- [robotic WOOP]
Hello everyone, Scrivener here!
It's been a few weeks since we last posted a video,
and I made a post on our community tab about that.
We basically didn't feel like the 
content that we had lined  up was
really, the right tone. It just didn't feel
right to post the next installment of our 
chapter-by-chapter reading of Twilight.
So we didn't. It doesn't really need to be said,
but Paige and I have always
 supported Black Lives Matter.
This is not a new thing for us. We support
the people who are protesting.
 We are sending them our money.
But today I have something kind of fun. 
Y'all might remember that I did a video
a couple months ago about some 
of the books that I had read
at the beginning of this year and I 
was really, really enjoying,
and that I'd really loved. One of those books was
a Romance novel called Get A Life, 
Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
who is a Black disabled British woman.
[laughs] I basically wrote that 
whole video so that I could just
gush about how much I loved that one book!
Basically, as soon as I finished Get A Life, Chloe Brown,
I knew that it was one of my all-time favorite books.
And that's kind of a big deal.
Talia Hibbert's publicist reached 
out to me on Instagram,
she'd seen the video, she wanted to know
 if I was interested in receiving a copy
of the follow-up, Take A Hint, Dani Brown,
and reviewing it for the channel.
And so, I absolutely said yes! [laughs]
This has actually never happened 
before. This is the very first time
that we've ever received something for free 
to review it. I probably would've reviewed it anyway.
But I also ended up purchasing 
the audiobook through Libro.fm.
Um, because I wanted to support Talia Hibbert 
anyway, because I really like her books.
[quietly] I'm making the 
switch from Audible to Libro.fm...
I, like, got all quiet, because, like,
 my Alexa is still  plugged in,
and I'm like, [dramatic music] "Jeff Bezos is listening!"
I'm gonna go unplug it, okay.
And I just wanted to disclose
 that because, you know, it's
something I should disclose. That, 
you know, I got this for free.
This would be the same review that I would be giving
if I had purchased the book myself.
But I also kind of did. Because
 I bought the audiobook, so.
[claps]
And the publicist that I spoke with was
very nice, and very polite and 
gave no indication that she would 
want me to do anything else.
Wonderful experience, thank you
 so much! It's kind of a...
it, like, makes me so happy that this is a thing
that happened. Um...
[laughs]
So, I've got thoughts. Let's get started!
The first thing I wanna talk 
about is the audiobook, because
my feelings about the audiobook obviously have nothing
whatsoever to do with Talia Hibbert's actual writing.
I was kind of disappointed in the audiobook, and I
ultimately, wouldn't recommend it.
Get A Life, Chloe Brown - one of the
 things that I really, really loved about it
was that I wholeheartedly loved the audiobook.
That was one of my selling points 
for why you should read it, because
it was so, so good.
This one was just okay. And to be 
fair, I think part of that is because
Adjoa Andoh read the first one. 
She read Get A Life, Chloe Brown.
Andoh not only had really fantastic voices that were
easily distinguishable from each
 other that brought the characters to life.
Hibbert's particular wit and joke style
was so efficiently and genuinely delivered by Andoh.
Like, it...it was perfect. I don't think 
you can get better than her for
for Hibbert's work, or at least for this particular series.
At first I didn't know that it was 
going to be a different reader because
you know, Andoh already had voices
 that had been seared into my brain.
And so I was a little surprised when we
 had somebody different but I understand
why that would be the case. 
Different voice, different reader.
But ultimately, I just- the performance
 didn't really click with me.
I'm not at all saying that the reader herself was bad
or that, you know, she just can't 
read audiobooks- that's not it at all.
The way that this was read, I 
don't think really did the story
and the writing justice in the way 
that Adjoa Andoh, like, absolutely did.
I know that that is a personal
 thing. Uh, on a slightly more
objective, technical level, there
 is a sentence that uses the word
"cissexist," and the audiobook
 reader mispronounced it.
She pronounced it as "cis" "exist." So, like,
two separate words. And that particular pronunciation
leads me to believe that neither 
she, nor the producers knew
what the word was. And that 
nobody bothered to look it up.
It was a very odd mistake and it was quite jarring.
There's not really any excuse. 
Uh, cissexist is, um [laughs]
not a very difficult word. If you have
 the option between reading the
hard copy and the audiobook, I would absolutely
recommend that you just read the physical 
book instead of listening to the audiobook.
I still liked her voice. I would've preferred a different
direction for this particular recording.
Given how great I thought the first one was.
That being said, let's move on to
 the actual content  of the book!
Mleh....
I turned the A/C off so that there would be no sound.
Overall, I really, really enjoyed the book.
This is the third book that I've read of Talia Hibbert's
and I just really, really enjoy her Romance novels!
You can feel the warmth that Hibbert has 
for people in general in her stories, and
 that's something that's really comforting
and really lovely. And especially when 
you get into things like, you know,
race and gender and sexuality that- 
that very clearly, like, accepting and loving, 
glowing way that she talks about people
and that she writes people is very wonderful.
I just love it! And I- I can't wait to read more of her books.
If you're a woman who is attracted to men, 
or if you're just a person who is attracted to men
 and has enjoyed Romance novels in the past,
I...really, there's absolutely no
 reason not to read Talia Hibbert.
She is inclusive and wonderful and has good, important
things to say about relationships that you need to hear.
So, yeah. I have a lot of things about
 this book that I really, really loved.
And I had a couple of issues with it that
were kind of big things, I'm not gonna lie.
Oh my god, I just realized that I never 
actually said what the book is about!
Here's what the book is about:
 Danika, or Dani, Brown
is a 27-year-old Black Bisexual Literature
 professor, who is also studying
to get her pd-[stumbles]. [slowly] P. H. D.
I can say that word if I really think about it.
She's a Literature professor who 
is studying to get her PhD, 
just recently gotten out of a fling with somebody
where they wanted to be in a relationship 
with her and she didn't want that because
she doesn't really wanna be in 
a relationship with anybody.
So she is looking for a new person 
to have sex with on the regular,
and also be friends with.
Yeah.
And the universe delivers her Zafir Ansari.
Ex-professional Rugby player, but 
is now a security guard at the
university where Danika works. 
They have a very flirtatious kind of
workplace friendship. There's an 
incident at the beginning of the book
wherein Zafir carries Danika out of the building after
she gets trapped in an elevator after 
some kind of emergency drill.
And somebody posts a video of him carrying her.
This video goes viral. The publicity that Zafir gets
from this viral video is really
 helping bolster his sports charity.
So they start fake dating and 
Dani is also very much like
"I wanna have sex with you. So let's do that too."
Danika and Zafir both go by 
Dani and Zaf, so I'll be referring to them
 by both names throughout this video.
I do also just wanna say that Get A Life, Chloe Brown
was a very unusual circumstance
 with me reading a book and
immediately loving it so much 
that I knew it was a favorite.
I went into this book knowing that 
that was very unlikely to happen.
So I-  I don't have, like, "sequel 
disappointment" or anything like that
because I knew it was not gonna be the same book.
First big pro: I absolutely love Zafir!
I just really, really love the way that Hibbert has written
the male romantic leads in both of 
the Brown sisters series [books].
It's a way for her to explore and 
dismantle toxic masculinity. Which is a thing that I 
think a lot of romance novelists are doing right now.
At the same time, I think that there's this misconception
that to talk about and ultimately 
critique toxic masculinity
that you have to write a certain type of, like, 
not super masculine, like, male lead, 
and Talia Hibbert's like, "Ha ha! That's funny."
In both of the Brown Sisters books. 
We have Zafir in this one,
and we have Red[ford] in the first one. 
Both of them are working through some
real issues, and yet, both of them are
very, very masculine. [Hibbert] 
critiques toxic masculinity
by writing characters where it's
 clear that toxicity is not inherent
in masculinity. She's very good 
at divorcing those two ideas.
And being numb or aloof or a jerk 
does not make you masculine.
I still read Romance novels where 
we get male characters who are like,
[dramatically] "I am a manly man 
and I can't talk about my emotions!"
Mm. Real attractive.
I felt like I really knew Zafir. I knew about his family,
I knew about his best friend, I knew his routine,
I understood why he acted the way he did.
And, ultimately, when you know 
characters in a book really, really well,
it just means that you're very, very prime to
understand and enjoy the story in a way that you can't
if you can't connect with the characters.
I've always felt like I have a real 
sense of who her characters are
long after I finish her books. Unfortunately, and I feel
really bad saying this, Danika Brown
 is not one of those characters.
We're told so many things about who Danika Brown is.
But we never really get to see 
those things for ourselves.
And that's really disappointing, 
given how interesting she sounds.
Danika Brown is a Black Bisexual witch who is studying
Race and Gender, post-slavery for her PhD.
That's really interesting. And yet...
There are so few instances where we 
actually get to see any of that in action.
And it was just really surprising because
 this wasn't an issue that has come up at all
with any of the other characters 
in the books that I've read.
I'll give a few examples. Danika 
is preparing for a symposium
in which she is going to appear 
on a panel with an idol of hers.
One of the only Black female 
professors in the United Kingdom.
Dani really looks up to her. We know very little
about what the symposium is really about. 
We see Dani preparing for it - and 
when I say that, I mean that
she talks about how, you know, she spends hours 
preparing post-it notes and 
research topics and all of this
other stuff. But we never ever 
hear the name of a single book
or an idea of what she's going to
talk about during this symposium. She
 never really talks about her work at all.
The first time that we ever actually, like, learn
about what, specifically, she studies, is when
Zafir says it. It's a while before we get to that point,
and it just felt very unusual. I really hate 
to say it, because it's obviously a pretty
big issue, but I really felt like I didn't know
 who Danika was by the end of the book.
Except that, you know, she had a lot of 
emotional issues that were very similar to
things that I've gone through. That 
very much resonated with me.
But, the thing was, was that I wanted to know more
about her passions. Part of that 
might've been intentional,
because she does mention several
 times that past partners have told her
"I'm not interested in your work," 
but when we're inside her own head
so much of the book, there's absolutely no
 reason that we shouldn't be getting some
of that. I'm not saying that I 
expected Talia Hibbert to, like,
give me a reading list of, like, real, 
actual, you know, books, but
I felt like, ultimately, the lack of information
 that wee got about that just didn't
cement Dani as a real character in my mind.
Certainly not in the way that
 Zafir and other characters were.
I think a good example for me 
to, kind of, compare this to
is Chloe, from the first book. Chloe, we know, is a
Disabled, chronically ill woman 
who very much loves her work.
And we know that her work is marketing and 
building websites and doing social media,
and we know that because we see it, 
and because she talks about it,
not because we are just told that she does it.
And we also know that she's Disabled because 
that is a really big part of her identity,
We see her taking medications,
 she talks about her limitations,
the ways that, personally, her
 Disability have impacted her
ability to form relationships with 
people because people are ableist.
Chloe is such a defined character because
 we don't just hear about her interests.
She shows them to us. Danika, unfortunately,
rarely shows us who she is. And
that's really disappointing because I really, 
really wanted to like and connect with her.
I know that that was a lot of kind of negative 
stuff, so I wanna go back into positives.
Something that absolutely remained
 top notch from the last one:
the humor and the jokes and the wit. Just...
[smacks lips] Ugh! So good!
Most of these tabs are jokes that I really, really loved.
[reading] "Who are you?" Zaf spluttered, 
"The bloody...voice police?"
"I hope next time you're in the shower,
"you think of 70 things you could've said just then 
that would've been way better than 'voice police.'"
Like, these feel like real people, and
 the jokes really  help with that! I was
not at all disappointed on the joke front.
Top-notch, A plus, 10 out of 10, 
read it because jokes  are good.
Yeah.
There are several really big important ideas
 about romance and relationships in
this book that I think, it's just- 
a really good thing for people
 to hear and read. Things that
I wish that I had known. Because
 I kind of mentioned that, you know,
Danika has this sort of aversion
 to being in romantic relationships
because her first relationship did not work out,
and, ultimately, she left that relationship feeling like
"I, myself, am not adequate at being a girlfriend.
"There is something wired wrong with me."
That really resonated with me, 
because I struggled with that for a while.
It's only within the last couple years that
 I really started to do some of that, like,
emotional work. There's something
 really wonderful that I have marked
here that I wanna read out. It's so simple and effective
but it's something that people really need to hear.
[reading] "Priorities that don't match, 
punishments for being yourself.
"That's not how a relationship should be.
"People harp on about compatibility for a reason. 
"If you value family and work, you just 
need someone who feels the same way.
"Someone that admires that about 
you. If you can't do the sappy shit,
"you just have to find someone who's okay with that.
"I know you have a busy life, but you 
make room for the stuff that matters.
"If it was worth it, and you wanted to, you 
could make room for a relationship, too.
"What you get out of being loved is 
supposed to be worth the compromise.
"When it's good, it makes you want to compromise."
And like, [slurring a little] I'm getting a little 
emotional thinking about that 'cause it's
very, very true, and I feel like
it is really unfortunate that, like, 
so many people don't know that.
Because, that is, like, the biggest thing that I wish
 I could go back and tell my younger self. Like,
"You are not broken. The people 
you are with are not in line
"with the kind of person that you 
want to be. And that is not your fault.
"There's literally millions of people 
out there for you to find
"and possibly date and possibly be 
with. And the fact that you have found
"a couple of people who you are incompatible 
with does not make you bad or broken."
And that's, like, a really important thing! To say!!
And I lov that it's in here!
Oh yeah, okay, this tab just says, "I cry."
[reading] "Feeling is always worth it. 
The words were too true to ignore.
"The family had spent so long numb with grief.
"Now the idea of stifling his emotions on purpose felt
"like a sin. He couldn't do it. And 
maybe that was okay because
"things couldn't grow without water or light."
And, like...
It was just so (censored) refreshing to read.
Because, obviously, when you have 
characters that go through trauma,
when you have people who go through trauma, even,
it's very understandable that they want 
to numb themselves from the world so
that, you know, you never get hurt again.
And it's just really lovely that we have
 this extremely masculine character
talking, very openly, about 
shutting yourself off from feeling
does nothing but a disservice to 
you and the life that you're living.
I don't think I've really ever heard it 
phrased in such a compelling way.
Those lessons are hard to learn and, for some 
reason, we don't teach them very often.
And that's really sad. [laughs]
On of Zaf's main qualities that I can't believe
 I haven't mentioned up to this point
is that he loves reading Romance novels. First of all,
very endearing quality! You have good taste, sir!
There's a scene where he explains why 
he loves Romance novels and, like,
the power that they have for him. And the way
that she articulated that was so spot-on, and, like,
so accurate, especially for me
 and why I read so many of them
that, like, I cried.
It's also specifically related to, 
like, his experiences, and it
felt just so genuine and sincere and I really loved
 it. It was one of my favorite parts of the book.
I feel like a lot of people think, "Oh Romance 
novels are just really silly things," instead of, like,
"Romance novels are a genre of book just 
like anything else with its own tropes
"and people's own reasons for reading them."
And, yeah, there are bad ones, but there are 
also terrible science fiction books out there.
There are also terrible crime books. 
It's just like any other genre.
One other small thing that I just remembered:
[Dani] tells him, like, "I'm not interested in relationships.
"Romance is not my thing." And he basically says, like,
"I can't remember what the 
term is but does that mean you-
"you, like, don't experience that kind of attraction?"
And she's like, "Oh, you mean aromantic!"
This is a Romance novel, and she, like, 
actually said the word "aromantic" 
and that was just really wonderful.
Ace validation is something that we need more of.
We need people looking up those
 terms if they don't know them.
I love that stuff like that gets included in these books.
There's really only one other 
issue that I had with the book
and it's not quite as big as the whole
'I didn't really feel like I knew who 
Danika Brown was by the end of the book.'
Not as big an issue as that.
I wanna talk about the Bisexuality.
It did not really resonate with me.
And I wanna explain why that is.
But I also wanna preface that 
by saying a couple of things.
I-I'm going to do my best to make
 it not sound like I'm Gatekeeping,
but if you think that I start to wander into that territory,
please feel free to tell me in the comments.
God knows there's enough Gatekeeping
 [laughs] for Bisexuals as it is.
There's never going to be a single, 
universal Bisexual experience.
Okay. We're all just way too different.
And I recognize that me, as a white Bisexual woman,
my experience is going very different
 from a Black Bisexual woman.
Just because I didn't connect with it 
doesn't mean that somebody else couldn't
find it incredibly validating and relatable.
I have no problem, whatsoever, with the fact that
she gets with a guy in this book. Bisexual women
are sometimes attracted to men!
It doesn't make their Bisexuality invalid,
it doesn't make them 'not really Queer.'
Et cetera, et cetera. I never felt like, for a single moment, 
Hibbert or, you know, just, like, the book itself
was saying that Dani wasn't valid as a Queer person.
She's, obviously, very, very good at writing
 about female sexual attraction to men.
And, when writing from the 
perspective of male characters,
men's sexual attraction to women. 
The thing is, is that there is, like,
almost zero talk about Dani's attraction to women.
Part of the reason that Dani 
wants a new Friend With Benefits
is that she has just recently 
finished a fling that she had with
a friend of hers, who is a female professor 
at the university that she works at as well.
But with the exception of that and literally one line
that we don't even hear from Danika's own mouth
but we hear it second hand after the fact from Zafir -
the universal Sapphic, um, experience of
wanting to sleep with Janelle 
Monae, because yes we do.
There might not be a universal Bisexual exprience,
but the universal Sapphic experience is that
 we all wanna sleep with Janelle Monae
because she's wonderful and super hot!
That is spot on! But, literally, with that one exception,
there is no mention of Dani 
finding women attractive.
A lot of people think of Bisexuality
 as "You're half straight,
"and you're half gay! And that's it!"
But, like, they don't really grasp 
that that's not how it works.
You are just- you are attracted to
 the people that you're attracted to
all the time. You don't switch. You don't
alternate. It's something that is its own existing
thing. This is not really the video to explain this concept, 
but, like, a good example is how 
Garnet in Steven Universe is obviously a metaphor
for Transness and a Trans experience as well.
But I think it's also a good kind of way too illustrate, like,
the nature of Bisexuality or Pansexuality.
Garnet is not, like, Ruby and Sapphire in a trenchcoat
pretending to be, like, one thing. 
Ruby and Sapphire form
together to make a whole, individual unit.
And, like, I think that's just something
 people don't usually get or understand.
They think of it in very Binary terms. [claps]
And unfortunately, that's a little bit what this feels like.
Danika's Bisexuality is an element of her character
that you can entirely remove from the book
 and there's almost no difference to the plot.
With the exception of that one female professor.
Quite frankly, I find it completely unbelievable 
that Danika Brown doesn't have some kind 
of Queer  community and Queer friend group.
Uh [laughs]. I- [claps]
Dani is a Black Bisexual witch for (censored) sake! And I
know people like that and there is no way! i mean,
I have straight friends. My whole family is straight!
You know? Like, I'm the Queer person in those
particular circles. But I also have a really large Queer
community and group of friends. Queer
 people just kind of naturally find each other
even without realizing it, but Queer people also
actively seek out other people who are also Queer.
It's just a thing humans do in general. I 
think us Americans have a tendency
to think that, because the UK has
 universal healthcare that they're, like,
so much better about Queer issues than we are.
They're not. The UK can be really 
homophobic and really Transphobic.
There is talk about Dani's race in terms of
'it's very difficult for Black women to get 
recognized for their achievements' and whatnot
and I think that there was absence of 
the understanding that, when you 
add Queerness on top of that,
it makes it even more complicated.
I'm saying this stuff about the 
Bisexuality not because I want to
discourage [Hibbert] from ever
 writing Queer characters again,
it's more that I wanna suggest that the 
attraction to men that she is so good at writing
is really, at its core, not all that 
different from the sexual attraction
that Bisexual women who are
 attracted to other women experience
for, you know, women or other people in general. 
Ultimately, humans are humans. And 
that's kind of what it comes down to
when your Bi or Pansexuality means 
that, you know, you're attracted to
many different types of genders. I know that she
is entirely capable of learning 
and adjusting and growing.
For example, at the beginning of the book,
 in the acknowledgments section,
she thanks not one, but three people at least
for providing her specific guidance 
on how to authentically write
Zafir's experience. I know that she could do the same
with Bisexuality or with Queerness in general.
I wanna clarify that I know talking about
 these big issues that I had for so long
kind of gives the impression that I didn't like the book.
Not at all true. I think it's a really good Romance novel
All of the positive things that I had to say about it
are still absolutely true. But I also wanna be honest
about some of the things that kind of fell short for me
because I love Talia Hibbert's
 writing. And I know that she
will get better. I know that she'll learn, and I know
she will continue to write really great 
books and I'm gonna be there,
reading those books! I think that about does it.
I have filmed for a ridiculously long amount of time
because it's been many a week 
since I filmed a video by myself.
[claps] So anyway, I'm ready to be done.
 Thank you so much for watching!
If you enjoyed this video, please give it 
a thumbs up. In the comments below,
let me know if you think you're going 
to read it or if you've already read it!
Please let me know what you think! And subscribe to
The Princess and the Scrivener for more 
videos on Disney, intersectional feminism,
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One of us  will see ya real soon!
She is a 27-year-old Literature professor 
who is also studying to get her Pd-
Why have I- why can't I say the word "PhD"?!?
[cool lo-fi music]
