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

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Stranger in the Mirror by Liv Constantine ~ Book Review

Morgan

Harper
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: July 6, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Addison has only three years of memories. Everything about her life before she was found by the side of the road is gone. Despite this constant uncertainty and unease, she’s made a new life for herself and recently became engaged. Her chapters were interspersed with those of Julian, whose wife Cassandra disappeared several years earlier, leaving him alone with their daughter. This was a pretty standard thriller setup, but I was excited to see what fresh approach the author duo had thought up.

I was pretty riveted to the first two thirds of this book trying to figure out how Cassandra and Addison’s stories would coincide. As Addison’s future mother-in-law looks into her past, and Julian continues his hunt for his wife, I couldn’t wait for the inevitable shakeup.

The truth, unfortunately, felt pretty gimmicky to me. It was so far-fetched that I had trouble seeing it as a viable and creepy conclusion. Instead, I felt much less captivated by the remainder of the story. The premise and buildup were incredibly well done, and I wished there had been more of a shocking “AHA” moment that kept me hooked for the remainder of it.

Buy The Stranger in the Mirror at an indie bookstore near you
The Stranger in the Mirror on Goodreads

Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner ~ Book Review

Morgan

Knopf Publishing Group
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: April 20, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Michelle Zauner truly pours her heart out in Crying in H Mart, a memoir that reckons with her mother’s struggle with cancer and with the distance she feels from her Korean heritage. It’s largely focused on food, and the way that supermarkets, cooking, and eating connect her to her family. Michelle is unabashed in her descriptions of how difficult she was to her parents growing up. She doesn’t shy away from fully telling her story.

When Michelle’s mom receives her diagnosis, Michelle travels back to Oregon as a young adult and does her best to care for her mom. It’s so clear how desperately Michelle wants to repay her mother for the years of caring for her, and the best way she knows how to is through food. Through vivid and mouthwatering descriptions, she reminisces on the Korean dishes her mom made her when she was young, each accompanied by a story or situation that comes along with the memory. By cooking, Michelle finds herself reconnecting with being Korean, and loses herself in the process as she struggles to come to terms with the severity of her mom’s cancer.

This memoir is painful to read, but there’s so much beauty in the depth of the writing. Michelle illustrates so much growth, from her teenage years, to the time taking care of her mother, to her ultimate success in the music industry. I really liked that she didn’t dwell on her career success — above all, this memoir is about her mom. That being said, this was a wonderful topic to end on. She tells of her concerts in Korea that her extended family came to, and putting her mom’s picture on her album and showed how her actions continue to be influenced by her mom.

Buy Crying in H Mart at an indie bookstore near you
Crying in H Mart on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Genre: Science fiction
Release Date: April 27, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

This book reminded me a lottt of The Midnight Library. It asks the reader to suspend reality and engage in Thora and Santi’s constantly intertwining multiple lives. From their first brief meeting, the two have a connection, but it’s cut short by an untimely accident. When they next meet, in another life, they have more time together to connect. And so it goes, lifetime after lifetime. They meet as friends, lovers, teacher and student, father and daughter.

I couldn’t decide how I felt about the multiple lifetimes. I like a story that builds on itself, and I felt like I would just be getting into a storyline when the entire thing would change as another life began. That being said, each different narrative was beautifully written and whatever kind of relationship they had was intricate and touching.

Things change in the later part of the book as they begin to come to terms with their situation and try to figure out what’s really going on. From there, it took on a little bit of a thriller feel and I was just as invested as them in uncovering the truth. Their ultimate discovery shocked me and I loved how the entire story up until then was suddenly revealed in a totally different light.

Meet Me in Another Life is conceptually fascinating, and although a bit slow in the middle, I would highly recommend holding out for the ending.

Buy Meet Me in Another Life at an indie bookstore near you
Meet Me in Another Life on Goodreads