The Gist of the Book So Far

I'm also the hero is like his family owns the boarding school prep school that they all go to, so like he's had a honcho, whatever. I'm so tired, I'm gonna get 50 into this book though and I will come back to you bright early tomorrow morning and then we can finish off the book after that. Okay, so sadly, I'm actually going to be DNFing A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime. Feel like I was trying so hard in the last clip to like overlook some of the issues in this book, it just didn't get better. I got 15-20ish percent in and the weirdness just never abated, it just never let up, it never quit. The creepy teacher that I talked about a little bit - he definitely is very much a player in the story, and I don't appreciate that. I understand that that's something that likely happens in real life, but the way that it's handled in this book felt gross and egregious, and it's like if this is a known problem in the school, how come no one is reporting this man? Ew.

We also have our hero, Crew, who has his name, and Ren, her name. Crew is just relentless in his pursuit of Ren, but his idea that she needs to be taken down a peg, and like I'm gonna be the one to sexually please her, and like she's gonna give it up for me - kind of thing. I understand teenage boys can be gross, operator words sometimes don't really want to read about it, and it's the way he is consistently talking about her on one page, I counted three or four times, of him using the word virgin to describe this girl. And I understand like that's what he's after, whatever, but calling her little Miss Virgin, and she's so virginal in her little socks and her little skirt, and she has a bow in her hair like a little girl, I just was feeling deeply uncomfortable. Let's just say that I was feeling deeply uncomfortable which is not how I want to be feeling when I'm reading a romance.

Again, I'm able to overlook certain things, I understand like misogyny, and you know boys just being boys in some of these romances, like it does become something that the character grows from, and like they become a decent person. But this, I just couldn't do it, and it's weird because I mean the reviews are very mixed for the story on Goodreads, from what I can tell, but some people, who I wouldn't expect gave this book five stars, and just said like oh, it was kind of silly, but I enjoyed it. I don't know, maybe this particular juncture, I'm just unable to overlook certain things, but um yeah, I couldn't, couldn't overlook things, and this was not a story that I found myself immersed in.

So definitely that makes this vlog a little shorter than I had intended, but I just feel like I'm at the point in my life, and especially in my reading journey right now, where I don't want to continue on with books that I just absolutely know we're not going to be for me. Who knows, maybe there are some redemptive moments here, maybe this book is actually fantastic, but I kind of don't think that's going to be the case so I'm not going to continue on with it. But um yeah, I just, I don't have time for it.

All Things Considered

I feel like this was a very successful KU reading vlog. I had two books that I really, really liked and enjoyed, one book that just didn't get better, and another one that didn't work out but the other two, I just feel like having a five-star and a four-star romance in the same video, I'm willing to overlook any hate I had or extreme dislike I had for this last book. So I would say if you're looking for a really good small-town romance, but got flawless, if you're looking for like new all-time favorite romance material and you like a grumpy grumpy romance, it's just so good. Pick up Wicking Olivia okay that's what you need to take away from this video. Pick up Wicking Olivia.

Another KU Vlog Coming Up

I don't do these every week, but you know the past couple of videos have been just like regular contemporaries, but I want to try something a little different. Let's get into dark romance again, so that'll be coming, I think like the last week of July. But thank you so much for watching this.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel today i'm going to be doing another kindle unlimited reading vlog are we shocked are we surprised you shouldn't be because i do these kind of often i think i have about one or two of these planned each month for the rest of the year so much to look forward to hopefully and also i just have so many ku books that i'm adding to my tbr because i feel like especially right now i'm seeing so many books on instagram that are calling to me and that is definitely the case for this vlog i picked all of these books because they had pink in the cover i'll be honest with you but also a lot of these are books that i just cannot stop hearing about and or intrigued by i i don't know a ton about each of the books but i did do a quick peruse so i could quickly tell you like what the synopsis or like vibe of each book is before we go into the vlog um but yeah three ku books let's let's talk about which ones i'm going to re-reading i think the first one is a high school new adult romance called a million kisses in your lifetime by monica murphy this is the one that i think i'm like the most tentative about simply because it is set in high school i've heard that there is some like misogyny at play am i going to be bothered by it am i going to like be okay with the fact that this is probably like at least a little bit of bully romance i mean i don't want to say that it for sure will be but what romance have i ever read that's in high school isn't a little bit of bully romance you know anyway excited to read this one tentative but excited the other two i think are gonna be slam dunks just because i've heard more about them and i feel like the synopsis android like five of the books are just they're more my speed so flawless by elsie silver is a book that i literally see everywhere i feel like this one and another book that i'm not reading for this video but i'm ready for another video i've seen a lot about i think it's a new release and this one is about a bull rider who i want to say is like working for the heroine's dad and the dad is like you can't be with my daughter or something like that uh forced proximity grumpy sunshine i think it's like small town vibes i mean bull riding it's a little bit yeehaw like i'm a little bit yeehaw so like i'm kind of down for it i didn't realize nuggets ear was in the corner this whole time and then the last one that i'm reading uh is the one i'm currently reading actually and it is waking olivia by elizabeth o'rourke how do you feel about that teddy he is pleased with my selection i'm 10 into this book and i'm already having a good time let's talk about it waking olivia is a new adult sports romance and it is set in a college setting already liking it because our heroine went to the university of texas for two years my alma mater and now she is at eastern colorado university she had to transfer because she took a baseball bat to one of her teammates hospitalized them and almost killed them she's she's kind of going through it she is a cross-country runner and she still i guess wants to run she still has like a passion for running but at the start of the story she kind of has this like i don't want to say bad attitude but she's not in a good place she's definitely not in a good place she sleep runs as well which is kind of hindering her performance on the team and on top of that this guy that is the coach of her new team she didn't expect him to be the coach she thought this kind of like say world-renowned but this like really illustrious head coach of the men's cross country team would like have something to do with hers sadly that's not the case there's just this random guy named will who's super hot super grumpy who is the coach of her team and he's giving her a really hard time so not only is she kind of like suffering herself she's obviously been through some stuff we don't know why she hurt her teammate but we're assuming it was probably justified does have childhood trauma on top of that and uh she also you know she's doing this the sleep running she's got a bad coach she's got a lot going on miss olivia who likes to go by finn i think it's olivia finnegan she goes by finn she wants to be bald finn but her coach calls her olivia i was wondering too like why this book was called waking olivia and i feel like the cover of this book makes it seem like it's going to be this like a certain kind of romance i don't know how to describe it but it's giving like a mia sheridan book to me like it's giving deeply emotional not smutty romance and i know that that's not gonna be the case for this one so i feel like the cover was a little misleading so it was the title and that's why i didn't initially pick it up when when i heard about it the first time but after reading a deal with the devil i was like i gotta pick this one up and so far i mean i'm enjoying it there's just something so different i would say tonally about elizabeth o'rourke's writing that i personally enjoy it's something that i connect with and i feel like if i were to write a romance i'm hoping to do at some point totally i would like it to be like this it's a little bit melancholy all of her stories i feel like have a little bit of a melancholy tone to them they're not like super bright and shiny rom-com but there is definitely a humorous element to all of the dialogue between hero and heroine definitely dark humor but it's humor that i can appreciate from the beginning you can tell that there's sexual tension between the characters never insta love but definitely like a sexual tension and chemistry that builds throughout the story this book's no exception and i'm loving it okay i'm loving it it's a good time and i'm only like 10 15 in i guess we'll see i'm gonna withhold my judgment maybe this like turns out to be terrible i really don't think it will be but maybe maybe something weird will happen i'm gonna keep reading i'll update you like the longer the book goes on curious to see kind of what happens with olivia's sleep running and if that resolves itself maybe like sleeping by will her coach at night will like make her not run i don't i don't know i'll be i want to know how that resolves itself okay so i'm like 50 into waking olivia i'm definitely finishing this book tonight and i am in love like it is so compelling it's such a page turner and the plot is surprisingly like very interesting i don't really need a strong plot and i definitely think that elizabeth o'rourke does character dynamics character dialogue and interaction so well that like if there were no plot to this book i probably wouldn't give a but the plot is so interesting the fact that olivia is sleep running the fact that will is having to be there for her and try to get her to stop doing this um by basically like being with her before meets it's what i want it is the perfect tension-filled angsty romance that i want i also really like olivia's character which i think is interesting because i saw some goodreads reviews that said they found olivia to be irritating or too and i'm like her childhood from what we know of it uh in flashback which isn't much seems pretty traumatizing she was abandoned by both of her parents her brother ran away at age eight like she's been through some no one cares for her she's never gotten any sympathy from anyone so i definitely understand why she acts the way that she does if anything surprised that more characters and books don't act the way that she does seems like a lot of authors are willing to give characters trauma but aren't willing to have characters that react appropriately because of that drama i mean everybody reacts differently so who am i to say the appropriate trauma response is but i like this alternative i guess portrayal i feel like i've never really seen a romance heroine like this maybe not never but it has been a while i feel like i only get characters like this in like y a books interestingly enough i like it i love the slow burn i love that even at 50 we have gotten literally no like touch from them she just touched his chest for the first time i guess technically he has slept by her side during one of these like episodes which i don't think she really knows at this point i'm just loving it and i feel like i'm gonna be hard-pressed to find and elizabeth overwork a book that does not work for me going forward i could continue to ramble on i think i'm gonna go ahead and take a shower and then finish this book because i'm just so into it already i'm gonna tell you to go pick it up okay okay okay i will say though uh one thing before i go is that there is cheating in this book so that does bother you okay but i feel like whenever the person that's getting cheated on uh has no character development and plays literally no role in the story like who really gives a right i mean controversial maybe do i care also no well yes hello i am back and i have a new favorite romance of all time i miss surprises you are absolutely adored waking olivia it did at times make me teary-eyed especially near the end there and honestly i just feel like this was exquisitely crafted i think i was maybe mentioning this or maybe it was just in my head and i didn't actually mention it or like fully flesh out my feelings but i feel like when i first started this i was i was definitely noticing how elizabeth works writing has matured over time and i definitely think that is the case but there's something so raw and uh real about the story that i just really appreciated there definitely is a drama and attention and angst in the story that i wasn't necessarily expecting to come into play the girlfriend uh thing kind of became more of a plot point than i really thought that it was going to be which was unexpected though i wouldn't say unwelcome i was actually kind of like into having the girlfriend be sort of like i don't want to say a i mean she was a but i i liked the part that she played in the story in creating tension and angst keeping our lovers from being together at least at some points in the story i also i don't know i just i liked it i also liked the plot twist at the end-ish of the book really i did not see that coming i probably should have but like wow this made it a not a thriller but like you know there were definitely some thrilling plot points and moments near the end of the story so you know i don't have much else to say about the story except for i absolutely adored it i loved the characters this is a new all-time favorite romance i've since added it to my amazon wishlist have a physical copy of i'm not buying any books this year so um i just get to go and look at that wish list for the next six months and just you know count down the days i guess until i get to own a copy of it if you are looking for a new adult sports romance with a justifiably main character grumpy grumpy romance there's no sunshine here it's just all grump if you're looking for grit and reality extremely tension-filled steamy-ness pick it up mic drop i'm done i'm done talking about this book it's amazing pick it up wish i could say that i have since started flawless by elsie silver i have not uh that is the next book that i'm going to be picking up for this video though and i am excited to get into it i have just sadly been uh reading for their videos and i say sadly because the other because i'm reading right now are not very good but i have every faith that flawless is going to knock it out of the park i will update you once i'm like 20 in okay so i am about 20 into i was about to say chestnut springs into a flawless which is one of the books in i believe the chestnut springs series by elsie silver and it's pretty cute i'm enjoying it i say cute i don't know i don't think the cute's necessarily the right word for this book but it is entertaining thus far this book is about our two main characters rhett and summer rhett is a professional bull writer and at the start of the story he is kind of getting into trouble he is kind of in the later stages of his career but he is still writing high and doing very well he's like in his 30s which is definitely old for like the bull riding scene but he has a lot of sponsors he's kind of infamous and people who don't even follow bull writing kind of know who he is because he's super hot and kind of a womanizer but at the start of the story he is getting into trouble because he says that he doesn't like milk someone like overhears him saying this gets him on camera saying it and since he is sponsored by i want to say like a milk company they're unhappy and they pull their sponsorship and a couple of his other sponsors are considering pulling their sponsorships i think he also gets into a physical altercation with someone i think he like punches someone and uh yeah things are not looking so great for rhett right now he's not like total loser at this point you know what i mean he's not like late stages of his career like yikes things are looking bad he definitely needs to get himself back on track so that he can keep his sponsorships and save his family's farm now his family farm is run by his father who's still alive and his i want to say two or three other brothers we are on the farm for the first kind of part of the book now summer comes in because after some of these altercations after these issues that red has been having his manager kip is like hey uh you need someone to look after you you need a babysitter because you obviously can't handle your by yourself even though you're a grown adult man so he sends his daughter summer who is like a recent law school graduate and or new manager at that company like a new um like talent manager i guess she's going to be your babysitter and she has to keep him in check make sure he doesn't like bring home random women make sure he doesn't get in fights make sure he doesn't piss off any of his sponsors and so summer is going to be staying i want to say at the farm with the guys she's met rhett's dad she's met some of the brothers i think right now they are out at a bar um it's like their first night together all together yeah i've enjoyed it so far i like the interactions between kip and his daughter and also kip and uh rhett surprisingly like the dad the dad slash the manager of rhett is actually one of the funnier characters in the story and like one of the ones that i think is kind of interesting i'm liking the interactions i'm liking the sense of humor the only thing that i'm like not totally sold on at this point is is rhett as a character i don't think he is bad per se but i feel like i've read this character a million times and i think unless there's some sort of like emotional vulnerability or something i don't know that the story is going to be something super stand out for me that's the thing it's like if you're going to do familiar tropes and you're going to you know give me like a womanizing bad boy of a sport like there's gonna have to be something else there i'm hoping at the very least that like summer is someone who really stands up for herself i am sort of getting those vibes so far there's also some hints that maybe she doesn't totally love her job so i'm wondering if she's going to have some sort of self-discovery as the story carries on but uh so far like i'm enjoying it i'm tentatively excited for it i think i will probably read some more of this tomorrow because i want to finish an elizabethan workbook i'm trying to finish a devil in the deep blue sea so i'll finish that tonight and i will read flawless tomorrow he wants me to feed him which i'm gonna do after i finish this clip also i'm facing a different direction so you know trying to give you that varied content though it looks identical because this is just a white box i finished flawless and it was cute i think i would give this book like three and a half four stars i'm gonna put it as like four stars on goodreads probably i like how i talked about how i was hoping that like maybe the sex scenes wouldn't be cringe i did at times kind of cringe a little bit that's not to say that y'all will i think a lot of the possessiveness and the spiciness will be something that a lot of people enjoy for me i just didn't totally love it i think that's because i've just been in a slower burn mood lately that's not to say that they hook up like immediately upon you know discovering their feelings for each other but i did feel like just not totally invested i guess in the sexual relationship or in the relationship in general that's kind of where i'm going with this at the 50 mark red and summer you know they tell each other how they feel about each other they also kind of talk a little bit about their backgrounds and their childhoods etc so we do understand more about them and their motivations i feel like after that 50 mark there wasn't a lot in the way of relationship development i feel like i wanted more from their interactions this story i don't want to say it was like all spent in the characters heads but it did seem like there was a lot of internal thought going on and maybe not as much dialogue as i personally would have preferred certainly wasn't bad i mean it was an enjoyable story i think i'm just you know still kind of hung up on waking olivia like it was such a good book and this one i don't want to say pales in comparison because that feels like an unfair comparison but i do feel like that one had so much nuance in the characters and in the way that they react to their trauma this one felt very like typical and it felt like all of the conclusions that were come to i guess conclusions came to conclusions conclusions that were come to came to the characters came to conclusions they felt like very natural conclusions like brett makes a decision about his career and summer makes decisions about her career and her past and it all felt very formulaic and again sometimes you're not looking for something that is going to be out there and super nuanced and maybe be unlikable at parts you know what i mean but i was just i was feeling black there that's making it sound like i didn't enjoy this book i did have a good time with it it was a really like quick enjoyable read and i do want to read more of the books in the series i'm hoping that maybe some of the other heroes will be more my speed i think that's probably another thing too that like didn't make this you know a five star read for me was that rhett like while he was a fine hero and i did appreciate the way that he was possessive in some ways of our heroine his immaturity i think was something that i just didn't totally love and i think the next book is about a single father rhett's older brother kade and that is something that i think i'd really with he definitely has more of a stern persona it seemed like any of the more stern characters in this book i could just tell that i feel like our author probably excels in that avenue like sometimes you can just tell when authors like have a thing and they're like really good at that thing and i just feel like elsie silver is probably pretty good at doing a grumpy hero i guess rhett at points in the story is grumpy but that's not really his like vibe i really feel like cade is gonna be the hero that i really connect with so i'm excited to read that one when it comes out and i definitely will be reading that one and possibly picking up more of elsie silver's backlist because this was it was a good book maybe not like the earth shaking world shattering thing that i wanted it to be but like i said that i did i wanted to be that or did i just want it to be enjoyable i digress i have since started i keep wanting to say a million boy kisses because i keep getting it confused with a thousand boy kisses but million kisses in your lifetime by monica murphy now i've never read any books by monica murphy before i did realize that i actually have rate a date on my shelves and i'll be listening to the audiobook of that probably sometime this month too so if this one goes terribly i will have another book by her that i don't think is new adult that i can kind of like compare to and see you know if her stories are for me but this one is about our main characters i cannot remember the name of i'll be honest i'll bring that information next time we talk our heroine is described as virginal so she's like the new girl at school freshman year i think and she is beautiful and kind and interesting and a virgin and like i don't know has like committed herself to virginity and has like a promise ring i don't know it's like one of those weird i committed myself and like i promised my dad i wouldn't anyone weirdness she is very popular and everybody really likes her and our hero doesn't really buy it like he does but he doesn't he's like you know she's such a light in the school everybody likes her but why is she still a virgin i want to be the one to de-virginize her which is weird enough in an of itself then we also have the addition of the creepy teacher at the very beginning of the story we have our heroine going to class and she sees one of her best friends like hanging all over the teacher and she's like this is weird her friend goes away and then after the class is over he calls her up calls our main character up to his desk and is like hey i know you're going to be my ta next semester and he gets like all up in her face and stuff and it's just a creepy encounter yeah the writing is weird there's definitely rampant misogyny so i can't really fight back on that claim i read like the top goodreads review in my like friends goodreads reviews say that they dnf this book give it one star because misogyny was rampant i don't disagree i'm willing to overlook it kind of because this is kind of like a silly new adult romance and that's kind of par for the course and i'm just used to it and it doesn't like i'm not saying it doesn't bother me but you're on the head of a teenage boy like i feel like it's not really that outlandish i don't i don't know what to think about this story to be to be completely honest with you our heroine is very much a goody two shoes in her internal dialogue when she's thinking about her friend embracing with this teacher she like is talking about how you know she really shouldn't give away her charms and you need to make smart decisions about who you're gonna take this next step with and stuff it just it feels very preachy and i just don't know where the story is going to go i think it's going to be like the hero is going to try to get with the heroine because he wants to like take her virginity and he also thinks like she's not really who she says she is i don't know i don't know y'all this is something i'm good at with all judgment though this could surprise me maybe i don't know i mean dear eva one of my favorite noodle romances starts kind of weird and it turns out to be a favorite so maybe this will go in that direction i'm not holding out that much hope but i am withholding judgment so i'm gonna go ahead and keep reading this book i'm only like five or six percent in so you know not that far but i kind of get the gist of the book so far i'm also the hero is like his family owns the boarding school prep school that they all go to so like he's had a honcho whatever i'm so tired i'm gonna get 50 into this book though and i will come back to you bright early tomorrow morning and then we can finish off the book after that okay so sadly i'm actually going to be dnfing a million kisses in your lifetime feel like i was trying so hard in the last clip to like overlook some of the issues in this book it just didn't get better i got i want to say like 15 20ish percent in and the weirdness just never abated it just never let up it never quit the creepy teacher that i talked about a little bit he definitely is very much a player in the story and i don't i really don't appreciate that i understand that that's something that likely happens in real life but the way that it's handled in this book felt gross and egregious and it's like if this is a known problem in the school how come no one is reporting this man ew and then we also have our hero hero his name is crew and her name is ren crew is just relentless in his i don't want to say pursuit of ren but his idea that like she needs to be taken down a peg and like i'm gonna be the one to sexually please her and like she's gonna give it up for me kind of thing i understand teenage boys are gross operative words sometimes don't really want to read about it and it's the way that he is consistently talking about her on one page i counted three or four times of him using the word virgin to describe this girl and i understand like that's what he's after whatever but calling her little miss virgin and she's so virginal in her little socks and her little skirt and she has a bow in her hair like a little girl i just i was feeling deeply uncomfortable let's just say that i was feeling deeply uncomfortable which is not how i want to be feeling when i'm reading a romance and again i'm able to overlook certain things i understand like misogyny and like you know boys just being boys in some of these romances like it does become something that the character grows from and like they become a decent person and like you know i'm here for that but this i just i couldn't i couldn't do it and it's weird because i mean the reviews are very mixed for the story on goodreads from what i can tell but some people that like i wouldn't expect gave this book five stars and just said like oh it was kind of silly but i enjoyed it i don't know maybe this particular juncture i'm just unable to overlook certain things but um yeah i couldn't i couldn't overlook things and this was not a story that i found myself immersed in so definitely that makes this vlog a little shorter than i had intended but i just feel like i'm at the point in my life and especially in my reading journey right now where i don't want to continue on with books that i just absolutely know we're not going to be for me who knows maybe there are some like redemptive moments here maybe this book is actually fantastic i kind of don't think that that's going to be the case so i'm not going to continue on with it but um yeah i just i don't have time for it that being said all things considered i feel like this was a very successful ku reading vlog i had two books that i really really liked and enjoyed one book that just didn't it just wasn't for me it didn't work out but the other two i just feel like having a five-star and a four-star romance in the same video i'm willing to overlook any you know hatred i had or extreme dislike i had for this last book so i would say if you're looking for a really good small town romance but got flawless if you're looking for like new all-time favorite romance material and you like a grumpy grumpy romance like it's just so good pick up waking olivia okay that's what you need to take away from this video pick up wicking olivia so that is it for me i have another one of these ku vlogs coming in a couple weeks i think for that one i'm going to be reading some dark romances so a little bit different than we've been doing for the past a couple of weeks i don't do these every week but you know the past couple of videos have been just like regular contemporaries but i want to try something a little different let's get into dark romance again so that'll be coming i think like the last week of july but thank you so much for watching this i love you so much and until next time youhello welcome back to my channel today i'm going to be doing another kindle unlimited reading vlog are we shocked are we surprised you shouldn't be because i do these kind of often i think i have about one or two of these planned each month for the rest of the year so much to look forward to hopefully and also i just have so many ku books that i'm adding to my tbr because i feel like especially right now i'm seeing so many books on instagram that are calling to me and that is definitely the case for this vlog i picked all of these books because they had pink in the cover i'll be honest with you but also a lot of these are books that i just cannot stop hearing about and or intrigued by i i don't know a ton about each of the books but i did do a quick peruse so i could quickly tell you like what the synopsis or like vibe of each book is before we go into the vlog um but yeah three ku books let's let's talk about which ones i'm going to re-reading i think the first one is a high school new adult romance called a million kisses in your lifetime by monica murphy this is the one that i think i'm like the most tentative about simply because it is set in high school i've heard that there is some like misogyny at play am i going to be bothered by it am i going to like be okay with the fact that this is probably like at least a little bit of bully romance i mean i don't want to say that it for sure will be but what romance have i ever read that's in high school isn't a little bit of bully romance you know anyway excited to read this one tentative but excited the other two i think are gonna be slam dunks just because i've heard more about them and i feel like the synopsis android like five of the books are just they're more my speed so flawless by elsie silver is a book that i literally see everywhere i feel like this one and another book that i'm not reading for this video but i'm ready for another video i've seen a lot about i think it's a new release and this one is about a bull rider who i want to say is like working for the heroine's dad and the dad is like you can't be with my daughter or something like that uh forced proximity grumpy sunshine i think it's like small town vibes i mean bull riding it's a little bit yeehaw like i'm a little bit yeehaw so like i'm kind of down for it i didn't realize nuggets ear was in the corner this whole time and then the last one that i'm reading uh is the one i'm currently reading actually and it is waking olivia by elizabeth o'rourke how do you feel about that teddy he is pleased with my selection i'm 10 into this book and i'm already having a good time let's talk about it waking olivia is a new adult sports romance and it is set in a college setting already liking it because our heroine went to the university of texas for two years my alma mater and now she is at eastern colorado university she had to transfer because she took a baseball bat to one of her teammates hospitalized them and almost killed them she's she's kind of going through it she is a cross-country runner and she still i guess wants to run she still has like a passion for running but at the start of the story she kind of has this like i don't want to say bad attitude but she's not in a good place she's definitely not in a good place she sleep runs as well which is kind of hindering her performance on the team and on top of that this guy that is the coach of her new team she didn't expect him to be the coach she thought this kind of like say world-renowned but this like really illustrious head coach of the men's cross country team would like have something to do with hers sadly that's not the case there's just this random guy named will who's super hot super grumpy who is the coach of her team and he's giving her a really hard time so not only is she kind of like suffering herself she's obviously been through some stuff we don't know why she hurt her teammate but we're assuming it was probably justified does have childhood trauma on top of that and uh she also you know she's doing this the sleep running she's got a bad coach she's got a lot going on miss olivia who likes to go by finn i think it's olivia finnegan she goes by finn she wants to be bald finn but her coach calls her olivia i was wondering too like why this book was called waking olivia and i feel like the cover of this book makes it seem like it's going to be this like a certain kind of romance i don't know how to describe it but it's giving like a mia sheridan book to me like it's giving deeply emotional not smutty romance and i know that that's not gonna be the case for this one so i feel like the cover was a little misleading so it was the title and that's why i didn't initially pick it up when when i heard about it the first time but after reading a deal with the devil i was like i gotta pick this one up and so far i mean i'm enjoying it there's just something so different i would say tonally about elizabeth o'rourke's writing that i personally enjoy it's something that i connect with and i feel like if i were to write a romance i'm hoping to do at some point totally i would like it to be like this it's a little bit melancholy all of her stories i feel like have a little bit of a melancholy tone to them they're not like super bright and shiny rom-com but there is definitely a humorous element to all of the dialogue between hero and heroine definitely dark humor but it's humor that i can appreciate from the beginning you can tell that there's sexual tension between the characters never insta love but definitely like a sexual tension and chemistry that builds throughout the story this book's no exception and i'm loving it okay i'm loving it it's a good time and i'm only like 10 15 in i guess we'll see i'm gonna withhold my judgment maybe this like turns out to be terrible i really don't think it will be but maybe maybe something weird will happen i'm gonna keep reading i'll update you like the longer the book goes on curious to see kind of what happens with olivia's sleep running and if that resolves itself maybe like sleeping by will her coach at night will like make her not run i don't i don't know i'll be i want to know how that resolves itself okay so i'm like 50 into waking olivia i'm definitely finishing this book tonight and i am in love like it is so compelling it's such a page turner and the plot is surprisingly like very interesting i don't really need a strong plot and i definitely think that elizabeth o'rourke does character dynamics character dialogue and interaction so well that like if there were no plot to this book i probably wouldn't give a but the plot is so interesting the fact that olivia is sleep running the fact that will is having to be there for her and try to get her to stop doing this um by basically like being with her before meets it's what i want it is the perfect tension-filled angsty romance that i want i also really like olivia's character which i think is interesting because i saw some goodreads reviews that said they found olivia to be irritating or too and i'm like her childhood from what we know of it uh in flashback which isn't much seems pretty traumatizing she was abandoned by both of her parents her brother ran away at age eight like she's been through some no one cares for her she's never gotten any sympathy from anyone so i definitely understand why she acts the way that she does if anything surprised that more characters and books don't act the way that she does seems like a lot of authors are willing to give characters trauma but aren't willing to have characters that react appropriately because of that drama i mean everybody reacts differently so who am i to say the appropriate trauma response is but i like this alternative i guess portrayal i feel like i've never really seen a romance heroine like this maybe not never but it has been a while i feel like i only get characters like this in like y a books interestingly enough i like it i love the slow burn i love that even at 50 we have gotten literally no like touch from them she just touched his chest for the first time i guess technically he has slept by her side during one of these like episodes which i don't think she really knows at this point i'm just loving it and i feel like i'm gonna be hard-pressed to find and elizabeth overwork a book that does not work for me going forward i could continue to ramble on i think i'm gonna go ahead and take a shower and then finish this book because i'm just so into it already i'm gonna tell you to go pick it up okay okay okay i will say though uh one thing before i go is that there is cheating in this book so that does bother you okay but i feel like whenever the person that's getting cheated on uh has no character development and plays literally no role in the story like who really gives a right i mean controversial maybe do i care also no well yes hello i am back and i have a new favorite romance of all time i miss surprises you are absolutely adored waking olivia it did at times make me teary-eyed especially near the end there and honestly i just feel like this was exquisitely crafted i think i was maybe mentioning this or maybe it was just in my head and i didn't actually mention it or like fully flesh out my feelings but i feel like when i first started this i was i was definitely noticing how elizabeth works writing has matured over time and i definitely think that is the case but there's something so raw and uh real about the story that i just really appreciated there definitely is a drama and attention and angst in the story that i wasn't necessarily expecting to come into play the girlfriend uh thing kind of became more of a plot point than i really thought that it was going to be which was unexpected though i wouldn't say unwelcome i was actually kind of like into having the girlfriend be sort of like i don't want to say a i mean she was a but i i liked the part that she played in the story in creating tension and angst keeping our lovers from being together at least at some points in the story i also i don't know i just i liked it i also liked the plot twist at the end-ish of the book really i did not see that coming i probably should have but like wow this made it a not a thriller but like you know there were definitely some thrilling plot points and moments near the end of the story so you know i don't have much else to say about the story except for i absolutely adored it i loved the characters this is a new all-time favorite romance i've since added it to my amazon wishlist have a physical copy of i'm not buying any books this year so um i just get to go and look at that wish list for the next six months and just you know count down the days i guess until i get to own a copy of it if you are looking for a new adult sports romance with a justifiably main character grumpy grumpy romance there's no sunshine here it's just all grump if you're looking for grit and reality extremely tension-filled steamy-ness pick it up mic drop i'm done i'm done talking about this book it's amazing pick it up wish i could say that i have since started flawless by elsie silver i have not uh that is the next book that i'm going to be picking up for this video though and i am excited to get into it i have just sadly been uh reading for their videos and i say sadly because the other because i'm reading right now are not very good but i have every faith that flawless is going to knock it out of the park i will update you once i'm like 20 in okay so i am about 20 into i was about to say chestnut springs into a flawless which is one of the books in i believe the chestnut springs series by elsie silver and it's pretty cute i'm enjoying it i say cute i don't know i don't think the cute's necessarily the right word for this book but it is entertaining thus far this book is about our two main characters rhett and summer rhett is a professional bull writer and at the start of the story he is kind of getting into trouble he is kind of in the later stages of his career but he is still writing high and doing very well he's like in his 30s which is definitely old for like the bull riding scene but he has a lot of sponsors he's kind of infamous and people who don't even follow bull writing kind of know who he is because he's super hot and kind of a womanizer but at the start of the story he is getting into trouble because he says that he doesn't like milk someone like overhears him saying this gets him on camera saying it and since he is sponsored by i want to say like a milk company they're unhappy and they pull their sponsorship and a couple of his other sponsors are considering pulling their sponsorships i think he also gets into a physical altercation with someone i think he like punches someone and uh yeah things are not looking so great for rhett right now he's not like total loser at this point you know what i mean he's not like late stages of his career like yikes things are looking bad he definitely needs to get himself back on track so that he can keep his sponsorships and save his family's farm now his family farm is run by his father who's still alive and his i want to say two or three other brothers we are on the farm for the first kind of part of the book now summer comes in because after some of these altercations after these issues that red has been having his manager kip is like hey uh you need someone to look after you you need a babysitter because you obviously can't handle your by yourself even though you're a grown adult man so he sends his daughter summer who is like a recent law school graduate and or new manager at that company like a new um like talent manager i guess she's going to be your babysitter and she has to keep him in check make sure he doesn't like bring home random women make sure he doesn't get in fights make sure he doesn't piss off any of his sponsors and so summer is going to be staying i want to say at the farm with the guys she's met rhett's dad she's met some of the brothers i think right now they are out at a bar um it's like their first night together all together yeah i've enjoyed it so far i like the interactions between kip and his daughter and also kip and uh rhett surprisingly like the dad the dad slash the manager of rhett is actually one of the funnier characters in the story and like one of the ones that i think is kind of interesting i'm liking the interactions i'm liking the sense of humor the only thing that i'm like not totally sold on at this point is is rhett as a character i don't think he is bad per se but i feel like i've read this character a million times and i think unless there's some sort of like emotional vulnerability or something i don't know that the story is going to be something super stand out for me that's the thing it's like if you're going to do familiar tropes and you're going to you know give me like a womanizing bad boy of a sport like there's gonna have to be something else there i'm hoping at the very least that like summer is someone who really stands up for herself i am sort of getting those vibes so far there's also some hints that maybe she doesn't totally love her job so i'm wondering if she's going to have some sort of self-discovery as the story carries on but uh so far like i'm enjoying it i'm tentatively excited for it i think i will probably read some more of this tomorrow because i want to finish an elizabethan workbook i'm trying to finish a devil in the deep blue sea so i'll finish that tonight and i will read flawless tomorrow he wants me to feed him which i'm gonna do after i finish this clip also i'm facing a different direction so you know trying to give you that varied content though it looks identical because this is just a white box i finished flawless and it was cute i think i would give this book like three and a half four stars i'm gonna put it as like four stars on goodreads probably i like how i talked about how i was hoping that like maybe the sex scenes wouldn't be cringe i did at times kind of cringe a little bit that's not to say that y'all will i think a lot of the possessiveness and the spiciness will be something that a lot of people enjoy for me i just didn't totally love it i think that's because i've just been in a slower burn mood lately that's not to say that they hook up like immediately upon you know discovering their feelings for each other but i did feel like just not totally invested i guess in the sexual relationship or in the relationship in general that's kind of where i'm going with this at the 50 mark red and summer you know they tell each other how they feel about each other they also kind of talk a little bit about their backgrounds and their childhoods etc so we do understand more about them and their motivations i feel like after that 50 mark there wasn't a lot in the way of relationship development i feel like i wanted more from their interactions this story i don't want to say it was like all spent in the characters heads but it did seem like there was a lot of internal thought going on and maybe not as much dialogue as i personally would have preferred certainly wasn't bad i mean it was an enjoyable story i think i'm just you know still kind of hung up on waking olivia like it was such a good book and this one i don't want to say pales in comparison because that feels like an unfair comparison but i do feel like that one had so much nuance in the characters and in the way that they react to their trauma this one felt very like typical and it felt like all of the conclusions that were come to i guess conclusions came to conclusions conclusions that were come to came to the characters came to conclusions they felt like very natural conclusions like brett makes a decision about his career and summer makes decisions about her career and her past and it all felt very formulaic and again sometimes you're not looking for something that is going to be out there and super nuanced and maybe be unlikable at parts you know what i mean but i was just i was feeling black there that's making it sound like i didn't enjoy this book i did have a good time with it it was a really like quick enjoyable read and i do want to read more of the books in the series i'm hoping that maybe some of the other heroes will be more my speed i think that's probably another thing too that like didn't make this you know a five star read for me was that rhett like while he was a fine hero and i did appreciate the way that he was possessive in some ways of our heroine his immaturity i think was something that i just didn't totally love and i think the next book is about a single father rhett's older brother kade and that is something that i think i'd really with he definitely has more of a stern persona it seemed like any of the more stern characters in this book i could just tell that i feel like our author probably excels in that avenue like sometimes you can just tell when authors like have a thing and they're like really good at that thing and i just feel like elsie silver is probably pretty good at doing a grumpy hero i guess rhett at points in the story is grumpy but that's not really his like vibe i really feel like cade is gonna be the hero that i really connect with so i'm excited to read that one when it comes out and i definitely will be reading that one and possibly picking up more of elsie silver's backlist because this was it was a good book maybe not like the earth shaking world shattering thing that i wanted it to be but like i said that i did i wanted to be that or did i just want it to be enjoyable i digress i have since started i keep wanting to say a million boy kisses because i keep getting it confused with a thousand boy kisses but million kisses in your lifetime by monica murphy now i've never read any books by monica murphy before i did realize that i actually have rate a date on my shelves and i'll be listening to the audiobook of that probably sometime this month too so if this one goes terribly i will have another book by her that i don't think is new adult that i can kind of like compare to and see you know if her stories are for me but this one is about our main characters i cannot remember the name of i'll be honest i'll bring that information next time we talk our heroine is described as virginal so she's like the new girl at school freshman year i think and she is beautiful and kind and interesting and a virgin and like i don't know has like committed herself to virginity and has like a promise ring i don't know it's like one of those weird i committed myself and like i promised my dad i wouldn't anyone weirdness she is very popular and everybody really likes her and our hero doesn't really buy it like he does but he doesn't he's like you know she's such a light in the school everybody likes her but why is she still a virgin i want to be the one to de-virginize her which is weird enough in an of itself then we also have the addition of the creepy teacher at the very beginning of the story we have our heroine going to class and she sees one of her best friends like hanging all over the teacher and she's like this is weird her friend goes away and then after the class is over he calls her up calls our main character up to his desk and is like hey i know you're going to be my ta next semester and he gets like all up in her face and stuff and it's just a creepy encounter yeah the writing is weird there's definitely rampant misogyny so i can't really fight back on that claim i read like the top goodreads review in my like friends goodreads reviews say that they dnf this book give it one star because misogyny was rampant i don't disagree i'm willing to overlook it kind of because this is kind of like a silly new adult romance and that's kind of par for the course and i'm just used to it and it doesn't like i'm not saying it doesn't bother me but you're on the head of a teenage boy like i feel like it's not really that outlandish i don't i don't know what to think about this story to be to be completely honest with you our heroine is very much a goody two shoes in her internal dialogue when she's thinking about her friend embracing with this teacher she like is talking about how you know she really shouldn't give away her charms and you need to make smart decisions about who you're gonna take this next step with and stuff it just it feels very preachy and i just don't know where the story is going to go i think it's going to be like the hero is going to try to get with the heroine because he wants to like take her virginity and he also thinks like she's not really who she says she is i don't know i don't know y'all this is something i'm good at with all judgment though this could surprise me maybe i don't know i mean dear eva one of my favorite noodle romances starts kind of weird and it turns out to be a favorite so maybe this will go in that direction i'm not holding out that much hope but i am withholding judgment so i'm gonna go ahead and keep reading this book i'm only like five or six percent in so you know not that far but i kind of get the gist of the book so far i'm also the hero is like his family owns the boarding school prep school that they all go to so like he's had a honcho whatever i'm so tired i'm gonna get 50 into this book though and i will come back to you bright early tomorrow morning and then we can finish off the book after that okay so sadly i'm actually going to be dnfing a million kisses in your lifetime feel like i was trying so hard in the last clip to like overlook some of the issues in this book it just didn't get better i got i want to say like 15 20ish percent in and the weirdness just never abated it just never let up it never quit the creepy teacher that i talked about a little bit he definitely is very much a player in the story and i don't i really don't appreciate that i understand that that's something that likely happens in real life but the way that it's handled in this book felt gross and egregious and it's like if this is a known problem in the school how come no one is reporting this man ew and then we also have our hero hero his name is crew and her name is ren crew is just relentless in his i don't want to say pursuit of ren but his idea that like she needs to be taken down a peg and like i'm gonna be the one to sexually please her and like she's gonna give it up for me kind of thing i understand teenage boys are gross operative words sometimes don't really want to read about it and it's the way that he is consistently talking about her on one page i counted three or four times of him using the word virgin to describe this girl and i understand like that's what he's after whatever but calling her little miss virgin and she's so virginal in her little socks and her little skirt and she has a bow in her hair like a little girl i just i was feeling deeply uncomfortable let's just say that i was feeling deeply uncomfortable which is not how i want to be feeling when i'm reading a romance and again i'm able to overlook certain things i understand like misogyny and like you know boys just being boys in some of these romances like it does become something that the character grows from and like they become a decent person and like you know i'm here for that but this i just i couldn't i couldn't do it and it's weird because i mean the reviews are very mixed for the story on goodreads from what i can tell but some people that like i wouldn't expect gave this book five stars and just said like oh it was kind of silly but i enjoyed it i don't know maybe this particular juncture i'm just unable to overlook certain things but um yeah i couldn't i couldn't overlook things and this was not a story that i found myself immersed in so definitely that makes this vlog a little shorter than i had intended but i just feel like i'm at the point in my life and especially in my reading journey right now where i don't want to continue on with books that i just absolutely know we're not going to be for me who knows maybe there are some like redemptive moments here maybe this book is actually fantastic i kind of don't think that that's going to be the case so i'm not going to continue on with it but um yeah i just i don't have time for it that being said all things considered i feel like this was a very successful ku reading vlog i had two books that i really really liked and enjoyed one book that just didn't it just wasn't for me it didn't work out but the other two i just feel like having a five-star and a four-star romance in the same video i'm willing to overlook any you know hatred i had or extreme dislike i had for this last book so i would say if you're looking for a really good small town romance but got flawless if you're looking for like new all-time favorite romance material and you like a grumpy grumpy romance like it's just so good pick up waking olivia okay that's what you need to take away from this video pick up wicking olivia so that is it for me i have another one of these ku vlogs coming in a couple weeks i think for that one i'm going to be reading some dark romances so a little bit different than we've been doing for the past a couple of weeks i don't do these every week but you know the past couple of videos have been just like regular contemporaries but i want to try something a little different let's get into dark romance again so that'll be coming i think like the last week of july but thank you so much for watching this i love you so much and until next time you\n"