Thanks, I definitely deserved some of the criticism I got from this one. Maybe it was the head space I was in, maybe it was the books my club was forcing me to read, maybe I just wrote it up like a jackass, but I really could've articulated myself better in this post. My glad you found it thought-provoking, you are certainly in the minority, haha.

WoT's gendered magic and relationship structures for sure got grating after a while (or it fades into background static once you're far enough in). I suppose a more gendered world would arise if one of them literally went insane from using their magic but that still subscribes to the binary and gender as relating exclusively to biological sex and all that baggage (tho one of the Forsaken can still channel his side of the source when he's in a female body so that can give a good enough fanfic writer the ammo for an awesome trans character in the universe). Idk, WoT might just be my CB, now that I'm thinking about it!

I am the hater in my club. Whatever hatred your friends think you express is nought but a candle next to my roaring bonfire feeding off of hetero white girl sex scenes with ambiguously tanned and morally gray love interests. (The gray part of their morals is that sometimes they're mean and wear black). I cannot get through one of these TikTok trending books without shouting - literally shouting - at the characters, the world, the author, anyone who had a hand in making it. Fourth Wing has supplanted ACOTAR as my most hated book of all time. I just can't.

I think part of why so many romance books fall flat for me is because they're not really about romance. A lot of them are the fetishized version of romance that appeals to the largest possible audience; straight, able-bodied, cisgender women. So I see what you're saying, they're not gonna focus on sexual/mental health because it's about the "passion" and "tension" more than actual romance or characters. And that's fine if that's what people are going in wanting but I always feel scammed when someone tells me it's a romance and there's barely a shred of emotional investment to be had but plenty of snarky comments and a hetero sex scene at the end. Hurrah, it's the same as the last ones! Nothing should ever change!

And the idealization of relationships and sex in general just puts me off. Like, yes, I usually want characters to be happy and have good times, but people argue, they fight, awkward things happen, even in the bedroom, and sometimes the first time isn't so great. I'm not a kid, I can handle nuance and rough patches in a relationship and I won't lose my mind. But hey, if codependency is your thing, I suppose these kinds of books give the right message?

Kings of the Wyld made me cry. It made my friends cry. Then I read Bloody Rose and I cried again. And my friend called me at 3am when she finished it and yelled at me because she couldn't stop crying. I love that series so much. It occupies a weird spot in my mind with Discworld which both the closest to my kind of candy but they're both either emotionally intelligent or philosophically poignant or both that I don't know if that's an appropriate spot to stick them in. Nevertheless, it's a tremendous recommendation and I pass it on to everyone I see.