June 10, 2016 – My Tiny Obsessions

Hey guys. I swear I didn’t mean to stop doing discussions for so long, but you know… LIFE and lack of ideas and so on. But this week, while on twitter, I started to see a pattern and I wanted to talk about it.

I usually have no problems with spoilers, but I don’t appreciate when they’re thrown in my face, you know? If I’m curious about something, I go and look for it. But scrolling through my timeline and being bombarded with spoilers for several books and shows, it sometimes pisses me off.

I’ll give you a three examples that threw me a bit off, delivered through different methods, but all with the same end: it was a major SPOILER.

I’ll start with a pretty basic one: Game of Thrones. And for this one I was spoiled by the official show account! I get it, you have to bring in audience to your show – though to be honest, everyone is already into Game of Thrones – but do you have to plaster a picture everywhere of such a big moment that totally gives a very important thing away?

I mean, raise hands if you’re still in the dark about what happened to Jon Snow. Anyone? Didn’t think so. They could have used a picture of one single second earlier of the same shot, and that wouldn’t have spoiled anything.

The second way I was spoiled a lot recently was with fanart, specifically from A Court of Mist and Fury. Guys, I love all the fanart going around on twitter and tumblr, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it is highly spoilery and pretty hard to ignore if it pops up on your twitter feed. While you can chose not to read a tweet, a picture is, by definition, VISUAL, so there’s no way to escape it.

Another one that kind of did it for me was a fanart of Simon and Blue from Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. It’s one of the few things that I think it’s still protected, that bit of spoiler, and while I do love the fanart, posting it on twitter will literally spoil the book.

Thirdly, I would like to mention written spoilers. Anyone can slip and write a spoiler when reading a book, whether because you’re discussing it with someone, or because it just slips, right? Especially while live-tweeting a book. It happened to me at some point.

But consciously writing a spoiler for a book that won’t be out for MONTHS, not tagging it as a spoiler, and then saying that you did nothing wrong in doing it? No no no guys… don’t do that!

You can tweet your feelings and reactions all you like, but tweeting a plot point or a twist, can spoil a lot of people.

Yeah… easier said than done! If you’re aware of a show or book coming out that you don’t want to get spoiled for, you try to overt it, sure, but after a week, a month, spoilers will be everywhere and they’re unavoidable.

So, if you can’t avoid it, what can you do?

Well, I think there’s need to be a little more consideration from those doing the spoiling. Comments can escape, sure, but don’t give away spoilers just because. Be careful about what you write.

Same with fanart, which is amazing, but if you’re drawing a spoiler, be sure to mark it as such when you share it, because that gives people the chance to avoid it.

TV shows spoilers are intriguing to me, given that most people have DVR nowadays and don’t watch the shows live, you would expect that at least the official accounts would be more careful about giving out spoilers, right? Apparently no!

heatitup

Some games are hotter off the ice…

Sofia Phillips feels cursed. Her father cheated on her mother, her boyfriend cheated on her — she’s done with dating. A summer work-exchange program in Finland is the perfect escape. But instead of gaining experience as an athletic trainer, she’s cleaning toilets. Awesome. The trip is a disaster, and even better, she meets Kyle Bennett. In the sauna. Naked.

Sexy hockey player Kyle was the star right wing for an NHL team. But after an accident killed his wife and left him injured, Kyle has appreciated the “therapeutic” benefits of booze and puck bunnies. Now in Finland for the summer, he’s coaching in an elite hockey-training camp for teens. When Sofia’s grandmother decides to set her up with a nice Finnish man, Sofia recruits Kyle as her make-believe boyfriend. Neither expects their first kiss to sizzle. And neither expects, while stranded on an island during a storm, to have a scorching night of passion.

But as their charade, and then their attraction, develops into something deeper, the past comes back, threatening to destroy them. They must decide if their feelings for each other are strong enough to survive — or it will be game over.

Once again, I read this book with Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much, so head to her blog in the next few days to check out her review of this book.

I really enjoyed the writing on this book, it flowed well and the voices of the 2 protagonists were very different, which was wonderful (especially considering that the last one I had read with dual POV hadn’t accomplished this).

I really liked both main characters too, they were both very flawed, but somewhat trying to overcome what had happened to both of them, which made them strong and vulnerable. Their relationship starts as friends and evolves to something more – initially friends with benefits – but they both soon realize that they want more of each other, but they’re so haunted by their own pasts, that they’re super scared to move forward. Though it starts with a mutual attraction, the romance is a slow burn, and I really liked that they spent a lot of time with friends and family.

Joni was a character that I didn’t appreciate, I hated that even though he thought that Sofia and Kyle’s relationship was serious, he still kept making moves on her, and taking advantage of her friendship and blissful ignorance. I wanted to slap Sofia and make her see how wrong that was. Unfortunately this is something that doesn’t get resolved by the end of the book, and that pissed me off. I thought Sofia should have confronted him in some way, not only for what he did, but also to make it clear to him that she was choosing Kyle – not that there was ever any doubt about it!

The ending felt a bit abrupt to me, I wish we had one more chapter or at least an epilogue to actually see them adjusting to a life they both didn’t know they wanted or needed.

Other than the ending and Joni, this book is a pretty awesome NA romance, with a twist that I didn’t see coming (at all, though Cátia did!). It has little hockey in it, because Kyle is coaching and he can’t play himself, which was a bummer. With that said, I would recommend it if you’re into the NA genre 😉 .