Hello. Welcome to the What to Read Next podcast. The podcast that helps you topple your TBR. We are, we have plenty of recommendations for you to talk about today. We're talking about spring. This week is all about spring. I got spring releases. I got spring reading inspiration. I got spring cozy. Romans, we got it all for you. We got spring cozy mysteries too. We're gonna have lots of spring recommendations because. The clocks move forward. And so we're in daylight, semi shower, standard time. I don't know, I don't know what time it's, but we just lost an hour and it's just the days are gonna actually get longer. We're gonna have long, we're gonna have sunsets at seven, which I'm very excited for. Although I'm not happy that's gonna be dark in the morning 'cause I'm trying to have a morning routine. But, we got longer sunset, we got sunsets at seven o'clock. We got the sun coming out in little later. So it's spring, it's time of flowers. It's time of joy. So let's get to this week our recommendations. So the first recommendation that we have is Francesca is our from Under the Covers book block. She's here to talk about spring readings. She's talking about tropes that you can look for ideas of things. So flower shops, road trips, weddings, all the books. She got three recommendations for you to pick up. There'll be more recommendations coming up in other episodes. So just sort to get started as well as the. Spring Reading Trope guide that she has available under the Covers commu book. Under the covers v Blog community. I think it's under the covers community. I don't know. The link is gonna be in the show notes, but just go into, just, so let's just enjoy this episode. So, all right. Bye.

Let's start with the tropes. Know what spring tropes are so we know what to look forward to. So Francesca will be sharing that with us. So we're going to kick ourselves off the stage and hear from her now. Yeah, so I love reading things by tropes. I think tropes are the perfect crutch when you're looking for seasonal reading or mood reading or anything like that. They just help you. easily find something that has the vibe and the mood that you're looking for. And that is especially helpful when you're seasonally reading. So the books I'm going to be sharing today are about three tropes, I guess. And I say this tropes as in themes or character types or things like that. So the ones that I'm going to be talking about today are Things like flower shops or anything related to flowers, gardening, anything like that, because spring is all about being outside and working with the earth and gardening and starting to plan things. So it's a perfect season for that. So anything related to that are books that you can pick up in the spring. Also, it's a great time to start looking at wedding themes in books. And Also, I really enjoy reading a good road trip romance or anything road trip related when it starts to be spring. So there's also other tropes that I talk about. I do have a guide actually in my step stack, which I put out in 2024 and that is available for paid sub stack members. But I do go into the kind of all time favorite recommendations and All different tropes that you can find, especially when it comes to romance books. So there's historical romance, there's paranormal romance in there. There's a bit of everything and different tropes that are good to read in the spring. And there's also like recipes. I also included in there like different springtime festivals all around the world. So it's lots of fun. There's a bucket list and stuff like that, but it does come with a ton of book recommendations in romance that you can read in spring. So that's available on Substack. But going back to the books that I'm going to be sharing today the first one is forget me not by Julie Soto. So this one is kind of perfect because it has a couple of the elements that I just talked about. The hero is a florist and basically he works in the wedding industry. So he does flowers for weddings and the heroine is a wedding planner. Now she is kind of like she loves planning weddings, but she doesn't believe in weddings or marriage herself. They were an item in the past, and she kind of broke his heart. So now they haven't basically spoken to each other since that happened, and they are having to work together planning, working at this wedding, which is a celebrity wedding. It's a very big deal to both of their careers. And obviously like that forced proximity of having to work together. There's lots of tension and lots of unresolved things that they have to work through while being in the middle of this, like high stakes celebrity wedding celebrity wedding and all of the drama and all of the mess. So, I mean, weddings are already chaotic enough, but adding the stress of this celebrity wedding, the pressure of what it can do for their. businesses in their careers, and then, of course, reconnecting and everybody telling them how perfect they are for each other. So this was a lot of fun. It kind of like embodies all of the tropes that you could be reading in the spring. So I really enjoyed that one. The second book has a bit of magical realism, but it has a lot of the same things that I just talked about with this one, and it's Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hagel. So this one is technically contemporary romance, but it does have a little bit touch of magical realism. It's not super heavy. If you have never read magical realism, this is a great starter book for that because it's just a very light element. So it is set in a small town and the magical realism element is the fact that our heroine has this magical ability that she can infuse. flower arrangements to get people to find love and things like that. So basically people come to this flower shop and they buy things and something good happens that they want. And the flower shop is struggling and they're trying to figure out how to save it and how to, make the business work and. There's this big wedding that's going to happen in town, which is actually the parent of one of the workers at the shop. So our heroine and that worker decided they're going to fake date. They're going to pretend like they're together. There are a couple and they're going to get the flower arrangements. for this wedding. So as they're doing that, and they're going through the motions of that, the bride that's going to be getting married finally comes to town. And what happens is that the son of this woman that is getting married, and it's basically going to be the stepbrother of the guy that she's pretending to date is a guy that she used to date in high school. So it's kind of like an old flames reconnecting that, it's a second chance love. And they, and she's pretending to date this other guy. So the fake dating is not with the main character, it's with a side character. And it does create that tension throughout the story as they are reconnecting and like they're finding out that some of the things that happened, what, what really went wrong in their relationship and that kind of stuff. So it's really sweet. It also has plenty of the magic element. I really love the subtle magic in this book. And it's just perfect for like the new beginnings of spring. It really had that vibe. And then the last book that I'm going to talk about is a road trip romance, and it's a long for the ride by Mimi Grace. So now this one is an enemies to lovers. So these two basically hate each other and the heroine is finally getting her life together. And she is going to help her sister move basically across the country is a 16 hour drive and she's going to do this road trip with her father to help her sister move. But something happens, her father wins this vacation and off he goes. And now she's basically having to do this alone except that there's this guy that is a friend of. Her sister and, there, he's gonna take the spot and kind of make that drive with her and help with the move. So he happens to be somebody that she's always clashing with, they don't like each other, and now they're stuck in a car for a 16 hour drive that turns into a lot more shenanigans because I mean, car breaks down. They have to spend the night different places. So a lot of unexpected things happen and they start to realize that they actually kind of like each other. And maybe what they were doing was pretending to not like each other, to not admit that they did like each other. So lots of banter. Some graduates that they have to get over and just the fact that they are stuck together in this like really fun and just hilarious road trip. So this one is also perfect for that So that's basically all of the things that I think would be great for you to read in the spring Think of things that are all about new beginnings Even like a second chance romance could be considered a new beginning. So anytime that you are light fluffy and anything with nature too, so anything with botanical themes, gardening, anything like that, I think it's perfect for you to read in the spring. Yay! I couldn't agree with you more. Love the recommendations and I love the little breakdown on the tropes and just things we can look forward to. So friends, get the spring reading trope guide, okay? On Substack. Link in the video's description. What did you think, Laura? I really love all the flower like I'm like, oh, yes, it's just like time to lift up daffodils and then seeing it in romance and it's oh, it makes sense and I love forgive me not. It's like such a good book and audio spray because you hear the here's perspective from the past and the parents perspective from the current present moment. And you're like, how does this collide? And then it's just it works out really well. on audio. Yep, that's awesome.

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