vtuber's reviews
69 reviews

i finally return to nora roberts after this book put me in a 4 month long reading slump.. we try again though

island of flowers is an 80s romance novel about a french girl named laine simmons and a pilot named dillon o'brian (i know right? i can never escape teen wolf..). also it takes place in hawaii. i don't really know why, but it is good ambience. 

again i hated everything about this. these 1982 novels are all the same. also this one has a few microaggressions towards native hawaiians which i guess is par for the course here but jesus

laine's personality is so bizarre she starts off as fairly normal and then suddenly becomes barbara cartland out of nowhere. "you have no right to make love to me just because it amuses you", "i shall limit myself to pork and pineapple". is this because she's french? why does she talk like a victorian? french people can also speak casually. macron will allow it

at the same time that this is probably nora roberts' most "problematic" book of 1982, i was still kind of genuinely satisfied by the ending and liked the setting of kauai more than any of her other ones so far. i'm so excited for these books to become good as i read her more recent ones

apparently i was asleep or something reading this because i was genuinely so confused how the relationships worked. turns out i was reading as if calypso and callisto, persephone and penelope, and orpheus and odysseus were all the same people. i may be stupid.

katee robert must be awesome if you like men because this was awesome. i want shy butch medusa to ************ me also. am i allowed to say that

this was also the most egalitarian sex ever. this is possibly the closest we can get to the non-imperialistic lesbian revolution sheila jeffreys dreamed of in the 90s (if you know you know..) 

neon gods is an erotic romance novel about persephone escaping a forced marriage with zeus before meeting the "mythical" hades and falling in love with him. i would say this is a retelling of greek myth in the way that a quesadilla could be considered a sandwich. 

i do think it's a little unfair to judge this erotica novel based on its literary merit since that's clearly not what was trying to be done here, but can i admit that the sex kind of sucks? this whole book operates on the assumption that one of the reader's greatest fantasies is to have a sexy powerful man taking care of you, and if that doesn't describe you, most of this book will not work at all. and yet i still want to come back for electric idol. just take me out back and shoot me. and the worldbuilding is total butt ass too.. i was genuinely curious about the thirteen but my questions were never answered

i read this via audio and yes it was fucking insane. would i reccommend? honestly yes even if the british accents are not your thing i would go for it. fair warning though persephone's narrator does make hades sound like dracula which is never not funny during a sex scene

at some point i was genuinely invested in the story here but there is literally one plotline and the severity of it just gets repeated over and over by the characters and i'm like ok. let's keep it moving.. but i just love a happy ending come on now

the adventures of amina al-sirafi is a historical fantasy novel about mother and ex pirate amina al-sirafi, who is hired to do one last adventure to save a kidnapped teenager. 

i loved this book. some say the characterization is a little flat and i do agree to an extent, but also i read this via audio, so i think i felt that a little less. lameece isaaq is the perfect voice for this novel.. if you're really worried about the character work, i would suggest the audiobook. worldbuilding perfect. plot amazing. amina's backstory epic. i have very few notes here this is just a big gorgeous epic pirate adventure

the flatshare is a british contemporary romance novel following tiffy and leon, who live in the same flat and yet have never actually met each other in person.

this novel is adorably british. or english.. as Those People would say. i felt myself becoming more british the longer i read. it's kind of incredible. they even do the british x kisses thing after every text message!! 

as i'm reading the reviews i'm noticing that no one else clocked leon as neurodivergent. i thought it was like.. extremely obvious.. he even has a different style of prose and different dialogue formatting from tiffy. he's highly introverted and takes a while to accept when things don't go how he thought they would. not diagnosing him here just saying! we can literally read his thoughts, clearly he thinks a little differently. 

imogen, obviously is a sapphic romance novel about a senior in highschool named imogen who discovers her bisexuality after visiting blackwell college and meeting her friend emilia's queer friend group. this also, in many ways, reads to me as becky albertalli's semiautobiographical novel about being forced to come out after writing simon vs. the homo sapien's agenda, because she got so much hate online for "appropriating queerness as a straight woman". 

this book is a perfect picture of what it was like to immerse myself into online lgbt communities after realizing i was a lesbian. everyone is on your ass all the time. that's all i can say. it sucks to know in your heart that you are completely accepting of everyone, and furthermore, on the same page as everyone, and yet you still have to prove yourself and avoid the smallest slip-ups to avoid getting a stern talking to about how you have "some work to do" from some fucking random (who definitely also has "some work to do" of their own..). 

page 49 (on digital) completely mirrors the thoughts i was having about internet discourse and morality in general as a baby teen. "am i allowed to love this?" and the answer is YES!! the second you delete your account the answer will literally appear in front of you in neon lights. not everyone is going to agree with you on everything. often there is no right answer, no one correct thought. everything is just you. if believing in something is making you stressed and giving you more anxiety (even though it's the "correct opinion") then you don't actually believe it. you connect to what you connect to. live your life shamelessly.

the drama of this book is gorgeous.. this is a blue sparkly ballgown of a novel and this is a dripping strawberry cheesecake of a novel. nick is in with the wealthy but kind of hates them for their fundamental selves and yet aligns himself with gatsby more than anyone else, and the last 3 chapters of this book will hit you over the head with a shovel several times. there definitely are a few lines here that i think scotty straight up plagiarized from zelda, but f scott fitzgerald himself was such a character that i kind of cant bring myself to feel anything about it. his own views about relationships with women definitely seeped into this novel though with the way nick is more infatuated and affectionate towards gatsby than his literal love interest

actually just too much for me to handle at this time and into the foreseeable future. got 57% of the way through