Yes, definitely over the whole 'for fans of ACOTAR' thing. Not a fan of that series (or anything by Sarah J Maas), so if you wanna compare your book to it, you're saying it's not for me. Same with songs in a book, not a fan. Did love the playlists at the start of each of the Kitty Norville series though. About a werewolf who is also a talkback radio show host. Appropriate and fun. Yep, take those printed stickers off the cover, they're awful and please, please, please, tell us where in the series that book is. Preferably on the spine.

My biggest pet peeve is a generic one. The overuse of THAT type of title. You know the one. A Bowl of Mac and Cheese. Also when spines in a series don’t match. Why did the title and author name switch places four books in? Annoying.

Left no crumbs.

As far as structure goes, Romantasy is really YA Fantasy spiced up for the now adult lovers of that genre and I think that's why this sub-genre in particular is very confusing for a lot of readers of adult fantasy and adult romance. Kind of like how SJM evolved from YA Fantasy (ACOTAR) to hard core Adult Fantasy smut (Silver Flames) and then all her books got shelved in the adult section because there was tons of sex in them even though they were still being published by Bloomsbury's Children Imprint. You get the fast paced plot, the character focus on relationships, the largely consequence free female power fantasy, and the swiss-cheese-ish world building (because the world is for flavor and not the focus.) This is a very different narrative structure and formula from Kushiel's Dart. Overall, I think Romantasy runs a lot closer to Paranormal Romance as a sister genre and it makes me a little nervous because Paranormal Romance pretty much swallowed up the entirety of Urban Fantasy. Fantasy itself is obviously a much larger genre with a huge umbrella. I'm really hoping it's just a trend.

people on the cover, the unremovable stickers, no numbers on books, agree about the made for tv or movie adaptations, are all my pet peeves as well lol

I have a very specific pet peeve in books: I'm French but I mostly read books in English and I find really annoying when English speaking authors have a French character saying random French things all the time. Like calling their Mom "Maman" or having a Mom call their son "Mon Chéri", it takes me out of the book every time. Especially on audio when the accent is off because they don't get a French narrator who learned English to voice a French character, they get an English speaker who learned French, not the same. Yeah I'm looking at you Addie Larue.

I think my top books would be: daughter of the moon goddess by Sue Lynn tan; the extraordinaries trilogy by TJ Klune; Simon snow trilogy by Rainbow Rowell; strange the dreamer by laini Taylor; so this is ever after by F.T. lukens; the starless sea by Erin morgenstern; before the coffee gets cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki his years of pilgrimage by haruki murakami.

Strange the dreamer is such a good book. Man, the way the story is unfold. So good. It gets dark so fucking fast though. But yeah it goes get quite whimsical at points. Oh such a perfect 10/10

Just became a super fan for the SJM point

You know what makes me so upset???? When they change the designs mid fucking series. I know that because I bought Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miró becuase I bought the first book when it came out (hardcover) but the second book just came out and it is completely fucking different. When the paperback of the first book came out it matches the second book but it doesn’t match the first book. Omg I hate it so freaking much!!! They also are doing that w the series of The Hurricane Wars and Fourth Wing. Like WTF. Shut the hell up. I hate it all. Now the books won’t freaking match.

Genuinely curious: What the hell did Sarah J. Maas do to make her a horrible person?

Yes, tell me what order the books come in! I don't know how many times I've almost picked up a book, had a quick Google if it's a part of a series or not, realised it is, and had to put it down because the book shop isn't selling book 1. Surely it's bad marketing to have people pick up the wrong book by mistake?

Daaaamn you're hilarious 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Archie comics were a giant part of my childhood, I will NEVER forgive the CW for what they did. I'm glad I never watched it, I just heard how awful it was.

That thing about series not having the book number can actually cause confusion. For example, my best friend started reading the Atlas Complex. Without even knowing it was from the Atlas Six series, much less the third in the trilogy. And that's because that cover in Portuguese didn't have that information. Predictably it was quite confusing for her. And I concur on the non-removable stickers. A plague upon humanity. Truly. I'll add my own pet-peeve, which is to have what I call Spanglish or Japinglish or whatever combination of languages randomly in the text. Let me explain, say a character is from a Spanish speaking country and so it's understood that whilst we are reading the text in English, the character is talking and thinking in Spanish, we just read it in English because it's an English written book. Then why on god's green earth would you put random sentences of Spanish in it?? I will actually name and shame, the book "Together we burn" from Isabel Ibañez suffers from this. An example: < He has an angular, sharp face with deep, weathered lines forged by years in the sun and taming beasts. “¿Tienes un momento, por favor?” “Give me an update, Benito.” > For those of us who can understand it, it's redundant. To those who can't, it surely breaks the flow of the story causing confusion. To all it breaks immersion: it's implicit that everyone is speaking Spanish though all writing is in English for the benefit of the reader. Yet, when there's a random Spanish sentence you can't help but think where they talking in English then and just happen to burst into Spanish randomly? It's the sort of thing I see in a lot of anime/manga fanfiction and that at least, has the excuse it's not professionally published. It's one thing to add a random other-language word when you are talking, we all forget or confuse vocabulary, especially the more languages you know, but in a published, presumably edited text? Nah fam.

Ok so I'm not scientific, but I did pass science at school so in my opinion...that counts! Here's my opinion on the real people on covers phenomena. In my opinion, I think the reason we get startled by real people on covers when we see real people everyday is that we use both reading books and shopping for books as escapism. We don't want to think about other people when we're either buying books or reading them, and I think this definitely puts us into a certain mindset while we're shopping. This means that when you do see a real person on a book cover, it startles you similarly to how jumpscares get us in horror movies. We all go into horror movies, knowing there will most likely be jumpscares and yet they still catch us out. It's the same with these real people on book covers, we know that they exist, but when we're in our mindset of shopping for books, we don't remember they exist and therefore when we see one, we are startled and go 'ew' or something similar. I hope this helps. This is just my opinion and I'm not a scientist or anything but I hope that makes sense :)

4:05 - oh that hit close to home, Ukrainian editions of Terry Pratchett Discworld books are the prettiest things ever, but they have nothing, NADA in terms of their chronological order on their covers and they are wrapped in plastic in bookstores so I walk away from them grinding my teeth because I just get too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them, this has been going on for years I can't take it anymore.

I.need.a.part.two (please). This was so much fun xD

i recently learned that trad. pubbed authors typically have zero say in comp titles. which makes me frustrated for them because seeing a book that says "for fans of acotar and/sarah j. maas" pretty much means i get an immediate ick and won't bother with it. their publishers/marketing team are nerfing them, honestly

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! (a bit late) I'm American but I celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving to avoid my family!

The worst time jump I ever saw was in The Meg series where there was a 17.8 year time jump between book 3 and 4 so the author could immeadiatly sexualize the mc's infant daughter.

Any hunger games comparisons that are actually just battle royale story structure and not actual politically charged commentary of government and ruling class IRKS ME

Oh THIS is the way to do a bookish pet peeves, so much passion 😅💖

Ok, but for the “for fans of…” pet peeve; I feel the same way about Game of Thrones. Every time I see a book that says, “for fans of Game of Thrones,” I want to scream. Just because it’s grime dark fantasy doesn’t mean it’s Game of Thrones.

"For fans of Red White and Royal Blue/RWRB meets ___" means NOTHING other than the books is gay. It's become a household annoyance for me and my roommates that so many books have that as a blurb. (No hate to RWRB itself but I need publishers to STOP)

I hate how books aren't numbered on the spine because how do I know when buying them? It's easier for me to remember that I have book two than the title. I want to write it somewhere on the book, but feels like sacrilege and some books have dark spines. I've written the numbers on the inside cover in pencil in Agatha Christie's Poirot series, but I want to be able to just glance and know what is what

My major pet peeve is when an author says something rose to a crescendo. No, it didn't. It rose to a climax. The crescendo is the rising. Learn your music terminology before slopping it on your pages.

Your haircut & hairstyle are so cute! One of my biggest pet peeves is when all of the action is in like the last 40 pages and then there’s only 3 pages left after the conflict is resolved. I want more pages after the conflict!

Glad I’m not the only special editions hater. I want to see more boosting up of books by authors who are underrepresented and lost under all the booktok slush! Not the 50th special edition of the same book that’s been shoved in my face for the past six months! On top of that, I hate hardcovers so I’m not even gonna want your special edition anyway!

Not a Sarah J Maas girlie, so 'Good for fans of ACOTAR' = welp, guess this book isn't for me. -__-

I hate the non-removable stickers!!!

I published my first three books with a legitimate (ie, not vanity or hybrid) but well-known small press in 2016 where they were using stock photos of real people doing real things. They even sent me to Shutterstock and told me to find something that closely resembled what I had in mind and they would either recreate it or buy the rights to it. I couldn't find anything, so I left it in their hands. The choices they sent me had nothing to do with the book, nothing. I made the best choice possible, but have regretted it ever since. The second publisher wasn't much better. The first time I was sent the cover art to approve, I thought they sent me a page out of a child's coloring book by mistake. My point being, I agree, real people on the cover is a trend I am glad to see the back of, but I also hate cartoony covers also. I'd almost rather we go back to the days of bodice ripper covers that looked like paintings than the crap we are often given.

teeth aren't bones 😭

It's wild to me how people are stuck in shame to the point that there's no in between from shame to total unquestioning. I have intrusive thoughts, I do not agree with these thoughts and I question them when they come up but I don't shame myself for having them. It's not the same, and if it still feels shameful to question your behavior or the way you process your trauma, you're not as healed as you think you are. You can be caring and loving towards yourself m yet still think deeply about the implications of your actions. It's part of self care, it's what ACTUAL SHADOW WORK is, something people so enthusiastic about dark things should know about.

" (in the US) 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level" UHHHH yeah it's not the author's fault if the audience doesn't understand

frankly, both writers and readers owe each other nothing. and i mean, i think it's pretty obvious when a one star review is coming from a place of hatred/personal bias rather than constructive crit. so i don't think those matter all that much. as an avid reader, writer, and future author, i ignore them pretty readily considering the only real reason to hate a book enough to give it 1 star is because of a personal issue you have. hate denotes an intimate connection with a subject. apathy is what i'm looking for, since it's a result of something being impersonally, across the board objectively low quality. which is why i only pay attention to 2+ star reviews. 2 stars means there were good aspects, but overall it was cruddy for various reasons. 2 stars are the real 1 star reviews. it wasn't hated enough to deserve 1 star, but really wasn't any good either. this is the apathetic review that tells me if a book is truly worth spending my time on. 3-4 stars are very balanced and give you the best general feel for the book. i'm not going to be pessimistic and say that 5 star reviews are untrustworthy like some seem to feel. i think they're pretty valid so long as they come with some good reasons that aren't too subjective/personal. but again, i feel like the bias is obvious if its present, so you can just skip over those. imo reviews aren't even necessarily something that value OR devalue a product. they just tell you how others experienced engaging with it. and you aren't that person, so just because someone hated it and thought it was garbage doesn't mean you will. just because they absolutely loved it and it's their favorite piece of literature ever, doesn't mean you'll feel that way too. you really won't ever know until you experience it for yourself. imo, reviews aren't really all that helpful in general outside of 2/3 stars (which tell me it was too boring to either hate or love and something i should pass up) because of how personal and subjective they are, outside of making potential buyers aware of poor grammar/editing and a small handful of objectively bad writing practices. so i guess tl;dr is imo the vast majority of reviews are simply unreliable. it's only the quantity of 2 & 3 stars that tell me anything.

I loved the vibes of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Nobody wants to read gay authors just because there gay you woke retard

You do know you are white don't you and batty

Oh please Scot a groomer your a smearer she was 25 yo can't cry victim there was no grooming you woke retard

I‘m sorry but a lot of this rhetoric seems just incredibly condecending and infanatalizing to me. I have no issues with morality lessons in media for kids and teens. But when ppl pearl clutch over media made for adult, it starts to get really weird in my eyes. Who are you to police what other adults can and cannot read? Aside from actual illegal material wich nobody would disagree with banning, why do you expect morality teachings to be part of every single piece of literature? And I also think that the reason ppl call you sexist for this is because the implication here since these genres are mostly read by women, is that you are acting like grown women aren‘t smart enough to have a moral compass if media they engage with won‘t shoehorn morality lessons into their content 24/07. I‘m a huge fan of a game series called Silent hill. And there is a huge amount of horror stuff happening there to characters. Abuse, neglect etc. but it‘s still a fantastic narrative because it is so good at portraying these problems and stuff like medical trauma in a supernatural angle. Basically a town turning into the pain you feel inside externally. It‘s incredibly validating and it‘s also for adults so If someone came in and had a fit over it portraying darker themes, it‘d be ridiculous. So things like Silent Hill can‘t exist because you think adults cannot understand basic morality unless they are taught that in every piece of media they engage with? To me that‘s just infantalization of the audiences. Nobody reads a book about crimes happening and thinks doing crimes are ok. Neither has media ever been a defense for some ppl‘s criminal actions. And in most cases, what actually creates these situations is far more than just media. If it‘s about kids media, that is an issue ofc cause kids need to be taught things. But we grow out of that as adults. Also, if you are actually shouting down ppl with trauma that like this content cause it helps them get better through a safe engagement of that media, then that to me is just victim shaming. You can ask any therapist on why traumatized individuals tend to enjoy media that has darker themes and they will tell you that it can be validating to see fiction tackle these things and also the safety with this media engagement helps them feel more in control about things. That is a good thing. If we start to police media made for adults into this morality policing, to me that feels like a rehash of the haze code. Cause we had that for a time. Religious leaders chosing to censor and force media creators and artists to morally fall in line with their demands about what you can and can‘t produce. What stories can and can‘t be told. And all it did was shaming people. Ppl with trauma. Ppl with health issues and addictions, ppl of certain minority groups also. So genuinely, ask yourself why adult need to be perpetually parented by media? Cause I don‘t think that‘s productive at all. Fiction exists to give us experiences that are safe to engage with. As well as teaching us things and other people‘s experiences being shared. If you as an adult are incapable of knowing right from wrong unless media tells you every time what is good or bad, you have a lot of maturing to do. No. We don‘t need ppl to hold our hands all the time. That‘s ridiculous.

I love your energy and I found some books I may be interested in. So, thank you. 😁

Also, where did you get that dress bc I want it

Yep totally Plant Daddy in that fit

I understand what booktok is saying, but when your genre is basically entirely man is cold, morally-"grey" who 🍇s and 🔪s women, and he gets with woman who he does not like, and never seems to like but he _"loves her and she's different and he just has a sad backstory",_ then I am going to be a bit on the offensive. These books literally objectify women, but we are allowing this and setting this up as _romance_ novels.

Ooh thank you for doing a wrap up, for some reason most of my fav booktubers didn’t post a wrap up for September and just did tbr videos. This Will Be Fun has been added to my tbr! My fav books from the month were Caraval, Legendary, and An Arrow to the Moon

Ended Sept with "Love and Other Conspiracies" and "The Broken Places" to get ready for October. And Not-Deer vibes.

Over my dead body was almost there, wanted more story wise but loved the illustrations

Hell ya! I love The Deep and Into the Drowning Deep! I liked Emily Wilde but don't like Bambleby so it was a 4.25 for me. One of my other fav gay merwaid/witch book is The Mermaid the Witch and The Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall (5☆)! I had a very successful sappic september! Her Spell that Binds Me by Luna Oblonsky was fantastic (lots of magical creature stuff including sirens and mermaids) Prisoner of the Witch Queen by Edie Marr and The Princess and the Foxgirl by Julie Law were both good fantasy books that bappen to be smutty. Kingdom of Exiles by Maxym M Marrineau was a good book about a "beast charmer" which is pretty much a Pokemon trainer and a group of shadow assassins, it was het but I think theres going to be poly iin the sequels.

Had preordered A Dark and Drowning Tide. Hope I like it more than you did. Honestly what you said about the romance lures me in (no pun intended) regardless of the second half of the book 😂😌