Tag: book blogger

Book Review, Romance

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn ~ Book Review

Morgan

Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪

When Georgie loses her fast-paced personal assistant job in LA, she goes back to her small hometown, where her best friend is expecting a baby, and settles in to reassess her life. Feeling unmoored in her new circumstances, Georgie is drawn to a diary she wrote in high school, outlining all the things she wanted to accomplish during that time in her life. The simplicity of each goal makes Georgie decide to pick it up where she left off and so she finds herself on a series of mini adventures as she tries to figure herself out. Along the way, Georgie finds an unexpected comrade in former bad boy Levi, the brother of her childhood crush.

The premise of Georgie’s confusion about what to do next with her life and trying to rediscover it through the lens of her past self was really unusual and intriguing. Unfortunately, the book was so slow and repetitive that I could not enjoy it. I felt like the same scenes were playing over and over on loop and I knew what they were all leading to miles in advance.

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Buy Georgie, All Along at an indie bookstore near you
Georgie, All Along on Goodreads

Book Review, Historical Fiction

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

Historical Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

The Four Winds is an epic tale spanning much of Elsa Martinelli’s life. It starts when she’s in her twenties, having been convinced by her parents that, due to a childhood illness, she’ll never be independent. After her hurried and unexpected marriage, Elsa finds herself reluctantly welcomed into a new family who she lives with as the Dust Bowl batters their home.

I haven’t read a lot of historical fiction and the historical context of this novel made it especially enthralling for me. Learning about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl through Elsa’s eyes and experience was educational and added a lot of depth to her story.

I really appreciated Elsa as a main character. She did not receive a lot of love and support growing up and it was wonderful to watch her growth despite that. She deals with a number of big difficult hardships and choices and approaches them with grace and immense strength. I enjoyed getting to spend time with her and understanding her thought processes and how they changed over time as she fought to make the best choices for her family.

My only complaint is that the events leading to the end of the book felt rushed to me. I wish there had been more build up and more detail to end Elsa’s story.

Buy The Four Winds at an indie bookstore near you
The Four Winds on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction

All About Love by bell hooks ~ Book Review

Morgan

Nonfiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪

What I appreciated most about this book was the discussion of romantic love and how society emphasizes it as being the most important kind of love. hooks discusses the importance of love between friends and family, which is often more enduring than romantic love. It was refreshing to reframe this and make myself more cognizant of how society has shaped my views.

What I appreciated least about this book was the focus on spirituality. For me, that approach does not resonate and it felt like it was being forced on me in order to try to understand hooks’s perspective. While someone with more religion or spirituality in their life might find this effective, it caused me to skim over much of the book to try to pick out pieces that felt more relevant to my life.

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Buy All About Love at an indie bookstore near you
All About You on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

When Maggie finds herself divorced at 29 after her marriage of less than two years ends, she finds herself suddenly adrift, attempting to convince herself and everyone around her that she’s doing really good, actually.

I enjoyed the self deprecating humor throughout this book. It made me feel like I could really understand Maggie’s character and the way she processed (or refused to acknowledge) pain. Just know that that’s the majority of the book – there’s not much else going on. It’s about her meandering through her new life and trying to figure things out. The actually content of the storyline lacked depth, but as a character study of Maggie’s journey to find herself again, that worked. There wasn’t much exploration of her choices beyond surface level humor, but if you go into this one with that in mind, it’s a quirky read.

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Buy Really Good, Actually at an indie bookstore near you
Really Good, Actually on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction, Self Help

The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane~ Book Review

Morgan

Personal Development
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

The central tenet of The Charisma Myth is that charisma is not something innate to certain people, but rather, it is something that can be taught. Through a series of stories, Cabane illustrates issues that people in her life have faced and practices they have used to exude more charisma in future similar situations.

The book is interspersed with exercises to try that illustrate the concepts being explained. Although some of them seem obvious, like giving someone your full undivided attention during a conversation, I’d never really made the connection between those actions and someone’s perceived charisma.

A number of the practices discussed gave me more confidence in myself because I recognized them as things I already do in my day to day interactions. As I’ve implemented more of them, I feel at least an internal shift knowing that I am approaching situations more intentionally.

Some of the suggestions did not feel like they would be applicable/helpful to someone who struggles with public speaking or social anxiety. If those situations are deeply difficult, I’m not convinced that these are the right fixes. When Cabane started explaining how too much charisma can basically make people obsessed with you (paraphrasing) it felt like she was tooting her own horn a bit too much – I have trouble believing people walk away from this book with THAT MUCH more charisma. Overall though, I did come away with some useful new tools for social situations.

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The Charisma Myth on Goodreads
Buy The Charisma Myth at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

Nina is in her thirties, a successful cookbook writer living alone, and single. Her closest friends are settling down, her mom has decided to rebrand herself, and her father has dementia. Nina downloads a dating app and soon meets Max. They quickly become serious until one day, after they’ve confessed their love, he ghosts her.

This story paints one women’s experience being single in her thirties and how her romantic life impacts her actions, emotions, and self-perception. It’s a story of getting older and watching things change around you that you thought never would and that you want to desperately to cling to.

I appreciated the relationship between Nina and her parents and the difficulties they were dealing with at this new chapter in her life. I wish that had been the main focus of this book. The romance was rushed and lacked substance, as did Nina’s character in general. We were told she was a successful author etc. but never got any detail or saw any of it in practice.

There did not seem to be a lot of actual plot in this book, but there were a lot of random subplots like Nina’s loud neighbor (mentioned 5 too many times) and debate over where her middle name came from (mentioned 12 too many times).

There was a lot of promise to a story centered around the various types of ‘ghosting’ many women face in their thirties, but ultimately none of them were focused on enough.

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Ghosts on Goodreads
Buy Ghosts at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers ~ Book Review

Morgan

Science Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

What a comforting, thought-provoking story wrapped up in the tale of a tea monk and a robot. The world-building in A Psalm for the Wild-Built is subtle enough that I didn’t get overwhelmed by it, but integrated so that I understood the context of the book’s world. The premise centers around a time in the past when robots gained self awareness and then disappeared into the wild.

Dex feels unfulfilled in their life and longs for purpose. They take themselves off the beaten path, away from the tea monk life they have been living, and stumble across a robot, Splendid Speckled Mosscap. The robot is on its own journey, to understand humans. Together, the two of them engage in deep conversations about life that left me feeling optimistic and not alone.

Although this is a fairly short book, it feels rejuvenating in a way I haven’t experienced before from a book. I’ve never dabbled with the ‘cozy’ sub-genre, but I want to curl up in the story of Dex and Splendid Speckled Mosscap, so I would classify at as giving definite cozy vibes.

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Buy A Psalm for the Wild-Built at an indie bookstore near you
A Psalm for the Wild-Built on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

These Impossible Things is a coming of age story that follows three best friends, Malak, Kees, and Jenna, as they graduate college and navigate their new adult lives. Their friendships quickly become strained, and the story beautifully, and oftentimes painfully, follows each woman independently. The three of them struggle to navigate the expectations of the traditional Muslim values they were raised in with their personal desires, particularly surrounding romantic relationships.

The three main characters were distinct and had very different priorities from each other and it was interesting to see the ways they approached big decisions and how there were still parallels between the lives of all three. Each of them dealt with heavy and difficult struggles of their own and I felt like the story provided a strong portrayal of what people deal with at that stage in their life.

Despite the fact that the women lost the physical closeness they once had, their love for one another was apparent in their actions and interactions throughout the narrative. Although their romantic relationships often appeared central to their lives, it was their relationships with each other that stood the test of time and that the entire book kept looping back to. I really appreciate stories that highlight the magic of strong female friendships, and These Impossible Things was exactly that.

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Buy These Impossible Things at an indie bookstore near you
These Impossible Things on Goodreads

Book Review, mystery

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw ~ Book Review

Morgan

Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

A History of Wild Places starts by introducing the disappearance of Maggie St. James and Travis Wren, a detective who went looking for her. It picks up years later in a culty commune called Pastoral when one of the members discovers Travis’s abandoned truck just outside the community’s boundaries – where no one is supposed to venture to avoid bringing in disease. Thus begins the slow questioning of the community and what its members have been told to believe about the world beyond.

I found this book to be pretty slow for a mystery. It mainly followed the daily lives of several members of Pastoral. There was a decent amount of ‘world-building’ to acclimatize the reader to the culture of Pastoral, which felt overdone to me. It felt like the way the inhabitants were being controlled was repeated over and over and it was unclear why none of them seemed to notice or care.

Although I finished the book and was interested in hearing the ultimate truth about Maggie and Travis, it kind of just ended up where I would have expected it to, which fell flat.

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Buy A History of Wild Places at an indie bookstore near you
A History of Wild Places on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

What an unusual and delightful story. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a split narrative that follows three vastly different characters. Tova began cleaning at the aquarium after her husband’s death. It serves as a distraction for her from both the loss of her husband, and her son, who disappeared more than thirty years prior. Our second narrator is the aquarium octopus, Marcellus, who forms an unlikely friendship with Tova as he sees her come through every night. His narration was fascinating and insightful and somehow felt not at all far-fetched. Lastly, we have Cameron, who is out of sorts on a search for his birth father and the inheritance he imagines he deserves.

These three characters were remarkably different and each of them grew so much over the course of the story. I loved seeing their growing insight into themselves and their pasts. They were each so distinctly quirky and getting to know them was such a pleasure.

This was definitely a slow burn of a story, but even without a lot of action I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

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