RECENT READS [NEW YA BOOKS!]

A Taste of Romance: A Review of Recent Reads

As a book lover, I'm always on the lookout for new releases that capture my attention and transport me to a world of romance and adventure. In this article, I'll be sharing my thoughts on four recent romance novels that I've had the pleasure of reading recently.

First up is "The Boiling Girl" by Casey West. This book has all the makings of a classic summer read: a young protagonist who embarks on a journey of self-discovery, a quirky cast of characters, and a healthy dose of sarcasm. Avery, the main character, is a free-spirited girl who's always been the "cool kid" in her family. When she meets her sister and begins to question her own desires and aspirations, she finds herself on a path of exploration that leads her to a summer camp experience that's equal parts fun, music, and romance.

I must say, I was immediately drawn to the vibe of this book - it's got that same carefree, summery feel as "Dirty Dancing", but with its own unique twist. The author has done a great job of capturing the ups and downs of adolescence, from the thrill of new friendships to the agony of unrequited love. Avery is a lovable protagonist who's easy to root for, and her sister is the perfect foil - their banter and chemistry are undeniable. Overall, I'd give this book three out of five stars - it was an enjoyable read that left me feeling uplifted and inspired.

Next up is "A Taste for Love" by Jennifer Yen. This book had me hooked from the very first page, with its witty dialogue and engaging characters. Liza Yang, the protagonist, is a talented baker who's forced to choose between her passion for pastry-making and her parents' expectations of her future career. As she prepares to enter the annual Texas Baking Competition, Liza meets James, one of the contestants who becomes her unlikely ally - and potential love interest.

I was charmed by Liza's warm and caring personality, as well as the author's clever nods to baking culture and Taiwanese heritage. The way the book explores the complexities of identity, family expectations, and first love is both thoughtful and engaging. And let's not forget the romance - it's a sweet and tender affair that will leave you feeling all the feels. I'd give this book four out of five stars - it was an absolute delight to read, with its lighthearted tone and infectious enthusiasm.

Last but certainly not least is my review of "Casey West Books" latest release (which I couldn't quite remember the title of, so apologies for that!). This author has a knack for crafting stories that are both fun and meaningful, with characters who feel like old friends. Their books always leave me smiling, and this one was no exception.

I must admit, I was a bit stumped by the premise - it seemed to have elements of "Camp Rock" and "The Great British Baking Show", but without quite pulling them off (I was reminded of the latter, though - the judging system in this book had me giggling!). Nevertheless, I enjoyed every minute of it, and Liza is an absolute sweetheart. If you love baking, or just enjoy stories about strong, independent women who find their passions, then this one's for you.

Overall, I was thoroughly entertained by these four recent reads - each one brought its own unique charm to the table, and I'm excited to see what Casey West Books has in store for us next.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone today i'm here to do another recent reads video my reading game has finally come back and i for one am very happy and hope it doesn't leave me ever again so today's recent reads is going to be all young adult books and they're all kind of contemporary with the exception of what one of those videos i take my most recent reads i try to combine them all into one genre because i think it's just easier as a viewer for you to decide if you want to watch it or not and i just tell you what the book is about what i liked about it what i didn't like about it and my reading they're all spoiler free and again if you're interested in hearing about one of the books um all the time stamps will be down below for each individual book today the four books i'll be talking about that's right four books in this our good girl bad blood by holly jackson what's not to love by emily whiberly and austin i always have a hard time austin sigma broca sun kissed by casey west and a taste for love by jennifer yen so let's get right into it so the first book is our only non-contemporary one and that is good girl bad blood this is as you can tell a y mystery thrower and this is the sequel to her first book which came out last year called a good girl's guide to murder and i really enjoyed it and i feel like i can talk about this book in this without spoiling it because i wouldn't say it's like a sequel more as a companion novel so it's not pertinent that you read the first book but i always recommend it because it's just easier that way so the whole beginning of this whole series good um a good girls guide to murder we follow care named pip who is like a high school junior and she's like doing this project for school and she decides that she wants to like do like a murder case that happened years ago at her um in her town her small town a guy got accused of murdering his girlfriend and that was the end of it she wants to prove his innocence even though he has been deceased and so the whole book is about her going through that it's multimedia where you get to see her notes you get to see pictures you get to see maps it's just really interesting so the second book it's not spoiling anything because it's a completely different case pip is like i'm done i hung up my hat for being like little miss teen detective and you know she doesn't want to do it anymore because it cost her a lot of turmoil you know read the first book if you want to learn more she also decides to release like this podcast of her um case last year because there is another like ongoing court case that's going along with it that she wants to people to like keep relevant on if that makes any mistake if that makes any sense but she doesn't want to like solve any new mysteries shall we say until one of her very best friends comes to her and is like my brother's missing i need your help to find him and she's like no so she tries everything not to do it but somehow she gets involved and is basically trying to find this guy named jamie throughout this entire book it's a whole book of like a mysterious disappearance of where this guy went why disappeared what were his motives things like that i really enjoy this series they are fun why mystery thrillers and i usually don't like them because i don't know i like more adult mysteries not a lot of why a ones but i was pleasantly surprised by a good girl's guide to murder and also this one this one i will say i didn't like it quite as much as the first book but the second half really took off the first half of this book is kind of slow kind of meandering like i didn't really enjoy the whole case of trying to find where this guy went because it didn't make sense and i was like i don't get it but the second half and even the ending of how it wrapped up and how it came to fruition i was like all right i'm hooked i am here for and this clearly makes way for a third book that i think that will definitely go off this one so i would recommend this series i gave this one a four out of five if you just maybe are not quite ready for the adult mystery fillers maybe they're a little bit too intense for you i think these would be great ones to start with they're fun they're engaging i bet they're great on audio i don't listen to audio so i wouldn't know but like i said they have multimedia in them case files of pictures and maps and you know she really does her investigation like she's very thorough way more than i was when i was 17 i couldn't solve this at all but i really enjoyed it i really have quickly loved to come to holly jackson's books i need to see if she's written anymore because these are addicting like there i'll say it they're there i will say it they're addicting i enjoyed them four out of five love both of the books first one slightly more because i just think i liked it just a teensy bit more even though i think i gave them both four out of five maybe the first one i gave four and a half this one i'll give four i don't know moving on next up we have what's not to love by by emily whiberly i always struggle with this and austin sigma broca this is their oh goodness third or fourth book together i'm not 100 sure but they write why contemporary and i have read all of them i've enjoyed all of them and i would say this is my favorite by them it's a hate to love romance which is my jam i love hate to love romance and this book we fought a character named allison who um is really smart really wants to go to harvard she's really applying herself think of like a young rory gilmore um and she has also a nemesis at school named ethan they are always fighting for like they are always fighting like who gets the best test score who will finish this test first who is not going to show up to class it's all they're always one-upping each other it's it's quite juvenile but you know high school but you know you when you get into those like tedious relationships where it's just like really one up in each other that's just how it is so the whole book is about them like just not liking each other always trying to defeat each other another principal gets tired of it she's like i'm tired of this and so she decides i'm gonna make you two work together to plan um the 10-year high school reunion and so they have to work together to plan this reunion and of course with all hate to love romance books they get closer and realize that maybe they're more alike than they thought and maybe they have feelings for each other and so on and so forth i did really enjoy it allison is a character that's a hard pill to swallow because she is so i don't want to say one-dimensional but she is very like set on her course for like going to harvard doing this beating everybody and she even has a sister in this book that has come home after from graduating college she lost her um her job that she got and her boyfriend broke up with her and so she moves home to like try to you know reset herself try to find herself and her sister just thinks allison just thinks she's lazy not doing anything and being complacent and she doesn't talk to her sister until a long time in the book and i'm like you gotta like learn there's different paths to life not there's one there's not one path for everybody and so she was kind of rigid at first like for a lot of the books she was very rigid and you're just like let's calm down a little bit but eventually she does i love the relationship between her and ethan i love a good hatred love romance any day of the week so i gave this one a four out of five it was enjoyable it was fun and had that hate romance it's like if um the hating game probably was in y.a i guess you could say because that's how much they load each other at the beginning of the book and gosh it was just it was fun it was a fun read i'm not gonna lie to you next up is one of my favorite y contemporary authors of all time sun kissed by casey west this book is not my favorite casey west book she has written a whole bunch of them i've she's written so many books i've done a whole authors video on her if you want to check that out but i have favorites of hers that i have some that i don't really like this home was just kind of okay i didn't love it but casey west does summer reads perfectly this is a perfect book to read by the beach the pool outside wherever you want to be it's a perfect summer read so in this book we fought character avery and her parents take her and her sister to kind of this i don't want to say it's not like a camp because the whole family goes it's kind of like a resort it's kind of like dirty dancing it gives you a lot of dirty dancing vibes you know it's like this upscale resort for like families and things like that and so she goes and avery's always known to be kind of go with the flow like whatever she's cool as a cucumber she's good and her sister says some things that kind of upset her and she thinks maybe i do need to like live outside the box and so she meets i forget the guy's name please forgive me she meets this guy that works there that's in like the camps band i guess you could say this also this almost sounds like camp rock it's not but they're like they just like perform at dinner and stuff but they want to be bigger and they want to win this musical festival and she's like hey um you know i'll help you out with writing some lyrics to a song if you help me kind of be more adventurous then it kind of goes from there so it's definitely got that dirty dancing vibe but obviously like younger but it was enjoyable i gave it a three out of five it wasn't my favorite casey west book it was cute that's i feel like that's all i can say about it it's just got that kind of camp summery vibe a boiling girl meet they learn things about each other it's like quick to fall in love you know that kind of cliche stuff but i enjoy it i enjoy it casey west books they always make me smile i always read them super fast and they're just always usually a good time so i give it a three out of five not a bad rating at all just kind of right in the middle the last book i'm talking about today is a taste for love by jennifer yen this one came out earlier in the year and i finally got and i'm finally now getting around to it and i'm feeling i'm realizing now they're drinking boba never had boba should i try it i really want to so this book is about a character named liza and eliza has taiwanese parents and they own this bakery and restaurant like their her name's liza yang and so they restaurant is like the yin and yang bakery restaurant it's really cool honestly and she loves baking that's like her passion but her parents obviously don't want her to do that they want her to go to college they want her to be you know a doctor or a lawyer and things like that and liza's like i don't really want to do that but college is around the corner she thinks maybe she can prove to her mom that she really does love baking and can make it a career because her mom has like this big baking competition every single year in texas it's a pretty big deal and so she decides to help out with it and maybe to prove her mom that hey like you know this is a real deal for me when she gets there in the first day of the competition she realizes that all the contestants are young asian american men that her mom obviously is trying to set her up with one of them is james who she's met before and they do not get along he loves her she loves him but of course like oh romance why a or not you'll see that they have more in common that they may like each other and things like that it says eliza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love so it's a super cute book it's got like kind of a pride and prejudice retelling to it while also a heavy heavy dose of a great the great british baking show like kind of in it because the way they judge and things like that i was like goodness me this is like watching an episode of great british breaking show which i'm not which i'm not knock at all because i love that show so it was cute if you love baking if you love learning about you know the taiwanese culture and things like that i would recommend this one i give it a four out of five super cute super easy to read super enjoyable as well and i really enjoyed liza she was very caring as a daughter as a friend and as a person honestly and the romance was also super cute as well so i enjoyed it a lot so there you have my thoughts and feelings on four recent why a contemporaries my books that i've read recently i would love to hear if you've read any of these did i convince you to read any of them you know things like that i hope you enjoy these recent reads because i quite enjoy filming them hopefully i'll have like a romance one coming out soon fingers crossed i hope but yeah thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in my next video bye youhello everyone today i'm here to do another recent reads video my reading game has finally come back and i for one am very happy and hope it doesn't leave me ever again so today's recent reads is going to be all young adult books and they're all kind of contemporary with the exception of what one of those videos i take my most recent reads i try to combine them all into one genre because i think it's just easier as a viewer for you to decide if you want to watch it or not and i just tell you what the book is about what i liked about it what i didn't like about it and my reading they're all spoiler free and again if you're interested in hearing about one of the books um all the time stamps will be down below for each individual book today the four books i'll be talking about that's right four books in this our good girl bad blood by holly jackson what's not to love by emily whiberly and austin i always have a hard time austin sigma broca sun kissed by casey west and a taste for love by jennifer yen so let's get right into it so the first book is our only non-contemporary one and that is good girl bad blood this is as you can tell a y mystery thrower and this is the sequel to her first book which came out last year called a good girl's guide to murder and i really enjoyed it and i feel like i can talk about this book in this without spoiling it because i wouldn't say it's like a sequel more as a companion novel so it's not pertinent that you read the first book but i always recommend it because it's just easier that way so the whole beginning of this whole series good um a good girls guide to murder we follow care named pip who is like a high school junior and she's like doing this project for school and she decides that she wants to like do like a murder case that happened years ago at her um in her town her small town a guy got accused of murdering his girlfriend and that was the end of it she wants to prove his innocence even though he has been deceased and so the whole book is about her going through that it's multimedia where you get to see her notes you get to see pictures you get to see maps it's just really interesting so the second book it's not spoiling anything because it's a completely different case pip is like i'm done i hung up my hat for being like little miss teen detective and you know she doesn't want to do it anymore because it cost her a lot of turmoil you know read the first book if you want to learn more she also decides to release like this podcast of her um case last year because there is another like ongoing court case that's going along with it that she wants to people to like keep relevant on if that makes any mistake if that makes any sense but she doesn't want to like solve any new mysteries shall we say until one of her very best friends comes to her and is like my brother's missing i need your help to find him and she's like no so she tries everything not to do it but somehow she gets involved and is basically trying to find this guy named jamie throughout this entire book it's a whole book of like a mysterious disappearance of where this guy went why disappeared what were his motives things like that i really enjoy this series they are fun why mystery thrillers and i usually don't like them because i don't know i like more adult mysteries not a lot of why a ones but i was pleasantly surprised by a good girl's guide to murder and also this one this one i will say i didn't like it quite as much as the first book but the second half really took off the first half of this book is kind of slow kind of meandering like i didn't really enjoy the whole case of trying to find where this guy went because it didn't make sense and i was like i don't get it but the second half and even the ending of how it wrapped up and how it came to fruition i was like all right i'm hooked i am here for and this clearly makes way for a third book that i think that will definitely go off this one so i would recommend this series i gave this one a four out of five if you just maybe are not quite ready for the adult mystery fillers maybe they're a little bit too intense for you i think these would be great ones to start with they're fun they're engaging i bet they're great on audio i don't listen to audio so i wouldn't know but like i said they have multimedia in them case files of pictures and maps and you know she really does her investigation like she's very thorough way more than i was when i was 17 i couldn't solve this at all but i really enjoyed it i really have quickly loved to come to holly jackson's books i need to see if she's written anymore because these are addicting like there i'll say it they're there i will say it they're addicting i enjoyed them four out of five love both of the books first one slightly more because i just think i liked it just a teensy bit more even though i think i gave them both four out of five maybe the first one i gave four and a half this one i'll give four i don't know moving on next up we have what's not to love by by emily whiberly i always struggle with this and austin sigma broca this is their oh goodness third or fourth book together i'm not 100 sure but they write why contemporary and i have read all of them i've enjoyed all of them and i would say this is my favorite by them it's a hate to love romance which is my jam i love hate to love romance and this book we fought a character named allison who um is really smart really wants to go to harvard she's really applying herself think of like a young rory gilmore um and she has also a nemesis at school named ethan they are always fighting for like they are always fighting like who gets the best test score who will finish this test first who is not going to show up to class it's all they're always one-upping each other it's it's quite juvenile but you know high school but you know you when you get into those like tedious relationships where it's just like really one up in each other that's just how it is so the whole book is about them like just not liking each other always trying to defeat each other another principal gets tired of it she's like i'm tired of this and so she decides i'm gonna make you two work together to plan um the 10-year high school reunion and so they have to work together to plan this reunion and of course with all hate to love romance books they get closer and realize that maybe they're more alike than they thought and maybe they have feelings for each other and so on and so forth i did really enjoy it allison is a character that's a hard pill to swallow because she is so i don't want to say one-dimensional but she is very like set on her course for like going to harvard doing this beating everybody and she even has a sister in this book that has come home after from graduating college she lost her um her job that she got and her boyfriend broke up with her and so she moves home to like try to you know reset herself try to find herself and her sister just thinks allison just thinks she's lazy not doing anything and being complacent and she doesn't talk to her sister until a long time in the book and i'm like you gotta like learn there's different paths to life not there's one there's not one path for everybody and so she was kind of rigid at first like for a lot of the books she was very rigid and you're just like let's calm down a little bit but eventually she does i love the relationship between her and ethan i love a good hatred love romance any day of the week so i gave this one a four out of five it was enjoyable it was fun and had that hate romance it's like if um the hating game probably was in y.a i guess you could say because that's how much they load each other at the beginning of the book and gosh it was just it was fun it was a fun read i'm not gonna lie to you next up is one of my favorite y contemporary authors of all time sun kissed by casey west this book is not my favorite casey west book she has written a whole bunch of them i've she's written so many books i've done a whole authors video on her if you want to check that out but i have favorites of hers that i have some that i don't really like this home was just kind of okay i didn't love it but casey west does summer reads perfectly this is a perfect book to read by the beach the pool outside wherever you want to be it's a perfect summer read so in this book we fought character avery and her parents take her and her sister to kind of this i don't want to say it's not like a camp because the whole family goes it's kind of like a resort it's kind of like dirty dancing it gives you a lot of dirty dancing vibes you know it's like this upscale resort for like families and things like that and so she goes and avery's always known to be kind of go with the flow like whatever she's cool as a cucumber she's good and her sister says some things that kind of upset her and she thinks maybe i do need to like live outside the box and so she meets i forget the guy's name please forgive me she meets this guy that works there that's in like the camps band i guess you could say this also this almost sounds like camp rock it's not but they're like they just like perform at dinner and stuff but they want to be bigger and they want to win this musical festival and she's like hey um you know i'll help you out with writing some lyrics to a song if you help me kind of be more adventurous then it kind of goes from there so it's definitely got that dirty dancing vibe but obviously like younger but it was enjoyable i gave it a three out of five it wasn't my favorite casey west book it was cute that's i feel like that's all i can say about it it's just got that kind of camp summery vibe a boiling girl meet they learn things about each other it's like quick to fall in love you know that kind of cliche stuff but i enjoy it i enjoy it casey west books they always make me smile i always read them super fast and they're just always usually a good time so i give it a three out of five not a bad rating at all just kind of right in the middle the last book i'm talking about today is a taste for love by jennifer yen this one came out earlier in the year and i finally got and i'm finally now getting around to it and i'm feeling i'm realizing now they're drinking boba never had boba should i try it i really want to so this book is about a character named liza and eliza has taiwanese parents and they own this bakery and restaurant like their her name's liza yang and so they restaurant is like the yin and yang bakery restaurant it's really cool honestly and she loves baking that's like her passion but her parents obviously don't want her to do that they want her to go to college they want her to be you know a doctor or a lawyer and things like that and liza's like i don't really want to do that but college is around the corner she thinks maybe she can prove to her mom that she really does love baking and can make it a career because her mom has like this big baking competition every single year in texas it's a pretty big deal and so she decides to help out with it and maybe to prove her mom that hey like you know this is a real deal for me when she gets there in the first day of the competition she realizes that all the contestants are young asian american men that her mom obviously is trying to set her up with one of them is james who she's met before and they do not get along he loves her she loves him but of course like oh romance why a or not you'll see that they have more in common that they may like each other and things like that it says eliza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love so it's a super cute book it's got like kind of a pride and prejudice retelling to it while also a heavy heavy dose of a great the great british baking show like kind of in it because the way they judge and things like that i was like goodness me this is like watching an episode of great british breaking show which i'm not which i'm not knock at all because i love that show so it was cute if you love baking if you love learning about you know the taiwanese culture and things like that i would recommend this one i give it a four out of five super cute super easy to read super enjoyable as well and i really enjoyed liza she was very caring as a daughter as a friend and as a person honestly and the romance was also super cute as well so i enjoyed it a lot so there you have my thoughts and feelings on four recent why a contemporaries my books that i've read recently i would love to hear if you've read any of these did i convince you to read any of them you know things like that i hope you enjoy these recent reads because i quite enjoy filming them hopefully i'll have like a romance one coming out soon fingers crossed i hope but yeah thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in my next video bye youhello everyone today i'm here to do another recent reads video my reading game has finally come back and i for one am very happy and hope it doesn't leave me ever again so today's recent reads is going to be all young adult books and they're all kind of contemporary with the exception of what one of those videos i take my most recent reads i try to combine them all into one genre because i think it's just easier as a viewer for you to decide if you want to watch it or not and i just tell you what the book is about what i liked about it what i didn't like about it and my reading they're all spoiler free and again if you're interested in hearing about one of the books um all the time stamps will be down below for each individual book today the four books i'll be talking about that's right four books in this our good girl bad blood by holly jackson what's not to love by emily whiberly and austin i always have a hard time austin sigma broca sun kissed by casey west and a taste for love by jennifer yen so let's get right into it so the first book is our only non-contemporary one and that is good girl bad blood this is as you can tell a y mystery thrower and this is the sequel to her first book which came out last year called a good girl's guide to murder and i really enjoyed it and i feel like i can talk about this book in this without spoiling it because i wouldn't say it's like a sequel more as a companion novel so it's not pertinent that you read the first book but i always recommend it because it's just easier that way so the whole beginning of this whole series good um a good girls guide to murder we follow care named pip who is like a high school junior and she's like doing this project for school and she decides that she wants to like do like a murder case that happened years ago at her um in her town her small town a guy got accused of murdering his girlfriend and that was the end of it she wants to prove his innocence even though he has been deceased and so the whole book is about her going through that it's multimedia where you get to see her notes you get to see pictures you get to see maps it's just really interesting so the second book it's not spoiling anything because it's a completely different case pip is like i'm done i hung up my hat for being like little miss teen detective and you know she doesn't want to do it anymore because it cost her a lot of turmoil you know read the first book if you want to learn more she also decides to release like this podcast of her um case last year because there is another like ongoing court case that's going along with it that she wants to people to like keep relevant on if that makes any mistake if that makes any sense but she doesn't want to like solve any new mysteries shall we say until one of her very best friends comes to her and is like my brother's missing i need your help to find him and she's like no so she tries everything not to do it but somehow she gets involved and is basically trying to find this guy named jamie throughout this entire book it's a whole book of like a mysterious disappearance of where this guy went why disappeared what were his motives things like that i really enjoy this series they are fun why mystery thrillers and i usually don't like them because i don't know i like more adult mysteries not a lot of why a ones but i was pleasantly surprised by a good girl's guide to murder and also this one this one i will say i didn't like it quite as much as the first book but the second half really took off the first half of this book is kind of slow kind of meandering like i didn't really enjoy the whole case of trying to find where this guy went because it didn't make sense and i was like i don't get it but the second half and even the ending of how it wrapped up and how it came to fruition i was like all right i'm hooked i am here for and this clearly makes way for a third book that i think that will definitely go off this one so i would recommend this series i gave this one a four out of five if you just maybe are not quite ready for the adult mystery fillers maybe they're a little bit too intense for you i think these would be great ones to start with they're fun they're engaging i bet they're great on audio i don't listen to audio so i wouldn't know but like i said they have multimedia in them case files of pictures and maps and you know she really does her investigation like she's very thorough way more than i was when i was 17 i couldn't solve this at all but i really enjoyed it i really have quickly loved to come to holly jackson's books i need to see if she's written anymore because these are addicting like there i'll say it they're there i will say it they're addicting i enjoyed them four out of five love both of the books first one slightly more because i just think i liked it just a teensy bit more even though i think i gave them both four out of five maybe the first one i gave four and a half this one i'll give four i don't know moving on next up we have what's not to love by by emily whiberly i always struggle with this and austin sigma broca this is their oh goodness third or fourth book together i'm not 100 sure but they write why contemporary and i have read all of them i've enjoyed all of them and i would say this is my favorite by them it's a hate to love romance which is my jam i love hate to love romance and this book we fought a character named allison who um is really smart really wants to go to harvard she's really applying herself think of like a young rory gilmore um and she has also a nemesis at school named ethan they are always fighting for like they are always fighting like who gets the best test score who will finish this test first who is not going to show up to class it's all they're always one-upping each other it's it's quite juvenile but you know high school but you know you when you get into those like tedious relationships where it's just like really one up in each other that's just how it is so the whole book is about them like just not liking each other always trying to defeat each other another principal gets tired of it she's like i'm tired of this and so she decides i'm gonna make you two work together to plan um the 10-year high school reunion and so they have to work together to plan this reunion and of course with all hate to love romance books they get closer and realize that maybe they're more alike than they thought and maybe they have feelings for each other and so on and so forth i did really enjoy it allison is a character that's a hard pill to swallow because she is so i don't want to say one-dimensional but she is very like set on her course for like going to harvard doing this beating everybody and she even has a sister in this book that has come home after from graduating college she lost her um her job that she got and her boyfriend broke up with her and so she moves home to like try to you know reset herself try to find herself and her sister just thinks allison just thinks she's lazy not doing anything and being complacent and she doesn't talk to her sister until a long time in the book and i'm like you gotta like learn there's different paths to life not there's one there's not one path for everybody and so she was kind of rigid at first like for a lot of the books she was very rigid and you're just like let's calm down a little bit but eventually she does i love the relationship between her and ethan i love a good hatred love romance any day of the week so i gave this one a four out of five it was enjoyable it was fun and had that hate romance it's like if um the hating game probably was in y.a i guess you could say because that's how much they load each other at the beginning of the book and gosh it was just it was fun it was a fun read i'm not gonna lie to you next up is one of my favorite y contemporary authors of all time sun kissed by casey west this book is not my favorite casey west book she has written a whole bunch of them i've she's written so many books i've done a whole authors video on her if you want to check that out but i have favorites of hers that i have some that i don't really like this home was just kind of okay i didn't love it but casey west does summer reads perfectly this is a perfect book to read by the beach the pool outside wherever you want to be it's a perfect summer read so in this book we fought character avery and her parents take her and her sister to kind of this i don't want to say it's not like a camp because the whole family goes it's kind of like a resort it's kind of like dirty dancing it gives you a lot of dirty dancing vibes you know it's like this upscale resort for like families and things like that and so she goes and avery's always known to be kind of go with the flow like whatever she's cool as a cucumber she's good and her sister says some things that kind of upset her and she thinks maybe i do need to like live outside the box and so she meets i forget the guy's name please forgive me she meets this guy that works there that's in like the camps band i guess you could say this also this almost sounds like camp rock it's not but they're like they just like perform at dinner and stuff but they want to be bigger and they want to win this musical festival and she's like hey um you know i'll help you out with writing some lyrics to a song if you help me kind of be more adventurous then it kind of goes from there so it's definitely got that dirty dancing vibe but obviously like younger but it was enjoyable i gave it a three out of five it wasn't my favorite casey west book it was cute that's i feel like that's all i can say about it it's just got that kind of camp summery vibe a boiling girl meet they learn things about each other it's like quick to fall in love you know that kind of cliche stuff but i enjoy it i enjoy it casey west books they always make me smile i always read them super fast and they're just always usually a good time so i give it a three out of five not a bad rating at all just kind of right in the middle the last book i'm talking about today is a taste for love by jennifer yen this one came out earlier in the year and i finally got and i'm finally now getting around to it and i'm feeling i'm realizing now they're drinking boba never had boba should i try it i really want to so this book is about a character named liza and eliza has taiwanese parents and they own this bakery and restaurant like their her name's liza yang and so they restaurant is like the yin and yang bakery restaurant it's really cool honestly and she loves baking that's like her passion but her parents obviously don't want her to do that they want her to go to college they want her to be you know a doctor or a lawyer and things like that and liza's like i don't really want to do that but college is around the corner she thinks maybe she can prove to her mom that she really does love baking and can make it a career because her mom has like this big baking competition every single year in texas it's a pretty big deal and so she decides to help out with it and maybe to prove her mom that hey like you know this is a real deal for me when she gets there in the first day of the competition she realizes that all the contestants are young asian american men that her mom obviously is trying to set her up with one of them is james who she's met before and they do not get along he loves her she loves him but of course like oh romance why a or not you'll see that they have more in common that they may like each other and things like that it says eliza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love so it's a super cute book it's got like kind of a pride and prejudice retelling to it while also a heavy heavy dose of a great the great british baking show like kind of in it because the way they judge and things like that i was like goodness me this is like watching an episode of great british breaking show which i'm not which i'm not knock at all because i love that show so it was cute if you love baking if you love learning about you know the taiwanese culture and things like that i would recommend this one i give it a four out of five super cute super easy to read super enjoyable as well and i really enjoyed liza she was very caring as a daughter as a friend and as a person honestly and the romance was also super cute as well so i enjoyed it a lot so there you have my thoughts and feelings on four recent why a contemporaries my books that i've read recently i would love to hear if you've read any of these did i convince you to read any of them you know things like that i hope you enjoy these recent reads because i quite enjoy filming them hopefully i'll have like a romance one coming out soon fingers crossed i hope but yeah thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in my next video bye you\n"