Romance – Page 8 – World of Bai

Book Review: “The Roughest Draft” By Emily Wibberley

I recently became a VIP for The Once Upon A Book Club Subscription Box and this was my first book from their subscription box. I immediately dove into this book because I was excited to read it and find out what the gifts were that came along with the book and I was not disappointed!

If you would like to order your own book box from Once Upon A Book Club please click this link for a discount!

“…sometimes relationships don’t die. They just don’t grow. Kept from sunlight, from nourishment, they never flourish.”
Emily Wibberley, The Roughest Draft

About The Book

Author: Emily Wibberley

Publisher: Berkley Books

Published Date: January 25, 2022

Page Count: 317 Pages

Main Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Fiction

GoodReads Rating: 3.68

“Forever is about reaching into the future, into years far away and unknowable. Always is about every second of every day. It’s as far reaching as forever, it just starts sooner.”
Emily Wibberley, The Roughest Draft

Synopsis

Katrina and Nathan wrote a best selling book together four years ago and haven’t spoken since due to some writing fallouts that led to Nathans divorce and Katrina’s writers block. Still having a contract to write one more book together they are forced to reconnect and knock out another bestseller in two months. Will they be able to put their rocky past behind them or will they let their contract fall to pieces?

“Fiction comes from truth. It is a wonderful, imaginative, flourishing thing grown from a seed of real feelings, real desires, real fears. No artist ever creates from nothing. We work from what we’ve experienced, inspired by the unique piece of the world we see. It’s why art cannot be replicated.”
Emily Wibberley, The Roughest Draft

Rating

Review

As said above I got this book from Once Upon A Book Club and so after this review I will be showing you what came in the box. These are gifts for you to open as you read the book. Please only scroll all the way to the bottom if you are ok with spoilers!

This book was a slow burn but it was really worth it! You feel the connection between the two characters immediately and you are just rooting for them to get together from the start.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book. They both had silly little quirks they had to overcome throughout the book that really added some much needed contrast to the writing and characters. Chris’s character was easy to hate which I thought was perfect for this books over all story because we needed something to despise while reading.

The thing that I hated and loved the most was the ending. It was super fast which flowed really well but I was left wanting more of their relationship. Overall this was a really fun read that I think you will really enjoy.

“There’s no truth to these pages, but the trick of fiction is to make you think there is. I let myself fall for it as often as I can.”
Emily Wibberley, The Roughest Draft

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Book Review: “Things We Never Got Over” By Lucy Score

Now that I have finished this book I have officially reached my 2022 reading goal of 40 books! In all of 2021 I read 35 books so I am already killing it this year and I still have four months to go! I would also like to point out that I read this 500 paged book in less than a week along with listening and finishing an audio book so I have been really on top of my game.

“There’s a difference between taking care of someone because you love them and taking care of someone because you want them to love you,”
Lucy Score, Things We Never Got Over

About The Book

Author: Lucy Score

Publisher: That’s What She Said Publishing

Published Date: January 13, 2022

Page Count: 568 Pages

Main Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Adult

GoodReads Rating: 4.31

“Sooner or later, you have to accept that you’re not responsible for other people’s choices. Worse, sometimes you can’t fix what’s wrong with them.”
Lucy Score, Things We Never Got Over

Synopsis

Naomi is a runaway bride on her way to the smallest of small towns to save her twin sister from some kind of trouble yet again. But instead of finding a warm welcoming town she is faced with a grumpy Viking of a man who thinks she is her no good twin sister Tina, here to stir up more trouble. After putting the man in his place she quickly finds out that Tina set her up to steal her car and a bag full of cash and left her with an 11 year old niece she didn’t know she had.

Naomi is now the sole guardian of her niece in a small town with no money where the only person she knows is a Grumpy man who already got on her nerves. She is quick to lay out a plan on how she will make a life for her and her niece but is she truly ready to be a parent?

“I’d lost myself while trying to convince someone else that I was what he wanted. I’d forgotten who I was because I’d let someone else take over the definition.”
Lucy Score, Things We Never Got Over

Rating

Review

This book has been all over my Bookstagram and Booktok so I have been super excited to read this for quite sometime. I received this as a gift for my birthday last month and I am so grateful!

This book hooked me from the first chapter! I read this while at the beach and sped through the first half of the book in one sitting! I read the rest today on my day off under a nice shady tree and loved every moment of it. I truly believe the hype for this book is well deserved and I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t pick it up yourself.

One thing that I struggle with in steamy books are the sex scenes. 90% of the time they talk way too much and it just feels awkward and strange. Maybe I don’t have enough experience reading steamy books and maybe I like less steam. To be honest me and my boyfriend just laugh at the words being used to describe things. Like being milked gets talked about several times in this book and that is not a sentence I would ever say.

My favorite part of this book was Naomi’s relationship with Waylay, her niece. They just fit like glue and became the best part of the book. I love Waylays smart mouth and the love Naomi automatically has for her. Just over all the whole community of this book was much needed and I love the found family trope that is so strongly presented in this whole book.

QOTD: How is your reading goal going this year? Do you even have a goal or do you just read for fun?

“When you trust someone to see you for who you really are, the betrayal is a thousand times worse than if you hadn’t handed them the weapons in the first place,”
Lucy Score, Things We Never Got Over

June Wrap Up

June has been a crazy month full of packing and putting final touches on our home so we could move. We are officially moved into my childhood home and now all that is left is finding room for all of our stuff. Now that we are moved I am hoping to have more time to read next month but if I am honest this move has exhausted me and I am not sure how much brain capacity I have for reading right now.

As always I will post the link to my reviews for you to read those. I don’t post full reviews for audio books so my thoughts will be next to those books here. I mostly listened to audio books this month while we packed so this could be fun.

Physical Books

“Read Between The Lines” By Rachel Lacey

Rosie’s whole life has been centered around books. She grew up in her moms bookstore surrounded by all the stories she loves. When her mom passes away Rosie takes over the shop which has so many wonderful memories of her childhood and special moments with her mom. All that Rosie is missing is her own romance story, But she thinks she has found that too when she strikes up a conversation with her favorite author Brie on Twitter.

Everything feels like the stars have aligned until the day Rosie gets a letter telling her that the Bookstores lease will not be renewed and that she has till December to find a new home for her beloved store. Rosie pushes love to the back burner in hopes to save her store but why can’t she have it all?

Full Review

“Loveless” By Alice Oseman

Georgia is about to head off to University never having the chance to have a relationship let alone her first kiss. She felt like she was falling behind in the romance category but she believed that was all about to change when University started. This was her time to find the love of her life.

Arriving at University she finds out that she has a roommate who seems to have relationships all figured out. This gave Georgia hope, thinking she could learn a thing or two about relationships and sex. However, this just caused her more confusion than anything. Why is romance so easy for everyone but her?

Throughout the course of University Georgia has a chance to find her true self but this will turn out not to be an easy task. Will Georgia be able to find love?

Full Review

Audio Books

“The Charm Offensive” By Alison Cochrun

I have seen a lot of amazing reviews for this book and I heard it was basically The Bachelor. Because of these things I was super excited to listen to this book. The beginning was super cute and I was hooked but the longer it went on the more I just felt meh about the whole thing. Charlie and Ben both really annoyed me and I never really cared about their relationship. The big romantic gesture happened two hours before the book ended and so once that happened I was just done. The ending really fell flat overall.

“Written In The Stars” By Alexandria Ballefleur

This book was Highly recommended to me by many Bookstagrammers and I was super excited to read this one. I think I was pretty distracted while I was listening to this book because I can’t remember much that happened, I did listen to it 30 days ago but still. I know I loved the first part of the book, The middle and all the animosity between the characters really made me feel meh and the ending just felt rushed. I have never liked enemies to lovers so this rating doesn’t surprise me but I do think I would have enjoyed it more if I actually read the book.

“Meet Cute Club” By Jack Harbon

This was a super cute story that I think every book lover dreams about. I really enjoyed this book and the characters relationship. However I did not like the narrator and so I probably would have given this 5 stars if the narrator was better, he just took me out of the story more than I would have liked.

Favorite Quotes

“Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they’re just as important. Actually, for us, they’re way more important.”
From Loveless

“She’s happy with who she is. Maybe it’s not the heteronormative dream that she grew up wishing for, but… knowing who you are and loving yourself is so much better than that, I think.”
From Loveless

“Never trust your fears. They don’t know your strength.”
From Read Between The Lines

“Life would be a lot better if we all spent a little more time staring at the stars.”
From Written In The Stars

June Thoughts

I read a lot of the books I thought I would read this month which I am super happy about! I am also in the middle of reading “Ace” but this is one I am taking my time with to mark and annotate so I can really gather my thoughts.

We have officially moved so I think life will be less busy here soon so I really hope to read and post more in the near future!

Book Review: “Loveless” By Alice Oseman

June has been seriously flying by! We are just over halfway through June and I have now finished two physical books and two audio books! That’s really not terrible but I don’t see myself finishing any more books for this month if I am going to be completely honest with you. As I have stated in a few of my latest posts we are moving and we are down to exactly one week till the moving truck arrives, eekk, so much stress!

“I’ve learnt some Things. Like the way friendship can be just as intense, beautiful and endless as romance. Like the way there’s love everywhere around me – there’s love for my friends, there’s love for my paintings, there’s love for myself.”
Direct Quote From The Book

About The Book

Author: Alice Oseman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published Date: July 9th, 2020

Page Count: 433 Pages

Main Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult, LGBTQ

GoodReads Rating: 4.31

“She’s happy with who she is. Maybe it’s not the heteronormative dream that she grew up wishing for, but… knowing who you are and loving yourself is so much better than that, I think.”
Direct Quote From The Book

Synopsis

Throughout the course of University Georgia has a chance to find her true self but this will turn out not to be an easy task. Will Georgia be able to find love?

“You know why people pair up into couples? Because being a human is fucking terrifying. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you’re not doing it by yourself.”
Direct Quote From The Book

Rating

“People are really out there just … thinking about having sex all the time and they can’t even help it?’ I spluttered. ‘People have dreams about it because they want it that much? How the – I’m losing it. I thought all the movies were exaggerating, but you’re all really out there just craving genitals and embarrassment. This has to be some kind of huge joke.”
Direct Quote From The Book

Review

When I first ordered this book I had just finished reading the “Heartstopper” Books and honestly I assumed this would be a graphic novel as well. To my surprise I opened the book up and it was a full novel! It is really hard to compare Alice’s writing in the novel and in the graphic novel. They both have such a different impact. In the graphic novels you can see the emotion but in this book you really felt the emotion, which I really enjoyed! I am very happy this was a 400 paged book, I felt like the topic of Aero Ace really needed a full story and explanation because it isn’t something many people know about or can really understand.

I have a lot to say about this book but I do feel like I am still trying to fully process everything that I read. Asexuality is a very broad spectrum with many sub sexualities and I am very thankful of the way this book was written. Alice really explained Aero Ace in a way that you can understand their feelings and emotions even if you aren’t feeling the same way. I just can’t tell you enough how well this book was written. I think that anyone who thinks they might fit into the Aero Ace sexuality or even those who want to learn a bit more about it, this is a great book to start with.

I will always be recommending this book and I know I will be rereading this one. I am also dying to order the rest of Alice Oseman’s books, She has quickly became an auto buy author for me.

“The aromantic and asexual spectrums weren’t just straight lines. They were radar charts with at least a dozen different axes.”
Direct Quote From The Book

QOTD: Have you read any of Alice Oseman’s Books?

One Year Blogging Anniversary

Today marks exactly one year since my first blog post was released! I read somewhere when I was starting that most bloggers don’t make it past the three month mark (Don’t Quote me because now I can’t find where I heard this). But reaching the three moth mark was my only goal starting this blog and now here I am, a whole year later, still making blog posts!

I am excited to share my journey with you today and I encourage you to check out some of my links that I share. I will post my Bookstagram and any related blog posts for you if you are interested in seeing more of what I do!

I also have a Buy Me a Coffee link and an Amazon Wishlist if you would like to check those out as well.

My Story

My story starts when I was young, I used to HATE reading when I was younger. It just never made sense to me why people would choose to sit down and read words off of something that felt endless, instead of playing sports, videogames or really anything else in the world. I remember being forced to read books in junior high and high school such as; Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird and Jane Eyre. I truly believe this led me down a deeper hole of hatred. I just feel when you are forced to do something it can ruin your perspective on those things.

Jump to July 2020, mid pandemic, I had just moved into a new home with my boyfriend who worked long nights. Being cooped up in a new home all alone was really starting to get to me and so I was searching for new hobbies to keep me occupied. While scrolling through Facebook I stumbled across an ad for Book of the Month Club (Not Sponsored) and it peaked my interest! Paying a monthly fee of $15.99 for a book credit and $9.99 for each add on sounded like a steal and let me tell you, it was! I dedicate getting back into reading to BOTM. Cheap, affordable, good quality books that helped me step out of my comfort zone and start an obsession. Now I have an endless TBR pile that will continue to grow and a bookstagram that keeps me on track!

Now

I have been on Bookstagram for about a year and a half now and I have made so many amazing bookish friends, created this blog, became an ambassador for a few companies and even had the chance to interview a few authors! This has been a crazy experience but I wouldn’t change a thing!

I have so many ideas for the future of this blog including more posts, Bookish Merch and author spotlights. All of these things will hopefully be coming soon starting with more posts each week in July! As for the author spotlights I would like to start reading one Indie book each month and really spotlight that book and author and maybe even try and get interviews with the authors each month. I am not sure when this will start but I would love some Indie book recommendations so I can start putting this together.

Fun Facts

As of today I have 95 total followers on my Blog

In the 6 months my blog was running in 2021 I had over 2,000 Views and 488 total likes

My Book stack for a cause to save the bees was my most viewed post

My favorite blog post was about My Greatest Accomplishment

My Favorite Book Review was “It Ends With Us” By Colleen Hoover

Favorite Books

“It Ends With Us” By Colleen Hoover

“Book Lovers” By Emily Henry

“One Last Stop” By Casey McQuiston

“Verity” By Colleen Hoover

“Crescent City: HOSAB” By Sarah J Maas

“The Hate U Give” By Angie Thomas

“The Love Hypothesis” By Ali Hazelwood

I would like to thank all of my followers here on the blog and also on Bookstagram for supporting me in this amazing journey. Every like and share or even just a click on a link makes me so happy! I love seeing how much this blog has grown over the past year and I can’t wait to see what happens in the coming years as well. Please don’t be a stranger, my DM’s are always open and I love talking about books and pretty much everything else, so lets be friends! Here’s too many more years of blogging!

QOTD: What are some of your hobbies other than reading?

Book Review: “Read Between the Lines” By Rachel Lacey

For the month of June I am reading all LGBTQ+ books. I read LGBTQ+ all throughout the year but I thought for Pride I would really focus on these topics and books I have been dying to read or have been on my shelf for awhile. This book was one my boyfriend gave me for Christmas and I thought the synopsis sounded so cute and so I finally dove in!

“I’d date Ms. Maybe to find out if she could be Ms. Right, but not if I already know she’s wrong for me.”
Direct Quote From The Book

About The Book

Author: Rachel Lacey

Publisher: Montlake

Published Date: December 1st, 2021

Page Count: 331 Pages

Main Genres: Romance, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

GoodReads Rating: 3.79

“So, more often than not, she curled up with a book and read about fictional characters falling in love instead of putting herself out there.”
Direct Quote From The Book

Synopsis

“And right now, you’re having too much fun flirting with her on Twitter,” Lia teased. “It’s chatting, not flirting,”
Direct Quote From The Book

Rating

Review

Possible Spoilers Ahead

I honestly had very high hopes for this book because any book about a book store just sounds so cute! Like this book could have been a booklovers dream but it failed to keep me entertained.

Rosie and Jane (AKA Brie) were not compatible at all! Mostly because Janes family business are the ones who are tearing down the bookstore. This causes so much animosity between the two characters that I just didn’t want to root for them to be together. I get the bookstore is special to Rosie but seriously grow up and realize that Jane had no choice in the matter. Also there was one scene where Rosie invites Jane to coffee they have a great five sentence conversation and Rosie who literally invited Jane out stood up and said “Sorry I can’t do this” and left… Like WTF?

Also, don’t even get me started on the pacing of this book. There were things that needed a lot more detail and things that could have used less detail. There were scenes, especially the sex scenes, that were like two sentences and they were already at completion, no that’s not how this works. Then right after the sex scenes there wasn’t much connection between them like we were already moving onto the next day.

Their relationship just felt forced and they really had no time together that was written well enough to make you care about their relationship. All you know about their relationship is that Rosie was always in love with Brie’s writing but hates Jane because of her job. You can’t hate and love someone, one side will always win. And again, all their conversations come back to Janes family business destroying the building, like we get it, can we get some other dialog?

I would have loved this book if Rosie was in love with Brie and they started an online relationship but secretly Brie is Jane, a book lover who comes into the bookstore once or twice a week and they each have secret crushes in real life and in the online world. That would have been amazing! But the whole plot line of destroying the bookstore just built too much animosity that made their relationship unbelievable.

Overall, Rosie’s character was annoying and Janes character had no back bone and both characters combined fell flat. I would love more about Lia and her back story, she was by far the best character who actually did most of the work at the bookstore and to try and save the store. Like Rosie this is your family business and you hardly can even show up to work because you are too busy Hating and loving Jane at the same time to even try and save your store. I just don’t think this is a book you need to read and you should probably skip over this one as a whole.

QOTD: What books plot drives you crazy?