Book Review, Fiction

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Talk about an unlikeable, delusional main character!! When June Hayward’s loose friend and literary darling Athena Liu dies suddenly, June steals her latest manuscript and finishes it herself under a pen name. What follows is a darkly humorous exploration of cultural appropriation, racism, and June’s utter lack of accountability.

Athena’s books focused on the trauma of her Chinese characters, a niche she felt pressured by the publishing industry to play into time and time again. June, writing under the name Juniper, leaves her race ambiguous and only tells anyone she is white when asked directly. Rumors begin to swirl on social media accusing her of stealing Athena’s work, kicking off a whole new cycle of crazy.

Kuang does an incredible job of writing characters who are unlikeable. She paints an uncomfortable picture of the publishing industry’s interactions with marginalized authors. Her dialogue is painfully good at getting to the heart of this story and I could not stop listening (to the audiobook). It’s cringe-worthy in a way that verges on satire.

June is so selfishly focused on her own success and using her intellect to get out of negative situations. I was holding my breath to find out what would lead to her eventual final downfall, but I never could have seen the ending coming. It left me utterly shook and continued, all the way to the last paragraph, to hammer home the themes and messages that played out through the entire book.  

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction
Similar to: In Five Years
Release Date: March 19, 2024 (Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for my ARC)

Rebecca Serle has done it again. Daphne, our protagonist, receives a slip of paper whenever she meets a new man she’ll have a romantic connection with. The paper tells her how long they will be romantically involved. That is, until she meets Jake, whose slip of paper has only his name.

I absolutely love the way Serle incorporates the littlest bit of the fantastical into an everyday narrative. It makes for such captivating stories. I loved that there was no justification for the expiration dates in Daphne’s life, they simply were. Her relationship with Jake seemed so effortless and heartwarming and I believed in their chemistry. I also appreciated the way the story explored her past and her previous relationships, illustrating how the expiration dates came to be correct.

This is a short book and a very quick read, but it made my jaw literally drop multiple times. They were twists I would never have guessed were coming and moved the story along in such interesting ways. I will say I was not 1000% happy with the ending, but I loved the rest of the book so much that it still gets 5 stars from me.

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Buy Expiration Dates at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

A Winter in New York by Josie Silver ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance
Read if you liked: The Christmas Orphans Club

I’ve really enjoyed Josie Silver’s previous books, but this one really missed the mark for me. Iris moves to New York to follow in her late mother’s footsteps and stumbles upon a gelato shop she recognizes from a photo her mom cherished. When she meets the owner, Gio Belotti, she realizes that his family and hers are deeply intertwined.

I found Iris’s choices to be kind of immoral and it made it hard for me to respect her or her choices throughout the book. Like I didn’t really want there to be a happy conclusion for her because of the way she was acting, which made me unable to get invested in the romance.

During the book, there’s some reflection on Iris’s mom’s time in a band and how it related her to the Belotti family. I wanted so much more of that. I wanted her mom’s perspective and life on tour and the complexity of the relationships between band members. Instead, that thread of the narrative felt very much told to the reader, rather than shown.

The ending of this book really bothered me too. It felt over the top and slapped together, like suddenly Iris just [insert spoiler]??!

I liked the winter in New York/exploring the city vibe and the found family element of the story, but nothing else was working for me.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Mille r~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fantasy

The Song of Achilles is a retelling of Achilles’ life as told in The Iliad. It focuses on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as they meet, fall for each other, and go to battle in Troy. We know all along that this story won’t have a happy ending and the wonderfully organic unfolding of their feelings for each other made it all the more painful to become immersed in their world and their story.

The source material for this story is an epic, but it felt to me like making this adaptation could have been an opportunity to stray from that format. The parts of the book that were character-driven were beautiful, but it seemed like nothing really happened for the majority of it and then there was a lot of rushed action at the end. In my opinion, it could have been shorter and more focused and packed a greater punch.

I enjoy Greek mythology and many pieces of this story were familiar to me. I enjoyed getting to reimagine them through the lens of this romance. Achilles and Patroclus were flawed and often frustrating, but I found myself rooting for them nonetheless and the ending absolutely gutted me.

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Book Review, Fiction

Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

What a clever premise for a book. Sam and Nisha lead very different lives. Sam is a mother, trying to support her depressed husband as he copes with the losses of his job and his father. Nisha’s ultra-wealthy husband has suddenly cut her off and stopped communicating with her. When there’s a mix-up between the two women’s bags at the gym, they’re quite literally forced to walk in the other’s shoes.

These two characters were detailed and distinct. Moyes’ created two women with depth of character and background and their personalities were rich. The choices they made, although sometimes questionable, were always aligned with who they were.

There isn’t a ton of action in the story, it’s more so a character exploration, but it didn’t feel as long as it was. That said, the ultimate conclusion was a little bit far-fetched and made the story feel a bit cheesy.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller
Similar to: The Housemaid

The Housemaid’s Secret revisits Millie the maid as she takes on a new job working for Douglas Garrick. If you’ve read The Housemaid (which you should before picking this up), the premise will be familiar, with Millie quickly suspecting some sort of abuse is occurring in the luxurious penthouse she cleans.

McFadden’s books are sooo easily digestible. I flew through this one as Millie drew nearer and nearer to doing something drastic, all while knowing she was somehow being misled. I loved the flip in perspective halfway through the book that illustrated just what was at play.

If you know McFadden’s style, you know that there’s not necessarily a ton of interesting choices being made with the writing, but I could not read this book fast enough (Although, I will say, Millie’s relationship with her boyfriend was harped on one too many times for my liking).

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

When Woman Were Dragons is set in almost our world, but not quite. The Mass Dragoning of 1955 saw thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, but it’s not spoken about anymore. Even Alex’s aunt, who has since transformed herself is no longer spoken of.

The concept behind this book and the way that society responded was fascinating and applicable to real life. The repression of women and conversations about their experiences was blown up to dragon-scale, but was still relatable. That said, it was someone one-dimensional and repetitive.

Alex finds herself raising her younger cousin, Bea, who she has been trained to introduce as her sister so as not to reference the aunt that became a dragon. Bea, however, is preoccupied with dragons, which consistently gets her in trouble. Alex must navigate empathy for her cousin with the expectations of society. Alex’s circumstances made her a compelling main character. She was forced to grow up so quickly and come to her own conclusions about the world around her.

The situations that Alex and Bea dealt with began to feel somewhat repetitive to me after a while and often didn’t seem to move the plot forward. In contrast, a lottt happened at the end of the book that I think could have been slowed down and explored more fully. This lack of balance kept me from fully loving this book

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The Secret History by Donna Tartt ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery
Similar to: If We Were Villains

Richard comes from a poor background and can’t believe his luck when he’s able to attend a prestigious college in New England. When he arrives, he soon finds himself emersed in the cultish Classics program, which necessitates that he take all his classes with the same professor and band of students.

The characters in this story were perfectly horrible. Tartt did an exceptional job of creating privileged, selfish students who gave no thought to how their actions impacted others, and whose magnetism mesmerized Richard. We know from page one that one of them ends up dead, and it was captivating to watch the web of relationships tangle and unravel, and to watch each person try to justify their actions.

The way that Tartt writes had me completely immersed in this story from the get-go. The setting seemed to come to life in a way that made it feel like more was happening than actually was. I usually struggle with long books (mainly because I like a lot of action and they tend to be more character and/or description-driven), but this on carried my interest and intrigue all the way through.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

Wallace lived to work. He was seen as ruthless by all those around him and kept most everyone at arm’s length. When he finds himself at Charon’s Crossing, a tea shop owned by Hugo who informs Wallace that he’s dead, Wallace begins to question whether he ever really lived.

Conceptually, I loved the idea of this magical tea shop and the cast of characters who owned it ferrying ghosts to the afterlife on the side. It was charming and whimsical and I enjoyed seeing them interact with customers and explain how things worked to Wallace.

I found there to be a lot of characters to keep track of, and to me things seemed a little jumpy. Wallace suddenly becomes a better person, a romance pops up out of nowhere, the rules of their universe change. These big moments didn’t feel believable to me because they happened seemingly without build-up. 

This was a sweet book, but it was kind of slow and I didn’t take too much away from it besides a contented warm fuzzy feeling.

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix ~ Book review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller

Lynnette is a final girl: the only survivor of a horrible massacre. She, along with five other final girls, have met with a therapist for years to support each other as they struggle to move forward from this unique trauma. When one woman fails to show up to a meeting, Lynnette fears that there is more horror in store for each of them.

This book was interspersed with articles about the sensationalization of final girls and reviews of the movies and games created based off of real women’s situations. These incorporations did a lot to help me understand the layer’s to Lynnette’s experiences and her paranoia.

I really liked the premise of this book and the style of writing was enjoyable. That being said, there were a lot of characters with a lot of backstory and I couldn’t keep them straight. Their stories were too similar for them to be distinct in my mind, making it challenging to follow the narrative and to keep track of Lynnette’s many guesses about who was after them.

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