Book Review, Fiction, thriller

None of this is True by Lisa Jewell ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller
Similar to: Emma in the Night

Podcast books seem to really be picking up in recent years. Alix is a podcast host, highlighting the lives of different women. When she runs into Josie at a restaurant on both of their forty-fifth birthdays, Josie latches onto Alix, convincing her that she deserves to be the subject of a podcast.

The book bounces back and forth between present day narrative of the two women interacting, snippets of their recorded podcast, and updates from a documentary about them. It’s clear based on the documentary that something dark is coming for the two women and it made it hard for me to put this book down.

Josie is one of the most spine-tinglingly off-putting characters I’ve read. Clearly unreliable, her actions made me cringe throughout the entirety of the book and I wanted to shake Alix sometimes. The real story here is incredibly dark and twisted, so be warned.

Despite the snappy format, I found that the narrative dragged toward the middle. We kept getting story after story that we couldn’t trust and I was ready for things to be figured out long before they were. I also did not think the ending did justice to the rest of the story.

Solid, but not standout.

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Book Review, Historical Fiction

The Beach at Summerly by Beatriz Williams ~ Book Review

Morgan

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

Lovvve me a summer drama/romance set on an island. The Beach at Summerly explores Emilia’s life in both 1946 and 1954. The earlier storyline explores the Winthrop Island community as they readjust after the war. Two childhood friends, Amory and Shep Peabody are back on the island introducing a tangle of confused romantic feelings on Emilia’s end. New to the island, is the boys’ aunt, Olive, who is well-traveled, liberated, and entirely independent. In the present, Emilia is summoned to CIA headquarters to confront the consequences of the summer past and the help she provided in capturing a Soviet spy.

The earlier timeline of this story felt much more rich and fully fleshed to me. It explored the class dynamics between Emilia’s family and the wealthy ‘summer’ families and how it played into her feelings towards the Peabody boys and about her future. The dynamics between her and each family member were complicated and helped me understand her. I loved being immersed in the whirlwind of her life.

I felt like the later narrative didn’t do Emilia justice. To me, it didn’t really speak to the complicated feelings she must have had about the earlier summer and I had trouble connecting as much with her character and understanding how she’d gotten to where she was.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Look Closer by David Ellis ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Thriller
Similar to: The Last Mrs. Parrish

Okay, I don’t even know where to begin with this one. It was a big book and about halfway through things felt like they were wrapping up and I didn’t understand what else could happen – but there was SO much more to the story.

We get multiple perspectives in this narrative, all circling around Halloween night when a wealthy woman is found dead in her home. We jump forward and backward in time and get text messages and diary entries. It’s made clear from the get-go that some of our narrators are deceitful, but the deeper into the story I got, the less certain I was of who was actually conning who.

When you think the twists are done coming, they just keep going deeper and deeper, but it all makes sense in retrospect which I absolutely love from a thriller. If I reread this, I’ll do it with a completely different lens knowing what I do now.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such an intricate thriller and highly recommend it for fans of the genre.

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Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Historical Fiction
Similar to: The Four Winds

Twins Stella and Desiree run away from their tiny town together but could not wind up with more different lives. Years later, we follow Desiree as she leaves her abusive husband and takes her daughter Jude back to her hometown. Much of the book follows Jude and her experiences as the person with the darkest skin in many of her circles. Jude also finds herself looking for Stella, who vanished. When she finally finds her, she discovers that Stella has been passing as white and has a white husband and a daughter.

This story explores colorism and the way that it impacts each sister’s life and the lives of their families. It was interesting to understand Stella’s fear that her secret may be uncovered and the lengths she went to protect herself. The complexity of the life she chose for herself created a very nuanced character and it was fascinating to contrast the way she thought with her sister’s point of view.

I really appreciated the multiple generations introduced through the story and getting to see how Stella and Desiree’s choices shaped their daughters. The two girls were so vastly different and it was fascinating to trace the threads of their mother’s lives that made them who they were.

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Buy The Vanishing Half at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Only One Left by Riley Sager ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Thriller
Similar to: Never Lie

Kit takes a job as a home health aide at Hope’s End, a dilapidated manor by the sea that was the site of a series of murders. Lenora Hope, now an old woman who can’t walk on her own or speak, was suspected of killing her parents and sister when she was a teenager, but her involvement was never confirmed. Kit begins getting to know Lenora and finds out that she has decided she’s ready to type out the story of what really happened that night.

The setting of the creaky old mansion by the sea made for the perfect setting for suspense. With the whole house set on a tilt and subject to the whims of the wind, it was hard to know what was ominous and what was just a product of this environment. 

I didn’t find Kit to be a terribly compelling main character. We know that she has delt with recent sorrow and hardship in her life, but I didn’t feel like I really got to know her character as much as I would have liked to.

We did, however, get a lot of Lenora’s backstory and I enjoyed the part of the book focused on her relationships with everyone else who lived at Hope’s End as she grew up. It opened a lot of doors for possibilities as to who committed the murders and kept me hooked.

There were a bunch of twists at the end of the story and it felt like one too many to me, but it also introduced some interesting additional character dynamics that I appreciated.

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Buy The Only One Left at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Romance

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance 

I am truly baffled by all the glowing reviews for this book. If you’re just looking for some smut without a strong narrative tying it together, knock yourself out, but I was hoping for a solid storyline I didn’t get.

Anastasia is a competitive figure skater heading toward an important competition when her team suddenly finds themselves forced to share their rink with the hockey team. Nate, the team captain, is immediately intrigued by Anastasia’s intensity and lack of interest in him and wants nothing more than to make her warm up to him.

From the fun, cute premise, this quickly devolved into a bunch of sex scenes and a random plotline of people getting punched and blaming random other people for it and Nate suddenly becoming a stand-in for Anastasia’s figure skating partner because of course there would be no other actual skater who could do that.

Anyway, big pass for me.

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Book Review, Science Fiction

The Measure by Nikki Erlick ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Sci-fi
Similar to: Our Missing Hearts

Not me sobbing in my bed when I finished this book!! The Measure is set in the real world, however, one day everyone over 22 wakes up to see that they have received a string that shows the remaining length of their life. So begins an exploration of how the world reacts, from different countries’ governments, to support groups, to the polarization that begins between ‘long stringers’ and ‘short stringers.’

The book follows a number of characters with different length strings (or who don’t look at their string at all) and shows how they each respond and how the arrival of the strings irrevocably change the course of their lives. I was concerned I would get confused between all the characters, but their stories and choices were distinct enough that it wasn’t a problem. The way that their stories merged and intertwined was beautiful and breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Both concept and execution of this story were impeccably done.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance
Similar to: Remarkably Bright Creatures, One Night on the Island

Wow, what a wonderful read. On the day that Evvie finally gets up the nerve to leave her horrible husband, he is killed in a car accident, leaving her to play the role of grieving widow. The complexity of the emotions Evvie is left to manage were enough to make her a compelling character. Dean, a former major league baseball pitcher, is running from his own demons when he rents out the apartment at Evvie’s house.

This was a slow burn romance, but I loved how it was based in a friendship that I truly believed in. The conversations between the two were fun and witty and serious and raw. I also enjoyed Evvie’s best friend Andy and the nuances of their friendship. Holmes does a wonderful job of showing the layers of different types of relationships and doing so in a way that was realistic.

There was definitely a heaviness to this book, but it felt more like actual life than a lot of fluffy contemporary romances do. To top it off, the writing was delightful.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller

Cass and her big sister Emma disappear one night, neither to be seen for three years. When Cass returns, she tells the police, to the best of her ability, about the island they were held by two strangers. The more Abby, the forensic psychiatrist on their case, hears, the less sure she is that she believes Cass’s story.

This is, above all, the story of a deeply dysfunctional family. It speaks to narcissism and the impact it can have on children. The way that Cass narrates her story makes it clear that she is spinning some sort of tale, but it is unclear why or which parts of it are true. The detailed description of her and Emma’s life being held captive kept me invested in the story and could not have prepared me for the ultimate unveiling of where Emma was.

I didn’t find Abby’s perspective as compelling as Cass’s – I felt like I needed more of her backstory, but she was an interesting point of view to include and added some context to Cass and Emma’s family dynamics.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Once More with Feeling by Elissa Sussman ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance
Similar to: Funny You Should Ask

If you’ve read Elissa Sussman’s previous book, Once More with Feeling will feel awfully familiar. It follows the life of teenage popstar Katee Rose whose career runs off the tracks after she finds herself drawn to another member of her boyfriend’s boyband, Cal. The narrative picks back up with Katee as an adult when she is auditioning for her dream role and none other than Cal shows up as the director.

I really enjoy the celebrity romance genre and liked the setting of rehearsals as the stage for Cal and Katee’s reconnection. As a main character though, Katee really bothered me. She felt incredibly passive in her own life and I was frustrated with her to the point where it was hard to care what happened to her. Additionally, there was no chemistry and no build up to the romance. I was not rooting for the two main characters to be together because I didn’t get to see why they were into each other.

This was a fast read and I liked the premise and the setting, but it could have used a lot more depth.

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Buy Once More with Feeling at an indie bookstore near you
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