Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do.
You’d like to get to know Grace better. But it’s difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart.
Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows.
Sometimes, the perfect marriage is the perfect lie.
Easily 4,5/5 and I could definitely consider 5/5, it was that good.
I really liked Paris's writing-perfect for the genre; no-nonsense, not flashy. Just matter of fact but still managed to make you care enough about the characters. I liked Grace. Many think her weak but I didn't see it that way. She often blamed herself for not seeing Jack's "issues" (even though how could she?), thus taking responsibility, all the while not losing hope and trying to save hers and her sister's lives. I would have liked Jack to be more of an understated evil guy and not an outright psychopath, but that's just me. I think it would have given the book that a little extra something to make it a solid 5/5. Overall, I definitely recommend it to fans of the genre. It can be read in one sitting.
Piece of advice: don't leave the last chapters for tomorrow or later in the day. Read the end in one go, otherwise you will feel disconnected from the story when tension peaks.
Genre: MM, YA, High school, Contemporary, Romance, Bullying,
Rating:
When Ollie meets Will over the summer break, he thinks he's found his Happily Ever After. But once summer's ended, Will stops texting him back, and Ollie finds himself short of his fairy-tale ending.
A family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country - Will's school - and Ollie finds that the sweet, affectionate and comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn't the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, a basketball jock and, well, a bit of a jerk.
Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn't ready for a relationship. But as school life throws them together more and more frequently, from music class to the lunch table, Ollie finds his resolve weakening.
With the noisy drama of their friends as the backdrop - from ambitious Juliette and frosty Lara, to big-hearted Darnell and king-jock Matt - Ollie has a decision to make.
The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again. Right?
I received an ARC of Only Mostly Devastated from Hatchette Australia and these are my thoughts.
I loved Grease as a kid. I knew the lyrics to all the songs and I used to sing along every chance I got. And for a non native speaker, trust me, it was an ordeal to learn all these lyrics!
As I grew older, it stopped appealing to me as much and that is why I decided to pass on Only, Mostly Devastating. Until it arrived on my doorstep and I felt like I just had to give it a chance. The first 70 pages or so were great and I was really absorbed in it, I couldn’t put it down. Ollie was just a bit too intense for my taste, too angsty. He was coming across way younger than a senior in high school but only when it had to do with his romantic life. He acted way more mature in his relationship with his parents and the very serious role he had to play during a family crisis. I felt like that was the biggest contradiction in the book because while I didn’t much care for the romance part of it all which I found quite frivolous – a bummer for a book marketed as a YA romance – I was genuinely touched by the way Ollie’s life outside of school was written. There were a couple of pages where Ollie was thinking about the inanity of death and I could really relate with and feel for him. I was actually nodding my head because those were exactly my thoughts on this! But then he would go to school and everything would change, he became like this completely different person.
I didn’t really care for Will. I didn’t like the way he was behaving around Ollie for his friends’ benefit even though he absolutely didn’t have to be so over the top anti gay. Which is way his big romantic gesture in the end was so out of the blue and basically not convincing at all. I didn’t buy Will’s sudden change and I never really got the chemistry between him and Ollie. The other characters were more caricatures than real people you can relate to. Over the top reactions that are just not believable at all.
Overall, while Only Mostly Devasted is by no means a bad book, since it is tackling such a major issue like inclusivity, tolerance and acceptance, I would have liked it to be a more realistic depiction of the romantic life of a 17 year old gay kid in the South, rather than an over romanticised, utopic version of it. Just change your target audience to pre teens and you’ll be golden. As it is, I believe older kids will find it silly.
Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
This is chock-full of spoilers, so please don't read it unless you have watched The Witcher Season 1.
I am not even going to pretend otherwise - I only picked this up because of Henry Cavill and the show The Witcher. But mostly for Cavill. Because, you know. I only had a crush on him since The Tudors, no big deal.
So, the book. Right. Most of it is already depicted in the show and it too plays with timelines a lot. Geralt is way more talkative in the book than he is in the show. I have to admit I liked book Geralt better. He was more real and, if not relatable, then more human and down to earth rather than super hero-ish, paranormal hottie. Again, nothing wrong with that but I prefer my characters to have feelings and emotions once in a while. Yennefer was on the same boat-the show focused more on her transformation and how gorgeous and dark and mysterious she is now, rather than her power and personality. Actually, it's mentioned in the book that Geralt initially thought she wasn't even that good looking:
...Yennefer, although attractive in her own way, couldn't pass as a great beauty.
In fact, it was stated that all sorceress had to go through a transformation to become pretty because of their profession and they were described as "pseudo pretty" with "cold eyes of ugly girls". That was still shown in the show, but I think the message was undercut a bit by how stunning Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) was.
Renfri's story - the fight scene between her and Geralt kicked ass in the show; beautifully choreographed and shot. Geralt's devastation over killing Renfri was more believable in the show but again, their interaction just didn't have the same impact as in the book.
I have to say, the translation was not the best for me. The edition I got from the library was old and I don't know if there is a new one out there, but the dialogue was very stilted in parts and words weren't really flowing. Originally, the book came out in 1993 so I kind of get it, translating game wasn't that great back then. I'm told Sword of Destiny is better, so we'll see.
All in all, I enjoyed the show as much as the book. I think Geralt and Yennefer's characters were more explored in the book in comparison to the show which was way flashier. I'd suggest you watch the book first and then watch the show.
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Horror, Crime, Dark, Mystery, Some Paranormal, Suspense
Rating:
When an eleven-year-old boy is found murdered in a town park, reliable eyewitnesses undeniably point to the town's popular Little League coach, Terry Maitland, as the culprit. DNA evidence and fingerprints confirm the crime was committed by this well-loved family man.
Horrified by the brutal killing, Detective Ralph Anderson, whose own son was once coached by Maitland, orders the suspect to be arrested in a public spectacle. But Maitland has an alibi. And further research confirms he was indeed out of town that day.
As Anderson and the District Attorney trace the clues, the investigation expands from Ohio to Texas. And as horrifying answers begin to emerge, so King's propulsive story of almost unbearable suspense kicks into high gear.
Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy but there is one rock-hard fact, as unassailable as gravity: a man cannot be in two places at the same time. Can he?
I can't believe I'm saying this, but The Outsider TV show is way better :/ The first 4 episodes gave me nightmares and I will never forget the image of a bloody Jason Bateman 😖
That being said, the story is 100% King, and it is horrifying. I would have liked it to be less paranormal and more "we all have an evil twin out there somewhere", but anyway. I felt like it dragged a lot towards the end and apart from Holly and Ralph, all the other characters are almost invisible. Even Terry and Jack - especially Jack with literally no backstory whatsoever. Come to think of it, never really saw much of a connection between Holly and Ralph either :/ Also I am sorry to say, but the dialogue Holly and Ralph had with the "thing" at the end, was almost comical. No idea how it's going to be show on TV.
All in all, first half of the book was great because the story draws you in. Once you realise what is going on, it gets boring really fast. Imagine that almost half of the book could fit into 3 episodes= 3hours. Yikes.
Publication date: July 23 2019 Published by:Harper Collins Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Historical, Mystery, Suspense, Time Travel, Romance
Rating:
Julian has lost everything he ever loved and is almost out of time. His life and death struggle against fate offers him one last chance to do the impossible and save the woman to whom he is permanently bound.
Together, Julian and Josephine must wage war against the relentless dark force that threatens to destroy them. This fight will take everything they have and everything they are as they try once more to give each other their unfinished lives back.
As time runs out for the star-crossed lovers, Julian learns that fate has one last cruel trick in store for them--and even a man who has lost everything still has something left to lose.
Gut wrenching but still beautiful, the last instalment in End of Forever had it all (well, almost).
This series might have been about two people's epic love story in the beginning but I think in the end, it was all about Julian and about his personal journey as a son, a friend, a partner. He is the main focus of Inexpressible Island and Mia just compliments his story. I have to hand it to Simons, her storytelling is magnificent. All the twists and turns will have you sitting at the edge of your seat going "No way!" almost throughout. She knew where she was going with the story from the first page of the first book and it showed. The way the story came together was the most beautiful part of the book for me. What made me drop one star, was the actual ending. Not that it was particularly bad, but after all this anticipation about what would happen on Julian's last journey, it was a bit anticlimactic imo. I personally don't think a HEA suited these two. I know Julian and Mia had been through so much and they deserved it, but a happy ending comes in many forms. It doesn't always mean
a beautiful wife and a baby.
shoved in the last 10 pages. I didn't like that history was re-written to their advantage with no actual reasoning. Unless
it was confirmed that Julian did that full circle "meet Mia-time travel-get lost in the caves-meet Mia" multiple times and the re-writing of history is finally him being lucky and living the best version out of 10 or 100 of tries. Then, yes. I accept the ending. But none of that was made certain. Maybe it was sort of implied, but I can't be sure.
Honestly, after Julian got rescued and he "started" his life again and met Mia, I had this sense of foreboding, emotionally preparing for her to die. But not only she didn't die, everything was changed on top of that and I thought "Oh, Ok. Was that it? Why didn't he do that from the beginning then if that's all it took...?" Also, at some point I thought that Mia is the one who time-travelled and came to find him for a change the way she was written, acting all obsessed with Julian from day one. But no, not even that. So even though I was very satisfied with how Julian's story turned out, I was disappointed in how Mia's story concluded. Then again, I was never fond of Mia :/
To readers starting this series now: if you get past the 1st half of book 1, then you are good to go. It only gets better from there. Paullina Simons is a master when it comes to epic romances, end of story. Remember: this is a deeply heartbreaking story, bordering on really depressing. Not for the faint of heart.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
I don’t know where to start with this book 🤔
As soon as I finished the Six of Crows duology, I immediately went to Goodreads to see what is coming up from Leigh Bardugo. When saw that The Ninth House was scheduled for late 2019, I almost wet my pants! I love books about college and at that point I was obsessed with Bardugo. So her writing an adult book about secret societies in Yale was just too much for me. Needless to say, that since then (April 2017), The Ninth House was the most anticipated book release for me. I was 100% sure it would be the most amazing, awesome book I had ever read (not having high expectations AT ALL!). After the initial lukewarm and straight up bad reviews, I was a bit disappointed but my interest and excitement never wavered. I just had to get my hands on this book!
Long story short, the book was great but not what I was expecting at all 😕 I wanted intrigue, mystery, secrets and in part I got all that, but I didn’t expect the paranormal element to be so prominent, it threw me off a little bit. I would have much preferred a contemporary novel. But that’s on me, it has nothing to do with the quality of the book itself.
Another thing I didn't expect was how gritty and, for lack of a better word, miserable this book is. There is no respite from the constant reminder that people are horrible, bad guys always win and life is pointless. In other words: it was such a downer. And I like downer books, but that was overkill. The hardest thing for me and the reason I didn’t quite get into it as much as I would have liked, was the fact that I didn’t really care for anyone. Alex was the ultimate anti-heroine and a very difficult person to like. The rest of the characters were all pretty terrible except for:
1.Alex’s friends, whose bubbliness was completely out of place and made them stand out like unicorns in a tar pit 2. and Darlington, who was the best part of the book for me, regretfully cut very short. Hopefully, he gets a much bigger presence in book 2 but I have to be honest: it took a lot out of me to read book 1 (three weeks to be exact) a lot of perseverance and patience, so forgive me if I can’t even think about book 2 right now.
All that aside, there were times where Bardugo’s brilliant writing and vision shone very brightly. Like for instance when
Alex goes to the Underworld to strike a deal with North, I thought it was such an awesome scene. I really liked North and Alex together.
Or when
the night at Ground Zero was described -like watching Kill Bill-that good. Or gross and disgusting, depending on your view.
Speaking of disgusting, that whole thing with Blake: Nah, it didn’t bother me at all. He deserved way worse.
To conclude this pretty lengthy and all over the place review, I get why people didn’t like the Ninth House. Most of Bardugo’s readers are YA readers and even though it was mentioned sooooo many times that this is an adult book, Bardugo’s fans would still read it and of course get disappointed because this is DEFINITELY NOT a YA book. Personally, I would have liked it to have been more fast-paced and a lot less bleak. If I don’t have someone to root for or care for what happens to them, I kinda lose interest. Hero/villain it doesn't matter, as long as they are gripping enough to get me invested. So, please bring Darlington back OK?
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
3.5
Beautiful, magical story but the writing was too extra for a YA advertised book. Nothing wrong with that on paper (no pun intended) but seeing that the story was so information-heavy and action packed, I would rather the book was easier to read and the writing had a better flow.
As it was, I found it hard to pick up, choosing to read something else instead and coming back to it two days later and only because I was drawn to that amazing story. Harrow should have been clearer on her message and the book's genre and target audience.
Genre: YA, Children's Fiction, Re-telling, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Romance
Rating:
Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.
Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?
When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next.
This would have been a 2 if not for the last 70 pages or so which were rather unexpectedly pleasant.
Confession time: I think I might be getting a tad too old for classically written YAs. I use to love them in my 20s but now (ahem getting closer to my 40s) I find them incredibly boring and monotone. I want more in a book than run of the mill writing and one dimensional characters.
I apologise to a large community of YA readers, but I guess the cliché is true: I just don't have time for uninteresting and repetitive books, I can't fit them in my life right now. I will continue reading YAs as some of them, albeit less and less, are still the bomb. However, I will definitely limit the amount, and learn not to believe the crazy, undeserving hype created by readers with completely different book tastes to mine :/
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Dark, Self-Harm, Abuse, Mystery, Sexual Assault
Rating:
Grace wants out. Out of her house, where her stepfather wields fear like a weapon and her mother makes her scrub imaginary dirt off the floors. Out of her California town, too small to contain her big city dreams. Out of her life, and into the role of Parisian artist, New York director—anything but scared and alone.
Enter Gavin: charming, talented, adored. Controlling. Dangerous. When Grace and Gavin fall in love, Grace is sure it's too good to be true. She has no idea their relationship will become a prison she's unable to escape.
Deeply affecting and unflinchingly honest, this is a story about spiraling into darkness—and emerging into the light again.
Bad Romance was a very hard book to read. I constantly felt threatened and afraid while at the same time, I couldn't put it down. That's the power of a great writer and of ,what has got be, one of the best books I read this year.
You probably already know, but Bad Romance contains many, many triggers about emotional, physical and sexual abuse. If you have been abused or know someone that has, this might be a bit difficult for you to go through and I completely get if someone chooses not to read it. It wasn't easy.
Grace leaves in an abusive home. Her mum is married to a horrible man who physically abuses and belittles her and consequently she takes it out on Grace. Grace is made to do all housework to perfection and if not, she is given the most severe and absurd punishments. No wonder that after falling head over heels with Gavin, a teenage rock god and senior at her school, she doesn't see the level of his abuse straight away, putting it down to him being protective and caring about her.
When I was in my 20s, I heard my mom telling stories about friends of hers being talked down to and beaten by their partners and were in general extremely unhappy in their marriages. As far as I know these women are still married to the same men to this day. I remember thinking: "What, are they fucking stupid? Why don't they leave?" I'll admit, I was very judgmental and quite ignorant back then, mostly because I grew up in a safe and loving family and I just couldn't understand why these women didn't just leave. Simple. Just open the door and never look back. As I got older, I had a rude awakening and my bubble was not only burst, but shattered into million pieces. I found out firsthand how abuse can be so subtle and fine that it is almost undetectable (definitely by the people involved) and how you can stay in an abusive relationship without even realising that it is harmful. As for leaving? Ha. Not even on the table.
That is what happened to Grace. She knew after a while (you cannot not know, it's impossible) that she was unhappy and she could not live that way anymore but she just couldn't leave. Reasons varied from lack of self respect ("I'm never gonna find anyone like him to like me back"), complete denial ("But he loves me and I love him") to emotional manipulation ("If you leave me, I will kill myself"). Whatever the reason, the answer to her friends demanding that she break up with him was always "I can't".
The level of abuse Grace had to suffer was beyond anything I could imagine. It was A LOT, but I liked the fact that she remained real throughout. She didn't turn from victim to super hero in one day, or had a completely unwarranted and out of character reaction, which if I'm being honest, at that point, I could believe even that. To see that kind of trauma painfully unravel in front of me little by little, I didn't even know what reaction would be "suitable". I also really loved the ending, and I think it is a clear message to all women out there.
Grace went to Gavin and told him for a second time that she is breaking up with him, for real this time. There was no begging from his part, no tearing of clothes, no tears, certainly no killing himself. And then Grace opened the door and just left.
That goes to show that a lot of times we embellish things and situations in our heads so much that it's almost paralysing, when it's very very simple. And when we do take that leap, we see how much time we wasted being inactive and unhappy. OBVIOUSLY not all situations are the same! and if you find it impossible to walk out and say enough is enough, I get it. It is extremely hard, nobody saying it's not. That is why you need a good support system or if you don't have that, please find someone with the knowledge and expertise to help you. Reach out, because it's definitely not something you can do on your own.
As much as I hated Grace's parents (no excuses for her mum, she was horrible, awful and she should be institutionalised, if not imprisoned), I think Gavin's parents were worse. They were not doing him any favours by piling on his deluded dream of getting married to Grace and getting an apartment and all that crap. I mean they were barely 19 years old and Gavin was mentally unstable, he was on medication. They should have paid closer attention to him and not emotionally manipulate Grace into staying with him. Maybe I'm being harsh, I don't know. I understand that they loved him, but you can't be blind to anything else that is going on.
Bad Romance was exquisite, but I'm not gonna lie, I struggled with it. On an emotional level, it took me back to a state of mind where I swore I'd never be again, and I found I needed a long break from reading after I finished it. That said, it was amazingly written and I don't regret picking it up for a second. It made my heart bleed, but I loved it.
A dear friend of mine was hospitalised earlier this year because of something her husband did to her, I don't want to go into details. She could have died, that's how bad she was. After months in the hospital and clinics and therapy, she went to live with her mom. In one of our calls, she admitted to me that she misses her husband because, and I quote: "He is the only one who gets me". I think that says a lot about an abused woman's mindset.
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases — a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice — with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan — from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...
Remind me again why this book is so popular? Cause I don’t see it 🙅
After reading all these amazing reviews for The Kiss Quotient – almost all my GR friends gave it 4 to 5 stars- I read the blurb and easily dismissed it because I knew it wasn’t for me. More and more reviews started to come up about how wonderful this book is and I relented. Library waiting period was crazy, but I finally got it. And it was a total disappointment.
I will start with the positives first. It always fills me with immense joy to see diverse groups of people being represented in books. This is the first book I've read with an autistic female lead and I couldn’t be happier that books like these exist and raise awareness of such matters. Like Hoang herself said in her note, the first book she read with autistic characters, led her through a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Aaaand that’s all for the positives.
It made me giddy inside to read about a woman hiring an escort just because she wanted to be serviced by and learn from a professional. Can I get a hallelujah for that please 🙏? Yes yes and yes, it ticks all my boxes and honestly, I personally find it a great idea. Why go on Tinder or meet some rando in a bar who could turn out to be a dud or a psycho? It’s a gig economy; hire a professional if you want something done right. I wholeheartedly agree and support that sentiment 👍 What I don't agree with is the part in Hoang's note where she says “but I hadn’t been able to figure out why a successful beautiful woman would hire an escort”. So successful and beautiful women shouldn’t hire an escort for some reason? Maybe they are lonely, maybe they had sexual partners that were utter shit before, maybe they just want to try it. So, only ugly and downtrodden women should hire escorts because, let’s be honest, no one else would want them? What? No!
I didn’t find the story interesting enough to draw me in. It was a very superficial boy meets girl scenario, with bare minimum backstory to fill the pages. The book was very romance heavy and even that was sickly sweet with A LOT of outdated clichés.(rich girl spends tens of millions of dollars to make a man she practically just met happy. What is this, the Dynasty?) The sex was OK I guess, a bit weird and awkward at times. I understand that Michael was supposed to be more experienced, that was his whole shtick and the reason he was hired, but I got the sense that Stella was doing a lot of things she wasn’t particularly fond of doing but just because Michel “knew what he was doing” she should trust him and go with it. Not that he forced her to do anything, but there always this eek feeling of her being dragged to do something she was not comfortable doing. I guess that was my problem with the book: we were made to believe that Stella thought she was bad at sex because she was autistic. But 1. how being good at sex would help her in any way? and 2. why was she self-flagellating? She knew that her previous sexual partners were dicks and horrible in bed so what does that have to do with her sexual "performance" and her being autistic? That train of thought didn't make any sense to me and it ruined the whole concept of the book.
Her co-worker Philip had sexual harassment suit written all over him and he was admittedly disgusting. And he was portrayed as such, the monster and villain of the story. Well, the hero (Michael) didn't fair much better, let me tell you. After the woman he claims he loves and respects gets sexually assaulted, his go-to response was to kiss her long enough and passionately enough to erase the taste of the other guy in her mouth. Um, do you realise how gross and disgusting that is? And Stella went right with it, even though it goes so much against her character. I rolled my eyes at all the things Michael and Stella had "in common", like watching K-dramas and Kung Fu movies. The “beautiful sexy but also quirky and nerdy girl” trope is soooooooo 10 years ago and honestly done to death. Plus, these empty and superficial things are maybe cute yes, but where is the connection that actually matters? Where are the real conversations and the bearings of souls and actual no sexual intimacy that would justify them falling so hard and so fast for each other? I just don’t buy it.
For me the Kiss Quotient is undeservingly overhyped. It’s good for a quick beach read if you’re into something fluffy and a bit spicer than vanilla romances, but no more than that. I found it very mediocre, lost interest about halfway through and rolled my eyes at it a lot. There are so many good contemporary romances out there which are way more well written and thought out than The Kiss Quotient, you should try those.
