Book Review, Fiction

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult ~ Book Review

Morgan

Ballantine Books
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: November 30, 2021 (Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

It’s kind of surreal reading about March 2020 through a fictionalized lens. The confusion, uncertainty, and misunderstanding about how severe Covid would get were perfectly depicted through Diana O’Toole as her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, begins to ring the alarm bells about the pandemic. Finn urges Diana to take their planned vacation to the Galápagos without him, and she finds herself transported from an increasingly dystopian NYC to a locked-down paradise.

The juxtaposition of the unique and stunning natural setting of the Galápagos, with the heartbreaking horror of the New York City ICUs, as described in Finn’s emails, was an incredibly powerful way to frame this story. The research that went into understanding what doctors have been faced with through the pandemic was clear and makes you realize the intense pain of this pandemic all over again.

We also get flashbacks to Diana’s job auctioning art and her relationship with her parents, both of which helped round out her character and added yet another level of depth to the story. That being said, I didn’t really like Diana. She came off as very selfish, and as a result, the ending of her story didn’t sit well with me. It did, however, do a great job of depicting how the pandemic has made people reevaluate what they really want out of their lives, a process which can be painful.

Wish You Were Here was hard for me to read in the current climate, and the big twist halfway through, although interesting, made me like the first half of the book less. It was, however, beautifully written and incredibly powerful and insightful. If you read this book, be sure to read the author’s note at the end.

Buy Wish You Were Here at an indie bookstore near you
Wish You Were Here on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: September 7, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪

Okay, I am a BIG Lisa Jewell fan, but The Night She Disappeared just did nottt do it for me. It has two intertwining storylines, one that of Kim and her daughter Tallulah who goes missing with her boyfriend one night after a night out, and the other of Sophie who finds a note on a tree instructing her to dig underneath it and inadvertently reopens Tallulah’s case two years after its gone cold.

This didn’t feel as much like a thriller to me as it did a deep dive into Tallulah’s character as she adjusts to being a teenage mom, experiences an abusive relationship, and explores her sexuality. As she gets pulled more and more deeply into the world of her classmate Scarlet, Tallulah questions her life more and more. There were so many unlikeable characters in this book that they really made me feel for Tallulah and everything she was dealing with.

Sophie’s part of the story seemed utterly unconnected to everything else. I felt like I knew nothing about her compared to Tallulah, which made the details that were included feel random and unnecessary. This approach would have worked better if Sophie was given equal time and depth to Tallulah, but instead the story felt lopsided and I wasn’t sure why Sophie was included.

The conclusion of this book came out of nowhere, and not in a shocking thriller-twist kind of way, but in an unrealistic way that made me wish I hadn’t bothered finishing it. I ended feeling very disappointed.

Buy The Night She Disappeared at an indie bookstore near you
The Night She Disappeared on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams ~ Book Review

Morgan

Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Romance
Release Date: June 1, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I’ve been on a roll with reading books about authors. In Seven Days in June, an erotica writer, Eva Mercy, finds herself unexpectedly face to face with Shane Hall at a literary event, years after they shared an intense and passionate seven days together as teenagers. As the two of them cautiously reconnect, flashbacks recount their seven days together and the strife and demons that brought them together and eventually tore them apart.

Seven Days in June paints a vivid experience of the “Black literati” and the difficulties and racism the members face. Eva eloquently expresses the inequities she faces and struggles with trying to figure out if she should keep fighting for her art, or give in to what others in the industry push for (i.e. having white main characters in the movie adaptation of her book). I would highly suggest reading own voices reviews to better understand the intricacies of this portrayal.

The chronic pain Eva deals was such an important portrayal that I haven’t read about often. It helped to understand her and her motivations.

This was definitely a slow burn of a narrative, and I would have appreciated a little more action, but the nature of the story (with flashbacks to each day of Eva and Shane’s teenage romance) didn’t lend itself to that kind of storyline.

Buy Seven Days in June at an indie bookstore near you
Seven Days in June on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Therapist by B.A. Paris ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Genre: thriller
Release Date: July 13, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

The Therapist is a classic creepy-exclusive-community thriller. Alice and Leo move into a gated community called The Circle (all I could think about was the Netflix show) after having dated long-distance for a matter of months. Alice is desperate to meet her neighbors, but things get weird when a stranger starts poking around the house under the guise of joining her housewarming party.

Soon, Alice learns about the tragedy that the befell the previous owner of her home, and she begins to question her relationship with Leo and her budding friendships in The Circle. Alice slowly becomes more and more paranoid and it’s unclear which of her concerns are valid and which are just in her head.

The writing in this book is fantastic and creates a cultish atmosphere that made me unsure of whether I could trust anyone. I felt like Alice made connections with her neighbors a little too quickly, and her up and down feelings toward Leo confused me. That being said, the ending was definitely a shocker and worth getting to. This was an excellent spooky-season read.

Buy The Therapist at an indie bookstore near you
The Therapist on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre ~ Book Review

Morgan

DCA
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: October 2, 2017
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I’m a big fan of thrillers and books about authors, so I was immediately on board with The Ghostwriter, which combines the two. Helena, a best-selling author is our reclusive main character. She lives alone in a house that clearly haunts her, but we have no real sense of what happened to leave her alone in it — we only know that her husband and child are no longer there. Helena has decided it’s time to write down her own story, but she needs the help of a ghostwriter, and decides her arch nemesis is the right person for the job.

The mystery around Helena’s past and what’s haunting her so furtively that she needs to get it out kept me glued to this book. Her relationship with her ghostwriter was unexpectedly touching and I loved seeing them come to terms with the depths of each other. I was a big fan of the haunted-feeling setting and the always present threat of running out of time.

There was no way to guess the darkness that Helena had uncovered in her past and what it triggered, and I was definitely shocked and caught off guard. The ending did an exceptionally good job of wrapping up every loose string, and I liked that Torre wasn’t afraid to paint Helena in a not so great light, leaving the reader feeling conflicted about her, while also deeply sorrowful for her.

Buy The Ghostwriter at an indie bookstore near you
The Ghostwriter on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Widow by Fiona Barton ~ Book Review

Morgan

NAL
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: January 14, 2016
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Although I love thrillers, I’m not a huge fan of police procedurals, so keep that in mind through my review. The story opens after Jean’s husband, Glen, is killed by a bus. Glen was previously accused, and the found not guilty of kidnapping a little girl who has never been found. The reader sees from Jean’s perspective much of the time, and her passivity was infuriating. She doted on Glen and (for the most part) believed him when he told her the graphic porn the police found in his possession somehow downloaded itself onto his computer.

We also get flashbacks to the kidnapping case and the investigators and reporters who worked on it. I liked trying to figure out what had happened along with them, but the details of their personal lives felt extraneous. As I noted above, I just want to focus on the actual crime at hand, not who’s looking into it, but that’s just a personal preference.

I felt like I knew where this story was going pretty early on. It does a great job of setting up a very unique (and VERY disturbing) situation, and I appreciated that the narrative between Jean, Glen, and the kidnapping felt like something new. That being said, I wish there had been a twist at the end that surprised me.

Buy The Widow at an indie bookstore near you
The Widow on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Always, in December by Emily Stone ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dell
Genre: Holiday romance
Release Date: October 12, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I’m not sure how to properly review this book without giving away the ending. There was a big old cliché I did not see coming that really negated a lot of the positive aspects of this story for me.

Josie experienced a tragedy on Christmas Eve when she was a child, and as a result, she usually spends the holidays at home, preferring not to relive that time in her life. When she bumps into Max (literally) who is stranded for the holidays due to a flight delay, things start looking up for her Christmas season. I loved Josie and Max’s chemistry and their Christmas dates and adventures. The holiday spirit was palpable through the descriptions and I could perfectly imagine each of their dates.

After their initial meeting, the story starts to take some large jumps in time, each of which I found less compelling. Max and Josie bump into each other over the years, they’re always mad at each other for one reason or another and it just felt very drawn out.

And then the ending completely unraveled the story for me and felt like such a cop out. This did not end up being the cute Christmas romance I was hoping for.

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC.

Buy Always, in December at an indie bookstore near you
Always, in December on Goodreads

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