New Year, Who Dis? || Goals for 2018

WHAT'S GOOD 2018?!

We hope everyone had a fun time ringing in the New Year and is ready to read all the good books! We're both very excited for 2018 so we can show out and shout about romance books. Today we'll be sharing some of our goals for 2018 when it comes to blogging and reading and y'all should definitely let us know some of your goals in the comments below!

ARI'S RAMBLES

R E F L E C T I N G  O N  2 0 1 7

I started off 2017 very excited about blogging after having done a full makeover on my blog, The Daydreaming Bookworm. But about halfway through 2017, I felt like I was losing my blogging mojo and I wasn't really enjoying it. Then Kelly, a mutual friend of Britt and I, suggested the idea of co-blogging since Britt was struggling with her blog as well. Bing. Bang. Boom. The New Romantics was born! I absolutely adore our new blog and having Britt as my partner in crime. We get to toss ideas back and forth and I like having someone who provides a different perspective. I also feel less stressed since I don't have to posts as often (y'all see how lazy I am?!). Shout out to Britt for taking a chance on my crazy ass.

L E A V I N G  I T  I N  2 0 1 7

I read a lot of books in 2017 and while some of them were really great, most of them weren't. I actually think 2017 was my worst reading year to date. Like I'm not even exaggerating since my Goodreads rating went down by a lot. One thing that really annoyed me when it came to new releases this year were some of the tropes that were used, two specific tropes if I'm being honest: AGE GAP ROMANCE WITH UNDERAGED HEROINES AND INCEST. Y'all, do you know how many books I read this year?? About ten. TEN DAMN BOOKS WHERE INCEST WAS USED AS A PLOT TWIST AND THERE WAS NOT WARNING IN ANY OF THE REVIEWS. I'm basically scarred now and I need these types of romances to stop. This kink needs to die. Also, what's good with these age gap romances with 40-year-old billionaires skirt chasing high school girls?! It's just disgusting to be quite honest, like is legal age pussy not good enough or....?? Listen, I'm not kink shaming, but considering the shit that has gone down when it comes to sexual assault and women becoming more empowered to voice their stories, maybe authors should cut it out when it comes to these types of romances. Just food for thought. 

R E A D I N G  G O A L S  F O R  2 0 1 8

I decided to not stress with it comes to reading in 2018 so I'm only aiming for 50 books. And I know some of y'all gonna come at me with "Ari, you done know you gonna read like 200 books again", but y'all gonna leave me alone and let me live dammit! I also want to focus on cleaning up my TBR and reading more backlist series. I have over 300 books on my to-read shelf on Goodreads and I'm hoping to get it down to 200. Plus, I don't have to worry about reviewing backlist series but I'll definitely give a shout out to the ones I end up enjoying.

B L O G G I N G  G O A L S  F O R  2 0 1 8

This year, I plan on staying ahead when it comes to blogging. I'm going to try to blog on the weekends only so this way I can focus on reading and catching Z's during the week. I also hope that this method will keep me on track when  it comes to writing reviews. Another thing I want to get back to is writing discussion posts. I really do miss writing those since I get to be petty as hell, lol. I also want to continue to grow my bookstagram account. I've had a lot of fun on bookstagram this year and I like being able to pretend that I'm a professional photographer with my phone. I've also made some new friends on bookstagram and I'm excited to keep fangirling with them about upcoming romance releases.

BRITT'S RAMBLES

2017: THE YEAR THAT TRIED LITERALLY EVERYONE

I think we can all agree that 2017 was a bit a dumpster fire what with everything going on in the world. I really feel like I was tested a lot this year in my personal life, probably more than I've ever been in my life so far. There were some really tough times, and I had to make some really hard decisions. And although it was all hard, and a lot of it is still now, I'm lowkey thankful for it because I feel like I got to learn a lot about myself as a person. I definitely think I have a lot more life tests to face this year and I am seriously praying for some goodness to come my way. Sometimes even in your early 20's it seems like everyone (mainly the older generation) wants you to have your entire life mapped and panned out to the T, and you're not allowed to go off course or make choices for yourself. I honestly have no damn clue what I want to do right now in my life lmao, but I'm excited to try and figure it out. But anywho I'm sure y'all don't wanna hear shit about my personal life, but it felt good to let that out haha.

Like Ari I started 2017 off on a pretty good foot. I redesigned my blog, read some bomb books, and got more into my Instagram. I had met a group of bloggers (where I met Ari) a bit later in the year before so I had fun getting to know them all and we all became pretty close. But around the mid year mark I started to feel a little drained. It wasn't that I feel out of love with blogging and reading or anything because I love reading and gushing over books and I don't think that'll ever change in my life. Ari and had been discussing how we had both began to feel this way and with the (very) strong insistence of our dear friend Kelly we made The New Romantics!! It really made the perfect sense because we read the same books and loved a lot of the same ones. Tbh Ari and I have found out that we might as well be twins lmao sometimes it's crazy how similar we can be. This was probably the best blogging decision I've made besides starting my blog a few years back and I've had way too much fun lmao. Between the petty in both of us, and all of the hits we've buddy read this year it's been a blast and I can't wait to continue on for the new year!!

 SOME THINGS I NEED TO GET OFF MY CHEST:

Ok so the more that I got into blogging and the more I've read in 2017 I feel like I know more of who I am as a reader more than any other year. I've been reading my whole entire life nonstop and even though I've discovered more of my identity in past years I think 2017 was REALLY  the year that I know what's up. I've read enough to know what I like and don't like, which writing styles I enjoy, what tropes I can get down with, etc.

And one thing I really learned, and sometimes learned the hard way was DON'T ALWAYS BELIEVE THE HYPE!! I got burned by some overhyped books and I'm pretty annoyed by it because a lot of them were awful and I really feel like in reading them that I wasted my damn time. Time that could've been spent reading something a whole lot better. And I don't mean to sound like a hating bitch when I say this but a lot of the overhype I saw, and discovered the books at was from bookstagram. It's so easy to see a pretty picture with a dope cover and raving caption and go and one-click the book. And sadly a lot of times that I've done this the book in question was mediocre at best. I don't mean to say that all of bookstagram is this evil trap of bad books, but I definitely learned to take some things with a grain of salt and seek out reviews or thoughts from people I trust. Plus it doesn't help that I've been seeing some people saying that they're essentially scared or nervous to review books honestly most times. Seeing that just makes me even more nervous because it makes me question what was a real genuine book love, and what was just a 5 star slap on the wrist for the sake of reviewing. I say all this to say that I'll be more cautious when reading any buzzed about books in 2018 lol.

And to add on to the whole "scared to review honestly thing" I just want to say that I think it's so sad that some readers are starting to feel this way. As reviewers we read and blog to share our honest opinions on books, for some of us this is an escape from our daily lives where we're able to express ourselves freely. I'm a firm believer in the freedom to be as honest as you want, as long as you aren't being a bitch to the author themselves. Honestly critiquing a book does not automatically mean that you hate said author, or are trying to be overly mean, it just means that you found some faults in a book and want to share them with others. Honest reviews have helped me a lot because sometimes people will share things about a book that I know I'm not a fan of so then I can avoid them completely and not waste my damn time. Plus if everyone is forced to lie about loving books, how are authors going to improve their craft. A bunch of ass kissing is not going to help anybody at all whether it's in the real world, or in our blogging world. Sorry for the mini rant about all of this, and I'm not trying to drag or bash anybody, but it really rubs me the wrong way that honesty seems to lowkey be put on the back burner more and more. But no matter what imma always be completely honest about whatever tf I read!! And to any reviewer who feels scared or nervous to share your honest thoughts on a book, don't be!! People will appreciate the fact that you're honest no matter what, and always remember that there's a genuine community of other readers that will always support you.

And although I didn't read all the horribly scarring books that Ari has read this year, I still got the full tea on all the books as she read them and I have to cosign everything she ranted about above. There have been some really sick and twisted trends this year, and not trying to kink shame at all but shit where is the line that says something has gone just too damn far?? I firmly believe that some things should just be off limits to be romanticized about. There are too many sick individuals and victims in the world, and romance as a whole genre already gets shat on so damn much, the last thing that's needed is for people to think we all love this mess.

Also I talked about this in my review for Pennies but there's like this unspoken competition between some authors I've noticed where they try to "out dark" one another and I for one am sick and tired of it. It's like one author writes one overly sick plot and the next is like "hmm bet. Let me top this". 

Then you have the complete opposite where an author writes to most non dark, super dry, uninteresting "dark" read that's just a waste to read. And I'm just so done. There's gotta be a better balance than these two man.

 READING GOALS FOR 2018:

My biggest reading goal for 2018 is to HAVE FUN AND STRESS LESS!! Sometimes I can get WAAYY to caught up in in the actual act of reading that I'm kinda not reading if that makes sense. With blogging there's always something you kind of have to think about such as what to read next, what's all on your tbr for the month/week if you do tbr's, how many reviews you have to do, why did I let all these reviews pile up, what is life, omg I forgot to review this too, crap I forgot this new release was coming out, and damn now I'm in a slump. Lmao all this may make you think why the hell do you even review and I promise y'all it's not as bad as I may have made it sound!! But although blogging is a hobby, it is still very much a job, and with any job there are responsibilities you have to do. I really want to jut focus on the books, and stop getting so caught up in my own head all the time when picking books. I also want to finish up a lot of my backlisted reads as well because I have so many unread Kindle books from me and my damn one-click addiction haha. And I have quite a few series I need to finish and that I want to start. And I have a few YA titles on my tbr that have either been there for years, or that have caught my eye recently so I want to dive back into the genre for fun. I think it would be fun to switch things up a bit when I need a change so this could be good. I don't think I'll be reviewing any of the YA books I read just because I know that my romances will take up a good chunk of my reviewing, and adding on YA books would probably just stress me out a bit. And one last goal is to for real try audiobooks. This was a goal of mine for 2017 and I never got around to it so I'm going to try again lol. Leave me some audio recs and tips down in the comments!!

BLOGGING GOALS FOR 2018:

As far as my blogging goals go for the year I want to stay in the same mindset as my reading goal which is to blog more and stress less. I can sometimes get behind in my reviewing and then I get so mad at myself for never getting around to reviewing all the books. I still get stuck in the mindset that I HAVE to review EVERY single book I ever read, and even though I try to tell myself not to get think that I always go back to it anyway. This year I for real want to stop this thought because it really be stressing ya girl out lmao!! And I've been bad at keeping up and replying back to comments lately so I need to get back on track with that. If I haven't replied back to any of y'all's comments I promise I'm not trying to be mean I'm just lazy af haha.  Another goal of mine is to continue to post on my bookstagram consistently, and improve on my pictures. I feel like I've been getting better at my editing skills, and I really want to narrow down a bomb theme because I feel like I still haven't found my favorite one just yet. I also really want to get into a reviewing vibe that works out best for me personally so that way I can keep myself organized and on track. I may only review books that really move me to feel the need to whether that's a glowing review or not. Or maybe I'll come up with some other plan. Ari and I have also been thinking up a ton of fun content for the blog and we have a lot of fun and exciting things for you all. We honestly didn't really think that anyone would check us out as a co-blog but we were wrong haha!! Thanks to you all for sticking with our crazy asses on here and stay tuned for a whole lot more.

Here's to a lit 2018!! Let's get this shit popping!!

 

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