books I thought I’d love and hate: how accurate were my predictions? 

I'm a fan of this format! ❤

I like this format! It's a fun experiment on how we perceive books vs. actually experience them

Annie Bot sounds great, it reminds me of that episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer "I Was Made To Love You." Sounds intriguing.

“Why did that happen to me?” Is such a funny response 😂😂 had me cracking up. I like paranormal and fantasy romance for world building too and agree Bride just wasn’t for me. If you ever read translated novels I really recommend Guardian by Priest. It’s translated form Chinese and a queer paranormal/fantasy romance that follows a paranormal detective falling for a professor with secrets. Super fun and lots of world building. Can be daunting but there’s a glossary and cultural info in the back of the book so it was more accessible than I expected

I get so happy every time I see a new upload notification. Let’s goooo

agreed from experience romantasy does tend to drop the ball at both the romance and fantasy which is so frustrating!

I'm not going to read any of them, but your format here kept me involved and interested in books I'd cross the street to avoid being given a no-strings copy of. If there's higher praise I can offer, I can't formulate it just now.

👹: "omg i love her so muchhh!" 😂 i loved that voice you used

Always excited for a review from you, you always have soemthing to say that's interesting and thought provoking.

I love this format, and I always find your reviews interesting and entertaining!

Loved this format! ❤

I really enjoyed this format! ❤

I enjoyed this format. I liked your explanation of wanting to read wildly to help you as a reviewer. I also did pick up someone else's 2 star and had a really fun time with the book. It wasn't well written but it was fun to read! Sometimes books superise you.

As always, even if I had a different rating, I appreciate all your critiques. I might weigh some of the pros slightly higher so they outweigh the cons, but everything you say is spot on

Such a fun format!

Great format and, as always, you have the *best* laugh. 🤗

I 100% would rate Bride higher than One Dark Window. Bride, I at least had fun. One Dark Window was a bit "well I'm 40% of the way in, might as well finish it"

"impressed with how bored I was" is a feeling I can relate to, but I haven't read Bride. I'm trying to remember what was the last book that made me feel that but it's not coming to mind.

I like this format. This type of formate gives way to a less structured style of review and also just a spontaniouos way of looking at books and be pleasently suprised. For me personally I'll probably pass One Dark Window and maybe Bride, but I am willing to try Checkmate by Ali Hazelwood mostly because I want to see how she handles the "Sports"/Chess torument aspect of the book. If she handles it well similar to March Came in Like a Lion, Hakaru No Go, or the one where you slap the cards of the poem out of the way (I'm aware all three of these are Manga and/or Anime), I that may be the one way I can enjoy her style of writting. Now I'm not going to garateed that you may like Checkmate either because it *is* actually written for YA and that just may make the reading experience even more tropey which may annoy you even more, or you may actually like it slightly better due to it being a YA and thus it changes the dyamic of writing with the story it's telling. But I think Checkmate is probably going to be the only Ali Hazelwood I'll read personally just to see. (Though I'm glad that it's probably only going to be the style of writting that may be the issue for me I have with it as it seems like they're pretty harmless books which is a nice change) Annie Bot I may pick up eventually after I actually knock down more of my TBR as I'm trying to avoid adding even MORE books to my TBR since my story graph is having a hard time loading when I'm scrolling through xD;;;; Now granted I don't think I'm in the 1000s yet but last I checked it was 130 something and I'm going to for now focus on my one Buddy Read (A Soul to Keep) and Finishing Bringer of the Scourge and then rotate in other books I have on my tbr and may already own. (Really enjoying A Soul to Keep btw. It's a Monster Romance that is actually having me enjoy the world building even when it's a slow burn there as there's 7 books thus far with the 7th book being written. Bringer of the Scourge is also a delight to read as I think I really needed something a little bit action pact and adventurous in a short book.) But yeah, Annie Bot I think I would probably enjoy a lot because I do enjoy when litearity is intertwined into other genres weather it be fantasy or sci-fi. I enjoyed Parinesi because of that and I felt like it elevated the fantastial elements of the story due to it.

yay mari vlog!

Gonna read anni bot now, thanks for the rec

Yes please do more reviews like this! 😁

I do like this format. It seems like fun. I might start doing that with my own TBR.

I applaud you for making it all the way through One Dark Window, tbh. I got through 100 pages and DNFed because NOTHING had happened. So, it makes me feel vindicated to see the hype for it dying down a bit.

Not me watching this whole thing to see what you hated the most like I'm not in the discord server 😂. I love the concept of this video though. Not just how good are you at predicting what you'll love, but how good are you at predicting what you will just enjoy or what you'll dislike.

I think you are so right about enjoying bride more if its your first foray into paranormal romance! I use the cawpile method of rating and therefore rated things like plot, characters, logic very low but I personally had so much enjoyment with it that it got a higher rating that maybe the quality merited 😆

Loved the format. I was hoping you’d review Bride. As a long time urban fantasy and paranormal romance reader I was hopeful when I read Bride and couldn’t believe how much people liked it once I’d finished it. And yes that wash cloth scene has stayed with me. I think folks must not know the good stuff available in UF.

your description of annie bot reminds me a bit of klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro, which i read recently and quite enjoyed. very much a soft sci-fi with robots that's focused on themes of autonomy and personhood. i'll have to check out annie bot sometime!

This format is so cool! Please try Emily wildes encyclopedia of faeries- it’s a good contender for 5 stars!

You introduced me to Kate Daniels and for that I owe you my life lol! You are the only book reviewer whose opinion I can always trust

This video has confirmed that I need to read Annie Bot! Social based Sci-Fi is my absolute favourite! Also, I LOVE this style of video, Marines!

I heard good reviews of Annie Bot from Cari Can Read, so maybe I'll just have to pick it up!

I don’t know why, I thought something was wrong with me but I thought one dark window was quite awful. I couldn’t finish it. My book club? They all loved it. Like.. they adored it. 5 stars for them. 1 star for me. 😭

Your experience with Ali Hazelwood is almost exactly my experience with her. I read and LOVED The Love Hypothesis, then read the novellas she wrote and thought they were pretty mid. I actively disliked Love on the Brain, and suffered through about 30% of Love, Theoretically before DNFing and admitting to myself that she is just not the author for me. I honestly wonder how I would feel now if I went back and reread The Love Hypothesis. Ultimately, I feel like all her books (excluding maybe Bride because of the supernatural element) are the same book with the same characters in a slightly different package. You could play mix and match with her heroes and heroines and not much would change.

I really enjoyed Bride and I don’t usually enjoy Ali Hazelwood’s writing. I was surprised I was actually looking forward to the next book in this world. Definitely not a 5, but it was enjoyable. I gave it a 3, which was generous considering I’ve given her 1s in the past.

You have the cutest laugh!

I agree with your take on Ali Hazelwood. I loved The Love Hypothesis and thought it was so fun to read and decided to pick up Love Theoretically a few days ago, since I head people also loved that one. I honestly, I did not enjoy Love Theoretically, I felt like this was so much more cringe and did not seem to blend as well as that in the Love Hypothesis. I did read TLH about 3 years ago so I know my reading taste has changed drastically since then so I believe it's just that she's not an author for me anymore. I probably will not be picking up anymore books from her.

I'd like to see your take on The Mortal Fates books by J Bree. Only cos I rate them all between a 2-3 star but I still have read 3000+ pages of this series. IT is interesting to me in that it is the slowest of burns without much romance payoff, considering the genre and inferred audience. But I am mostly a pulp thriller and character study reader - so I'm enjoying the war strategising.

I'd be curious to see you read and review the sequel to One Dark Window. I've seen (lately) a bunch of booktok discussing how they had low to middling thoughts on One Dark Window but Two Twisted Crowns was amazing

Agree about one dark window i didn’t like it at all

Highly recommend taste of gold and iron if your looking for well executed (queer) romantasy!

I enjoyed the format of the video. I liked Annie Bot overall, but I didn’t really like the ending either. I also agree with your thoughts on the treatment of race. I’m not sure why the author chose to introduce it and not explore it at all. I read Bride for a book club. It was my first Ali Hazelwood, and I don’t think I will reach for another. It was just okayish IMO, and I didn’t love the writing.

Have you read The Hierarchies by Ros Anderson? It is also about a bot who thinks she's a wife, but starts to realize that she is apparently disposable. (Gross simplification.)

Just from you reading the description i put Annie Bot on hold on Libby 🤣 10 weeks wait though 🙃

SPOILER ALERT. My biggest pet peeve is when characters are incompetent. In the One Dark Window, when all the main characters find out who the monster in the FL's head is, and nobody thinks to ask whether it knows where the last card is, I lost my shit. I thought the whole thing about the last card is that it hasn't been seen for hundreds of years, and that the last time it was, it was with the dead king who turns out to not really be dead and has been in the head of the FL all along. Well maybe he f*cking hid it!! ASK goddammit!! He's RIGHT THERE!!!! Turns out the author was just saving it for the last line of the book, like it's such a big reveal. She made every single one of her characters look like idiots with that. No I will not be reading the second book. I don't have a kink for incompetence.

Great video! I get really frustrated when the author tells the reader over and over that the main character is a certain way but all of the on page scenes contradict that characterization. I read a book recently where this character was supposedly very tough and able to fight well. Unfortunately, during the 4 or 5 fight scenes she had her @ss handed to her every time but then she tells another character she can take care of herself and doesn't need protection. Ummmmm.....sure you can. It was so unsatisfying.

😎📚👍

I wanted to like Ali Hazelwood so so much but I find that she writes her FMCs to be really really...meh. Olive and I have a one sided beef. She's possibly the worst character I've ever had to read.

are regular subscribers able to join your discord? :•)

😐😐😐