Book Review, Fiction

My Friends by Fredrik Backman ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Teenage Louisa has fallen in love with a painting and upon getting to see the original for the first time, she unexpectedly finds herself  to be the new owner of said painting. Ted, a close friend of the late-artist tasked with bestowing the painting to her, joins her on a train ride where he tells her stories of his childhood with the painter and the other people depicted in the painting.

Now that I’m reflecting back on this book several weeks later, I may have rated it too high. I found much of this book to be repetitive and boring. Despite hearing countless stories about this friend group growing up, I did not feel that I got to know them all that well. Some of the stories were quite endearing, but their motivations were not very clear or compelling.

The deeper themes of belonging and growing up as they related back to Louisa were nice, but this will be my last Backman read. I’ve tried him before and his writing style continues not to work for me. 

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Buy My Friends at an indie bookstore near you
My Friends on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance

Aiden Valentine is the host of a romance hotline on a radio show. One day, Lucie’s teenage daughter calls in asking dating advice for her mom. When Lucie overhears her and grabs the phone, her ensuing conversation with Aiden goes viral leading his network to pitch her her very own dating show.

This book was quite long and there was simply not enough plot to fill it. Even now, I’m sitting here wondering how there was so much book with so little story. I liked the premise and was hooked for the first third of the book or so. I liked Lucie and Aiden’s growing chemistry and I was excited to see how things would play out. Tension and build up can only last so long though and I got bored waiting for more from them.

The characters themselves didn’t stand out to me as individuals in a way that made me really want to root for them. The combo of boring characters and boring plot didn’t leave much for me to enjoy for the majority of this one.

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Buy First-Time Caller at an indie bookstore near you
First-Time Caller on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism, Romance

The Other Side of Now by Paige Harbison ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance/Magic Realism

I’m such a sucker for a magical realism romance combo and The Other Side of Now is just that. TV star Meg (stage name: Lana Lord) needs a break from her life so she takes a spontaneous trip to a town in Ireland she always dreamed of visiting with her best friend Aimee who died before they got a chance to go. Once arriving, Meg finds she’s landed in an alternate timeline where she and Aimee both moved to Ireland and Aimee is still alive.

There was a heaviness in this story about Aimee and Meg’s relationship and the secrets they kept from each other and regrets they had. Seeing Meg get a second chance with her best friend was so lovely and made for an interesting dynamic between them. There was a lot of lightness and humor to the book too though, that balanced things out well. The characters were nuanced and quirky and believable and I could perfectly picture their town.

I found this book to be so immersive and fell in love with both the characters and the setting and I was on the edge of my seat to see which reality Meg would end up in and how that would influence her future.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Other Side of Now at an indie bookstore near you
The Other Side of Now on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Horror

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Horror

This one was a bit more of a wild ride than I was expecting. Eve and Charlie have just moved into their new house when a family shows up on the doorstep claiming to have lived there previously and asking if they can show their kids around. Eve hesitantly says yes, but once they’re inside, she can’t get the family to leave and then odd things begin to happen around the house.

Kliewer did an excellent job of making me feel very unsettled while reading. This is really captivating writing and the things that started happening around the house were creepy. The story was also interspersed with news article excerpts and I was so intrigued to see how everything fit together.

I didn’t mind that everything kept getting crazier and crazier because I was expecting a neat ending. I did not get it. The end of the story is very ambiguous, which makes a lot of the details feel like they were randomly added rather than thought-out and relevant. I don’t mind that I immediately ran to Reddit to see what other people were saying, but I would have liked to have a slightly more solid idea of what actually happened in the book.

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Buy We Used to Live Here at an indie bookstore near you
We Used to Live Here on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Genre: Thriller

Claire returns to her hometown for the summer and decides to take a job at Galloway Farm, where her sister loved working before she disappeared decades ago. As Claire settles into her new routine, she begins to suspect that there may be something sinister going on at the farm and her sister’s case may not be as black and white as it seemed.

The premise of this book was so promising, but it was so slow that I could not get invested. The characters felt fairly one-dimensional and I just couldn’t get myself to care about them.

I enjoyed the setting of a Southern farm in the summer. I could perfectly picture the farm and feel the heat. The descriptive writing was really well done in terms of place.

I may not have given this one such a low star rating if it felt like the ultimate outcome was worth the slow burn, but ultimately, I didn’t find anything about it all that surprising or thrilling.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Forget Me Not at an indie bookstore near you
Forget Me Not on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

At 72, Sybil spends much of her time alone writing letters to folks from all different parts of her life. Through her letters, we get to know her passions, her (grumpy) personality, and some mistakes and tragedies that have defined large parts of her life.

I loved the letter format of this book. It allowed us to bounce back and forth between different tones and topics without things feeling disjointed. The thing that stayed constant? Sybil’s very distinct voice. She  is very blunt and straight to the point in a way that’s quite endearing. She takes big chances that sometimes pay off (like corresponding with famous authors she likes). Some of her letters don’t seem to ever be sent and these too helped me learn deeply what made Sybil who she was.

The Correspondent is an incredible story of one women’s life as she reflects back on parts of it and thinks about what she wants from the rest of it. I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent with Sybil.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Correspondent at an indie bookstore near you
The Correspondent on Goodreads

Fiction, Science Fiction

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: SciFi

What is there to say about Project Hail Mary that has not been said over and over in the past month? I finished the book a few weeks before the movie came out (which I have now seen twice) and absolutely loved it. I’m not a huge sci-fi person, and I did skim a lot of the super sciencey passages, but the story really held its own beyond the science.

Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, wakes up in a space ship with no recollection of who he is or what is going on. Little by little, his memories return and he realizes he is on a mission to save earth from an extinction-level disaster. With information about his mission returning to him very slowly, he is forced to try to piece things together as quickly as he can.

This book is about so much more than just the space mission though. We get flashbacks interspersed with the present narrative that help us get to know Grace and how he became involved in the mission. We learn about the months leading up to his departure from earth and the stakes for all of humanity. I found the general science/world-building really easy to follow which was incredibly impressive to me. It wasn’t a stretch or confusing to understand what was at play.

The friendship in this book was really so outstanding. It was unexpected and endearing and so so heartwarming. To me, it spoke to the power of Weir’s writing and character development. Next on my TBR: The Martian.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Project Hail Mary at an indie bookstore near you
Project Hail Mary on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

I’m doing a consolidated review of volumes 1-3 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion because although I enjoyed them, I listened in close succession and can’t say I remember where one ended and the next began. (They’re also very short, so felt more like one book’s length all combined).

What a delightful world. This series is presented as a set of journal entries detailing Emma’s life as she arrives in London in the quirky St. Crispian’s neighborhood. Things are a little abnormal there (in a fun, charming way) and I loved how naturally those quirks were sewn into the fabric of the setting.

Emma is such a wonderful narrator. She’s funny and sarcastic and her wit had me chuckling. I loved her uncensored take on the people in her life. Because we’re in her journal, we see exactly what she wants to do, even if she doesn’t take action.

It took me a while to get to know all the characters in Emma’s world, but each is a bit of a caricature and serves a different purpose to the storyline. I have largely come to love them all (even the annoying ones).

I felt like I needed a break after volume three, but now that I’m finally getting around to reviewing the series, I think I’m ready to dive back in. This world is perfect wholesome untroubled escapism.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol. 1 at an indie bookstore near you
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1 on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

My first five star read of the year! Broken Country is a dual timeline narrative following Beth. In the past, she meets and begins to date Gabriel, a wealthy boy in her village. They’re teenagers when they meet and have a big class divide. As is often the case with first love, they end things and Beth finds herself giving a chance to Frank, the boy-next-store who has always been there for her. In the present-day narrative, Beth and Frank are married when Gabriel suddenly comes back into her life. And then there’s the future storyline: a murder trial.

There are so many layers to this story. Beth and Frank lost their young son only for Gabrie to appear, newly divorced, with a son of a similar age. This alone introduces an interesting and emotional dynamic. As the book unfolded, I was holding my breath to find out what happened to Beth’s son and to start to piece together how things ended up in a murder.

It’s really hard to pin this book to any one genre. There’s a romance through line, deep character studies and layers of mystery. The big twist made me audibly gasp and I fully had to finish the audiobook at my desk at work because I could not stop listening.

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Buy Broken Country at an indie bookstore near you
Broken Country on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

The Phone Swap by Lia Louis ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance
Pub date: August 25, 2026 (Thank you to Simon & Schuster for my ARC!)

I loved how perfectly I could picture every bit of this story. Allie is a field scientist heading home from a work trip when she accidentally switches phones with her plane seatmate who just so happens to be a movie star named Milo. When the two realize their mistake, they contact each other to see about switching their phones back and find themselves unexpectedly drawn to each other.

Even though their connection grew over the phone, Milo and Allie’s chemistry was so wonderful and well written. I was rooting for them as they slowly opened up to each other. We got a lot of background about each character and insights into past trauma and things that influenced their flaws. They were certainly each flawed, but it mostly made them feel real.

Partially because a lot of the first part of the book was excerpts from the digital environment, the initial section of the story flew by. I don’t know where I was expecting it to go, but there was a dramatic change in setting and how the story was written about halfway through.

The part of the book that was set in the arctic was really picturesque and I loved how Allie’s passion bled into the descriptions of the nature surrounding them. This setting was really immersive and made this a nice winter read (even though it’s publishing in the summer).

I often struggle with characters just refusing to communicate about confusion and there was definitely some of that in this book, but it didn’t bother me tremendously.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Phone Swap at an indie bookstore near you
The Phone Swap on Goodreads