Book Review, Fiction

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney ~ Book Review

Morgan

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: September 7, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

My experience with Sally Rooney’s books has been very mixed. If you like rambling stream of consciousness existentialist musings, you really can’t go wrong with her writing. Beautiful World, Where Are You is no exception. It tells the story of Alice, her best friend Eileen, and their on again off again lovers, Felix and Simon.

What happens in this book? The four main characters orbit around each other, write each other letters, muse about the world and their relationships and what it all means. It’s character driven in the sense that there’s not a lot of plot, but I didn’t feel that the characters actually had very much depth in terms of backstory. I didn’t know a lot about them, but I knew a lot about their hopes and fears. I also knew that Alice represented Sally, and I wish she’d either fully embraced writing about herself or not done this at all. The constant complaints about her life rubbed me the wrong way.

This book opens up a lot of interesting questions about relationships and sex, especially in light of the pandemic. I appreciated the incorporation of quarantine and getting to see how the characters felt and experienced this disruption. I definitely preferred Conversations with Friends (which I loved!) to Beautiful World, but this was an easy and pleasant listen (thanks to Libro.fm for my free audiobook).

Buy Beautiful World, Where Are You at an indie bookstore near you
Beautiful World, Where Are You on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

Golden Girl by Elin Hilderbrand ~ Book Review

Morgan

Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: June 1, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Golden Girl starts by introducing the reader to the novelist Vivi and then immediately killing her off. From there, it unexpectedly takes us to the afterlife where Vivi and the reader both watch her friends and family as they try to wrap their heads around Vivi’s sudden hit and run death.

This book has everything I love from Elin Hilderbrand — beautiful depictions of Nantucket summers, exquisite food descriptions, and lots and lots of drama. Vivi’s children and friends are wrapped up in a lot of deceit and confusion, creating a warped web that only adds to their newfound grief. As Vivi, just as shocked as the reader, watches everything unfold, she’s able to use three ‘nudges’ to influence what’s going on on earth. She has to act fast though — once the summer ends, she has to leave her vantage point.

As always, I appreciated the drama in this narrative, but I didn’t feel like the characters were deep enough to really care about. A lot of the information we got about them felt surface level, which made it hard for me to get invested in their stories. I didn’t understand their motivations.

I enjoyed this book for the setting and the summer vibes, but it wasn’t my favorite by this author.

Buy Golden Girl at an indie bookstore near you
Golden Girl on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: July 20, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Oh man, the main narrator of For Your Own Good was something else. Teddy Crutcher’s teaching philosophy at prestigious Belmont Academy is to help his students and colleagues become better people by doing things for their own good, regardless of the morality behind what that means. If a coworker is always stressed and high-strung, sometimes they need a light sedative injected into their k-cup, as per Teddy’s logic. When a parent falls dead after a school function, we’re brought deeper into Teddy’s twisted web trying to figure out just how involved he really is.

I absolutely love having an unreliable narrator like Teddy in a thriller. I truly could not understand his logic and how far he would go to try to “fix” things. We also, however, get insight from some of the students who’ve fallen victim to Teddy’s intense scrutiny, and see how they start to uncover what’s really going on.

The short chapters and quick escalation of the storyline kept me utterly gripped to this book. I loved getting to see the perspectives of so many characters as they collectively hone in on Teddy.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know I love the ‘murder at a prep school’ genre, so the setting added a lot to this one for me too. All in all, a truly gripping thriller from Samantha Downing.

Buy For Your Own Good at an indie bookstore near you
For Your Own Good on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: November 17, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Ahh this book made my heart so happy. It’s the story of the Fontana family, who are rumored to have a curse that prevents second-born daughters from finding lasting love. I wasn’t super intrigued by the premise at first, but I got fully caught up in the story.

Two second-born daughters, Emilia and Lucy, decide to accompany their estranged Aunt Poppy on a trip to Italy for her 80th birthday, when she claims the curse will be broken. I got totally carried away in the beautiful depictions of Italy and felt fully immersed in the wonderfully vibrant setting Spielman creates.

As the trio travels, Poppy tells the story of the man she’s convinced she’ll be meeting on her birthday and how their love was torn away from her. As the sisters learn about their aunt’s tragic past, it allows them to be introspective about how the curse has affected the way they live their lives, whether or not they really believe in it.

This book was heartbreaking and transportive and wove a spellbinding, character-driven narrative.

Buy The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany at an indie bookstore near you
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn ~ Book Review

Morgan

Shaye Areheart Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: September 26, 2006
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Sharp Objects is a darkkkk thriller. The first thing that hits you is the main character Camille’s tendency to carve words into her body that she subsequently feels pulsing all over her. A burgeoning reporter, Camille’s been sent back to her hometown to cover the murders of two young girls. She begrudgingly shows up at her mom’s house and tries to desperately to get someone to talk to her.

Flynn has an uncanny ability to describe the most mundane objects and actions in a way that makes my skin crawl. Every thing and every person in this book had something unsavory about them, least of all our main character. Camille has no qualms about badgering people in grief, doing drugs with her thirteen year old stepsister, and sleeping with people close to the investigation.

If you can stomach the somewhat graphic nature of the writing, the mystery of this story kept me on edge, sensing who might be responsible for the murders, but unsure how we were going to get there. Ultimately, the conclusion turned out even darker than I imagined and I found myself very caught off guard, which is hard to do to someone who reads so many thrillers.

Buy Sharp Objects at an indie bookstore near you
Sharp Objects on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

No Words by Meg Cabot ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Genre: Romance
Release Date: September 28, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

What a joyful book this was. First of all, the cover is stunning, so I was pretty much smiling from the moment I picked it up until I finished it. I love books about writers, so a literary festival on a picturesque beachy island was a perfect premisefor an end of summer read. Jo Wright writes the YA Kitty Katz series about a teenage cat, and the number of cat related puns Cabot incorporated into her narrative was amazing. They seemed so on brand for a YA author and I wish this series was real.

Jo’s thrilled to attend the book festival until she finds out her nemesis, Will Price, will be there as well. Each author in this book was so unique and quirky. I loved that they all seemed to be a  caricature of their genre. They made the story so much fun and brought so much life and humor to every conversation.

This was definitely a character-driven story, which I sometimes struggle with, but the quirkiness of the characters combined with the picturesque setting made this book fly by for me. It was light and witty and the romance was cute but not over the top. It appears that this is part of a series all set on the same island and I will absolutely be picking up the rest.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC!

Buy No Words at an indie bookstore near you
No Words on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins ~ Book Review

Morgan

Riverhead Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: August 31, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

A Slow Fire Burning is a character driven thriller following a series of unreliable women who are all somehow related to a murdered man. Their relationships to him are his aunt, neighbor, and one-night-stand. Each woman is dealing with a lot of trauma and/or drama, and being sucked into the police investigation for the murder sets each of them off differently.

The structure of this book was interesting as I tried to ascertain the motivations for each main character. I generally prefer plot-driven narratives to character-driven ones, and especially in a thriller, I was hoping for more action. A lot of this book felt fairly slow to me, and I wasn’t particularly invested in figuring out who was responsible for the murder.

Hawkins did a wonderful job of crafting deeply layered, detailed, and troubled characters. They each had distinct and robust pasts that explained their current behavior and it was interesting to see how everything came together. Overall though, the story was a bit slow for me.

Buy A Slow Fire Burning at an indie bookstore near you
A Slow Fire Burning on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

Spiegel & Grau
Genre: Mystery
Release Date July 11, 2017
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Olive’s mom, Billie, has been missing for a year when Olive starts having visions of her. They hit Olive suddenly and are so realistic that she begins to believe her mom is still alive and wants to be found. At first I thought these visions were actually Olive seeing her mom, but once I realized they weren’t, this premise lost a lot of intrigue for me. It seemed like Olive was building the case for her mom being alive off of pretty much nothing.

The more interesting side of the story for me, was that of Jonathan, Billie’s husband. Jonathan is working on getting a death certificate for Billie in an effort to start trying to move on with his life. In the process, he’s going through some of her belongings and realizes that his wife was more of an enigma than she let on.

As Jonathan and Olive both question what they knew and believed about Billie, I was excited to figure out the truth with them. The things they discovered just didn’t feel fleshed out enough to me and ultimately, the storyline fell somewhat flat. I found myself not really caring what had happened to Billie.

Buy Watch Me Disappear at an indie bookstore near you
Watch Me Disappear on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: September 28, 2021 (Thank you to the publisher for my ARC!)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

Eight Perfect Hours tuggedddd at my heartstrings. It opens with an eight-hour traffic jam in the midst of a blizzard during which Noelle meets Sam, who offers to let her use his phone charger. During the storm, Louis crafts a perfect little utopia for the two of them with palpable chemistry. They’re both truly lovable and quirky characters.

When the two of them went their separate ways without exchanging contact information, I was just holding my breath to see how they would meet again next. It turns out, there would be lots of surreptitious ‘nexts’ in their futures.

The detailed backstory about both main characters, most notably, the loss of loved ones when they were teenagers, created really believable and well-rounded narrators who I believed in wholeheartedly. Noelle finds herself constantly torn between caring for her mother and wanting to pursue her career ambitions. It was heartbreaking to see her struggle and how she’d held herself back for so long.

This story goes far beyond mere missed connections. The twists thrown into the storyline took my breath away, but were so seamlessly integrated that looking back I couldn’t believe I didn’t see them coming. This whole book gave me butterflies and I couldn’t look away.

Buy Eight Perfect Hours at an indie bookstore near you
Eight Perfect Hours on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave ~ Book Review

Morgan

Simon & Schuster
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: May 4, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

The Last Thing He Told Me follows Hannah’s desperate journey to uncover what happened to her husband when he disappears mysteriously leaving a note behind instructing her to protect his teenage daughter, Bailey. Hannah and Owen have only been married for a year, and she has yet to win over Bailey’s trust or acceptance. Nonetheless, they suddenly find themselves inextricably bound together as they realize that Owen was not who he said he was.

The mystery surrounding Owen’s sudden disappearance and the depth of his lies was incredibly intriguing and I loved how it was framed by Hannah and Bailey’s relationship. The daughter-stepmother dynamic was such a unique choice for a thriller and it added a lot to the story. Bailey struggles to trust Hannah in the midst of her world being turned upside down and it was really heartwarming to see them learning how to work together.

The pacing of this mystery was a little slow for me, and I didn’t really feel like there was any grand reveal. It was kind of anticlimactic in the end, and I wished there had been a little more of an ‘Aha’ moment when we found out what was going on. Although I enjoyed the story, the ‘thriller’ aspect of it left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

Buy The Last Thing He Told Me at an indie bookstore near you
The Last Thing He Told Me on Goodreads