Caitlin > Recent Status Updates

I’m so bored that I’m listening to the audiobook now to push through. Everything that’s happened could’ve been achieved in half the pages. I’m gonna scream if we have one more instance of Mary making up her mind about something in one chapter just to change it immediately in the next. Also, why is this book trying so hard to redeem every man while making most of the women seem worse? So many weird choices.

I mean, I definitely thought that we'd start after the events of Pride and Prejudice and since we aren't it's making me wish I had reread P&P before starting this. It's honestly feeling very over written and repetitive. I don't care for what's been done to Charlotte and it kind of feels like we're just setting up some sort of Persuasion-style plot for Mary. Hoping it picks up now that there's a time jump!

Kennedy Ryan is a good writer but I am begging for some actual conflict here. How are there another 300 pages???

yeah the romance is working too, which is such a relief because I've been struggling with romance lately!

Idk how I’ll end up feeling about this romance but I can already tell that it’d be fun to talk about baseball with KT Hoffman

I am liking this but also it feels like I can read for an hour and barely make any progress, so, yeah
a little like treading water

Once again, I am very charmed by this!

That said, the idea that this is the “When Harry Met Sally…” to First-Time Caller’s “Sleepless in Seattle” is very silly. Like the connection on the first book was tenuous at best but this one isn’t even trying. One alteration-filled diner order and a late night viewing of “Casablanca” cannot make convince me otherwise lol

I was already dubious when the preface claims these women I’ve read about before “are only now revealed,” but Holt’s insistence that the Pastoral Symphony is a complete failure and “past the point of redemption” is so weird. It just undercuts her valid critiques to keep lying that no one likes it, especially when her only support comes from two random, non-contemporaneous reviews…

I've already cried like 3 times. Reading this book during what's historically a rough month for me and the year my 18 year old cat died is either self care or self harm, who's to say 🙃 I really like it so far though

This is so charming??

Okay, to be fair, like immediately after I said that this book was all dialogue it started including way more description.

Remember when some girl on booktok said that she only read the dialogue in books? Well she'd love this one!
For real, the writing in this is so odd to me. It's so...nothing. I'm begging for some atmosphere or something else to dig into just it's mostly talking in weird stilted ways because the dialogue is being tasked with providing all of the backstory too.

This book’s concept was already a hard sell for me but it sure doesn’t help that this relationship is progressing way too fast and that it feels like the mmc turns into a different person during the sex scenes 😒

This is so readable and I like the concepts that are going on but I don’t think Abby Jimenez’s writing is for me, especially her humor and dialogue 😅
Also, what do you mean her brother marrying a world famous pop star is a subplot of a subplot?? And this fmc just referred to the pop star as a “commoner” ☠️

Wanted a palate cleanser between Emily Henry books and thought this would be quick and fun. It turns out to be both slower and more of a downer than I expected, but I am still very intrigued to see how the ending plays out.

I was enjoying this so much in its first third but I fear it is going downhill 🫠

I wish someone loved me the way that Rebecca Ross loves to use the word “limned” 🫠

(I thought about dnf-ing this about a quarter of the way in and maybe I should have…)

I’m smitten 🥰

I can't tell if the voice of this book is actually as delightful as I think it is or if this narrator is just doing a phenomenal job, but either way I am really hooked on it.

Also I don't want to jinx it, but I genuinely can't believe that thus far I am loving a book featuring an accidental pregnancy???? people I watch on booktok might've gotten this one right 😮

This is taking me forever and I don't know why!
I love Kiki and her voice, and her chemistry with Malakai is so good but...I guess I feel like it took forever for the plot to actually set into motion and now that it has we're also getting mysterious backstory being rolled out slowly and this was so hyped up for me but it's not playing out how I expected 😩

🫣🤨🙃

I feel like such an asshole because this book isn’t doing anything wrong yet so many things in the writing are just grating to me. Thought about DNFing but I’m basically halfway and I am curious about where the plot is heading so 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

Is listening to this rotting my brain? Probably, but I can do it at 2.5x speed and I do want to know how she's going to explain why there's a castle in the Alaskan wilderness. That being said, I reserve the right to quit if it keeps saying "wtf" and "af" in the narration 😒

I’m feeling very meh about this already but want to give it more of a chance because the concept still sounds so good to me! But there’s already been a lot of references to other contemporaneous books and authors that I feel weird about? It’s been weirdly judgy, and more annoyingly inconsistent (I don’t buy that this mc doesn’t know Howl’s Moving Castle)

I'm not disliking this but it's taking me way longer to read than I would've liked and I think a lot of that is just that Delilah's perspective is tough to read from. She does so many things that make me so frustrated but it's all earned through her backstory and how we know she's thinking and feeling. It's still just rough to read, though. It'd almost be easier if she was being unlikable for the hell of it.

This book is such an odd mix of breezy, bubbly writing mixed with some truly depressing subject matter and I don't know what to make of it so far