Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner ~ Book Review

Morgan

Park Row
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Genre: Historical Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I went into The Lost Apothecary totally blind and I was blown away. This book is such a unique mix of tropes. It has a little bit of mystery, historical fiction, and feels almost like fantasy at times. The book is split into two timelines, one in 1791 and the other in present day.

In the 1700s, Nella runs a secret apothecary shop catered to women who want to poison a man in their life. In the present-day narrative, Caroline jets to London for her tenth anniversary leaving her cheating husband behind. Determined to still have the trip her history-loving self desired, she joins an expedition looking for old artifacts in the river Thames and stumbles across an old apothecary vial.

I really loved Caroline’s story. The background information about what led her to the place she was at in her life and her struggle between pursuing her passions or settling down with her husband were really well written and believable. Her trip to London feels like a second chance for her and I loved seeing her character open up and thrive on her own. It was an unexpectedly empowering addition to the book.

The historical sections were slightly less enthralling for me, but the concept behind the apothecary shop was intriguing. That being said, I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to feel about Nella.

The Lost Apothecary is so unique and varied, that I think it would appeal to a wide range of readers. I’d suggest going into it blind and (hopefully) letting the story suck you in.

Buy The Lost Apothecary at an indie bookstore near you
The Lost Apothecary on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Fly Away by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Fiction
Release Date: April 23, 2013
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Fly Away given how the first book in the series, Firefly Lane ended. Understandably, it focuses in large part on grief. Much of the story follows Kate’s daughter Marah, who at 16 goes on a rebellious spree in an effort to grapple with the death of her mother. Tully too finds herself spiraling in both her career and personal life, unsure how to move forward. I definitely didn’t love Marah’s storyline, and it felt kind of repetitive and drawn out to me.

I really liked how Kristen Hannah found a way to still loop Kate’s character into the story and inserted memories of her and Tully consistently. This kept me going and brought back some of the energy from Firefly Lane. Overall thought, this didn’t seem like a really necessary follow up to the first book.

Buy Fly Away at an indie bookstore near you
Fly Away on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: May 28, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

This book took me on the most glorious journey to Nantucket. Adrienne is a wanderer who bounces from place to place working for hotels. After her ex-boyfriend leaves her broke, Adrienne decides to head to Nantucket, where she’s immediately in need of a job that will pay well. Upon a recommendation, she interviews at The Blue Bistro, one of the most popular restaurants on the island. Despite having no experience, the owner, Thatcher Smith, decides to give her a chance as a hostess for the restaurant’s final summer before they close for good.

The descriptions of food and setting in this book are everything. Hilderbrand makes the chaos of the kitchen and the hustle of keeping picky customers happy absolutely come to life. She writes with a frenetic energy that made me feel like I was right beside Adrienne as she’s thrust into the fray and forced to quickly learn the idiosyncrasies of the restaurant’s regular customers, and what they do and don’t accommodate.

The details of the food served at The Blue Bistro made me want to go there. I wanted to taste the iconic crackers and sample Adrienne’s signature pink champagne. The glamour of the customers contrasted with the summery beach environment and made for such a rich setting.

The relationships between the restaurant employees added so much to the story too. Each person had a different relationship to the restaurant and what it meant for it to be closing. I enjoyed learning about each of these characters through Adrienne. The romance in this book was understated, but well written, and the undercurrents of heartbreak as the summer wore on added a lot of depth.

Buy The Blue Bistro at an indie bookstore near you
The Blue Bistro on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss ~ Book Review

Morgan

Random House
Genre: Nonfiction, Food
Release Date: February 26, 2013
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Salt Sugar Fat is a fascinating, and sometimes horrifying look into the food industry in America. It’s split into three large sections, each exploring one of the main substances used to hook consumers: sugar, salt, and fat. I feel like these are all substances I was aware were heavily relied upon in processed food, but the testing and science behind how much of them is added to different products was really eye-opening.

The reporting in this book is extensive, and Moss spoke with high level executives and CEOs at a number of the biggest food companies in the country. It was wild to hear the way they tiptoe around these three components being addictive and use other terminology to express the optimal ways to get consumers hooked on products.

I really appreciated the findings of different studies the companies did that analyzed the optimal amount of sugar in different products, and how, when fat was added as well, consumers never indicated that there was too much of it. It was also wild to hear about how many packaged products have completely excessive amounts of salt, that can actually be harmful for people with certain disorders.

Moss also discusses the way that these companies have pushed back against criticism of the ‘health’ of their products — sometimes by simply changing the packaging without actually making any updates to the products.

Although I’m not about to boycott all processed foods, I definitely think I’ll be giving nutrition labels a second glance before I buy something new, and will no longer trust that anything that’s labeled as having real fruit juice actually has any substantial amount. If you’re interested in the food industry, this is a must read, although it does get a little bit dry at times.

Buy Salt Sugar Fat at an indie bookstore near you
Salt Sugar Fat on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Fiction
Release Date: February 5, 2008
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Firefly Lane is a beautiful exploration of the friendship of Kate and Tully, from the time they meet in eight grade, through their adult lives. Kristin Hannah paints an incredibly vivid and detailed account of their experiences and changing relationships with each other and with the people around them. There’s so much detail about each girl’s personality and her dreams and aspirations.

I found this friendship incredibly realistic. They come together over shared loneliness and quickly become inseparable despite Kate’s reputation as a quiet loner, and Tully’s as the cool new girl. Over the years, things don’t always go as planned for the two of them, and they naturally have arguments and disagreements as they learn more about what they want for themselves.

Ultimately, they choose very different paths for themselves, with Tully focusing on her career and Kate focusing on relationships and her family. Both of these lifestyles were written about wonderfully and having such a split type of storyline kept the book really interesting.

This was a long book without a lot of action, but it kept me fully immersed and captivated the entire time.

Buy Firefly Lane at an indie bookstore near you
Firefly Lane on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Shipped by Angie Hockman ~ Book Review

Morgan

Gallery Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: January 19, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Shipped is a quintessential quick summer romance read. Henley is up for a promotion at her job in marketing for a cruise line. Her competition for the job: Graeme Crawford-Collins, her flippant and seemingly rude remote colleague who she’s never met in person. Although their communications mainly consist of Henley yelling at Graeme to do things faster, there are some times when she wonders if they might be…flirting?

Their boss announces that the two of them will be going on one of the company cruises to the Galapagos Island, and whoever comes up with the best proposal for how to boost cruise bookings will get the promotion. The beautiful depictions of the Galapagos and the quirky characters on the ship and the islands really rounded out the story and made it a thoroughly enjoyable setting for the story to take place in.

Henley and Graeme had great chemistry, and I loved their banter. There was also depth and detail to their characters that gave them dimension and made me care more about their relationship.

The story took a turn at the end, and that part of it felt kind of rushed and cliched to me. Although I loved being immersed in Graeme and Henley’s romance and in the Galapagos for the majority of the story, I found the ending somewhat disappointing and unbelievable.

Shipped on Goodreads
Buy Shipped at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Siren by Katherine St. John ~ Book Review

Morgan

Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: May 4, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

The Siren sets us up for the perfect storm of a thriller: the tropical island set of a movie, with ex-husband and wife, Cole Power and Stella Rivers as the stars. Stella has been struggling financially since the couple’s breakup, and she’s grateful for the role, and for her new assistant Felicity who seems to be able to anticipate what she needs before Stella even knows herself. Something’s a little off about Felicity though– she seemed to appear out of nowhere and continues to be confused for someone else.

Felicity’s motivations were really what drew me through the narrative. Through flashbacks, we see how her childhood impacted her and led her to the set, and to Stella and Cole in particular.

The third woman the story focuses on is Taylor, a young producer trying to make her big break. I truly didn’t understand why Taylor’s storyline was included. It was a pretty substantial part of the book, but I didn’t see how it fit into Felicity and Stella’s overarching narrative. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Taylor a lot, especially her budding romance, but I would’ve appreciated a separate book about her, rather than trying to fit her into this one.

The beachy setting and glamour of Hollywood drama made this a great summer read, but the depth of Felicity and Stella’s characters really grounded it, and much of the action toward the end was extremely dark and sinister. This book had a little bit of everything.

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

Book Review, Nonfiction

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson ~ Book Review

Morgan

Random House
Genre: Nonfiction
Release Date: August 4, 2020

Caste draws a comparison between the caste system in India, in Nazi Germany, and in the United States. Caste is a concept I was familiar with, but had never thought about as it applied to America. I had some difficulty following Wilkerson’s delineation between casteism and racism, but I found it to be an incredibly eye-opening lens through which to look at the disparities in the United States.

The connections between the US and Nazi Germany were especially shocking for me. I’ve never been taught about the amount of policy and ways of thinking that the Nazi’s based on things that were happening in America at the time. Wilkerson carries this comparison into present day, citing the way that reparations and memorials were handled (or weren’t) in each country and the mindset that Americans and Germans tend to have in relation to slavery and the Holocaust, respectively. This part of the book was incredibly hard to read about, but the information covered is something I wish more Americans learned about in school.

In addition to extensive research, Caste also includes personal anecdotes from Wilkerson’s experiences with racism. These excerpts offered a contrast to the denser historical context and also highlighted the way that the country has failed to progress in the present day.

Buy Caste at an indie bookstore near you
Caste on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

Recursion by Blake Crouch ~ Book Review

Morgan

Crown Publishing Group
Genre: Science fiction
Release Date: June 11, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

The premise of Recursion was instantly intriguing. It starts with the introduction of False Memory Syndrome, which is sweeping New York City, leaving victims with detailed memories of a completely alternate life. The confusion and disorientation it causes frequently leads victims to kill themselves. One of our main characters is Barry Sutton, a cop bearing witness to the devastation, while the other is Helena Smith, a neuroscientist studying ways to bring back memories.

I don’t read much science fiction, but I was instantly drawn in by the story of this phenomenon and loved trying to figure out what was happening. The depiction of the syndrome and the way people reacted to it was incredibly detailed and heartbreaking, and was written in  a way that made it seem like it could be real. In general, the writing was descriptive but never drew attention to itself, allowing me to feel fully immersed in this world.

About two thirds of the way through the book, things started feeling really repetitive. It plays into the nature of the entire plot, with repeating memories, but it dragged on too long for me. The relationship between Barry and Helena helps carry the reader through a tumultuous narrative, but by the end I felt like I just kept reading different ways to end the story over and over again. I think if this had been cut down by a few chapters it would have been a five star read.

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Recursion on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides ~ Book Review

Morgan

Celadon Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: June 15, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

If you like the ‘murder at a bougie prep school’ genre, add The Maidens to your TBR. The story centers around Mariana’s trip to Cambridge University following the murder of one of her niece Zoe’s friends. Following the death of her husband, Mariana has felt unmoored, and she throws herself into investigating the murder, certain that the Greek Tragedy professor, Edward, and the elite group of students he calls The Maidens, must be involved.

Michaelides is incredible at beautifully crafting settings that make a reader deeply uncomfortable. The details surrounding the murders that unfold, as well as the descriptions of the sprawling old campus, made a vivid backdrop for the action. I also thought it was really fun how the author tied in some details and characters from his previous book, The Silent Patient. This kind of universe-building makes for really fun easter eggs.

Edward’s character came off as charismatic but untrustworthy and his consistent alibis for each of the murders had me questioning character’s motivations up until the very end. I will say that the ultimate conclusion seemed kind of abrupt to me, and I wish there had been more clues along the way so there was a chance I could’ve kind of guessed where things were heading.

Thank you to Celadon for my copy!

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