Tag: baking

Book Review, Fiction

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

When the patriarch of the Storm family dies, his family gathers on their private island to find out what was left to each of them. Alice is returning after a long estrangement after choosing not to use her family name to get ahead in life. When she gets back, she quickly remembers why she got out from under the manipulative grasp of her father. He has set up for them an inheritance game requiring them to stay on the island for a week and each perform different tasks.

I loved the concept of these inheritance games and the fact that the family was trapped on an island with an attractive employee of their patriarch overseeing their actions. I found the games themselves to be kind of boring though. They were painted as being really shocking and humiliating, but they just…weren’t that crazy. Honestly, it made me want to reread The Inheritance Games if anything.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the romance, which I didn’t event expect to be part of it. I thought that relationship was far more compelling than those of the family members (who I couldn’t keep straight because they weren’t individually given any depth). I think I mostly kept reading to find out how the romance would wrap-up and there were some twists along the way that kept me going.

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Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism

Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

Cassandra, our neurodivergent main character, has always needed things to be done in a certain way and tends to struggle to understand other people’s perspectives. When she unexpectedly discovers that she has the ability to go back in time, she uses it to her advantage to learn more about the people and experiences around her and play out scenarios in a way that she’s happier with. Most notably, she attempts to keep her job and her boyfriend, both of which she loses at the beginning of the book.

The premise of this story was so intriguing to me. I love magical realism and have enjoyed a lot of similar types of books. Unfortunately, the way time travel was used in this book was a) incredibly repetitive and b) undefined to a point where it was confusing what the rules of this new ‘ability’ were.

I really enjoyed the way that Cassandra (sometimes) learned and grew from her power, but often she was just hitting rewind willy nilly to her heart’s content when she said something slightly wrong. I also didn’t particularly appreciate how much effort she spent trying to change herself for a man and using her powers to keep herself in situations that clearly did not serve her. I found it to be incredibly frustrating.

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Book Review, Fiction

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

It’s hard to write a review of Finding Grace without giving away a major twist in the book – but don’t worry, it happens very early on. The story is told from the perspective of Honor, who has a daughter named Chloe, and a husband, Tom, but longs for another child. She is so close to getting what she wants until suddenly, the unthinkable happens and the entire story is flipped on its head.

The rest of the book is kind of a weird twisted, suspenseful romance. I was so shocked by the initial twist in this book and completely sucked in by Tom’s compulsive behavior. This was the kind of book where you feel utterly sickened by characters’ actions, so much so that you can’t look away.

I will say, toward the end of the book I was completely fed up with Tom and felt like his behavior had gone off the tracks to the point where it wasn’t really enjoyable to read about. But overall, a suspenseful and unexpected story start to finish.

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Buy Finding Grace at an indie bookstore near you|
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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Heartwood by Amity Gaige ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery

When Valerie goes missing on the Appalachian Trail, Beverly is tasked with tracking her down. The story oscillates between Valerie’s perspective as she writes letters to her mother while she’s lost and Beverly’s as she runs the search. The third perspective comes from Lena, a woman living in a retirement community who begins to believe she knows something about the disappearance hundreds of miles away.

I really enjoyed the structure of this book and particularly the audio version. It includes interviews with people Valerie met along the trail and listening made it seem like sitting in on actual police interviews. I was also so curious to see how Lena fit into Valerie’s story. I liked getting to escape to her bubble at the retirement community and learn about her life there. 

As more details emerge about the circumstances surrounding where and when Valerie went missing, I was gearing up for some sort of crazy twist or reveal. As this was somewhat of a police procedural, I was expecting a big discovery toward the end of the book. Instead, I felt like the ending was pretty random and unsatisfying. Although the story itself was interesting, it all kind of fell flat when there wasn’t something wild or compelling to wrap it all up.

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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.

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Book Review, Fiction

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

When Vix becomes friends with Caitlin as a teenager, she finds herself suddenly swept up in a world of luxury totally unlike her own. Caitlin invites her to come to Martha’s Vineyard with her for the summer and so the summer sisters are born.

This book follows the two girls throughout the years, jumping from summer to summer as they grown and change. They are surrounded by a cast of characters from Caitlin’s family to the boys they have crushes on. A lottt of this book centers on discovering their sexuality and obsessing over boys. Which is fine, but I wished the girls had a little more dimension.

I always enjoy a story focused around a female friendship with two wildly different women. In this case, Caitlin was the wild child and Vix was more practical. I liked the way they used their differences to their advantage when they were young. Learning from each other as they did. When they got older, I could not understand why they were still friends. Their relationship soured yet they still seemed to feel obligated to be their for one another. I think I would have been happier with this remaining a strong female friendship.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig ~ Book Review

Morgan

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

Tom has a rare condition that causes him to age incredibly slowly. Although he looks 41, he has been alive for centuries, and he’s not alone. He’s part of the Albatross Society, a group of people with the same condition who help each other with new placements and identities whenever their lack of aging becomes suspicious. One main rule if you are a member however is that you are not allowed to fall in love.

Tom broke the rule once before, and we’re shown in flashbacks his heart wrenching experience as his love grew old without him. In the present, Tom begins a new identity and finds himself quickly taken with a new coworker. He must decide whether to continue to let the society dictate his life, or to take a chance at another great love.

Tom’s story in the present is interwoven with flashbacks from his past. In the present, he is a history teacher, and the lessons he teaches his students are then supplemented with his own memories from those time periods. I will say some of that seemed a little like “how many famous people from history can we include in this book,” but I still found it fun. It was also cool to see how his life changed in different decades. Each vignette taught us more about Tom and how his condition was treated by those around him throughout his life.

This is a rambling centuries-long character study that explores what is truly most important in life. It wasn’t groundbreaking science-fiction, but it pulled at my heartstrings and made me care deeply for Tom.

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How to Stop Time on Goodreads
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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Mistakes We Never Made by Hannah Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

Mistakes We Never Made is the road trip journey of Emma and her will-they-won’t-they friend Finn as they attempt to track down a runaway bride, Sybil, in the days leading up to the wedding. I love me a road trip story, but this one reallyyy dragged. Emma kept making dumb decisions and assumptions about where Sybil was, like I could have found this woman faster. That said, I did enjoy her conversations with Finn and watching them untangle their past and the problems that had stood in the way of them getting together.

There were a lot of loose ends in this book which really frustrated me. We never fully figured out what went down with Emma and Finn on prom night, which is harped on incessantly, and we don’t even find out what happens with Sybil?? It felt like lazy writing! Like no one wanted to take the time to figure out what happened.

Parts of this book were fun flirty romps around the the country, but I cannot recommend it just for those sections.

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Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance
Similar to: When in Rome

Not sure why I picked this one up when it’s set in the same universe as When in Rome, which also got 2 starts from me. Practice Makes Perfect focuses on Annie who feels desperate for low-stakes dating practice after she overhears her date telling a friend that she’s incredibly boring. Enter Will, a sexy bodyguard who Annie decides is perfect for fake dating despite the fact that she is desperately attracted to him.

My main qualm with this book is that I could not stand Annie. She’s incredibly naive and immature and takes no agency in her own life. She spends a lot of time complaining that everyone in town sees her as this innocent little butterfly and yet she plays right into that role and doesn’t correct her sisters when they treat her that way. It honestly made me wonder why Will put up with her.

Also, the lack of communication between Will and Annie was frustrating. I often struggle with the fake-dating trope because there’s always a period where one person has feelings and won’t tell the other person and I’m like just talk to each other!!

Anyway, I did enjoy the small town gossipy setting and the slowburn of the romance, but that was about it.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

None of this is True by Lisa Jewell ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller
Similar to: Emma in the Night

Podcast books seem to really be picking up in recent years. Alix is a podcast host, highlighting the lives of different women. When she runs into Josie at a restaurant on both of their forty-fifth birthdays, Josie latches onto Alix, convincing her that she deserves to be the subject of a podcast.

The book bounces back and forth between present day narrative of the two women interacting, snippets of their recorded podcast, and updates from a documentary about them. It’s clear based on the documentary that something dark is coming for the two women and it made it hard for me to put this book down.

Josie is one of the most spine-tinglingly off-putting characters I’ve read. Clearly unreliable, her actions made me cringe throughout the entirety of the book and I wanted to shake Alix sometimes. The real story here is incredibly dark and twisted, so be warned.

Despite the snappy format, I found that the narrative dragged toward the middle. We kept getting story after story that we couldn’t trust and I was ready for things to be figured out long before they were. I also did not think the ending did justice to the rest of the story.

Solid, but not standout.

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