Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren ~ Book Review

Morgan

Gallery Books
Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I was so wonderfully surprised by Something Wilder. Although this is definitely romance, there’s also a ton of adventure and even some mystery. The storyline felt very fresh to me. Lily Wilder leads ‘treasure hunts’ through the canyons of Utah for a living, using maps left behind by her dad, Duke, a notorious treasure hunter. The premise felt incredibly Indiana Jones-esque to me, and I loved it.

When Leo’s friends plan a group trip to Utah, the last thing expected was to suddenly find himself face to face with his first love. Leo and Lily don’t immediately rekindle things, and I liked the slow burn and buildup wondering if they would ever truly reconnect.

The setting really made this book stand out to me. I could picture the canyons so wonderfully through Lauren’s descriptions and it made the sense of adventure palpable. The hardships thrown in the way of the group on their journey were unexpected, but for the most part seemed believable and kept me eager to see what would happen next.

This was such a refreshing and interesting mashup of genres and all the pieces were done well.

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Something Wilder on Goodreads
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Book Review, Nonfiction

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates ~ Book Review

Morgan

One World
Nonfiction: Essays
Release Date: October 3, 2017

We Were Eight Years in Power is a collection of essays first published in The Atlantic, along with original introductions to each one. The book speaks broadly about the presidency of Barack Obama, and how Coates’s views and expectations of him changed over the course of his eight years as the president. It also speaks powerfully about pervasive racism in America and different programs and policies that kept and keep it in place.

Coates’s insights and research painted a stark and powerful image of the country and tied America’s history to both Barack Obama’s ascendance to the White House, and Donald Trump’s.

I found the essays incredibly compelling and thought provoking, although their introductions were a bit less so for me. His views of America, and the research and data he used to backup his perspectives, were valuable and continue to resonate with me.

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Book Review, thriller

Things We Do in the Dark by Jennifer Hillier ~ Book Review

Morgan

Minotaur Books
Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

This book!! I could not stop reading. Jennifer Hillier knows how to suck a reader in. Things We Do in the Dark starts off with Paris Peralta, who finds herself arrested for the murder of her much older celebrity husband. As her arrest begins to blow up online, she becomes increasingly concerned that the unwanted publicity will unearth a past life she has worked for years to bury.

I was surprised when a second point of view was introduced, that of true-crime podcast host Drew Malcolm. Drew has decided to dedicate an episode to the Ice Queen, who was convicted of murder when he was a teenager. She also happened to be the mother of the one who got away for Drew, Joey Reyes, who has since died.

At first, I found the jump disruptive, but I soon got sucked into Drew’s life too and I was intrigued to see how his story and his singular focus on the Ice Queen would eventually tie into Paris’s life.

Paris’s life was constructed incredibly richly. She had detailed interests, backstory, and friendships and I felt like her character came to life so much. This kind of character development felt rare coming from a thriller, and it made me especially invested in the plot.

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC!

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Buy Things We Do in the Dark at an indie bookstore near you
Things We Do in the Dark on Goodreads

Book Review, Romance

All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
Romance
Release Date: July 17, 2018
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

All Your Perfects alternates between then and now, telling the love story of Quinn and Graham. Their meeting and whirlwind romance was so wonderful – the chemistry palpable and the details thoughtful and sweet. Watching them fall in love through the pages made it incredibly sad to read the present, as the two drift apart largely due to their struggles with Quinn’s infertility.

This book was a slow and steady heartbreak. There was not a lot of action, but deep introspection particularly into Quinn and her experiences and yearning for a child. Hoover knows how to create a deep and powerful love story, and the build up of this relationship was just that.

This was such a slow burn that I felt like the ending did not do the rest of the story justice. It felt as if sooo much hurt and heartbreak were wrapped up so quickly and conveniently and I think Quinn in particular deserved a little more.

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Buy All Your Perfects at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Cover Story follows Lora Ricci as she embarks on a summer internship with ELLE magazine. It’s your classic naïve-girl-in-the-big-city storyline, which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the premise, it just wasn’t terribly original. The narrative was broken up by emails and diary entries which was a fun format that made the story fly by.

Lora is taken under the wing of Cat Wolff, a contribution editor who lives at the Plaza Hotel. I’m a sucker for a story set in NYC, and I enjoyed reading about the opulence of Cat’s life, especially through the eyes of Lora. Lora agrees to act as Cat’s ghostwriter, anticipating that this might be her big break.

What bumped this story up to three stars for me was the plot twist at the very end, which had me rethinking the entire book. I love it when stories do that, and certainly wasn’t expecting it from this kind of narrative. That being said, the rest of it felt a little too much like a wannabe knockoff of Anna Delvey.

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Book Review, Romance, YA

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
YA Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Thanks to Libro.fm for my audiobook!

What a strange concept for a book. When Shara Wheeler goes missing weeks before high school graduation, Smith, Rory, and Chloe all find themselves banding together to look for her. The three have nothing in common until they realize that leading up to her disappearance, Shara kissed all of them. They soon discover that she has also left cryptic notes for them.

I liked that the notes led them to locations and disclosed information that made them realize they did not know everything about Shara. It was a fun and unexpected way to slowly peel back the layers of a character who largely wasn’t actually in the book.

I found the whole premise of this book confusing. It seemed like Shara and Chloe had very little contact before Shara disappeared besides being competitors for valedictorian. Why then was Chloe suddenly obsessed with finding Shara, to the point of completely neglecting her own best friend? Was Shara truly ‘missing?’ If so, why did no one else in the whole town except these three random high schoolers seem invested in finding her? The lack of clarity around the main plot was hard for me to overlook.

The characters were well developed and the high school environment and surrounding locations were detailed, fun, and interesting, but I struggled to get fully invested in the randomness of the narrative arc.

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Buy I Kissed Shara Wheeler at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose ~ Book Review

Morgan

Bloodhound Books
Thriller
Release Date: July 13, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪

The Perfect Marriage opens like your classic domestic thriller. Adam has been engaging in an affair, primarily taking place at the lake house he and his wife Sarah own. Sarah is a defense attorney who is typically too busy to join her husband for outings to the lake house. Adam is frustrated and resentful of his wife, and has come to realize that he wants to be with his mistress Kelly. That is, until she’s found dead and he’s suspected of her murder.

The first issue I had with this book was Sarah defending Adam for the murder of his mistress. Excuse me?! In what world would that happen. I had trouble looking past that as the investigation into the crime got under way.

I was, however, intrigued with how the police force and Kelly’s mysterious and possibly violent history would all play into her ultimate murder. For the most part, I couldn’t stop reading. I really was invested in figuring out what had happened to her.

Alas, the ending. I think I rolled my eyes. It was not a twist so much as a convenient fallback that left me disappointed.

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

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson ~ Book Review

Morgan

Ballantine Books
Fiction
Release Date: February 1, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Black Cake was a very winding story. Although much of it is a slow-burning character driven exploration of a family, there was an unexpected mystery baked in as well. Siblings Byron and Benny find themselves faced with a letter left behind for them after their mother Eleanor’s death, along with a traditional Caribbean black cake for them to eat together when the time is right. As they delve into the letter, the two begin to realize that there was much more to Eleanor’s life than they ever could have imagined.

Eleanor’s story was intricate, heartbreaking, and compelling. The challenges she was up against were interesting and intricate. Her story pulled me in much more fully than those of Byron and Benny. Although fully grown, the two seemed to lack maturity, and their stories felt shallow, particularly in comparison to the richness of the characters surrounding Eleanor and her life.

There was a lottt that went on in this book to the point where I had some trouble following along and keeping track of characters, and the ending seemed like a rushed effort to tie everything together.

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Buy Black Cake at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Thriller
Release Date: July 2, 2015
My Rating: 🍪🍪

Not sure what I just read. I completely get that thrillers often have problematic and/or disturbing narratives and themes, but Pretty Girls was wayyy out there. Central to the story’s narrative arc is the theme of missing girls. One has recently disappeared, making the main character Claire reflect on her sister’s mysterious disappearance when they were both teenagers.

Simultaneously, Claire begins to discover threads of her husband’s life that lead her to believe that he may not be at all the man she thought he was. When she discovers some extremely realistic, horrifying, and violent porn on his computer, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s more going on than a horrific fetish.

The descriptions of the porn in this novel were so incredibly disturbing. This was a pretty central theme, be warned. I felt like far too much time was spent trying to make the reader uncomfortable with these super detailed descriptions and not enough was spent actually trying to tie the different parts of the story together into a thriller that made sense.

The conclusions drawn by the end of the story ultimately felt far-fetched and unbelievable. Besides the descriptions, nothing felt especially shocking in a good way. Instead, the ‘twists’ had me rolling my eyes more than anything else.

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Buy Pretty Girls at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Book Lovers by Emily Henry ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley
Romance
Release Date: May 3, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Emily Henry’s books are like a warm hug and Book Lovers was no exception. It follows Nora Stephen, a successful literary agent who agrees to join her little sister Libby on a girl’s vacation to the town where one of her favorite books is set. Libby comes prepared with a secret checklist of Hallmark-esque experiences she wants the two to have together, but Nora finds herself distracted by work and by an unexpected run in with Charlie, an editor she’d had unpleasant interactions with in the past.

I loved the contrast between Nora’s cutthroat work persona and the cheesy charming activities Libby tries to force upon her during their vacation. The book that Nora finds herself working on was an entertaining and unexpected addition to the story and I liked the way she and Charlie connected over the content. How could I not fall for two book lovers?

As always, Henry knows how to create a detailed and wonderfully interesting and vivid setting, and how to craft chemistry with a buildup that keeps me glued to the pages. The family history and the way the sisters look out for one another added a lot of depth to the characters and the ending completely made me melt.

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