romance

The Unhoneymooners

| enbyyourself

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

Title: The Unhoneymooners

Author: Christina Lauren

Year: 2019

Genre: Romance, enemies to lovers

Queer shit: gay brother, nearly insignificant character so he felt kind of token-y

Vibe Check: twin sister and entire wedding party get food poisoning but honeymoon is non-refundable so this twin and the best man are sent on the trip instead, enemies to lovers

Pile of Opinions: Enemies to lovers is a tough one for me because if it’s not done well it feels abusive. This one was leaning into the bullying behavior and came across extremely annoying and immature. The story is about a twin sister who is the maid of honor in her twin’s wedding. The bride is big into giveaways and winning stuff so she ends up winning most of her wedding vendors (including a seafood buffet that gives the entire wedding, except our two leads, food poisoning) and the entire all expenses paid honeymoon. The maid of honor has a seafood allergy and the best man has an aversion to buffets so they are the only two wedding guests who do not get sick. The bride decides her twin sister should pretend to be her to redeem the non-refundable honeymoon and the groom tells his best man to pretend to be her new husband. It took me 150 pages before I felt like the book was readable for me. I enjoyed pages 150-300 because they were unpacking misunderstandings and spending time together on purpose and they had stopped bullying each other even if they didn’t quite admit to liking each other yet. I’ve liked other books by Christina Lauren so I pushed through to finish this one but I don’t think this was their best work. The plot was choppy and the last 100 pages felt like another book’s ending, like there were too many stories going on at once. I appreciate the story being layered and involving a large family so naturally there would be many stories, but by the time we got the happy ending it didn’t really feel that happy. I feel like this book leaned too far into the cliché of the trope and then swung too far the other way trying to add more plot and depth than a common romance and it didn’t feel like it fit. This book was a perfectly fine romance read if you like chaos and drama and don’t mind the enemies to lovers, I think this one was not for me. I didn’t hate it but It’s not going on my reread list personally. Feel free to share in the comments if you read this one and what you thought.

Buy The Unhoneymooners

The Notekeeper

| enbyyourself

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

Title: The Notekeeper

Author: Hannah Treave

Year: 2023

Genre: Romance? I actually don’t know. Is grief fiction a genre? It should be

Queer shit: none that registered

Vibe Check: Hospice nurse works through her own grief while giving her patience the best death she can

Pile of Opinions: This book was an absolute HR nightmare haha Our MC is a hospice nurse from Australia who has been working in England for a couple years. She tragically lost her child and fell apart with no idea how to begin processing her grief. She abandons her marriage and goes to England to work at a hospice house. Her mission becomes to help others have the most comfortable and dignified death she can give them. She spends her spare time writing cards and notes to residents and makes time to take down unofficial final words and wishes from her patience. Sometimes people want to apologize to a family member, sometimes they need to say goodbye to someone. She delivers these letters after they pass as part of her own grief processing and to honor their wishes. The hospice house gets bought by a new owner who sends someone to evaluate the hospice house’s practices and management. This, of course, throws off the unconventional way she does things and she will have to convince him of the value of her notes. This story celebrates the beauty of people being in our life for a meaningful and sometimes short amount of time. The stories tug at your heartstrings and address many complexities of grief. The love story in this book sort of threw me and felt almost out of place honestly. Also the timing of this book was super confusing and the entire thing possibly took place over two or three weeks? I assume it was more like 6-12 months but even that is a big gap and I’m super unsure. I enjoyed the stories and books about grief always hit me hard. The MC had to rebuild her life, and her career, while finding ownership of her decisions and building a life she chooses. This book was full of found family, rebuilding after loss, and building your dream life.

Professional Reader

Buy The Notekeeper

Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling 

| enbyyourself

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

Buy Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling

Holiday Read

| enbyyourself

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

Title: Holiday Read

Author: Taylor Cole

Year: 2023

Genre: Romance, Surfing, 

Queer shit: one queer side couple barely mentioned

Vibe Check: Surfers in Cornwall, writers and readers, found family, extensive detail on random subjects and choppy incohesive plot 

Pile of Opinions: This one was rough… I think this book was a really great idea with poor execution. I was dragging myself through the book. There were too many stories going on that sort of came together at the end but not cohesively and it felt really forced into a tidy wrap up. I felt like there were many things well researched and understood but I could not tell you what this book was about other than surfing because there were so many stories and substories. I think this could make a great mini series show but it did not make a great book. The plot twists felt like plot holes and there were so many niche rabbit trails of information that I felt like they took away from the story instead of fueling it. The lead character fell flat for me but then would react explosively with great rooted values and character that were shown nowhere else in the book. It was unclear what she wanted in this book so in the end when it felt like she got some things, it wasn’t satisfying because it was set up so choppy. I wanted to like this book because I love found family but this felt like an unpolished draft. Also the title and cover do not reflect the book and though covers aren’t everything, they matter quite a bit to readers. I would like to petition for the cover to be of the ocean and her van as that intrigues me and feels like it reflects the book. I would also like the title to be changed to “Writing the Waves” because I think that is also intriguing and more in line with what the story is. This story is not just a romance, it has so many other pieces and is long enough and webbed enough that it really needs a title and cover that show that. This book is for you if you love surfing, if you love Cornwall and/or Hawaii, if you are looking for a little escape to another town, if you love found family, and if you read it in a single weekend so you can keep up with all the side stories. 

Professional Reader

Buy Holiday Read

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

| enbyyourself

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

Title: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Year: 2017

Genre: Fiction, romance, Historical Fiction, Queer, Hollywood

Queer shit: SO MUCH! You got gays, you got lesbians, you got bisexuals.

Vibe Check: Glam, queer, struggle for love, our self that we put into the world and our self we truly are. What we do and give up for what is most important to us. Dignity.

Pile of Opinions: I read this book right after an overly heterosexual romance and had very low expectations of loving this book. This one was recommended by people and kept popping up on social media. Every so often I have to buy books that have been haunting me and pop up everywhere. I knew nothing about this book when I started it other than it was about a hard tear who was a famous actress in the 50’s. This book is about a 79 year old woman who was a famous movie star for decades and disappeared from the spotlight years ago, and she is finally ready to share her full story. This story is the journey of her telling her life story to a biographer. Her life, relationships, secrets, and most importantly the truths behind her seven husbands and who her true love was. I enjoyed this story for the characters and the stories. I loved to see character growth and hear the stories of these people across decades of their lives. The friendships in this were as good as the romance, which is not as common in books as I’d like and also one of my favorite things. Books that have friendships as interesting and important and nurtured as much as the romantic entanglements give me life. I finished this book and was ready to read it again immediately. This would be a great book to bring on a weekend away or vacation because the storytelling feels best read in a few sittings (or one sitting if you really want it). Looking forward to reading this book again soon. 

Buy The Seven Husbands of evelyn Hugo

Holiday Romance

| enbyyourself

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

Title: Holiday Romance

Author: Catherine Walsh

Year: 2022

Genre: Romance, travel, Irish, Christmas

Queer shit: Nods to queer side characters

Vibe Check: this friends to lovers set over years of traveling home for the holidays just hit me right in the romantic feels, I loved it so much 

Pile of Opinions: I read this book digitally as an Advanced Readers Copy through NetGalley. I hoped for a cozy Hallmark Christmas vibes book with maybe a little steam and this did not disappoint. Friends to lovers over Christmas, sunshine and grumpy, and kooky families, I love it. This book had me laughing out loud at their banter and I loved the way they communicated. I get so annoyed when characters unrealistically keep secrets or do unbelievable things to keep the plot moving. This book had none of that and this felt like an adorable telling of a believable pair of pals falling in love. I am looking forward to reading this book again at Christmas time and I have added the author’s other books to my TBR.

Professional Reader

Buy Holiday Romance

The Love Hypothesis

| enbyyourself

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

Title: The Love Hypothesis 

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Year: 2021

Genre: Romance. Academic

Queer shit: none? If there was any it was like random side characters that didn’t really matter other than being fillers. Maybe there was none? If it was, it was subtle enough to not be memorable. 

Vibe Check: Academics and grad school, fake dating, gender roles. 

Pile of Opinions: I both loved and felt really icky about this book. I read this book because it was recommended by many people and I kept seeing it pop up on social media. I loved the idea of a love story while someone is in grad school, I enjoyed that this felt like smart people making out of character decisions like faking a relationship. The story is about a grad student who decides to get a fake relationship to convince her best friend that she doesn’t have feelings for the boy her best friend likes. The man she picks at random is the faculty who is harshest on his students and least liked among her peers. I felt like the connection between the two leads felt believable and I enjoyed watching them fall for each other for realsies. I did not like the jokes about Title IX, especially when it became a real concern with a side character. I did not enjoy how heterosexual this was not only being a cis man and a cis women but how much it enforced gender roles and stereotypes. The male lead was often described by how large of a human he was and the female lead was often talked about as small and petite. Yes, she was smart and a hard worker, but the sheer number of times he rescued her was frustrating by the end of the book. He’s already faculty and she is a student (not his student) so there is already a power dynamic to be aware of and I felt that was leaned into rather than treaded lightly near. The sex……more about how small she is and how large he is, weird and unnecessary virginity or inexperience shit (I super hate this tactic with adults because it is almost never done in a way that isn’t sexist). By the time they were done having sex I actually started admitting I disliked the book as it was sort of the nail in the coffin of a lack of queerness, continued reinforcement of gender roles, and I was happy when I finished the book but sort of wished the whole sex part was left out and I could just enjoy the rest of it without feeling icky about gender roles and just write this off as likely too straight for me. I later found out this started out as Reylo (Rey and Kylo Ren) fan fiction and I really disliked it with commitment after that. Star Wars is sacred and I have strong opinions about Rey (because I will fight Kylo for her, I mean, only if she loves me back and wants me to fight him. She may want to fight her own battles and that is one of the many reasons I love her). Anyway, I probably would not have read it had I known it started as fanfic for a couple I don’t ship. It wasn’t bad, just not for me and arguably perpetuating damaging stereotypes. Not gay enough haha 

Buy The Love Hypothesis

One True Loves

| enbyyourself

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.

Buy One True Loves

Happily Ever Afters

| enbyyourself

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.

Buy Happily Ever Afters