Hey guys! I've held off on putting any original Wattpad stories in my Reading List for quite a long time—mainly because I was waiting to find a really good novel on here that was, y'know... clean! (If this is unimportant to you, feel free to skip this chapter! Much of this is just me wishing cursing didn't exist in stories. Or in real life. XP)

...And to be honest, I'm still waiting to find one that doesn't have SOMETHING bad SOMEWHERE in it. (Like... really, you people? Everyone does realize that there IS a big audience for awesome, clean stories, right???)

However, I did finally add a bunch of stories I enjoyed to my reading list! (Find it under But That's Another Story (Basil's Reading List) on my profile page!) But, I did so under the condition that I'd post some disclaimers/warnings here in this chapter! It's kind of like... the Focus on the Family of Wattpad reviews. XD #someofyouwillgetit

As a general rule, I can't really stand behind any of these stories and say that I'd totally recommend them, but I did really enjoy the plot lines and characterization, and that's why they're here! Hopefully one or two will sound interesting if you're looking for a new book to read! :D

Anyhow, without further ado, here we go!

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READING LIST DISCLAIMERS:

-The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones: I was really excited when I started reading this story, because it is super well-written (I'm talking published-novel quality here!), and it didn't seem to have any cursing in it! Unfortunately, about halfway through the book, a few of the minor bully characters start picking on the main character (the story's set in the fifties, and the main character is half Black, which was very looked down upon in the South in that era), and they swear some. Sigh. But other than that, I would definitely recommend the story! It is VERY well-written historical fiction that really sheds some light on how Black people were hated and treated very badly for no good reason up until very recently. (Also, the KKK is extremely creepy. *shudders*) Juniper (the titular character) is super creative and fun. The only reason I would advise you not to read this book is if you're allergic to your own tears, BECAUSE YOU WILL LIKELY BE CRYING REALLY HARD AT THE END. I'M NOT KIDDING. I HADN'T CRIED THAT MUCH IN A WHILE. I DIDN'T ACTUALLY THINK... THAT WOULD HAPPEN...

-Cataindar: I thought this book was awesome in its action/adventure/fantasy aspects! And it has a REALLY well-intertwined, suspenseful plot. Hence its place on my reading list! (I mean, a medieval world of anthropomorphic cats with their own society and government? That also have an extremely mysterious past and a lot of ancient relics? COOL!) Sadly, though, there are quite a few parts that aren't clean—and by this I mean it has cursing, fighting, some violence, and a few weird romantic-ish scenes. (They are brief, though, so it's pretty easy to skip around them.) The main character, Luisa, attends a somewhat disreputable school in Wales, so in most of the school/her world scenes, there's fighting and swearing. She doesn't like the fighting, but she does curse on occasion (usually in British :P). (I'd probably skip the scenes at Luisa's school; they get kind of violent.) Quite a few Catains are killed during battle or attacks, and Finn (MY FAVORITE CHARACTER BECAUSE HE SEEMS TO BE THE ONLY UNDOUBTABLY GOOD GUY) gets pretty hurt near the end. There's... actually more, but come to think of it... there is some inappropriate (though brief) stuff. Darcius, a cat of very questionable integrity, drinks their equivalent of a strong drink, as well as threatening a female cat with being the father of her kittens. On the bus, Luisa watches a knife fight get started, ending with one guy getting hurt. (Not sure how hurt, I kinda skipped over that. Gore is not my thing. XP) A creepy guy at Luisa's school is really disrespectful toward her, though she eventually stands up to him in the end.

...Okay, seeing this all in type, maybe I'll be taking this off my reading list eventually. However, if you can skip all those parts, the rest of the story is really good! The characterization is awesome, and if you like action or mystery, there's a LOT of that. Plus, cats wearing armor! I may be biased as a fantasy fan-slash-cat person, but I thought that was pretty cool.

-The Disney Fanboy: The original version of this was really clean, if I remember correctly (No warnings! Whoohoo!), but the author is in the process of rewriting it at the moment, so I can't 100% say how it'll be now. However, I will say that I did not know that a story consisting of only dialogue between two characters could be so funny. XD CAROLINE'S WITTY REMARKS TO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING FINN DOES ARE THE TOTAL BEST. SHE'S GREAT. XD

-Super: MacKenzie, or 'Mac', to her friends, really thought she might have a chance at living a normal life. (HA HA HA! So sorry Mac!) Sadly, her entire town suddenly turned into the plot from a comic book, and now there's superheroes, supervillains, blob monsters and clones on the loose throughout her city of Vertigo. And wouldn'tcha know it, she might just fit into more than one of those categories... (Haven't read this in a long time; going to have to reread it before I can really remember the warnings for it. Sorry!) From what I remember, this had a pretty cool storyline! It was not free of cursing, though. (The only really specific thing I can remember about this story is that I told myself "Hey, if I ever make a reading list, maybe I should put this on it!". So... here it is?)

-Rosehead: I'm hardly ever one for the horror/supernatural genre, but strangely enough, for the most part, Rosehead was actually really good! (Story-wise, it was awesome; it had great characters and a huge sense of action/adventure/mystery.) I'd definitely say that the reason it's good is that it dwells much more on the mystery aspect than it does any gore. There's actually not too much detail when there is any real blood, which is nice. (Only rarely does anyone get injured or die, but Lilith does imagine that a lot of the creepy things she catches wind of are the result of people dying.) Another cool part of it is that Lilith is a kid, and since the story is through her eyes, there's very few inappropriate parts.

The story is about the adventures of Lilith Bloom—a girl whose parents and relatives think she isn't quite alright mentally, mostly because she sometimes feels like buildings are swaying or moving (later, she gets wrapped up in the mystery of the eerie Bloom mansion, and telling your parents about the talking roseheads you see coming out of the wall probably isn't going to go over well either)—her pet whippet, Panther, who acts like a cat and can talk!—and later, a new friend of Lilith's, a mute boy. Together, they try to figure out why the Bloom family mansion is so creepy, what the stench and eerie groaning noise is that's coming from the famed Bloom rose gardens, and what in the world to do about it all. (Lilith assumes that her grandfather must be feeding the garden with blood, and that's what makes the roses so eerily red. In the end, she is partly right, hence the horror aspect—but she manages to stop the garden from eating people eventually.)

I wasn't sure what to expect when I decided to carefully try reading it one day, but it was actually really good for being the genre it is! If you aren't bothered much by references to blood or creepy man-eating plants, I'd recommend it! It even has a really happy ending, which I didn't expect from a horror/supernatural story. (Also, one thing I would mention: for the first part of the story, it's a little hard to tell if all the weird things Lilith sees are in her imagination or not, but later, you find out that almost all of them are not—she's just the only one who notices them.)

-Dark Side: Come to the dark side. We have cookies. Welcome to the dark side. Are you surprised we lied about the cookies? 😝 Anyways, this is a superhero book about a girl who's an electricity villain in a town where almost all of the superheroes and villains have made a pact—a slightly shady pact for the villains to give superheroes part of their earnings from crime in return for them being let go. Johanna (aka a villain, Lightning Pulse), her friend Lawrence (aka a superhero, Torch), and a couple of her other friends have to go through some seriously crazy supervillain trouble to battle old nemeses and save Johanna's mom! I get in a really superhero-y mood some days, and this was a really epic and creative book to read! Not too many warnings, actually, other than some cursing and some fairly mild romantic-ish stuff in a couple scenes. I just got done reading this the other week, and it inspired me to try to work on brainstorming for a superhero story I've had lying around, Non Sequitur!

-Damsel[ed]: No Rescue Required: Hrrr, it's been a while since I read this... I don't exactly remember a lot of specific things to warn anybody about, but I'm pretty sure there were some, so... watch out for those? XD Sorry, that's not helpful. The main character, Angelo, lives in a city full of superheroes and villains along with his friends Heaven and Gatsby. And happily so, at least until Angelo is kidnapped by a mysterious villain for mysterious purposes. Angelo does not like swearing (though it does come up occasionally), so he and his friends use their own euphemisms a lot. There is some non-biblical angel stuff in there (kind of a superhero/supervillain-type angel experiment thing), and the villain is a guy with black angel wings named Lucifer. Small spoiler alert, pretty much all the main characters end up falling in love with someone, so there's some romance stuff too... Otherwise, I think it was fairly clean? Mostly? It's been a while since I read this one; I'm gonna have to check up on it. XP

I can't exactly remember how it all ends, but I do remember thinking that it was really well-written? I'm gonna have to reread it when I have time. xD

Edits:

-The Badlings: I may or may not have just read this entire book in one sitting, because while I wasn't sure what it was going to be about, YIKES IT'S HARD TO STOP READING. (Also, the entire story is about all the bad things that can happen to kids if they stop reading a book before they reach the end, so that probably played into it too. XD) The story is about four kids—eleven-year-old Bells, plus her friends Grand, Peacock, and Rusty—who get sucked into a book called the Mad Tome. At first, they land in the story of the Snow Queen, then Don Quixote, then Alice in Wonderland... and they rather quickly realize that they're in danger, because even though not all the characters are evil, per se, pretty much everyone is out to get them. They find out that the book is a mismatched conglomeration of books that kids didn't finish reading—and as punishment for abandoning the books, the Mad Tome sucks these "badlings" in to live through the story.

Plot-wise, it's pretty amazing, and it was actually mostly clean! There were two cases of mild swear words, but nothing too bad, which was pretty cool. Grand's mom works at a mortuary, so he talks about death-related things fairly often without realizing he's grossing people out. The four land in a few horror books along the way—The Red Death, Bluebeard, and Dracula, namely—and encounter the slightly creepy characters from those books. (Red Death and Dracula weren't too bad, but when they end up in Bluebeard's dungeon, they find his dead wives—who, as made-up characters in a story, are still perfectly capable of bantering and moving around even though their heads are chopped off.) The characters in the book all are trying to set themselves free, and to do so, they have to draw blood from the badlings in some way. Peacock gets bitten by one of Dracula's sisters at one point (I didn't realize Dracula had sisters?? I never read that book to the end, whoops...). Overall, the storyline is REALLY cool, and the main characters are all sweet in their own ways and really original. If you don't mind some horror aspects, I'd recommend it!

-Why I Can't Rule the World: COMPLETELY CLEAN CHRISTIAN BOOK! IT'S HEARTBREAKING AND WONDERFUL AND REPRESENTS A JOURNEY TO FIND REAL LOVE SO WELL! READ IT READ IT READ IT!

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There'll probably be more stories I'll add eventually, so I'll update this chapter as I update my reading list! (Might take a few off of it, too, if I reread them more thoroughly and they're too bad. XP)

Thanks for sitting through this impromptu book review session, guys! (Hopefully you at least enjoyed the snacks! ...What? You didn't see any snacks? You think I ate them all?! FIRST OF ALL, HOW DARE YOU. I PROMISE IT'S... um... true? *hides two dozen blueberry muffin wrappers behind back* Sorry. XD)

Stay tuned! :D