Maybe its my overly aro/ace heart but I wished they stayed friends. It was cute but still overtly toxic. IDK romance is boring to me its kinda overplayed. No shame if you like it. Its just not for me.
@@bettyunicorn6132 yep, me as well. i thought that one scene where america tried to convince travis to ask abby out was really cute, especially with him saying that their connection was special and he didn’t wanna ruin it, but the rest of the book just forgot about it because for some reason they still get together.
@@bettyunicorn6132idk how it’s possible for romance to be “overplayed” when it’s simply a type of relationship lol. Sometimes it’s not needed or feels wrong for the characters but calling it overplayed would be like saying friendships or student-teacher dynamics are tired and boring💀
"Travis has such a vast collection of red flags in this book that you would think he was planning to secede and start his own nation." I just cant omg i love you so much lexi
I'd definitely read a book if it was about a mc figuring out she's in a wattpad book and struggles to survive the batshit plot points and red-flag standard-bearers of "love interests".
Abby and Travis are the type of couple where you go "They deserve each other". Not in a nice, genuine way, but in a they need to be quarantined and contained and this is the only feasible option type of way.
I was thinking the same thing!! Every time I thought I understood where this book was going it completely threw me for another loop. The whiplash from everything going on is nonstop
Good god thought you were joking when you said high school musical but got to that point when Trav starts bellowing in the middle of the cafeteria and realised you weren't LMAO what was she thinking?
Kids these days don’t know the “I think I Love You” scene from Scream 2 or the “Lost that Lovin Feeling” scene from Top Gun. Breaking out into random song has a long, storied, intentionally cringe-inducing history.
in the aftermath of credence im honestly perfectly satisfied with any ya book with a protagonist who isnt a literal child in highschool who spends her free time casually hooking up with her male relatives who are all well into adulthood
I think anyone who watches this channel has been permanently scarred by watching Lexi sink into the depth of insanity while trying to summarize Creedence.
I wonder what the most outlandish country name for a person/character would be… apparently there are people called Argentina and I feel like I could come across a character named Venezuela if an author’s feeling wild but Ecuador would be taking it too far
This whole story sounds like something ur coworker who is like 10 years older than u would tell you happened to them when they were ur age and the whole time you have to sit there and pretend you're not hearing the most insanely toxic relationship unfold in front of you
Its honestly unfathomable to me how easily you're able to so eloquently ramble about a book for upwards of 2 hours with seemingly no script. I really love the content and eagerly await your next upload!
Things that are revealed in Travis' book: 1. The nickname pigeon actually comes from the last conversation Travis had with his mom before she died. She basically told him that there will always be vultures in life who will try to take advantage of him, but someday he's going to find an innocent pigeon, and that he should hold on to her as much as he can, because she's the secret to his happiness. I have no idea why the author chose pigeon, maybe because the nickname Dove is too generic. Anyway, Travis called the women that he sleeps with vultures throughout his book(even though he uses them just as much as they use him) and the second he sees Abby he instantly knows that she's his pigeon. 2. Travis gets hired by the CIA or FBI because his oldest brother works for them and he recruits him and also because Travis helps the government take down Benny and his whole operation. He has to keep his job secret from Abby, but she somehow finds out anyway. And also Abby becomes a math teacher.
The mom scene, oh gods ew, truly boymoms are a danger to society, imagine telling your son there will be a woman who can fix him and he should not let her go, ew
@@newlynova I have a vivid memory of starting Travis' book at 12 am on a school night and being so invested that I stayed up all night reading it. I was 14 so if say these books had an immense impact on my views on love and healthy relationships, it would be an understatement. Also I don't wanna suffer alone :)
“have you considered whether your definition of normal in this instance is greater than three standard deviations away from rational thought” is a roast I will be adopting, thank you very much
I wasn’t watching the video at first, just listening and I thought “Mare” was “Mer,” short for America. But no, they’re calling her a horse. Horse and bird.
OH MY GOD my freshman year roommate and I have thorough lore of this novel, watched the movie when it came out and took shots of lemon juice every single time he said “pigeon” and now have a thrift store bought, annotated copy of this novel. This is amazing, there is not enough people talking about the ATROCITY that is this book I’m so excited
I have hated this fucking book and Jamie Mcguire since 2013 when I first came across this bullshit, and I cannot tell you how loudly I gasped when I saw this in my recommended. I'm not done with the video and i have to be up in less than 6 hours for work, and I am LOCKED IN. I've forgotten how fucking incel-y this book is. 💀And this also makes me appreciate the movie as an adaptation. Movie Travis, while still annoying af, isn't *nearly* as awful, abusive, misogynistic or psychotic than book Travis, and Dylan Sprouse 100% understood the assignment. Sure, it's a stupid movie, but at the very least it was entertaining, legitimately amusing and cute at times, and is vastly preferable to the book.
I feel like any character that tells someone that they essentially don’t care if they get SAd, they should immediately be disqualified from being a love interest. That’s just despicable behaviour
My favorite detail from the Travis companion book epilogue is that Travis becomes an FBI agent, probably because of his dysregulation and violent outbursts
“The second I graduated with a degree in criminal justice, it just made sense for the FBI to contact me. The honor was lost on me. It never occurred to me or Abby that they had thousands of applications a year, and didn’t make a habit of recruiting. But I was a built-in undercover operative, already having connections to Benny. Years of training and time away from home had culminated to Benny lying on the floor, his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling of the underground. The entire magazine of my Glock was buried deep in his torso. I lit a cigarette. “Call Sarah at the office. Tell her to book me the next flight. I want to be home before midnight.” “He threatened your family, Travis. We all know what Benny is capable of. No one blames you.” -last chapter of Walking Disaster
He has no training, no ability, no knowledge just sibling fights….the mental image of the fighting ring devolving into sibling slapfights in which he simply overpowers all through plot armor im crying.
Giving the main characters the names “Travis” and “Abby” and then having within the same binding of covers the side characters “Shippley” and “America” is quite seriously cracked behavior. 100% giving John, Paul, George, and Ringo Starr energy. Just call him Richard, you know? edit to add: BRAZIL
As if the cafeteria scenes didn't make it obvious enough that the author never went to college, she then has someone claim that his SAT and ACT scores are relevant to getting into medical school. 😂
I feel like the worst crime here is that there's the core of a good story here. Like a guy trying to pay for college through underground fighting and a girl from a dysfunctional family background with ties to illegal gambling sound like genuinely interesting characters. You could do a lot with that, talk about class differences, the cost of higher education, what desperation can drive people to do, struggles of growing up etc. It's just that you'd have to write them as actual humans and not as weird caricatures.
@HoodwinkFalls I mean, I've read romance novels with genuinely interesting takes. But yeah, not sure if this was in the cards for this specific novel. 😅
I would die for Canadian-accent, Ivy League, $200K-Porche-driving Parker Edit: I was just gaslit by the absolutely unhinged behavior of the other characters into thinking he was sane. I’m gonna live for myself, Parker. I won’t die for you 😂
“Travis has such a vast collection of red flags in this book that you would think he was planning to secede and start his own nation” LEXI WHY IS EVERY SENTENCE OUT OF YOUR AMAZING MOUTH UNEQUIVOCAL BANGERS
I would love to read a retelling of this from Kara's POV- we just get all the classes and hearing the rumors while she is fending people off trying to get confirmation of said rumors and just get through her classes
Learning that Dylan Sprouse was in the movie adaptation of this book was more of a shock than learning he co-starred in a wuxia movie based on the opera Turandot
this left me speechless for a solid minute. wuxia...as in chinese martial arts??? DYLAN SPROUSE of disney channel fame??? if the film was produced in mainland china, did he learn mandarin??? what casting director looked at the script for their wuxia turandot mashup and was like "hmm, this needs dylan sprouse"? and i thought manhuas were far-fetched when the female lead magically gets all the roles for being a jade-like beauty
@@anitacollins571 yeah update I looked it up and it’s not actually a wuxia, I misremembered that part. It IS a Chinese film taking elements of Turandot and putting it in more of a fantasy framework. It’s called The Curse of Turandot. With regards to learning Mandarin he apparently stated that he spent six months learning it and speaking nothing but it while filming??? As for why Dylan Sprouse, I truly have no clue. I did find this trailer for it though: ua-cam.com/video/Qgc4esKP9LQ/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
Every time I listen to one of these "romance" book recaps I feel compelled to write a story where it starts off feeling like another 'glorifications of toxic relationships' romance story that ends with the main character finally accepting that she's in an abusive relationship and leaving.
Dude sameeeeeee. I did exactly that once for a fic and it was a mix of people thanking me for her to get out and the other half yelling at me at how terrible the ending was cuz she left even though he “loved her so much” 🥲🥲🥲 like how sad is this normalized that ppl thought a person leaving a toxic abusive relationship a “bad ending”? 😅
omg so true! i was also just thinking about how cool it would be if there was a book in which the protagonist realises the random women that the male love interest sleeps with are also real people (shock horror) and she ends up falling in love with one of these 'bimbos'
a family friend's mother lent me this book when i was a teenager, and abuse was so nornalized for me that i made a pinterest aesthetic board for this book. in 2014.
as someone who went to jewish day school for grades k-12 when i heard about the hebrew tattoo i immediately paused the video and found the hebrew text so i could confirm my suspicion that it was a verse we spoke about in class all the time and something the author took so incredibly out of context. i am pleased to report that i was correct, and not only that but it was a quote that at least ten classmates used as their hebrew yearbook quote.
Not to be THAT viewer but you truly inspired me to make my own notion. As a self diagnosed autistic person (healthcare is expensive) and professionally diagnosed adhd haver, this is a dream come true. I didn’t know this existed and am thoroughly excited to start breaking down my life and hobbies into manageable bites in one place. It’s a big task but my organization coded mind is so hyped. So thanks for not only entertaining content (I vibe with your recs 85-90% of the time) but actually useful sponsors that your audience connects with.
Knowing that in english he calls her pigeon made this book a thousand times worse. In portuguese is actually kinda cute, he calls her humming bird, which is "Beija-Flor" and translates literally to Flower Kiss and he abbreviates it to just Flower
When you said there was no condom I felt so much FEAR in my soul as I thought this dumpster fire of a book was gonna add ACCIDENTAL PREGNANCY to its list of crimes
AND EVEN IF pregnancy wasn't an issue, if I decided to sleep with a man who has had one night stands with around half of the college campus, I'd be comcerned about STDs
I had to sit with this video for a full 3 days. To process the interlude in Las Vegas. The Italian Mob. Run by Benny. The fact that she's a master poker player. All of it. Insane. And then they just GO BACK TO COLLEGE like it's NOTHING
"He's not Mick" I would hope he's not her father!? Also what?! Comparing your "friends interest" to her father?! WHAT?! *panic crying* ( I know there are others scenes but this is the one that broke the camels back)
I would ABSOLUTELY read a verson of this book (from a different author) of Karas pov that just gets more thriller the more often any of the others show up covered in blood with no explanation
holy god i was thinking a book from kara's pov would be the best thing as i was watching this, just the abby/travis conversations that she is forced to bear witness to
you dont understand the primal fear i felt seeing "the couch" posted as a character on the collage wall at the beginning of the video. a fear that ended up being So justified
yknow, despite all the wild shit with the flash mob and the mafia and the deadly fire, I think the craziest part by far of this book is still just that travis is 100% undefeated. for comparison, the best professional boxers *in the whole world* only have 70-80% win rates (although there are a couple “undefeated” outliers, these are people who spend every hour of their lives boxing and the wins recorded are only from contract bouts). so either travis is some sort of demigod or he’s only ever beating the shit out of people who have no idea how to fight whatsoever
First rule of having read Beautiful Disaster, is you never again talk about having read Beautiful Disaster. Every time I remember this book it feels like a fever dream I wish wasn’t still so vivid
Random, but Travis getting a tattoo saying ‘pigeon’ has the same energy as Mal getting a tattoo saying ‘I am become a blade’ and one of those is much better than the other
1. Lexi is truly missing her calling as a audiobook narrator 😂 distinct voices for every character on fleek 2. I think I manifested this video by commenting the day before it was uploaded asking if Lexi was okay and coming back 🤣
I have no idea how I came across your content, I literally only read non-fiction books and essays, but I cannot stop watching these. I fear that I may stan
1:03:14 - i think “every girl from kansas needs a toto” broke me for real. i will need approx 6-8 business years to process the events in this book, thank you for putting yourself through this for us lexi, you are stronger than a united states marine
I genuinely don’t think abusive relationships are inherently bad in books, even romance books (and yes, I say this as a survivor) but what really bothers me is how many scenes like the one at 1:25:00 feel the need to specifically say a clearly unhealthy relationship is actually fine. Like credence and fifty shades have similar scenes, I wish more dark romance would just say “yeah this is screwed up but it’s hot” and not feel the need to make it actually super healthy
Same. I keep going back to Mr and Mrs Smith - or I’ve heard of the Korean film Thirst as an example of a darker tone ? And the thing about those is that they don’t even need to go as dumb because just treating the events with relatively appropriate gravitas makes it hit like a truck
what i found is the problem most times is how they're sold. if they just came out as, you know, dark romances they may not have been as beloved as they were, but at least it would've been more honest. i think authors and writers of original fiction in general are way too scared to go anywhere near dark romances … for reasons i'm not privy to, although i'm guessing half of that is because they describe ~taboo~ or otherwise unhealthy relationships.
54:08 it’s probably indicative of the desensitization this book is inflicting upon me that I see Parker as a normal character. Also, the aggressive motorcycle revs as bleeps are killing me
abby feeling profoundly lonely because she realizes she belongs to no one is such an interesting moment for a character. like, the author did (accidentally?) write a female character who would feel attracted to possessive, obssessive guys. her mom is dead, her dad is terrible and gets her in trouble SHE has to rescue him out of, her best friend america is kinda unreliable, it would make sense for a character like this to think unconditional love is an angry dude promising to murder anyone to flirts with her. i can almost see the great but tragic story of two young people falling into obsession with each other because that's what they think love is. anyways, if anyone here likes shoujo, go read "a condition called love".
You just described my first relationship. At least I realized how fucked up it was and spent the next 6 years single because I recognized that I was in no condition to choose or have a sane relationship.
@@nyanchat2657 Yeah, I liked the manga, but I don't feel like it was a subversion, maybe more of a... Idk, humanization? They took the "yandere" archetype, have him do big love gestures like looking for the protagonist's jewelry alone in the snow in the middle of the night, and instead of being romantic it backfires. Hananoi is self-aware enough in his head to know he needs to put effort this time into being a good boyfriend, which means not stalking his girlfriend or demanding she isolate herself for him. It's supposed to be a romance, so naturally the protagonist starts asking for extra time to be with him, instead of always resrrving this time for friends and family, like when she leaves the family meeting early to celebrate his birthday on the day. I liked that scene a lot, it was very sweet, but ALSO, I almost wanted it to not exist. I wanted Hananoi to bask alone in the knowledge that his girlfriend would have to celebrate with him the next day, because she had a family funera to attend, because she loves other people that are not him, and that's okay. Have him be genuinely okay with it! Or not feel okay, but go to his grandma instead of pressuring his girlfriend to ditch the funeral to visit him, and have him do his best to stay calm and not panic and do something bad to her. I kind of wanted him to spend a little more time on how he behaved in his previous relationships, after spending time in a good one, on perhaphs apologizing someway to his exes for nearly abusing them (yes, even the one that cheated on him. I really hated the decision to show one of his exes, tell us all she cheated on him, so she was no saint, and THEN have her tell the protagonist all the abusive shit he demanded of his exes, but was capable of refraining himself to demand of her, the girlfriend he wanted to be good to). Maybe it would feel like too much of a fantasy though to have your high school ex boyfriend show up out of nowhere, apologize for stalking you while you two were dating, for not making the effort to stop being a stalker even though he knew consciouly he was a stalker, and that in retrospect you were right in dumping him, the tracker app WAS indeed too much.
Listening to the part where you talked about his choice of room decor, and I took a big sip of water not expecting it to be so funny, but I wasn’t expecting the sombrero.
the second hand embarrassment when you got to the "breaks out into song" section was so real i had to pause my work and pull out my headphones until it was over. a thousand blessings upon your house, lexi, for enduring what many of us can not and then giving us a 2hr long recap of it all.
The fact this this is only the plot of the first book is unhinged. How many pages was this book if all of these things happened and in the time span of 1 year…How do they still want each other at the end of the book after all happened. We can’t forget the TATTOO at the end thats WILDD😭😭 Honestly the big take away I got from this is justice for kara
let it be known to the people at notion that they were so right to sponsor u because seeing u use it for silly little hobbies actually spoke directly to my soul and i think i need it now
i remember when both of the sprouse twins came back to acting. they made it seem like they were only going to be doing purposeful, meaningful projects…then cole does five feet apart and riverdale and dylan does this😂
Actually appreciate you showing off your Notion because I've seen others talk about it but for whatever reason it's never fully clicked in my mind how fun (and useful) it could be to use until your little segment ♥︎
One of the things I like best about this video is that the speed at which you speak combined with my audio processing issues causes me to hear the word "b*tch" every time you say "pidge"
Reading how Travis developed the nickname pigeon from his mother has made me develop an immediately better story where he is still somewhat the 'bad boy", but with a strong connection with his mom, and because of her he learned how to have a deep respect for his girlfriends. He learned how to fight because he lived in a poorer neighborhood where those skills were somewhat crucial to stay alive, but he's still a nice person. I am 21 years old. It took me literal seconds to come up with this AU. WTF is going on in Jamie McGuire's head?
I personally think this book putting out into the world that america is a secret background villain always plotting with no care or concern for women- while masquerading as it’s in their best interest- is actually pretty prophetic
the fact that you can consistently make such high-quality book reviews(?) despite how long the videos often end up being is mind-boggling to me. i've already rewatched your other recaps a few times because of how entertaining they are, so thank you for saving me the boredom of working in dead silence.
this book is basically
man discovers platonic relationships
30 dead 47 injured
Maybe its my overly aro/ace heart but I wished they stayed friends. It was cute but still overtly toxic. IDK romance is boring to me its kinda overplayed. No shame if you like it. Its just not for me.
@@bettyunicorn6132 yep, me as well. i thought that one scene where america tried to convince travis to ask abby out was really cute, especially with him saying that their connection was special and he didn’t wanna ruin it, but the rest of the book just forgot about it because for some reason they still get together.
STOP IM DYING
@@xyippee Leave it to a Bocchi pfp user to have me wheezing with laughter. Checks out.
@@bettyunicorn6132idk how it’s possible for romance to be “overplayed” when it’s simply a type of relationship lol. Sometimes it’s not needed or feels wrong for the characters but calling it overplayed would be like saying friendships or student-teacher dynamics are tired and boring💀
"Travis has such a vast collection of red flags in this book that you would think he was planning to secede and start his own nation." I just cant omg i love you so much lexi
I had to pause at this, I was laughing so hard
52:12
the nickname pigeon is a warcrime and if any man called me that he would be my mortal enemy
Stranger to mortal enemy is how this book should have gone
hard agree! I would have puked on the spot
I'd definitely read a book if it was about a mc figuring out she's in a wattpad book and struggles to survive the batshit plot points and red-flag standard-bearers of "love interests".
and then he tattooed the nickname on himself
He might as well call her a flying rat
Abby and Travis are the type of couple where you go "They deserve each other". Not in a nice, genuine way, but in a they need to be quarantined and contained and this is the only feasible option type of way.
I felt the same way about the couple in after
“I love you PIDGE. I’ll never stop loving you PIDGE” like that one vine was all I kept thinking this entire time
STOP THAT'S HILARIOUS
HELP ME
THAT MAN IS A KING AND SHOULD NOT BE COMPARED
@Kitten_Kadoodle No he was saying bitch in the original vine don't worry
It’s like the author was trying to speed run embarrassing wattpad tropes but I truly didn’t expect the high school musical moment
Oops all tropes
I was thinking the same thing!! Every time I thought I understood where this book was going it completely threw me for another loop. The whiplash from everything going on is nonstop
Good god thought you were joking when you said high school musical but got to that point when Trav starts bellowing in the middle of the cafeteria and realised you weren't LMAO what was she thinking?
Kids these days don’t know the “I think I Love You” scene from Scream 2 or the “Lost that Lovin Feeling” scene from Top Gun. Breaking out into random song has a long, storied, intentionally cringe-inducing history.
in the aftermath of credence im honestly perfectly satisfied with any ya book with a protagonist who isnt a literal child in highschool who spends her free time casually hooking up with her male relatives who are all well into adulthood
the bar is truly in hell
@@fulgurixxHades probably died tripping over the bar
Oh my goshjj this is the comment
I think anyone who watches this channel has been permanently scarred by watching Lexi sink into the depth of insanity while trying to summarize Creedence.
@@fulgurixx Tartarus, actually, it's deeper than Hades 😂
Truly amazing that the author named not one, but two characters after countries. America and Brazil in one book is wild.
I wonder what the most outlandish country name for a person/character would be… apparently there are people called Argentina and I feel like I could come across a character named Venezuela if an author’s feeling wild but Ecuador would be taking it too far
Im making a oc called Zimbabwe
I mean America is a Hispanic name and there's a lot of ppl with that name but Brazil? 😭😭😭😭
America isn't a country
@@SofiaVillasecaSoria bro you're never going to believe this...
buying a girl a dog to make her stay is like baby trapping without the full commitment
baby trapping is way more costly and legally binding
with a dog he can just say "I don't want it"
@@chuchisneko that's what I said
@@ohveeve yeah, and I didn't contradict , I elaborated on why that was true?
@@chuchisneko just kinda redundant
solid 5/7 comment section you guys, mundane discussion thats also mildly funny from an outside perspective
kara was having the best month of her life with those two bozos out of the house and ofc the moment abby comes back it all goes to hell again
GIGGLING AT THIS
Playing Stardew Valley whilst listening to recap videos about books I’ve never read is my favourite hobby thank you Lexi
that is literally what im doing too LOOL its book recaps, book reviews, or movie reviews always in the bg as i farm
literally playing house flipper 2 while watching this lol
literally ME
What I’m doing rn too lol
who’d you marry in sdv
"Spoken like a true vampire pretending to be human so he can wear her skin." WHEN I TELL YOU I CACKLED.
53:15 I didn't remember when this was said and I just had to look it up
travis breaking out into song while the entire football team sings backup is what broke me at 1:06am on a tuesday
that's truly so Alex Volkov from Twisted Love of him, which explains a lot tbh
brothers in arms
I literally heard that in the video and i cringed so hard that I imploded and disappeared into the void lol
@@beyza9436 it has 2 b a connected universe
@@naginoriette7857 no same, we are now void siblings!!
This whole story sounds like something ur coworker who is like 10 years older than u would tell you happened to them when they were ur age and the whole time you have to sit there and pretend you're not hearing the most insanely toxic relationship unfold in front of you
‘Oh… I’m glad it worked out for you 😬’
I fucking LOVE book reviews that feel like when a friend from another school tells you about the school drama and you don't know any of the people
100%! That's how I found this channel, I clicked on the review of Credence and the minute Lexie opened her mouth I was hooked.
@@marinaramalho SAAAAME
Its honestly unfathomable to me how easily you're able to so eloquently ramble about a book for upwards of 2 hours with seemingly no script. I really love the content and eagerly await your next upload!
Absolute peak content
i was seriously thinking about what her script must look like while watching 😂
Things that are revealed in Travis' book:
1. The nickname pigeon actually comes from the last conversation Travis had with his mom before she died. She basically told him that there will always be vultures in life who will try to take advantage of him, but someday he's going to find an innocent pigeon, and that he should hold on to her as much as he can, because she's the secret to his happiness. I have no idea why the author chose pigeon, maybe because the nickname Dove is too generic. Anyway, Travis called the women that he sleeps with vultures throughout his book(even though he uses them just as much as they use him) and the second he sees Abby he instantly knows that she's his pigeon.
2. Travis gets hired by the CIA or FBI because his oldest brother works for them and he recruits him and also because Travis helps the government take down Benny and his whole operation. He has to keep his job secret from Abby, but she somehow finds out anyway. And also Abby becomes a math teacher.
The mom scene, oh gods ew, truly boymoms are a danger to society, imagine telling your son there will be a woman who can fix him and he should not let her go, ew
i hate knowing these things thank you so much
What an absolutely wild ride the author must have in their own head when thinking about writing these books.
@@newlynova I have a vivid memory of starting Travis' book at 12 am on a school night and being so invested that I stayed up all night reading it. I was 14 so if say these books had an immense impact on my views on love and healthy relationships, it would be an understatement. Also I don't wanna suffer alone :)
She was also her bridesmaid 😂😂😂 poor Kara
The "lone Sombrero" easily one of the funniest lines I've heard since "doing woods"😂 Lexi, are you ok???😂😂😂
no HAHA
@@newlynova you are truly a soldier of the highest quality, your medal of honor is on its way😭
Travis and Abby need to stay together forever so that no one else has to deal with their nonsense
Something about the way she speak tickles my brain so perfectly, like she’s so articulate about this stupid book lmao
i laugh at every single motorcycle rev instead of the cursing. favorite comedic element
It took me a while to figure out that's what the noise was. But I love it.
@@susannahlewis8464 the Credence video uses a banjo 😂
This comment saved my life - I thought it was a fart noise for at least half the video
the just EXTRA midwestern accent given to parker is my favorite thing
The American-Shepley break up had me near tears because of the idea of that man staying up stressed about this exact situation for months.
“have you considered whether your definition of normal in this instance is greater than three standard deviations away from rational thought” is a roast I will be adopting, thank you very much
I wasn’t watching the video at first, just listening and I thought “Mare” was “Mer,” short for America. But no, they’re calling her a horse. Horse and bird.
russel hartley: the early years
OH MY GOD my freshman year roommate and I have thorough lore of this novel, watched the movie when it came out and took shots of lemon juice every single time he said “pigeon” and now have a thrift store bought, annotated copy of this novel. This is amazing, there is not enough people talking about the ATROCITY that is this book I’m so excited
Also this is possibly the best sponsorship section of a video I have ever seen, girly DEF uses notion holy crap
@@blossom8806z
Lemon juice!! 😂😂 that is so painful lmao
I have hated this fucking book and Jamie Mcguire since 2013 when I first came across this bullshit, and I cannot tell you how loudly I gasped when I saw this in my recommended. I'm not done with the video and i have to be up in less than 6 hours for work, and I am LOCKED IN. I've forgotten how fucking incel-y this book is. 💀And this also makes me appreciate the movie as an adaptation. Movie Travis, while still annoying af, isn't *nearly* as awful, abusive, misogynistic or psychotic than book Travis, and Dylan Sprouse 100% understood the assignment. Sure, it's a stupid movie, but at the very least it was entertaining, legitimately amusing and cute at times, and is vastly preferable to the book.
I feel like any character that tells someone that they essentially don’t care if they get SAd, they should immediately be disqualified from being a love interest. That’s just despicable behaviour
My favorite detail from the Travis companion book epilogue is that Travis becomes an FBI agent, probably because of his dysregulation and violent outbursts
I’m sorry, what?
“The second I graduated with a degree in criminal justice, it just made sense for the FBI to contact me. The honor was lost on me. It never occurred to me or Abby that they had thousands of applications a year, and didn’t make a habit of recruiting. But I was a built-in undercover operative, already having connections to Benny.
Years of training and time away from home had culminated to Benny lying on the floor, his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling of the underground. The entire magazine of my Glock was buried deep in his torso.
I lit a cigarette. “Call Sarah at the office. Tell her to book me the next flight. I want to be home before midnight.”
“He threatened your family, Travis. We all know what Benny is capable of. No one blames you.”
-last chapter of Walking Disaster
@@waltergroceries9534 Objectively terrible writing.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA PERFECT
@@waltergroceries9534IT JUST MADE SENSE I'M CRYING
He has no training, no ability, no knowledge just sibling fights….the mental image of the fighting ring devolving into sibling slapfights in which he simply overpowers all through plot armor im crying.
Giving the main characters the names “Travis” and “Abby” and then having within the same binding of covers the side characters “Shippley” and “America” is quite seriously cracked behavior.
100% giving John, Paul, George, and Ringo Starr energy. Just call him Richard, you know?
edit to add: BRAZIL
HELPP THATS AN INCREDIBLE COMPARISON
THE PHOTO OF UNCLE JAKE IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE SPONSORSHIP😭😭😭😭😭
he's fully haunting the narrative at this point
THATS ACTUALLY SO FUNNY OMG
Dude imagine the game “find uncle Jake” XDDD
Not uncle Jake 🤢
GN IM CRYING
If I could add a third PSA: If your friend treats you like America treats Abby, she's not your friend
As if the cafeteria scenes didn't make it obvious enough that the author never went to college, she then has someone claim that his SAT and ACT scores are relevant to getting into medical school. 😂
I feel like the worst crime here is that there's the core of a good story here. Like a guy trying to pay for college through underground fighting and a girl from a dysfunctional family background with ties to illegal gambling sound like genuinely interesting characters. You could do a lot with that, talk about class differences, the cost of higher education, what desperation can drive people to do, struggles of growing up etc. It's just that you'd have to write them as actual humans and not as weird caricatures.
Sadly that would require an author to have talent and actual critical thinking but sadly with this genre that may be asking too much
@HoodwinkFalls I mean, I've read romance novels with genuinely interesting takes. But yeah, not sure if this was in the cards for this specific novel. 😅
@strawberrycheesecake5502 yeah haha sorry that was meant to be a joke but it didn't come off right. There are genuinely good books in this genre
"they cant tell what shes thinking but little do they know its because shes never had a thought in her entire life" cracked me up
"It's only the moon and a man who's been to every other planet in the galaxy" must be one of Shakespeare's lost sonnets. That is POETRY and I CACKLED
You have only had this UA-cam channel for 9 months and yet you are already the best to ever do it
an honor truly
I would die for Canadian-accent, Ivy League, $200K-Porche-driving Parker
Edit: I was just gaslit by the absolutely unhinged behavior of the other characters into thinking he was sane. I’m gonna live for myself, Parker. I won’t die for you 😂
cackling at this HAHAHA
I thought that was supposed to be a Michigan accent
“Travis has such a vast collection of red flags in this book that you would think he was planning to secede and start his own nation” LEXI WHY IS EVERY SENTENCE OUT OF YOUR AMAZING MOUTH UNEQUIVOCAL BANGERS
I would love to read a retelling of this from Kara's POV- we just get all the classes and hearing the rumors while she is fending people off trying to get confirmation of said rumors and just get through her classes
Learning that Dylan Sprouse was in the movie adaptation of this book was more of a shock than learning he co-starred in a wuxia movie based on the opera Turandot
this left me speechless for a solid minute. wuxia...as in chinese martial arts??? DYLAN SPROUSE of disney channel fame??? if the film was produced in mainland china, did he learn mandarin???
what casting director looked at the script for their wuxia turandot mashup and was like "hmm, this needs dylan sprouse"? and i thought manhuas were far-fetched when the female lead magically gets all the roles for being a jade-like beauty
Wait he WHAT
he was in A WUXIA MOVIE
BASED ON AN OPERA???
What😭😭😭
@@anitacollins571 yeah update I looked it up and it’s not actually a wuxia, I misremembered that part. It IS a Chinese film taking elements of Turandot and putting it in more of a fantasy framework. It’s called The Curse of Turandot. With regards to learning Mandarin he apparently stated that he spent six months learning it and speaking nothing but it while filming??? As for why Dylan Sprouse, I truly have no clue. I did find this trailer for it though: ua-cam.com/video/Qgc4esKP9LQ/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
I….. I literally have no words wtf
I had to go research this because it sounded so wild... but yeah it was a 2021 movie flop. He was dubbed over though (standard practice)
lexi i must personally thank you for casually dropping the line "yes im biased but im also right", it is incredible and is now my new personal motto
“Cognitive dissonance comes for us all” is simultaneously the smartest and funniest thing I have ever heard 🤣🤣🤣
Every time I listen to one of these "romance" book recaps I feel compelled to write a story where it starts off feeling like another 'glorifications of toxic relationships' romance story that ends with the main character finally accepting that she's in an abusive relationship and leaving.
Dude sameeeeeee. I did exactly that once for a fic and it was a mix of people thanking me for her to get out and the other half yelling at me at how terrible the ending was cuz she left even though he “loved her so much” 🥲🥲🥲 like how sad is this normalized that ppl thought a person leaving a toxic abusive relationship a “bad ending”? 😅
omg so true! i was also just thinking about how cool it would be if there was a book in which the protagonist realises the random women that the male love interest sleeps with are also real people (shock horror) and she ends up falling in love with one of these 'bimbos'
Wait…he nicknames her PIGEON when there a literal BUTTERFLY on the cover. Am I the only one see this??
💁🦋
Is this a pigeon
It’s for the best if her nickname were butterfly I assure you that Travis would have started to call her butt
@@Night_Mite or butter lol
a family friend's mother lent me this book when i was a teenager, and abuse was so nornalized for me that i made a pinterest aesthetic board for this book. in 2014.
truly harrowing times
Did you just say “mother”? STRAIGHT TO JAIL
find the pinterest board i need to see it
i need the interests board now you can't just drop that like this
@@nataliejanine4611 just made it public again for y'all lol user is artisticow (i'm sorry)
THE BIT WHERE THE TATTOO IS REVEALED AND ITS JUST LIKE
Pigeon
MADE ME GENUINELY PAUSE THE TREADMILL SO I COULD CATCH MY BREATH FROM MY LAUGHING FIT
as someone who went to jewish day school for grades k-12 when i heard about the hebrew tattoo i immediately paused the video and found the hebrew text so i could confirm my suspicion that it was a verse we spoke about in class all the time and something the author took so incredibly out of context. i am pleased to report that i was correct, and not only that but it was a quote that at least ten classmates used as their hebrew yearbook quote.
Not to be THAT viewer but you truly inspired me to make my own notion. As a self diagnosed autistic person (healthcare is expensive) and professionally diagnosed adhd haver, this is a dream come true. I didn’t know this existed and am thoroughly excited to start breaking down my life and hobbies into manageable bites in one place. It’s a big task but my organization coded mind is so hyped. So thanks for not only entertaining content (I vibe with your recs 85-90% of the time) but actually useful sponsors that your audience connects with.
🫶🫶🫶 i hope you love it as much as i do, i am a notion shill through and through
Knowing that in english he calls her pigeon made this book a thousand times worse. In portuguese is actually kinda cute, he calls her humming bird, which is "Beija-Flor" and translates literally to Flower Kiss and he abbreviates it to just Flower
“I would burn down his house but that’s just me” ☠️☠️☠️ this whole video was pure gold
I paused at 'Abby Abernathy" and sat in silence with my head down for a minute
When you said there was no condom I felt so much FEAR in my soul as I thought this dumpster fire of a book was gonna add ACCIDENTAL PREGNANCY to its list of crimes
It's almost worse that it implies that cycle tracking is an acceptable means of birth control
AND EVEN IF pregnancy wasn't an issue, if I decided to sleep with a man who has had one night stands with around half of the college campus, I'd be comcerned about STDs
I had to sit with this video for a full 3 days. To process the interlude in Las Vegas. The Italian Mob. Run by Benny. The fact that she's a master poker player. All of it. Insane. And then they just GO BACK TO COLLEGE like it's NOTHING
the ending really was “i am always living, laughing, and loving with travis - abby❤”
HAHAHA
The voice for Parker absolutely destroyed me lmfaoo why is he Canadian
Hahahahaha omg that’s what I thought the accent was too!!
I literally JUST got through your Credence video yesterday, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to glue my eyes to the screen for the next 2 hours 💓
LOEYYYY HIII
Oh no not credence😭😭 you doing a 'reading your worst books vlog'
LOEY IS HERE WTF???
TWO HOURS?! Lexi I owe you my life
"He's not Mick" I would hope he's not her father!? Also what?! Comparing your "friends interest" to her father?! WHAT?! *panic crying* ( I know there are others scenes but this is the one that broke the camels back)
Imagining her poor roommate thinking they are UN. HINGED.
Your sly smile at every "more on this soon," and "we'll get there" was glaring evidence of how much your sanity was tested througout this book
I would ABSOLUTELY read a verson of this book (from a different author) of Karas pov that just gets more thriller the more often any of the others show up covered in blood with no explanation
holy god i was thinking a book from kara's pov would be the best thing as i was watching this, just the abby/travis conversations that she is forced to bear witness to
"There is a darkness inside this woman" had me in STITCHES
you dont understand the primal fear i felt seeing "the couch" posted as a character on the collage wall at the beginning of the video. a fear that ended up being So justified
yknow, despite all the wild shit with the flash mob and the mafia and the deadly fire, I think the craziest part by far of this book is still just that travis is 100% undefeated. for comparison, the best professional boxers *in the whole world* only have 70-80% win rates (although there are a couple “undefeated” outliers, these are people who spend every hour of their lives boxing and the wins recorded are only from contract bouts). so either travis is some sort of demigod or he’s only ever beating the shit out of people who have no idea how to fight whatsoever
First rule of having read Beautiful Disaster, is you never again talk about having read Beautiful Disaster.
Every time I remember this book it feels like a fever dream I wish wasn’t still so vivid
Random, but Travis getting a tattoo saying ‘pigeon’ has the same energy as Mal getting a tattoo saying ‘I am become a blade’ and one of those is much better than the other
1. Lexi is truly missing her calling as a audiobook narrator 😂 distinct voices for every character on fleek
2. I think I manifested this video by commenting the day before it was uploaded asking if Lexi was okay and coming back 🤣
I have no idea how I came across your content, I literally only read non-fiction books and essays, but I cannot stop watching these. I fear that I may stan
"a man like Travis would never let an artificial barrier get between his deep thirst for freedom and the open road" sent me 💀💀💀💀
1:03:14 - i think “every girl from kansas needs a toto” broke me for real. i will need approx 6-8 business years to process the events in this book, thank you for putting yourself through this for us lexi, you are stronger than a united states marine
WAKE UP BABE!!! NEW LEXI TWO HOUR LONG UNHINGED RECAP VIDEO JUST DROPPED!!!
The exaggerated Wisconsin accent when you're voicing Parker is absolutely perfect.
honestly that one character being named america really fits her whole deal
i feel like abby had maybe 10 minutes of rational thinking when she said they were toxic before she just jumps straight back to insanity
I genuinely don’t think abusive relationships are inherently bad in books, even romance books (and yes, I say this as a survivor) but what really bothers me is how many scenes like the one at 1:25:00 feel the need to specifically say a clearly unhealthy relationship is actually fine. Like credence and fifty shades have similar scenes, I wish more dark romance would just say “yeah this is screwed up but it’s hot” and not feel the need to make it actually super healthy
This!
Same. I keep going back to Mr and Mrs Smith - or I’ve heard of the Korean film Thirst as an example of a darker tone ? And the thing about those is that they don’t even need to go as dumb because just treating the events with relatively appropriate gravitas makes it hit like a truck
what i found is the problem most times is how they're sold. if they just came out as, you know, dark romances they may not have been as beloved as they were, but at least it would've been more honest. i think authors and writers of original fiction in general are way too scared to go anywhere near dark romances … for reasons i'm not privy to, although i'm guessing half of that is because they describe ~taboo~ or otherwise unhealthy relationships.
54:08 it’s probably indicative of the desensitization this book is inflicting upon me that I see Parker as a normal character. Also, the aggressive motorcycle revs as bleeps are killing me
abby feeling profoundly lonely because she realizes she belongs to no one is such an interesting moment for a character. like, the author did (accidentally?) write a female character who would feel attracted to possessive, obssessive guys. her mom is dead, her dad is terrible and gets her in trouble SHE has to rescue him out of, her best friend america is kinda unreliable, it would make sense for a character like this to think unconditional love is an angry dude promising to murder anyone to flirts with her. i can almost see the great but tragic story of two young people falling into obsession with each other because that's what they think love is. anyways, if anyone here likes shoujo, go read "a condition called love".
I'm up to date with a condition called love and I'm ngl, I see the parallels with 0 subversion
You just described my first relationship. At least I realized how fucked up it was and spent the next 6 years single because I recognized that I was in no condition to choose or have a sane relationship.
@@nyanchat2657 Yeah, I liked the manga, but I don't feel like it was a subversion, maybe more of a... Idk, humanization? They took the "yandere" archetype, have him do big love gestures like looking for the protagonist's jewelry alone in the snow in the middle of the night, and instead of being romantic it backfires. Hananoi is self-aware enough in his head to know he needs to put effort this time into being a good boyfriend, which means not stalking his girlfriend or demanding she isolate herself for him. It's supposed to be a romance, so naturally the protagonist starts asking for extra time to be with him, instead of always resrrving this time for friends and family, like when she leaves the family meeting early to celebrate his birthday on the day. I liked that scene a lot, it was very sweet, but ALSO, I almost wanted it to not exist. I wanted Hananoi to bask alone in the knowledge that his girlfriend would have to celebrate with him the next day, because she had a family funera to attend, because she loves other people that are not him, and that's okay. Have him be genuinely okay with it! Or not feel okay, but go to his grandma instead of pressuring his girlfriend to ditch the funeral to visit him, and have him do his best to stay calm and not panic and do something bad to her.
I kind of wanted him to spend a little more time on how he behaved in his previous relationships, after spending time in a good one, on perhaphs apologizing someway to his exes for nearly abusing them (yes, even the one that cheated on him. I really hated the decision to show one of his exes, tell us all she cheated on him, so she was no saint, and THEN have her tell the protagonist all the abusive shit he demanded of his exes, but was capable of refraining himself to demand of her, the girlfriend he wanted to be good to). Maybe it would feel like too much of a fantasy though to have your high school ex boyfriend show up out of nowhere, apologize for stalking you while you two were dating, for not making the effort to stop being a stalker even though he knew consciouly he was a stalker, and that in retrospect you were right in dumping him, the tracker app WAS indeed too much.
Your desperate laugh everytime you try to read a serious scene and he calls her “pigeon” has me on the floor
Listening to the part where you talked about his choice of room decor, and I took a big sip of water not expecting it to be so funny, but I wasn’t expecting the sombrero.
It! Is. Surprising. Lmfao
the second hand embarrassment when you got to the "breaks out into song" section was so real i had to pause my work and pull out my headphones until it was over. a thousand blessings upon your house, lexi, for enduring what many of us can not and then giving us a 2hr long recap of it all.
The fact this this is only the plot of the first book is unhinged. How many pages was this book if all of these things happened and in the time span of 1 year…How do they still want each other at the end of the book after all happened. We can’t forget the TATTOO at the end thats WILDD😭😭
Honestly the big take away I got from this is justice for kara
According to this comments section she gets married to Travis's brother Trent in another book
Have I ever read this? No. Am I HYPE for this video? YES.
let it be known to the people at notion that they were so right to sponsor u because seeing u use it for silly little hobbies actually spoke directly to my soul and i think i need it now
The half tribal tattoo butterfly cover should have tipped me off
my toxic trait is this was my favorite book in high school
SAME LMAOO im so glad I grew out of it
Omg why?
400 pages is crazy for this book
A sprouse twin book video essay might've been the last place i expected to see this channel at😭 chaotic video essay icons together
ozzy??!!
i remember when both of the sprouse twins came back to acting. they made it seem like they were only going to be doing purposeful, meaningful projects…then cole does five feet apart and riverdale and dylan does this😂
Hey, five feet apart is a masterpiece compared to whatever these shit shows are
@@luuuuux_oh for sure, but it wasn’t exactly the type of art house cinema that he acted like he was going to be making😭
I mean those seem like art compared to this lol like Riverdale initially wasn't the red fuel it ended up being.
Cole is one of the more irritatingly pretentious people out there though so I’m not surprised whatsoever 😂
I love how Parker has a UP accent, it truly pulls the character together.
Michigan Upper Peninsula accent?
parker getting progressively more canadian in the impressions - god i love your unhinged deep dives
omg was missing so much a new video from this channel and now you comeback with fucking two hours roasting a book i never heard about, i'm in.
as you can see the trenches have been warm
Actually appreciate you showing off your Notion because I've seen others talk about it but for whatever reason it's never fully clicked in my mind how fun (and useful) it could be to use until your little segment ♥︎
i use my notion almost solely for goofball things!! it is a serious program that i use completely unseriously, 10/10 would recommend
I can't imagine the huge amount of work and psychic pain making these videos cause, but you can't imagine how much I enjoy them.
One of the things I like best about this video is that the speed at which you speak combined with my audio processing issues causes me to hear the word "b*tch" every time you say "pidge"
Reading how Travis developed the nickname pigeon from his mother has made me develop an immediately better story where he is still somewhat the 'bad boy", but with a strong connection with his mom, and because of her he learned how to have a deep respect for his girlfriends. He learned how to fight because he lived in a poorer neighborhood where those skills were somewhat crucial to stay alive, but he's still a nice person.
I am 21 years old. It took me literal seconds to come up with this AU. WTF is going on in Jamie McGuire's head?
I personally think this book putting out into the world that america is a secret background villain always plotting with no care or concern for women- while masquerading as it’s in their best interest- is actually pretty prophetic
the fact that you can consistently make such high-quality book reviews(?) despite how long the videos often end up being is mind-boggling to me. i've already rewatched your other recaps a few times because of how entertaining they are, so thank you for saving me the boredom of working in dead silence.
I legit almost cried out of second hand embarrassment when you talked about him singing in the cafeteria.
I love that you give Parker the most Wisconsin Accent [TM] I've ever heard.
I've read this, and still watched you describe it for 2 hours because it's just so entertaining to hear you roast it.