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Christine "Xtinemay" Riccio (born August 4, 1990 ) is an American YouTuber and author. She is best known for her YouTube channels, polandbananasBOOKS and polandbananas20, and her novel Again, but Better (2019). Riccio is often regarded as the first YouTuber to popularize the community BookTube, a subset of YouTube where creators discuss and promote books, as well as the surrounding culture.

Early life and education
Riccio was born August 4, 1990 and grew up in Montville, New Jersey as the oldest of three children. Her siblings, Olivia and Paul, are featured occasionally on her YouTube channel. She first discovered her love for photography at the age of seven when she was gifted a camera for Christmas.

Riccio would later go on to study film and literature at Boston University in 2008. In 2012, she graduated from Boston University’s College of Communications with a bachelor's degree. During her time at university, Riccio studied abroad twice: once to England in 2011, which inspired the events of her debut novel, Again, But Better, and then in the summer of 2012 to Los Angeles, where she now lives today.

Her parents divorced in 2008 when she was 18, which would go on to inspire the subject of her second novel, Better Together.

YouTube
Riccio created her first Youtube channel, polandbananas20, on March 29, 2006 when she was 16, where she would upload dance and sketch videos with her younger sister, Olivia. However, she only posted videos sporadically until July 5, 2010, when she created her second and more well-known channel, polandbananasBOOKS.

Her channel polandbananasBOOKS is devoted to discussing and reviewing books and fan culture, often in the Young Adult genre, and other book-related content such as book buying hauls, challenges and trivia, author interviews, and writing vlogs. Riccio's channel was one of the first of its kind and remains the most popular with more than 429 thousand subscribers and 76 million views, leading her to be credited as one of the founders of the BookTube community. Her channel was featured on The Washington Post ' s "Ten BookTube channels to watch" list in 2019.

Since 2010, the BookTube community has grown immensely. Along with BookTubers Kat O’Keefe (Katytastic) and Jesse George (jessethereader), Riccio founded BOOKSPLOSION in 2013. BOOKSPLOSION is a collaborative group in which Riccio and her colleagues host monthly book clubs, question and answer videos (Q&As) called "Ask BOOKSPLOSION", and create other joint individual videos such as trip vlogs and book-related challenges. Riccio also often collaborates with other BookTubers, such as Natasha Polis (Tashapolis) and Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia).

While she is less active on her original channel, polandbananas20, Riccio uses it to post content non-book-related content, such as sketches and vlogs. As a result, this channel has amassed upwards of 96 thousand subscribers and 11 million views.

Author
In 2016, Riccio announced in her vlog BOOK WRITING | EP 1, posted January 19, that she had begun writing a novel earlier in the year. Her playlist “THE BOOK WRITING CHRONICLES WITH XTINEMAY” follows her journey of becoming a published author and the writing of her first, second, and third books. Her video GETTING PUBLISHED?!? | BOOK WRITING EP 27 formally announced that her debut novel, Again, but Better, would be published by Wednesday Books.

Again, but Better was officially published May 7, 2019 and became a New York Times bestselling novel. It is a Young Adult contemporary novel, about an unhappy university student who goes on exchange to London, England. From May 6 to 18, 2019, Riccio went on a book tour to promote the launch of her book and was interviewed by guests such as her fellow BookTubers Kat O'Keefe and Natasha Polis, as well as bestselling author Sarah J. Maas.

In 2020, Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney chose Again, but Better as the May novel for her online book club, saying that "it has such a beautiful wish fulfillment aspect to the book that I think we all need right now." Later, the novel would be featured as one of the actress's favourite reads in an interview with Marie Claire.

Riccio would later go on to publish her second novel Better Together June 1, 2021, about two sisters separated by their parents' divorce, and write her third, unnamed novel that she announced in her video BUILDING BOOK 3 | BOOK WRITING.

Riccio also participated in the anthology novel Because You Love to Hate Me, released July 11, 2017, in which thirteen authors teamed up with thirteen BookTubers to reimagine the stories of fairy tale villains. She, however, did not contribute any writing to the anthology.

Young Adult

 * Again, but Better (2019)
 * Better Together (2021)