Tag: baker

Book Review, Fiction

Meet Me in Paradise by Libby Hubscher ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: March 23, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Don’t be deceived by the fun, tropical cover of Meet Me in Paradise — this book has emotional heft! It starts with Marin reluctantly agreeing to go on a tropical vacation with her sister Sadie. The sisters couldn’t be more different. Sadie is a travel photographer, always on the go, and ever since their mother died on a work trip as a journalist, Marin doesn’t travel or take risks. Instead, she takes care of Sadie.

When Sadie misses their flight, the handsome stranger, Lucas, who takes her seat on the plane next to Marin becomes her impromptu tour guide. When Marin’s passport quickly goes missing, Sadie promises to help her get a new one, using her work connections, only after Marin has proven that she’s letting loose and trying something new on her vacation. Marin slowly comes to realize that maybe the missed flight wasn’t so much of an accident, and that there’s more to her trip, and her sister’s motivations than she realizes.

Sadie and Marin’s relationship was incredibly well written and I could feel the closeness of their connection. The island of Saba was the perfect setting and made for a stark juxtaposition to the shattering discoveries that Marin uncovers about her sister while she’s there. Although Marin’s relationship with Lucas is important to the story, her relationship with Sadie is far more salient and meaningful. We see the sacrifices Marin has made to try to keep them both safe, but that sheltered her from truly living, and Sadie’s attempts to make Marin truly see what life could be.

This book has a little of everything — romance, adventure, family, and heartbreak, not to mention a gorgeous cover, and I highly recommend it.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren ~ Book Review

Morgan

Gallery Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: May 18, 2021 (Thank you to NetGalley for my copy!)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

When I started The Soulmate Equation I was pretty quickly convinced it was going to be very clichéd. Jess, a single mom, joins a new DNA-based matchmaking company and gets an insanely high match with none other than the company’s founder himself, River Pena. I may have rolled my eyes. BUT, this story was actually very sweet and I was super pleasantly surprised by it.

I loved Juno, Jess’s daughter, and the depth the story took into their relationship and crafting Juno as a well-rounded character. She added a level of complexity to the story that not all romance books have. Jess’s best friend, Fizzy, is an amazing addition as well. She’s hilariously extroverted and over the top and completely unafraid to speak her mind and push Jess to do things she wasn’t totally comfortable with — in the most supportive way.

There was a twist in this story that caught me off guard, and I couldn’t guess where the narrative was going to end up after that. This kept me fully engaged even through that scenes that did feel a little stereotypically romance-y.

Jess and River’s relationship felt like it blossomed organically and I loved that they bonded over being statisticians. This is a really lovely story and a quick read that made me smile.

Buy The Soulmate Equation at an indie bookstore near you
The Soulmate Equation on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

People we Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry ~ Book Review

Morgan

Berkley Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: May 11, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I loved Beach Read and couldn’t wait to read Emily Henry’s newest book. People We Meet on Vacation tells the story of two best friends, Alex and Poppy. They meet in college and although they move to different cities once they graduate, they set aside time every year for a summer vacation together. At first I was a little disappointed when this started showing signs of the ‘friends to lovers’ trope, but I eventually I fell in love with Alex and Poppy too much to care if there ended up being a little bit of cliché in their story.

It’s clear from the start that something came between Alex and Poppy and kept them apart for many years, and through flashbacks, we begin to get an idea of what happened. This allowed the reader to see just how their friendship formed and how they became so close. These details were incredibly well written and believable and made for a really solid basis of the characters’ friendship. I loved getting to see the two of them realize how well they worked together. I also loved getting to be a part of their inside jokes.

Emily Henry’s writing is fantastic. The details she includes create vivid settings for the plot to unfold in. I could picture each moment of Alex and Poppy’s many vacations and their jetsetting made for an ever changing and always interesting environment for each chapter of their story.

The backstory behind what each character wanted out of their life added a lot of richness and depth to both Poppy and Alex. They both seemed incredibly real and I felt just as torn as they did about the decisions they had to make.

Buy People We Meet on Vacation at an indie bookstore near you
People We Meet on Vacation at Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: April 13, 2021 (Thanks to Libro.fm for my copy!)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

The Good Sister tells the stories of Fern and Rose, twin sisters who are vastly different. Fern works at the local library. She’s masterful at selecting book recommendations for patrons, but she struggles with sensory overload and sometimes has trouble understanding people if they aren’t speaking literally. She has dinner with her sister Rose three times a week. Rose seems to act almost as a guardian figure for Rose, since their mother is in an assisted living facility following a stroke, but it slowly because clear that Rose may not be the supportive sibling she appears to be.

I loved Fern’s character and the way she slowly became empowered to live independently throughout the book. She had always seen her differences as detrimental, and been told (by Rose) that they meant she couldn’t live a normal life. As Fern becomes romantically involved with a library patron, she comes to realize that there are other people like her and that, with a little planning, she can fully live her life like anyone else.

It was pretty clear to me that Fern had been manipulated for her entire life, but the extent of it was shocking and the twists toward the end were well implemented. This definitely wasn’t a typical thriller — it had an element of romance, and Fern was a unique main character who I came to care about a great deal.

Buy The Good Sister at an indie bookstore near you

The Good Sister on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Survivors by Jane Harper ~ Book Review

Morgan

Flatiron Books
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: February 2, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5 

The Survivors is a tangled mystery that brings its characters back time and time again to a fatal storm during their teenage years. Kieran Elliott has always felt guilty for the loss of his brother that resulted from the storm, and returning to his hometown with his wife and baby stirs up those feelings all over again, especially when a new fatality occurs. The townspeople are forced to reconsider the past in an attempt to draw parallels to the murder at present.

The setting of this book was especially fitting for the plot. ‘The Survivors’ themselves refer to iron slabs that stick out from the sea — resulting from a shipwreck. They guard the entrance to a series of seaside caves that fill with water as the tide comes in. The eeriness in the depiction and creation of this setting was wonderfully atmospheric and made me distinctly uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, the story itself just didn’t grab me. It was slow for a mystery and I had trouble keeping track of how everyone fit together. There were ‘clues’ along the way that were obvious plot devices and kept me from feeling fully invested in the ultimate reveal of what was going on.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Love Your Life by Sophie Kinsella ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dial Press
Genre: Romance
Release Date: October 27, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I had fun reading Love Your Life because of the humor threaded throughout the storyline. Kinsella is excellent at including sarcasm and witty asides and quips through the narrative that made me smile. That being said, I was pretty frustrated/enraged by the time I finished this book.

Ava is convinced that the way to meet someone is not by over-analyzing an online dating profile and establishing clear deal breakers. Instead, she believes that when she meets the right person, she’ll just know, and things will fall into place. On a writing retreat in Italy, she catches site of Dutch and immediately thinks she’s found her match. I liked the beginning of their romance, and the fact that its transition from the retreat back to real life was not as smooth as Ava anticipated.

As the central relationship became more and more problematic, I kept waiting for Ava’s character to develop and for the story to take an empowering turn and it just… didn’t. I grew increasingly frustrated with the main character and her lack of self-worth. She was obsessed with the idea that she needed to be in a relationship and pushed aside any misgivings she had about her current relationship. Moreover, her friends weren’t really helpful in building her up and getting her out of her situation.

I found the ending extremely frustrating, and it felt to me like it was promoting unhealthy relationships. This book really could have turned things around by having Ava grow into her own, but unfortunately, it let me down.

Buy Love Your Life at an indie bookstore near you
Love Your Life on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction

How I Built This by Guy Raz ~ Book Review

Morgan

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Genre: Nonfiction (Business)
Release Date: September 15, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Although I’ve never listened to the associated podcast, I was immediately fascinated by a book detailing how successful entrepreneurs got their start and created their business ventures. From Ben & Jerry’s, to Stitch Fix to Boomchickapop, the book covers a lot of ground quickly.

The structure follows the steps most entrepreneurs find themselves going through as they attempt to get their businesses off the ground, from bootstrapping and asking family and friends for money, to learning how to manage employees and imbue a company culture. Although this organization made sense, it was a little confusing to keep bopping back and forth between different founders and their products. I think I would have preferred if the book had looked at one at a time. That being said, the format made clear parallels between the experiences of so many entrepreneurs, which was interesting.

Guy Raz does a wonderful job of distilling business terminology into terms that are easily digestible for any reader. The stories he chose to focus on are thought-provoking. The amount of effort it must have taken to sort through hundreds of hours of interviews to select what he included is commendable. It was wild to hear about all the incredible difficulties faced by so many businesses that are now successful and well-known. 

I learned a lot from this book and it will definitely make me think more critically about the companies and products I support and how much work went on to get them to the point they are at today. The book also speaks directly to the reader, to offer them advice and encouragement in their own entrepreneurial journey, if they choose to take one.

Buy How I Built This at an indie bookstore near you
How I Built This 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.

Buy The Sun Down Motel at an indie bookstore near you
The Sun Down Motel on Goodreads

Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction, Uncategorized

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah ~ Book Review

Morgan

Doubleday
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: November 15, 2016
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Born a Crime is an eye-opening and insightful account of Trevor Noah’s experience growing up in South Africa during apartheid, as a mixed-race child. His writing is very straightforward, and I really appreciated how he wrote exactly from his own point of view. As a kid, he didn’t know anything different from his own experiences. Being mixed-race made his birth itself a crime, and he focuses a lot on how being half white privileged him throughout his childhood, and how he didn’t understand why.

I learned so much about the culture in South Africa during apartheid from this book, and many of the details were heartbreaking. It was easy to visualize each story or anecdote that Trevor detailed, and the whole book played out almost like a movie in my head. He crafted an incredibly comprehensive account of the different phases of his life he went through and the creativity and ingenuity he employed to enrich his life: from waiting in the lunch line for other students to get a cut of their lunch money, to selling CDs he mixed and burned himself.

One of my favorite parts of this book was Trevor’s descriptions of his relationships with various family members. The dialogue and interactions felt like they were taken directly from his memories. One thing I would have liked more of is Trevor’s later life, and how he got to his current career and notoriety, but it definitely wasn’t necessary to make the memoir feel complete.

Buy Born a Crime at an indie bookstore near you
Born a Crime on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

The Switch by Beth O’Leary ~ Book Review

Morgan

Romance
Flatiron Books
Release Date: August 18, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

The premise of The Switch was very cute and unique. Leena Cotton, burnt out at her corporate job, is told to take two months off — she hasn’t taken any time off in years. Her grandmother, Eileen, has just begun her first foray into online dating, but she’s having trouble finding anyone eligible and her age in her small town. Leena suggests they switch places: Eileen live in her apartment in bustling London, surely surrounded by hundreds more men her age, and Leena slow the pace of her life to live in the country.

I liked that there were layers to this story beyond just the actual switch. Leena lost her sister to cancer several years earlier, and her relationship with her mother has been strained, at best, ever since. This was a really interesting addition that added to the everyday goings on in the story.

I’m a very plot-driven reader, and unfortunately the slow pace of this story was hard for me to get into. It mostly discusses the mundane events that Leena and Eileen take part in everyday as they try to adjust into the other woman’s lifestyle. It felt repetitive for me, and the romances didn’t feel very believable. I think they needed to have more depth and time spent focusing on them for me to really be rooting for anyone to get together. I finished The Switch because it was cute, but it never fully enthralled me.

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