May Book Club Blog Post: Any Stories App

Falling for my Boyfriend's Navy Brother

This month's book blub blog is about a book - Falling for my Boyfreind's Navy Brother -- but it is also about an app - Any Stories.

I don't know about you, but I keep getting sucked into these ads on Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes they are videos, othertimes they are photos of extremely hot men and the first portion of a novel is included. You usually get an action scene of some sort, and you are definitely thrust right into the action. Which.... is how they hook you.

There are several apps like these, and the advertisements really are enticing. They get you just invested enough that you want more, and then you have to buy tokens in order to get additional chapters. The tokens are fairly inexpensive. I think I purchased some for $2.99. However, there is nowhere that tells you how many chapters your tokens purchase. Reading some of the books gets very expensive if you are choosing this payment method. With Any Stories, you also have the option of paying for a one week memberhip or a monthly membership. I chose to read for a week.

The book I read had an attrocious title - Falling for my Boyfriend's Navy Brother. Social Media didn't mention the title. If it had, I likely would not have continued to read. Once I purchased Any Stories, I noticed that a lot of the books have titles that are similar. Instead of an attention grabbing name that most author's strive for, these books are named for what happens inside them. She does fall for her boyfriend's brother, although I believe he is a marine, actually. Secret Wife, Real Billionaire. Sold to Lycan King for Surrogacy. Son-In-Law is a Telepath. There are also books with titles that would make it into bookstores, but I mean, I think you can take a wild stab at what happens in "Sold to Lycan King for Surrogacy." Or, for that matter, the book I read.

And yet, to my surprise, this was a very good book, at least mostly. I couldn't put the thing down. The characters felt compelling, the sexual tension between the main character and the brother is sizzling, and the author actually managed to write the story in a way that the unforgiveable betrayal of the original boyfriend was both justified and absolutely satisfying. Yes, he cheats on her, but even before they get there, he's just neglectful. The emotion of this story with it's horrible name actually choked me up in a lot of places.

At least for the first half of the book.

Remember when I said that this book would have cost a lot if I had paid with tokens? That's because the book was three hundred and twenty-five chapters long! I got to read it for $10. Not bad.

I didn't realize it was that long until I was siginificantly invested. In fact, since I was reading on an app in my phone, I couldn't completely figure out the app. I couldn't, for example, figure out how to advance or go back with the chapters. I couldn't figure out how to find the store library. I couldn't figure out how to cancel the app. I had to log into my laptop and google how to do those things. It turns out it's all fairly simple. You just have to tap on the bottom of the screen and a menu appears. It disappears quickly, so you have to figure out what selection you want to make fast, but one you know how to navigate, it's not difficult.

The book starts out with ballerina, Penelope Vale, in class, and she's not having a good day. She is the star of the school, and her very tough instructor thinks she may have a chance at landing a role in the Spring Gala which they are training for. The book is written in the first person, so we are inside Penelope's head, which is the best point of view thsi could have been written in. We learn that the reason she is having an off night is because her boyfriend, Tyler, was supposed to pick her up and drive her to class, but he forgot. She had to run to class last minute.

He forgets her again after class, and when she confronts him, he says he was helping someone study. He is very repentant and tries to make up for it. They were friends before lovers, and they have been dating for a year, so she has incentive to stay, but as the book goes on and Tyler becomes an inreasingly subpar boyfreind, his neglet just makes her sadder and sadder. It really did kind of choke me up. This also suprised me. To make up to her, Tyler invites her to his house for dinner. As a college student, he lives at home, and Penelope has a mutually caring love for his parents, so she is happy to get the invitation.

It's at dinner, though, that she meets Tyler's older brother. Although we won't know this for quite some time, Asher has recently been injured in combat and he is home on mandatory rest. He is angry at the world, and he initially takes that out on Penny by considering her a spoiled princess. He seems to base this on her study of ballet, since she does nothing really to give him this impression. She is attracted to him from the beginning, athough in an innocent enough way. It's only the more that Tyler neglects her and Asher ends up stepping up in his place that their relationship starts to grow.

Soon enough, they are fighting their mutual attraction. They are really good at fighting, since they don't even kiss each other until Chapter 166. The author is the master of delayed gratificaiton. In this format, it works. One thing this app allows readers to do is to contribute comments after each chapter, and the readers were right there with this pair up until very shortly before the kiss. Then the comments about frustration began to grow. Considering this app makes more money the longer they can keep readers reading, my guess is that the writers guage how long to make the book by following those comments.

Once Penelope ends her relationship with Tyler and begins sleeping with Asher, the comments suggest that readers don't enjoy the sex scenes as much as they enjoyed the build up to the sex scenes. The truth is, the writing is not nearly as strong with the sex scenes, but the author has crafted enough complications that the story truly does manage to hold your attention right until the end. Although, for me, I will say I started skimming the sex scenes that filled the last third of the book.

This book had a lot of good things going for it. That said, it did feel at times like the author was just throwing every possible romantic scenario at the wall and making the book as long as humanly possible. It easily could have been half this length. But also, I was still reading all the way to the end nad did enjoy the story. There were also several moments where I noticed contradictory things in the story, as if the author forgot what they'd said earlier. I can't say I was suprised given the number of chapters in the story. I almost wondered at times if there were actually multiple writers creating this book.

So, all in all, I did enjoy this story. I did find it worthwhile downloading the app. There wasn't a lot that appealed to me on the app based off the title or the book cover, but there have been other stories online that snagged my attention. So, I can't say don't download this because of the quality. The quality was decent. I will recommend not doing this for a different reason.

Apparently, Any Stories is a Japanese app, so I got billed in Japanese yen. Those must be worth a lot more than the Canadian dollar, because what Paypal billed me and what came out of my bank account was significantly different. Even more, though, I did attempt to cancel immiately so I would not be charged for a second month. As I said, I googled how to do it, and then I went ahead and cancelled. It appeared to work, except I did not get notification that the app had cancelled. Then, I was charged again. Not only was I charged, I was charged for a monthly membership rather than for a second week.

Normally, that would irritate me enough that I would track the app down on principal, but I was already reading one other book and wanted to finish, so I decided to simply let it go. I put a stop payment on Paypal, and left it at that. Although this isn't exactly the normal type of post I do for Book Club, I thought this was worth a write up. If you have ever downloaded any of these apps, I'd love to hear if your experience was similar to mine.