Hey everyone, it's Jananie from the channel The Story Ain't Over, and
welcome back to another episode of #EpicBookRecs.
So this is a monthly series that I do here on the Epic Reads channel where I
recommend a bunch of books based on a certain theme.
So we've done a bunch of fun themes before, so
go check out the playlist in the description down below.
But for today's theme I wanted to go with something that kind of fits the coming
month, February 2021.
And kind of the romance-y vibe of the month.
So today's theme is virtual romances, or
books that prove that you don't need to be face to face to fall in love.
So every single one of these books on this list feature characters who may have met
in person but end up falling in love over text messages, or letters, or postcards.
They're separated by some sort of distance, or
some incapability of meeting in person, and so they fall in love in other ways.
Hopefully this will be a fun video and
a way to pick up a book that will just put you in a good mood.
So let's just get right in.
All right, so
the first book that I have to talk about is Don't Read The Comments by Eric Smith.
So this is a really fun kind of YA romance but also just a contemporary in general.
It involves two main characters, Divya Sharma and Aaron Jericho.
And Divya is actually a super huge gamer and she actually is a streamer as well.
And she has a screen name and everything, and she has this huge armada of fans,
but in real life she's just a regular girl with a single mom, and
she's helping her mother pay rent.
And so Divya uses the money that she gets from sponsorships while streaming to help
her mother out.
But as a female woman of color gaming,
she's faced with lot of trolls in the gaming environment.
And then we have Aaron,
who is kinda stifled by his mother's expectations for him.
She wants him to become a doctor, and he just wants to design games.
He wants to be writing games and giving them to developers to create, and
he can't find a way to get his mother to see his side of things.
But these two characters kind of end up meeting on the game that Divya plays.
And Aaron ends up meeting her in a situation where he can't recognize that
she's this famous streamer, and
so the two of them end up kind of playing this game together.
And also messaging on the side and sending cute packages to each other, and
it's all just really adorable.
They start to sort of form this really nice friendship and
that later turns into a romance.
And it was just a lot of fun just seeing the way that they connected over their
shared love for games and it was just definitely a really cute read.
And it had a wonderful ending, I thought, with some really cute romantic gestures,
so highly recommend if you're looking for the perfect kind of virtual romance.
Where characters just connect over shared interests and
learn to connect without actually meeting in person at first.
All right, the next one that I want to recommend is quite a popular one, but
I think it's just so much fun, and that is Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda.
So for those of you who don't know, this book follows our main character,
Simon Spear, who was not so openly gay at his school.
But he ends up in a situation where he is kind of emailing this secret admirer, or
person that he seems to have a connection with,
who has just mysteriously named themselves Blue.
And the two of them have kind of formed this unlikely bond and
also start this flirting relationship.
But when one of Simon's emails falls into the wrong hands, the wrong
hands being the class clown Martin, he ends up getting blackmailed by Martin.
To be Martin's wingman and help him out, or
risk having his secret revealed to the whole school.
But the reason I wanted to mention this book is mainly because of the really cute
exchanges between Simon and Blue in this book.
Just the romance that develops between them and it was just such a sweet story,
and I just love the way that we get to Blue's reveal later on.
And just seeing their relationship blossom by the end was just really great.
All right, the next book that I wanna recommend is a personal favorite of mine,
and that is Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia.
So this follows our main character Eliza, who is very meek and shy and
introverted girl.
And secretly without anyone knowing, she is the infamous author of a really amazing
web comic called Monstrous Sea, and so she's called Lady Constellation.
She has never shown her face online, but she has thousands of fans of her and
her work, and she's kind of formed a community online.
And then we have our other main character, Wallace Warlin,
who is the biggest fan fiction writer for Monstrous Sea.
And Eliza has heard of him and his kind of like pen name online, but when the actual
Wallace transfers to her school, she finds out about his identity as a fan fiction
writer, but he doesn't know that she is the creator of Monstrous Sea.
And so they end up in this situation where they are both talking online, but
also in person, but also connecting over things mostly on line,
especially Monstrous Sea and their love of similar things.
And one of the things that I love about this book is that although
the relationship kind of starts mostly online and through text message, and
through them writing notes to each other in class.
I really liked the way that Wallace and Eliza both start to bring each other out
of their own shells and help each other kind of accept themselves as they are.
This also has some really beautiful illustrations in the book of Eliza's web
comics, so I highly recommend you go check that out as well.
Because it's just so cute and it adds to the story in a really nice way.
All right, the next book that I wanna recommend is an old favorite of mine and
that is The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E Smith.
As you can see, my copy's kind of bent and battered, but
I really enjoyed this book back when it first came out.
It follows our two main characters, Lucy and Owen.
So Lucy lives on the 24th floor of her building and Owen lives in the basement.
And the two of them get stuck in an elevator in the middle of the building,
on a day when New York is facing a blackout.
And so they're stuck in the elevator for hours on end and
forced to kind of interact.
And even when the blackout kind of lifts, the two of them end up
roaming Manhattan through the night and just getting to know each other.
But obviously, when the lights come back on, reality kind of sets back in and
the two of them realize that they are both bound for very different directions.
Lucy's parents are planning to move her abroad and
Owen is moving out west with his father.
And so the two of them decide to, last minute,
keep in touch through postcards and letters and phone calls.
And it's just this really wonderful and sweet story of how these two
characters are taken around the world, and in different directions.
But their hearts are kind of still in the same place in that elevator in New York.
And they are both trying to connect with each other,
although they only spend this very short amount of time together, at the beginning.
And they also have just so many hopes and expectations for
what their relationship could be.
And I remember just being on the edge of my seat waiting for the next phone call or
the next postcard that each of them would receive.
And also seeing how in some ways their relationship deteriorates at some points.
And I was just rooting so hard for them to finally reunite by the end.
This is also a really nice romance in the sense that it was also
on the contemporary side.
Where both of the characters were dealing with their own kind of personal struggles,
while also harboring this attachment for each other,
as they went about their regular lives.
So just seeing them grow as people and then come together was just really nice.
All right, the next book is one that I'm going to briefly mention,
because I mentioned this in the last Epic Book Recs video.
But that is, Dashing Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.
This is an absolute favorite of mine and
the perfect example of falling in love without actually meeting.
But this follows our two main characters, Dash and Lily, and
Lily has an older brother who puts on this scheme during Christmas
break to kind of find her someone to hang out with.
And so he places this red notebook that Lily has onto a shelf at The Strand,
Lily's favorite bookstore, and he puts a bunch of dares inside.
And so when Dash kind of stumbles upon this notebook in The Strand,
he starts to follow the book and do the dares.
And what occurs is that Dash and Lily ended up exchanging dares through this
red notebook, and leaving it in different places in New York.
And kind of catching up with it as they complete their dares and
connecting through the pages of the notebook without actually meeting.
It is actually fun and sweet little tale set over Christmas break,
I just absolutely enjoyed it, and
definitely the perfect example of falling in love without meeting a person.
All right,
the next book that I want to recommend is Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi.
So this follows two different main characters.
So the first is Penny Lee, who had a mostly non eventful high school life, and
she is moving to Austin, Texas to start her college life,
thousands of miles away from her original home.
And then we have Sam, who works at a café near the college that Penny goes to.
And his life has not turned out in any way, shape, or
form the way he wanted it to, but he does want to be a movie director.
And the two of these characters are very lonely in the same place, and when
they end up in this really interesting and hilarious meet cute situation.
The two of them end up swapping numbers and
kind of become each other's emergency contacts.
So whenever something is kind of going on in each of their lives,
they end up just texting each other, and
that texting relationship turns into something a lot bigger.
Most of this book is actually told through the text messages that these two
characters have.
And I thought it was just so much fun,
because it really reflects how a lot of people interact in today's age.
And I just really enjoyed that aspect, and just seeing the sparks virtually fly.
Another thing I love about this book is that neither of the main characters
are perfect in any way.
They're both deeply flawed, but they're just trying to do their best and
make the most of things in the situation that they have.
And in the end, it's such a sweet and
wonderful story about kind of connecting in a place where you are very lonely.
All right, and this last recommendation is one that's not necessarily virtual.
But it is another example of characters falling in love when they can't be
together in person.
And that book is Lovely War by Julie Berry.
And when I talk about two characters falling in love when they can't be with
each other in person,
I'm actually referring to two specific characters in this book.
Because there are four different characters or
four different main characters, but
I'm specifically mentioning the romance between Hazel and James in this book.
Because with their love story, they end up meeting at this kind of dance one night,
and have a wonderful kind of night together.
And end up meeting, I think, once or twice more before James is about to go off and
fight in the First World War.
And what happens is that the two characters keep in contact via letters.
And so for a large chunk of this book,
you're seeing them kind of continue to keep in touch over these letters.
And try to learn more about each other, and
to try to be each other's hope in this very devastating time.
And because of the short time span that they spent together at the beginning of
the book, there's this pressure as they exchange these letters.
And when they want to finally meet again, of whether the person in the letters will
live up to the person that they eventually meet again.
So yeah, overall, a really cute and fun read, and
definitely has that aspect of longing for someone you can't physically be with, but
learning to connect with them in other ways.
All right, but those are all the books that I wanted to recommend in this video
of virtual romances, books that prove that you could still fall in love even if
you're not to face to face.
I hope you're all having a wonderful start to 2021,
and let me know down below some of your favorite virtual romances.
I would love to get all your recommendations.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'm Jananie from the channel The Story Ain't Over, and
I will see you in the next episode of #EpicBookRecs, bye.