april wrap up 2024 + where I’ve been 

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thank you!! 🤍🤍

phew! glad it wasn’t just me! 🥺

wow! thank you for your comment!! here is my (equally large!) response to it: I think it's more that the conflict in ESA was comparatively better for me to comprehend resolving. I thought sam was treating percy badly & had said a break but it read more like he didn't want to be with her. obviously, if I were sam I would be very hurt by what percy did but the surrounding circumstances seemed kinder & more generous to her than L&OW. unlike ESA, to me macy seemed entirely innocent so that combined with the death of her dad who was the most wonderful, gentle, quiet but steady presence in her life was just beyond for me. there is a level of trauma from the event of finding the love of your life naked with a girl on top of him to then having your father diie in front of your eyes because he came out to help you with said love of your life that doesn't exist even slightly in ESA. I wanted to mention the thing about the possible r*pe but I didn't know how to without spoiling the book for those who might be still interested in reading it. it's tricky because if it was just a result of eliot losing his ability to not give into lust or whatever then I think it's absolutely unacceptable in my mind to get drunk like that. he should've known his limits & to me there's no excuse for behaviour like that. on the other hand, if he was assaulted then the fact he wasn't sober would be irrelevant to the way he was treated in terms of whether he should have been or not - taking advantage of someone is wrong whether they are under the influence or not. I would've then had more understanding. I still however, like you, would've disliked how he handled discovering what happened to macy's dad. her level of suffering was so extreme, she deserved more care either way. however, I do have a strong feeling that if christina lauen wanted to suggest what happened to eliot was assault then they would've made a bigger deal out of driving that narrative. especially opening up the conversation of male r*pe which is rarely discussed, specifically so in media. also, it is just devastating to me how eliot told macy repeatedly that that girl was nothing to worry about & then something actually DID happen. like macy I find it difficult to trust people deeply so finding out I wasn't just delusional despite being told I was for literal years would've been very damaging for me - & I'm sure for her too. as for your last point: I see where you are coming from but I do think coming to a conclusion like that goes along with maturity. there have been several times I haven't wanted to ruin friendships because I've had feelings & it took me a long while to realise that the relationship had changed the second I felt those feelings despite not having confessed them yet. I hope this helped to explain things a little... 🤍🤍🤍

@@JemimaRose Thank you for your response!! That definitely helped me to see things better and from a different perspective that I hadn't thought of before. I totally forgot that Sam and Percy were on a break when she slept with his brother. I read ESA in December of 2023 so I definitely forgot some things about it. After hearing your points and explanations, I def agree with you that L&OW would be so much harder to forgive and resolve since there's so many more layers of hurt and trauma from it. Christina Lauren couldn't have written a better father for Macy and I was fighting tears when he died :(( I agree with your thoughts on the discussion of r*pe in L&OW. It would have been SO impactful for the story to have opened up this conversation if it was indeed what happened in the story. A potentially lost opportunity, but I suppose the book would have been much longer and more emotionally-heavy (for lack of better words) so I guess it depends on what the author was going for. About your last point, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I forget that it is Macy and Eliot's first relationship and that they are young. It was hard for me to see the complexity of the feelings and that prob stems from a lack of a friendship to lovers/relationship experience lol. My own thought process has always been that "now that I like you more than a friend, we shall be more than friends immediately if you feel the same", so it's hard for me to grasp other ways since I haven't even had friends who share Macy's view in relationships to my knowledge. It still frustrates me a bit, but it's mainly cuz it wasn't the way I wanted their teen relationship to pan out (basically I wanted more 'screen time' of them in a relationship before the eventual split happens). Also I forgot to mention this in my original comment, but THANK YOU for mentioning in ur vid the emotional cheating that Macy does on her fiancé cuz it also annoyed me so bad. I am glad I read these books because it has made me realize that I really don't enjoy reading the tropes of cheating or emotional cheating etc... I just get too annoyed on behalf of the characters that I just can't learn to chill out lol. Do you have any romance recs that don't involve cheating by any chance? I feel like I wanna adjust my Goodreads ratings on these books now after reflection and discussion, but idek what I'd give them at this point haha