Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney ~ Book Review

Morgan

Conversations with Friends and Cookies

Hogarth
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Release Date (USA): July 11, 2017
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I loved this book, but I hated everyone in it. Does that make sense? Rooney did an unbelievably wonderful job crafting characters whose morals, thought processes, and conversations (see what I did there?) are questionable at best. 

Frances and Bobbi, best friends, college students, and previous lovers, speak like they know everything about everything. They are so self-assured in their intellect that their characters immediately seemed believably like those twenty-one year-olds who think they’re better than everyone else. Bobbi and Frances find their lives intertwined with those of an older married couple, Melissa and Nick. Bobbi is drawn to Melissa, while Frances is attracted to Nick. The friendship with the four of them seemed a bit odd to me given the age difference between the two pairs, but they were all immersed in the art/literary world, so I guess that gave them enough of a connection to maintain their friendship.

The story focuses mainly on Frances and her relationship with Nick, her financial struggles, and her health. The way she approaches each of these obstacles, as if they’re wholly out of her control, was infuriating. She acted as if she had no agency in her own life. This was a fascinating read precisely for that reason. I didn’t understand the type of people any of these characters were, or their motivations. This made for a really interesting character study that wholly and completely sucked me in. Reading about people so different from anyone in my own life always kept me on my toes, although the plot was not action-filled. I would definitely recommend this one, and I’m surprised that I had previously heard so much more about Rooney’s more recent novel, since Conversations with Friends blew it out of the water for me.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The Twin by Natasha Preston ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Twin with Muffin

Delacorte Press
Genre: YA Thriller
Release Date: March 3, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪

I want to preface my review by saying that I’m not the target audience for this book, and I think that had a lot to do with me not loving it. This is a YA thriller, and as such, focuses a lot on high school drama, but doesn’t get super crazy messed up. (Okay, maybe kind of toward the very, very end, but not overwhelmingly so). I actually haven’t read any thrillers with the good twin/bad twin thing going on that I can recall, but it’s a trope we’re all familiar with.

Ivy and Iris are twins who were separated when their parents divorced, but after their mother’s sudden death, Iris comes to live with Ivy and their dad. From the get-go, Iris doesn’t have any discernible grief about her mother’s death, and what seems like clinginess in an attempt to have her sister to lean on, soon becomes something more sinister. Preston illustrates ways that Iris seems to be trying to overhaul Ivy’s life entirely, but the action unfolds very slowly. A lot of the book is used to define Ivy’s relationships with her friends, boyfriend, dad, and therapist, which I thought was great world building, but was a bit slow.

I think what I really needed more of here were character motivations. It wasn’t clear to me what Iris’s agenda was, and I didn’t get why Ivy’s friends and teachers would be so quick to turn against here. Everyone in her life seemed to be freaking out about how much she changed, but it wasn’t made super clear to the reader. I do think if I was in the YA target age range, this may have been something I wouldn’t care so much about, so I would encourage younger readers to give this one a try.

My Rating: 🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

You Were There Too by Colleen Oakley ~ Book Review

Morgan

You Were There Too with Cookies

Berkley
Genre: Romance
Release Date: January 7, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

When Mia and her husband Harrison move to small town Pennsylvania, they are not in a good place with each other, or with themselves. Mia is reeling from another miscarriage, and Harrison, a doctor, struggles to overcome his feelings of guilt associated with a young patient he lost during a routine procedure. The setup speaks volumes about the story as a whole: it is emotionally raw and heart wrenching.

Into this setup walks Oliver, the man of Mia’s dreams — literally. Mia’s shocked to see that the man she’s dreamt about for years is, in fact, real. Not only that, Oliver dreams about Mia, too. As the two get to know each other, Mia grapples with her connection to Oliver and what it means for her relationship with her husband. One aspect of the story that I really appreciated was that Mia shares everything with Harrison. Even though her situation with Oliver is awkward and uncomfortable, she is totally upfront with Harrison, and he respects her decision to try to figure out what her dreams mean. 

Both Oliver and Harrison are wonderful and complex characters, and Oakley makes the reader really feel for Mia. Mia’s tension and confusion were palpable and my emotions ran high along with hers the whole time I was reading. I definitely knew what I wanted Mia to do, but I wasn’t sure if she would follow through, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the heartbreaking ending.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier ~ Book Review

Morgan

Little Secrets with coffee and cookies
Minotaur Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: April 21, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for an ARC of Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier (out April 21!).

The depths of this book were seriously impressive. The premise of a thriller based on the a disappeared child was different than many of the domestic thrillers I read and I was interested to see how the pacing of the plot played out. Man, did it pack a punch. Hillier fit so much into this book! Luckily, it was pretty lengthy, so it never seemed like too much was happening at once to the point of disbelief.

Marin struggles to live with herself each day after her son is kidnapped from her side at a busy market. Some days she is more successful than others. Hillier paints a rounded picture of Marin’s work life, her grief group, and her relationship with her husband and her best friend Sal, and how each is impacted and influenced by her loss. Marin has also hired her own private investigator, employed after the police have long given up actively searching for her boy, Sebastian. Marin keeps the investigator secret from her husband, but she soon learns that she is not the only one in their marriage keeping secrets.

As Marin focuses in on the deceit in her relationship, the other parts of her life seem to distort around her. Reading this book was like watching a carefully constructed life fall apart piece by piece. It highlighted the darkest corners of the human psyche, and the truly twisted ways different people react and lash out when they are hurting. 

I never could have guessed how each thread of this story was interconnected, and what elements of Marin’s past were informing her present. I’m not sure how, as a thriller-lover, I am just now discovering Jennifer Hillier, but I can say with confidence that I’ll be seeking out more of her work!

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid ~ Book Review

Morgan

Such a Fun Age with Danish

G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Release Date: December 31, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I really enjoyed Such a Fun Age, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. Twenty-five year old Emira is low on ambition. The highlight of her days is babysitting Briar for the Chamberlain family and she recognizes her importance in the little girl’s life. One night, Emira, who is black, is accused of kidnapping the Briar as they walk through the aisles of an upscale grocery store. The incident is a catalyst, mostly, for Alix Chamberlain to suddenly take an extreme interest in her babysitter.

The book focuses a lot on Alix’s life — her childhood, her career, her insecurities. I found these details really interesting and unusual. Reid creates a very unique character who I liked learning about, although I didn’t particularly like. The grocery store incident sparks a strange obsessive interest in Emira’s life that I didn’t see coming, and made me distinctly uncomfortable. It was wild to read how Alix felt she was trying to help Emira, when it was clear to the reader that she was crossing lines left and right.

The story also has a steady exploration of explicit and implicit racism. There are so many details, experiences, and conversations that Emira goes through that were uncomfortably familiar. Reid does a powerful job of exploring racism through Emira’s lens. It was painful to see how Emira tried to not let her discomfort show in situations that were clearly not okay, but that she had experienced so many times they felt normal-adjacent.

Overall, the plot did a unique job of exploring a deep-rooted societal issue while also laying out an interesting story. Honestly, I didn’t particularly like any of the characters as people, but it speaks to Reid’s skills as a writer that I still enjoyed, and would recommend Such a Fun Age.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The New Husband by D.J. Palmer ~ Book Review

Morgan

The New Husband and cookies

St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: April 14, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I’ve taken a little break from thrillers, so I was excited to jump into The New Husband (coming April 14!). The book follows a very typical domestic thriller setup. Nina Garrity moves in with her new boyfriend, Simon, two years after her husband Glen mysteriously disappeared. Her children, Connor and Maggie have extremely different views of Simon. Connor seems to love him, while Maggie is increasingly concerned about the flashes of intense anger she catches in his eyes. Who to believe…?

We get to see a few character’s points of view through different chapters, which really allowed the reader to see how they justified actions to themselves. This was alternately disturbing, and clarifying. It allowed me to get to know the characters and their motivations a lot better.

This book was almost 400 pages and the first half really dragged for me. We watch Simon’s manipulative ‘nice guy’ nature slowly chip away at Nina’s life and sanity, in a series of very repetitive vignettes. When the second half of the book hit, however, I was completely shocked. The twist was not at all something I saw coming, and the plot became next-level messed up.

Nina as a main character was not particularly likeable. She fell into a typical thriller ‘clueless female protagonist’ for the most part. I loved that Jewell had Maggie, instead, as the suspicious one who brought things into her own hands, and tried to protect her family. The push and pull between Maggie and her mom was extremely frustrating, but in a good way. I couldn’t wait to see how Maggie would be able to convince her mom that Simon wasn’t all he seemed.

By the end of this thrill-ride I was totally hooked, but the distribution of the action and excitement definitely felt uneven to me.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Flatshare with pastry

Flatiron Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: May 28, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

The Flatshare is a very cute read. The premise sets up an inevitable (and predictable) romance between Tiffy and Leon — flatmates who never meet. Leon works at night and Tiffy works during the day, so they cohabitate like ships in the night. Until they don’t. The slow burn up to the romance is adorable. I loved that they communicated through sticky notes around the apartment, using them to comment on things that needed moving or cleaning, as well as emotionally checking in on each other and sharing food. I could feel the love blossoming.

I really appreciated how different the two main characters were, and how completely Beth O’Leary was able to emulate that through their different chapters. The sections narrated by Tiffy depict her eclectic style and nature, her big heart, and her emotional side. Leon, on the other hand, is very logical and straightforward. His narrative was much more choppy, which was jarring at first, but came to define his voice. It was always very clear which one was leading the story.

The ending of the book threw me off a little bit. Throughout the story, Tiffy’s crazy ex-boyfriend popped up a lot, but I felt like his role was pushed too far at the end. It was really powerful to see how O’Leary wove in flashbacks to the way Tiffy had been emotionally abused by her ex, and the repercussions of that treatment as she came to terms with what she had been through. I think this would have been just as powerful without the ex flying off the handle at the end of the story.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Dutch House and Pastry

Harper
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: September 24, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

The Dutch House is a steady read. The pacing is by no means fast, but the detail of the characters’ lives was deep enough to keep me fully invested. There’s not a particular build or climax, but there doesn’t need to be. This is deeply a character study of Danny and his sister Maeve from childhood all the way through their lives. The pacing and general format of the plot reminded me somewhat of Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.

I found it really interesting that this book was named after the house that Danny and Maeve lived in as children, until they were kicked out by their stepmother. Patchett illustrates the ways that the house continues to influence their lives, and brings them back to it in a beautiful full circle by the end of their stories. The home is very much a character in Danny and Maeve’s lives and, as such, their relationships with it ebb and flow over the years. 

Patchett is able to carry the reader seamlessly through every new step in her characters’ lives: college, medical school, marriages, children, deaths, divorces, without the narrative ever feeling bogged down or too slow. There were times when I didn’t even realize how much time had passed until someone’s age was mentioned, which could feel a little startling.

Since I’m used to primarily reading thrillers, it is rare that a slow burn like The Dutch House will keep my interest and enjoyment the way this book did. It is clear that Patchett took time and care in truly getting to know her characters and mapping out their lives. I will say that the ending felt a little rushed compared to the rest of the narrative, but it was still a solid way to let the reader emerge from the lives they’d just been immersed in.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Family Upstairs and Banana Bread
Atria Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: November 5, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

At first glance, the premise of The Family Upstairs seems not unlike other thrillers: character X inherits mysterious giant mansion filled with secrets. Don’t be fooled! This book was nothing like I was expecting. I’ve never read anything quite like The Family Upstairs, and certainly wasn’t expecting to be thrown head over heels into a narrative chronicling a family-turned-cult. The horrifying and manipulative behavior that’s described within the walls of 16 Cheyne Walk is shocking. 

The story takes place across two time periods, one chronicling Lucy and Henry’s experience growing up in the mansion, and one following Libby as she begins to uncover the secrets surrounding her new inheritance. I loved the way that Jewell had Lucy and Henry hint at the sinister changes that were soon to befall them. The transformation from a happy, wholesome family unit to a disturbing, controlling prison was hard to look away from when narrated by the children.

Towards the end of the book, the two narratives begin to bleed into one another. It took me a while to connect all the threads, but the ultimate confusion, and cohesion of them was wonderfully constructed. This was one of the rare thrillers where every stray piece fits perfectly when reviewed after finishing the entire story. If you’re okay with being distinctly uncomfortable with the circumstances you’re reading about, I highly recommend delving into the darkness within 16 Cheyne Walk.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
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Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction, Uncategorized

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan ~ Book Review

Morgan

Good Boy with Brownies

Celadon Books
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: April 21, 2020 (Thank you to Celadon Books and BookishFirst for the ARC)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

This book far and away exceeded my expectations. Jennifer Boylan’s writing is truly enjoyable to read. Not just clear and eloquent, enjoyable! Her humor and wit are wonderfully woven into the prose and snuck up on me. Boylan is a master at incorporating pithy quips and flippant cultural references into the midst of musings on her past.

The premise of this book was extremely unique. I know that Boylan has other memoirs, but this is the first I had read of her. The setup for this particular book included outlining her life through a timeline composed of the dogs she’s had. You might think that by dog number seven, it would be repetitive to hear another set of canine descriptors, but each dog was such a unique character, that this was not the case.

Boylan creates a web of relationships to each dog. They are more than just timeline benchmarks, they are parts of her family — however her family may be defined at any given time. Mother, father, sister, wife, each have a different relationship to, and take on, each dog. It shocked me how many strange and extremely disobedient dogs Boylan’s experienced over the years.

Beyond the canine aspect of this book, there is, of course, Boylan’s life story. Boylan wonderfully details a childhood as a boy, reacting and interacting with his sister and parents, and the fear surrounding transitioning to being female. Boylan narrates, in a very straightforward manner, all of her experiences, and the real, raw, emotional reactions around her. It was especially interesting hearing about her reaction to finding out that her son also identified as transgender. The scenes towards the end of the book with Boylan and her wife spending time with their children and friends were so incredibly well written. They were infused with painful emotion, but the outward actions reflected a joyful, supportive family.

I definitely recommend this book. If Boylan’s writing has not been on your radar before, it should be now!

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
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