Elise Bryant

Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling 

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling 

Author: Elise Bryant

Year: 2023

Genre: YA romance

Queer shit: Lesbian couple, maybe more that was small or in passing?

Vibe Check: a shy powerhouse of a singer finds her voice and self in a way she never expected, a D&D loving blogger finds that who he is as person is enough

Pile of Opinions: I love everything Elise Bryant has published thus far and I safely assume I will love everything she ever publishes. This story and these characters are so sweet and sincere and this book shares so many real struggles many adults and young adults alike face as they try to find their way without losing who they are. Reggie is a Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast with an anonymous blog calling out the problematic areas in the D&D game and community. Delilah finds herself with the chance to sing with her friend’s band and it scares the shit out of her and she does it anyway. She finds she loves it. Reggie and Delilah bump into each other a few times by accident and then eventually on purpose as they learn who they are and the power of their voices. I really enjoyed how raw this book felt. This book spanning over a year gave space for organic growth and some real time processing. I found myself so frustrated with Reggie’s choices and realized it’s because I related so hard and felt super called out. Society (and sometimes even our own communities) so often send the message that what we like and who we are is wrong and the path to revealing our truest selves can often come with some little lies for self protection, but at a price. I love coming of age stories and I love seeing character growth. Let me know what you thought of this one in the comments.

Professional Reader

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One True Loves

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: One True Loves

Author: Elise Bryant

Year: 2022

Genre: YA Fiction/Romance

Queer shit: Gay friend, gay brother

Vibe Check: This book has everything! Betrayal, complex family dynamics, mental illness, pressures to succeed, the beauty of friendship, love after broken trust and also complete hesitancy with love because broken trust, a cruise ship, amazing countries I would like to go to, prom, planning for after high school, deciding what to do with your life. This is basically a book about an Enneagram 4 going on a family cruise and as an Enneagram 4, I am here for it. 

Pile of Opinions: This book was so much more than I expected. The story is about the best friend (Lenore) of the lead (Tessa) from happily Ever Afters, Elise Bryant’s debut book, who we already sort of knew was a strong-willed free spirit. The book mostly takes place on a Mediterranean cruise with her little sister who is a prodigy child already reading and comprehending at the collegiate level while barely being a tween, her older brother who is getting ready to start law school, and their parents. Lenore is about to go to prom and graduate, then spend two weeks of her summer on this family vacation. I loved how this book captured how much at this point in someone’s life is everything. I talk a lot about this but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop anytime soon, but we (adults) can be so rude and inconsiderate to teenagers by taking the mindset of “in a few years you’ll look back and this won’t seem like as big a deal” and I find this so demeaning. My crushes and loves as a teenager were everything and all-consuming and someone older belittling my experience was incredibly hurtful and damaging. Bryant writes these young adults so beautifully, their problems are real and they aren’t silly or childish. Relationships are difficult and complicated and we bring all our past experiences into our future relationships, and not just romantic. Siblings, parents, friends, all of these relationships help shape how we build and maintain relationships. Bryant also wrote beautifully about mental health, more specifically, panic attacks. As someone who experiences panic attacks and has had to learn how to navigate the world and explain myself to people about this, while being misunderstood about it, I really appreciated how gently she handled this subject. This book made me cry three completely separate times and it was wonderful. I highly recommend this book for a large number of reasons. The amount of personal reflection I did during this book felt like months worth of therapy. It was beautiful. I am looking forward to reading this one again.

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Happily Ever Afters

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: Happily Ever Afters

Author: Elise Bryant 

Year: 2021 

Genre: YA Fiction/Romance

Queer shit: Gay friend 

Vibe Check: This book is about an arts focused school and I am very jealous and would like to go there.  

Pile of Opinions: Tessa is starting at a new school that specializes in the arts. She is a writer and is there to polish her skills and advance as a writer. She meets friends, meets so many challenges in writing and in romance, and has to find the balance of who she is and how she wants to move around in the world. I absolutely loved this book. It was everything I hoped it would be and gave me butterflies to read through. Elise Bryant is quickly becoming my favorite YA romance writer. This story was sweet and sincere and the characters were not only believable but I finished the book feeling as though they were my friends too. Tessa’s journey of finding her place at a new school, building friendships, and seeing through facades of high school was very real and relatable while also having that “out of a book” edge. This book also didn’t have sex in it which is refreshing to me because every romance story pushing to include sex burns me out a little. I enjoy the innocence of falling for someone without it needing to include teen sex is good representation and nice to mix in with the love stories that get steamy and do involve sex. Please go read this and then go read Bryant’s 2022 book One True Loves so we gush about them.

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