that i think this one's being compared to it's not i'm not buying it and i want to buy it but i have not bought it so i don't know i'm gonna stop rambling because we got a cookie review to get to i mean hayden's still you know in line but all that to say maybe things will turn around i'm not convinced that they will but for the love of live laugh love i'm praying that they do because i spent money on the physical copy of this book i mean i actually didn't spend money i had an amazon gift card but that being said i have i have the physical manifestation of hype i guess in my house so i would like to finish it and i would like to enjoy it but i'm just not there yet oh the glow the light's not as good on you but it's great on me still do not care honestly the less light on me the better well today my friends my background of the crumble cookies review like i said i'm feeling some warmth and filling some heat they said one of them is really hot fry bread one all right well let's crack this puppy open like i'm pretty sure she said careful well that's never good but looking pretty cute i don't want to tip it too much because then things go everywhere we have red velvet pie an oreo sandwich pie thing i don't know strawberry strawberries and cream i think it's called something else but something like that and then fry bread with dollop of cinnamon sugar butter and boy oh boy am i ready to crack into these puppies you know and i was almost not going to get the oreo one but what the lord led me to her in what world would you have not gotten but here's the thing it's whipped cream on the inside and i'm not a whipped cream girl you'll be just fine okay uh let's start with the ones that are less likely to blacken the teeth uh first up we got the fry bread and she's buttered is she hot she's warm yeah i'll let you know that i kind of smush this right here so i can get it oh yeah how did you demolish this ass has fallen out of it i was about to say the same thing it's almost like we're married i like it a lot that's good because i don't need you blue garden on my honestly that's like if a cinnamon toast crunch was a cookie that's what that tastes like to me it has a very similar like cinnamon sugar flavor it's not just that it's cinnamon sugar it's like very specifically similar to cinnamon toast crush now this one i was worried that this one would be too similar to the raspberry from was it last week or the week before not really i can already tell that it's not i can already tell that it's not the cookie base is less uh gravel forward and more cookie like because it doesn't have the graham cracker crumbs in it i don't like whipped cream so texturally it's not my favorite but pretty good flavor though i saw them in there cutting up strawberries to make the strawberry sauce and that's quality you can count on i mean i kind of agree with you it's like like mostly kind of bland and it's texturally not i mean it's better it's not like my favorite but it's not bad at all i do like the strawberry flavor yeah the strawberry is definitely bear the berry biberian wonder if the berry would like that you tell me honestly the berry isn't a nick mom he has an indica my dad we call him j berry this is going to be hard to eat it's good for you it's a good thing i have a big mouth just unhinge that jaw a little bit like you normally do i don't think i'm gonna like the cream in the middle yeah i'm going in for a two biter yeah am i ever gonna get to try this i think you'll like it because it's not it's i mean it's not cream cheese you see that like i don't like cream cheese no i know you do but it's a little lighter thing that i like about it it's very grippable it's very chocolate cookie forward which like as i've gotten older is my favorite part of the oreo i'll just eat this little bit that got left you can try it at the same time you're trying to romance me you've had the red velvet from here before right pretty good actually i don't know i might have only had the pink velvet i've pretty good just that bite because it wasn't like completely covered in frothing i'm sure i've said this before but the ones that are like just covered in frosting not my fave she loves them that edge piece that i had texturally was my favorite bite of all of these yeah it's very like oh no i mean it had like a crisp outside it was almost like a little like crunchy you know but the inside it's very it's like tasting cupcake i feel like i have oreo just all in my face oh yeah on my face in my teeth yeah all of them that one definitely stuck around the most it definitely looks like i ate mulch do like mulch ain't nothing different i don't know we i don't think i've talked about this i don't know why i would have talked about this but i like mulch a lot chill into the flavor that kind of like cleans in between your teeth when you chew it like the way it looks when it's freshly laid like ripping into the bags and just watching it all pour out into my garden we're gonna rank these we forgot we're gonna rank them you wanna make them yeah i would say overall it's a pretty good week yeah i would say for me personally fry red number one okay is less icing oreo number two because i really liked the texture and the flavor of the chocolate cookie part she popped off um really good you know it like sticks in your teeth and then red velvet and then strawberry strawberry still wasn't bad for me but i just think like extraordinary was the worst the strawberry is a good flavor but it's the only flavor and it's like very strong if you like strawberry you'll like it well let's not go too far texturally it's like it's a mushroom it's not the bed yeah it's just really tough i think i'm gonna have to go red velvet number one if there's cream cheese on the menu best believe chandler's eating it and it's probably gonna be number one number two i'm gonna have to say oreo because she surprised me i wasn't expecting to like her i almost didn't get her because i don't like whipped cream but this whipped cream is good and it adds a lightness that this cookie i think desperately needs being kind of a cocoa-y taste then i'm gonna have to go fry bread and then i'm gonna have to go miss jobs so i guess that means like overall oreo is the winner since we both put it at number two she's she definitely is it the underdog that we needed yeah it's a pretty good one like it more than i was anticipating liking it and i think it's because it's less sweet than i thought it would be or would lady in the trampo with you absolutely hello happy friday uh it's been a second since we last talked i have been reading for my secret tbr video oh this hair is driving me nuts but i thought i would pop in and say hey before i hop on to some reading sprints i have a couple of new pairs of shoes that i got yesterday when i was out with hayden and i wanted to show you them because you know what is a weekly reading vlog without me buying and then i also have books to discuss i know i actually have been reading for this video so already talked about forbidden promises that was the first book that i finished i started in on my fake rake and i like briefly talked about it but didn't really get into details about it it was just okay i ended up giving this book two stars which was a little disappointing i really wanted to enjoy the relationship between grace and sebastian basically grace is trying to like woo this guy who she thinks is like brainy but also sexy and kind of a rake but she can't seem to like catch his attention so she's going to turn her best friend sebastian into a rake but she ends up falling for sebastian the issue is that like the majority of the book is spent with grace trying to like woo this other guy and not really spent developing a relationship with sebastian and the times that she spends with the guy that she's trying to like woo is it's uncomfortable like she just is so lacking social grace which is interesting because her name's grace that it was just not fun i was like secondhand embarrassed the majority of the time reading this book i wish that sebastian had like communicated his feelings towards grace in the first place because like she sees him without glasses on the beginning of the story and is like oh he's so hot he's like why don't you just get with him i don't know it just didn't make a lot of sense to me and it seems like that's a pretty universal feeling i looked at the goodreads reviews for this and it's not good i don't know why i personally purchased this one i think it was because it was like kind of hyped when it came out like people were excited for this one i've never read ava lee before i think it's abele uh this came out in 2019. i guess i've had that long that's wild to me i mean it is really like it's a cute cover but this just was okay and then i started these two baddies i started yours until dawn by teresa medeiros scandal of the year scandal of the year i have the audiobook for this one i'm reading an ebook copy and you're probably like okay you have these why and you know what i prefer audiobooks and ebooks i just do it's more convenient to read i think about a mass-market paperback for the most part is intimidating okay this one's not that bad the majority of the time like the font's too small it stresses me out okay so let's start with scandal of the year this is one that i picked up on audio and i'm not that far into it so i don't know that much about it but the beginning of the story is like pretty juicy and it i feel like feels like a loretta chase book that kind of starts the same way where our heroine is before a divorce court and she is having to say like hey i was adulterous i ended up sleeping with a man and the man is named aidan and aiden is the hero of this book so i guess she was married to someone else who wants a divorce from that person or like is getting a divorce from that person and she has to admit that she was adulterous and aiden i think at this point is looking for his bride like he's looking to marry someone but he's haunted by that one night that he and julius met together i'm so bad with character names i'm intrigued that that opening is definitely keeping me interested and it's only a nine hour audio book so i can definitely like squeeze that in i say definitely squeeze that in tonight maybe squeeze that in tonight because i'm actually trying to finish up a pretty long y fantasy for the video i'm posting on sunday so we'll see the one that i think is intriguing me more though is yours until dawn by teresa medeiros i think this is like her most popular romance i don't know that much about her i do have two of her books one of them is like a vampire historical romance which is kind of fun this one is i think a beauty and the beast retelling or like a loose beauty in the beast retelling at the start of the story our hero i think he's recently lost his vision and he's kind of a grump all of the people in his household are like kind of scared of him and they're looking to hire a nurse for him to kind of like help get him back on his feet and you know get him back to being the kind of guy that he was he might yeah he was abandoned by his fiancee it's kind of in some ways also reminding me of the first book in the girl meets duke series by tessa dare and samantha comes to this like palatial country estate and i don't think she has like the best background to be doing this like she's not qualified but she's damn sure gonna like assert herself she she ends up interviewing and the people interviewing her are not like impressed by her qualifications but they're like oh i don't think she's like old enough to do this right it's like oh don't worry about it like i i see that he's a grump i'm gonna stay anyway i think i'm gonna take this on for myself he is haunted by her scent at the very beginning so we'll see like where that goes but i'm intrigued i love a good like damaged hero and the writing of this feels very accessible which i really appreciate sometimes i like a historical that feels a little bit more historical for lack of a better word sometimes i want something that's just like easy to get through but like in a historical setting and this one i would say the one by miss laura lee gurkey feels inaccessible but maybe a little bit more historically so anyway uh these are ones i'm reading i'm definitely gonna try to finish these in the next like day or two so that will leave me having read four historicals i would like to get to like a fifth but we'll see i do still have to finish magnolia parks for the live show on sunday that i'm doing on my patreon for people who aren't on my patreon the review for magnolia parks will be a video in september so you're gonna have to wait a little bit but i'm almost done with this i have thoughts and feelings let me tell you let me show you the shoes i got though and then i'll show you the area rug i got y'all i feel like my bedroom is coming together and i'm so pleased with it i feel like my home in general is coming together i've lived in this house for over two years at this point and it's a whole home you have to slowly over time start decorating things and trying to like flesh out a space but i feel like i'm finally getting the hang of my style and uh just like what is needed in a space and i'm just loving it i feel like the rug was a really good idea we do have carpet in our bedroom and so i didn't think like oh we need a rug i think it helps bring in pattern and a little bit of like fun to the space i mean it's a neutral pattern drug it's not that exciting but i think it looks good and i'm excited about it shoes okay i want to start posting pictures of outfits and stuff i wanna i wanna have a good time i want to live my best life and also accept where i'm at in life does that make sense okay i think we all have like a dream self that we buy for you know we'll buy these like really cute outfits like oh my god wouldn't it be so cute if i had a plaid skirt okay i work from home when the am i going to wear a plaid skirt you know and i feel like in the past i've done that i have like all deadly oversized sweatshirts that are not like the cutest and i have like really fancy stuff that i never wear and i feel like i need a little bit more in between which leads me to why i bought two pairs of sneakers tennis shoes we call them tennis shoes in texas okay i got two pairs of neutral shoes and i'm they're really cute okay i'm very pleased with them these i could see in a couple of different settings not like a true athletic setting like i wouldn't wear these with like a true athletic outfit but athleisure yes like leggings and a cute sweatshirt my new balances they are kind of like a creamy color obviously they've got a little bit of a like leopardy pattern on the back but i don't think it's too in your face and uh they actually look pretty good on the foot and they're really comfortable i tried on some nikes that had like a lot of elevation to them and they were not comfy so these were super like fun and i feel like these are a little bit more on the not dressy side but definitely not like you could wear them to the gym in my opinion i mean i guess you could but i wouldn't these ones i like because i could wear them to the gym or i could wear them with leggings and a cute shirt they're cute they have like a little bit of a kind of lavender i guess stripe running through them right here but for the most part they're just like a cream on white pair of tennis shoes and i just oh they're stunning so pretty much very similar but very different different uses we need them i'll link to these in the description if you're in the market for for shoes and these interest you i got these both from academy these were on like mega sale these were not but they were both under a hundred dollars um individually that is i feel like i did pretty well i have another pair of shoes coming i know who gets more sneakers i do i guess uh they're white nike air maxes and i don't know if i'm gonna like them or not but they're they're coming and we'll see i'll let you know how those go but i'm very excited because the only sneakers right now that i have are like black and you know black sneakers are nice but i like some variety so the rest of the day i have a lot of stuff i need to get done to finish hawaii fantasy book i need to get through i would say at least one of these books or niche magnolia parks i can't really decide which i'm going to do and then tonight hayden's making us a pesto pasta again i have charged up my old vlog camera for him so hopefully he will get some good footage for us b-roll magic moment and uh if he is following a recipe i'm not sure if he is but if he is i'll leave that in the description so also i do need to do reading sprints for something for some of these books so i'm gonna go do that i will be back in the evening time it's like 2 45 right now but i will pop back on around like i don't know dinner time so just as the lawnmower goes off outside forget that i don't have the copy of the book that i'm reading in front of me right now happy sunday it's been a second since we talked i think the last time updated you was friday uh saturday i spent time with my little sister and hayden we ended up going to a sushi restaurant i'm not a sushi gal but my sister and my husband are so i went for them and that i had mcdonald's it was good night i had a really fun time with them and i didn't do any reading and i don't care i felt good about it edited and uploaded my video for today had the live show for magnolia parks so i feel like i've gotten a lot done but i feel like i haven't done as much reading as i want to do so my goal for tonight is to finish the books that i talked to y'all about last time we spoke which are scandal of the year and yours until dawn and then i'm actually almost finished with sulto cottage by i think debbie mason i have the audiobook for this one why am i reading a christmassy romance the time that's not christmas i don't really know though i will say this book doesn't really feel very christmasy wow this book is interesting it's better main character sophie and she and her daughter mia have recently moved back to uh sophie's hometown and sophie's daughter i want to say is like four or something like that and sophie for mia's entire life has assumed that daughter is this guy michael's like she kind of dated michael she kind of had a thing with michael and he got her pregnant at 19 and she just like never told him about it i guess now she's back in town and she's trying to figure out like how to tell michael about it she's also trying to kind of get back on her feet she had a little bit of a mishap in the last place she lived i don't remember where exactly it was there's a situation where cps was called and now she's kind of trying to deal with that as well even though she's like moved to a different town and like she didn't really do anything wrong we just got a major plot twist which i'll tell you because i mean no offense like who's gonna read this like i don't think i'll really like i'll tell you the tea okay basically sophie has had a crush on this guy named liam for a long time and liam is michael's cousin michael is the guy that she thought was her baby daddy but it's not actually she finds out actually that it was liam and that liam took advantage of her like she was drunk she knew she said she doesn't know it was him but like liam is mia's father and a lot of flirtation and stuff going on between sophie and liam now she's like i don't know if i want to be with this man because he took advantage of me but also i really like him and he's like my baby's father but like i don't want her know him and i don't want him to have custody and so it's just getting very twisty and tiny i definitely understand why she's upset like she was drunk that night and you know she didn't know that it was him like she literally thought that her baby's father was someone else so like i get her anger but i'm assuming it's gonna be a romance between the two i don't know i i mean they're gonna end up together so it's just an interesting book i'm gonna put it that way the reason that i'm still listening to this is because it is so mild and palatable and i can tune out and then tune back in still understand everything that's going on which i'm really actually liking sometimes it's nice to just send to something passively and it be pleasant to listen to and then every once in a while you get like a wild plot twist definitely not the best thing i've ever read but you know what i own it i wanted to you know get it done because i i own it i think i have this one upstairs i thought i had brought it down here for some reason but it's not in my stack of um mass markets over there i brought the other two over here i also have this one on audio and this one that i'm like farther into now ebook format though honestly i might just pick up and read the mass market today so i want to get these all done today because hayden is actually playing a show tonight he's only in one band at the moment so he doesn't play as often as used to but you know whenever he gets opportunity he tries to take it and so he's doing that but he'll be home really really late tonight and i can't decide if i want to try to attempt to sleep if he's not here it always goes poorly because it'll come back and wake me up so i'm like maybe i'll just like stay up really late and finish these ones and update you as i as i do that reading updates have been a little skimpy this week but you know it's fine it's actually kind of considering what i'm going to read for next week and i think i'm going to try to read the truly devious series i think that would be fun i honestly think that i'm going to try to do that for like a lot of the weekly reading vlogs coming up this fall because i do have a lot of like why fantasy series and things like that that i want to read why not have them in a video you know so like if anyone is like hey what are your thoughts and feelings on six of crows i can direct you to that video that hasn't happened yet but it will maybe i'm gonna go ahead and finish mistletoe cottage and then i'm gonna get into one of these and we can get her done because i feel like it'd be really nice to have gotten five books read i'm filming my wrap up for august tomorrow and i'm at 20 books right now which is awesome but like 23 it'd be better so i'm gonna go ahead and get these done and uh i'll keep you posted as i do okay so i finished mistletoe cottage and i didn't really like this i ended up giving it like two stars i guess it could have been a three star but i really didn't like the premise of the guy like taking advantage of her and then him being the hero i also felt like the central conflict in this book was weird and i didn't mention it earlier but there's like a ghostly presence that i thought was a little bit strange and unsettling beginning of this book the owner of this like ian or bed breakfast or whatever ends up passing away she's like 104 and she like haunts people and she like looks over them and i don't know if she's supposed to be like the ghost of christmas past or christmas i don't know just sort of a bizarre addition that i didn't really love um also like this big event that is minted that's going to happen this wedding that's going to happen and like save everybody doesn't end up happening but apparently everything's okay anyway also the random marriage that happens like kind of out of nowhere no it was i'm glad i finished it but no i have since gotten uh not very far but like a little bit farther into scandal of the year and i actually am enjoying this one the banter is definitely giving loretta chase for sure like if you have read any of her books before you know that her writing is pretty distinct i would say compared to some other historical romance authors and she really focuses on i don't want to say older heroines but people who typically have a little bit more life experience she doesn't do a lot of like blue stalking kind of characters and i don't know if this third typically does but our heroine is a divorcee and so she's got a little bit more worldly experience maybe than some of the other heroines you might have read in historical romance julia is trying to figure out what she's gonna do now that she's divorced she doesn't have as much money as she should she's still getting like an allowance from her husband i think or is it her brother i don't know she's getting an allowance but she's having to use it to pay off her debts so she kind of doesn't know what she's going to do for the rest of her life she doesn't want to be a paid courtesan mistress she doesn't want to open her own business she's not really sure what to do and she's also trying to kind of meddle in the life of aiden who was our hero and again he is the one that like had sex with our heroine and is kind of the reason that our heroine got a divorce and he is in the midst of like courting some other women and like trying to get married to have a suitable error whatever um apparently he's a duke so that's fun he is haunted by julia because she's like at the society gatherings like she has scandal in her life but like she hasn't been shunned by her friends and she's trying to like slowly re-enter society and stuff so i don't know i'm liking it it's pretty good it's not like groundbreaking original so fun but i am feeling the chemistry between the two of them i feel like the one you know counter that they've had so far that we've seen on page i liked so i'll be curious to find out more i have not read any more of yours until dawn um and in fact i'm actually going to go and take a shower because as you've probably seen my hair is like so pathetic and limp so i will probably update you one final time tomorrow hopefully having finished both these books knowing me probably just one but you know what i'm gonna hype myself up i'm gonna try to finish these these books and then i will get back to you tomorrow finish this vlog off and then i'll be starting another vlog monday friends it is the end of the road and we did pretty good this week okay i'll be honest i didn't actually finish yours until dawn but four out of five ain't bad i guess i can tell you my final thoughts on scandal of the year by this laura lee kirky this didn't end up being very good i was kind of upset because i liked our hero and our heroine was like unlikable but in a unique way i've appreciated it like she wasn't someone i had read a ton of times before so i was like okay like i'm open to this right but my issue with the story right julia was married and ended up cheating on her husband with aiden and we find out the details of that essentially she didn't actually cheat on her husband she just wanted her husband to think that she cheated because he was abusing her she wanted to get out of this situation and the best way to do it was basically to trap aiden into appearing to have cheated with julia so they never actually consummated their um attraction for each other and she never really like clarified what she was doing if that makes sense um i don't know i don't like that she tricked aiden i wish she could have confided in him even if it was after the fact about what had been happening to her so that he could understand why she did what she did and then they could have i don't know perhaps had a successful romantic relationship sooner earlier on i it was just frustrating i really felt sympathetic towards julia obviously like her situation was terrible and you get to see her multiple times trying to find a man to um have an affair with so that she can out of this terrible marriage but it just didn't it just didn't really work for me and i just felt that her unlikable personality could have been okay on its own but she was never very honest with aiden and so at the end of the story i was just kind of like y'all had sexual chemistry but like it wasn't enough to overcome the issues that i have to the story so i had three two stars and one three star i actually would recommend forbidden promises this is actually a pretty fun story and i do kind of want to continue on with the series i won't be doing it anytime soon but like it was pretty solid we'll be finishing yours until dawn here pretty soon because it's on my currently reading shelf and like i tried to finish those ones so overall like a pretty solid successful reading week i am hoping to do probably another week like this fairly soon because i do want to get these best market paperbacks of my physical tbr and i still have quite the stack let's be honest i went a little bit ham i think back in 2020 buying a bunch of historicals this week i'm going to be doing something a little different and picking up the truly devious series so if you want to hear my thoughts on these books back next tuesday and you can see my thoughts and feelings on these that is it for me thank you so much for watching this video i love you all so much and until next time youhello welcome back to my channel and welcome to the start of another weekly reading vlog i am so happy to have you here with me this week is going to get interesting i have so much stuff i want to get done i feel like last week the weekly reading vlog was not great the reason for that is because i was chilling i got pretty much no reading done except for what was required for the planned tbr content and this week my friends i am going to get stuff read i have quite a bit of stuff on my currently reading shelf on goodreads i am going to plug in my airpods clean my house get stuff done get some of my new art on the walls get my office decluttered i have many things to accomplish this week but specifically i have very many things to accomplish today mondays are my slow day at work so that means i have a lot of time between things to kind of i don't know get done get done we will so i'm going to go ahead and start time lapsing and i will be checking things off my to-do list as i do sorry i have you know given you a whole rundown on what i'm doing but i think it's better if you just visualize see what a mess my life currently is tell me babe where are you going prairie when it goes is in the life i had a vision in the dark of premonitions tell me babe what are we gonna is pick me up and put me down hello my loves i am in the passenger seat and you know what that means we're going to be doing a crumble cookie review whenever hayden gets out of this long ass line the flavors this week looked so good i'm very excited about it but i thought i would update you on my reading and also like all the stuff i got done yesterday you saw what i got done but i feel so good about it it's so nice starting my week and like getting getting all of the things done that i need to get done wow gotta love living in texas so many trucks to pass by my car but i didn't get much reading done yesterday which is a shame but i did finish forbidden promises which was a book that i was reading in the last vlog i kind of talked about it a little bit ended up being a three-star read for me but it did kind of spur my interest in the rest of the things that i'm going to be reading for this weekly reading vlog this is like a mass market paperback romance that i was sent from harlequin a couple of years ago i made a video reading like five mom rom books i called them so basically just like mass market romances not not historicals necessarily but like basically harlequin books and i didn't really uh give those books the most favorable reviews but harley quinn reached out to me and was like hey uh we have some stuff that might be more your speed and so they sent me two books that were definitely for a younger age demographic which was really cool and forbidden promises is one of them i didn't love this book but i actually had a really good time with it so i kind of don't care that it wasn't perfect i ended up giving it three stars but our main character india who at the start of the story is having to come back to her family's home i can't remember exactly why she had to go back home but her family owns a tobacco company in i think north carolina her older brother i think is running for like senator or something like that i'm actually not entirely sure like what office of government he's running for but he's running for office of government he's gonna propose to his like very recent girlfriend and so the family's kind of up in arms about this there's also the older sister who wants to be the ceo of the company take over from their dad her dad's kind of a hard ass he's going to marry his mistress it's kind of all giving dynasty vibes which i really liked because it's this like rich black southern family i don't know the vibes the vibes were definitely excellent i liked the soapy feel of it but i feel like the romance between india and her sister's ex-husband like it wasn't as developed as i really wanted it to be which is kind of disappointing because i really i was rooting for them like i love a forbidden relationship and i mean how juicy is it to like go after your sister's ex-husband but ultimately the romance wasn't like that well developed and the ending was sort of weird too like i definitely end up together but it's more like a happy for now rather than a true happily ever after and with it being so soapy i wanted it to be a true happily ever after especially since though it's a series they're not going to be doing multiple books for each couple if that makes sense um but i would be interested to read more in the series i really want to know what happens to the older sister who's like wanting to be the ceo and who's kind of like messy and maybe kind of a little bit drinks too much um her name's elena and i kind of want to like read her story so i might pick up more books in the series in the future so i guess hats off to harlequin for like kind of nailing my taste in books which is like kind of melodramatic over the top written for a younger audience so i finished that one and it kind of i don't know i was looking at my shelves and i really desperately for these weekly reading vlogs i need to get back into reading the books on my shelves not that i haven't been doing that but i was really staring down the barrel of my tbr and i was like i need to figure out ways to creatively read these books in these weekly reading vlogs so it's fun and zesty and interesting i think this week i'm going to try and read as many mass-market paperback romances as i can i have quite the variety i have like old-school historicals i have newer historicals i have old contemporaries one of them no actually i'm reading this for a different video this week one of them is actually about a female magician more to come on that i think you'll probably you will see that video before this one but if you haven't seen my i read five books i regret buying go and watch that the book i'm talking about is honest illusions by nora roberts but i have so many mass market romances and i just want to get through them and they're all kind of like color coordinated they're all like orange pink and yellow and i don't know aesthetically it just sounds nice i'm gonna read those this week i think the first one actually that i'm going to pick up one that i conveniently got an audio audiobook for because i'm going to need that this week because i'm trying to read for that books i regret buying video as well i have yours until dawn by theresa medeiros checked out but i also have my fake rake by eva lee abele oh no this one i think this is sort of like a he's sort of a nerd historical romance that makes sense he's not a rake fake right she's like turning him into a rake so he's like more or something and then she wants to him i think is the premise so looking forward to that things that i'm reading i think that's pretty much it i do need to finish emerald blaze and maybe i'll like mention but at some point though it doesn't really fit in the mass market romance like thumbnail that i'm envisioning in my head honestly half of these vlogs is just me figuring out like what the thumbnail is going to be um oh let's get serious here i did start magnolia parks today i'm telling you this now because i want to give you a little bit of like a cookie crumb sprinkle if you're watching this uh the vlog that's going to include magnolia parks i don't think is going to be until like mid-september so i'll give you a little a little sprinkle here i'm like 60 pages into this book and boy i have thoughts i wouldn't say it's bad it's just so hard to parse through and to understand this lady this writer she was like okay i'm gonna throw five or six men at you you need to keep them apart you need to understand their relationships you also need to understand why this chick is like hanging out with all of them you're also going to try to figure out why this woman has this man sleep in her bed all the time but they're not actually together but they're in love okay but he cheated on her but there's like a lot of other stuff going on and i'm just like i like angst don't get me wrong but i i'm feeling a lack of realism big time and like it's not supposed to be realistic it's like gossip girl sat in london like i get it but i think what's like kind of me up right now besides the writing which is genuinely the first chapter was a wreck in my head like i could not get through it why is this guy so obsessed with her she seems kind of irritating to be honest and i'm not saying that like flawed characters you know shouldn't exist she seems kind of unbearable and he's like he has 20 22 22 tattoos all dedicated to her and yet he cheated on her and yet they're not together and like it's not giving chuck and blair to me though that is a toxic relationship as well that i think this one's being compared to it's not i'm not buying it and i want to buy it but i have not bought it so i don't know i'm gonna stop rambling because we got a cookie review to get to i mean hayden's still you know in line but all that to say maybe things will turn around i'm not convinced that they will but for the love of live laugh love i'm praying that they do because i spent money on the physical copy of this book i mean i actually didn't spend money i had an amazon gift card but that being said i have i have the physical manifestation of hype i guess in my house so i would like to finish it and i would like to enjoy it but i'm just not there yet oh the glow the light's not as good on you but it's great on me still do not care honestly the less light on me the better well today my friends my background of the crumble cookies review like i said i'm feeling some warmth and filling some heat they said one of them is really hot fry bread one all right well let's crack this puppy open like i'm pretty sure she said careful well that's never good but looking pretty cute i don't want to tip it too much because then things go everywhere we have red velvet pie an oreo sandwich pie thing i don't know strawberry strawberries and cream i think it's called something else but something like that and then fry bread with dollop of cinnamon sugar butter and boy oh boy am i ready to crack into these puppies you know and i was almost not going to get the oreo one but what the lord led me to her in what world would you have not gotten but here's the thing it's whipped cream on the inside and i'm not a whipped cream girl you'll be just fine okay uh let's start with the ones that are less likely to blacken the teeth uh first up we got the fry bread and she's buttered is she hot she's warm yeah i'll let you know that i kind of smush this right here so i can get it oh yeah how did you demolish this ass has fallen out of it i was about to say the same thing it's almost like we're married i like it a lot that's good because i don't need you blue garden on my honestly that's like if a cinnamon toast crunch was a cookie that's what that tastes like to me it has a very similar like cinnamon sugar flavor it's not just that it's cinnamon sugar it's like very specifically similar to cinnamon toast crush now this one i was worried that this one would be too similar to the raspberry from was it last week or the week before not really i can already tell that it's not i can already tell that it's not the cookie base is less uh gravel forward and more cookie like because it doesn't have the graham cracker crumbs in it i don't like whipped cream so texturally it's not my favorite but pretty good flavor though i saw them in there cutting up strawberries to make the strawberry sauce and that's quality you can count on i mean i kind of agree with you it's like like mostly kind of bland and it's texturally not i mean it's better it's not like my favorite but it's not bad at all i do like the strawberry flavor yeah the strawberry is definitely bear the berry biberian wonder if the berry would like that you tell me honestly the berry isn't a nick mom he has an indica my dad we call him j berry this is going to be hard to eat it's good for you it's a good thing i have a big mouth just unhinge that jaw a little bit like you normally do i don't think i'm gonna like the cream in the middle yeah i'm going in for a two biter yeah am i ever gonna get to try this i think you'll like it because it's not it's i mean it's not cream cheese you see that like i don't like cream cheese no i know you do but it's a little lighter thing that i like about it it's very grippable it's very chocolate cookie forward which like as i've gotten older is my favorite part of the oreo i'll just eat this little bit that got left you can try it at the same time you're trying to romance me you've had the red velvet from here before right pretty good actually i don't know i might have only had the pink velvet i've pretty good just that bite because it wasn't like completely covered in frothing i'm sure i've said this before but the ones that are like just covered in frosting not my fave she loves them that edge piece that i had texturally was my favorite bite of all of these yeah it's very like oh no i mean it had like a crisp outside it was almost like a little like crunchy you know but the inside it's very it's like tasting cupcake i feel like i have oreo just all in my face oh yeah on my face in my teeth yeah all of them that one definitely stuck around the most it definitely looks like i ate mulch do like mulch ain't nothing different i don't know we i don't think i've talked about this i don't know why i would have talked about this but i like mulch a lot chill into the flavor that kind of like cleans in between your teeth when you chew it like the way it looks when it's freshly laid like ripping into the bags and just watching it all pour out into my garden we're gonna rank these we forgot we're gonna rank them you wanna make them yeah i would say overall it's a pretty good week yeah i would say for me personally fry red number one okay is less icing oreo number two because i really liked the texture and the flavor of the chocolate cookie part she popped off um really good you know it like sticks in your teeth and then red velvet and then strawberry strawberry still wasn't bad for me but i just think like extraordinary was the worst the strawberry is a good flavor but it's the only flavor and it's like very strong if you like strawberry you'll like it well let's not go too far texturally it's like it's a mushroom it's not the bed yeah it's just really tough i think i'm gonna have to go red velvet number one if there's cream cheese on the menu best believe chandler's eating it and it's probably gonna be number one number two i'm gonna have to say oreo because she surprised me i wasn't expecting to like her i almost didn't get her because i don't like whipped cream but this whipped cream is good and it adds a lightness that this cookie i think desperately needs being kind of a cocoa-y taste then i'm gonna have to go fry bread and then i'm gonna have to go miss jobs so i guess that means like overall oreo is the winner since we both put it at number two she's she definitely is it the underdog that we needed yeah it's a pretty good one like it more than i was anticipating liking it and i think it's because it's less sweet than i thought it would be or would lady in the trampo with you absolutely hello happy friday uh it's been a second since we last talked i have been reading for my secret tbr video oh this hair is driving me nuts but i thought i would pop in and say hey before i hop on to some reading sprints i have a couple of new pairs of shoes that i got yesterday when i was out with hayden and i wanted to show you them because you know what is a weekly reading vlog without me buying and then i also have books to discuss i know i actually have been reading for this video so already talked about forbidden promises that was the first book that i finished i started in on my fake rake and i like briefly talked about it but didn't really get into details about it it was just okay i ended up giving this book two stars which was a little disappointing i really wanted to enjoy the relationship between grace and sebastian basically grace is trying to like woo this guy who she thinks is like brainy but also sexy and kind of a rake but she can't seem to like catch his attention so she's going to turn her best friend sebastian into a rake but she ends up falling for sebastian the issue is that like the majority of the book is spent with grace trying to like woo this other guy and not really spent developing a relationship with sebastian and the times that she spends with the guy that she's trying to like woo is it's uncomfortable like she just is so lacking social grace which is interesting because her name's grace that it was just not fun i was like secondhand embarrassed the majority of the time reading this book i wish that sebastian had like communicated his feelings towards grace in the first place because like she sees him without glasses on the beginning of the story and is like oh he's so hot he's like why don't you just get with him i don't know it just didn't make a lot of sense to me and it seems like that's a pretty universal feeling i looked at the goodreads reviews for this and it's not good i don't know why i personally purchased this one i think it was because it was like kind of hyped when it came out like people were excited for this one i've never read ava lee before i think it's abele uh this came out in 2019. i guess i've had that long that's wild to me i mean it is really like it's a cute cover but this just was okay and then i started these two baddies i started yours until dawn by teresa medeiros scandal of the year scandal of the year i have the audiobook for this one i'm reading an ebook copy and you're probably like okay you have these why and you know what i prefer audiobooks and ebooks i just do it's more convenient to read i think about a mass-market paperback for the most part is intimidating okay this one's not that bad the majority of the time like the font's too small it stresses me out okay so let's start with scandal of the year this is one that i picked up on audio and i'm not that far into it so i don't know that much about it but the beginning of the story is like pretty juicy and it i feel like feels like a loretta chase book that kind of starts the same way where our heroine is before a divorce court and she is having to say like hey i was adulterous i ended up sleeping with a man and the man is named aidan and aiden is the hero of this book so i guess she was married to someone else who wants a divorce from that person or like is getting a divorce from that person and she has to admit that she was adulterous and aiden i think at this point is looking for his bride like he's looking to marry someone but he's haunted by that one night that he and julius met together i'm so bad with character names i'm intrigued that that opening is definitely keeping me interested and it's only a nine hour audio book so i can definitely like squeeze that in i say definitely squeeze that in tonight maybe squeeze that in tonight because i'm actually trying to finish up a pretty long y fantasy for the video i'm posting on sunday so we'll see the one that i think is intriguing me more though is yours until dawn by teresa medeiros i think this is like her most popular romance i don't know that much about her i do have two of her books one of them is like a vampire historical romance which is kind of fun this one is i think a beauty and the beast retelling or like a loose beauty in the beast retelling at the start of the story our hero i think he's recently lost his vision and he's kind of a grump all of the people in his household are like kind of scared of him and they're looking to hire a nurse for him to kind of like help get him back on his feet and you know get him back to being the kind of guy that he was he might yeah he was abandoned by his fiancee it's kind of in some ways also reminding me of the first book in the girl meets duke series by tessa dare and samantha comes to this like palatial country estate and i don't think she has like the best background to be doing this like she's not qualified but she's damn sure gonna like assert herself she she ends up interviewing and the people interviewing her are not like impressed by her qualifications but they're like oh i don't think she's like old enough to do this right it's like oh don't worry about it like i i see that he's a grump i'm gonna stay anyway i think i'm gonna take this on for myself he is haunted by her scent at the very beginning so we'll see like where that goes but i'm intrigued i love a good like damaged hero and the writing of this feels very accessible which i really appreciate sometimes i like a historical that feels a little bit more historical for lack of a better word sometimes i want something that's just like easy to get through but like in a historical setting and this one i would say the one by miss laura lee gurkey feels inaccessible but maybe a little bit more historically so anyway uh these are ones i'm reading i'm definitely gonna try to finish these in the next like day or two so that will leave me having read four historicals i would like to get to like a fifth but we'll see i do still have to finish magnolia parks for the live show on sunday that i'm doing on my patreon for people who aren't on my patreon the review for magnolia parks will be a video in september so you're gonna have to wait a little bit but i'm almost done with this i have thoughts and feelings let me tell you let me show you the shoes i got though and then i'll show you the area rug i got y'all i feel like my bedroom is coming together and i'm so pleased with it i feel like my home in general is coming together i've lived in this house for over two years at this point and it's a whole home you have to slowly over time start decorating things and trying to like flesh out a space but i feel like i'm finally getting the hang of my style and uh just like what is needed in a space and i'm just loving it i feel like the rug was a really good idea we do have carpet in our bedroom and so i didn't think like oh we need a rug i think it helps bring in pattern and a little bit of like fun to the space i mean it's a neutral pattern drug it's not that exciting but i think it looks good and i'm excited about it shoes okay i want to start posting pictures of outfits and stuff i wanna i wanna have a good time i want to live my best life and also accept where i'm at in life does that make sense okay i think we all have like a dream self that we buy for you know we'll buy these like really cute outfits like oh my god wouldn't it be so cute if i had a plaid skirt okay i work from home when the am i going to wear a plaid skirt you know and i feel like in the past i've done that i have like all deadly oversized sweatshirts that are not like the cutest and i have like really fancy stuff that i never wear and i feel like i need a little bit more in between which leads me to why i bought two pairs of sneakers tennis shoes we call them tennis shoes in texas okay i got two pairs of neutral shoes and i'm they're really cute okay i'm very pleased with them these i could see in a couple of different settings not like a true athletic setting like i wouldn't wear these with like a true athletic outfit but athleisure yes like leggings and a cute sweatshirt my new balances they are kind of like a creamy color obviously they've got a little bit of a like leopardy pattern on the back but i don't think it's too in your face and uh they actually look pretty good on the foot and they're really comfortable i tried on some nikes that had like a lot of elevation to them and they were not comfy so these were super like fun and i feel like these are a little bit more on the not dressy side but definitely not like you could wear them to the gym in my opinion i mean i guess you could but i wouldn't these ones i like because i could wear them to the gym or i could wear them with leggings and a cute shirt they're cute they have like a little bit of a kind of lavender i guess stripe running through them right here but for the most part they're just like a cream on white pair of tennis shoes and i just oh they're stunning so pretty much very similar but very different different uses we need them i'll link to these in the description if you're in the market for for shoes and these interest you i got these both from academy these were on like mega sale these were not but they were both under a hundred dollars um individually that is i feel like i did pretty well i have another pair of shoes coming i know who gets more sneakers i do i guess uh they're white nike air maxes and i don't know if i'm gonna like them or not but they're they're coming and we'll see i'll let you know how those go but i'm very excited because the only sneakers right now that i have are like black and you know black sneakers are nice but i like some variety so the rest of the day i have a lot of stuff i need to get done to finish hawaii fantasy book i need to get through i would say at least one of these books or niche magnolia parks i can't really decide which i'm going to do and then tonight hayden's making us a pesto pasta again i have charged up my old vlog camera for him so hopefully he will get some good footage for us b-roll magic moment and uh if he is following a recipe i'm not sure if he is but if he is i'll leave that in the description so also i do need to do reading sprints for something for some of these books so i'm gonna go do that i will be back in the evening time it's like 2 45 right now but i will pop back on around like i don't know dinner time so just as the lawnmower goes off outside forget that i don't have the copy of the book that i'm reading in front of me right now happy sunday it's been a second since we talked i think the last time updated you was friday uh saturday i spent time with my little sister and hayden we ended up going to a sushi restaurant i'm not a sushi gal but my sister and my husband are so i went for them and that i had mcdonald's it was good night i had a really fun time with them and i didn't do any reading and i don't care i felt good about it edited and uploaded my video for today had the live show for magnolia parks so i feel like i've gotten a lot done but i feel like i haven't done as much reading as i want to do so my goal for tonight is to finish the books that i talked to y'all about last time we spoke which are scandal of the year and yours until dawn and then i'm actually almost finished with sulto cottage by i think debbie mason i have the audiobook for this one why am i reading a christmassy romance the time that's not christmas i don't really know though i will say this book doesn't really feel very christmasy wow this book is interesting it's better main character sophie and she and her daughter mia have recently moved back to uh sophie's hometown and sophie's daughter i want to say is like four or something like that and sophie for mia's entire life has assumed that daughter is this guy michael's like she kind of dated michael she kind of had a thing with michael and he got her pregnant at 19 and she just like never told him about it i guess now she's back in town and she's trying to figure out like how to tell michael about it she's also trying to kind of get back on her feet she had a little bit of a mishap in the last place she lived i don't remember where exactly it was there's a situation where cps was called and now she's kind of trying to deal with that as well even though she's like moved to a different town and like she didn't really do anything wrong we just got a major plot twist which i'll tell you because i mean no offense like who's gonna read this like i don't think i'll really like i'll tell you the tea okay basically sophie has had a crush on this guy named liam for a long time and liam is michael's cousin michael is the guy that she thought was her baby daddy but it's not actually she finds out actually that it was liam and that liam took advantage of her like she was drunk she knew she said she doesn't know it was him but like liam is mia's father and a lot of flirtation and stuff going on between sophie and liam now she's like i don't know if i want to be with this man because he took advantage of me but also i really like him and he's like my baby's father but like i don't want her know him and i don't want him to have custody and so it's just getting very twisty and tiny i definitely understand why she's upset like she was drunk that night and you know she didn't know that it was him like she literally thought that her baby's father was someone else so like i get her anger but i'm assuming it's gonna be a romance between the two i don't know i i mean they're gonna end up together so it's just an interesting book i'm gonna put it that way the reason that i'm still listening to this is because it is so mild and palatable and i can tune out and then tune back in still understand everything that's going on which i'm really actually liking sometimes it's nice to just send to something passively and it be pleasant to listen to and then every once in a while you get like a wild plot twist definitely not the best thing i've ever read but you know what i own it i wanted to you know get it done because i i own it i think i have this one upstairs i thought i had brought it down here for some reason but it's not in my stack of um mass markets over there i brought the other two over here i also have this one on audio and this one that i'm like farther into now ebook format though honestly i might just pick up and read the mass market today so i want to get these all done today because hayden is actually playing a show tonight he's only in one band at the moment so he doesn't play as often as used to but you know whenever he gets opportunity he tries to take it and so he's doing that but he'll be home really really late tonight and i can't decide if i want to try to attempt to sleep if he's not here it always goes poorly because it'll come back and wake me up so i'm like maybe i'll just like stay up really late and finish these ones and update you as i as i do that reading updates have been a little skimpy this week but you know it's fine it's actually kind of considering what i'm going to read for next week and i think i'm going to try to read the truly devious series i think that would be fun i honestly think that i'm going to try to do that for like a lot of the weekly reading vlogs coming up this fall because i do have a lot of like why fantasy series and things like that that i want to read why not have them in a video you know so like if anyone is like hey what are your thoughts and feelings on six of crows i can direct you to that video that hasn't happened yet but it will maybe i'm gonna go ahead and finish mistletoe cottage and then i'm gonna get into one of these and we can get her done because i feel like it'd be really nice to have gotten five books read i'm filming my wrap up for august tomorrow and i'm at 20 books right now which is awesome but like 23 it'd be better so i'm gonna go ahead and get these done and uh i'll keep you posted as i do okay so i finished mistletoe cottage and i didn't really like this i ended up giving it like two stars i guess it could have been a three star but i really didn't like the premise of the guy like taking advantage of her and then him being the hero i also felt like the central conflict in this book was weird and i didn't mention it earlier but there's like a ghostly presence that i thought was a little bit strange and unsettling beginning of this book the owner of this like ian or bed breakfast or whatever ends up passing away she's like 104 and she like haunts people and she like looks over them and i don't know if she's supposed to be like the ghost of christmas past or christmas i don't know just sort of a bizarre addition that i didn't really love um also like this big event that is minted that's going to happen this wedding that's going to happen and like save everybody doesn't end up happening but apparently everything's okay anyway also the random marriage that happens like kind of out of nowhere no it was i'm glad i finished it but no i have since gotten uh not very far but like a little bit farther into scandal of the year and i actually am enjoying this one the banter is definitely giving loretta chase for sure like if you have read any of her books before you know that her writing is pretty distinct i would say compared to some other historical romance authors and she really focuses on i don't want to say older heroines but people who typically have a little bit more life experience she doesn't do a lot of like blue stalking kind of characters and i don't know if this third typically does but our heroine is a divorcee and so she's got a little bit more worldly experience maybe than some of the other heroines you might have read in historical romance julia is trying to figure out what she's gonna do now that she's divorced she doesn't have as much money as she should she's still getting like an allowance from her husband i think or is it her brother i don't know she's getting an allowance but she's having to use it to pay off her debts so she kind of doesn't know what she's going to do for the rest of her life she doesn't want to be a paid courtesan mistress she doesn't want to open her own business she's not really sure what to do and she's also trying to kind of meddle in the life of aiden who was our hero and again he is the one that like had sex with our heroine and is kind of the reason that our heroine got a divorce and he is in the midst of like courting some other women and like trying to get married to have a suitable error whatever um apparently he's a duke so that's fun he is haunted by julia because she's like at the society gatherings like she has scandal in her life but like she hasn't been shunned by her friends and she's trying to like slowly re-enter society and stuff so i don't know i'm liking it it's pretty good it's not like groundbreaking original so fun but i am feeling the chemistry between the two of them i feel like the one you know counter that they've had so far that we've seen on page i liked so i'll be curious to find out more i have not read any more of yours until dawn um and in fact i'm actually going to go and take a shower because as you've probably seen my hair is like so pathetic and limp so i will probably update you one final time tomorrow hopefully having finished both these books knowing me probably just one but you know what i'm gonna hype myself up i'm gonna try to finish these these books and then i will get back to you tomorrow finish this vlog off and then i'll be starting another vlog monday friends it is the end of the road and we did pretty good this week okay i'll be honest i didn't actually finish yours until dawn but four out of five ain't bad i guess i can tell you my final thoughts on scandal of the year by this laura lee kirky this didn't end up being very good i was kind of upset because i liked our hero and our heroine was like unlikable but in a unique way i've appreciated it like she wasn't someone i had read a ton of times before so i was like okay like i'm open to this right but my issue with the story right julia was married and ended up cheating on her husband with aiden and we find out the details of that essentially she didn't actually cheat on her husband she just wanted her husband to think that she cheated because he was abusing her she wanted to get out of this situation and the best way to do it was basically to trap aiden into appearing to have cheated with julia so they never actually consummated their um attraction for each other and she never really like clarified what she was doing if that makes sense um i don't know i don't like that she tricked aiden i wish she could have confided in him even if it was after the fact about what had been happening to her so that he could understand why she did what she did and then they could have i don't know perhaps had a successful romantic relationship sooner earlier on i it was just frustrating i really felt sympathetic towards julia obviously like her situation was terrible and you get to see her multiple times trying to find a man to um have an affair with so that she can out of this terrible marriage but it just didn't it just didn't really work for me and i just felt that her unlikable personality could have been okay on its own but she was never very honest with aiden and so at the end of the story i was just kind of like y'all had sexual chemistry but like it wasn't enough to overcome the issues that i have to the story so i had three two stars and one three star i actually would recommend forbidden promises this is actually a pretty fun story and i do kind of want to continue on with the series i won't be doing it anytime soon but like it was pretty solid we'll be finishing yours until dawn here pretty soon because it's on my currently reading shelf and like i tried to finish those ones so overall like a pretty solid successful reading week i am hoping to do probably another week like this fairly soon because i do want to get these best market paperbacks of my physical tbr and i still have quite the stack let's be honest i went a little bit ham i think back in 2020 buying a bunch of historicals this week i'm going to be doing something a little different and picking up the truly devious series so if you want to hear my thoughts on these books back next tuesday and you can see my thoughts and feelings on these that is it for me thank you so much for watching this video i love you all so much and until next time you\n"