April 24, 2019 – The Bibliophagist

I’m always up for a new tag, so I was really excited to see that Cait had tagged me in her original get to know the blogger tag! Thank you! ❤

Rules:

Thank the person who tagged you!
Link back and credit the original creator (GoodeyReads)
Answer book questions about yourself.
Answer the other questions about yourself.
Change the last 5 questions when you tag someone else (if you want! – the more random the better)
Tag at least 3 people.
Have fun! (ooh, that was cliche)

a book about where you’re from (city, state, country — your choice)

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger is set pretty close to where I live.

a book about your favorite non-bookish hobby

I’m Not in the Band by Amber Garza starts with a girl at a concert with her older sister.

a book about a fear of yours

I can’t really say that I’m afraid of plane crashes, but I’m definitely not a huge fan of flying. (There are only two or three people I’d get on an airplane for.) The Upside of Falling Down by Rebekah Crane is about the sole survivor of a plane crash.

a book about something that brings you joy

I love baking, and while I don’t own Sugar Rebels yet, I hope to own it soon!

a book about your career/what you’re studying in school

I work as a medical biller and I don’t know any books about that (other than the code books I use at work, but who wants to look at those), so here’s a book about linguistics, which is what I majored in! I just got Wordcrime from the library and I can’t wait to read it.

What job would you be terrible doing?

As I said, I work in the medical field. I’m the billing manager, which means I mostly just sit at my desk and get yelled at by patients and yell at insurance companies. I never would have believed this job would involve so much yelling before I took it. I also work in dermatology, which means that I don’t really have to deal with people who are actually sick, which is a really good thing. I’m such a germaphobe that I can’t even focus if there’s an actual sick person in the office. I would never be able to work in an emergency room or urgent care or primary care office. I would also be a terrible nurse.

What’s a subject you wish you knew more about?

I mentioned that I majored in linguistics, but one aspect we never got to study was language acquisition. I’m interested in everything about everything having to do with language acquisition, but especially how little kids learn how to talk. Someday I’ll have time to read all of the Cambridge Linguistics texts on this.

In your opinion, what is the best day on the calendar and why?

Maybe Christmas? It’s not about the religious aspect or even the presents for me. It’s just that everyone is usually in a good mood, I don’t have to work, and I get to spend the day with people I love.

What is the craziest item you spent way too much on?

I don’t even want to think about how much money I spent, but I got a hotel room right next to Dollywood for two nights back in October. I really should have just stayed with my manager’s family, but I felt too weird about it.

What’s a quirky thing you do?

I asked my boyfriend this question because I wasn’t entirely sure and he gave me a couple ideas. My favorite was “you look up to the left whenever you try something new,” which is a thing I wasn’t totally aware that I did until he pointed it out. Now I can’t not notice it, but I’m okay with it.

I’m tagging…

Lori ❤ Hamad ❤ Siobhan

No pressure to do the tag, and if I didn’t tag you and you want to do this, please consider yourself tagged! What’s your favorite day? What’s one of your quirks? Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’

My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

Rating: ★★★★☆
Links: Amazon • TBD • Goodreads
Publication Date: December 4, 2018
Source: Borrowed

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Millie and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

I was on a book-acquiring ban when I first saw the ARC of My Favorite Half-Night Stand pop up on Netgalley. I was really tempted to request it anyway but decided to be mature and responsible and not bite off more than I could chew by requesting books I had no time to read. That said, I totally planned to check it out from the library as soon as it came out. Well, life got in the way. I ended up traveling a lot at the end of the year and I kind of forgot about this one until I stumbled across it while waiting in line to check out at the library.

The thing is, I almost always enjoy books by Christina Lauren. They’re one of my favorite author duos. Aside from Dating You/Hating You, I think I’ve rated everything of theirs either four or five stars. There’s just something about their writing style that puts me in a great mood, and I love that their characters are always charming, yet flawed. And their dialogue! It’s like reading an actual conversation.

Realizing that you might like a friend in a romantic way is always a weird feeling, and Christina Lauren captured that perfectly when Millie and Reid fall into their friends-but-sort-of-more arrangement. I appreciated that they didn’t play into the “we can’t because it’ll ruin our friendship” cliche — that always bothers me and almost always feels so unrealistic — and instead had Millie and Reid hook up and then try to fall back into their normal rhythm.

The online dating aspect was great! I’ve never tried online dating, never wanted to, and hope that I’ll never have to, because I find it absolutely terrifying. Nobody in this book had any (scary) disasters, though there was never a dull moment. I think, though, that the only part of the book I honestly took issue with was Millie (as “Catherine”) stringing Reid along for so long, and Reid continuing to message “Catherine” despite his growing feelings for Millie. I think I say this in most reviews of romances, but if they’d just been adults and talked to each other, they could have avoided a lot of unnecessary drama.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book! It was a lot of fun and it’s only made me more excited to read more from these authors.

#ps19: a book you meant to read in 2018
#romanceopoly: women’s ave

Have you read My Favorite Half-Night Stand? What’s your favorite friends-to-lovers romance? Let’s talk in the comments!