**Reading Wrap-Up and Reflections**

As I sit down to write this reading wrap-up, I'm still trying to process the whirlwind that has been July for me. This month has been intense, and I'm not just talking about the books I've read. My emotional journey with Walker See Asia was a rollercoaster ride of feelings, from the highs of their passionate romance to the lows of dealing with panic attacks, PTSD, and mental health issues. The emphasis on these heavier topics is undeniable, but it's left me feeling like the true relationship development took a backseat.

One aspect that really stood out to me was Walker's acceptance of Asia's panic attack at the beginning of the story. I appreciated how he didn't question her too much about it, instead choosing to be supportive and understanding. This moment felt like a beacon of hope in an otherwise heavy exploration of mental health issues. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that there could have been more of them working through their issues together, rather than apart. Date nights were scarce, and I found myself craving more intimate moments between the two leads.

The small-town setting is another aspect that felt underutilized for me. While it's clear that the author aimed to create a charming atmosphere, I didn't get to know the side characters as well as I would have liked. The focus on Walker and Asia's relationship left some of the supporting cast feeling like they were just background noise.

**Sex, Anxiety, and Mental Health**

I want to make it clear that these heavier topics are essential in a book, not because they're gratuitous or unnecessary, but because they add depth and nuance to the story. The representation of mental health issues is something I appreciate, but at the same time, I wish there had been more balance between exploring these heavier themes and developing the romance.

Sex is often a part of any relationship, and in this case, it's an integral part of Walker and Asia's connection. However, I found myself wishing that the focus on sex would be tempered by a stronger emphasis on emotional intimacy and long-term development. While the passion between the two leads was undeniable, I couldn't help but feel like we were missing out on more meaningful moments between them.

**Looking Ahead to August**

As I wrap up this reading wrap-up, I want to give you a glimpse into what's coming next for me. Since I don't have any major announcements or updates for August that are significantly different from July, I'll be sticking with the same routine: videos three times a week, including my upcoming project video which I'm really proud of, and more weekly reading vlogs.

I do want to acknowledge that this update is also my four-year anniversary on YouTube, and it's surreal to think about how far I've come since starting this journey. If you've been here with me from the beginning or have joined later, thank you for being part of my community. Your support means the world to me, and I'm grateful for every single one of you.

**Closing Thoughts**

As I conclude this reading wrap-up, I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your comments, questions, and discussions about books have been invaluable to me, and I'm honored to be able to share these experiences with you. If you're interested in seeing more of my favorite romances from the month, including some steamier ones, head over to my Patreon page.

For now, that's all for this reading wrap-up. Until next time, stay bookish, and I'll see you in the next video!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel and welcome to another monthly reading wrap up i took me a second to figure out what filming today probably because my brains are scrambled after having read 52 books this past month now full transparency i haven't actually gotten to 52 books i will by the end of today or tomorrow saturday when i'm filming this but this is by far been my most productive reading month ever i am kind of proud of the fact that i was able to read 52 books this is not something that's likely to happen again however i'm glad that i did it because of a reading challenge that i am carrying out for the month of july that i will tell you about more in august i have a lot of things to share with you today obviously we're not going to talk about all 52 books don't you worry you're pretty little head we're in instead going to talk about 16 books that i have talked about either in weekly reading vlogs in passing or i've just never talked about ever you want to hear about any of the 33 books that i'm not talking about here in this video go ahead and check out these videos where i talked about other books in more detail because those were like secret tbr are you know very lengthy type vlogs i had a really good reading month overall i read a lot of four and five star books and it was game changing i think that's maybe why i read so much i was so excited about most of the things that i was reading that i just wanted to read more and more now you might be saying what 16 plus 33 bit that's not 52 books and you would be correct if you want to hear about the other three books that i absolutely adored for the most part that are not featured in any of the videos that are live on my channel check out my patreon because i'm going to be posting a exclusive reading vlog for three books that i really enjoyed that are like ku specific you know i do that every month they're on patreon exclusive reading vlog on my 10 tier so you know shameless plug as one always does but you know what today we're here to talk about 16 books i am going to give you a bit of a disclaimer here if you do not want to hear me rant and rave mostly rant i wouldn't stay tuned because most of the books i'm going to be talking about are two star reads i know i said i had a good reading month and i did but a lot of those good books were featured in hey reading vlogs or other like you know lengthy type vlogs and um we're not talking about those books here today we're going to talk about some stuff i honestly pretty much hated so grab yourself a beverage and let's let's hop into it so the first book that i finished this month was my killer vacation by tessa bailey which i unfortunately gave two stars to i know what you're thinking but chandler you love tessa bailey but chandler you give all of her books five stars that's not actually true the first book i ever read by tessa bailey i gave two stars and this one well not very reminiscent of that first book that i read by her was just also a fail for me as well so my killer vacation is about miles and taylor miles is our hero taylor's our heroine our hair when she's on a summer vacation i want to say in cape cod and she is living her best life until she finds a dead body oh what's going on it's the guy who owns the airbnb she's staying in now she's determined to figure out what the hell happened to this man and miles is called in because he is like a detective private investigator or something the guy who died his sister hired miles and so miles and taylor sort of team up i guess you could say throughout the story to find out what's happening to this the dude i mean i guess he's dead so we know what happened to him but you know solve who done it the premise of that is exciting the premise of that is exactly what i want it's it's giving me cozy mystery it's giving me a mystery thriller it's giving me suspenseful romance the execution however was not it the the mystery thriller aspect was just lackluster i don't need to go into detail about why it kind of sucked um it just was not very good and that was disappointment in and of itself my big issue really is miles and taylor's relationship now look here look look here in my eyes okay i like smut okay i do i certainly do what i don't like is unjustified smut spot between two characters sex sexual chemistry between two characters who have no business having sex and i felt that way between miles and taylor did not find him charming i found him to be described as sort of like a greasy old man even though he's like 35 i think and taylor's like 28 like they're not the age gap is not there it's not very big he's always in his head talking about like how he's too old for her and she's naive and she's stupid but i'm gonna steal her panties and put him in my pocket anyway it just it didn't really have the appeal that i wanted it to have and it made me rethink a lot of my like love for tessa bailey i'm like are all of her books like this am i just overlooking the fact that like all of the dudes in her books are kind of like gross um and i don't think that's true and if it is true i do think that it's usually balanced right like it's not just a sexual attraction there he's actually attracted to like her personality and stuff like piper and brendan likes that she's dumb okay he likes that she likes stuff he likes buying her things and it's that relationship this one i don't think really had a foundation i don't feel like miles and taylor had the relationship or the chemistry that i wanted them to have and the ending of this book i thought was weird i didn't really love miles approach to like and taylor back i'm gonna leave it there okay it was a two-star read i'm disappointed in it i'm glad that i do not own a physical copy i swiftly deleted that off of my wish list i'm collecting a wish list right now because i'm not buying any physical books but i am adding things that i have enjoyed right um and for some reason i preemptively put my killer vacation on that list and uh it was it was deleted okay moving on to a book that i gave one star to now in the past i really have not been very generous with with my one star ratings like i have not been giving out one stars to me it's rare that a book is deserving of one star this novella however i just didn't like like it wasn't there was nothing there was nothing there two a two star read is like okay like it wasn't the worst thing i've ever read but like it wasn't great one star pretty bad okay magic in the wind by christine feehan it's a novella in this series right it's like the first book or the first novella in the series introducing us to these like witchy sisters right we have sarah and damon damon comes to town this small town and he becomes enthralled by sarah sarah is this like witchy interesting person but nothing happens like i was reading an abridged version or i was reading like the sparks notes to a romance it was bizarre and it's been a second since i've read this because i've read 52 books this month and i i really can't recall the details the fine details of this particular novella except for i disliked it and i am greatly excited to unhaul it next up we have the wedding crasher which i gave two stars to this book is about solange and dean and the premise of this one was really cute i really enjoyed the worst best man by mia sosa i expected to like this one just as much but unfortunately i just didn't really feel the chemistry between our two main characters so at the beginning of the story dean is getting married he is like on his wedding day about to walk down the aisle or i guess his his bride's gonna walk down the aisle to him and solange finds the bride talking to i think one of the groomsmen or just like one of one of her friends friends and she's like you know i've always loved you i've always wanted to be with you blah blah blah just like oh like i don't want dean the groom to to marry this woman like i've heard things that i can't unhear right blonde i don't think is in the wedding industry she's just helping out her cousin or her sister i don't really remember the main character of the last book he essentially prevents the sweating from happening and for some reason dean and solange decide to keep in touch afterwards dean is somewhat grateful i guess that's launch like called off this wedding but the reason he was marrying this girl in the first place was because he wanted to like look good at his law firm like he wasn't going to get promoted unless he had a family life or like was relatable in some way i guess as if being a human being with like interest is not relatable enough he he needs to be married solange and dean decide to fake date he is like hey since you called off my wedding uh that i was fine with like i didn't really care if it was an open relationship or not you sort of things up for me you're gonna fake danny and she's like you know what okay sure i think you're kind of hot i kind of like you let's do this there were some scenes that i found cute there were some scenes that i found fun i did feel the sexual chemistry there but the relationship development was just not it's not something i was super into i got kind of bored midway through this book i could not for the life of you phew geez i don't want to put that on you i can't for the life of me remember how this book ended and i feel bad about it because i have to talk about it in this year wrap up but it just was not it was not everything that i wanted it to be and more next up the fourth book that i read this month i mean it wasn't technically the fourth book but it's fourth book on my list for this year video the league of gentle women witches which i gave two stars too i didn't enjoy it uh like i didn't enjoy most of the books on this on this list for this video this is about alex and charlotte and the overall premise of the story i really liked i really thought was interesting we have a society of witches we have a society of pirates and we have like another society of witches i think it's like lady scoundrels the start of the story charlotte is on the look for this amulet because she's heard that it's loose in the wild and that it like rightfully belongs to her i guess so she decides she's gonna go hunt after it and she comes into contact with a man named alex who's also after the same amulet are we shocked are we surprised they embark to find it together but they're also kind of competing to find it and also they're having a lot of sex and also i'm supposed to like somehow root for this relationship and or care about them that just never ended up happening they have a lot of sex i think we're supposed to believe that they have this like off the charts chemistry and that this relationship just is is faded to happen but i didn't feel that way charlotte's head a lot of the time when they're having sex she's like wow this is this is quite a delight i i could never i could never settle down with this man though he's a pirate you know his he has a flying house i could never and it just was not convincing it wasn't interesting it wasn't fun i felt like this world in my opinion was a little too whimsical for me it didn't have a lot of like basis i was gonna say basis in reality if it's whimsical of course it's not gonna have basis in reality i wish that this world that this magical world had more rules and that it made more sense it was not really laid out before me how this worked and we just have flying houses appear we just have women flying on broomsticks which i mean i guess like that's witchy we get that but if you're gonna have fantasy romance let's include the fantasy elements in a way that makes sense and not just like throw at the reader and expect them to care i didn't care and i give this book two stars i'm doing an absolutely dog job at telling you what these books are about i'm gonna chalk it up to hunger but you know what i'm gonna persist stop the sizzle paradox which i also gave two stars too this one's about lyric and keon i'm gonna go with kian our heroine is in stem as i'm sure you could probably tell from the sizzle paradox it honestly sounds like the title of an alley hazelwood book lyric is studying sexual chemistry in like long-term romantic partners and seeing what makes romantic relationships stick like what what is going to make for a successful long-term relationship and to do this like not only is she getting her phd for this i guess you could say uh this is her research she's also doing some experiments of her own by dating random guys kissing them trying to engage in some sort of sexual relationships but the thing is the thing is lyrics a weirdo okay she's bizarre and i can best sum this up by saying she lives with her best friend named kian they're apparently inseparable they know everything about each other they've lived together for a few years they're they're besties okay right so they go to target together you know very domestic things he he becomes the love interest i think that's pretty safe to say and not really spoil the book right okay they go to target together and some random dude just looks at her and thinks she's beautiful and comes up to her and is like hey i'm gonna go on a date with me sometime and she's like sure and he's like what about right now i am here with a friend but i am in fact gonna ditch him to go get froyo with with a stranger with a complete stranger i feel like that's all you really need to know right it's weird it's a weird book the beginning half of the story she is trying to figure out why none of her relationships or why none of the guys she date um really appeal to her and obviously she finds out that it's because kian has been there the whole time like he knows her so well and no other man could possibly know her and so that's why her dating life is unsuccessful also she's weird so that's i mean that's really let's get down to it that's that's why her relationships are unsuccessful i liked the idea of her research i wanted that to be more of a component of the story it's really just her being very immature it is her not actually doing the research for her phd it's like her her advisor or whatever it's like are you gonna do your research like you're you're technically spending money to be here or you actually don't know i don't know psja is work but he's like you know um i'm trying to help you out girl but like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing and she's like i just can't figure it out i don't know i don't know i didn't like this i thought the romance was pretty weak as well this is the second book by lilly manon san diamond like her second adult romance novel and i just didn't enjoy it so i think after having had two very unsuccessful romances can safely say that i don't think this author's for me i just find her hair wants to be pretty insufferable i've never liked a heroine that she's written whether that's why i or adult so i think i'm safe saying at this point regardless of a list video in the future like i'll not be reading her books okay you know i found i found things out about myself through this journey so i'm i'm feeling satisfied i guess i'm trying to make myself feel better about the fact that i willingly read this entire book but um nothing's really making me feel better did i say i was talking about 16 books technically 18 okay i threw a trilogy in here and i'm just going to talk about them all at once i read kind of randomly ruined avenged an allied by amy tantera this is a why a fantasy series that i owned all of because i got them on a steep discount way back in the day okay this book series is about our main character emelina and she lives in the rival country to prince casimir prince casimir is like i don't want to say the head honcho he's definitely like beholden to his dad he is someone who is not in a lot of control of his life and so he gets married off to a woman of a rival country now this woman is not actually emelina emelina decides to pretend to be the person that prince cass is supposed to marry but that she can get insider information into prince cass and the country that emelina is from called ruina or something like that there are ruined people there and the ruined people are magical magic is kind of like outlawed in in this like world i guess you could say um and so we put all of the magical people in ruina and they're kind of suffering they're not having about the best time ever emelina now that her sister olivia has been taken by prince cass's family uh decides that she's going to pose as the princess from another country and marry prince cass you know to get in standard information and to somehow maybe get her sister olivia back okay that's what the trilogy is about the first book is kind of about the marriage and at the very end prince cass finds out that emmelina is not who she says she is the second book i think they spend most of the time apart and then in the third book they come back together and kind of like work on things together i liked the premise of this series i didn't think it was interesting it was very palatable i thought it was a fairly enjoyable read i did like the sibling dynamics here because olivia we're not really giving insight into her character until like the second book we're just like trying to to get her i guess like to get her out of being you know held prisoner in the first book and when we actually get to know her personality we're like okay did we actually want to get her did we do do we want her back i don't know and we have to see olivia and emmelina kind of like fight over how they think the country should be ruled and what the like best order of events and like what should happen next i guess should they try to kill prince caz should they run the country together like there's a lot of things that take place that i thought were interesting that i'd never seen done before in a ya fantasy especially fantasy romance um i also found like the romance component here surprisingly i don't want to say well developed but it was uh surprisingly at the forefront of the story which i thought was fun it's not something that i thought was maybe the best i do think the second book was quite boring and i don't think the third book was like the best wrap up to a series ever it was entertaining enough to keep me entertained and to keep me picking up the books after i read the first one i told myself like you know if you don't like this one you don't have to continue on with the series you can just unhaul it but it were entertaining enough to where i decided to like listen to audiobooks for all three would i recommend i don't know i think if you like yeah fantasy and you're not looking for something game changing but you want a fantasy with romance you like sister dynamics i actually think this is like maybe worth a try i kind of enjoyed it uh the first book i think i gave three stars in book two stars third book three stars i can't remember overall it was like a three star series for me next up back to the romance i think all of these next ones are romance i'm looking i'm looking they're all romance are we shocked are we surprised the next book that i read was electric idol by katie robert and this is the book again that really helped me find out things about myself and that thing was that i don't really like katie robert books and i kind of knew this i've tried other books by her in the past they've all kind of failed for me but this was like my last ditch attempt at really enjoying her stuff and i had to read this book for a list video so i was like you know in it either way book is about psyche and eros i don't know much about greek mythology so i don't know if they actually end up together in like greek myth but psyche at the beginning of this story is she has a hit out on her i guess right eros is supposed to murder her after some like interactions between the two of them they discover that they have this in intense sexual chemistry arrows decides he doesn't really want to kill psyche and the only solution to not killing her because his mom is the one that like put the head out on psyche the only solution is to marry her instead so this is a marriage of convenience fake relationship sort of story and it likes parts of it this was very basic and very boring but it was fine like i enjoyed the sexual component i liked that psyche was like an influencer i liked her relationship dynamic with her sisters i thought she was like a fairly fun heroine and i also liked arrows he was kind of this like damaged hero who has to do his mom's bidding and he has to kill a lot of people even though he doesn't really want to kill people and i think he is if he calls himself a sociopath but like he he considers himself to be like different than everybody else i liked them individually as characters i just didn't feel the romance or the plot to be very interesting it wasn't anything that i was like oh wow this is different or wow these two are like picture perfect puzzle pieces like they should they should be i number one otp i just didn't get that vibe from this book to me nothing about nothing about greek mythology retellings is really doing it for me i've discovered i've wanted to really find a hades and persephone retelling that works for me and i haven't found that this book i liked i think maybe a little bit more than the first book in the series but like not much more just okay i don't know i don't really have any desire to read the next book in the series will i be forced to read it for a list video or for like the goodreads choice words next year you know most likely most likely discovered that katie roberts stuff just like doesn't historically work for me and i'm okay with that like it is what it is two stars moving on next up oh boy okay i didn't write down the character names for this book and i kind of regret it because they were interesting i think one of the characters is named tanith okay a letter to three witches is a book that i gave one star to again i i told you i'm not very generous with my one stars i kind of default to two stars if i didn't enjoy a book but this book was so bad that i had to give it one star i don't remember the names of our main characters but the villain of the story is named tanith and tanith at the beginning of the story i think she's like the adoptive sister to our heroine like hey heroine and two cousins i stole one of your men and i'm not going to tell you who it is but i stole one of your men and i'm out of town i'm leaving and so the three cousins are left to figure out which of their men is going to be taken by tanith is it going to be like the cheating husband of the one of these people is it going to be the boyfriend who's like out of town is it going to be the boyfriend who's in town who is it going to be who has tanneth taken that's kind of the gist of the story it's bizarre like it wasn't a very interesting book oh and then there's a family curse aspect which i really hated okay so tanith and like all of her cousins siblings whatever they're not allowed to use magic and taneth is using magic i guess to like get this guy on her side and i guess that's like part of the plot line is that magic exists in this world but this particular family is banned from using magic because i used magic a long time ago and it was bad there's also like a kooky aunt who has been cursed and she is like taken from her one true love was so chaotic so all over the place the romantic thread here was weird too the heroine of the story like her only plot line really is like no i really like this guy and i really want to cheat on my boyfriend wouldn't it be like awesome if tanith actually took my boyfriend because then i wouldn't have to feel guilty about the fact that i'm cheating on him if i'm if what i'm saying is making no sense it's because this book didn't make any sense okay i didn't enjoy this book i'd never heard of this author before i didn't have like super high hopes going into this i was i was kind of thinking like oh maybe this will be a witchy romance that i actually like and that was not the case okay so i give this book one star the ninth book that i read this month okay under one roof by ali hazelwood this is the last of the novellas that i needed to read to have read all of them okay this is the first one in the series it's about our heroine mara and our hero liam she is an environmentalist environmental science i think was her degree and liam is a big bad oil lawyer and they live together under one roof because our heroine mara i think is like given off of this house i i think like she knows this old person this old lady who who passes away and like leaves her part of the house but guess who else is left part of the house it's liam so they decide begrudgingly to live together and for a lot of the time at the very beginning of the book living together they like don't talk at all and then they come to this reluctant truce and they get to know each other and their habits and they fall for each other i did find that this story worked in the format that it was presented in i didn't hate the relationship between liam and mara i just didn't find it very convincing because i didn't actually get to see much of their relationship freak out before the romantic relationship if that makes sense like i wanted to see more of these domestic moments i wanted to see them slowly over time grow from like completely hating each other and avoiding each other to being like reluctantly at this truce where they do get along and then they do i don't know help each other a little bit um or like are polite to each other when they live together that never really happened in a way that i found satisfactory and it makes sense because this is a novella length story it made for a weird reading experience i didn't feel like the flashbacks worked very well in the story either it just wasn't my favorite of the novellas i think i gave this one three stars it's not the worst thing i've read ever uh but it's very very very unmemorable i would say if you want to read any of the feminist novels i highly recommend the third one it's my favorite the second one sucks the first one's okay but really just read the third one i thought it was great i like i like the hero in that one a lot so anyway i'm glad that i've completed the feminist novellas i am now less excited i guess to read the full-length novel i think that's coming out like august or something like that but i'll be reading it you know as one dies for for the content the beige content next up at number 10 we have count your lucky stars by alexandra belflore this is a sapphic novel about margot and olivia margot i believe is a app creator she's really into astrology and that's that's her job she does astrology olivia is a wedding planner and she used to be in a semi relationship with margo in high school okay back in the day they had like this two week really intense romantic entanglement okay they were friends before that but then one of them i think is sick and then they just like hang out for two weeks and they and you know it's it's a delight until olivia decides that she is going to back with her boyfriend afterwards it's a bit of a miscommunication trope for sure but she gets back with her boyfriend and then margot and olivia kind of never talk again until they're brought together when margot's best friend is getting married at the place that olivia works so the two after series of events end up living together and entering into a relationship together it's kind of sexual in nature at first and then it turns into something more i liked parts of the story but i felt like the third act conflict was really really grating and i also felt like because these two had built in history there wasn't a lot of time spent in the present day developing a relationship between the two women that's not to say there was no relationship development there was sex um we do see them work through some of their personal issues together but i think my issue here was that i wanted to know more about what would make them work together in a long-term relationship like yes we understand that when you guys were 18 you had a lot of like hot steamy sex that's awesome um i get that you know that she likes bagels that's really cool too in the present day like what about it all works you know you'll have different careers you have different interests so what about you is going to work and i never really felt like i got that i didn't hate this book i feel like i'm nitpicking a little bit too much i did appreciate things about the story i did appreciate the level of steam in this book i think oftentimes in female female romances the steam can be a little bit lacking it definitely was not lacking here but i just wanted a little bit more from the romance i've yet to find a sapphic romance where i was just like holy they are puzzle pieces they should be together forever say that actually i think party favors by aaron mcclellan kind of did that for me this month go watch my uh reading subscriber favorite ku video which i'll link in the description if you want to hear my thoughts and feelings on that book i think actually that one in terms of the sexual component very similar i actually feel like even though that one was like kind of a novella it did the relationship dynamic stuff better than this book even though this book had more time to do it so three stars it wasn't bad i wouldn't hesitate to recommend this if you're looking for a sapphic story because i do feel like it was cute it was a slice of life and something that like would be totally easily listening on the beach or like i guess reading with your you know physical eyes on the beach but it just wasn't it wasn't my favorite so next up book number 11 is a book that i actually enjoyed and i gave four stars too it's the only four star on this list lady for a duke by alexis hall now i'd heard so many good things before picking up this book especially by crystal from crystal's bookish life so i was really expecting a lot and i think that that kind of unfairly set my expectations of this book which is why i'm a little disappointed to be giving it four stars and not five stars but i did really enjoy the story and let's talk about it okay so this book is about our main character viola and she at the start of the story is um just living her life she's a ladies companion and she has reinvented herself and really come into her true identity after the battle of waterloo she is presumed dead and is able to live her most authentic self right and there are some unintended repercussions of this her best friend the duke of gracewood thinks that she is dead and is kind of struggling so whenever viola's sister-in-law hears that the duke of grace what is it isn't doing very well she decides to take it upon herself to go and visit him so viola and her sister-in-law they go to the duke of gracewood and they decide to give him comfort and try to kind of get him out of his shell especially since his younger sister needs to debut into society who better to help with that than viola and viola's sister-in-law is married to the duke who is fiola's brother it is this delightful push and pull and um kind of hidden identity situation because biola obviously deeply knows the duke of grace where they used to be best friends and yet she doesn't want to reveal you know their former friendship because she is living her life and wants to continue living her life as she is the duke of grace would does eventually kind of figure out that viola is his former best friend it stirs up a lot of emotions in the both of them and i think the story is really about them kind of like coming to terms with where things are now having to kind of like live through some of the grief that the duke of grace was living through yet also realizing like hey my best friend is right here and um she's really hot and i like also want to sleep with her i loved the nature of the story i loved that the secret identity here made a lot of sense i liked the way it was unveiled i liked that the duke never had any ill will towards viola he like was never angry about the situation was never never a dick which i really appreciated like he has every right i think to be angry that his best friend never came forward and was like hey like i'm alive just i liked i liked the way that that was handled i think my issue with the story was it was just too long frankly it like were so many moments when either the duke or viola were like in their heads just thinking about their emotions and thinking about things that were said and like rehashing conversations that we had already seen on page and it was just a little frustrating i was like okay let's move the momentum forward a little bit and i also found sometimes that uh viola's reactions were a little bit tricky for me like i didn't fully understand where she was coming from at times when the duke of gracewood was just so accepting and was so like okay you're my best friend you're beautiful i want to have sex with you let's get married she really was like not into the idea at first and i understand like sometimes you have to sit with decisions and sit with ideas a lot of her like reactions and emotions were um justified like they didn't really make sense they felt like they were kind of coming out of nowhere at points and maybe that's just me not understanding like that could definitely be on me but it was just frustrating sometimes like having so many conflicts and like so many things keeping these people apart that obviously really wanted to be together that i was like okay come on guys like let's get together let's get together i gave this book four stars i really really enjoyed it i love seeing a historical romance with a trans heroine i think if you like historical romance i'd recommend picking this up if you're not really historical romance person i don't know that this is like the best book for you because it is kind of a slow moving plot line but i enjoyed it and um definitely fun read uh the next book that i read is not a fun read for so many different reasons we have a brush with love which i gave two stars to the first reason this book is not fun is because this is a dental romance our heroine is in dental school she's applying for like an oral maxillofacial surgery internship i don't know how it works residency she she is basically a dentist at this point in the next year she wants to like go and get this training to be a surgeon and she's really into dentistry she's also really anxious and she's kind of like not in the market to date however we have dan come into the picture anne is a reluctant first-year dentist student dentistry student dentistry student herper kind of reluctantly helps him they do strike up a bit of a romance there's a lot of sexual chemistry there they're definitely really into each other there's definitely good i would say mental health rep um there is also representation of like abusive parental relationships emotionally abusive parental relationships so if that is triggering to you maybe you don't pick this book up my issue here was that like i did not feel the romance i felt like both characters were just extremely awkward and you know what they're extremely awkward people in real life they deserve love too i get that but um it just was not a very fun read and i can't entirely chalk that up to the fact that this was set in like a dental school but that definitely didn't help things this was just honestly a pretty forgettable romance it was not it was not a favorite and um i wasn't expecting that much from it so i'm not like upset about it but it was it was two stars except a book that doesn't have anything to do with basketball yet has basketballs on the cover and it's called getting its game back is a book that i gave uh three stars to actually and this book is about khalil and vanessa and at the start of the story vanessa is out with a group of friends lamenting the fact that guys suck especially white men in particular she is a black woman and she is really like wanting to find like a long-term partner she's a bad bench right she's like in a stem field i want to say she like owns her own business and is a software engineer so she's like she's awesome she's really really cool so she definitely does like want love but she's she's not really finding it historically she just has not had very good luck um with men until one day she meets khalil i think she meets khalil at his barber shop he is a barber he owns a barber shop with his best friend which is like a plot line that kind of comes in later he's named khalil she signs up for this appointment she thinks that khalil's gonna be black he is not he's white she develops like an instant chemistry with him and she's having to kind of struggle with the fact that there's this white guy he's attractive i like him but like is he going to fetishize me is he going to be weird like i don't know i don't know how i'm feeling about this and khalil is dealing big time with mental health issues he has i don't know like the exact terminology for what he's dealing with i know he has depression which is definitely there his seasonal affective disorder he might have anxiety and ocd i don't know he has a lot of stuff going on um and at the start of the story he's trying to get his game back right he has had a failed relationship that is leaving him a little bit like self-conscious i guess and he's also dealing with his mental health so he's like really into vanessa but he's not really sure how to like approach a relationship with her he's not really sure you know how to put the moves on her he's just like he's not feeling very confident he's not feeling like himself when historically he has been a little bit of a player and like you know gotten off the ladies so we've got vanessa who's dealing with her feelings by the fact that she likes a guy who's not black and she's not sure how this is gonna work out in the long term and then we also have khalil who's dealing with like these intense mental health issues uh but is also really attracted to vanessa and the story really is about them kind of working through their issues and getting together this one is so tricky for me to talk about and also so tricky for me to like articulate what i liked and didn't like about i really enjoyed the mental health representation it was really intense seeing khalil deal with things that he's dealing with but i feel like it's rare to see mental health handled um in a romance especially when it comes to in a man really felt like it was authentic it was intense it was sad to read about for sure but i really did appreciate khalil and some of like the backsliding he does but also the progress he makes in kind of healing his mental health i thought it was i thought it was really accurate representation and really interesting to read about i also really liked vanessa and the way that she was so accepting of khalil's mental health and also was able to like set really healthy boundaries and was able to like get what she wanted out of the relationship in a way that like was productive i don't know i liked their romance i thought it was really steamy i really enjoyed like the steamy moments between them i think the reason this isn't getting like five stars for me is because i wanted just a little bit more relationship development we have khalil and vanessa like sleeping together and at the beginning of the book there's like a very long period of them like meeting up every once in a while and like going on like a couple of dates sort of or like i don't know not even true dates he's like hey come to this like festival or whatever and she comes it felt a little bit like long and drawn out or whatever and then we have them sleeping together and i wish that that time at the beginning of the book had been spent with them like truly dating and like truly having more one-on-one time it felt like our characters were in their heads a lot we had a lot of like internal dialogue and it was something that like i wanted more on page i wanted more interactions between the two of them because the sex was hot and i did like the individual journeys of the characters i just felt like the romance could have used a little bit more so tough one because i'm really glad this book exists i really like the characters um i just didn't love the romance so this one was a three star for me and it actually reminds me of i think the last book i'm gonna be talking about in a lot of ways and um we'll get into that in a second but um i liked this book i actually you know didn't know what to expect this wasn't really on my radar until i saw that i needed to read it for a list video and i'm glad i picked it up though don't be fooled by the cover this has nothing to do with basketball only three books left to go first up we have something wilder which i gave two stars too are we shocked are we surprised this is a christina lauren book and it was pitched to me as this adventure novel don't expect romance it's going to be adventure and that's what i went in expecting i didn't get anything from this book i'll be honest this story is about lily and leo at the beginning of the story we see them in this kind of like whirlwind romance they are i want to say like working on lily's father's ranch together and she dreams of owning this ranch one day her dad is like begrudgingly the owner of this ranch he doesn't really like it it's been in their family for a while and uh all he wants to do is treasure hunt that's kind of all he's interested in he's not really into horses he doesn't care about the ranch years later we fast forward lily and leo are no longer together and we have lily who was leading tours through the desert on horseback she's not working on the family ranch and we don't really know why that is we do find out through the course of the story obviously but uh she is just not happy she's not having a good time and she's also doubly not having a good time because leo who she is estranged from is actually one of the guys that she's going to have to take on one of these like tours through the desert and these tours are usually for people who are inexperienced with horseback and inexperienced with like trail writing in general so it's leo and his like goofy ass friends and she's just not having she's not having a good time her best friend is also with her um on the trail and she is uh also helping them get through this her friend nicole the story kind of starts evolving when we figure out that duke lily's dad left behind a journal that has instructions on how to find the treasure her dad is deceased and left behind you know these instructions on how to get to this treasure and lily's like i don't want to do this because this is what my dad was obsessed with my entire life it really like put a wedge between us and our relationship right but she does end up embarking on this journey to find this hidden treasure with leo some of the other people are involved in the story as well like with the treasure hunting but it all kind of comes to a head when lily and leo are set up on their own and go find this treasure together now my issue with this book was that the adventure plot line of the story doesn't really happen until like the 70 work of this book like we know what we're going to do we know what we're setting off to do i want to say like the 20 or 30 mark but between then and the 70 mark it's just a lot of people getting injured and a lot of people just like bitching at each other and it's not exciting there's not like clues to be found or or things like that until the 70 mark the clues when they did come out i thought were so fun and so interesting and i wanted more of that in the story like i was fine with it not being a romance but then other things came in and it just it the book up okay lily and leo uh there's no relationship development here he claims that he's been in love with her this entire time even though they've been separated for like 12 years and they just like a lot and it's actually on page it's not a closed door romance we get a couple of on-page sex scenes that come out of seemingly nowhere oh my god it's raining and there's like some tension or like i'm mad at you and we're just gonna have sex we're just gonna have sex outdoors actually i think they have sex in his tent but i just didn't i didn't want the sex scenes because i didn't care about the relationship because there was no relationship development say it with me i don't care about the smut unless there's a relationship to back it up my opinion there was no relationship to back up uh what was happening here this was just not it's not it for me again i think like if we had gotten rid of the sex scenes you know gotten more relationship development we had gotten more in the way of like clues and stuff throughout the story this could have easily been a five-star read for me it was summary it was fun in some ways but it left a little bit to be desired when it came to again the adventure plot or the romance i was like you know you're not doing either very well what's the point hang on to another two star read are we shocked by the book by jasmine guillory is the book that i gave two stars too i didn't expect to like this book i did read that it was a closed door romance which i know i just said that i don't really like smut unless there's a romance to back it up i need someone okay i need a little bit like one sex scene nothing nothing crazy but i need some sex this book is about isabelle and beau isabelle at the beginning of the story is getting her dream job kind of as a assistant i think at like a literary agency or a publishing company i don't actually know what her job is i didn't really care that much she actually like lost out on her dream job at her dream company but she got a very good one um instead and unfortunately the job actually kind of sucked she kind of hates her life we get like flash forwarded a couple of years and she is just really struggling and not having a good time and her boss is like hey um i know you've been emailing this one guy who's supposed to be writing his own like memoir for a long time um he's still not writing it i'm gonna need you to go to his house in la knock on the door and be like hey i need to write the story of your life and uh bo our hero i want to say like a former child star or something and he refuses to hire a ghost writer he wants to write this himself and yet he's not responding to anyone's emails and like he's not submitting any pages whatever and so isabel goes to bo's house and it's like hey you need to write this story she's like if i have to pep talk you i'll pep talk you and he's like okay you will pep talk me you're going to stay at my house and pep talk me every morning so i can write and so she stays with him for like a month or two it's kind of a beauty and the beast retelling i think this is like a disney property or whatever like a adult romance retelling of disney's intellectual property and this is supposed to be beauty and the beast it's just it was not good beau as a character is completely flat he has no personality except of being grumpy and isabelle is kind of just pitiful i'm gonna be honest with you i know that she's put in some sort of like difficult situations but i didn't find her a very like likable or brutal heroine rootable i didn't want to root for her okay like she just wasn't someone i was like oh you go girl you mean to this man i just didn't care i really didn't care at the end of the day which is upsetting because i wanted to care i wouldn't say i expected like a whole lot going into this book but i was kind of hoping that jasmine gallery writing an adult romance that wasn't in her like wedding day series like i would enjoy it more i've just been waiting for her to write stuff that's not in that series and like seeing if that would be different i guess this was different than her wedding date series hillary tends to rely on the sex scenes as relationship development in her stories so not having a book with sex scenes i think it made it difficult for this romance to really uh work now number 16. okay my neck's starting to hurt from kind of sitting at a weird angle so i'm ready to be ready to be done with this here wrap up i read bet on it i actually really liked this book i gave it three stars main character is asia and walker and they are living in a small town walker grew up in this small town asia decided to move there because she was just looking for a change of pace she wanted to live somewhere that felt a little bit more secure that maybe would not be as anxiety-inducing she has really bad panic attacks and really bad anxiety i don't exactly remember what her job is to be honest it doesn't really seem to play much of a part in the story and walker is back in his hometown because he is i think like visiting his grandma helping his grandma out i think he lives in like i don't know whatever the big city in south carolina is they end up meeting actually because asia goes to bingo nights she just decides that that's gonna be like the way that she meets people and it like calms her brain a little bit so she's been going to bingo nights and walker starts going to bingo nights with his grandmother and they develop this like instant sexual chemistry sexual tension and they start going on dates together and also having like incredibly intense sex frequently on page i liked this book this one actually reminded me a lot of um getting his game back in that we have a hero who has bad mental health we have a heroine who has bad mental health that kind of being the emphasis of the story and i think that's why this book didn't get like more stars for me this particular one focused so much on the mental health that it made it to where the characters didn't feel maybe very individual especially when i came to asia like she had panic attacks she had anxiety but like i can't remember her job i don't i don't really know what her interests are except for that she's like dealing with the stuff um she does make friends throughout the course of the story which i thought was nice like her kind of finding her groove and like finding her rhythm and finding people that really um like and accept her but we also have a lot of emphasis too on like walker's past and on his trauma he had kind of a bad relationship with his dad and his dad comes back into town at one point in the story which becomes a conflict he also has dealt with panic attacks in the past he has ptsd from his childhood um that's like what a lot of the emphasis of the story is it's a lot of like these two having a lot of like really intense but like sexy sex and then them kind of dealing with like the mental health issues again like there wasn't as much relationship development as i really really wanted on page i wanted to see more of what would make them a good like long-term fit and since they are both dealing with mental health we do have walker see asia have a panic attack at the very beginning of the story be very accepting of that and not like question her too much about it which i appreciated i feel like i needed more of that i feel like i needed more of them being through their issues together rather than apart i feel like i wanted more of like date nights there were only a couple and i wanted more of a small town feel because this is set almost entirely in a small town but i feel like i didn't get to know the side characters as well as i wanted to i feel like it could have been maybe a little bit more charming and a little bit less like sex and anxiety mental health heavy does that make sense i don't know i feel like those are important things to have in a book not the sex but like the the mental health representation i i appreciated it but i just felt like the true relationship development took a backseat to kind of the heavier topics and i wanted this to be a little bit more rom-com those are the 16 books that i've not talked to you about before that i kind of quickly sped through because this reading wrap-up was um very intense and i will leave links to some of the videos where i talked about some of my favorite romances of this month if you would like to see any of those if you're like you just bitched for a whole hour and i want to see what books you actually like i'll leave links those videos in the description if i can remember and again if you want to see like my in-depth thoughts on some steamier romances those will be over on my patreon that's that's kind of it i was trying to think of like any updates that i have for you uh going into the month of august ahead you know because i like to do those at the end of my wrap-ups and honestly there's not a whole lot that i feel like is coming up in august that is that different from the month of july i'm hoping to read honestly a similar amount in the month of august that i did this month we're gonna be seeing videos for me pretty much three times a week for the foreseeable future i have an exciting like kind of project video i think coming that i'm kind of proud of or that i will be proud of when i film it and i do have some like i read fives and some weekly reading vlogs and you know the usual the usual fair here on my channel so i guess like this update was basically telling you that there's gonna be more of the same and i hope you're looking forward to it but thanks so much for watching this video i really appreciate you i just realized uh five seconds ago too that day that you're watching this will be my four year anniversary here on youtube and honestly just wild to me that i've been making videos for that long it doesn't feel like it to me it feels like literally just yesterday that i started um sitting in front of my camera and talking to myself and you about books just want to take the opportunity i guess to say thank you for sticking around if you've been here this entire time or if you've joined later like thank you for watching my videos thank you for supporting me thank you for commenting and talking books with me i would not picture my life any differently and it is also so wild to me that this is my life that this is something that i do with my time um if you would have asked me like in college or like i don't know five years ago hey do you think you're gonna have a youtube channel and like talk to people about books i would not have believed you and it's just it's wild to me that i'm doing this and i'm so happy that i am i love doing this i cannot i cannot imagine my life without all of you and without um you know making stuff i didn't really have anything planned when i brought that up but um i really do appreciate you and i just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you i love you so much um i have good things coming for the rest of the year i hope you're excited about it i have all my content planned for the rest of the year um i will see you in the next video thanks so much for watching and until next timehello welcome back to my channel and welcome to another monthly reading wrap up i took me a second to figure out what filming today probably because my brains are scrambled after having read 52 books this past month now full transparency i haven't actually gotten to 52 books i will by the end of today or tomorrow saturday when i'm filming this but this is by far been my most productive reading month ever i am kind of proud of the fact that i was able to read 52 books this is not something that's likely to happen again however i'm glad that i did it because of a reading challenge that i am carrying out for the month of july that i will tell you about more in august i have a lot of things to share with you today obviously we're not going to talk about all 52 books don't you worry you're pretty little head we're in instead going to talk about 16 books that i have talked about either in weekly reading vlogs in passing or i've just never talked about ever you want to hear about any of the 33 books that i'm not talking about here in this video go ahead and check out these videos where i talked about other books in more detail because those were like secret tbr are you know very lengthy type vlogs i had a really good reading month overall i read a lot of four and five star books and it was game changing i think that's maybe why i read so much i was so excited about most of the things that i was reading that i just wanted to read more and more now you might be saying what 16 plus 33 bit that's not 52 books and you would be correct if you want to hear about the other three books that i absolutely adored for the most part that are not featured in any of the videos that are live on my channel check out my patreon because i'm going to be posting a exclusive reading vlog for three books that i really enjoyed that are like ku specific you know i do that every month they're on patreon exclusive reading vlog on my 10 tier so you know shameless plug as one always does but you know what today we're here to talk about 16 books i am going to give you a bit of a disclaimer here if you do not want to hear me rant and rave mostly rant i wouldn't stay tuned because most of the books i'm going to be talking about are two star reads i know i said i had a good reading month and i did but a lot of those good books were featured in hey reading vlogs or other like you know lengthy type vlogs and um we're not talking about those books here today we're going to talk about some stuff i honestly pretty much hated so grab yourself a beverage and let's let's hop into it so the first book that i finished this month was my killer vacation by tessa bailey which i unfortunately gave two stars to i know what you're thinking but chandler you love tessa bailey but chandler you give all of her books five stars that's not actually true the first book i ever read by tessa bailey i gave two stars and this one well not very reminiscent of that first book that i read by her was just also a fail for me as well so my killer vacation is about miles and taylor miles is our hero taylor's our heroine our hair when she's on a summer vacation i want to say in cape cod and she is living her best life until she finds a dead body oh what's going on it's the guy who owns the airbnb she's staying in now she's determined to figure out what the hell happened to this man and miles is called in because he is like a detective private investigator or something the guy who died his sister hired miles and so miles and taylor sort of team up i guess you could say throughout the story to find out what's happening to this the dude i mean i guess he's dead so we know what happened to him but you know solve who done it the premise of that is exciting the premise of that is exactly what i want it's it's giving me cozy mystery it's giving me a mystery thriller it's giving me suspenseful romance the execution however was not it the the mystery thriller aspect was just lackluster i don't need to go into detail about why it kind of sucked um it just was not very good and that was disappointment in and of itself my big issue really is miles and taylor's relationship now look here look look here in my eyes okay i like smut okay i do i certainly do what i don't like is unjustified smut spot between two characters sex sexual chemistry between two characters who have no business having sex and i felt that way between miles and taylor did not find him charming i found him to be described as sort of like a greasy old man even though he's like 35 i think and taylor's like 28 like they're not the age gap is not there it's not very big he's always in his head talking about like how he's too old for her and she's naive and she's stupid but i'm gonna steal her panties and put him in my pocket anyway it just it didn't really have the appeal that i wanted it to have and it made me rethink a lot of my like love for tessa bailey i'm like are all of her books like this am i just overlooking the fact that like all of the dudes in her books are kind of like gross um and i don't think that's true and if it is true i do think that it's usually balanced right like it's not just a sexual attraction there he's actually attracted to like her personality and stuff like piper and brendan likes that she's dumb okay he likes that she likes stuff he likes buying her things and it's that relationship this one i don't think really had a foundation i don't feel like miles and taylor had the relationship or the chemistry that i wanted them to have and the ending of this book i thought was weird i didn't really love miles approach to like and taylor back i'm gonna leave it there okay it was a two-star read i'm disappointed in it i'm glad that i do not own a physical copy i swiftly deleted that off of my wish list i'm collecting a wish list right now because i'm not buying any physical books but i am adding things that i have enjoyed right um and for some reason i preemptively put my killer vacation on that list and uh it was it was deleted okay moving on to a book that i gave one star to now in the past i really have not been very generous with with my one star ratings like i have not been giving out one stars to me it's rare that a book is deserving of one star this novella however i just didn't like like it wasn't there was nothing there was nothing there two a two star read is like okay like it wasn't the worst thing i've ever read but like it wasn't great one star pretty bad okay magic in the wind by christine feehan it's a novella in this series right it's like the first book or the first novella in the series introducing us to these like witchy sisters right we have sarah and damon damon comes to town this small town and he becomes enthralled by sarah sarah is this like witchy interesting person but nothing happens like i was reading an abridged version or i was reading like the sparks notes to a romance it was bizarre and it's been a second since i've read this because i've read 52 books this month and i i really can't recall the details the fine details of this particular novella except for i disliked it and i am greatly excited to unhaul it next up we have the wedding crasher which i gave two stars to this book is about solange and dean and the premise of this one was really cute i really enjoyed the worst best man by mia sosa i expected to like this one just as much but unfortunately i just didn't really feel the chemistry between our two main characters so at the beginning of the story dean is getting married he is like on his wedding day about to walk down the aisle or i guess his his bride's gonna walk down the aisle to him and solange finds the bride talking to i think one of the groomsmen or just like one of one of her friends friends and she's like you know i've always loved you i've always wanted to be with you blah blah blah just like oh like i don't want dean the groom to to marry this woman like i've heard things that i can't unhear right blonde i don't think is in the wedding industry she's just helping out her cousin or her sister i don't really remember the main character of the last book he essentially prevents the sweating from happening and for some reason dean and solange decide to keep in touch afterwards dean is somewhat grateful i guess that's launch like called off this wedding but the reason he was marrying this girl in the first place was because he wanted to like look good at his law firm like he wasn't going to get promoted unless he had a family life or like was relatable in some way i guess as if being a human being with like interest is not relatable enough he he needs to be married solange and dean decide to fake date he is like hey since you called off my wedding uh that i was fine with like i didn't really care if it was an open relationship or not you sort of things up for me you're gonna fake danny and she's like you know what okay sure i think you're kind of hot i kind of like you let's do this there were some scenes that i found cute there were some scenes that i found fun i did feel the sexual chemistry there but the relationship development was just not it's not something i was super into i got kind of bored midway through this book i could not for the life of you phew geez i don't want to put that on you i can't for the life of me remember how this book ended and i feel bad about it because i have to talk about it in this year wrap up but it just was not it was not everything that i wanted it to be and more next up the fourth book that i read this month i mean it wasn't technically the fourth book but it's fourth book on my list for this year video the league of gentle women witches which i gave two stars too i didn't enjoy it uh like i didn't enjoy most of the books on this on this list for this video this is about alex and charlotte and the overall premise of the story i really liked i really thought was interesting we have a society of witches we have a society of pirates and we have like another society of witches i think it's like lady scoundrels the start of the story charlotte is on the look for this amulet because she's heard that it's loose in the wild and that it like rightfully belongs to her i guess so she decides she's gonna go hunt after it and she comes into contact with a man named alex who's also after the same amulet are we shocked are we surprised they embark to find it together but they're also kind of competing to find it and also they're having a lot of sex and also i'm supposed to like somehow root for this relationship and or care about them that just never ended up happening they have a lot of sex i think we're supposed to believe that they have this like off the charts chemistry and that this relationship just is is faded to happen but i didn't feel that way charlotte's head a lot of the time when they're having sex she's like wow this is this is quite a delight i i could never i could never settle down with this man though he's a pirate you know his he has a flying house i could never and it just was not convincing it wasn't interesting it wasn't fun i felt like this world in my opinion was a little too whimsical for me it didn't have a lot of like basis i was gonna say basis in reality if it's whimsical of course it's not gonna have basis in reality i wish that this world that this magical world had more rules and that it made more sense it was not really laid out before me how this worked and we just have flying houses appear we just have women flying on broomsticks which i mean i guess like that's witchy we get that but if you're gonna have fantasy romance let's include the fantasy elements in a way that makes sense and not just like throw at the reader and expect them to care i didn't care and i give this book two stars i'm doing an absolutely dog job at telling you what these books are about i'm gonna chalk it up to hunger but you know what i'm gonna persist stop the sizzle paradox which i also gave two stars too this one's about lyric and keon i'm gonna go with kian our heroine is in stem as i'm sure you could probably tell from the sizzle paradox it honestly sounds like the title of an alley hazelwood book lyric is studying sexual chemistry in like long-term romantic partners and seeing what makes romantic relationships stick like what what is going to make for a successful long-term relationship and to do this like not only is she getting her phd for this i guess you could say uh this is her research she's also doing some experiments of her own by dating random guys kissing them trying to engage in some sort of sexual relationships but the thing is the thing is lyrics a weirdo okay she's bizarre and i can best sum this up by saying she lives with her best friend named kian they're apparently inseparable they know everything about each other they've lived together for a few years they're they're besties okay right so they go to target together you know very domestic things he he becomes the love interest i think that's pretty safe to say and not really spoil the book right okay they go to target together and some random dude just looks at her and thinks she's beautiful and comes up to her and is like hey i'm gonna go on a date with me sometime and she's like sure and he's like what about right now i am here with a friend but i am in fact gonna ditch him to go get froyo with with a stranger with a complete stranger i feel like that's all you really need to know right it's weird it's a weird book the beginning half of the story she is trying to figure out why none of her relationships or why none of the guys she date um really appeal to her and obviously she finds out that it's because kian has been there the whole time like he knows her so well and no other man could possibly know her and so that's why her dating life is unsuccessful also she's weird so that's i mean that's really let's get down to it that's that's why her relationships are unsuccessful i liked the idea of her research i wanted that to be more of a component of the story it's really just her being very immature it is her not actually doing the research for her phd it's like her her advisor or whatever it's like are you gonna do your research like you're you're technically spending money to be here or you actually don't know i don't know psja is work but he's like you know um i'm trying to help you out girl but like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing and she's like i just can't figure it out i don't know i don't know i didn't like this i thought the romance was pretty weak as well this is the second book by lilly manon san diamond like her second adult romance novel and i just didn't enjoy it so i think after having had two very unsuccessful romances can safely say that i don't think this author's for me i just find her hair wants to be pretty insufferable i've never liked a heroine that she's written whether that's why i or adult so i think i'm safe saying at this point regardless of a list video in the future like i'll not be reading her books okay you know i found i found things out about myself through this journey so i'm i'm feeling satisfied i guess i'm trying to make myself feel better about the fact that i willingly read this entire book but um nothing's really making me feel better did i say i was talking about 16 books technically 18 okay i threw a trilogy in here and i'm just going to talk about them all at once i read kind of randomly ruined avenged an allied by amy tantera this is a why a fantasy series that i owned all of because i got them on a steep discount way back in the day okay this book series is about our main character emelina and she lives in the rival country to prince casimir prince casimir is like i don't want to say the head honcho he's definitely like beholden to his dad he is someone who is not in a lot of control of his life and so he gets married off to a woman of a rival country now this woman is not actually emelina emelina decides to pretend to be the person that prince cass is supposed to marry but that she can get insider information into prince cass and the country that emelina is from called ruina or something like that there are ruined people there and the ruined people are magical magic is kind of like outlawed in in this like world i guess you could say um and so we put all of the magical people in ruina and they're kind of suffering they're not having about the best time ever emelina now that her sister olivia has been taken by prince cass's family uh decides that she's going to pose as the princess from another country and marry prince cass you know to get in standard information and to somehow maybe get her sister olivia back okay that's what the trilogy is about the first book is kind of about the marriage and at the very end prince cass finds out that emmelina is not who she says she is the second book i think they spend most of the time apart and then in the third book they come back together and kind of like work on things together i liked the premise of this series i didn't think it was interesting it was very palatable i thought it was a fairly enjoyable read i did like the sibling dynamics here because olivia we're not really giving insight into her character until like the second book we're just like trying to to get her i guess like to get her out of being you know held prisoner in the first book and when we actually get to know her personality we're like okay did we actually want to get her did we do do we want her back i don't know and we have to see olivia and emmelina kind of like fight over how they think the country should be ruled and what the like best order of events and like what should happen next i guess should they try to kill prince caz should they run the country together like there's a lot of things that take place that i thought were interesting that i'd never seen done before in a ya fantasy especially fantasy romance um i also found like the romance component here surprisingly i don't want to say well developed but it was uh surprisingly at the forefront of the story which i thought was fun it's not something that i thought was maybe the best i do think the second book was quite boring and i don't think the third book was like the best wrap up to a series ever it was entertaining enough to keep me entertained and to keep me picking up the books after i read the first one i told myself like you know if you don't like this one you don't have to continue on with the series you can just unhaul it but it were entertaining enough to where i decided to like listen to audiobooks for all three would i recommend i don't know i think if you like yeah fantasy and you're not looking for something game changing but you want a fantasy with romance you like sister dynamics i actually think this is like maybe worth a try i kind of enjoyed it uh the first book i think i gave three stars in book two stars third book three stars i can't remember overall it was like a three star series for me next up back to the romance i think all of these next ones are romance i'm looking i'm looking they're all romance are we shocked are we surprised the next book that i read was electric idol by katie robert and this is the book again that really helped me find out things about myself and that thing was that i don't really like katie robert books and i kind of knew this i've tried other books by her in the past they've all kind of failed for me but this was like my last ditch attempt at really enjoying her stuff and i had to read this book for a list video so i was like you know in it either way book is about psyche and eros i don't know much about greek mythology so i don't know if they actually end up together in like greek myth but psyche at the beginning of this story is she has a hit out on her i guess right eros is supposed to murder her after some like interactions between the two of them they discover that they have this in intense sexual chemistry arrows decides he doesn't really want to kill psyche and the only solution to not killing her because his mom is the one that like put the head out on psyche the only solution is to marry her instead so this is a marriage of convenience fake relationship sort of story and it likes parts of it this was very basic and very boring but it was fine like i enjoyed the sexual component i liked that psyche was like an influencer i liked her relationship dynamic with her sisters i thought she was like a fairly fun heroine and i also liked arrows he was kind of this like damaged hero who has to do his mom's bidding and he has to kill a lot of people even though he doesn't really want to kill people and i think he is if he calls himself a sociopath but like he he considers himself to be like different than everybody else i liked them individually as characters i just didn't feel the romance or the plot to be very interesting it wasn't anything that i was like oh wow this is different or wow these two are like picture perfect puzzle pieces like they should they should be i number one otp i just didn't get that vibe from this book to me nothing about nothing about greek mythology retellings is really doing it for me i've discovered i've wanted to really find a hades and persephone retelling that works for me and i haven't found that this book i liked i think maybe a little bit more than the first book in the series but like not much more just okay i don't know i don't really have any desire to read the next book in the series will i be forced to read it for a list video or for like the goodreads choice words next year you know most likely most likely discovered that katie roberts stuff just like doesn't historically work for me and i'm okay with that like it is what it is two stars moving on next up oh boy okay i didn't write down the character names for this book and i kind of regret it because they were interesting i think one of the characters is named tanith okay a letter to three witches is a book that i gave one star to again i i told you i'm not very generous with my one stars i kind of default to two stars if i didn't enjoy a book but this book was so bad that i had to give it one star i don't remember the names of our main characters but the villain of the story is named tanith and tanith at the beginning of the story i think she's like the adoptive sister to our heroine like hey heroine and two cousins i stole one of your men and i'm not going to tell you who it is but i stole one of your men and i'm out of town i'm leaving and so the three cousins are left to figure out which of their men is going to be taken by tanith is it going to be like the cheating husband of the one of these people is it going to be the boyfriend who's like out of town is it going to be the boyfriend who's in town who is it going to be who has tanneth taken that's kind of the gist of the story it's bizarre like it wasn't a very interesting book oh and then there's a family curse aspect which i really hated okay so tanith and like all of her cousins siblings whatever they're not allowed to use magic and taneth is using magic i guess to like get this guy on her side and i guess that's like part of the plot line is that magic exists in this world but this particular family is banned from using magic because i used magic a long time ago and it was bad there's also like a kooky aunt who has been cursed and she is like taken from her one true love was so chaotic so all over the place the romantic thread here was weird too the heroine of the story like her only plot line really is like no i really like this guy and i really want to cheat on my boyfriend wouldn't it be like awesome if tanith actually took my boyfriend because then i wouldn't have to feel guilty about the fact that i'm cheating on him if i'm if what i'm saying is making no sense it's because this book didn't make any sense okay i didn't enjoy this book i'd never heard of this author before i didn't have like super high hopes going into this i was i was kind of thinking like oh maybe this will be a witchy romance that i actually like and that was not the case okay so i give this book one star the ninth book that i read this month okay under one roof by ali hazelwood this is the last of the novellas that i needed to read to have read all of them okay this is the first one in the series it's about our heroine mara and our hero liam she is an environmentalist environmental science i think was her degree and liam is a big bad oil lawyer and they live together under one roof because our heroine mara i think is like given off of this house i i think like she knows this old person this old lady who who passes away and like leaves her part of the house but guess who else is left part of the house it's liam so they decide begrudgingly to live together and for a lot of the time at the very beginning of the book living together they like don't talk at all and then they come to this reluctant truce and they get to know each other and their habits and they fall for each other i did find that this story worked in the format that it was presented in i didn't hate the relationship between liam and mara i just didn't find it very convincing because i didn't actually get to see much of their relationship freak out before the romantic relationship if that makes sense like i wanted to see more of these domestic moments i wanted to see them slowly over time grow from like completely hating each other and avoiding each other to being like reluctantly at this truce where they do get along and then they do i don't know help each other a little bit um or like are polite to each other when they live together that never really happened in a way that i found satisfactory and it makes sense because this is a novella length story it made for a weird reading experience i didn't feel like the flashbacks worked very well in the story either it just wasn't my favorite of the novellas i think i gave this one three stars it's not the worst thing i've read ever uh but it's very very very unmemorable i would say if you want to read any of the feminist novels i highly recommend the third one it's my favorite the second one sucks the first one's okay but really just read the third one i thought it was great i like i like the hero in that one a lot so anyway i'm glad that i've completed the feminist novellas i am now less excited i guess to read the full-length novel i think that's coming out like august or something like that but i'll be reading it you know as one dies for for the content the beige content next up at number 10 we have count your lucky stars by alexandra belflore this is a sapphic novel about margot and olivia margot i believe is a app creator she's really into astrology and that's that's her job she does astrology olivia is a wedding planner and she used to be in a semi relationship with margo in high school okay back in the day they had like this two week really intense romantic entanglement okay they were friends before that but then one of them i think is sick and then they just like hang out for two weeks and they and you know it's it's a delight until olivia decides that she is going to back with her boyfriend afterwards it's a bit of a miscommunication trope for sure but she gets back with her boyfriend and then margot and olivia kind of never talk again until they're brought together when margot's best friend is getting married at the place that olivia works so the two after series of events end up living together and entering into a relationship together it's kind of sexual in nature at first and then it turns into something more i liked parts of the story but i felt like the third act conflict was really really grating and i also felt like because these two had built in history there wasn't a lot of time spent in the present day developing a relationship between the two women that's not to say there was no relationship development there was sex um we do see them work through some of their personal issues together but i think my issue here was that i wanted to know more about what would make them work together in a long-term relationship like yes we understand that when you guys were 18 you had a lot of like hot steamy sex that's awesome um i get that you know that she likes bagels that's really cool too in the present day like what about it all works you know you'll have different careers you have different interests so what about you is going to work and i never really felt like i got that i didn't hate this book i feel like i'm nitpicking a little bit too much i did appreciate things about the story i did appreciate the level of steam in this book i think oftentimes in female female romances the steam can be a little bit lacking it definitely was not lacking here but i just wanted a little bit more from the romance i've yet to find a sapphic romance where i was just like holy they are puzzle pieces they should be together forever say that actually i think party favors by aaron mcclellan kind of did that for me this month go watch my uh reading subscriber favorite ku video which i'll link in the description if you want to hear my thoughts and feelings on that book i think actually that one in terms of the sexual component very similar i actually feel like even though that one was like kind of a novella it did the relationship dynamic stuff better than this book even though this book had more time to do it so three stars it wasn't bad i wouldn't hesitate to recommend this if you're looking for a sapphic story because i do feel like it was cute it was a slice of life and something that like would be totally easily listening on the beach or like i guess reading with your you know physical eyes on the beach but it just wasn't it wasn't my favorite so next up book number 11 is a book that i actually enjoyed and i gave four stars too it's the only four star on this list lady for a duke by alexis hall now i'd heard so many good things before picking up this book especially by crystal from crystal's bookish life so i was really expecting a lot and i think that that kind of unfairly set my expectations of this book which is why i'm a little disappointed to be giving it four stars and not five stars but i did really enjoy the story and let's talk about it okay so this book is about our main character viola and she at the start of the story is um just living her life she's a ladies companion and she has reinvented herself and really come into her true identity after the battle of waterloo she is presumed dead and is able to live her most authentic self right and there are some unintended repercussions of this her best friend the duke of gracewood thinks that she is dead and is kind of struggling so whenever viola's sister-in-law hears that the duke of grace what is it isn't doing very well she decides to take it upon herself to go and visit him so viola and her sister-in-law they go to the duke of gracewood and they decide to give him comfort and try to kind of get him out of his shell especially since his younger sister needs to debut into society who better to help with that than viola and viola's sister-in-law is married to the duke who is fiola's brother it is this delightful push and pull and um kind of hidden identity situation because biola obviously deeply knows the duke of grace where they used to be best friends and yet she doesn't want to reveal you know their former friendship because she is living her life and wants to continue living her life as she is the duke of grace would does eventually kind of figure out that viola is his former best friend it stirs up a lot of emotions in the both of them and i think the story is really about them kind of like coming to terms with where things are now having to kind of like live through some of the grief that the duke of grace was living through yet also realizing like hey my best friend is right here and um she's really hot and i like also want to sleep with her i loved the nature of the story i loved that the secret identity here made a lot of sense i liked the way it was unveiled i liked that the duke never had any ill will towards viola he like was never angry about the situation was never never a dick which i really appreciated like he has every right i think to be angry that his best friend never came forward and was like hey like i'm alive just i liked i liked the way that that was handled i think my issue with the story was it was just too long frankly it like were so many moments when either the duke or viola were like in their heads just thinking about their emotions and thinking about things that were said and like rehashing conversations that we had already seen on page and it was just a little frustrating i was like okay let's move the momentum forward a little bit and i also found sometimes that uh viola's reactions were a little bit tricky for me like i didn't fully understand where she was coming from at times when the duke of gracewood was just so accepting and was so like okay you're my best friend you're beautiful i want to have sex with you let's get married she really was like not into the idea at first and i understand like sometimes you have to sit with decisions and sit with ideas a lot of her like reactions and emotions were um justified like they didn't really make sense they felt like they were kind of coming out of nowhere at points and maybe that's just me not understanding like that could definitely be on me but it was just frustrating sometimes like having so many conflicts and like so many things keeping these people apart that obviously really wanted to be together that i was like okay come on guys like let's get together let's get together i gave this book four stars i really really enjoyed it i love seeing a historical romance with a trans heroine i think if you like historical romance i'd recommend picking this up if you're not really historical romance person i don't know that this is like the best book for you because it is kind of a slow moving plot line but i enjoyed it and um definitely fun read uh the next book that i read is not a fun read for so many different reasons we have a brush with love which i gave two stars to the first reason this book is not fun is because this is a dental romance our heroine is in dental school she's applying for like an oral maxillofacial surgery internship i don't know how it works residency she she is basically a dentist at this point in the next year she wants to like go and get this training to be a surgeon and she's really into dentistry she's also really anxious and she's kind of like not in the market to date however we have dan come into the picture anne is a reluctant first-year dentist student dentistry student dentistry student herper kind of reluctantly helps him they do strike up a bit of a romance there's a lot of sexual chemistry there they're definitely really into each other there's definitely good i would say mental health rep um there is also representation of like abusive parental relationships emotionally abusive parental relationships so if that is triggering to you maybe you don't pick this book up my issue here was that like i did not feel the romance i felt like both characters were just extremely awkward and you know what they're extremely awkward people in real life they deserve love too i get that but um it just was not a very fun read and i can't entirely chalk that up to the fact that this was set in like a dental school but that definitely didn't help things this was just honestly a pretty forgettable romance it was not it was not a favorite and um i wasn't expecting that much from it so i'm not like upset about it but it was it was two stars except a book that doesn't have anything to do with basketball yet has basketballs on the cover and it's called getting its game back is a book that i gave uh three stars to actually and this book is about khalil and vanessa and at the start of the story vanessa is out with a group of friends lamenting the fact that guys suck especially white men in particular she is a black woman and she is really like wanting to find like a long-term partner she's a bad bench right she's like in a stem field i want to say she like owns her own business and is a software engineer so she's like she's awesome she's really really cool so she definitely does like want love but she's she's not really finding it historically she just has not had very good luck um with men until one day she meets khalil i think she meets khalil at his barber shop he is a barber he owns a barber shop with his best friend which is like a plot line that kind of comes in later he's named khalil she signs up for this appointment she thinks that khalil's gonna be black he is not he's white she develops like an instant chemistry with him and she's having to kind of struggle with the fact that there's this white guy he's attractive i like him but like is he going to fetishize me is he going to be weird like i don't know i don't know how i'm feeling about this and khalil is dealing big time with mental health issues he has i don't know like the exact terminology for what he's dealing with i know he has depression which is definitely there his seasonal affective disorder he might have anxiety and ocd i don't know he has a lot of stuff going on um and at the start of the story he's trying to get his game back right he has had a failed relationship that is leaving him a little bit like self-conscious i guess and he's also dealing with his mental health so he's like really into vanessa but he's not really sure how to like approach a relationship with her he's not really sure you know how to put the moves on her he's just like he's not feeling very confident he's not feeling like himself when historically he has been a little bit of a player and like you know gotten off the ladies so we've got vanessa who's dealing with her feelings by the fact that she likes a guy who's not black and she's not sure how this is gonna work out in the long term and then we also have khalil who's dealing with like these intense mental health issues uh but is also really attracted to vanessa and the story really is about them kind of working through their issues and getting together this one is so tricky for me to talk about and also so tricky for me to like articulate what i liked and didn't like about i really enjoyed the mental health representation it was really intense seeing khalil deal with things that he's dealing with but i feel like it's rare to see mental health handled um in a romance especially when it comes to in a man really felt like it was authentic it was intense it was sad to read about for sure but i really did appreciate khalil and some of like the backsliding he does but also the progress he makes in kind of healing his mental health i thought it was i thought it was really accurate representation and really interesting to read about i also really liked vanessa and the way that she was so accepting of khalil's mental health and also was able to like set really healthy boundaries and was able to like get what she wanted out of the relationship in a way that like was productive i don't know i liked their romance i thought it was really steamy i really enjoyed like the steamy moments between them i think the reason this isn't getting like five stars for me is because i wanted just a little bit more relationship development we have khalil and vanessa like sleeping together and at the beginning of the book there's like a very long period of them like meeting up every once in a while and like going on like a couple of dates sort of or like i don't know not even true dates he's like hey come to this like festival or whatever and she comes it felt a little bit like long and drawn out or whatever and then we have them sleeping together and i wish that that time at the beginning of the book had been spent with them like truly dating and like truly having more one-on-one time it felt like our characters were in their heads a lot we had a lot of like internal dialogue and it was something that like i wanted more on page i wanted more interactions between the two of them because the sex was hot and i did like the individual journeys of the characters i just felt like the romance could have used a little bit more so tough one because i'm really glad this book exists i really like the characters um i just didn't love the romance so this one was a three star for me and it actually reminds me of i think the last book i'm gonna be talking about in a lot of ways and um we'll get into that in a second but um i liked this book i actually you know didn't know what to expect this wasn't really on my radar until i saw that i needed to read it for a list video and i'm glad i picked it up though don't be fooled by the cover this has nothing to do with basketball only three books left to go first up we have something wilder which i gave two stars too are we shocked are we surprised this is a christina lauren book and it was pitched to me as this adventure novel don't expect romance it's going to be adventure and that's what i went in expecting i didn't get anything from this book i'll be honest this story is about lily and leo at the beginning of the story we see them in this kind of like whirlwind romance they are i want to say like working on lily's father's ranch together and she dreams of owning this ranch one day her dad is like begrudgingly the owner of this ranch he doesn't really like it it's been in their family for a while and uh all he wants to do is treasure hunt that's kind of all he's interested in he's not really into horses he doesn't care about the ranch years later we fast forward lily and leo are no longer together and we have lily who was leading tours through the desert on horseback she's not working on the family ranch and we don't really know why that is we do find out through the course of the story obviously but uh she is just not happy she's not having a good time and she's also doubly not having a good time because leo who she is estranged from is actually one of the guys that she's going to have to take on one of these like tours through the desert and these tours are usually for people who are inexperienced with horseback and inexperienced with like trail writing in general so it's leo and his like goofy ass friends and she's just not having she's not having a good time her best friend is also with her um on the trail and she is uh also helping them get through this her friend nicole the story kind of starts evolving when we figure out that duke lily's dad left behind a journal that has instructions on how to find the treasure her dad is deceased and left behind you know these instructions on how to get to this treasure and lily's like i don't want to do this because this is what my dad was obsessed with my entire life it really like put a wedge between us and our relationship right but she does end up embarking on this journey to find this hidden treasure with leo some of the other people are involved in the story as well like with the treasure hunting but it all kind of comes to a head when lily and leo are set up on their own and go find this treasure together now my issue with this book was that the adventure plot line of the story doesn't really happen until like the 70 work of this book like we know what we're going to do we know what we're setting off to do i want to say like the 20 or 30 mark but between then and the 70 mark it's just a lot of people getting injured and a lot of people just like bitching at each other and it's not exciting there's not like clues to be found or or things like that until the 70 mark the clues when they did come out i thought were so fun and so interesting and i wanted more of that in the story like i was fine with it not being a romance but then other things came in and it just it the book up okay lily and leo uh there's no relationship development here he claims that he's been in love with her this entire time even though they've been separated for like 12 years and they just like a lot and it's actually on page it's not a closed door romance we get a couple of on-page sex scenes that come out of seemingly nowhere oh my god it's raining and there's like some tension or like i'm mad at you and we're just gonna have sex we're just gonna have sex outdoors actually i think they have sex in his tent but i just didn't i didn't want the sex scenes because i didn't care about the relationship because there was no relationship development say it with me i don't care about the smut unless there's a relationship to back it up my opinion there was no relationship to back up uh what was happening here this was just not it's not it for me again i think like if we had gotten rid of the sex scenes you know gotten more relationship development we had gotten more in the way of like clues and stuff throughout the story this could have easily been a five-star read for me it was summary it was fun in some ways but it left a little bit to be desired when it came to again the adventure plot or the romance i was like you know you're not doing either very well what's the point hang on to another two star read are we shocked by the book by jasmine guillory is the book that i gave two stars too i didn't expect to like this book i did read that it was a closed door romance which i know i just said that i don't really like smut unless there's a romance to back it up i need someone okay i need a little bit like one sex scene nothing nothing crazy but i need some sex this book is about isabelle and beau isabelle at the beginning of the story is getting her dream job kind of as a assistant i think at like a literary agency or a publishing company i don't actually know what her job is i didn't really care that much she actually like lost out on her dream job at her dream company but she got a very good one um instead and unfortunately the job actually kind of sucked she kind of hates her life we get like flash forwarded a couple of years and she is just really struggling and not having a good time and her boss is like hey um i know you've been emailing this one guy who's supposed to be writing his own like memoir for a long time um he's still not writing it i'm gonna need you to go to his house in la knock on the door and be like hey i need to write the story of your life and uh bo our hero i want to say like a former child star or something and he refuses to hire a ghost writer he wants to write this himself and yet he's not responding to anyone's emails and like he's not submitting any pages whatever and so isabel goes to bo's house and it's like hey you need to write this story she's like if i have to pep talk you i'll pep talk you and he's like okay you will pep talk me you're going to stay at my house and pep talk me every morning so i can write and so she stays with him for like a month or two it's kind of a beauty and the beast retelling i think this is like a disney property or whatever like a adult romance retelling of disney's intellectual property and this is supposed to be beauty and the beast it's just it was not good beau as a character is completely flat he has no personality except of being grumpy and isabelle is kind of just pitiful i'm gonna be honest with you i know that she's put in some sort of like difficult situations but i didn't find her a very like likable or brutal heroine rootable i didn't want to root for her okay like she just wasn't someone i was like oh you go girl you mean to this man i just didn't care i really didn't care at the end of the day which is upsetting because i wanted to care i wouldn't say i expected like a whole lot going into this book but i was kind of hoping that jasmine gallery writing an adult romance that wasn't in her like wedding day series like i would enjoy it more i've just been waiting for her to write stuff that's not in that series and like seeing if that would be different i guess this was different than her wedding date series hillary tends to rely on the sex scenes as relationship development in her stories so not having a book with sex scenes i think it made it difficult for this romance to really uh work now number 16. okay my neck's starting to hurt from kind of sitting at a weird angle so i'm ready to be ready to be done with this here wrap up i read bet on it i actually really liked this book i gave it three stars main character is asia and walker and they are living in a small town walker grew up in this small town asia decided to move there because she was just looking for a change of pace she wanted to live somewhere that felt a little bit more secure that maybe would not be as anxiety-inducing she has really bad panic attacks and really bad anxiety i don't exactly remember what her job is to be honest it doesn't really seem to play much of a part in the story and walker is back in his hometown because he is i think like visiting his grandma helping his grandma out i think he lives in like i don't know whatever the big city in south carolina is they end up meeting actually because asia goes to bingo nights she just decides that that's gonna be like the way that she meets people and it like calms her brain a little bit so she's been going to bingo nights and walker starts going to bingo nights with his grandmother and they develop this like instant sexual chemistry sexual tension and they start going on dates together and also having like incredibly intense sex frequently on page i liked this book this one actually reminded me a lot of um getting his game back in that we have a hero who has bad mental health we have a heroine who has bad mental health that kind of being the emphasis of the story and i think that's why this book didn't get like more stars for me this particular one focused so much on the mental health that it made it to where the characters didn't feel maybe very individual especially when i came to asia like she had panic attacks she had anxiety but like i can't remember her job i don't i don't really know what her interests are except for that she's like dealing with the stuff um she does make friends throughout the course of the story which i thought was nice like her kind of finding her groove and like finding her rhythm and finding people that really um like and accept her but we also have a lot of emphasis too on like walker's past and on his trauma he had kind of a bad relationship with his dad and his dad comes back into town at one point in the story which becomes a conflict he also has dealt with panic attacks in the past he has ptsd from his childhood um that's like what a lot of the emphasis of the story is it's a lot of like these two having a lot of like really intense but like sexy sex and then them kind of dealing with like the mental health issues again like there wasn't as much relationship development as i really really wanted on page i wanted to see more of what would make them a good like long-term fit and since they are both dealing with mental health we do have walker see asia have a panic attack at the very beginning of the story be very accepting of that and not like question her too much about it which i appreciated i feel like i needed more of that i feel like i needed more of them being through their issues together rather than apart i feel like i wanted more of like date nights there were only a couple and i wanted more of a small town feel because this is set almost entirely in a small town but i feel like i didn't get to know the side characters as well as i wanted to i feel like it could have been maybe a little bit more charming and a little bit less like sex and anxiety mental health heavy does that make sense i don't know i feel like those are important things to have in a book not the sex but like the the mental health representation i i appreciated it but i just felt like the true relationship development took a backseat to kind of the heavier topics and i wanted this to be a little bit more rom-com those are the 16 books that i've not talked to you about before that i kind of quickly sped through because this reading wrap-up was um very intense and i will leave links to some of the videos where i talked about some of my favorite romances of this month if you would like to see any of those if you're like you just bitched for a whole hour and i want to see what books you actually like i'll leave links those videos in the description if i can remember and again if you want to see like my in-depth thoughts on some steamier romances those will be over on my patreon that's that's kind of it i was trying to think of like any updates that i have for you uh going into the month of august ahead you know because i like to do those at the end of my wrap-ups and honestly there's not a whole lot that i feel like is coming up in august that is that different from the month of july i'm hoping to read honestly a similar amount in the month of august that i did this month we're gonna be seeing videos for me pretty much three times a week for the foreseeable future i have an exciting like kind of project video i think coming that i'm kind of proud of or that i will be proud of when i film it and i do have some like i read fives and some weekly reading vlogs and you know the usual the usual fair here on my channel so i guess like this update was basically telling you that there's gonna be more of the same and i hope you're looking forward to it but thanks so much for watching this video i really appreciate you i just realized uh five seconds ago too that day that you're watching this will be my four year anniversary here on youtube and honestly just wild to me that i've been making videos for that long it doesn't feel like it to me it feels like literally just yesterday that i started um sitting in front of my camera and talking to myself and you about books just want to take the opportunity i guess to say thank you for sticking around if you've been here this entire time or if you've joined later like thank you for watching my videos thank you for supporting me thank you for commenting and talking books with me i would not picture my life any differently and it is also so wild to me that this is my life that this is something that i do with my time um if you would have asked me like in college or like i don't know five years ago hey do you think you're gonna have a youtube channel and like talk to people about books i would not have believed you and it's just it's wild to me that i'm doing this and i'm so happy that i am i love doing this i cannot i cannot imagine my life without all of you and without um you know making stuff i didn't really have anything planned when i brought that up but um i really do appreciate you and i just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you i love you so much um i have good things coming for the rest of the year i hope you're excited about it i have all my content planned for the rest of the year um i will see you in the next video thanks so much for watching and until next time\n"