Book Review, Fiction

The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand ~ Book Review

Morgan

Little, Brown & Company
Fiction
Release Date: June 14, 2022 (Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC!)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Ah, to be back in Elin Hilderbrand’s world! The Hotel Nantucket transported me instantly to sun-soaked Nantucket and the glamour of the newly renovated and incredibly posh Hotel Nantucket. Lizbet Keaton, hired to be the general manager by the mysteries Xavier Darling, who himself has never seen the hotel, scrambles to hire an eclectic mix of employees to get the place up and running. The cast of characters had such wonderful dynamics with one another. Even though there were a lot of them, each was so unique that I never mixed anyone up or felt confusion over who was who.

I was the littlest bit thrown off by the part of the narrative told by a ghost, but I promise it wasn’t too disruptive to the rest of the story – and I’m not one who usually enjoys that kind of suspension of reality in an otherwise realistic story. Although there was not a ton of action in the day to day goings on of the hotel, the secrets and drama of each individual employee grew and complicated over time in a way that made this book hard to put down.

As always, Hilderbrand’s descriptions of everything from room décor to cocktails leapt off the page and illustrated every aspect of the novel. I felt that things were a little rushed and maybe not entirely thought out at the very end of the story, but other than that, I loved every page.

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Mystery
Release Date: October 26, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Heather meets Stephen when she’s hired as an interior decorator for his wife, who has dementia. As her condition deteriorates and she is moved to a care facility, Heather and Stephen soon find themselves romantically involved. Stephen’s two grown daughters Tully and Rachel are shocked when Stephen announces his engagement to Heather, who’s younger than them.

Tully, Rachel, and Heather all narrate the story and have really rich backstories. That being said, the issues they have dealt with including eating disorders, rape, and kleptomania seemed like they were included as personality traits and were glossed over. The seriousness of these issues did not feel addressed enough to me. Instead, they were used over and over for descriptors of the women.

The book includes flashes to a tragedy occurring at Stephen and Heather’s wedding, narrated by an unknown fourth narrator. I enjoyed the way this built suspense and how the rest of the threads of the story all lead to that point.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a twist at the end of this book. To me, it didn’t feel like much of a thriller since what was going on was pretty much explained to us early on. This felt much more character-driven to me than a true thriller. That being said, I did think it was an interesting character exploration, and I liked reading about the narrators and Stephen’s influence on their lives.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant ~ Book Review

Morgan

Minotaur Books
Thriller
Release Date: November 16, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

These Silent Woods is classified as a thriller, but I definitely don’t think that’s quite accurate. I found it to be really character-driven and slow paced, but not in a bad way. Cooper lives with his daughter Finch in a remote cabin in the woods. They have one neighbor, Scotland, and a friend named Jake who brings supplies to them every year.

When Finch sees a girl out hiking in the woods one day, she becomes curious about her. Finch’s isolation causes her to begin to obsess about the girl and her life. Cooper is clearly uncomfortable with Finch’s interest, and it’s clear that something sinister occurred in his past that keeps him hiding out with his daughter.

The secluded setting and the small patch of forest that was Finch and Cooper’s world were so vividly depicted. I felt like I was seeing the cabin and the woods through their eyes. 

I was anticipating there being some sort of explosive and shocking discovery as to what caused Cooper to flee to the woods, but instead, there was a slowly unfolding and heartbreaking account of his history and the hardships he’d fought through to stay with Finch.

These Silent Woods was hauntingly atmospheric and told a unique and captivating story, but I would not classify it as being particularly shocking or thrilling.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey ~ Book Review

Morgan

Avon Books
Romance
Release Date: March 1, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I loved It Happened One Summer and was excited for another light, steamy story in the Bellinger Sisters’ universe. I really enjoy the small fishing town of Westport and the tight knit community it fosters, so I was thrilled when Hannah ended up there for work. She decides to crash with Fox Thornton while she’s there, a notorious flirt who she has befriended, largely over text, since her last visit.

The build up of Fox and Hannah’s relationship and their individual concern about ruining their friendship felt realistic to me and kept me on my toes. I couldn’t wait for them to finally get together. I did think there were some very dramatic hot and cold situations, but that feels like more a product of the genre than this specific story.

I really enjoyed getting to delve into Hannah’s work life and her career aspirations and how prominently that played into her storyline and her motivations. This added a lot more to her character and I liked seeing how Fox supported her.

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Mystery
Berkley
Release Date: March 15, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

After suffering her own abduction as a child, Shea Collins has turned to true crime blogging, throwing herself in head first following her divorce. Her latest focus is an interview with the elusive Beth Greer, a local woman who was acquitted after being held as a suspect in the murder of two men. Known as the ‘Lady Killer’ the murders have since gone unsolved for decades.

The narrative is split between Beth and Shea’s perspectives and they both bring the reader incrementally closer and closer to identifying the Lady Killer. The story also brings in elements of the paranormal, which I was not expecting. The ghost-y aspect was veryy creepy and  kept me from reading this too late at night. I’m generally not really a fan of this kind of mystery with paranormal activity, so this definitely took away from my enjoyment of the story.

Shea’s character was really compelling and I liked how her past experiences were used to inform her present actions. I felt like Beth wasn’t explored in as much depth and I had some trouble following her logic.

For whatever reason, I just wasn’t really gripped by this mystery. I didn’t feel like suspending reality to wholly embrace the paranormal plotline which made me care less about the ultimate ending. I had high hopes for this story, but ended up disappointed.

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Mystery
Release Date: February 22, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I love a thriller with a creepy, atmospheric, anthropomorphic setting. When Jess arrives to visit her brother Ben at his new apartment, that’s exactly what she finds in his building. What she doesn’t find is Ben. Jess begins to question the other residents, trying to ascertain what could have happened between her last phone message from Ben and his disappearance.

There were a lot of characters, each of whom narrated different chapters, and it was hard for me to keep track of them all. Getting so many points of view also made the story move really slowly, since we saw how every character perceived the same events.

I will say that the sinister activities at the heart of this story were very unique compared to the numerous other thrillers I’ve read, but I would definitely classify this as more of a ‘mystery’ than a thriller (there’s a very distinct difference in my mind between the two).

The setting and character motivations of The Paris Apartment were interesting, but I wished things moved faster.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

November 9 by Colleen Hoover ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
Romance
Release Date: November 10, 2015
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I do not expect plot twists from romance books like the one in November 9. I think my draw literally dropped along with the main character Fallon, as she realized that her unconventional, meet-for-one-day-a-year romance with Ben might not be all that she thought it was.

Let me back up. Ben and Fallon meet the day before she moves across the country, when he overhears a conversation between her and her dad and pretends to be her boyfriend. Despite their bizarre beginning, the two have instant chemistry. They decide that they will meet back up one year later. They share no contact information and simply put their trust in this near-stranger. The yearly meet-ups ultimately become the inspiration for the novel Ben has long been trying to write.

I was so tense reading this book waiting to see what would get in the way of this love story. Naturally, there are other relationships and extraneous events that make the annual reunions sometimes difficult, but I loved the moments in between the chaos when Ben and Fallon could just be together.

Colleen Hoover is the queen of putting characters in heart-wrenching situations and this was no exception. The positions that each of our main characters were forced to work through were so hard to consider, but I had hope that their quirky love story would persist. This one was definitely a CoHo favorite for me.

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Buy November 9 at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, mystery, Romance

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
YA Romance
Release Date: December 17, 2012
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Sky has begged her mom to let her stop home-schooling for years. When she finally caves, Sky finds herself preparing to go to public high school for the first time just as her best friend is leaving for a semester overseas. I loved how resilient Sky was in the face of this change and the quirky relationship she had with her best friend/neighbor.

When Sky is noticed by Dean Holder, of the bad boy reputation, she struggles to understand how the boy she’s getting to know could be so at odds with the rumors swirling around him.

I loved the depiction of high school and the friendships Sky forms. Hoover does an incredible job of capturing the mindset and the experiences of a teenager. I didn’t realize this book was YA when I picked it up, and I definitely think some of the extreme overreactions that I had trouble with were just a product of the genre.

I felt the chemistry between Dean and Sky right away, but I also was pleasantly surprised that there was a vein of mystery running through the romance. I had no idea what the connections could be between all the characters and I couldn’t read fast enough to figure everything out.

This book has some dark and very disturbing themes that I was not prepared for, but the way that Sky’s past tied everything together made for a thought-provoking and intense story.

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Book Review, Nonfiction

Cultish by Amanda Montell ~ Book Review

Morgan

Harper Wave
Nonfiction
Release Date: June 15, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I’d seen Cultish all over the place before picking it up and had a general sense that it was about cults of all kinds, including brands that were on the verge of being cult-like. The real focus of the book is the language used in cults, referred to by the author as ‘Cultish.’ Montell highlights the ways that cult leaders speak to and teach those around them in order to encourage them to internalize ways of thinking and believe certain things about themselves.

The chapters range from covering intense cults with mass suicides, to multi-level marketing schemes, to organizations like Soul Cycle, and draws parallels between the ways that leaders of these different groups speak to members.

I liked hearing about the ways that people were sucked into these groups, and especially the insight from past members and the ways that they thought about their time in cults. I think I just wanted a little bit more about how cults get into people’s heads and why certain people are more susceptible to them than others. The organization also felt a little jarring to me. I feel like adding in more examples would have made the transitions less jumpy.

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Book Review, Fiction

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin ~ Book Review

Morgan

Gallery Books
Fiction
Release Date: August 3, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I feel conflicted about The People We Keep. The narrative follows April, who lives largely alone in an immobile motorhome while her dad moves in with his new girlfriend. One day, April decides she’s had enough, takes her neighbor’s car, and drives away. April ends up in Ithaca, NY, and being a little bit familiar with the area, I found the descriptions of the area really fun to read.

April finds a job at a local cafe and works there while living out of her car. The difficulty and confusion she experienced around how to trust was heartbreaking, but the small group of quirky friends who took her in were so wonderful to read about. During this section of the book, I couldn’t stop reading, and loved seeing April learn to let people in.

The book took a sudden turn after this, which saw April once again on the road. From there, the story never recaptured the initial magic it had for me. April tended to define her life by men, which diminished her character for me. I understand that the point may have been that events in Ithaca were catalysts for pushing her back into her old confusion and mistrust, but that didn’t seem fully developed.

The ending of the book, particularly her random reconnection with an ex, felt rushed with a lot of seemingly unconnected events crammed in. I wish this story had built off of April’s time in Ithaca, rather than having her character lose so much again and again.

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