I appreciate you touching on how True Crime podcasts can be problematic. I knew someone who was the victim of a crime, and someone tried to make a podcast out of it, and it was incredibly traumatic for the victim.
Yeah unless I feel a podcast is really respectful of the victim I probably won't listen at this point. I also don't consume dramatizations of true crime because I know those have been upsetting for families. I think the only nonfiction true crime thing I still watch is Bailey Sarian
@@sarawithoutanHI am not familiar with that one, but I do know some are actually victim advocates as well as “entertainment”, and I really appreciate that those exist. I know there are a few that are good about sharing the profits with the victims as well, which I think is the only ethical way of monetizing off someone else’s trauma.
@@taylorgayhart9497i had an old colleague (and my boyfriends friend before i knew him) who was murdered and i don’t listen to those ones but my friend does and told me how one girl did one that basically blamed my friend. for being MURDERED 🙃🙃🙃 so there’s only a few i consume, crime junkie is a great podcast and do a lot of victim advocacy etc
Andy Weir is a lovely author. His stuff is super hard-sci-fi but very accessible and his characters are amazing. Also he is very sweet if you talk to him
When she said he seems like a dude bro I was like…the guy who wrote The Martian?!?! No dude bro would have that amount of knowledge, his head would explode.
i haven't read phm yet but i did read the martian and i loved it, andy weir is very good at writing characters you can root for if that makes sense, and having the most ridiculous things seem completely believable
The skirt is giving!!! 🤩 I was very surprised that Project Hail Mary was on the list because it was one of my favourite books of last year! I also listened to it on audio and I basically just locked myself into my apartment for an entire weekend because I couldn't stop reading 😅 (I'm to impatient to wait for what emoji to comment but I will watch the video until the end!)
Ahhh the timing of this video is amazing!! I just finished my reread of Project Hail Mary tonight, it’s one of my favorite books of all time. It was so exciting to see you love it 🥹😍 I’m surprised people put this as their worst book haha like why it’s so fun and wholesome
🤠 I'll be honest, after all the flops you've had the last few months I didn't have high hopes for these ones, but I'm so glad they all turned out to be good! Also that Billie shirt is absolutely everything
Project Hail Mary was my favorite book of 2022 so I was GAGGED it was on the worst list, I'm so glad you loved it! I adore hockey romance, specifically queer ones, and the Hockey Ever After series by Ashley Kane and Morgan James is FANTASTIC! I've been scared to read Icebreaker but this made me less scared. I would LOVE a hockey romance video so much
I thought I was gonna get Cutting Edge with Icebreaker too, and was sorely disappointed by the ending because of that respect. Also, there’s a spicy bit where Nate is dressed like Gru from Despicable Me and I feel like people should be prepared for that going in.
lmao i think i blocked that spicy scene from my mind. it's definitely not the best books i've ever read - a little too all over the place. but i also thought it was much better than other booktok darlings i've read
It feels like you found more great books reading other people's worst books than any other video, which is hilarious! I can't understand how people hate Project Hail Mary. It's an amazing book!! And I agree, I don't read a ton of male authors anymore, and certainly I had mediocre expectations about a sci fi, male author, male protagonist-type book, but when it's great, it's great.
Andy Weir has very early 00's "so randum" humor imo. Like the pirates vs ninjas joke in The Martian was dated even when it came out. I can understand people liking the ingenuity of his plots, the science, etc. but the book is so reliant on that sort of humor, it's basically the MC's entire character. I've heard his other books are pretty much the same way.
Idk for main characters that are meant to be men in their early 40s it kinda makes sense for them to have an older cringier sense of humor. I didn't have an issue with it at all in PHM! The mc was a little lame but that didn't detract from the story at all
I think his one book between PHM and the Martian he wrote a female mc and no one liked it so perhaps this is all he knows how to do 🥲😅 I think that book was called Artemis or something? People don't talk about it for a reason lol
i cringed at the hate of twisted love when I’ve only read twisted hate 😭 I’m stupid - as someone also from GA, I also kinda dislike winter. Fall is the best szn
ok if you're interested in hockey romance you've gotta try the game changers series by rachel reid... the first one is okay but the couple from the second is actually my guilty pleasure ship🤭
yes please do a sport romance sub genre vid !! here are some hockey books i've read so far: - Mile High by Liz Tomforde -collide by Bal Khabra - Unsteady by Peyton Corinne - Behind the net by Stephanie Archer most of them were pretty decent 🙂
i gave icebreaker 0.75, and that was solely because the smut was decent and i liked the representation which didn’t seem forced. other than that i had the worst time 🤣🤣 and the ending made me so angry i almost threw the book in the bin, i couldn’t even look at it. if it wasn’t for the ending i may have given it 1.5, i know, pushing the boat out. i get why people liked it, but god i didn’t 😅
I know you're not doing YA anymore but Icebreaker by A. L. Graziadei was a really good hockey rivals to lovers M/M romance, but they're in college so personally I wouldn't consider it YA, and it definitely gets a little bit spicy so it's more like NA. I know I really enjoyed the writing style of that one.
3:40 i LOOOOOVE project hail mary omg 😭😭 the martian is also sooooo good. i love andy weir's writing style. a similar(ish) book to it is "to sleep in a sea of stars" by christopher paolini!
I don't have a favorite hockey romance but I did randomly pick up Double Pucked by Lauren Blakely and I think that would be a fun one to see you read haha.
my sister is a big romance fan, and she really loved ice breaker, im a fan of hockey and figure skating myself so i was thinking abt picking up the book. it being on this particular is a little concerning but im excited to see your thoughts on it before i decide to read it X3
Oh, I kind of want to read Icebreaker now. I *loved* Cutting Edge when I was younger too. And I love the Grumpy/Sunshine trope, and I love that she's the grump and he's the sunshine (because that almost never happens). The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen is a Hockey Romance I read in 2018 that I really enjoyed. I haven't re-read it so I don't know if it holds up anymore but I liked it at that time.
Icebreaker was one of the most boring books I read in 2023-not the worst one, cause I had a couple DNFs, but up there. The book's prose was HORRIBLE (so that may be a factor on rating vs listening the audiobook), Stasie was erratic AF in her feelings towards Nate and the blurb was such a lie: promising Cutting Edge and delivering a book that was 75% repetitive smut and everyday college life and only 25% skating. Honestly, I feel there was a better story to be told with her toxic partner. If both of them had gone on individual healing, growing journeys and come back together in a stronger, healthier relationship after all the BS, the accident and the trauma, that would have been a much more impactful story. The path to healing a mutually destructive relationship, going from "we bring out the worst in each other" to "we bring out the best in each other" would have made for a better book. That's my hot take.
I loved project Hail Mary, I’m glad you liked it :) Maeve fly is on my tbr but Im a bit nervous, maybe this will give me the push to finally read it 😂 Icebreaker was not it for me 👀
I dont trust booktok either. they hyped up several books and rarely do i actually like their hype Spanish love deception for example is too long & boring We were liars is trash Haunting adeline made me uncomfortable. I could go on
Whatever you do do not read Meghan quinn if you want to read a hockey series...Meghan quinn start off good but her characters are so childish and at the end you like wtf did I just read?.....or maybe it's just me and miss quinn not vibing.
I’m so glad that there’s someone out there who actually hated Maeve Fly as much as I did. I seriously have no idea why that book has such high ratings. Maeve is literally one of the worst characters I’ve read about this year. She is literally a “I’m not like other girls” girl and the whole shtick is that she’s her own girl boss and kills all by herself and don’t need no man!!!! Except the whole reason she’s even inspired to go kill people in the first place is cuz some guy she hooked up with encourages her to “embrace the wolf inside of her”. Give me a break…such a garbage book it literally makes me mad. It’s being branded as feminist but how is it feminist? Cuz it’s a woman sexually assaulting and murdering other women this time instead of a man? Can someone please explain to me what makes this book so “feminist” like all the critics claim?
i think maeve being performative is part of the story. she wants to be different. she is different in some ways but she fosters it even more because she wants to be. i wouldn't say the book is feminist - maeve does a lot of fucked up things. but i think cj leede unintentionally made it an interesting character study of a girl who desperately wants to be different but also understood. some of the writing was clunky and try hard so i can see why it didn't work for certain people but i thought it was really interesting and enjoyed it despite the messiness. i think there's more to it.
@@sarawithoutanH I only mentioned it being “feminist” because I’ve seen it being blurbed by critics as feminist. If I’m not mistaken, it literally says that on Goodreads somewhere or maybe even the back of the book. I can’t remember but I’ve definitely seen it. The writing style was definitely clunky but idk…I found Maeve to be a really boring, human eye-roll of a character. Her obsession with Halloween constantly being brought up was annoying and the whole thing of her being a woman who kills on her own yet she literally only begins to kill because Gideon encourages that side of her is just so exhausting. Even the scene where Maeve about to kill that bar tender but because Gideon wasn’t giving her enough attention for it, she just stops and lets her go. And then right afterward he gifts her a “Halloween Room”. And then the whole sexual egg thing that kept coming up…I just can’t. I really don’t understand the point of this book or why it has so many raving reviews. To me, Maeve was insufferable and the whole book was insufferable. I usually love a good morally grey or even just evil character, but only if they’re well written and well fleshed out and this book just…was not it. To me it just felt like the author was trying way too hard for the story to come off edgy and interesting, while, at the same time, picking the goofiest things and trying to twist them to seem more “deep” than they actually were.
You said you were glad to find someone who hated it as much as you, but she actually liked the book. Did you mean the people who rated it badly? Or maybe you commented before you watched.
@@sunnyandthechlo No, I meant the people who rated it badly. She read Maeve Fly because another person told her that they didn’t like it. That’s what I meant. I’m happy that me and the person who told her it was bad both hated the book. Lol
I think going into Icebreaker with your expectations six feet under is the only way to do it. I ended up loving it, mostly for the same reasons as you! I also just thought the couple had great chemistry
oh my gosh yes please to the hockey romance video!! I love hockey romances (its an unexplainable mystery truly) time to shine is a cute queer hockey romance and the playing for keeps books by becka mack are also pretty solid
No honestly I don't even like sports but something about hockey romances... also went to a bruins game with my ex boyfriend and I had so much fun??? It's befuddling
When I first heard about "Icebreaker" I totally got Cutting Edge, and though I have no plans to read it.. I am thrilled to know I'm validated in that aspect.
I loved Maeve Fly, but the writing definitely gave post MFA vibes and felt like it was trying to achieve too much but I was down for the ride. Ive been recommending Kill for Love by Laura Picklesimer to people who say they liked Maeve fly. The plot is fun and well paced. The narrator reminds me of Channel Oberlin from Scream Queens if she went full Patrick Bateman
my favorite and only hockey romance (so far 😏) is Sunny Disposition by Deanna Gray, it’s a short read but it’s so fluffy, i actually quite liked it 🫂 also: 🤠 i love ur dog
When I saw "Maeve Fly" in your thumbnail, I had to watch this video. I also read Maeve Fly and after I finished the book I thought, "I kinda loved that book. What is wrong with me?" Also, that cover!! WTF. I read it in October, so I included it in my October Wrap Up video, and I was like "sorry about the cover, I know it's weird, but it does reflect the vibe of this book". 😂🤠
Talking about Maeve Fly and the whole American Psycho for girls reminds me of a book called "Boy parts" that was pitched to me as basically American Psycho but girls and i haven't read it yet but it sounds really good! Just wanted to recommend it based on vibe
all i know about project hail mary is that my dad was like, the first person to draw fanart for it because he liked it so much. so maybe it's worth a read
