I recently finished reading "People We Meet on Vacation" by Emily Henry, and I must say it was a charming read. The story revolves around two friends, Poppy and Alex, who have been taking a vacation together every year for years, but they've never actually spent any quality time with each other outside of their friendships. This year, however, things take a different turn when they decide to book a trip to Europe without telling anyone else about it.

The dynamic between the two main characters is at the heart of this story. Poppy and Alex have a very different outlook on life, but despite their differences, they've always been able to connect with each other in a way that few others can. Throughout the book, we get to see their personalities shine through as they navigate the ups and downs of their relationship. The author does an excellent job of capturing the quirks and mannerisms of each character, making it easy for readers to become invested in their story.

One thing that really stood out to me about this book was its exploration of themes such as identity, class, and relationships. Poppy and Alex come from different walks of life, and these differences often lead to interesting conflicts and misunderstandings. At the same time, they are both searching for a sense of belonging and connection with others. As the story progresses, we see them confront their own insecurities and learn to appreciate each other in ways that they never have before.

As I read through the book, I found myself drawn into the world that Emily Henry created. The writing is witty and engaging, making it easy to get lost in the story. The author's use of language is clever and insightful, adding depth and nuance to the characters and their relationships. One thing that might be considered a minor criticism is that the middle part of the book felt a bit lagging at times. There were moments when I felt like we needed more time spent with Poppy and Alex together, away from the influences of outside forces. However, this was a relatively small complaint, and overall, I found the book to be engaging and enjoyable.

One of my favorite aspects of "People We Meet on Vacation" is its portrayal of male relationships. Miles, one of the supporting characters, is particularly well-developed. He's charming and endearing, with a deep-seated desire to prove himself as a better man for Poppy. This aspect of the story really resonated with me, as I've always been fascinated by the complexities of male friendships and relationships.

The ending of the book was, in my opinion, perfect. The author skillfully crafted a sense of closure and resolution that felt earned and satisfying. The way in which Poppy and Alex come to terms with their feelings for each other is both heartwarming and realistic. It's clear that Emily Henry put a lot of thought into crafting this story, and it shows in the end result.

I also appreciated how the book handled themes of identity, class, and relationships. The author did an excellent job of exploring these topics without being too preachy or heavy-handed. Instead, she wove them seamlessly into the narrative, creating a rich and nuanced story that readers can appreciate on multiple levels.

In terms of the writing style, I found Emily Henry's voice to be engaging and witty. She has a way of making even the most mundane moments feel special and memorable. The dialogue is natural and conversational, which adds to the overall sense of realism in the book.

As I reflect on my reading experience with "People We Meet on Vacation," I'm reminded of why I love reading in the first place. There's something truly special about getting lost in a good story, surrounded by characters that feel like friends. Emily Henry has done just that with this book, and I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to read it.

In terms of whether or not "People We Meet on Vacation" will show up on my best-of list, I think it's definitely possible. While it may not be the most original story, it's certainly well-crafted and engaging. Emily Henry has shown herself to be a talented author in the past, and this book is no exception.

As I look ahead to May, I'm excited to see what's in store for my reading schedule. In March, I was on track with my goal of reading 300 books for the year, but unfortunately, that goal has fallen behind me. However, I'm determined to get back on track and make up for lost time. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting regularly here on this channel, so be sure to stay tuned for more reviews and updates.

In addition to my regular reading schedule, I've also got some exciting plans in store for my YouTube channel. In May, I'll be launching a new video series that will take you behind the scenes of my favorite reads. From author interviews to bookish challenges, there's something for everyone on this channel. Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss out on any of the action.

Finally, I want to thank all of my readers for their support and encouragement. It means the world to me, and I'm grateful to have such a wonderful community behind me. Keep reading, keep watching, and let's see what the future holds!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel today's video I'm going be doing my April wrapup as youall may know this month has been an interesting one for me so this is going to be simultaneously my worst wrapup ever as in like the least amount of books read and also like maybe my most interesting reading month in the sense that I've read a lot of books that are kind of like outside my comfort zone there are a lot of books that really surprise me so I'm very excited to run you through the sadly five books that I read this month and hopefully we can like chat a little more in depth than we normally do before we get into it I wanted to call in here and we can talk about the sponsor of today's video together we're super excited to be working with gentle bands on this video they make some really cool men's rings Hayden has been getting into like jewelry over the past little while when they reached out I was super interested because their focus is on like reimagining what men's jewelry can be they definitely like to take a stand I guess against like the boring rings that we've kind of grown up seeing men wear it's like you can only wear a wedding band and it has to be just like solid gold or silver something really boring so they really ton of cool and interesting designs on their website ton of different materials which I think is super cool like a really big emphasis on like quality and craftsmanship and we've definitely noticed that in the band that Hayden picked out so the Rings come packaged really nicely when they show up at your house I've already actually taken the ring out of here but I put it back in here just to kind of show you what the packaging looks like um Hayden picked one it's called the transmutation and it has little bits of like meteorite in it along with like 14 karat goldplated tungsten you could just tell the quality is definitely there because of the way that it like fits on your your finger I feel like sometimes you get rings and they feel like really Hollow on the inside and definitely like not weighty I really like this one cuz it definitely is like like smooth and nice why did you pick this specific design I had a hard time deciding between a lot of them they use a lot of cool and interesting materials that I haven't seen before some like antler and some like meteorite but I was trying to get something that kind of matched most of the jewelry that I currently wear which is almost all gold so I knew I wanted something gold and this one just really stuck out to me cuz I liked that it was like gold and black and I love again that you can like get these for wedding bands or you can get them just as like fashionable jewelry to like pair with your other things they also have an option where you can get chains to go with your band so if you are in sort of like a profession where you're not able to wear a ring every day but you still want to like you know wear your wedding ring you can put them on a chain which is super cool right now they're offering free engraving Services too so if you are like getting this for your special someone you can get like a special message engraved in it which is super cool so if you're looking for something exciting to get someone special in your life or if you want to get something for yourself if you use code chanler 25 you can get a 25% discount I'll leave a link in the description down below thanks again to Gentle bans for sponsoring this portion of today's video all right the first two books that I read this month are books in the plated prisoner series by Raven Kennedy I read gild and glint it was a reread for me for Guild but I have never read glint before and I needed to read glint for a video that's coming next week that I'm really excited to share with y'all I don't know I was hesitant going into the second book because the first one I initially gave three stars and I had such mixed feelings about it I just didn't know how to I feel about this series and I wish I could tell you that after reading these two books that I like have very firm concrete feelings about how I feel about these books and I can't say that I do but let me try to like puzzle through it with you and or like tell you what these books are about so first book is about our main character aurin and we come upon her as this like gold touched woman she is touched by King Midas and is completely gold from head to toe her hair her eyes her skin her nails everything is gold but she is not frozen in place like we see in a lot of other lore like related to King Midas pretty much everything he touches does turn to like solid gold although uh he does have the power or the ability I guess to turn some things just gold in so he has like golden sheets uh but they're not like rock hard metal but Orin is the only person who has this like gold touched gift I guess and it is sort of a reward I guess to her so Orin uh used to be I believe sold into sexual slavery she was definitely like frequently assaulted and things like that and King Midas saved her takes her to his Palace turns her gold and she is going to live in a cage and be protected from the outside world and initially she's really into this cuz she has been living this life that is really horrible and she is scared of a lot of things and so to be protected in this way is something that she's really into but she has been with King Midas at this point at the beginning of the story for 10 years and she has been in this cage a very large cage that kind of like lines the top of the palace she can kind of like walk around she's been in this cage for a long time and I think she's finally ready to sort of break free so in this first book she is uh starting to like awaken and come to the conclusion that she this isn't like the life that she necessarily wants and that she wants to live a little differently is actually married to someone so that he can be the king of this Kingdom not born into uh being a king he like married into the family Orin is of course like the mistress The Other Woman there are also other women the King Midas sleeps with and Orin has to watch these things so at the beginning of the story there's like a lot of sex and a lot of like confusion you just don't know you want to root for King Midas or if you don't like King Midas as in audience as like a reader you start to realize pretty quickly like he's not going to be love interest trust like he's not going to be the person that she ends up with and then just kind of like okay well who is she going to end up with and that doesn't really happen in the first book I digress the story kind of carries on the like main conflict of this book is whether or not Orin is going to be forced to sleep with the king of a foreign country King Midas has like promised her to another and I remember the first time I read this book I was so conflicted because I loved this idea of this heroin kind of like coming into herself and like having her own autonomy but I was also kind of turned off by the fact that there was so much threat of sexual violence and membered sexual violence and I'm not saying these things don't happen it's just not something I particularly like to read about in my romances typically honestly in any book it's just it's it's not my favorite you know enough of that happens in the real world and to have to like read that in fantasy like that's not a fantasy for me okay I didn't know how to feel about it because it was well written it was compelling I was wanting to turn every page and see what happened next so I think I gave this book three stars initially and upon reread I'm definitely like still firm with a three star uh but then I went on to read glint and this is where things got maybe a little dicey for me as in I don't know if I want to continue on with the series or if I'm like fine with just leaving it here but glint we have uh Orin finally kind of I want to say escaping but she gets into the situation where she is with other people and this person that ends up kind of capturing her and kind of using her as leverage to like um get King Midas to do what this person wants this person kind of opens orin's eyes even more to the fact that maybe she isn't treated as well- making Midas as she should be and as she wants to be I feel like my heart not even my heart that's a little traumatic my head started becoming more open to this idea of like this book really is or this series really is about gaining your own autonomy and gaining your own control and like figuring your own out and I was like I just compelled there was definitely a lot less threat of violence in this book I liked the characters that came in in this book even more but there were still just like a few things I just didn't love um I didn't like how the the book ended I'm just not I'm not like sold on these books I got to say but I am interested and I would just love to know I guess in in your opinion like if you've read these books do they continue to get better is this a series that you're glad you invested time into I think there's only like one or two books left I think fingers crossed like waiting to be published I think there's already like five books in the series so it's like do I want want to carry on and like really get invested or do I just like call it quits here cuz I'm kind of like unsure about it I don't know another Romany book it's honestly wild to me that I've read three romanity books in one month because that's just like not my genre but for that video that I am doing next week of Wrath and Flame by Ka Tucker Ka Tucker is the one that wrote oh is it the simple wild one about the girl who goes to like Alaska and reconnects with her dad the one that everybody seems to love I guess she took a turn and decided to write a Romany book and I don't know if I consider that success so like the ratings of this book going into it just like trying to kind of understand what to expect the ratings of this book are above four stars a lot of people seem to enjoy story and find it to be interesting and inventive I don't know if I would call it either of those things this is another one that I'm just kind of unsure of how to feel about this one I think I feel a little more firm with my two star reading okay so this one is about our main character raria she is a thief uh a jewel thief specifically in New York and she has been stealing things kind of all her life to kind of get by her mom I guess left her family a long time ago her dad unfortunately I believe is an addict and is on the streets and so rri's kind of just had to do what she can to kind of Stay Alive at some point she kind of crosses the wrong paths and she is now under the employ of this guy who is basically making her steal things for him not the worst situation ever she's not totally unsatisfied with her life although she I does think eventually want to go in the straight and narrow and not do this anymore but in like trying to I guess Rob someone of their gems she gets approached by a really beautiful woman a wealthy woman presumably and she's like hey I would love if you could steal some from me and romaria at the beginning is kind of like I don't know who the you are and I'm not sure if I really want to do this she gets convinced because her boss gets killed by this woman ostensively she is basically thrust into this situation where she's going to go to this place she doesn't know steal this thing that she's unaware of what it actually is for this man was married to the woman who's like requesting her to go steal this thing right I'm making it sound vague because it's all kind of confusing as a reader to be honest you're kind of like what the going on and then get even worse as in even more confusing you get thrust into this world essentially romaria wakes up in the body of a princess who is betroth to this guy she apparently is in love with you know they'd be she wakes up though and realizes she's killed this guy's parents and she doesn't she doesn't remember any of it right cuz she's like waking up in someone else's body the the real queen or princess romaria or whatever so she's in kind of a sticky situation right she's like killed this Man's family she doesn't know who she is she convinces him that she doesn't know who she is and over the course of the story she's starting to understand who this person is who romaria is while also trying to figure out more about the society the world that she in so that she can go and find this thing bring it back to the lady in the human world because this is not the human world or like not New York City anymore baby she's like in this Elven Society confusing as hell I think one of the things I really have found that I don't like and it feels kind of Niche but it's happened a couple times so is it really that Niche it's like if I had two nickels I don't really like when authors do plot devices or make plot choices that feel a little bit to you're putting this person in the body of someone who already lives in this world so that we can learn through their eyes but also be confused as f i don't love that setup personally humbly I am requesting a different setup like I've read this kind of setup a few times and I understand that it's like a very I guess familiar thing not necessarily waking up in someone else's body like I understand that the Trope of like you know Fish Out of Water we're learning with the character like that's not uncommon that's a very common Trope just the way this one was done it just felt confusing it felt a little lazy I didn't like romia's character I didn't really like the side characters either I understand that the hero is like rightfully upset that this woman or whoever was in the woman's body before her killed his family like understand him being upset but he also just wasn't someone that I really wanted to root for and at the end of this book there is a scene where romaria is like with this like Priestess lady learning a little bit about the religion and the world my head was going to like explode off of my body I was just genuinely so perplexed as to um what the was going on and why any of this information was relevant it was just very all over the place it didn't feel like compelling Reed I wasn't like chomping at the bit to turn the pages like I kind of was with the plated prisoner series you know it's like at least with that book it might not have been perfect and there might be some elements that I disliked but it was really like page turny this one was either like neither compelling nor page tney for that reason I'm giving you two stars now let's talk about two books that are not Romany shall we one was my most surprising book of the Year actually I was going to say both of these were surprising I guess this other one was surprising for a different reason okay let's talk about this one first and we we'll leave we'll save the best for last okay always remember it was a historical romance that I read for a list video that I'm doing at the end of this year it is I believe part of like the 63 most anticipated romances of 2024 or something like that you know I love doing those lists reading the books telling you what's worth your time what's not let me just tell you right now I don't believe this one is it's a historical romance by balog it's about our two main characters Jennifer and Ben Jennifer is in a wheelchair she is disabled from a childhood illness that left one of her legs a little bit shorter than the other and also I believe has like less muscle tone so she's just unable to walk we have Ben who is let me try to break this down for you the son of a Duke not from the Duke's wife right so he is a bastard not only is he a bastard but he also has half siblings not only from his dad but also from his mom because his mom was hoen as well as his dad that becomes part of the plot like he's trying to figure out if he wants to get to know know his mother's children because he's already living and like friends with I guess his dad's children so he's like brought up with the dukal family he's never going to inherit he's treated a little bit differently and he's not able to like marry into the Upper Crest of society like his siblings however they all treat him very equally and he like loves his life whatever because he is friends with his family he ends up meeting Jennifer lady Jennifer lady Jennifer is like 25 coddled by her family and they definitely don't like her to be independent not in like a malicious sort of way they're just like we care about you so much and like we don't want you to exert yourself is like kind of sick of this she like wants to be in love she wants to marry she wants to have children she actually is able to walk with the assistance of crutches Ben comes across her trying to walk and is instantly like curious about her he's like oh she's so interesting pretty quickly this kind of evolves into I can fix her I like anachronism in my historical romances and I think you kind of fall into one of two camps if you're reading a historical romance you either want it to be as historically accurate as possible or you don't really care about that you want some of the wrongs that time period to kind of just like go away and you want to just have like the fun dresses and stuff and like the relationships to be more egalitarian and stuff right I definitely fell into that second Camp I would like things to be a little less historically accurate I would prefer the representation to be good this book I think in the spirit of trying to stay historically accurate does some things that I just personally don't really like I appreciate the attempt to have a disabled character in historical romance I don't however love the way that this was approached like I don't think that the hero of a story should be trying to cure or fix someone's disability and you could definitely view the story in a couple of different ways I'm not saying the way that I view it is like 100% factual but it really read like he was trying to fix her right he tries to get her a different wheelchair he tries to find a way for her to walk better with crutches he I think understands that our heroine is looking for more Independence and she wants to do more things on her own and I think it's nice for him to see that like for her to feel seen but at the same time I feel like we could have done that in a different way we could have gone about it in a different way just because someone uses a wheelchair to be mobile does not mean that they are living a lesser life was a little strange for me didn't really love it personally and beyond that the story wasn't very fun I didn't actually really like the relationship between Jennifer and Ben it felt very Bland and then the surrounding story was also really Bland like if you're used to reading Tessa dare or Isa clus or something with like high stakes in tension and this romance that just feels very fraught with with you know with palpable tension you're not going to like this book because it there's no tension to be seen Ben is literally on the hunt for a wife this entire book he's like between three different women and then Jennifer comes in and he's like oh you I want I want Miss Jennifer there's so many Side characters that don't matter um I understand it's a big family but again it's not like you're reading Bridger to novel and you're like oo like I wonder who is going to get with Benedict like oh I wonder who's going to be the next person in the next book it's not like that at all you're kind of just like why the do I care about any of these people not a great book just not a great read for you two stars I've read another book by this author that I didn't love but I know my dear friend Crystal loves this author and so I really want to find like the perfect book from her to give another shot cuz this one just wasn't it okay let's talk about a book that I'm still kind of reeling from because I'm surprised that this one was for me you might have noticed in the thumbnail of this video that I had Funny Story by Emily Henry if you've been here any length of time you know that I have a fraught relationship with Miss Emily Henry's books funny story really took me by surprise and kind of corrected some of the things that I have not liked about this author in the past and I really wanted to like just dive into that and like talk about it okay so this book is about her two main characters Daphne and Miles Daphne is in Michigan she has recently been dumped by her fiance for her fiance's best friend she is in this like pickle of a situation because she was raised by a really independent woman did her best to kind of protect her from her flighty father Daphne's flighty father I should say who comes into the book later she's in Michigan and she feels stupid because she followed this man there they've been together for 3 years they're engaged to get married and so she feels like know even though I can't afford to like buy a house in Michigan with this man like I feel confident in moving with him right literally right before their wedding at his bachelor party he ends up getting a confession of love from his childhood best friend he's like oh well you've been the woman for me this whole time and so he ends up dumping his fiance dafney and daany is like just so distraught and then in comes miles who is the ex-boyfriend or like the current boyfriend at the time these two both got dumped you know and now they're going to live together because they don't have a place to live stanie followed this man in Michigan and now she's kind of okay it's interesting because it's seen a Tik Tok that really made me feel like I wasn't going to like this book I it was a really funny Tik Tok I wish I like still had the link to it but essentially saying this book felt like struggle love because miles in this book is a character who is a little bit flighty himself who is definitely not as career oriented and driven as Daphne and that this book just didn't really like it didn't it didn't work for them because they didn't love the hero and so I was like expecting to feel that way myself I was pleasantly surprised with this romance and kind of how everything worked out that's not to say this is my favorite Emily Henry book or that this is my favorite Romance of the Year certainly not that but I was really surprised at Emily Henry's ability to fight two characters who are so painfully real but not unlikable and here's the deal I love a good unlikable heroine but I feel like Emily Henry can sometimes lean too far into the unlikable side of things I who enjoy unlikable heroins cannot enjoy uh what she's writing Daphney in this book um has a lot of different things going on she has this like lack of trust for a lot of people in her life and she sees herself almost as kind of boring like why would anyone choose her because she's not the exciting Choice her dad has always kind of proven that to her because he would come and visit her every once in a while but would leave unexpectedly and would just constantly let her down so when she finally finds a man who has his life together and who has a supportive family she feels like she's going to be safe and then she gets dumped by him like completely abandoned for someone who's more manic pixie dream girl more exciting and so she's just constantly feeling like she's not good enough and like she isn't the exciting choice and she also feels like way in her friendships yeah she's just she's being constantly LED down by people and it just felt so not like that's something that I have personally experienced but I could just so sympathize with that it never felt whiny or or unlikable I really appreciated that with Miles he does a lot of odd jobs he's definitely not the most career oriented person he's definitely more like friendly and outgoing but he has his own trauma right like he has this family that has kind of been letting him down as well um I'm not going to kind of like spoil that for you cuz it is sort of like a reveal I guess in a sense in the book you understand why he is the way he is everything really lines up and makes sense and there's just something so satisfying as a reader when the author really does the footwork to super super understand her characters and that's just a complaint that I've had for Emily Henry's books for a while I will say is that all of the heroes perfect for the heroins but only because they are obsessed with them right whether it's we've been friends this entire time and I've always secretly been in love with obsessed with you or have had this semi- antagonistic relationship but only because I've secretly loved you it just never feels like the heroes really see the heroin and or are actually compatible with the heroin it seems like they're all a little bit onedimensional and flat I feel like you ask me the names of any of the heroes of the other books and kind of what their personality traits were I couldn't tell you and that's upsetting to me as someone who just deeply appreciates character work understanding character motivations and kind of where things come from it's just like the armchair psychologist to me but I like really appreciate that I really appreciate someone is willing to do the hard work of saying oh this character is going to have trust issues and then show us why shouldn't be that hard but it actually is it's like a hard thing to do as an author I can appreciate when people do it and she nailed it in this book she really did I loved the relationship between miles and Daphne too I felt like again even though she's the like straight La type and like want someone who is like financially supportive or whatever or like at least on the same level as her miles comes through and he's like I want to be a better man because of you oh me up that just took it to like the next level too at the end of the book they they're finally having this come to Jesus moment he's like I know I'm like not I'm not like you but I want to be like you you make me want to be a better man perfect that's like what everybody wants to hear right like you make me want to be a better man it could it could come off his corny and you could kind of roll your eyes if you've ever been in that situation and it hasn't worked out but like felt it I felt like he actually did want to be a better man for her and I it was Charming it was very Charming my one complaint and the reason I gave this four instead of five stars is that I felt like a lot of the middle part of the book was spent with outside forces that really do a convincing job at keeping the tension between the two characters like you've got one from dap's Life who comes in to make things complicated you've got one person from my's life who comes in to make things more complicated and I think the idea was for us to learn more about um the respective characters Anne and miles and also to kind of get us to pull off of the sexual attention like you didn't want them to be bang in every page right like that's not Emily Henry style I just don't know it was like totally convincing personally I would have liked maybe a little bit more time spent with the two characters in this W they won't they without Aid of other people it's a small it's a small gripe but it is one that I kind of had I think the middle part of this book lagged a little bit but I enjoyed it and I thought it was a pretty good time is this again going to show up on my best of list no but it's really nice to see that even though she's fairly formulaic all the books kind of have the same titles covers kind of look the same that Emily Henry is capable of growing in her writing and her craft and I like that I appreciate it and hats off to her okay I'm I'm satisfied four stars this is this is pretty good so that is it for my reading for the month of April I did want to kind of briefly run you through what's been going on if you missed anything and or what's going to be happening in the month of May CU I'm very excited for the month ahead uh if you didn't know in the month of April I experienced a pretty devastating pregnancy loss so I haven't really been posting videos as often as I would like and I really haven't been reading books that's the reason I only read five books this month when I was pregnant I was really really sick and then not being pregnant was also not great so it's been a time and I don't need to get into the details there's a whole hourong video on my second Channel if you like want to uh hear more about that I am so excited to get back to making videos here for you that are fun and exciting also reading a lot more because in March I was like on track with my read 300 books this year reading challenge on Goodreads and now like 20 bcks behind and I'm going to get back on track I am so may is going to be like so chalk full of stuff and I'm so excited about it that being said in terms of videos over here on this channel I'm going to be posting every Sunday unless something changes like with sponsorships but every Sunday as I kind of like get back on my feet I love posting two times a week here so I'm a little bummed that I won't be able to do that the videos I'm going to be posting are like good videos like jam-packed like we got some list videos like we got some like really good stuff for you so I'm very excited about that and then over on my Vlog Channel I'll be posting every Tuesday and then I believe I'm POS in two additional videos over there as well so definitely content coming from me and as again time goes on I will be getting back to my two times a week posting schedule taking a break definitely takes it out of me because I have not read books I have nothing to talk about that's pretty much it for me I just want to thank you all for your support especially if you have like commented or watched that video over on my other channel about the stuff I've been going through I just love you all so much I'm so grateful for this community I'm grateful for all of you and I'll see you in the next onehello welcome back to my channel today's video I'm going be doing my April wrapup as youall may know this month has been an interesting one for me so this is going to be simultaneously my worst wrapup ever as in like the least amount of books read and also like maybe my most interesting reading month in the sense that I've read a lot of books that are kind of like outside my comfort zone there are a lot of books that really surprise me so I'm very excited to run you through the sadly five books that I read this month and hopefully we can like chat a little more in depth than we normally do before we get into it I wanted to call in here and we can talk about the sponsor of today's video together we're super excited to be working with gentle bands on this video they make some really cool men's rings Hayden has been getting into like jewelry over the past little while when they reached out I was super interested because their focus is on like reimagining what men's jewelry can be they definitely like to take a stand I guess against like the boring rings that we've kind of grown up seeing men wear it's like you can only wear a wedding band and it has to be just like solid gold or silver something really boring so they really ton of cool and interesting designs on their website ton of different materials which I think is super cool like a really big emphasis on like quality and craftsmanship and we've definitely noticed that in the band that Hayden picked out so the Rings come packaged really nicely when they show up at your house I've already actually taken the ring out of here but I put it back in here just to kind of show you what the packaging looks like um Hayden picked one it's called the transmutation and it has little bits of like meteorite in it along with like 14 karat goldplated tungsten you could just tell the quality is definitely there because of the way that it like fits on your your finger I feel like sometimes you get rings and they feel like really Hollow on the inside and definitely like not weighty I really like this one cuz it definitely is like like smooth and nice why did you pick this specific design I had a hard time deciding between a lot of them they use a lot of cool and interesting materials that I haven't seen before some like antler and some like meteorite but I was trying to get something that kind of matched most of the jewelry that I currently wear which is almost all gold so I knew I wanted something gold and this one just really stuck out to me cuz I liked that it was like gold and black and I love again that you can like get these for wedding bands or you can get them just as like fashionable jewelry to like pair with your other things they also have an option where you can get chains to go with your band so if you are in sort of like a profession where you're not able to wear a ring every day but you still want to like you know wear your wedding ring you can put them on a chain which is super cool right now they're offering free engraving Services too so if you are like getting this for your special someone you can get like a special message engraved in it which is super cool so if you're looking for something exciting to get someone special in your life or if you want to get something for yourself if you use code chanler 25 you can get a 25% discount I'll leave a link in the description down below thanks again to Gentle bans for sponsoring this portion of today's video all right the first two books that I read this month are books in the plated prisoner series by Raven Kennedy I read gild and glint it was a reread for me for Guild but I have never read glint before and I needed to read glint for a video that's coming next week that I'm really excited to share with y'all I don't know I was hesitant going into the second book because the first one I initially gave three stars and I had such mixed feelings about it I just didn't know how to I feel about this series and I wish I could tell you that after reading these two books that I like have very firm concrete feelings about how I feel about these books and I can't say that I do but let me try to like puzzle through it with you and or like tell you what these books are about so first book is about our main character aurin and we come upon her as this like gold touched woman she is touched by King Midas and is completely gold from head to toe her hair her eyes her skin her nails everything is gold but she is not frozen in place like we see in a lot of other lore like related to King Midas pretty much everything he touches does turn to like solid gold although uh he does have the power or the ability I guess to turn some things just gold in so he has like golden sheets uh but they're not like rock hard metal but Orin is the only person who has this like gold touched gift I guess and it is sort of a reward I guess to her so Orin uh used to be I believe sold into sexual slavery she was definitely like frequently assaulted and things like that and King Midas saved her takes her to his Palace turns her gold and she is going to live in a cage and be protected from the outside world and initially she's really into this cuz she has been living this life that is really horrible and she is scared of a lot of things and so to be protected in this way is something that she's really into but she has been with King Midas at this point at the beginning of the story for 10 years and she has been in this cage a very large cage that kind of like lines the top of the palace she can kind of like walk around she's been in this cage for a long time and I think she's finally ready to sort of break free so in this first book she is uh starting to like awaken and come to the conclusion that she this isn't like the life that she necessarily wants and that she wants to live a little differently is actually married to someone so that he can be the king of this Kingdom not born into uh being a king he like married into the family Orin is of course like the mistress The Other Woman there are also other women the King Midas sleeps with and Orin has to watch these things so at the beginning of the story there's like a lot of sex and a lot of like confusion you just don't know you want to root for King Midas or if you don't like King Midas as in audience as like a reader you start to realize pretty quickly like he's not going to be love interest trust like he's not going to be the person that she ends up with and then just kind of like okay well who is she going to end up with and that doesn't really happen in the first book I digress the story kind of carries on the like main conflict of this book is whether or not Orin is going to be forced to sleep with the king of a foreign country King Midas has like promised her to another and I remember the first time I read this book I was so conflicted because I loved this idea of this heroin kind of like coming into herself and like having her own autonomy but I was also kind of turned off by the fact that there was so much threat of sexual violence and membered sexual violence and I'm not saying these things don't happen it's just not something I particularly like to read about in my romances typically honestly in any book it's just it's it's not my favorite you know enough of that happens in the real world and to have to like read that in fantasy like that's not a fantasy for me okay I didn't know how to feel about it because it was well written it was compelling I was wanting to turn every page and see what happened next so I think I gave this book three stars initially and upon reread I'm definitely like still firm with a three star uh but then I went on to read glint and this is where things got maybe a little dicey for me as in I don't know if I want to continue on with the series or if I'm like fine with just leaving it here but glint we have uh Orin finally kind of I want to say escaping but she gets into the situation where she is with other people and this person that ends up kind of capturing her and kind of using her as leverage to like um get King Midas to do what this person wants this person kind of opens orin's eyes even more to the fact that maybe she isn't treated as well- making Midas as she should be and as she wants to be I feel like my heart not even my heart that's a little traumatic my head started becoming more open to this idea of like this book really is or this series really is about gaining your own autonomy and gaining your own control and like figuring your own out and I was like I just compelled there was definitely a lot less threat of violence in this book I liked the characters that came in in this book even more but there were still just like a few things I just didn't love um I didn't like how the the book ended I'm just not I'm not like sold on these books I got to say but I am interested and I would just love to know I guess in in your opinion like if you've read these books do they continue to get better is this a series that you're glad you invested time into I think there's only like one or two books left I think fingers crossed like waiting to be published I think there's already like five books in the series so it's like do I want want to carry on and like really get invested or do I just like call it quits here cuz I'm kind of like unsure about it I don't know another Romany book it's honestly wild to me that I've read three romanity books in one month because that's just like not my genre but for that video that I am doing next week of Wrath and Flame by Ka Tucker Ka Tucker is the one that wrote oh is it the simple wild one about the girl who goes to like Alaska and reconnects with her dad the one that everybody seems to love I guess she took a turn and decided to write a Romany book and I don't know if I consider that success so like the ratings of this book going into it just like trying to kind of understand what to expect the ratings of this book are above four stars a lot of people seem to enjoy story and find it to be interesting and inventive I don't know if I would call it either of those things this is another one that I'm just kind of unsure of how to feel about this one I think I feel a little more firm with my two star reading okay so this one is about our main character raria she is a thief uh a jewel thief specifically in New York and she has been stealing things kind of all her life to kind of get by her mom I guess left her family a long time ago her dad unfortunately I believe is an addict and is on the streets and so rri's kind of just had to do what she can to kind of Stay Alive at some point she kind of crosses the wrong paths and she is now under the employ of this guy who is basically making her steal things for him not the worst situation ever she's not totally unsatisfied with her life although she I does think eventually want to go in the straight and narrow and not do this anymore but in like trying to I guess Rob someone of their gems she gets approached by a really beautiful woman a wealthy woman presumably and she's like hey I would love if you could steal some from me and romaria at the beginning is kind of like I don't know who the you are and I'm not sure if I really want to do this she gets convinced because her boss gets killed by this woman ostensively she is basically thrust into this situation where she's going to go to this place she doesn't know steal this thing that she's unaware of what it actually is for this man was married to the woman who's like requesting her to go steal this thing right I'm making it sound vague because it's all kind of confusing as a reader to be honest you're kind of like what the going on and then get even worse as in even more confusing you get thrust into this world essentially romaria wakes up in the body of a princess who is betroth to this guy she apparently is in love with you know they'd be she wakes up though and realizes she's killed this guy's parents and she doesn't she doesn't remember any of it right cuz she's like waking up in someone else's body the the real queen or princess romaria or whatever so she's in kind of a sticky situation right she's like killed this Man's family she doesn't know who she is she convinces him that she doesn't know who she is and over the course of the story she's starting to understand who this person is who romaria is while also trying to figure out more about the society the world that she in so that she can go and find this thing bring it back to the lady in the human world because this is not the human world or like not New York City anymore baby she's like in this Elven Society confusing as hell I think one of the things I really have found that I don't like and it feels kind of Niche but it's happened a couple times so is it really that Niche it's like if I had two nickels I don't really like when authors do plot devices or make plot choices that feel a little bit to you're putting this person in the body of someone who already lives in this world so that we can learn through their eyes but also be confused as f i don't love that setup personally humbly I am requesting a different setup like I've read this kind of setup a few times and I understand that it's like a very I guess familiar thing not necessarily waking up in someone else's body like I understand that the Trope of like you know Fish Out of Water we're learning with the character like that's not uncommon that's a very common Trope just the way this one was done it just felt confusing it felt a little lazy I didn't like romia's character I didn't really like the side characters either I understand that the hero is like rightfully upset that this woman or whoever was in the woman's body before her killed his family like understand him being upset but he also just wasn't someone that I really wanted to root for and at the end of this book there is a scene where romaria is like with this like Priestess lady learning a little bit about the religion and the world my head was going to like explode off of my body I was just genuinely so perplexed as to um what the was going on and why any of this information was relevant it was just very all over the place it didn't feel like compelling Reed I wasn't like chomping at the bit to turn the pages like I kind of was with the plated prisoner series you know it's like at least with that book it might not have been perfect and there might be some elements that I disliked but it was really like page turny this one was either like neither compelling nor page tney for that reason I'm giving you two stars now let's talk about two books that are not Romany shall we one was my most surprising book of the Year actually I was going to say both of these were surprising I guess this other one was surprising for a different reason okay let's talk about this one first and we we'll leave we'll save the best for last okay always remember it was a historical romance that I read for a list video that I'm doing at the end of this year it is I believe part of like the 63 most anticipated romances of 2024 or something like that you know I love doing those lists reading the books telling you what's worth your time what's not let me just tell you right now I don't believe this one is it's a historical romance by balog it's about our two main characters Jennifer and Ben Jennifer is in a wheelchair she is disabled from a childhood illness that left one of her legs a little bit shorter than the other and also I believe has like less muscle tone so she's just unable to walk we have Ben who is let me try to break this down for you the son of a Duke not from the Duke's wife right so he is a bastard not only is he a bastard but he also has half siblings not only from his dad but also from his mom because his mom was hoen as well as his dad that becomes part of the plot like he's trying to figure out if he wants to get to know know his mother's children because he's already living and like friends with I guess his dad's children so he's like brought up with the dukal family he's never going to inherit he's treated a little bit differently and he's not able to like marry into the Upper Crest of society like his siblings however they all treat him very equally and he like loves his life whatever because he is friends with his family he ends up meeting Jennifer lady Jennifer lady Jennifer is like 25 coddled by her family and they definitely don't like her to be independent not in like a malicious sort of way they're just like we care about you so much and like we don't want you to exert yourself is like kind of sick of this she like wants to be in love she wants to marry she wants to have children she actually is able to walk with the assistance of crutches Ben comes across her trying to walk and is instantly like curious about her he's like oh she's so interesting pretty quickly this kind of evolves into I can fix her I like anachronism in my historical romances and I think you kind of fall into one of two camps if you're reading a historical romance you either want it to be as historically accurate as possible or you don't really care about that you want some of the wrongs that time period to kind of just like go away and you want to just have like the fun dresses and stuff and like the relationships to be more egalitarian and stuff right I definitely fell into that second Camp I would like things to be a little less historically accurate I would prefer the representation to be good this book I think in the spirit of trying to stay historically accurate does some things that I just personally don't really like I appreciate the attempt to have a disabled character in historical romance I don't however love the way that this was approached like I don't think that the hero of a story should be trying to cure or fix someone's disability and you could definitely view the story in a couple of different ways I'm not saying the way that I view it is like 100% factual but it really read like he was trying to fix her right he tries to get her a different wheelchair he tries to find a way for her to walk better with crutches he I think understands that our heroine is looking for more Independence and she wants to do more things on her own and I think it's nice for him to see that like for her to feel seen but at the same time I feel like we could have done that in a different way we could have gone about it in a different way just because someone uses a wheelchair to be mobile does not mean that they are living a lesser life was a little strange for me didn't really love it personally and beyond that the story wasn't very fun I didn't actually really like the relationship between Jennifer and Ben it felt very Bland and then the surrounding story was also really Bland like if you're used to reading Tessa dare or Isa clus or something with like high stakes in tension and this romance that just feels very fraught with with you know with palpable tension you're not going to like this book because it there's no tension to be seen Ben is literally on the hunt for a wife this entire book he's like between three different women and then Jennifer comes in and he's like oh you I want I want Miss Jennifer there's so many Side characters that don't matter um I understand it's a big family but again it's not like you're reading Bridger to novel and you're like oo like I wonder who is going to get with Benedict like oh I wonder who's going to be the next person in the next book it's not like that at all you're kind of just like why the do I care about any of these people not a great book just not a great read for you two stars I've read another book by this author that I didn't love but I know my dear friend Crystal loves this author and so I really want to find like the perfect book from her to give another shot cuz this one just wasn't it okay let's talk about a book that I'm still kind of reeling from because I'm surprised that this one was for me you might have noticed in the thumbnail of this video that I had Funny Story by Emily Henry if you've been here any length of time you know that I have a fraught relationship with Miss Emily Henry's books funny story really took me by surprise and kind of corrected some of the things that I have not liked about this author in the past and I really wanted to like just dive into that and like talk about it okay so this book is about her two main characters Daphne and Miles Daphne is in Michigan she has recently been dumped by her fiance for her fiance's best friend she is in this like pickle of a situation because she was raised by a really independent woman did her best to kind of protect her from her flighty father Daphne's flighty father I should say who comes into the book later she's in Michigan and she feels stupid because she followed this man there they've been together for 3 years they're engaged to get married and so she feels like know even though I can't afford to like buy a house in Michigan with this man like I feel confident in moving with him right literally right before their wedding at his bachelor party he ends up getting a confession of love from his childhood best friend he's like oh well you've been the woman for me this whole time and so he ends up dumping his fiance dafney and daany is like just so distraught and then in comes miles who is the ex-boyfriend or like the current boyfriend at the time these two both got dumped you know and now they're going to live together because they don't have a place to live stanie followed this man in Michigan and now she's kind of okay it's interesting because it's seen a Tik Tok that really made me feel like I wasn't going to like this book I it was a really funny Tik Tok I wish I like still had the link to it but essentially saying this book felt like struggle love because miles in this book is a character who is a little bit flighty himself who is definitely not as career oriented and driven as Daphne and that this book just didn't really like it didn't it didn't work for them because they didn't love the hero and so I was like expecting to feel that way myself I was pleasantly surprised with this romance and kind of how everything worked out that's not to say this is my favorite Emily Henry book or that this is my favorite Romance of the Year certainly not that but I was really surprised at Emily Henry's ability to fight two characters who are so painfully real but not unlikable and here's the deal I love a good unlikable heroine but I feel like Emily Henry can sometimes lean too far into the unlikable side of things I who enjoy unlikable heroins cannot enjoy uh what she's writing Daphney in this book um has a lot of different things going on she has this like lack of trust for a lot of people in her life and she sees herself almost as kind of boring like why would anyone choose her because she's not the exciting Choice her dad has always kind of proven that to her because he would come and visit her every once in a while but would leave unexpectedly and would just constantly let her down so when she finally finds a man who has his life together and who has a supportive family she feels like she's going to be safe and then she gets dumped by him like completely abandoned for someone who's more manic pixie dream girl more exciting and so she's just constantly feeling like she's not good enough and like she isn't the exciting choice and she also feels like way in her friendships yeah she's just she's being constantly LED down by people and it just felt so not like that's something that I have personally experienced but I could just so sympathize with that it never felt whiny or or unlikable I really appreciated that with Miles he does a lot of odd jobs he's definitely not the most career oriented person he's definitely more like friendly and outgoing but he has his own trauma right like he has this family that has kind of been letting him down as well um I'm not going to kind of like spoil that for you cuz it is sort of like a reveal I guess in a sense in the book you understand why he is the way he is everything really lines up and makes sense and there's just something so satisfying as a reader when the author really does the footwork to super super understand her characters and that's just a complaint that I've had for Emily Henry's books for a while I will say is that all of the heroes perfect for the heroins but only because they are obsessed with them right whether it's we've been friends this entire time and I've always secretly been in love with obsessed with you or have had this semi- antagonistic relationship but only because I've secretly loved you it just never feels like the heroes really see the heroin and or are actually compatible with the heroin it seems like they're all a little bit onedimensional and flat I feel like you ask me the names of any of the heroes of the other books and kind of what their personality traits were I couldn't tell you and that's upsetting to me as someone who just deeply appreciates character work understanding character motivations and kind of where things come from it's just like the armchair psychologist to me but I like really appreciate that I really appreciate someone is willing to do the hard work of saying oh this character is going to have trust issues and then show us why shouldn't be that hard but it actually is it's like a hard thing to do as an author I can appreciate when people do it and she nailed it in this book she really did I loved the relationship between miles and Daphne too I felt like again even though she's the like straight La type and like want someone who is like financially supportive or whatever or like at least on the same level as her miles comes through and he's like I want to be a better man because of you oh me up that just took it to like the next level too at the end of the book they they're finally having this come to Jesus moment he's like I know I'm like not I'm not like you but I want to be like you you make me want to be a better man perfect that's like what everybody wants to hear right like you make me want to be a better man it could it could come off his corny and you could kind of roll your eyes if you've ever been in that situation and it hasn't worked out but like felt it I felt like he actually did want to be a better man for her and I it was Charming it was very Charming my one complaint and the reason I gave this four instead of five stars is that I felt like a lot of the middle part of the book was spent with outside forces that really do a convincing job at keeping the tension between the two characters like you've got one from dap's Life who comes in to make things complicated you've got one person from my's life who comes in to make things more complicated and I think the idea was for us to learn more about um the respective characters Anne and miles and also to kind of get us to pull off of the sexual attention like you didn't want them to be bang in every page right like that's not Emily Henry style I just don't know it was like totally convincing personally I would have liked maybe a little bit more time spent with the two characters in this W they won't they without Aid of other people it's a small it's a small gripe but it is one that I kind of had I think the middle part of this book lagged a little bit but I enjoyed it and I thought it was a pretty good time is this again going to show up on my best of list no but it's really nice to see that even though she's fairly formulaic all the books kind of have the same titles covers kind of look the same that Emily Henry is capable of growing in her writing and her craft and I like that I appreciate it and hats off to her okay I'm I'm satisfied four stars this is this is pretty good so that is it for my reading for the month of April I did want to kind of briefly run you through what's been going on if you missed anything and or what's going to be happening in the month of May CU I'm very excited for the month ahead uh if you didn't know in the month of April I experienced a pretty devastating pregnancy loss so I haven't really been posting videos as often as I would like and I really haven't been reading books that's the reason I only read five books this month when I was pregnant I was really really sick and then not being pregnant was also not great so it's been a time and I don't need to get into the details there's a whole hourong video on my second Channel if you like want to uh hear more about that I am so excited to get back to making videos here for you that are fun and exciting also reading a lot more because in March I was like on track with my read 300 books this year reading challenge on Goodreads and now like 20 bcks behind and I'm going to get back on track I am so may is going to be like so chalk full of stuff and I'm so excited about it that being said in terms of videos over here on this channel I'm going to be posting every Sunday unless something changes like with sponsorships but every Sunday as I kind of like get back on my feet I love posting two times a week here so I'm a little bummed that I won't be able to do that the videos I'm going to be posting are like good videos like jam-packed like we got some list videos like we got some like really good stuff for you so I'm very excited about that and then over on my Vlog Channel I'll be posting every Tuesday and then I believe I'm POS in two additional videos over there as well so definitely content coming from me and as again time goes on I will be getting back to my two times a week posting schedule taking a break definitely takes it out of me because I have not read books I have nothing to talk about that's pretty much it for me I just want to thank you all for your support especially if you have like commented or watched that video over on my other channel about the stuff I've been going through I just love you all so much I'm so grateful for this community I'm grateful for all of you and I'll see you in the next one\n"