i read the 10+ best romances of 2021 | Chanmas Day 12

hello welcome back to my channel in today's video i am going to be reading and ranking the nominees in the 2021 goodreads choice awards in the category of romance now if you are not new to my channel it should come as no surprise that i'm doing this video yet again this will be my third year reading and reviewing all of the books that are nominated for the goodreads choice awards this year i'm doing it a little bit differently though in prior years i have just read the top 10 finalists for the goodreads choice awards this year i am going to be reading and reviewing all 20 of the nominees and telling you which i believe should be finalists and then which ultimately should be the winner and then we're going to compare who the actual winner was who the actual finalists were but before that i thought i could kind of discuss how i feel about this year's goodreads choice awards and then i will get into talking about all of the books i will say this year has been quite different than prior years we have no write-ins for this particular goodreads choice awards we get 20 nominees at the beginning voted down to 10 finalists voted down to one winner now i like this format i feel like it makes a little bit more sense rather than having 10 nominees bloated to 20 after the write-ins and then back down to 10 again i think having just two rounds makes more sense though i will say i was a little irritated that there weren't any write-ins because i feel like the opportunity to have more indie romances on this list was definitely lacking there was only one indie romance on this entire list and i'm always disappointed in that as an indie romance lover so that's one thing that i didn't totally love about this year's choice awards but there were two things that i did actually enjoy the first thing that i really enjoyed is that there were no true sequels on this list in prior years we've always had like the 19th book in a series as a nominee and this time i think we only have one book that is not the first book in the series which is a book that actually can be read as a standalone so if you wanted to read all of the finalists like i do you don't have to have read other books prior to be able to understand the book that's nominated and the other thing that i really like about the goodreads choice awards this year really doesn't have anything to do with the format but it has to do with equality at least what i think is the quality of the nominees i have read 15 of the 20 nominees which has genuinely never happened before in past years i've only picked up the 10 finalists and even then i have not read such a high proportion of the books before the video even starts but this year i actually have read 15 of the 20 books which feels really good and i feel like tends to mean that this is a more representative sample of the romances that came out in the past year which is not to say that i've read every romance that comes out but i feel like i've read quite a large variety of their releases this year so i am happy to see that a lot of the books that i read and loved are on this list so those are kind of my thoughts on the goodreads choice awards this year i will say that my opinion does not apply to other categories in the choice awards but for romance i feel like the nominees were really good pretty fair and uh despite lacking indie romances i'm fairly happy with our selection so let's go ahead and get into the reading and ranking i will be sitting down right here to tell you about the 15 books that i have read and then the five that i have not i have vlogged and i will throw in those clips as we go first up we have the road trip by beth o'leary i know they say save the best for last but what about saving the worst for first because i am going to be dnfing the road trip by beth o'leary this shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has watched any of my goodreads videos before i have had to read i've been forced to read a beth o'leary book for each of these three videos and i feel like they get progressively worse so i feel like it's not surprising that i didn't like this and that i'm not going to be continuing it i do think this is the first one that i've dnf by her though so they really have been getting worse the road trip is about addie and dylan i had not gotten to actual road trip component of the story they end up in a car crash together two separate cars they end up colliding and now they're going to have to go on a road trip together to get to this wedding that they were both going to anyway and a bunch of their friends are there as well and so they're all kind of having to pile in this car and go together and then we are immediately given flashbacks to addie and dylan's relationship in the present day they're broken up in the past they have this fling and we're getting kind of backstory into that i think my issue is that it's not a true second chance romance or it's not a traditional second chance romance for me a second chance romance is only effective if the reasons keeping the two people apart were not really something that they did themselves this story we have dylan and i think he is the reason that they broke up i think he like did something shitty i don't think he like cheated on her or anything but there has been allusion to the fact that perhaps there was some sort of like toxicity in their relationship and i just don't know how this story could ever turn out in a way that i like if the relationship was toxic and didn't work the first time now when i say a second chance romance i really mean that two people when they were first together didn't even necessarily get together or they were together for one night you know that's like an acceptable oh okay now they get a second chance but if the first relationship that y'all had together didn't work out because the relationship didn't work out y'all were together for a certain length of time and it did not work out i don't want to see the second chance i don't want to see it on top of that the writing was just not really my favorite i just don't really gel with beth o'leary's writing the flash year was fine i cannot remember last year's title but it was less fine but not horrible this one i just like i don't understand and it's so long it's like unnecessarily long the audiobooks i think over 12 hours long for what reason i couldn't possibly guess i'm not going to rant about this book anymore for me this is a dnf and if i were to read it and read it i would not be surprised if this was either a one or two star read since this is the first book i don't really have anywhere to place this except as number one but we all know this is not going to be the lasting ranking of the road trip next up we have second first impressions by sally thorne this book is about ruthie who not only works in a retirement community but she also acts and dresses like one of the residents in typical uptight heroin fashion ruthie is brought out of her tortoise shell pun intended because saving tortoises is part of this book by teddy who is tattooed and doesn't take life too seriously for some reason he's got a cardigan and glasses with chains king and he thinks ruthie is the bee's knees and the story is about the two of them learning from each other this might be the most bizarre book on this list and it's made even stranger by the fact that sally thorne is the author who penned the hating game i shouldn't be surprised since her second title was such a dud for me but i was holding out hope that this third book would be the redemption that i needed unfortunately that was not the case this book was certainly not bad but i feel like it lacked the charm that i know sally thorne is capable of writing there were definitely good pieces here and there were a few cute scenes but the painfully meek heroine and fuckboy trope is one that i feel like has been done to death and done much better than it was done here in this book three stars and for now this book is the front runner but again let's be honest it will not be staying here for long next up we have the heart principle by helen huang now as a lot of you probably already know i have a very complicated relationship with this book on the one hand i feel like this is a deeply deeply personal story that really needed to be told but on the other hand i feel like it kind of failed as a romance this book is about kwon who is a character that we learn about in the first book in this series wow now that i'm thinking about it this is actually another book on this list that is a part of a series but can be read as a standalone i digress this book is about quan and anna quan is someone we learned about in prior books anna is a new character quan is dealing with a recent cancer diagnosis that is kind of bringing down his joyful and playful personality anna is a violinist who is struggling with anxiety and a sense of imposter syndrome after a video of her playing the violin went viral this story is about anna and kwan as they grapple with life's difficulties and also kind of deal with their relationship they've gone on a series of semi-filled dates due to anna's really really strong anxiety but kwon is just so drawn to anna that he's willing to overlook the fact that she kind of like runs away from him after their first date and they continue to go on these like semi-field dates and end up falling for each other in the process i really appreciated the message that this story had and i also really appreciated the look at mental health especially as it relates to the hardships of caretaking but i was also unfortunately viscerally angry as i was reading this book seeing how anna was treated seeing how she didn't necessarily stand up for herself and also having to see kwon become a character that i didn't enjoy just so that he could be a good match for anna i wanted someone to match kwan's energy instead of him having to bring down his happiness to kind of meet anna and i'm not saying that like he became downtrodden as the story went on i just feel like at the beginning of the story he was a completely different character than we had come to know before i've said it before in other videos but i think as a story this was super fantastic but as a romance it just really fell flat for me so for me this kind of is a middle-of-the-road read and it was three stars which breaks my heart since the other two books in the series were five stars as it stands this book is going to be at the head of this list for now but again it is certainly not going to stay there next up we have an equally depressing and much less charming entry on this list life's too short by abby jimenez this is another case of where the is the calm in rom-com and you might reply with chandler obviously this is a very serious book it's not marketed as a rom-com to which i would reply it's in the first sentence of the synopsis and i was cheated this book is about vanessa who like many millennials with disposable income is super into travel she makes a living off of travel vlogs and because her mother and sister died before the age of 30 vanessa thinks she'll probably go before 30 as well so yellow or whatever but one day her half-sister drops her baby off at vanessa's doorstep and she can no longer globe trot and is instead forced to clean up baby vomit it's totally okay though because her hot neighbor loves kids and helps her out this story was fine the dude was nice enough though i couldn't tell you his name and the romance was you know supportive and but the background of impending death and having to take care of a child that you didn't have a say in taking care of kind of put a damper on any swooning that could have taken place and that's not to say that i think all romance should be devoid of the realities of life i just feel like a lot of authors have a really hard time walking the line between cheer and depression for the crimes of being both depressing and forgettable this book is getting two stars for me and i think i'm going to squeeze it in between second first impressions and the road trip it wasn't quite so bad as the road trip but let's be honest it's not great next up we have while we were dating another installment in jasmine guillory's the wedding day series in my endeavors in other videos similar to this one i have been forced to read all of the prior books in the wedding date series up until this point now again that i'm thinking about it this is another book on this list that is actually a part of a series but like the others it is also one that can be read as a standalone so i don't think it's necessary that you've read the other books in this series to be able to participate in the goodreads choice awards now when reading jasmine guillory's prior books i think i gave almost all of them three stars so i feel like it should come as no surprise so this book was also just kind of middle of the road for me this book is about ben and anna ben is in advertising and he is put in charge of an ad campaign after nailing the presentation that he gives to our movie star heroine anna and this book is about them canoodling and falling in love which was fine but if you notice i didn't mention anything in that synopsis that would lead you to believe that there would be any meaningful tension or angst and that would be because there was none i really appreciated the emphasis on our hero's mental health and our heroine's journey to self-confidence but the attempts at conflicts in this book made very little sense to me that coupled with some half-baked side plots especially on the part of our hero ben made this book ultimately pretty forgettable for me three stars and when it comes to ranking this book i feel like it's a little bit challenging because we already have a few three stars on this list but i think i'm going to put this between second first impressions and life's too short next up we have how to fail at flirting i am really torn about this book y'all i am enjoying it i think the banter and the chemistry between our hero and heroine is off the charts easily some of the best chemistry that i've read in any of these books all year so i am delighted to be reading it however um everybody has their preference when it comes to content and stories and what they're cool and not cool with and there is a lot of abuse that is depicted in this story not current like not with our hero and heroine but an ex-boyfriend who was abusive and we get flashbacks to that i don't think that there is a hard and fast rule on whether or not those things should be or can be depicted in romance i think that's obviously up to the discretion of the author and i know a lot of people don't mind that and find it very realistic and again like i am not debating the merits of having that sort of content in romances however i do tend to steer clear of reading them and i don't need to justify why i i think that whatever reason that you have or or don't have for reading books with certain triggers is absolutely valid and i think that's what i'm struggling with right now i certainly again like love the hero and harry one of the story our main character naya is a college professor and she is having a bit of a hard time because she's trying to get to 10-year status but there's a new dean at this university and he might be cutting funding for the program that she is currently teaching in so she's dealing with that and then she's also trying to kind of get back on the horse when it comes to dating after being in this abusive relationship and the guy that she meets at the bar jake is so charming i think he's just visiting um wherever this book is set and you know naya is a little bit like she's kind of struggling to date right like she gets so so drunk the first night that they kind of spend together and ends up uh getting really sick instead of having a sexual encounter with this guy but he is so respectful and so sweet like she used a fake name the first time they were together he doesn't think that that's weird like he's just a really great guy like i said i so appreciate that but i'm torn like i said because i i don't personally like reading books that have domestic abuse in them i feel like i used to be okay reading them and now i'm not and that is just that's just the way it is so i'm not gonna like read this book poorly because of that or anything but it is impacting my enjoyment i just thought that i should be very transparent about that and i do think that's something that you should know if you decide to pick up this book it is sort of hinted at in the synopsis of this book and a lot of the reviews mention it so it's not something that you're gonna go into not not knowing that or at least i would hope so but i just thought it still made sense for me to talk about it here so that's where i'm at i don't know i don't know what i'm gonna read this book i don't know i don't know i'm gonna keep reading maybe my feelings will firm up a little bit as i go oh my god i can't look at myself anymore i have to go read so i have finished how to fail at flirting i'll be honest with you this book i feel like it got worse like the romance didn't get worse but the things that i didn't like at the beginning of the story that i told you about all of the abuse uh it definitely didn't get better there was a very upsetting scene at like the 75 mark of this book where our heroine has a real encounter with the abuser i did not i did not like that i mean you're not supposed to like it obviously but he just made it challenging to enjoy the story as a whole and like i said at the beginning of this book i feel like it's fine to have real world elements in a romance i don't think that that is inherently bad or wrong or anything like that i just personally don't like on-page graphic depictions of abuse it's just not really something that i look for whenever i am picking up a romance so for me this book is like a three-star read like the romance was so strong but the other elements of this book really pulled it down for me and unfortunately this is just not a book that i want to think about anymore or ever again to be honest like after i'm talking about this book i will just put it in the back of my mind and pretend that i didn't read it that being said i would read other books by this author in the future she's really good at banter and really good at crafting a romance but i would want something a little bit lighter so three stars since this book is another three star read again it's sort of challenging to know exactly where to place it so whenever i have a couple of books that have the same star rating i sort of go off of how i felt in terms of enjoyment when reading and even among three star reads there is differentiators there and i think for me this one is going to be at the bottom of my three star reads and will be ranked between while we were dating and life's too short next up we have the soulmate equation by christina lauren and i think this might be one of my most surprising romances of the year it's been so long since i've enjoyed a book by this author duo i had honestly all but given up hope that they could produce another five star read but this one really proved me wrong this book is about single mom and statistician jess who gets roped into signing up for a new startups dating app this app promises that with a swab of dna they can predict compatibility with other members on the app once jess spits on a swab or whatever she finds out she is the highest match the app has ever seen and she is actually matching with the app's founder river since this is really good for publicity jess and river team up to get a mutual beneficial relationship out of this river obviously gets the good publicity and he offers to kind of pay her to be a part of this experiment so she is gaining from it he is gaining from it but obviously real feelings end up becoming involved once they start fake dating this book wasn't one that i would consider particularly life-changing but i was fully engrossed in both the science and the romance i love a good grumpy hero and despite this one's personality vaguely resembling that of that stanley i still totally fell for him i also think the side characters and the story and justice kids added a lot of needed charm to kind of flesh out the other parts of the book that i feel like christina lauren is sometimes not the best at doing this book for me was five stars which makes this book super easy to rank in first place the spanish love deception i tried to pick this book up earlier this year i got an advanced reader copy and i was really excited to pick it up because i had been hearing good buzz about it i really like the author's instagram account i feel like she always has like really aesthetic stuff to post and she just seems super sweet so i was excited to receive a copy i was excited to read it but getting a couple of chapters in i was having a hard time getting through some of the writing the writing felt a touch clunky to me i'll be honest with you and on top of that i just wasn't completely gelling with our main character and i feel like that can really take me out of a romance if i'm not connecting with the heroine because usually we're seeing things through their eyes and that's definitely the case i don't know if there's ever going to be a perspective change but right now this is just a first person singular pov story anyway the first time i attempted to read it it just didn't go so well i don't know that the second time is going much better i'll be honest with you i'm five chapters in i managed to snag a copy of the audiobook which i think is a much better way for me to consume the story i think viewing it with my eyes not the best the first sentence or two honestly of this book i had to reread a couple of times to understand if it was grammatically correct not to nitpick but like that really hurt my brain a little bit so the audiobook is good the story i don't know that i love we have our main character catalina or lena and she's an engineer at a firm i think in new york city she has a best friend named rosie that she works with she also works with a guy named erin blackford and he is a fellow engineer on his first day of work or second day of work requested not to be on a project with lena because he said that she was too immature or something to that effect which made lena upset obviously and aaron is enemy number one at this point because that's a pretty shitty thing to do and we open up the story with erin offering to be lena's date to her sister's wedding and we're all kind of like interesting why is he doing this that's the first scene it's him proposing to her that he should go to the wedding with her and she rambles on in her head about how she couldn't believe that he could possibly ask her and we're like okay like what's the big deal later on we find out that he was pretty shitty to her and requested not to be on a project with her and before even we find that out we have this delightful workplace harassment sort of thing going on it's like a team meeting and someone suggests that lena should be in charge of this party and or social gathering because she's the woman and she should be able to kind of throw something together even though that's not her job description she's an engineer and this rightfully upsets her there is some name calling going on the guy who suggested that lena be in charge of the party planning calls her sweetie and no one speaks up except for aaron at the very end here's the deal here's really what i'm feeling right now there's enemies to lovers and then there is egregious faults and i'm kind of feeling like aaron is on the egregious fault side i think there's going to be some sort of redemption of him and or we're going to find out later that he didn't actually request not to be on a project with lena because she's incompetent it's because he liked her or some like that but the fact that he wasn't willing to stand up for her immediately when she started going south in this workplace harassment scene kind of pissed me off additionally i felt like it read like a training video for workplace harassment not saying these things don't happen they totally do just the way that the scene was executed was a little weird overall my reading experience is a little weird thus far and i'm only a couple chapters in so i don't want to say that this is the worst book ever or that is horrible writing style is really not unenjoyable when i'm listening to it i'm having a fine time but i just feel like i wanted to point those things out because everything that i see about this book is really really really positive or i have a couple of detractors who like any time i've posted about this book say it was terrible idea after it and i feel like there's room for some middle ground found and i mean i'm going to tell you if i hate it or if i love it but i just i don't feel like i've seen any sort of middling reviews and or actual critiques of the story and i want to bring that to you hope that wasn't too rambly hopefully i was able to get my point across i'll update you again at 50 hopefully things have gotten better and i'm just like so in love with aaron am i going to say anything of value in this 50 update no i don't know i can't tell if it is just my depression-based apathy or if i'm just not vibing with this book it's not terrible or anything like looking at it objectively looking at it on the surface of the components and the tropes that it has it seems like everything that i should like but i'm just not really loving it i think the biggest thing for me is something i mentioned previously it's just the maturity or lack thereof of lena she's so obtuse and i get that that's part of the story but i feel like other stories do a little bit better like the hating game for instance i feel like the reveal that josh was really into lucy was impactful because you didn't really see it coming in this book you see it coming the entire time the reveal hasn't even happened which makes sense because we're 50 into a slow burn romance but i just feel like it's an unenjoyable obtuseness is that making any sense i have no idea i just i don't know i'm just kind of like whatever about this book i'll update you when i'm finished okay so i finished the spanish love deception last night it didn't really improve for me i'm gonna be honest with you there were a few bright spots and i definitely want to read more books by this author in the future i just feel like this one was lacking some of the polish of books that i am used to reading and that's not really a huge deal i guess in the big scheme of things i mean it's a big deal in that it really affected my enjoyment of the story but it's not such a big deal that i wouldn't want to read more from this author in the future i could see little nuggets of goodness there were a few different times where our hero says some stuff that i was like wow that's kind of hot but ultimately i feel like the heroine was just a little irritating and a little too introspective for my taste i feel like if you really like mariana zapata books this is probably a really safe bet for you i feel like the older i get and the more romance i read i'm starting to find that the love that i have for slow burn romances is kind of dissipating and i don't know if that is just a result of me not finding the right slow burn books for me or if i like would go back and read some of my old favorites if they would still hold up i don't really know kind of where i'm at with that i just know that this didn't ultimately work for me and that kind of sucks i really i wanted to love this one as much as a lot of y'all do it just it was not a perfect romance for me this is definitely a disappointment i was i was really thinking that this would be the book on this list that i would really enjoy that just wasn't the case so i think i'm unfortunately going to give this book two stars honestly it's like more of a two and a half star read for me the spanish love deception is another book that's kind of hard to rank because when i look at it against some of these other titles i feel kind of neutrally about it but i do think that i enjoyed it just a little bit more than how to fail at flirting so i think i'm going to put this between while we were dating and how to fail flirting winner winner plastic dog shape dinner let's talk about actor age e brown by talia hibbert this is the third and final book in the brown sisters trilogy this book focuses on the youngest and flightiest of the brown sisters eve as she navigates both being a full-grown adult and falling for her boss at the start of this book eve is told in no uncertain terms that she really needs to grow up and stick to a job lest she find herself out of an inheritance she's told that she needs to stick with the same job for six months and after a series of wild events eve ends up becoming a chef at a bed and breakfast working with the not-so-charming jacob jacob runs a really tight ship and he is at odds with eve's fanciful ways but as romance heroes and heroines are want to do they end up falling into each other's arms and falling into each other's beds and it was an absolute delight start to finish talia hibbert's writing does everything that i need it to do it makes me laugh out loud swoon like a and also blush to high heavens i'm really sad that this is going to be the last book in the series but i am really excited to see what talia comes up with next this book was five stars and it goes at the top of the list 30 into neon gods and it's not going great i don't think i'm surprised i don't think you should be surprised because the five books that i am picking up for this video that i have not already read i didn't really have interest in reading or i previously tried to pick it up and it didn't really work this one is in the camp of i tried to read it earlier this year and i didn't like it then and i still don't like it now this retelling this hades and persephone retelling is different than some of the other ones that i've attempted to read over the years i feel like this is kind of a trendy thing this year and so i was going to make a video reading some hades and persephone retellings when i started this one i decided i didn't like it and then i just scrapped the video all together the mythology here is that the greek gods and the pantheon who are like in charge they're not actually like gods i guess you could say they're think of it as sort of like a political title like president of the united states new people fill the roles as time goes on and that's definitely the case here we have zeus in this story who's about 65 and we have persephone who is just chilling she's just having a good time her mom is a little bit of a schemer and she is one of the 12 or 13 whatever she has essentially done some maneuvering and gotten zeus to propose to persephone so she can be the new hera because i guess that spot was open for a while and there is kind of a rumor going around that zeus's prior heras have been killed off like he's killed two of his wives and she's scared that she's going to be next persephone is so she runs away one night and she crosses the river sticks she's with hades he decides that he is cool with this plan he wants to get back at zeus for being the worst and he decides that he is gonna sully miss persephone make it to where zeus won't want to marry her i think there's gonna be some sort of like bdsm component to the story i think my issue with this book and i say i think because there's multiple things that just kind of make me go i think my issue really is that the beginning of this book feels kind of gross and i understand that that is so the story actually would be a retelling like you got to keep the myths in there somehow but i didn't like that the 65 year old man is proposing to a girl who's completely unaware and i didn't like that she had to run away and sure you could call this unfair criticism because that's the damn myth that is the legend that's the story right but i don't like it and i wish that it had been retooled in a way in a way could it have been retooled that's my question that's where i'm at i don't want to up on this anymore because i need to continue to read and hopefully i will have more coherent thoughts i just don't like it okay so i just finished neon gods and i enjoyed it i feel like it sort of turned itself around it wasn't my most favorite romance that i've ever read but it did go from being in my opinion kind of like erotica bdsm stuff to being a little bit more of an actual romance i personally don't believe that all books that have explicit sexual content are erotica in fact i hesitate to ever call anything erotica because i feel like if there's a romantic thread it's a romance to me this story at the beginning mode really did not feel like a romance it really just felt like they were going to be boning the entire time but things did kind of turn around at the 50 mark and i really did root for hades and persephone i feel like they had a pretty sweet romance um i wouldn't say this is like my favorite book that i've ever read it's not one that i'm going to be thinking about after this and i'm certainly not going to finish the series but i feel like it did a good job at what it set out to do and i could see how people could enjoy this retelling i will say i don't know if retellings are for me i feel like this book sort of told me hey you might just not be into these things i feel like i've yet to read any sort of like greek myth retelling or fairy tale retelling that i've really been into so i feel like this just kind of um cemented that for me but it certainly wasn't a terrible book i think if i were to read this it would be like two and a half or three stars like it was fine but it just isn't anything special so that's my thought on it if you want to pick it up pick it up if you have no interest in it or you've been on the fence about it i would say maybe skip it neon gods is another one that is again kind of hard to rank since it was just kind of mediocre to me so again going off of enjoyment and just going off of its merits alone i think i'm going to put this between how to fail at flirting and life's too short i was kind of on the fence i was sort of considering putting this before how to fail at flirting but despite me not liking that book quite as much and not having as good of a time reading it i feel like it does say something perhaps a little bit more important than hades and persephone bdsm smud so this is working on gods is going to rest all right get ready for me to not shut the up because i'm going to talk about my favorite romance of the entire year it happened one summer by tessa bailey this book is about piper who is loosely based on alexis rose from shit's creek she's a vapid instagram personality with a heart of gold who has been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend and kind of told in no uncertain terms that she is vapid and this is something that piper has never really had to face before after piper sort of sits with this roast for a little bit she decides that she's going to act out and she does this by breaking into a hotel pool with a bunch of her friends and unfortunately being arrested by the police since piper is privileged she obviously doesn't end up having any true legal repercussions for what she's done she does get sent to her dead father's hometown by her stepfather who is refusing to pay for piper's lavish lifestyle anymore and surprisingly piper does incredibly well in her new setting after some adjustment she is aided and assisted by her really like level-headed younger sister and also our super sexy and hot crab fisherman brendan to me there's just nothing better than a vapid girl and the big strong man that she ends up falling for this book just really scratched a niche that i didn't know that i had but the thought of a man indulging every part of me and spending fat stacks on expensive jeans because he gets me i'm a sucker for it i'm not ashamed to say it it also doesn't hurt that tessa writes some of the raunchiest sex scenes i've ever read traditionally published or otherwise five you complete me stars this one's going to the tippy top of the list and i'm pretty sure that is where she's gonna stay let's talk about the whole boob in the mouth in the room the love hypothesis by ellie hazelwood this book is published reload fanfiction and i'll let you know right now it certainly feels like it which i really don't think is an inherently bad thing this book is about third year phd student olive as she navigates the misogyny of academia and her fake dating relationship she's using hot professor adam aka kylo as her fake dating partner in hopes that she can date this guy to prove to her best friend that she no longer likes the guy that she used to be dating so that her friend will date that guy instead if it sounds convoluted that's because it really is but let's be honest we don't really care about the plot of a romance we care about the banging and that along with the storyline were pretty solid i feel like if you're someone who really enjoys fanfiction tropes it would be pretty impossible for you not to enjoy this book there were definitely cringey parts i will admit but the one really long sex scene in this book actually kind of worked for me and i did buy into the chemistry between adam and olive do i think it's possible to fit the entirety of even the smallest of boobs in one's mouth no but i found this book charming nonetheless four stars and in terms of ranking this one seems like it should be difficult but it's not because this is the only four star read that we've had so far it's gonna go right after the soulmate equation and right before the heart principle if the soulmate equation was a delightful surprise this book is a halloweentown jack-o-lantern-sized well of disappointment the x-text by erin sterling i feel like it was promised a steamy second chance romance between witches set on a backdrop of small town goodness but it obviously did not deliver i got about 100 pages into this book that i physically owned before i chucked it in the bucket this book was so the opposite of charming as to be off-putting either the hero or the heroine's motivations made much sense to me and any interactions they had between each other i didn't so much cringe as physically want to set the book down nothing about the storyline to me was interesting or coherent beyond the opening prologues to this book where we get to see our heroine kind of like lamenting her life in a bathtub after that everything just sort of went downhill and i did not care to finish this book i dnf'd it since this book was a dnf alongside the road trip i think i'm going to have to put it down at the very bottom and because this one wasn't quite as upsetting to me as the road trip i think i'm going to put it between life's too short and the road trip let's talk about shift it's the on honeymooners meets the hating game with none of the charm of either of those books it's about rival colleagues of a cruise ship line as they embark to go on a cruise to do some research on a presentation that they are going to compete against each other to do to maybe win a promotion i'm sure you can see the comparisons between those other two titles and they like fall in love over turtles or whatever i read this book back in february and i won't lie the details are a bit fuzzy and obviously i put together notes for all these books before i film but this book was so boring and lackluster that i didn't even bother so three stars now you probably think that with my unenthusiastic review of this book that it would be farther down on the list but when i actually compare it to some of the other three star reads it actually was one of my more favorite ones especially when comparing it to books like second first impressions and while we were dating in the moment this book was like fairly okay it's just not something that i think i'm going to remember for years to come i kept telling myself i wouldn't dnf another book for this video because there's no books and series on this list and it just sounded nice to be able to complete everything but unfortunately the term offensive is just not really working for me i don't think that it is a bad book and from all accounts from my goodreads friends this really worked for them and was a really fantastic romance however the beginning 10 of this book just didn't work for me and that's okay this had very strong anxiety and ocd rep and just the way that it was written it hit a little bit too close to home for me and i just didn't really feel like it was a good idea to trigger myself to read this book i don't think i've had that experience before but yeah not really one that i want to continue on with so that is the main reason i'm not gonna finish this book and i think that's perfectly fine i think you gotta do what's right for you when it comes to your reading experience this is a story that is about two men one of which i think thinks he's straight he is going to be the next bachelor and his handler producer is the one that i believe he falls in love with and i also just don't know if that personally would have worked for me i don't think there's anything wrong with books that talk about exploring your sexuality i just tend to not really like coming out stories definitely a personal preference thing i think you again get to pick what you like to read and don't like to read i just personally prefer books with out and proud characters that's kind of where i'm at uh sorry that i couldn't finish this book but if you are interested in a gay bachelor bachelorette sort of thing i think that this could be a very good book for you i just feel like i read something similar when i read one to watch last year and i think like reading one of those stories is enough i also read the one by julie murphy that has a similar plot and i think i'm just kind of over the whole reality tv show thing um i don't watch any of those franchises so i think that might be part of it but um i think that's enough i'm just i'm gonna talk about the rest of these books in my comfy chair the term offensive is another of the dnf's but i feel like this one actually had the most promise in comparison to the x-texts and the road trip so i feel pretty comfortable putting this between life's too short and the xx you know it's just a book that didn't work for me but that doesn't mean that it's inherently a not good book unlike the axe hacks and the road trip which i do think were inherently ungood let's talk about the emily henry in the room as if i have not talked about this book in depth at length in multiple videos up until this point people we meet on vacation this book is about poppy and alex they have had a friendship since their college days they end up meeting on the way home from college one day because i guess they're from the same state it has sort of a when harry met sally vibe to it i want to say that's one of the comps of this book and they continue this friendship even post-grad poppy works for i want to say some sort of like travel publication and as a result she gets to go on trips pretty much all throughout her year in the summers though she ends up coaxing alex to go along with her on trips and this is kind of how they rekindle and keep their friendship alive until one fateful summer two years ago when something happened and poppy and alex decide that they are no longer going to go on trips together but poppy misses her best friend alex and she hits him up two years later and is like hey i really miss you can we please go on one final hurrah sort of trip and if it doesn't work if we can't rekindle our friendship again then we can just kind of go our separate ways to which alex agrees and obviously on the trip they end up boning and having a really good time this book honestly was a delight start to finish and it had that angst and juicy tension that i personally really like and honestly require of my romances this book to me is just seriously great and i wouldn't be surprised if this ends up in the top 10 finalists so i'm giving this book five stars when it comes to ranking this book amongst my other five star reads i feel like i'm going to place this between actor age eve brown and the soul mate equation by christina lauren it was a really solid read but actuary chief brown and it happened one summer are just all-time favorites for me at this point and i just can't see people we meet on vacation rising to that rank i mean it's great don't get me wrong but to me it's not like an all-time favorite yet how a book manages to have such an interesting premise and yet fails to deliver a hot romance is truly beyond me but somehow the x talk manages to do it when i read this book i thought it was fairly good but as more time passes the more that i a don't think about this book and b realized there were a lot of flaws that i didn't see going in the first time this book is about shae and dominic shea has been in charge of this radio station and radio show in particular and it's not doing so well when it comes to ratings and unfortunately this show is part of the reason that the radio station is doing quite poorly so in an effort to kind of revive the station and put something new on the table shay and her kind of rival new colleague this hot shot named dominic come together and decide to make this radio show podcast where they pretend to be exes in order to give dating advice to people who either call in or write emails to them that's a pretty great premise i love that and i loved the idea of having this sort of like mixed media format for a romance but unfortunately it just sort of fell apart when it came to the delivery of the romance i think a big part of that is shea our main character she is this woman who desperately wants to be loved but does a really poor job at judging character up until this point she ends up falling for dominic obviously and like he is a good guy clearly like it's their romance but she just doesn't have the confidence that i want in a heroine and i know that not everybody can be confident i get it but her moping and like self-consciousness was kind of irritating to read about on top of that i just feel like the romance was sort of odd you would assume that it would sort of take place maybe in the radio station around the radio station but the setting for most of the romantic scenes is this getaway that they're forced to go on to be able to prove that they have enough chemistry to be good exes on the radio show i don't know it was very strange and it was a jarring change from all of the kind of setting that we'd had up until that point or thought that i would say the setting of a book was jarring but in this case it certainly was all that to say this book was really lacking for me in a lot of different regards and even the cute ending was just not enough to save it for me so this book was just three stars which again leaves me in sort of a challenging spot when i have to rank this book but this one i mean i say that i enjoy it less the more i think about it which is true but looking at it against the other three star reads it definitely is above most of them so i think i'm going to put this one between shipped and second first impressions i certainly liked it more than second first impressions while we were dating and the spanish love deception also had failed flirting i guess all of those are technically three star reads so yeah i feel pretty confident about where this one is ranked okay let's talk about a wild card one that i initially read on recommendation of some of my subscribers a book that i'd never heard about but that completely charmed me seven days in june by tia williams this story is about ava and shane ava and shane have this sort of shared history where they spent seven days together in june quite a few years ago and they end up having this chance encounter in the city again and sort of rekindling this romance it's told in dual timelines we do get to see ava and shane in the past and also in the present as they sort of navigate both the hardships of life and their relationship and wow this book worked for me i do really love a good dual timeline romance and this one so so delivered on the angst and the tension i feel like the chemistry between our two main characters was absolutely undeniable and there were so many charming moments along the way especially when it comes to ava's kid i really loved her character and i feel like she had such a part in getting these two characters together i also really love the kind of non-traditional plot of this book there is a point where our two main characters are separated and i was sort of worried that we wouldn't have a happily ever after that is sort of required of books in the romance genre but i did find the ending of this book supremely satisfying and i loved getting to see the two main characters really work on themselves so that they could be better partners to each other so this book was fantastic i gave it five stars and when it comes to ranking this book it's a real tough one for me and i think this might be controversial but i'm going to put it in between actor age eve brown and people we meet on vacation as much as i loved emily henry's book there's just something so unique about seven days in june that i just don't think i've ever read in a romance before so that's what's really solidifying this book to me as number three on my list we're almost to the end of the list let's talk about the dating plan by sarah desai this book is about software engineer daisy and her second chance romance with venture capitalist liam liam is daisy's older brother's best friend we love a good older brother's best friend romance here actually no we don't i tend to not like them but for some reason this one actually worked for me the romance is sort of like a fake dating situation i feel like it's kind of obvious from the title the dating plan liam was someone that daisy had a really big crush on and i think he was supposed to take her to her senior prom but he bailed on her so daisy has a little bit of built-up resentment towards liam and after he ends up bailing on her she doesn't see him for years so she is not super happy about this she's also not super happy about the fact that her family is constantly harassing her about finding someone and settling down but as luck would have it liam is also looking for someone to fake date him and or be fake engaged to him so he can get an inheritance so it's sort of a mutually beneficial relationship daisy gets something out of it getting her family off her back and then liam obviously is going to get kind of a windfall of money after this and obviously they end up falling in love i feel like this book really really worked on so many different levels but i think the biggest thing that really stood out to me was the way that it blended family and culture and also romance there are a lot of books on the market right now that do all of these things but they don't do all of them as well as i feel like they could i feel like a lot of times the romance ends up taking a backseat to some of the other elements of the story and while i really do love emphasis on family and culture i'm also going to need the romance to be really strong in a romance and this one just did such a fantastic job i feel like sarah desai really nailed it and this book was really really phenomenal to me i feel like that built-in tension and backstory with daisy and liam just really put this book over the top for me so it's gonna be four stars and when it comes to where i would rank this book it's a toughy for me this is the only other four-star read on this list for me and i think i'm going to put it between the love hypothesis and the heart principle i really did enjoy this book but when it comes to whether or not i think it was better than the love hypothesis i don't necessarily think that it was i think it depends what you're looking for obviously but something about that sex scene in the love hypothesis i don't know just really did it for me so i'm pretty confident about where i'm placing this book lastly let's talk about a book that i have middling feelings about one last thought by casey mcquisten this book is a time travel romance between a hot 70s lesbian and a wayward 23 year old modern gal named august this book places a really heavy emphasis on found families breaking free of family members who ask for everything and give nothing in return and also obviously on love and i liked parts of it i really did enjoy the romance between august and jane i feel like there was so much palpable chemistry there and i feel like casey mcqueston really excels in that part of writing the thing that i didn't enjoy about this book was the plot i really really did not enjoy the time travel aspects of this book i feel like so much time was spent with august trying to figure out how to get jane off of the never-ending subway ride from hell and i feel like i didn't get the requisite relationship building that i really needed sugar there was chemistry sure the subway sex scenes were pretty hot but i didn't really understand how this relationship would work in the real world especially with a character who has spent most of her life on a subway and or growing up in the 70s like how is she gonna work in the real world there was just a passing mention of that at the very end of the story in i don't know if it was the formal epilogue but in the very end of the story and i wanted more i wanted to actually see how this relationship would function and i feel like that was one of the strong points of casey mcqueston's debut novel i really would have liked to see here as important as this book is and as charming as aspects of it are this is not going to be a book that i remember for years to come and unfortunately it's just not one of my favorites on this list so for me it's just a three star read now this is one that's sort of hard to place for me because we have so many three star reads at this point and i don't know the experience of reading this one was pretty difficult for me because i liked some parts of it but the time travel like it just made me put the books down a lot so it's kind of hard to know where to rank it but i think i think i'm gonna put it between shipt and the x talk i feel like i enjoyed it more for sure than the x talk but i feel like i had a better reading experience with shipt so i feel like that is where i'm going to place it which makes it the last book that i'm ranking and so these are my 20 rankings this is what i consider to be the rankings of the 20 nominees for the goodreads choice awards this year in the category of romance i feel like i'm pretty happy with these rankings and frankly i had a really good time reading the vast majority of these books like looking at it almost all of these books were three stars or above which i feel like says something for the quality of nominees this year despite the fact that we didn't get any write-ins like i'm pretty happy with this i feel pretty confident about these ratings in these rankings and uh now we can kind of look at my top ten these are the books again that i feel particularly happy with and i feel like i would not be surprised if the vast majority or if all of these books were in the top 10 finalists i have not looked at the top 10 finalists and i'm excited to kind of see how my rankings kind of stack up in comparison and i'm also just excited to see what the winner is this year especially since i didn't really focus on this goodreads choice words when it came to the finalists themselves i like held off on the finalists and so i really have no idea what the winner is going to be so this this is definitely a different experience than in prior years so let's go ahead and see what the finalists are and see how good my predictions are and my rankings are by comparison okay so here is the side-by-side my finalists with the real finalists i have my ratings in order and the finalists in order of how popular they were and you know who had the highest ratings by people who voted so 7 out of 10 of my picks are in the top 10 which i honestly feel really good about i had no idea if i was gonna get even close i just went off of what books i really thought were best so it makes me happy to see seven of my 10 picks on this list the ones that were on my list that didn't make the top 10 are shipped the dating plan and the heart principle which honestly i'm not that upset about i felt sort of middle of the road about all three of those books so it doesn't really make me that upset to not see them in the finalists and the three books that were finalists that were not on my list of finalists are the x hacks the spanish love deception and neon gods now looking at those three books i'm very unsurprised that the spanish love deception is on this list this is a book that while it didn't necessarily work for me i know so many people loved this one so i am very unsurprised to see it on this list and i'm very unsurprised to see it ranked as high as it is but i will say the xx and neon gods really did take me by surprise i mean i guess if you're really into hades and persephone bdsm like neon gods is decent at that but the xx is kind of an abomination i'm gonna be honest not as a book like i don't think it's the worst book ever but i feel like there were very very good romances that could have taken a spot on this list by comparison now in terms of ranking like let's look at these books and try to kind of make some sense of the rankings and how people voted as you can see people we meet on vacation was the winner and i'm i'm really not that upset about that i feel like that makes sense to me it was in my top five so to see it take that number one spot doesn't actually make me upset what does make me upset however is my winner it happened one summer being second to last on this list which frankly i should not be surprised at i feel like last year my top i think winner was take a hint danny brown by talia hebert and i want to say it was one of the last books on the list i think it was in the eighth place spot or something and i was pretty upset about it and i'll be honest with you i think that having it happened one summer this low on the list is sort of a crime but you know we're gonna move past it i think sort of a similar thing here is seven days in june but that one sort of makes sense to me because it was a book that i had never heard of and i feel like a lot of people just don't know of this story i'm hoping by drawing attention to this book in this video and two others that i'm going to be filming soon that it will get the attention that i feel like it deserves but i can't say that i'm super surprised that it is lower on this list than it deserves to be but overall the other rankings are both unsurprising and not upsetting to me at all i'm really not upset with the finalists i feel like this is overall a fairly decent representation of the state of romance in 2021. do i wish more indies had been on this list yes i will not shut up about that i feel like it's important to note but it is exciting to see spanish love deception getting the love that i feel like it deserves given how many people enjoyed it we do want to see good indies on this list and we do want to see them very high on lists as well they are good books and they do represent a fairly large reader base i know a lot of people read indie romance i can't think of a single person who makes romance related content on this platform who doesn't absolutely love indie romance so again like i would have liked to see a little bit more of it on the list but otherwise i'm pretty happy with this year's goodreads choice awards for the category of romance and i do mean romance i i am honestly a little bit shocked at the winners in some of the other categories but i'm pretty happy with the results i'm pretty happy that i read 15 of the 20 books before this video even started and i'm honestly glad that i read all of the nominees this is the first year that i've attempted to read all of them even last year whenever i'd read the top 10 like there were a couple of books that i feel like i didn't end up reading i feel like last year there was like a jr word book on the list that i didn't attempt because it was like you know the 19th book in a series and that wasn't the case this year which i'm happy with so that's it those are the goodreads choice words for 2021. uh thank you so much for watching this video i would love to know in the comments down below which of these books you wanted to win who did you vote for i'm always excited and interested to see if people have similar opinions on romances to me i feel like i tend to have fairly unpopular opinions and i feel like most of y'all are probably not going to say it happened one summer is your favorite romance but that's okay different strokes for different folks uh thanks so much for watching this video if you would like to watch more content like this i'll leave a link in the description to other list videos like this and i will also link you to my channmis playlist i am posting a video every day in december and there are a few videos like this during chamist so again thank you so much for watching i really appreciate your support i love you so much and until tomorrow [Music] you

Channel: chandler ainsley

Views: 30,063

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Id: ZLp-Jd4o608

Length: 50min 57sec (3057 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021