Book Review, Fiction

Heart the Lover by Lily King ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

I devoured this book in two days, captivated quickly by “Jordan,” our nameless narrator, as she is sucked into the world of Sam and Yash in college. This book did a wonderful job of illustrating a time in life when you are trying to figure so much out and so much is unknown. It explores the mistakes young people make and the lasting impacts those choices can have throughout life.

I was captivated by Lily King’s writing. Her descriptions and her simple ways of describing thought and feelings made it hard for me to stop reading and easy for me to perfectly see and feel what was happening in this book. I found the writing style to be as special as the book itself.

Although classified as a romance, it didn’t feel like one in the traditional sense. Jordan finds herself in a love triangle of sorts between both boys in her life and we do watch these relationships unfold. I was not terribly convinced of the romance (perhaps because both men were somewhat insufferable) – the story felt much more about the longstanding impact of those relationships on her life.

In the later parts of the book, we see Jordan married with her own family. It seems as though things have worked out for her as she hoped. I liked her relationship with her husband and seeing her happy. The ending has Sam and Yash suddenly pulled back into her life due to a terminal illness. To me, this felt like a plot device and the scenes at the hospital were overly saccharine. They seemed introduced to force some sort of emotion that the writing should have done on its own.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

P.S. I Hate You by Lauren Connolly ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

This was a bit of a throwaway book for me in that I had a pleasant time listening to the audiobook and pretty immediately forgot about it. When Maddie’s brother Josh dies from cancer, he requests that she and his best friend, Dominic, scatter his ashes in eight different places he never got to visit. The problem? Maddie hates adventures and hates Dom since he broke her heart years ago.

Maddie, our narrator, was kind of obnoxious in a way that was somewhat enjoyable but got a little old by the end. I didn’t particularly feel any sort of growth from her and a lot of her inner monologue going over her past was repetitive as a result. I did appreciate the way her relationship with Josh was portrayed and strengthened through the notes he left for her.

One part of the book that I found bizarre was the inclusion of Maddie and Josh’s emotionally abusive mother. Her excerpts were so randomly thrown in and felt like a plot device.

I did enjoy the romance and the way it contrasted and intersected with grief. It developed slowly, which made it more believable than is often the case with this kind of book.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Left of Forever by Tarah DeWitt ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance

This was a really lovely second chance romance in which high school sweethearts Ellis and Wren take the chance to see if they want to spend what’s Left of Forever back together. The two are divorced (from each other) and dropping off their son at college. On the road trip back, Ellis asks Wren to let this be a chance for them to revisit their relationship.

This framing felt unusual (in a good way to me). I loved that their experiment was finite and confined to their drive home. It combined an adventure in California/the Pacific Northwest, complete with really lovely descriptive settings, with the central conflict.

I appreciated the history of this relationship and the fact that the two had worked hard to be good parents together despite being teenagers when they had their son. However, I felt like the reasoning behind their divorce wasn’t really well thought out (or well explained). It seemed like they just stopped communicating in a weird way that didn’t make sense to me based on how strong their connection seemed to be.

In the present day, I liked the progression of their romance. I found some of it over the top/cheesy, but I was kind of expecting that from this book (purely based off the cover).

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Buy Left of Forever at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

The Poppy Fields by ~ Nikki Erlick

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Science Fiction

Ava, Ray, Sasha, and Sky are strangers who find themselves thrown together as they all happen to be heading west towards the Poppy Fields. The fields provide an unusual opportunity: to heal from grieving through a controlled, weeks-long sleep. This experimental treatment is highly contested, despite its great success rate.

At a macro-level, I found the premise of this book to be fascinating. Along with following our group of travelers throughout the book, there are chapters narrated by the founder of the Poppy Fields, which provides a better understanding of the facility, the process, the possible side effects, and her intentions behind the sleep. This insight allowed me to understand the treatment central to the story without it feeling forced.

Each of the characters was wonderfully crafted with a full backstory and very distinct personalities. They were all on their own journeys for different reasons and it was interesting to hear what was drawing each one west. I enjoyed watching them open up to each other. There were also a number of unexpected twists that deepened character relationships and added a lot of depth to the story.

I found myself somewhat disappointed with how this book wrapped up, which is the reason it didn’t quite hit four stars for me. It felt like there was a ton of build up for a somewhat incomplete and abrupt ending.

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Book Review, Fiction

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

Culpability is an ambitious fictional exploration of the increasing role of AI in our lives and the ethical considerations around it. The book starts with a family getting into a car crash that kills two people. Who was driving? Was it technically the autonomous car, or teenage Charlie who was in the driver’s seat? In the wake of the incident, the family retreats to a rented house on the Chesapeake Bay to try to lay low and process what happened. As each one grapples with the fallout, we slowly learn that they are all harboring secrets related to the crash.

The family drama and secrets kept me most drawn to this story. Although I didn’t really like any of the characters, I wanted to know what they were hiding from one another and how it was all going to come to light. That part of the story did not disappoint. Lorelei, Charlie’s mother, is a leader in the AI space adding an extra wrinkle to the discussion about AI within the story and influencing perspectives and motivations.

Despite a very interesting and timely premise, I felt like this book had a lack of focus that kept it from totally working for me. There was a whole second ‘incident’ with Charlie that popped up partway through the story and seemed totally weird and unnecessary. For me, it took away from the main issues at the center of the book, in terms of both technology and the family drama.

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Book Review, Fiction

Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E. Smith ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪

Genre: Fiction

        Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude Endicott were once bound together by the annual trips with their elusive mother, to a different state every year. They are suddenly brought back together by Jude, who initiates a new family trip, though their mother is long gone.

        I finished this book about a week ago and I can hardly remember it. The characters felt unrealistic to me, each one packed with stereotypes to try to make them feel distinct which actually just made them feel one-dimensional. It created a distinct lack of ability to care about what happened to them – maybe that’s also partially because I didn’t care for most of them. I also didn’t buy that they’d all just drop everything to fly to North Dakota.

        Central to the plot is three big secrets that Jude wants to get off her chest to her siblings. This was the most compelling part of the book for me (the rest felt very low on plot). We get flashbacks to the family’s road trips over the year that help to inform and provide context around the secrets.

        I’m kind of grasping at straws as to what else to say about this one because it was so forgettable for me.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Christmas at the Little Paris Hotel by Rebecca Raisin ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

What a cozy hug of a holiday romance. Christmas at the Little Paris Hotel was the perfect book to be reading on my holiday Europe trip. Anais receives a rundown hotel in her divorce and takes it upon herself to renovate it and open it in time for Christmas. What she doesn’t expect is Noah, who owns the bar across the street and has a lot of opinions about her renovations and how they impact his business.

Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style, I could perfectly picture the hotel and found it very immersive. Anais decides on a literary theme for the hotel and as a book lover I appreciated all the cutesy details. The renovation storyline was more interesting and compelling to me than the romance.

I found Anais’s relationship with her ex-husband and every way he appeared in the story to be pretty unbelievable, but I was mostly able to suspend reality in getting through those parts.

This was exactly the kind of snuggly feel good Christmas book with low stakes that I was looking for and I would reach for another book by this author if I was craving a similar vibe.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

I read Matthew Norman’s holiday romance at the end of 2025 and loved it so I was excited to pick up Charm City Rocks for that reason and because I love the celebrity romance trope. Billy’s meddling son Caleb semi-accidentally reaches out to Billy’s former rock star crush, Margot Hammer. Pushed back into the spotlight by a documentary about her old band, Margot’s PR team encourages her to take the opportunity to travel to Billy’s town.

Billy and Margot’s chemistry was so palpable and I had a wonderful time watching their relationship grow. The descriptions of their behavior while doing regular things together made me root for them so much. I also enjoyed the way social media and the fanfare around them as a couple played into the story – which is unusual for me because I don’t usually like pop-culture making its way into books I read.

All the characters were really lovely. I liked the exploration of Caleb’s non-traditional family life and how strongly all the adults in his life supported him. I also appreciated a romance about characters who were older than their twenties.

Charm City Rocks is exactly what I’m hoping for when I pick up a light romance.

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Book Review, Romance

It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I notoriously love books set in NYC, so that was an automatic plus for me. When June finds out that she and her former roommate/best friend/maybe more, Adam have inherited the brownstone they used to live in together. She flies back from LA to confront her past.

The book is written in both the present and the past, showing us how June and Adam came to live together and how their relationship grew and the aftermath. I found the development of their friendship really beautiful and believable and loved watching it grow. Some of my favorite parts were also seeing how Adam’s family interacted with and embraced June.

While this relationship was central to the story, it was as much about finding yourself and navigating your path in your twenties and into your thirties as anything else. We learn about how each character’s career and aspirations have grown and evolved and I liked seeing the differences between the two time periods. June is an actress and Adam is in the food scene and it was especially fun to read about those two worlds in the setting of NYC.

I find miscommunication in romance books to be kind of annoying, like just talk to each other. But regardless, I enjoyed seeing this relationship unfold.

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Book Review, Fiction

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Rowan washes up on the shores of Shearwater, an island near Antarctica home to the world’s largest seed bank. There, the Salt family nurses her back to health. They are the only ones left on the island as sea levels rise and researchers have slowly left. As they get to know each other, Rowan and the Salts begin to realize that there is more to their chance meeting than they initially thought.

McConaghy’s writing is SO atmospheric and she always picks really interesting settings for her books. The unforgiving nature of the island entirely came to life as we learn, through the main characters, about the animals who live there and the destruction humans have brought over the years. At times I felt like I was reading nonfiction about the island.

There are very few characters in this book due to the isolated setting, allowing us to get to know and deeply care for them – and I did. Rowan spends time with each of the kids who are charming, delightful, and nuanced, as well as their dad, Dominic. Dominic is haunted by the passing of his own wife and in large part, this makes the whole island take on a haunted feeling.

Central to the story is a swirling mystery about how the characters have all ended up together, but I would not call this book a mystery in itself because there’s so much more to it.

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