Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction, YA

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: YA Science Fiction

Coming fresh off reading Sunrise on the Reaping, I was excited to get back into the world of the Hunger Games. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes lets us in on the backstory of Coriolanus Snow (President Snow in the OG trilogy). For the tenth Hunger Games, members of the Capitol are matched up with tributes to be their mentors. Coriolanus is paired up with Lucy Gray, the girl from district 12.

As tends to be the case with these books, the part I enjoyed most was the actual games. I also found it interesting to see the training Coriolanus received and how the horrible people around him influenced his perspectives.

It was interesting to see how he bent and broke rules to help Lucy (or maybe just to help himself) and how they seemed on the one hand positive, but knowing how he turned out you could see how this was all the beginning of his downhill slide.

Once the games ended, the storyline got stagnant for me. It felt very locked in Coriolanus’s mind in a manner that was repetitive and yet things seemed to escalate very quickly at the very end in a way that I didn’t quite follow.

Still very well done world-building and I appreciated the effort to build out a villain origins story.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes at an indie bookstore near you
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Mystery

What a fantastic reminder of how much I love Janelle Brown’s writing. What Kind of Paradise is, at its core, a mystery, but it is also a sweeping exploration of one girl’s unusual life and the dark undercurrents that led to everything she knows.

Jane grew up in a cabin in the woods in Montana with her dad. They were almost entirely cut off from the outside world, with him constantly explaining the evils of technological advancement as well as having regular drills of what to do if and when the FBI came looking for them.

As Jane gets older and has a bit more exposure to the outside world, she begins to question whether her father’s rules and views are actually aligned with her own beliefs. After discovering paperwork in her dad’s study that makes her question everything, Jane sets off for San Francisco on her own and finds herself surrounded by start-ups focused on exactly the type of technological advancement she has been taught to fear.

I was so impressed with how huge this story felt while still only being about Jane. The section set in Montana was so different from that set in San Francisco but they were each so well developed in terms of setting and characters. I felt wholly immersed in both worlds and enjoyed them each equally.

The focus on the possible evils of technology felt so timely but I loved that it was explored at a time when the internet was just getting started. The arguments on each side are still so relevant and it was such an interesting study of someone who saw the downside to the internet so early vs. the people working so hard to expand what it could do. Plopping Jane in the middle, who had been spoon-fed one perspective all her life, was fascinating.

This story had so many layers and explored so many themes. It’s hard to try to capture it all in one review, so I’ll just say read it.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy What Kind of Paradise at an indie bookstore near you
What Kind of Paradise on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Set primarily at the University of Edinburgh, I was sucked in immediately by the allure of an academic setting. Pen is attending the university from Canada in part because she believes there’s someone there who can help her understand her parents’ divorce. Her best friend Alice is also attending. I loved their friendship. They had been friends forever and watching them fumble their way through university together, making mistakes as they went, was such an understandable journey.

Pen’s sleuthing skills led her to a wealthy author, Elliott Lennox, in the countryside and she visits his estate in the hopes that he will have information for her about her family. Instead, she finds herself welcomed by his family and drawn to Elliott’s son, Sasha, in particular. Thus her relationship with the family quickly becomes more complex than its mysterious beginning. I adored this family – how warm they were and how they enveloped Pen.

Alice’s storyline felt a little half-baked in comparison to Pen’s and I’m not sure it was really necessary. Although still interesting and a good example of how we may experience and make mistakes through early adulthood, her story felt completely divorced from the central plotline.

There was also on-campus drama that flowed between Pen’s visits to the Lennox estate and these depicted believable college experiences. I did feel that Pen’s relationship with the Lennox family was the most compelling part of the story, but her time at school was filled with enough drama that the book never felt dry.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus at an indie bookstore near you
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Sun Sets in Singapore by Kehinde Fadipe ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

This drama follows three women who are Nigerian ex-pats living in Singapore. Dara is a lawyer fighting for partnership at her firm, Amaka is a banker struggling to keep her finances in check, and Lillian followed her husband to Singapore from the US and finds herself lost when their marriage ends. All three are impacted by the arrival of Lani, an attractive new hire at Dara’s firm.

This book was primarily propelled along by drama amongst the women, their friends and family, and everyone’s evolving relationship to Lani. It was very character-driven, yet I found myself mostly only caring about Dara’s storyline. That said, Fadipe did an incredible job in creating believably flawed women.

The various ways the women obsessed over Lani was a bit much for me at times, but it worked as a means for ratcheting up the tension. This was very much a quick, melodramatic read and although I didn’t connect with the characters all that much, I had fun learning about their lives.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Sun Sets in Singapore at an indie bookstore near you
The Sun Sets in Singapore on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

I Hope this Finds You Well by Natalie Sue ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Jolene does the bare minimum to squeak by at her job and gets her qualms with her colleagues out by including her complaints in emails in white text. When she’s caught, HR is supposed to install software to monitor her computer, but instead allows her access to every message being sent in the company.

Jolene’s inner monologue and conflicting interests as to what to do with this newfound information was witty, funny, and sometimes painful. The nuance of office etiquette and the ways people skirt around it were so well summed up in this book.

We get to know Jolene’s mom and their relationship, her neighbor, and a number of her colleagues. I liked how each relationship helped me to understand a different piece of Jolene.

Obviously, things get tangled in a sea of dishonesty, but it helped me to see just how much growth Jolene’s character had. I loved that something negative (snooping on all her colleagues) led to her often understanding them more as people and opening up to them more. It was an unexpected outcome. There was also a really adorable romance that I could not have rooted for more.

There’s depth and darkness to Jolene’s character and a lot of her thoughts about her life are largely negative. That said, her sarcasm and sense of humor lent a light note to the writing. It was a joy to read and I could so perfectly visualize the story.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy I Hope This Finds You Well at an indie bookstore near you
I Hope This Finds You Well on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪
Genre: Romance

I wish I hadn’t bothered finishing this book because it continued to make me roll my eyes the whole way through. Samantha meets Xavier when she brings a kitten she found to his veterinary practice. There’s immediate chemistry, but just one problem, she’s moving across the country to help care for her mother who has dementia.

I really like the chemistry between the two main characters but, as per the entire premise, they’re across the country from each other for most of the book. They’re both completely miserable and it was not enjoyable to read about over and over. It made it hard to root for their relationship.

One of the main things that completely ruined this read for me were the endless references to social media and pop culture. Samantha works in social media for a mustard company and the number of times the author included mustard related instagram captions that were supposed to be funny was absolutely unnecessary. It completely pulled me out of the story every time.

There were about 1,000 things going on in Samantha’s life, none of which were discussed in depth enough for me to care and I was not a fan of the ultimate conclusion. It’s time I accept that this author is not for me.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Say You’ll Remember Me at an indie bookstore near you
Say You’ll Remember Me on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Great Big Beautiful Life has so much going for it. It has a grumpy/sunshine romance following Alice and Hayden as they compete for the chance to write the story of the elusive Margaret Ives, an heiress who grew up in a famous family and hasn’t been seen for years. The rumors swirling around her past make this opportunity – to finally bring her life to the public eye – a huge one.

Alice is desperate for her big break, but worried that Pulitzer-prize winning Hayden will beat her. As they bump into each other time and again on the small island, they begin to realize that A. Margaret is not telling them each the same things and B. they are undeniably attracted to each other.

The growing tension between the writers combined with them being competitors and bound by an NDA about their time with Margaret was delicious. I was eager to see how they would navigate the difficulty of their situation.

Much of the book tells the story of Margaret’s past and her family history. It felt like it was trying to be very Evelyn Hugo-esque. I know it was supposed to be scandalous and exciting, but I really didn’t care about her past. It didn’t feel like her character was fleshed out enough for me to be invested in her family history and the excerpts in the past (which was a lot of the book) fell flat for me. Whenever I was reading one, I wished I could rush through to get back to Alice and Hayden.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Great Big Beautiful Life at an indie bookstore near you
Great Big Beautiful Life on Goodreads

Book Review, Science Fiction, YA

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Science Fiction

Oh how I loved being back in the world of the Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins has done it again, this time chronicling the Quarter Quell games, which Haymitch participated in. Knowing Haymitch in the context of the original books, I was intrigued to see how his past informed his future, while also bracing myself because we know from the start things will not go well.

Collins does a beautiful job world-building and showing us how Haymitch has developed strong relationships with those around him despite the unfortunate circumstances in District 12. I was impressed with how fully I felt I understood his life and his place there in the short time before the reaping.

I feel like Collins said okay, the audience knows a few key things that happen to Haymitch already so let me completely throw them for a loop and make them entirely unexpected. The way I had no idea what was coming (see the reaping) even thought I kind of  knew what was coming.

There are a lot of characters, particularly since the Quarter Quell had double the number of tributes as usual, but each kid was so distinct (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way), that I had no trouble distinguishing between and feeling for them.

The final chapters of this book were shocking in a way that I hated but also so clearly defined who Haymitch becomes. Lucky for me, I haven’t read The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes yet, so I will be heading back into this universe ASAP.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Sunrise on the Reaping at an indie bookstore near you
Sunrise on the Reaping on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

When You Find Me by P.J. Vernon ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Genre: Thriller

Gray Godfrey is home visiting her family when her husband goes missing after a night out. Gray, who regularly drinks to oblivion, blacked out the night he disappeared and finds herself a suspect even to herself.

The descriptions of how much Gray wanted to drink and how she could sneak a drink and where she could find a drink were about half the content of this book. We needed like three sentences explaining that she was an alcoholic, yet it was hammered into the story incessantly. I found all the characters extremely unlikeable, which made it hard for me to care what happened.

The story is told in alternating viewpoints, which I enjoyed. One in particular, Annie, is a mystery for much of the story and I was eager to find out how her perspective fit into the lives of the other characters and what role she played in everything.

I found the big twist to be kind of a cop-out, but the veryyyy last sentence was really well done, so that was something.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy When You Find Me at an indie bookstore near you
When You Find Me on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Science Fiction

I read Mickey7 after seeing the movie adaptation, which I’ll admit, I enjoyed more than the book. This story has a wonderfully wacky sci-fi premise. Mickey is an Expendable. His role, as his colony continues their expedition to colonize a new planet, is to act as an exploratory guinea pig. Every time he dies, he is reprinted and continues as the next Mickey. That is, until Mickey8 is accidentally printed while Mickey7 is still alive.

The worldbuilding was so fascinating in this book. I liked learning about the space exploration and the history of other colonies. Mickey is a historian and sprinkling in the history of his universe added to both his character and my understanding of the present. There were also religious elements brought in, with some people feeling morally opposed to Expendables based on their religious beliefs. It was a well thought out addition that made the colony feel real.

The writing made this book especially amusing, it was funny and sharp and witty, even when the Mickey’s themselves tended to be dumb. It was especially enjoyable to listen to.

I found that the storyline dragged for me. It felt like not much happened for rather large chunks of the book, and there was some repetitive historical context that hammered some points home a little more than necessary. I also much preferred the ending of the movie and the role of the native creatures in it.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Mickey7 at an indie bookstore near you
Mickey7 on Goodreads