Hey everyone, it's Jananie from the channel @thisstoryaintover and
welcome back to another episode of #EpicBookRecs.
So this is the monthly series that I do here on the Epic Reads channel where I
recommend a bunch of books based off a certain theme.
So we've done a bunch of really cool themes before so
definitely go check out the playlist in the description.
But for today's theme,
I thought it would be a little bit fun to do a theme surrounding opposites attract.
So these are all books where there are two main characters who end up falling in love
or falling for each other, but they are basically total opposites from the get-go.
They either come from very different circumstances or
have really different personalities, or when it comes to some of the fantasy ones,
they are actually not the same species.
All these are super awesome and ones that I've read before so
I'm super excited to get into this.
So let's talk about the first book which is Hani and
Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar.
So this is a new favorite of mine because it features
two very different protagonists who are both Bengali.
So one is Hani who is very much the people pleasing person, she is popular at school.
And she really cares about her friends' opinions,
even when they totally invalidate her experience as being bisexual and
won't believe that she is bisexual when she tells them.
And so in order to convince her friends that she is actually bisexual and
that she actually is attracted to girls, Hani decides to fake date Ishu, who is
the other Bengali girl at her school and who has a very different personality.
Ishu is very prickly, she swears a lot.
She doesn't care what other people think.
And she is very focused on school.
So these two end up fake dating and obviously,
as with every fake dating situation, they end up falling for each other.
And it's just a really, really cute book.
And it examines the queer POC experience and it was just a wonderful,
wonderful read.
And you will definitely fall for both of these characters.
All right, the next book is a really old fave, but one of my all time faves, and
that is Legend by Marie Lu.
So Legend is a bit of a dystopian.
It is set in the near slash far future, and
America has kind of crumbled into two different factions, the republic and
the colonies and there's a lot of ecological ruin.
But in this version of our world there are two main characters.
So the first is Day who is this kid who comes from one of the worst off
sectors of the Republic of America.
And he has grown up poor along with his family.
And when he fails what is called the Trials in the Republic of America,
which basically determines where you'll go in life depending on how you score.
When he fails the trials, he is sort of sent away and
ends up in a situation where everyone thinks he's dead, including his family.
But Day is really determined to continue protecting his family and
also kind of fight the man while surviving the streets.
And so he's sort of made a reputation for himself as Day.
So his name is actually Daniel Alton Wing, but
everyone knows him as Day, the sort of hero in the community.
But when the mysterious plague in the Republic takes his family,
Day is forced to figure out a way to find some extra medicine for his family,
steal it if he can't afford it.
And this is where our other main character, June, comes in.
So in the effort to steal some medicine, Day encounters June's older brother
Metias who is part of the police force in the Republic.
And when things sort of go wrong in the situation and Metias ends up dead, June,
his younger sister, is wrought with grief.
And she's determined to catch her brother's killer who she believes
to be Day.
And these two are quite different in the sense that Day is a very laid back
character, even though he is in this very high stress situation.
Whereas June is very much a very particular character.
She's always counting down the minutes in her chapters and
just being in her head is super interesting.
And so these two characters are sort of facing off,
but they also end up falling for each other as well and
there's a little bit of a romance aspect to this series.
This is one of my all time favorite series, so
I try to recommend it all the time.
But I really appreciated June and Day's relationship and
just seeing how it evolves over the three books in the series.
All right, the next book that I wanna talk about is Crier's War by Nina Varela.
This is a really awesome sort of sci-fi fantasy book with a wonderful sapphic
relationship.
It's sort of is in the beginnings in this book.
But I have heard that it develops more in the second book,
which I hope to get to soon.
But basically in this world, humans had created these things called automae,
which are basically artificial humans, to be sort of their playthings.
But in a sort of famous historical moment, they take over and
become the ruling class and humans become sort of a sub class.
And so our main characters are Ayla, who is a human servant, and
then we also have Lady Crier who is an automae.
And she is also like the daughter of the ruler of the Automae and so
she is very high up.
And so Ayla being a human has had a lot of injustices done to her by the automae,
especially since they took her family away from her.
And so she's determined to get revenge and
decides that she's going to find a way to kill Lady Crier.
But of course, things get a little bit complicated as she's trying to get closer
to Crier and become her maid servant.
And Crier seems to see something in Ayla and finds herself caring too much.
And is also told that she's not acting like an automae, she's being too feeling.
And so she's trying to examine what it means to be human versus automae and
it's just so very interesting, this book.
I love the examination that they have between the automae and the humans.
And it is definitely a situation of opposites attracting because they're
literally different kinds of beings, even though they're both basically human.
But they also have pretty different personalities.
I feel like Lady Crier is very empathetic and
she tries to understand people and she is quite calm as well.
Whereas Ayla is easily riled, is very angry and wants her revenge and
does a lot of things spontaneously.
This book also left me with a lot of questions at the end.
So I'm really excited to pick up the next book, which is Iron Heart.
All right, this next book is a really fun one and
that is Counting Down With You by Tashie Bhuiyan.
So this book features our main character Karina, who is Bangladeshi and
her parents are quite conservative Muslim parents.
And they don't really let her her go out and do the things that she wants to do.
And they really, really want her to become a doctor and live up to this certain image
that they have of her, but she really wants to study English.
And so the book actually starts off with Karina's parents going off to Bangladesh
for a month, for 28 days I believe.
And so she is experiencing this sort of newfound freedom where her dadu,
her grandma, is very much more lenient and
she is much more understanding of what's going on with Karina.
And Karina, at the same time, is about to start tutoring this boy at her school by
the request of her English teacher.
And that boy is Ace who happens to be sort of the resident bad boy at their school.
He wears a leather jacket.
He has a whole reputation and he's a bit of a rich playboy as well.
And so she gets sort of wrapped up in his world when she starts tutoring him.
And he has a lot more to him than his reputation seems to portray.
And amid all that, Ace is trying to prove a certain point to his family.
And so he ends up lying that Karina is his girlfriend instead of revealing that she's
his tutor.
And so the two of them end up in this fake dating relationship and
Karina has to sort of protect her heart from falling for Ace.
Because she knows that when her parents are back home there's no way that this
could happen.
There's no way that they can be together.
This is definitely an opposites attract.
I feel like because their personalities are quite different,
Karina is quite shy and reserved and really wants to please her parents whereas
Ace is a lot more extroverted and will do spontaneous things.
And is oftentimes rebelling against his parents because he doesn't approve what
they want for him or doesn't think they really care.
And so in that way, their approaches to their family life are quite different.
And it was just really interesting seeing that dynamic.
All right, the next book is one that I've recommended a bunch of times, and
that is Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin.
So this is a really fun fantasy romance.
And it follows two different main characters.
So the first is Louise le Blanc who is a witch.
And in this sort of version of our world, witches are sort of hunted and reviled.
And about two years ago Louise actually fled her coven and
came to the city of Cesarine.
And is sort of hiding her magic and hiding from the rest of the world and trying to
just make people believe that she's a human and also hide from her coven.
And then our other main character is Reid Diggory, who is a witch hunter.
He is something called the shosir of the church who are basically witch hunters and
they really hate witches and think they are in a abomination and not human and
that kind of thing.
So when these two characters sort of cross paths and
end up in a really weird fake marriage situation.
They end up interacting a lot more and
challenging each other's ideas of one another.
Lou has certain opinions about witch hunters.
And then Reid has obviously certain opinions about witches and so
you see those break down as these two characters fall for each other.
They're definitely total opposites.
I feel like Reid is a little bit more of a cinnamon bun muffin boy where he seems
stern on the outside but really he's a softy.
Whereas Lou is very charming and seductive and
she knows how to get people to do what she wants.
And she knows how to charm Reid into doing what she wants.
And so it's quite interesting to see that dynamic.
All right,
the next book that I want to talk about is When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.
So this is a classic opposites attract romance and
it follows two different main characters, Dimple and Rishi.
So Dimple is Indian-American girl who is really bent on her career and
being a strong independent woman and
really wants to go to this app developing camp in the summer.
But her family has different thoughts for her.
They really want her to think about family and
think about finding a boyfriend to eventually marry.
They're really into this whole arranged marriage idea, not in like a "we want you
to get married right now" but we want to arrange something for you,
someone in your culture that kind of thing.
And so the person they want to set her up with is actually Rishi.
And so Rishi's parents are also friends with Dimple's parents.
So Rishi has always really loved the idea of love and falling in love and
really thinks that the arranged marriage idea is fantastic and
thinks it's kind of a stars aligning situation.
And so when their parents decide to send Rishi as well to the app developing camp,
he basically jumps at the idea and is really excited to meet Dimple and
see if there's gonna be a spark there.
But their first meeting doesn't really go as planned and
Dimple sort of throws a coffee in his face.
It was iced coffee, so don't worry.
And their relationship basically starts off quite rocky.
But over the course of the camp, Dimple is forced to kind of interact with Rishi.
And the two of them discover things about themselves and
about each other that they didn't really realize before.
And so they end up falling for each other in a very sweet and cute way.
It was honestly a really adorable book.
They are definitely total opposites.
Dimple is very studious and doesn't really believe in love whereas Rishi is very
starry eyed and so seeing that dynamic was really cute.
Alright, and
the final book that I want to talk about is Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo.
So this is a really fun a book that involves K-Pop.
So if you're in K-Pop it's super fun.
Basically this follows our main character Lucky who is this huge K-Pop star,
she's like this major sensation solo artist.
And she's about to debut in America as well and become even bigger.
But at this point in her career, she's feeling some feeling and
a bit of apprehension at this thing that's taken over her life.
And she's not really ready yet to move on to the American market.
But amidst all this, Lucky happens to have a performance in Hong Kong one day.
And so after the performance, she's sort of sitting in her hotel and
she decides that she wants a hamburger.
,So she decides to go out in sort of a disguise in only her slippers,
in the middle of the night to go get a hamburger in a place where most people
wouldn't recognize her right away with a disguise on.
And in the middle of the night, she ends up running into Jack who's our other main
character, who happens to be a tabloid reporter.
So he does it on the side, it's like his side gig.
And he doesn't actually know who she is at the beginning and
ends up helping her go get her hamburger.
But later finds out that she is Lucky and so
he decides that he's going to follow her around and find his big scoop, I guess and
break it to the tabloid to benefit himself.
But she's just looking for
a companion to sort of spend a crazy day away from all of her stardom.
And things get a little bit sticky, but it turns into a really cute romance.
And I found that these two characters were quite different.
They valued very different things.
And at the beginning, they really sort of knock heads about that and
as they progress through the book, but they start to learn a lot from each other.
And so it made for a really sort of satisfying end.
All right, but those were all the books that I wanted to mention today featuring
couples that have opposites attract situations.
And I absolutely loved each of these books so
I definitely recommend picking each of them up.
But I would love to hear from you guys what books you think have a opposites
attract relationship going on.
Where characters don't really mesh at the beginning or
don't really have the same personalities, but end up attracting each other.
As always, thank you so, so much for watching.
Go check out my channel @thisstoryaintover in the description down below, and
any of the other #EpicBookRecs videos down below.
And I will see you in the next episode of #EpicBookRecs, bye.