Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Funny Story by Emily Henry ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance

It’s taken me a few weeks to get to writing this review (life has been a lot lately) and I’ve somehow managed to forget almost this entire book, which says a lot about my thoughts on it. Daphne’s life is upended when her fiance Peter runs off with his childhood best friend, Petra, and Daphne moves in with Petra’s ex, Miles. Did you get all that? It’s a pretty standard set-up for a contemporary romance and you know exactly where it’s going from the jump.

As always, Henry does witty banter extremely well and I found myself charmed by Miles and Daphne’s dialogue much of the time. (Not so much when he was commenting on her moaning while enjoying food…why was that mentioned so much).

I found Daphne and Miles’s thoughts about their respective exes to be sometimes problematic. They clearly hadn’t had time to process what happened before they were falling for each other and it worried me from a logical perspective.

This was a solid romance, but ultimately nothing really stood out to me. It felt predictable and a bit uninspired. Definitely one of my bottom two Henry books.

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Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Women by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

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

When Frances, “Frankie’s” brother leaves to serve in Vietnam during the war, she makes the bold decision to follow him and become an army nurse. Arriving in Vietnam, she is faced with horror and chaos she never could have imagined but, bolstered by the other nurses who become fast friends, Frankie soon finds intense meaning and pride in her work.

This book was wholly immersive and captivating. It’s clear Hannah did an extensive amount of research before writing this book and I felt like I could see everything Frankie was experiencing perfectly. Frankie is a heroic and believably flawed character. There are moments she is so admirable and moments when she makes decisions that are so clearly wrong for her. Her life during and after Vietnam was not easy, and the book follows her as she is met with hurdle after hurdle.

I absolutely adored the friends Frankie made in Vietnam and the way they showed up for her over and over even as they each chose different paths upon their return to the states. The bond of their shared experiences made for such a tigh friendship that was depicted wonderfully. All of the characters in fact, were so well written, detailed and nuanced, whether that made me love them or hate them.

Toward the end of the book, there are a lot of BIG THINGS that happen to Frankie back to back. This is when the story lost me a fraction. It just felt like too much crammed in too little of a timeline. Other than that, this is an incredible read.

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Buy The Women at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

This Spells Love by Kate Robb ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪
Genre: Romance

When Gemma finds herself drunk and crying over her breakup, she enlists the help of her sister, aunt, and best friend Dax to help her conduct a cleansing spell to erase her ex from her life. Lo and behold, Gemma wakes to find out that it was a little too powerful, and has sent her to an alternate reality where not only does her ex not know who she is, neither does Dax.

I appreciated the message behind this story about being thankful for the things you have in your life at the present moment. As Gemma sees what her life could be, she has to weigh that reality against the relationships she has lost because of the spell.

The romance in this book was so unrealistic. Dax goes from thinking Gemma is breaking into his store to suddenly being really into her pages later. Their flirting was so cringey and nothing about the relationship felt organic.

One thing that I love about this kind of book is seeing the person who time/line travels needing to navigate their new life and inevitably making mistakes. This was almost entirely glossed over in this book. Gemma picked everything up way too quickly, eliminating what could have been a great opportunity for more connection between her and her friends and family.

If you’re interested in a timeline hopping story, I’d suggest finding another one.

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Buy This Spells Love at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction

Down the Drain by Julia Fox ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Memoir

I read Down the Drain for a book club having no idea who Julia Fox is and, to be honest, I still don’t really know who she is. This memoir follows Julia’s life from the time she’s very young to present day. It paints a picture of a child who was denied love from her parents and forced to fend for herself from a young age.

Her time in NYC featured lots of drugs, a sugar daddy, and her escapades as a dominatrix. From there, we follow Julia to New Orleans and are chaotically introduced to friends who seem to come out of nowhere. It was a little hard to keep up with the pacing.

This is an overview of Julia’s life without any reflection. She tells her story exactly as it happens. It was fascinating to read about a journey so different from mine and to see how she was able to fight for herself and become famous (for what exactly, I’m still not sure). It was hard to see her make the same mistakes over and over without commenting on that at all, but I guess that’s either not the kind of book she wanted to write, or that self-awareness doesn’t exist. I think she woke up one day and said “I’m going to write a memoir” and that was all the forethought that went into it.

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Buy Down the Drain at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Mistakes We Never Made by Hannah Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

Mistakes We Never Made is the road trip journey of Emma and her will-they-won’t-they friend Finn as they attempt to track down a runaway bride, Sybil, in the days leading up to the wedding. I love me a road trip story, but this one reallyyy dragged. Emma kept making dumb decisions and assumptions about where Sybil was, like I could have found this woman faster. That said, I did enjoy her conversations with Finn and watching them untangle their past and the problems that had stood in the way of them getting together.

There were a lot of loose ends in this book which really frustrated me. We never fully figured out what went down with Emma and Finn on prom night, which is harped on incessantly, and we don’t even find out what happens with Sybil?? It felt like lazy writing! Like no one wanted to take the time to figure out what happened.

Parts of this book were fun flirty romps around the the country, but I cannot recommend it just for those sections.

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Buy Mistakes We Never Made at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery

There are so many layers to this book. It starts off with a missing person. Mia’s father, Adam, fails to return from a walk with her younger brother, Eugene, who is nonverbal. The family begins to work together to try to uncover anything hinting at Adam’s whereabouts.

As they go through his things, they find notebooks indicating that Adam was fascinated by the psychology behind happiness, and determining ‘happiness quotients.’ This took up a large portion of the book, and honestly, there were whole sections I kind of skimmed. I found the science interesting to an extent, but it didn’t feel like it was moving the story along.

The other big focus of the book is on Eugene and how he was misunderstood as someone with autism and Angelman syndrome. It goes in depth about the different types of teaching and learning they have explored to try to help Eugene communicate. The research that must have gone into this narrative was tremendous and it painted a really powerful picture of the difficulty and frustration Eugene, and others like him, deal with.

Each piece of this book was interesting on its own, but as a whole, it felt like too many BIG THINGS to fit into one book. Together, they bogged the narrative down somewhat and made it feel slow.

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Buy Happiness Falls at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Romance

Better Left Unsent by Lia Louis ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

I’ve been a huge fan of Lia Louis’s previous books, but there was something lacking from Better Left Unsent. The premise was unusual and had a lot of promise: Millie writes down her thoughts, the ones she would never say out loud, in draft emails as a way of releasing them. One day, she finds that all her drafts were delivered. Millie is left to pick up the pieces of her life when her deepest thoughts have been shared with the exact people who were never supposed to see them.

Louis always writes wonderfully quirky and loveable characters, and this was no exception. Millie and her friends seem realistic in their quirks and I loved spending time with them. Although the romance was on the back burner for much of the book, I really enjoyed Jack and Millie’s chemistry. It was clear that they complemented each other wonderfully and I was so rooting for them.

The premise definitely did not feel deep enough to sustain the whole book. Millie’s constant need to clean up after herself/the emails got old pretty quickly and there wasn’t much else plot-wise to keep me hooked.

The loveable characters and promise of romance kept me reading, but the charm I expect from Louis’s books wasn’t sustained throughout.

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Buy Better Left Unsent at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, thriller

The Teacher by Frieda McFadden ~ Book Revie

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller

This book is nottt going to be for everyone. It’s one of the more twisted McFadden books, focusing on the relationship between Addie, a high school student, and her English teacher, Nate. Nate makes Addie feel special at a time in her life when she’s at her lowest of lows and no other students want to spend time with her. As their relationship escalates, she quickly becomes obsessively jealous of Nate’s wife Eve, who herself feels trapped in a loveless marriage.

McFadden’s short, snappy chapters always make her books breeze by and this was no exception. Told from alternating perspectives, I loved getting to know the secrets each of the main characters was harboring. We know from the prologue that someone ends up digging a grave and although I guessed pretty early on who it was for, I couldn’t wait to see how we would get there.

In typical McFadden fashion, there was a big old twist at the end. At first I was shocked in the way only a truly twisty twist can do, but if I think about it too much it just…doesn’t make sense. It didn’t put me off the whole book, but it definitely could have been better thought out.

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Buy The Teacher at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

What an unexpected surprise Tom Lake was for me. Lara’s three daughters come home to the family cherry farm in the spring of 2020 as the pandemic sets in. To pass the time, they request that their mom tell them about the time when she dated the famous actor Peter Duke. Lara transports us and her girls back in time to when she first began acting weaves a fascinating and nuanced story of her life and her relationships.

As much as this story focused on the past, I found the portions in the present fascinating, hearing about the labor involved with running the farm and the ways that the family considered the impacts of the pandemic on their lives. Having spent some time back with my parents at the start of Covid myself, this was particularly interesting. The complexity of the emotions Lara feels about having her girls home was compelling.

Lara’s journey in the limelight was quite at odds with her later life and made for a really refreshing contrast between the two running narratives. Her time acting focused on playing Emily in Our Town, but you definitely don’t need to be familiar with the play to understand the book. I’m shocked that hearing about the same characters over and over again didn’t start to feel old, but something about Patchett’s writing and the way Lara’s life changed from performance to performance kept the story moving and feeling fresh.

Tom Lake isn’t especially action packed. It looks deeply at relationships and how they change, both as people change and as circumstances do. This was such a gentle and immersive narrative and really reminded me of the slower pace of life when the pandemic first began.

I cannot recommend the audiobook enough. It’s narrated by Meryl Streep and she made it truly a joy to listen to.

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Buy Tom Lake at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Romance

The Second Chance Year by Melissa Wiesner ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance
Read if you liked: The Good Part

I saw this book compared to Josie Silver and Rebecca Serle and that perhaps set my expectations too high. Sadie’s life feels like it’s falling apart. She’s lost her job, her boyfriend, and her apartment and finds herself crashing in the spare bedroom of her brother’s childhood friend. With nothing to lose, she makes a wish to redo the last year of her life and low and behold, her wish is granted.

In an attempt to keep the “bad” things from happening to her all over again, Sadie finds herself censoring her words and actions and trying to fit into a mold she thinks will get her where she wants to go. I found this conceptually interesting, but it quickly felt repetitive and made me frustrated with her as a character.

The secondary characters in Sadie’s life were really lovely and interesting and the found-family she created around her ultimately helped her to figure out what was most important to her. I appreciated the way this journey helped Sadie to find herself and thought the premise was an interesting way to approach it (albeit, not a unique one).

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Buy The Second Chance Year at an indie bookstore near you
The Second-Chance Year on Goodreads