Category: Uncategorized

Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

Maybe in Another Life By Taylor Jenkins Reid ~ Book Review

Morgan

Maybe in Another Life with cookie

Washington Square Press
Release Date: July 7, 2015
Genre: Fiction 
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

I felt an uncomfortable connection with the main character of Maybe in Another Life, Hannah Martin. The book opens on her deciding to move from New York to Los Angeles, where she grew up. Hannah has bounced around from city to city, feeling unsettled in her career and unsure where home is. Ah, the millennial dilemma, What am I doing with my life? Am I doing enough? Should I try something else?
*Followed by an abrupt reimagining of entire life.* 

Hannah’s biological parents have lived in London since Hannah was in High School. They moved to allow Hannah’s sister to pursue her dancing dreams in the London ballet school. Hannah stayed behind with her best friend Gabby, and Gabby’s parents who acted like surrogates to Hannah. Moving back to L.A. with Gabby is as close to coming home as Hannah thinks she can get. She also becomes distinctly aware that Ethan, her ex-boyfriend from High School will be there. In a lovely series of banter-filled conversations, it’s clear that both girls still think he and Hannah would make a good couple.

Before I dive into plot any further, I need to address Gabby and Hannah’s friendship. Reid understands the core of a solid female friendship. The conversation between these two is so real and easy, and their comfort with each other jumps of the pages. The beautiful depiction of their camaraderie flows throughout the entirety of the book. If you can find no other reason to pick up this book, do it for this friendship.

The prospect of an entire novel based off a woman’s decision on whether or not to go home with a man at the end of the night does not appeal to me. It seems petty and shallow. Luckily, I didn’t know that was the premise of this story before I picked it up, so I had no time to question it. By the moment Hannah makes her fated choice(s) I was already fully committed to her life, her struggles, and the lovely relatability of the prose that described her. The reason I included plural “choice(s)” directly relates to the structure of the remainder of the novel. From that night with that boy, the book branches, into two parallel storylines: in one, Hannah decides to go home with Ethan (we all knew I was talking about him), and in the other, she goes home with Gabby.

I absolutely loved the two-parallel-universe-approach to this story. At first there were huge plot points that felt clichéd to me (hint: something to do with a car crash), but I got past them once each story had swept me up fully. Reid essentially gave me the pleasure of reading two books at a time, both equally alternately heart-wrenching and heart-warming. I didn’t like one more than the other, I loved them both. I was happy and sad and angry for Hannah and Gabby as they struggled through the wrenches that were thrown their way.

I thought it was particularly interesting the way that Reid had the same events play out in both storylines, but altered the characters’ reactions based off of what experiences they had had in that particular branch of the story. As the novel drew to a close, the two plots grew closer and closer together, until the same exact scene played out, but with different characters playing different roles. This was such a unique and fascinating way of storytelling, and I closed the book with my heart full of happiness for both Hannahs. Read this book.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Uncategorized

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Nightingale with Cookies

St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: February 3, 2015
Genre: Historical Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I always go into World War II novels with a bit of trepidation. I know that they will make me experience at least a couple of the following emotions: sadness, discomfort, anger, bitterness. Reading for me is an escape from reality, and I don’t necessarily want to be escaping into a story that makes me uncomfortable. I read a lot of horrifying thrillers, but they differ for me in that they are wholly fictional. Historical fiction forces me to confront real horrors.

The Nightingale moves back and forth between the stories of Vianne Mauriac, and her sister, Isabelle Rossignol, living in France during the war. Vianne has always been the more grounded of the two. Her husband Antoine is off fighting in the war, and Vianne does all she can to give her daughter Sophie every comfort possible in the increasingly sparse and trying times. A succession of Nazis billet with Vianne in her home, the first very polite, and uncomfortably attractive to Vianne, and the second, horribly violent and cruel. Vianne eventually begins to help save Jewish children whose families are deported. She has fake papers created for them, and tends to them at the local orphanage.

Meanwhile, Isabelle aids the war in a more active manner, locating downed pilots and helping them escape. Her journeys back and forth through the mountains are increasingly dangerous, and her hope of one day reuniting with the man she loves grows dimmer and dimmer each day.

I enjoyed the focus on the ways that women aided the efforts to fight against the Nazis. Despite the vast personality differences between the sisters, each found her own way to make a difference. While Vianne’s husband had no choice but to leave and fight, the choices of the women to risk their lives for the effort was incredibly admirable and insightful. I also appreciated the depictions of family threaded throughout the narrative. When Vianne’s best friend, who is Jewish, is deported without her son, Vianne takes him in, and instills in him a new past in which he was adopted from Vianne’s aunt who died. The relationship they are able to cultivate, and the decision she must make to eventually send him to America to be with his blood relatives was heartbreaking. 

There were also excerpts from present day. I don’t believe the reader is aware of who the old woman is narrating these parts, but we learn that she has received an invitation to return to Paris. She has a close relationship with her son, though her daughter has passed away. The ultimate conclusion of who she was, and what she had been through, as well as the truth surrounding her son, was heart-wrenching. 

Ultimately, I found this book to be too long. A lot of the storyline felt monotonous, with similar scenes playing over and over again. As compelling as the plot is, it was much too drawn out for me. I believe the story could have been more powerful if communicated in fewer pages.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

The Farm by Joanne Ramos ~ Book Review

Morgan

IMG_1866

Random House
Release Date: May 7, 2019
Genre: Fiction
My Rating: 🍪

The premise of this book sounded very Handmaid’s Tale-esque, and I went into it with that thought in mind. That may have been my downfall. The Farm takes place primarily at a bougie retreat where Hosts (Westworld, much?!) are paid very well to be surrogates for wealthy Clients. The Hosts are led to believe that their clients probably cannot physically have children of their own, but it’s more likely the case that they just can’t be bothered to carry a baby and deal with pregnancy, so they pay their way out of it.

Jane, the protagonist, who immigrated from the Philippines, applies to be a Host out of desperation. She has a baby daughter of her own, and no way to provide for her. Many of the Hosts are in similar situations. The vast majority of them are immigrants, and all are in need of money. 

Although the concept of this story was extremely interesting, the actual plot fell flat. The girls at the farm felt one dimensional, like caricatures of a personality type that were pushed too far, and Jane was endlessly meek and repeatedly cleaning up after herself. She didn’t exude the emotion or internal insight that would have made me care about her. The moments in the book that were clearly supposed to be twists frustrated me more than anything else. After building up something exciting, there was then no real follow up. 

I read about half of this book. Maybe the rest of it would have completely sucked me in and changed my mind, but there are too many options patiently waiting on my TBR for me to waste time reading something I’m uninterested in. Sadly, it was a DNF for me.

My Rating: 🍪
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Book Review, Nonfiction, Uncategorized

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou ~ Book Review

Morgan

Bad Blood with Cookies

Knopf
Release Date: May 21, 2018
Genre: Nonfiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I got the same response every time I thrusted this book at an unsuspecting friend imploring them that they had to read it.

“Bad Blood? Why does that sound familiar? Oh, yeah, Taylor Swift.”

No.

Well, yes, but no. Why don’t more people talk about this book and the scandal behind it? And I do not use the word scandal lightly. It was truly that. A health tech ‘entrepreneur,’ growing a start-up into a billion dollar company based off of… nothing? How can that be real?

John Carreyrou’s extensive investigative journalism into this piece offers an in-depth timeline of Elizabeth Holmes’ rise to tech stardom. Carreyrou, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, begins his exposé by chronicling Holmes’ life prior to her move to Silicon Valley. He offers details about her life at home, and her childhood dream of being a billionaire. She gets into Stanford; she drops out of Stanford. It’s all a steady outline of her character, the details of which are filled in as she begins her startup: Theranos.

Carreyrou does an excellent job of portraying Holmes in a way that made me steadily hate her, despite a not-intrinsically biased depiction. I guess he was just being honest. Holmes is obsessed with becoming the next Steve Jobs, so much so, that she takes to exclusively wearing black turtlenecks, and schedules meetings on the same days of the week that Apple executives have meetings. She hires unnecessarily extensive security for herself and her headquarters, and gives everything a code name. Her paranoia and pointed fixation on Steve Jobs made me distinctly uncomfortable about her as a person. I was also maybe a little biased, since I knew the general gist of where the story was going. 

I was astonished by what employees put up with at Theranos. The management style was abusive, and included using intense tracking of time at the office, and computer usage as constant fear tactics. The unbelievable turnover rates led to an environment that lacked steady internal communication, which played out well for Holmes and her partner, since no one employee fully knew where the company stood on different projects. 

Carreyrou walks the reader through each of his sources as he investigates Theranos. He primarily finds previous employees who are willing to speak up, although Theranos seems to always catch wind of the situation, and tales most of his interviewees. Some of these situations started to feel a little repetitive towards the end, but I suppose they did a good job of highlighting the unending lengths the company would go to to protect itself.

The sheer number of high-powered executives and business people who associated themselves with Theranos wholeheartedly and with full confidence was mind boggling. In fact, that’s a good word to describe the entirety of this narrative. If you’re looking for several hundred pages of incredibly frustrating, highly addictive nonfiction, pick up Bad Blood.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Turn of the Key with Pumpkin Cookie

Gallery/Scout Press
Release Date: August 6, 2019
Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

This book was probably a five star read until the last few chapters. Maybe a four and a half. Regardless, the way things wrapped up was frustrating and anger-inducing, and made me feel cheated of the immense enjoyment I got from reading the rest of the book.

This book centers around Heatherbrae house, where Rowan applies to be a nanny. The house is old, and has a dark history (think possible murder), but the new residents have happily remodeled nearly every inch of it, and installed state-of-the-art technology in the form of the Happy App, which monitors rooms and controls the lights, doors, heat, and pretty much everything else. Talk about a bandaid on a bullet hole. It’s kind of hard to erase the creepiness of that kind of a place. The omnipresent setting was distinctly reminiscent of the Westaway manor in The Death of Mrs. Westaway, also by Ruth Ware (see my review of that guy here!). In fact, much of the story was similar. There was a parallelism of a young woman who lived alone uprooting her life to travel to a creepy house and get embroiled in the family there. 

The technology was an interesting addition to this novel. It was actually pretty central, and it seemed like a fallback that kept getting blamed for everything.

Woken up in the night by the freezing cold?
Must’ve hit something on the heat-controlling-panel.
Lights won’t turn on?
Technology must be to blame!

It sort of undermined the creepy-factor of this thriller. I wanted there to actually be something sinister in the house besides just a newfangled iPad. 

I was kind of confused about pacing in this book. It seemed like Rowan was only at the house for a few days, but her relationships with everyone around her made it seem like it had been weeks or months. Near the end, as she considers if she will stay there, it seemed strange that she wasn’t acknowledging the fact that she had just barely unpacked.

I did love the spooky-thriller-esque parts of this book. The poison garden, the history of the house, and the two little girls who ominously warn Rowan that the ghosts are angry she is there. That was probably what kept me reading most — wanting to know what was at the heart of the children’s unhappiness. 

A lot happened at the end of this book, and although I was surprised by the major twist about Rowan, and enjoyed that, there were other pieces that felt unnecessary. The book is written as letters to Rowan’s lawyer while she is in jail, and a couple final letters she receives from individuals at Heatherbrae. They left the story feeling incomplete.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Last Time I Lied with Halloween Cookies

Dutton
Release Date: July 3, 2018
Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Riley Sager may well be climbing the ranks of my favorite thriller authors, and The Last Time I Lied did not disappoint. Sager puts a spin on the old ‘I see dead people’ trope with the main character, Emma Davis. Emma compulsively paints three girls: Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, who went missing from her cabin when they were all at camp together as teenagers. She paints them, and then she covers them up completely with other images, in essence, making them disappear over and over again. Emma’s art has become widely celebrated, but only she knows what lies beneath the scenes she paints. 

The creation of this cycle of constant disappearance is fascinating. It is a wonderful way to highlight Emma’s compulsion and obsession with the past, and make clear to the reader that although Emma no longer speaks about the events of Camp Nightingale, they are always on her mind. 

Sager splits the story between past and present, alternating chapters in Emma’s adult life, with those from fifteen years earlier. In the present, Emma is invited to return to Camp Nightingale as it reopens for the first time since her summer there. She accepts, and takes a position teaching painting to a new set of girls. Thus, each thread of the plot follows Emma as she adjusts to being at camp.

In each narrative, Emma meets the set of three girls staying in her cabin with her. As an adult, she reconnects with the family who owns the camp, including Frannie the director, and her son Theo, whom she had a crush on when she was little. Sager does a great job of not allowing the reader to fully trust anyone. Each character seems as if they could be guilty for one reason or another.

Emma begins to piece together research that Vivian was pursuing at the time of her disappearance. The discoveries Emma makes reminded me a little too much of the plot twist in Lock Every Door, Sager’s latest work. Just because an idea works phenomenally in one novel, doesn’t necessarily mean it should be reused (although technically, Lock Every Door would have been borrowing from The Last Time I Lied). Nonetheless, there were still enough twists and turns to keep me intrigued. Nothing was as straightforward as Emma is initially led to believe, which kept me a happy reader.

The best thrillers are those where the last few pages change everything, and this one definitely fits that bill. I was left rethinking the entire story. There was no way the ending could have been guessed ahead of time (I don’t think), but there were a few little loose ends that pointed in the right direction, once I looked back. Now on to the next Riley Sager book while I devour these cookie dough stuffed chocolate sprinkle cookies.

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My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell ~ Book Review

Morgan

A Stranger on the Beach

St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: July 23, 2019
Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Caroline is the proud owner of a lavish new beach house that overlooks the sea. Not only is it exactly what she wanted, it is also a splendid status symbol. Aiden, a local bartender, is similarly enthralled with the home, but for an entirely different reason. The land on which the home is built belonged to his family for years. He has myriad fond memories of staring out to sea from the spot that Caroline’s new mansion now occupies.

Caroline takes note of Aiden, watching her house. When she realizes that her husband has (probably) been cheating on her, and happens to stumble into Aiden’s bar distraught, one thing leads to another, and they tumble into bed together. Aiden and Caroline’s story is odd. The way Campbell wrote Aiden’s obsession seemed to come out of nowhere. Even if he had a history of instability, it wasn’t believable. Everything lined up much too perfectly to try to convince the reader that they were being told a certain story. It was very obvious to me what the twist was going to be, and I felt like I was just waiting for it to unfold. I’ve read a lot of thrillers, so I’m not easily tricked by predictable false perspectives.

When Caroline’s husband Jason goes missing, I was a little more intrigued, I couldn’t figure out how his storyline would quite fit in with Caroline and Aiden’s. His ongoing excuse for his shady behavior was that he had work obligations. Not actually knowing what he did, this always seemed a little too vague.

Ultimately, I was intrigued enough to finish this book. I was desperate to know how Campbell would unveil the truth. That being said, I would pass on this one if you’re weighing thrillers. The structure is too predictable, even if the plot is, at times, riveting.

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My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston ~ Book Review

Morgan

 

Red, White & Royal Blue with Doughnut

Griffin
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Genre: Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I know it’s not plot relevant, and I know (probably) no one else cares, but can we start by addressing the lack of an oxford comma in the title? There’s a constant battle between those of us who stand by that pesky punctuation mark and those of us who don’t, but every time I look at the cover of this book it’s all I can think about. Okay, now on to the review, which I would like to give the sub-title: ‘Morgan reads a romance novel.’ This is one of the few books I’ve ever read that is firmly planted in the romance genre. I won it in a giveaway, (and, of course, saw glowing reviews splashed here, there, and everywhere), so I decided to give it a go.

I could not put this book down. It sucked me into a warm happy place that I could only emerge from once there were no more pages left to read. McQuiston brings the reader into the world of Alex, the First Son of the United States of America. We get to know his sister, June, and his best friend, Nora, and how his life has changed since his mom (!!) became the president. Following an unfortunate cake-related debacle while attending an event in London, Alex is forced to forge a fake friendship with Henry, the Prince of England, to help clear his image for the press. As their relationship grows, Alex learns a lot about himself, and the future he always envisioned begins to transform.

McQuiston’s descriptions of Alex’s friends, both employed by the White House, and not, were vivid, realistic, and often humorous. She paints June and Nora as hugely different personalities with equal influence on Alex’s life. Their support and friendship was truly heartwarming. Okay, the entire book warmed my heart, not just that part. President Mom, as she’s often called, was also well created as a badass career woman in politics, who can whip up a PowerPoint presentation in under 10 minutes for any given occasion.

Some of the political details in the narrative felt a little too on the nose, for instance, the mention of personal email servers. We get it. The book talks extensively about the 2016 election, the subsequent 2020 election, and the first female president. Trust me, I see the connection to real life, but the way it’s written makes me feel like McQuiston is trying very hard to wipe away the reality that is 2019 America. I would rather have had the politics seem less ‘what could have been,’ and more entirely fictional. 

The other caveat I would like to make is that the word ‘wet’ should not be used to describe everything. Wet hugs, wet eyelashes, and wet mouths abound in McQuiston’s prose. All authors have words they fall back on time and again without realizing it, but this one really stuck out to me. Please find a new descriptor for your next book (side note to scream about the fact that this is Casey McQuiston’s first!).

Despite my trepidation at delving into a romance novel, this one has my support. If you don’t consider yourself a “romance novel” kind of person, do you like being happy and warm and idealistic for a little while? If the answer is yes, pick up this book. (Fair warning though that evidently romance narratives do include sex scenes, so if you’re a newbie to the genre, put on your seatbelt).

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing ~ Book Review

Morgan

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Berkley
Release Date: March 26, 2019
Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Fast read alert! I sped through this book, and suggest not starting it unless you’ve got a good chunk of reading time to devote to it. This story is very dark, and very Dexter. If you’re not into that sort of thing, or are a newcomer to the thriller genre, maybe take a step back to assess what you’re about to get yourself into. 

Millicent and her husband (our narrator) are a typical looking couple from the outside. In their spare time, however, they have developed an unusual extracurricular activity together: murder. When I sat down to write this review, I found it odd that I couldn’t remember the narrator’s name until I realized that he doesn’t have one. Obviously an intentional choice on Downing’s part, the realization left me feeling the way everyone in their town who was searching for the killer must have felt: he could be anyone, he is anonymous.

Yet, our narrator is not the main murderer. Although he and his wife choose their victims together, she is the one who does the killing. Our narrator doesn’t ask questions about this part. He assumes it is straightforward and completed quickly, a laughably simplistic assessment of how killing someone must go down. He aids mostly in the selection of the women, ensuring they don’t have too many friends who will notice they are missing. Occasionally, his involvement with them goes a step further. He will often assume his alter ego Tobias, a deaf man who communicates with ladies using his phone and sometimes gets carried away and sleeps with them.

The couple’s children, Jenna and Rory, are typical teenagers: they just want to fit in at school, and experiment with romance. Millicent runs a strict household: very limited sugar, all meals eaten together, and weekly movie nights, yet the kids are generally content. That is, until their town is suddenly plagued with murders, and the suspected return of a serial killer named Owen. 

As his family life starts to spiral out of control, our narrator begins to question exactly what his wife has been up to after they choose their victim. Where is she keeping these women, and what is she doing with them? As his concerns grow, their little pastime seems less sexy and more horrifying. I knew this story was going to be dark from the start, but the extent of it was unexpected. This was an exploration of the most evil of human psyches and I ate up every minute of it. The layers and levels of detail that Downing incorporates and brings back around in this tale are incredibly impressive, and I was shocked when I read that My Lovely Wife is her debut novel. I tend to hold high standards for thrillers since I read so many of them, but this is definitely near the top of my recommendation list!

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

Normal People: A Novel, by Sally Rooney ~ Book Review

Morgan

Normal People and DonutFaber and Faber
Release Date: August 28, 2018
Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Given all the hype surrounding this book, I was disappointed. The first thing that really stood out to me was the stylistic choice to omit quotation marks, making the narrative feel very stream-of-consciousness. This was a little jarring at first, but I came to like it. For me, it made the story feel more personal to the characters, as if experiencing conversations the same way they would.

The book follows the relationship between Connell and Marianne, beginning in High School. Connell’s mother works as a cleaning lady, and one of her clients is Marianne’s family. The two of them seldom interact at school, Marianne is a loner without friends, and Connell is popular. Nonetheless, a romance sparks between them. A romance that they only acknowledge when they’re alone together.

Connell’s mother is skeptical of the scope of the relationship: she loves Marianne, and she loves Connell, but she is concerned that he is mistreating Marianne by only paying attention to her in public. I mean, agreed. I loved Connell’s mom.

Unsurprisingly, the two have an on-again-off-again relationship. They seem to always be judging the people the other one surrounds themselves with. It all felt very repetitive to me. There was a constant struggle about whether or not they should hook up, and endless miscommunication. That’s what annoyed me the most. They kept breaking up just because they were bad at communicating. Like one person heard one thing and the other one heard something else and no one asked for any clarification. They were infuriatingly passive. Their relationship felt unbearably toxic, and I was deflated by the thought that they wasted so many years chasing each other in circles regardless of their fictional-ness. 

The writing in this book was exceptional, and the style was unique and interesting. The characters were detailed and vivid. The focus on their strained relationships with sex and violence was powerful and added a lot to my perception of Marianne and the household she was raised in. With all that being said, this story really didn’t blow me away like I was anticipating based on how much acclaim it has received. The maple bacon doughnut that I had to accompany it, however, absolutely did blow me away.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
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