Thriller books with murderous nannies, romance books with vanilla couples, & more 👶 Monthly Wrapup

  This book ended up beingthe most vanilla, stale book I have ever read in allof 2020. Perhaps ever. [intro music] Today, I'm gonna betalking about all the books I read in the month of Decemberwhile eating my favorite food: Fried Rice. They gave me a lot, so I mighthave to pace myself for this one. Before we start, I gottasay thank you to Squarespace for funding my fried rice addiction. They are the sponsor of this video, and they provide a platform foryou to make gorgeous websites for anything that you could possibly want. Collecting donations,email campaigns, blogging, whatever you want, they have it all. They even have integrated analytics so that you can refine your emailstrategy with real time campaign and website analytics from one source. And that way it helps youlearn more about your content so that you can have higherengagement and tracking metrics. You can head tosquarespace.com to get a free trial, and whenever you're ready to launch, you can go to squarespace.com/readwithcindy to save 10% off of your firstpurchase of your first domain. So the first book that I read inDecember is called "The Turn of The Key," which is a thriller book about ananny who is currently in prison because there is a childin her care that died, and she is accused of being the murderer. Which I'm sensing is a very commontheme among many domestic thrillers: they really hate nannies. It starts off with her in prison, and she's writing a letter to a lawyerbegging for him to take on her case, because she swears that she is innocent, and she had never murdered the child. And she's like, so you'reprobably wondering how I ended up in thisfunny little situation. Let me recount every single thingthat happened leading up to this point. And that's how we dive into the story. You see, it all started when I came acrossan ad that seems too good to be true, which again, is anothercommon theme for many thrillers. There was a job post for a nannyrole that had an amazing salary. And so she decided to apply for it and she got the job because theywere super impressed by her resume, which I find super ironic, becauseas you read throughout this story, you can tell that the maincharacter doesn't even like children, because she's constantlythinking about how tiring they are when they're basicallyacting like normal kids. Like she starts a job and then the kidsare acting bratty as most kids usually are. But then she acts like this is so emotionallydraining and taking so much out of her. And she's like, man, I don't know if Ican deal with such emotional turmoil of taking care of these monsters. And I'm like, bitch, aren't yousupposed to be an expert of this shit? Like, weren't you trying tobe Mary Poppins up in here? But the way that she describes the child,she fucking straight up hates the kids. So the whole time I'm reading the book, I'm just thinking about howterrible of a nanny that she is because she cursesin front of the children, she almost smacks them at some point, there's even a scene whereshe doesn't even watch the kids and she goes off to do something stupid. So I'm just like, bitch-- I mean, Iget it with the distaste for children, but this is literally your job. So maybe get your shit together, or else people are gonna think that youmurdered the kid when they die later. What she also finds is that the housethat she's staying in is very weird. It's considered to be a smart house because it has more advancedtechnology than most other houses. There are cameras installed aroundthe house for constant surveillance, but then sometimes thetechnology malfunctions, so then all of a sudden, there'slike booming music in the house, and she doesn't know why. Or like the lights just turnoff at the worst possible time. So it's super sketch. There's some Black Mirror shitgoing on, but the money is still good. So she's gonna stay anyway. Honestly, I didn't find thissmart house to be that weird. What I found to beactually weird was the fact that the house has a poisongarden in the backyard. Like there's this one partwhere the mom gives her like a 60 page manual of the house. And there was just like onesmall section on one of the pages in the middle of the packet thatmentioned the poison garden, and that she shouldn'tbring the kids in there. She doesn't read through thewhole packet because she's like, bitch, I don't have time for that. I'm too busy complaining aboutyour kids and being a terrible nanny. So later when the mom finds out that she and the kids went through the garden, the mom gets so pissed off becauseshe's like, that was a poison garden! And I'm like, bitch, first of all, if you have something thatdangerous at your house, why wouldn't you put it in like bigred text at the front of the packet? Second of all, why the fuckdo you have a poison garden? There is an explanation for it, but I still found that shitweird, because she was just like, oh, yes, we just happen tocasually have a poison garden despite having a bunch of little kids. And we won't mentionthe poison garden at all and it's just gonnabe like a little footnote. I didn't know how to rate this bookso I ended up giving a 3.5 stars. Why I hesitate to thinkoh, that was a great story is because the buildupfelt very, very slow. And many of the creepythings that happened, which is essentially just her hearing likeweird noises scraping across the floor, like, yeah, that's creepy, but then ithappens over and over and over again, and then that just gets repetitive. When she doesn't even like discoverwhy that's going on till the very end. So if you're going to keep theaudience hanging till the very end, I feel like it needs to besomething super juicy, which I don't really know ifit was, but on the other hand, what I did like about the story wasthat there were a lot of red herrings and misleads, like it wouldmake you think one way but then it would turn out toreveal something totally unexpected. I did see other people review this book and they weren't a fan of the red herrings, but I personally didn't mind it because Ithink it added to the whole surprise of it. I will say though, I totallycalled this big plot twist that gets revealed later in the story. I'm so proud of myself, because I think this is like a plottwist where most people didn't catch it. I'm not gonna say what it is but I felt like such a genius when Icalled it in the beginning of the story, because the plot twist is notreally dependent on the narrative. It's more dependent onhow the writing is constructed. And so I was just proud of myself for that, because whenever I read abook, or I listen to an audiobook, I like to pay attention to the way thatthe author constructs their sentences. And that was how I was able to pick it up because I was like, hmm, wait a minute, why did she write in these specific ways? So I was like, I see what you'redoing, Miss Ruth Ware, I'm on to you. And that was a prettygood twist I must say. Usually, when I pick up a twist early on,I'm just like, ah, that was too obvious. But this one I thought was kind of clever. The next book that I read is anotherthriller called "When No One is Watching." It stars the main character whowas born and raised in Brooklyn, but her neighborhood is being gentrified, because there's condos that arejust sprouting everywhere. The neighbors that sheknew are getting bought out or just had to leave because theplace is just getting too expensive. You know, just New York things. The main guy is one ofthe neighbors that moves in. He volunteers to bethe main girl's assistant because she decidesto take on this initiative to do a walking tour of the neighborhoodthat gives more insight to the history and the culture of theBrooklyn that she knew, rather than this whitewashed,gentrified version of it. But as they deep dive intothe history of neighborhood, there are some weirdpatterns that they start to notice that develop this senseof paranoia and fear and it develops this conspiracy theory about what is actuallyhappening to the neighbors who have moved out from theneighborhood and go to the suburbs. They start to think maybe those neighborsdidn't actually make it to the suburbs, even though before itseemed like they were adamant about staying in the neighborhood. But then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, we don't mind if these whitepeople move into our homes. We're just gonna go livea happy life in the suburbs. But where are they?Where the fuck did they go? Okay, I'm eating way too fast.So I'm gonna slow myself down. We'll save this for later.I was so into this idea. I love the premise of the story and I absolutely love it whenthrillers incorporate social justice issues and real world issues intothe thriller elements of it because that just groundsit more into reality. The author's approach tothis genre felt very unique because the first one third or half ofit felt more like a contemporary book. It even felt like a romcom, which makes sense because Alyssa Cole is moreknown for her romance books. That juxtaposition of having likea setting that feels like a romcom but is actually a thriller later onwas a super interesting dynamic, because the appeal of romcomsand romance stories is that the characters are very likable. In thriller books, in my opinion, you don't really see that that often, like the characters arekind of forgettable in thrillers. They're just there to make bad decisions so that you can see themgo into some scary situation. But this felt different, because Iactually really liked the main characters. And that made me simultaneouslyworried for their lives because I knew this was a thriller book,and that some shit was gonna go down. So I'm just like, oh my god,this is such a cute couple. But wait, this is a thrillerbook. Their lives are in danger. So the first half of the bookactually felt like another book called "Such a Fun Age" whereit was contemporary fiction that dealt with a lot of racial commentary. The third component buildsup throughout the story. It kicks in a little bitlater on towards the end. But what I did feel like was that itdidn't seem like much of a thriller. As I was building up, I kepton hoping for something crazier, but honestly, it just kind offelt like realistic fiction to me. Because if you're writing aboutthe horrors of gentrification, is that really like a horrorbook or a thriller book, or is that just a realistic story? The main problem that Ihad with the story though, is that even though thethemes of gentrification are a great concept for thriller, the bad guys in the book feltso cartoonish and overtly evil, when I think that a lot ofracism today is insidious. And that's why it happens,because it's not so obvious. But the book makes it super obvious. For example, there's this randomguy that pops up every now and then and tries to recruitthe main guy into this job that is essentially trying to push outall the black people out of their houses. And he talks like this typical dude-bro, or like a crony or asidekick for the big bad guy. And it's like, who just comes up torandom people and talks like that? You don't just walk upto people and you're like, hey, you want to join my evil society? Like no. I mean, I'm sure thereare dumbasses who do that. But I wish that this book was more subtle. And overall, I feel like there was just adecline in the story past the halfway points. Even then I didn't care about thecharacters at this point anymore as they revealed theirdramatic background stories, which I don't think were that dramatic. I kind of predicted it pretty early on. I got the sense that in thelast one third of the book, the author probably struggled writing it because all of a suddenwhen the thriller part comes in, it just feels so fast paced and rushed, that it feels very jarring andcomparison to all the build up that we had. And I feel like the authorreally boxed herself in because she set up this plot andthis conflict that is so much bigger than what the two charactersare capable of handling. How do you solve gentrificationwhen you're literally just one person? That's a very hard task to do.I'm going with 3 stars for this one. I will say though, that ifthis book does get picked up to be like a TV adaptation or a movieadaptation, I will still totally watch it. And then as a palatecleanser for these thrillers, I decided to pick up aromance called "The Flatshare." This is a story about a girl who needsto find a cheap apartment really fast. She finds an ad that is advertisingthis weird concept of a flatshare, where she would essentially besharing this apartment with a stranger that she has never met before, and that she will never meet for aslong as she stays in the apartment. Because the main guy works in a hospital, which means that he only worksduring the night and across weekends. So that means that during the day, when the main girl is at work,he is staying at the apartment. And then when it's nighttime, he goes to work whileshe goes home from work and she gets to stay at the apartment. It's funny how a lot of times whenever youdescribe the synopsis of a romance story, it could easily be a thriller book as well. This is a book that Iended up rating four stars. But what's funny is that I was soready to drop the book early on. There were two reasons for this. The first was that I couldn'tbuy into the premise at all, because of the fact thatthey had to share a bed. They're not sleeping together. But I think it's weird to justshare a bed in the first place. Because what if theother person is unhygienic? Also is the dude literally at work everysingle night and every single weekend? There's absolutely no waythis arrangement will work. No one's schedule is so rigid that they wouldn't need theirapartment during the daytime, every day. No one would ever go for that. I mean, I don't know, maybe London is super expensiveto live in so they have to resort to this. Actually, you know, I could see thiskind of shit being pulled up in New York or LA where their pricesare like way too high. But that's more of an economical problem. And I still don't think thatyou should resort to that, because that's fucking creepy. I need my privacy and I need to livein my own space that I can be in 24/7. Like, what if you're adepressed bitch like me, who likes to take depressionnaps for over 16 hours? Obviously, I can't be doing that ifI was in that kind of arrangement. Another thing that Ididn't like about the book was the writing style forthe main guy's chapters. He writes in very choppy sentences. And it's just very awkward and rigid, and I think the authorwas trying to do that to differentiate the twovoices of the characters. And to further amplify how themain guy is a bit more practical and rigid with the waythat he approaches life. But it didn't work for me. It made it very hard toget into the book at first. So I was buddy readingthis with two people, and I was on chapter seven, and I was like, hey, listen, I might just drop this book. I don't know if I'm feeling this. And then literally the nextday, I texted them saying, hey, guess what, I'm on chapter 27 now. It was totally a flip whenI read more of this story. I just started liking it alot more when they finally got accustomed to living in this same flat and they started sharingnotes to each other. Which I thought was cute. Do I buy the fact that that theywould reveal such personal information so early on in therelationship in the notes? No. But for the sake of advancing thestory, I understand that it must be done. But it's just sweet. Like there's this one point early onwhere the main guy is thinking that he likes having her notes to go home to. And I'm like, aww, it's a goodthing you're not a thriller book. Otherwise, this would be fucking creepy. What I liked the most aboutthis story was that the conflicts that they were dealingindividually were very serious and real things that people do deal with. So for example, themain girl is trying to heal from an emotionally abusive relationship. And the main guy has abrother who is in prison for a crime that he did not commit. There's a lot of angstand emotional turmoil when it comes totheir individual conflicts. But the romance that they have witheach other is so fluffy and wholesome. And it provides such a nicebreak to those serious matters that they are dealing with. And I really like relationships like that. I love romances where thecharacters go through serious problems, but their relationship isso pure and wholesome, because it makes me feel like love is areprieve from how awful the world can be, and that shit makes me soft. They very much lived individuallives separated from each other, and they had their own thing going onand they had their own interests going on. And I think that's nice. I like that characters have theirown lives outside from each other, and they just come togetherto make each other better. The romance took overa very long period of time, and they had this solidfoundation of friendship first when they weregetting to know each other and just communicating with each otherwithout really seeing each other first. It's not a perfect book, but it was just so cute and fluffythat I just had to rate it four stars. After that I read anotherromance book called "In a Holidaze." It stars the story of a girlwho's super close to her family, and every holiday they always goup to the cabins up in the mountains and spend their Christmaswith another family that they've been friendswith ever since she was little. The other family has two brotherswho are around the same age as her. She is really close friendswith the younger brother, but she has always had acrush on the older brother. When I first read it I was like,bitch is this The Kissing Booth? Not this shit again. Fortunately, it's notquite like The Kissing Booth, but also it wasn't that good either. The book starts off withher making a terrible mistake, which was hooking upwith the younger brother. They also find out that the otherfamily is going to sell the cabin, which means that they're not gonnahave their holiday trips anymore. So the trip is ending off on abummer as she is driving back home. She just thinks about how this shit sucks. And then suddenly there's a carcrash and then when she wakes up, she is back on theplane to go to the cabin. She finds out that she isstuck in a time loop where she is re-experiencing theweek long Christmas vacation that she had over and over again, thus providing an opportunityfor her to correct her mistakes and possibly reveal her truefeelings for the older brother. This book ended up beingthe most vanilla stale book I have ever read in allof 2020. Perhaps ever. I'm not even against vanillaromances, I actually like them. But this particular romance was so vanillato the point where it was so boring. Even the Christmas traditions or activities that the familiesdo with each other are so vanilla. It's like they were pulled out of awhite Hallmark Christmas movie. Like there's a part wherethey're exchanging gifts. And one of the gifts that they giveto the dad is one of those prank gifts where you press a button andsounds like someone is farting. This is the most stereotypicalgift that you could give to a dad. And that literally onlyhappens in hallmark movies. So it's like you couldn'tgive any kind of creativity or personality to whatthat dad might even like? The families have a competitionwhere they all team up to build a snowman andthe best snowman wins. And we spend a wholefucking chapter about that. And then someone throws asnowball instead of building a snowman, and they end up having a snowball fight and the main character gets upsetbecause that's not part of the tradition. And I'm just like, we get it bitch. Your family is so functional, that the only conflictyou can have is the fact that you decided to make a snowballfight instead of building a snowman. The biggest flaw in this story though, is that the time loopplot was entirely pointless. Like it didn't do anything. The main character only repeats the samedays for the first one third of the book, and then the last two thirds of the book is her continuing from the same timeline. So then it's like, why do we even have that whole time loopidea in the first place? The time loop was totally forgottenabout for the rest of the story, which defeats the whole point. You might as well havemade it a normal story without that added weird plot point of a timeloop that never really gets explained. I feel like the authorsonly put it in there just so that it would add a little bit offlavor to their otherwise vanilla story. And then the third actconflict was so frickin stupid. I'm not even gonnabother saying what it is. But it's literally like the most stupidestthing that you could ever be mad about. And then they made up in such an easy way, where literally, the way thatthey made up was just like, oh, I was just mad at you. That doesn't mean that we broke up. Like, then what the fuck was the point? Again, it just adds the factthat the story is so vanilla, that it can't even doproper tension correctly. Rated this two stars. Not for me. After that I read a contemporarybook called "This Close To Okay." This is a novel that coversa life changing weekend between the two main characterswhere the main girl is a therapist who is trying to move on from a divorce, and the main guy who she meets at a bridge because he is about to jumpoff the bridge and she stops him. She convinces the guy tojoin her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agreesto come to her house because she is just so desperateto make sure that he doesn't, you know, hit the bucket. The whole book covers theweekend that they have together, it also slowly starts to revealthe secrets that they have. The majority of thebook is essentially just very emotionally charged conversationsthat they have with each other as they get to know each other better. I picked this up because I really like stories abouttwo strangers coming together to help each other heal and form thisunique connection through their journey. That's why I liked "The Flatshare." But while I do think that thewriting in this book was lovely, I think the ending could have been waystronger if it were executed differently. And I also wasn't reallya fan of the dialogue. Again, most of the story is them havingthose emotionally charged conversations. But a lot of times it feltlike a very personal Q&A, where like these twostrangers are just hanging out, and then the main girl is justlike, what's your deepest fear? And then he answers and he'slike, what's your deepest fear? And it's like, and then they justgo back and forth with each other. And it's like, yeah, you know, thisis a great way to cut the small talk and really dive deep into things, but it was so obvious that this wasa very easy way for the character to learn intimate details with eachother very quickly and very easily. It reminds me of this Instagram account and this card game called'We're not really strangers.' Where they encourage you to asksuper personal questions about each other, and it's supposed to besuper emotionally poignant and make you all reflective and emo. So I think if you are into that Instagramaccount, you would really like this book. I didn't quite buy it. And so that'swhy I'm rating this three stars. And then the last book thatI read is "The Wife Upstairs." This is a modern dayretelling of Jane Eyre, where the main character Jane worksas a dog walker for a rich neighborhood. And what these parents do not knowis that she is somewhat of a grifter. She actually will steal someof the items in their houses because she is a brokebitch who has no morals. The story begins whenshe meets the main guy who we know from theoriginal story as Mr. Rochester. He is recently widowed because hiswife had drowned in a boating accident with one of her best friends. So Jane sees him as anopportunity because she's like, ooh, rich, brooding, handsome, and doesn't have awife because she dead? Cha-ching! They instantly fall for each other. Jane is gonna live her dreamsof having that rags to riches story. But as you can tellfrom the title of the book, and the original Jane Eyrethat this story is based on, perhaps the wife is notquite out of the picture. I'm gonna keep this short because I don't really havemuch thoughts about this story. I rated it three stars because I foundit to be a very quick and easy read. Like I read this in one day. But I found a lot of thisstory to be very predictable. As someone who is alreadyfamiliar with the Jane Eyre story, I pretty much knew exactlywhat was gonna happen. So I wish that the author added new things. I mean, she did but even like thenew twists that the author added, were easy to guess because youalready had the context of Jane Eyre, so you can kind of fit the pieces together. There wasn't reallyanything surprising to me. Just kidding I lied. The last book I ended upreading was "The Perfect Nanny." This is a book that was originally writtenin French and a won a bunch of awards, and so it got translated to English. It is about a mother whoreturns back to work as a lawyer and so she hires ananny to look after her kid. As you can tell from the title,the nanny is perfect for them. She sings to the children,she cleans the apartment, she stays late whenever she is asked. There's really no complaintyou can make about her except for the fact thatshe ends up killing the kids, which you find outliterally in the first page. Again, this is becoming a very common trend in books where nannies cannot be trusted. Now this is marked as a thriller bookand even compared to "Gone Girl," that is absolutely not true. It's not similar to "Gone Girl" at all. I wouldn't categorize this as a thrillerbecause it's very much a slow burn. I would categorize thismore as a character study. It's really more focused onthe buildup between the nanny and the family that she's taking care of, and how they become verycodependent and obsessed with each other. But nothing crazy happens fromthat other than the kids being dead. I liked the atmosphere of writing, and I normally like character studies,but this book didn't quite hit it for me. I found it difficult to stay interested because there weren'treally any answers provided. Even the ending was very enigmaticin a way that didn't feel satisfying. I really started off thisbook with high hopes because I was very interestedin the commentary of immigrants, and how they are often theones in the roles of the caretakers. The author is Moroccan andthe mother is Moroccan as well. Early on, there is a part whereshe is interviewing all these nannies and she immediately does not consider any of the Moroccanimmigrants that have applied. She doesn't want any ofthese immigrants to think that they have like a betterchance with her because she happens to be Moroccan as well. So she draws a line betweenlike, oh, I'm not like them. There's a line where it says the mother has always beenwary of immigrants solidarity. And when I read that I was like, bitch,what? It's the internalized racism for me. But I thought this is goingdown an interesting route because there are a lot of immigrants and kids of immigrants who do notwant to speak their native language or even want to be associated with it. And since the author is French Moroccan, I thought there wouldbe more of a commentary on how France has a tendency to havexenophobia, specifically with Muslims, and since Arabic is a commonlanguage associated with that, it's often dangerous for people to speakArabic out in the open due to hate crimes. So there were a lot of mentionsabout being an immigrant and being a Moroccan inthe beginning of the book that I was really interested in and Ithought that we would see more of and I thought this was gonna belike the central theme of the book. I was disappointed that wedidn't really get more of that, and I think if we had it couldhave been a more powerful story. But since we didn't, I endedup rating this three stars because I just thought it was okay. That is pretty much it for all thebooks I read in the month of December. Go ahead and unsubscribefrom my channel, and goodbye. [Music: Peaches by BABYBOYBLUEFeat. Marylou Villegas]