Book Review, Fiction, Romance

The Love Proof by Madeleine Henry ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: February 9, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪

The Love Proof tells the story of Jake and Sophie’s romance. They meet at Yale and feel an instant connection, as if they’ve known each other for years. Sophie is a physics prodigy studying time, while Jake has been cultivating his economics expertise since he was young, and using it to help support his mom. I really appreciated that Henry provided background stories about each character. They gave some context to why each turned out the way they did. That being said, Jake’s relationship with his mom seemed oddly extreme and was never fully explained.

While Jake and Sophie were at Yale, I liked watching them fall in love and it was believable to understand what they loved about each other. They had very unique personalities that felt real in their quirkiness.

After they graduated, however, the story really lost me. It felt like they wasted the majority of their lives obsessing over each other. Sophie’s research didn’t really make sense to me and felt like an extension of her obsession, rather than an actual interesting scientific discovery. The further the book got from their college relationship, the more frustrated I got. There’s a difference between love and obsession and this book did not seem able to make that delineation leading to a story that was concerning rather than heartwarming. 

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The Love Proof on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Someone We Know by Shari Lapena ~ Book Review

Morgan

Pamela Dorman Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: July 30, 2019
My Rating:🍪🍪🍪

Someone We Know follows a web of neighbors as they react to the fact that one of them, Amanda Pierce has disappeared. Her husband Richard’s narration seems calculated and cold, but it’s slowly uncovered that everyone in the surrounding houses has secrets as well.

I really liked that each household was facing distinct and believable struggles of their own. Olivia finds out that her teenage son, Raleigh, has been breaking into houses to hack people’s computers for fun, while her friend Glenda worries that her son has started drinking. The details of each family’s personal lives added a lot to the story and made me interested in learning more about each of these specific circumstances, and how they might be related to the disappearance.

This book has a police procedural element, closely sticking with the detectives investigating Amanda’s disappearance. This format tends to often feel repetitive for me, and this book was no exception. The pattern of going back to question each neighbor over and over seemed overdone by the end.

The ending of this book felt random to me. It wasn’t as much of a shock as I had hoped for, and the excessive use of infidelity felt kind of plot-devicey. I was definitely gripped by this storyline, especially helped by the short chapters and quick jumps between households, but it wasn’t a favorite thriller.

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Someone We Know on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker ~ Book Review

Morgan

Atria Books
Romance
Release Date: August 7, 2018
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I’ve seen countless rave reviews for The Simple Wild, so my expectations going into it were high. The story follows 26-year old Calla Fletcher, who leaves her life in Toronto to go and spend time with her father, who she last saw when she was a baby, in Alaska. Her father, Wren, is dying of lung cancer, and Calla knows this will be her last chance to form any kind of relationship with him.

Upon her arrival, Calla meets Jonah, a pilot who seems intent on making her stay miserable, and pointing out her materialistic ‘city-girl’ ways. She also meets a close friend of her dads, Agnes, and her daughter Mabel. The characters in this book were extremely well written. Tucker paints a beautiful picture of the close knit community in Bangor, Alaska, and the types of kind-hearted, rustic individuals who make it up. Each one was unique and detailed enough to feel very real. I felt like I knew them.

Jonah and Calla’s story predictable followed the hate-to-love trope. Their relationship was cute, but I wasn’t entirely blown away or convinced by it. I was more invested in Calla’s relationship with the community as a whole and with her dad. As she gets to know her dad more at the end of her life, she finds solace in forging friendships with those who were closest to him, and spends her days learning about how he’s lived her life.

Calla’s growth as a character was notable as she comes to appreciate the life her father chose in rural Alaska and the people who make the town so special. Tucker wonderfully explores the intricacies of life in Alaska, an element that added a lot to the story and elevated it from a standard romance. For me, this one was a little over-hyped, but I still liked it a lot.

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The Simple Wild on Goodreads

Uncategorized

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Genre: Horror
Release Date: October 20, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I hesitate to call Plain Bad Heroines horror, but I’m not quite sure what I’d classify it as– maybe some sort of gothic sub-genre. It’s a split storyline, and the two are very different. The modern storyline follows Audrey, Harper, and Merrit as they are shooting a movie at the old Brookhants School for Girls. 100 years before, it was the site of multiple mysterious deaths, two, Flo and Clara, stemming from savage yellow jackets, and tied to a then-scandalous novel by an author named Mary Maclane. The film recreates their deaths and the tragic happenings at the school at the time. The other part of the book takes place when the school is still open and the deaths are discovered. It is told by the school’s principal and those she surrounds herself with.

The juxtaposition of the two timelines was really interesting in this story, and particularly the way the movie director tried to play up the cursed nature of the setting. I was never quite sure what was really happening, and what was meant to be movie magic — and neither were the girls. The story features a lot of queer relationships during both timelines, and the relationships between the three modern girls were constantly shifting. That being said, I did not find any of the three of them particularly likeable.

I found the more modern part of this book fascinating, detailed, and incredibly unique. The part set in the 1900s was a little harder for me to follow. I think part of the problem for me was that I listened to the audiobook, and the story was over 600 pages. It would have been helpful to be able to flip back and reference past chapters (I’ve also heard the physical book has illustrations!). Overall, this was an incredibly unusual, twisty storyline with an omniscient narrator guiding the reader through the years.

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Plain Bad Heroines on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison ~ Book Review

Morgan

MIRA
Genre:YA Thriller
Release Date: December 31, 2019
My Rating:🍪🍪🍪

Good Girls Lie was a truly atmospheric thriller. Set at a prep school for girls whose parents are extremely wealthy and well connected, it had whispers of Gossip Girl and the Gallagher Girls books. In general, I find this to be an extremely intriguing setting. With hazing and age-old traditions abounding, it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s sinister at the Goode School.

Ash Carlisle arrives from London, accepted on a scholarship after both her parents die. She’s quickly taken under the wing of the most popular upperclassmen, Becca, but the attention switches back and forth between sugar sweet and toxic faster than Ash can keep track of. Ash’s intention was to keep her head down and try to fly under the radar, but she finds herself with an increasingly large target on her back as she’s drawn to Becca. The dynamic was a little too whiplash-y for me. I understand that teenage girls can be mercurial, but in this instance it sometimes seemed too extreme.

I knew that something was up with Ash from the get-go, and I was intrigued to uncover her secrets. The writing included alternating passages with a mystery narrator who kept me guessing. I was fully immersed in this book until the actual twist was uncovered and then I was disappointed. It felt like an overdone trope to fall into, and made all the odd happenings at The Goode School suddenly less spooky and intriguing. Overall, I’d recommend this book for the prep school setting with its unconventional traditions, and the schoolgirl dynamics, but not so much as a great thriller.

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Good Girls Lie on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Don’t Look for Me by Wendy Walker ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: September 15, 2020
My Rating:🍪🍪🍪.5

Don’t Look for Me follows the disappearance of Molly Clarke and the subsequent response of her family and law enforcement. The Clarke family is made of a web of strained relationships following the accidental death of Annie at nine years old. The accidental death caused by Molly hitting her with a car.

When the police find a note in Molly’s handwriting stating that she has chosen to flee and not to look for her, they don’t pursue the disappearance much more. Nicole, Molly’s daughter, however, doesn’t believe her mother would run away from her life, and despite their tense relationship, she begins a quest of her own to investigate.

The book is split into two perspectives: Nicole’s and Molly’s. I really enjoyed Nicole’s segments, and watching her trying to piece things together. The reader knows from Molly’s side that Nicole isn’t getting the full picture, and sometimes I wanted to scream at her to THINK about what she was doing, which I loved. I found Molly’s segments really bizarre and hard to get into. The plans she kept trying to make seemed incredibly far-fetched. Since this was such a big part of the book, it made it hard for me to love the story as a whole.

There was one big twist in the plot that I kind of sensed a little, but thought was really well done and built up to. The ultimate ending included another twist that I didn’t think was necessary and detracted from the story for me. Ultimately, this was a solid thriller, but not a favorite. 

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Don’t Look for Me on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Daughter by Jane Shemilt ~ Book Review

Morgan

Harper Collins
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: March 3, 2015
My Rating: 🍪.5

The Daughter is a split-narrative thriller centering on the disappearance of 15-year old Naomi, from her mother, Jenny’s, point of view. It follows Jenny in the days leading up to, and surpassing her daughter’s disappearance as well as a year later. The central concept is that she didn’t know Naomi nearly as well as she thought she did, but this is hard to fully grasp as a reader since we never get Naomi’s point of view. It would have been very helpful to see Naomi’s perspective. As written, I felt that there was no way to really guess what had happened to Naomi. I appreciate when you can look back on a thriller and see the threads that lead to the ultimate conclusion, but this narrative felt pretty aimless to me.

Jenny’s husband and two sons are frequently included in the storyline, but they never really seemed relevant until the very end, at which point it felt like too late to give them such importance. Overall, this story felt incredibly disjointed to me and the ending just seemed random. The writing itself was interesting and descriptive and there were a lot of unusual character traits and aspects of the plot that could have made for a really rich story if the narrative had been more cohesive.

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The Daughter on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy ~ Book Review

Morgan

Harper
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: October 13, 2020
My Rating:🍪🍪🍪

Hmm, I’m not quite sure how to review this one. I listened to the audiobook of Goodnight Beautiful (thanks to Libro.fm) and was instantly sucked in. I loved the flirty banter between Sam and his wife Annie to start. They like to roleplay out in public, and the first time Sam pretends to pick Annie up at a bar, it becomes clear that their little game will make it incredibly hard for the reader to tell exactly what’s really going on at all times in the book, which I loved.

The couple has recently moved out of New York City, and Sam opens up his own therapy practice. From upstairs, a vent in the wall allows anyone to overhear his sessions, which we readers are lucky enough to get to do. 

The twists in this book were shocking to the point of confusion for me. I think part of this was because I made assumptions and it was hard for me to readjust after I learned the truth. I had to rethink what I knew about a large chunk of the book. This is part of what I love about the thriller genre, it just took a bit of work for me on this on. I wouldn’t say that was a negative for this book, if anything, it indicates how seamlessly the opening was set up with the impending reveal of the twist.

The ending really let the book down a few notches for me. It felt cramped with reveal after reveal and it lost any believability factor it had had for me. The pacing and tone of the narrative completely changed from the rest of the book and was disappointing given how enthralled I was from the majority of the book. This is still a wild and intriguing thriller, and if you like thrillers that push the envelope on being believable, this one might be well suited for you.

Buy Goodnight  Beautiful at an indie bookstore near you
Goodnight Beautiful on Goodreads

Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole ~ Book Review

Morgan

William Morrow
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: September 1, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

There was a lot I appreciated about When No One is Watching. As an avid thriller reader, it was refreshing to get a totally new take on the genre. This book focuses on gentrification in America and Brooklyn specifically. The reality of the situation made it all the more scary. Sydney feels out of control as she watches her neighbors move out and her neighborhood completely change around her. She decides to create a walking tour that’s fully transparently representative of the history of the area.

Along with the help of a new neighbor, Theo, Sydney digs into the racism that’s permeated the area for decades. The narrative brought in systemic racism through shocking, sadly believable facts and evidence. It was interesting to see the difference in Sydney’s reaction to this information, and Theo’s, since he was wholly unfamiliar with much of it prior.

The action in this book felt very unevenly distributed. The beginning dragged for me. As Theo and Sydney visited different groups to learn about the history of the area, I was unsure why so many characters needed to be introduced. There were some times when Sydney felt uneasy about how quickly her surroundings were changing, but it didn’t feel like a thriller. The second half jumps full tilt into disturbing and twisted thriller mode. The premise from there on out was incredibly different from anything I’ve read before and there was no way I saw it coming. It was thought-provoking and terrifying. That being said, it felt like too much all at once for me. If everything was spaced out evenly through the book, I think it all could have worked, but as it was, I felt overloaded at the end and things didn’t feel fleshed out enough. If you’re looking for a thriller that doesn’t fit the stereotypes of the genre, and grapples with prevalent and timely issues surrounding systemic racism, I would recommend trying this one.

Buy When No One is Watching at an indie bookstore near you
When No One is Watching on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: February 18, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I tend not to really get into paranormal ghost stories, despite my love of thrillers. I usually find them unrealistic to the point where I just can’t get into them. The Sun Down Motel was a game-changer for me. The setting is an old isolated motel at the edge of a highway that was built there to cater to an amusement park that never ended up being built. That in itself was haunting all on its own.

The story is a split narrative between Viv, and her niece, Carly, 30-ish years later. Both come to Fell, NY on their own and work as night clerks at the motel. While Viv’s arrival there is pure happenstance, Carly is investigating what happened to Viv, who disappeared at the time she was working there.

Fell has a noted history of murders, and the Sun Down Motel has seen several deaths on the premises itself. Carly and Viv learn this first hand, as the motel often comes to life at night, with unexplained opening doors and power outages.

As Viv begins to investigate the history of Fell’s murders, it was intoxicating to watch the parallels between her and Carly’s storylines. The more they each uncovered, the more sure I was that they were headed straight for trouble, and the more freaked out I got. I’ve read a lot of thrillers and they rarely scare me, but this one absolutely creeped me out.

The one slight problem I had was that it felt like the ultimate conclusion was figured out a little early on so I kept expecting there to be a twist, which I would have loved. That being said, this was still a phenomenal and atmospheric spooky-season read.

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The Sun Down Motel on Goodreads