Tag: baking

Book Review, mystery, thriller

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins ~ Book Review

Morgan

St. Martin’s Press
Thriller
Release Date: January 4, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Lux and her boyfriend Nico are living in Hawaii trying to save up enough money to repair his boat, The Susannah. When Brittany and Amma offer Nico a generous sum to take them to remote Meroe island, Lux is excited to join their adventure. When the group arrives, they find that there’s a couple already there, the glamorous and friendly Jake and Eliza. Meroe island has a dark history and although the group of strangers hits it off initially, the sudden appearance of another visitor throws things off balance.

Lux followed Nico to Hawaii after only knowing each other for a short time, and more she begins to question the motives of everyone around her, the less she realizes she really knows about him.

The flashbacks we receive about Amma and Brittany’s history makes it clear that there is more to their friendship than meets the eye, and more to their trip to Meroe than they are letting on.

I truly trusted no one in this story, and the setting of an empty tropical island was the perfect mix of picturesque paradise and isolated nightmare. I couldn’t read fast enough through most of this book, waiting for all the pieces to come together.

This was a five star book for me until the end. There was a plot twist that seemed to leave a huge gaping hole in the plot that I could not find a way to see past. Ultimately, the way everything was explained seemed unbelievable to me and the ending left me deeply unsatisfied.

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

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Shadow House by Anna Downes ~ Book Review

Morgan

Minotaur Books
Mystery
Release Date: April 5, 2022 (Thank you to NetGalley for my copy!)
My Rating: 🍪🍪

The Shadow House follows Alex as she and her two children move into a new community called Pine Ridge. It’s clear that Alex is running from something as she tries to placate her teenage son about the necessity of another move.

Upon their arrival, Alex finds a box on their doorstep with a dead bird in it. Several days later, a similar box with a disturbing doll arrives. As Alex learns more about the land the community was built on, she begins to worry that there may be something sinister afoot.

I was expecting so much more out of this book. All along, I was waiting for a big reveal about Alex’s traumatic past and a big reveal about what was happening at Pine Ridge. I got neither. There was so much build up and suspense and it fell totally flat for me. There were random side plots of Alex getting to know the other residents, which I expected to all tie together, but they seemed to just be tangents that were ultimately hard to keep track of.

Check out my bookstagram: Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Shadow House at an indie bookstore near you
The Shadow House on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

Random House
Thriller
Release Date: April 26, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

Janelle Brown has a unique skill for creating characters with detailed backstories and layers that make them believable and deeply intriguing. Sam and Elli, the twin main characters of  I’ll Be You are no exception. Once childhood actresses, Sam is single and now struggles with addiction while Elli is married with her own floral business. That is, until one day when she mysteriously disappears to a retreat and stops responding to all communication. As Sam begins to worry about her sister, whom she’s been estranged from for years, she realizes that Elli’s happy life may be a mere façade.

Brown shows the progression of the sisters and their bond as they are discovered, become famous, and first learn to switch places. These flashbacks add such a richness to their present-day story and helped me understand their motivations.

I didn’t expect the cult aspect of this book going into it, but I found it especially fascinating, particularly the introspection into the members and how they ended up where they did.

This wasn’t a thriller in the traditional sense, and definitely was a little slower moving, but it kept me glued to the pages trying to guess how everything fit together and how the sisters would end up at the end of it all.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.Your.Shelf
Buy I’ll Be You at an indie bookstore near you
I’ll Be You on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Wahala by Nikki May ~ Book Review

Morgan

Custom House
Fiction
Release Date: January 11, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Wahala is the story of Ronke, Boo, and Simi, longtime friends living in London. Simi introduces the others to her friend Isobel, who ricochets into their lives. At first, Isobel seems like a harmless bundle of energy, but as she begins to worm her way into the other ladies’ lives, they begin to find themselves turning against each other.

Each of the main characters has a detailed and believable life, relationships, and backstory. Each woman had a very different personality and way of thinking about life, and they were each dealing with different struggles. Their friendship was believable and I enjoyed learning about Nigerian culture through them.

Some of the choices these characters made, and the way they were so easily influenced and manipulated by Isobel really rubbed me the wrong way. It would seem that after so many years of being friends, they would have had a little more allegiance to the other girls and wouldn’t be so quick to turn on them. Also, the way the drama ramped up and got very dark toward the end was a lot – I wished the book hadn’t been so backloaded.

Buy Wahala at an indie bookstore near you
Wahala on Goodreads

Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci ~ Book Review

Morgan

Gallery Books
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: October 5, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

If you’re planning to read Taste, I highly recommend listening to the audiobook. Having Stanley Tucci himself narrate his life to me made the listening experience all the more enjoyable. The book focuses, obviously, on the influential food that Tucci has cooked, eaten, and experienced throughout his life. The narrative is peppered (pun intended) with humor and excessive self-aware name-dropping that make it colloquial and amusing.

It was really interesting to learn more about Tucci’s life, from growing up in an Italian American family all the way to cooking during pandemic quarantine. He also details his recent battle with cancer and how that affected his relationship with food. This memoir is much less about Tucci’s professional life, and more so about the personal.

There are a lottt of descriptions of food, and recipes in this book, and sometimes it overwhelmed the narrative a bit (especially since listening to a recipe read out on audiobook isn’t the most thrilling). I greatly enjoyed the insight in between and left every listening session hungry.

Taste: My Life Through Food on Goodreads
Buy Taste at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle ~ Book Review

Morgan

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

Iris and Summer, identical twins, are in a race against time to produce an heir in order to inherit millions of dollars left by their father. Iris constantly thinks about the money, particularly after her divorce when she sees her hopes slipping away. Summer, however, is in no rush. She chose to marry for love and seems dedicated to doing things on her own timeline.

When Summer calls on Iris to help her with a family emergency in Thailand, Iris finds herself romanticizing her sister’s life and what might happen if she slipped into her place.

The premise of this thriller was fantastic. With the two girls trapped alone on a yacht together for much of the story, I had no idea how it would progress. After this section of the narrative though, the story got pretty slow for me. I felt like there was the most gradual leadup to the ending that had trouble holding my interest.

I really liked seeing the truth behind Summer’s character slowly get uncovered and the final reveal definitely surprised me. That being said, I wish there had been some sort of clues before the very end that would have possibly allowed me to guess what had happened.

Buy The Girl in the Mirror at an indie bookstore near you
The Girl in the Mirror on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

One Night on the Island by Josie Silver ~ Book Review

Morgan

Ballantine Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: February 15, 2022
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

The premise of One Night on the Island was so wonderfully quirky and unique. Cleo is a dating columnist, and for her 30th birthday, she’s given the assignment of going to a remote island to ‘marry herself.’ When she arrives however, she finds there’s been a mix-up with her lodging and she’s forced to share the small cottage with a photographer named Mac, who’s escaped from Boston to face his own set of demons. Initiate forced proximity romance.

Salvation Island was such a perfectly atmospheric setting. From the seaside hill where women occasionally go to scream, to the charmingly nosy cast of locals, I fell in love with this Irish island. The stark, rural location perfectly framed Cleo and Mac’s inner turmoils and outer thawing as they slowly got to know each other and the motivations that drew them to the same place.

Cleo and Mac were both detailed and realistic and the difficulties they were dealing with made me feel like I understood them. Salvation Island was a temporary stopover for both of them, a pause as they figured out how to forge onward with their lives. I was holding my breath to see what would happen with the two of them when that pause ended.

Although I found parts of the story slow, and I found the number of characters a bit hard to keep track of, I loved the realness and messiness of the romance, and above all, I loved the ambience it took place within.

Buy One Night on the Island at an indie bookstore near you
One Night on the Island on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Horror

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward ~ Book Review

Morgan

Viper
Genre: Horror
Release Date: March 18, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I only realized this book was classified as horror once I started reading, and came across a very graphic description of dead birds a few pages in. I’m not a huge fan of horror, but the story of Ted, his daughter Lauren, and his cat Olivia intrigued me. From the start, it was obvious that Ted’s mental state was not quite right, and it was hard to know what to believe. The author did an exceptional job of diving inside Ted’s mind and describing things as he saw and understood them.

This book was extremely dark and twisted and the details are not for the faint of heart. I pieced together little parts of what was going on, but definitely did not have the full picture and found the story unlike anything I’ve ever read.

The narrations were so distinct and the descriptions so explicit that I found myself fully immersed in this uncomfortable and unsettling narrative until the very end.

Buy The Last House on Needless Street at an indie bookstore near you
The Last House on Needless Street on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction

The Comfort Book by Matt Haig ~ Book Review

Morgan

Penguin Life
Genre: Nonfiction
Release Date: July 6, 2021
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I’ve never put as many sticky notes in a book as I did with The Comfort Book. Many of Matt Haig’s insights come from a place of deep pain and hopelessness, but the glimmers of positivity or at least calm that he was able to outline were deeply moving. The book is laid out in a series of mini essays, stories, and notes that focus on finding the way through times of pain or discouragement.

I loved the simplicity of many of these pages. Haig reminds the reader again and again that sometimes finding joy in the smallest things, like sitting down to eat a pear, is enough for one day. Each excerpt was a full and complete thought, but none was longer than a few pages.

The format made it easy for me to pick this book up during small bouts of free time throughout the day, and no matter how short they may be, I always felt that I got something out of it.

As brief as his musings may be, Haig has a wonderful gift of being able to shift my perspective and make me feel comforted and not alone.

Buy The Comfort Book at an indie bookstore near you
The Comfort Book on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand ~ Book Review

Morgan

Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: October 9, 2018
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

When a man and a woman are killed in a helicopter crash off a Caribbean island, their loved ones are forced to grapple with what the truth behind their clandestine relationship and what it means for their future. Irene Steele finds herself reeling from the lies her husband was keeping from her. When her sons arrive on the island, they quickly meet and are both enchanted by Ayers, the best friend of their father’s mistress.

In true Elin Hilderbrand fashion, Winter in Paradise is full of never ending drama. The relationships she introduces are complicated and layered with secrets. The setting provided wonderful escapism filled with picturesque tropical outings and adventures.

I felt like the grief that should have permeated this book wasn’t really present. No one seemed quite as upset about the deaths of their loved ones as I would have expected. It seemed weird that the characters were able to focus on pursuing romance and galavanting around the island instead of the deaths that brought them together.

I happily consumed the drama and the tropical beaches in the pages of this book, but I don’t think I liked it enough to read the rest of the series.

Buy Winter in Paradise at an indie bookstore near you
Winter in Paradise on Goodreads