Tag: book blogging

Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism

The Good Part by Sophie Cousens ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance/Magical Realism
Read if you liked: The Seven Year Slip

Ooh I loved this book. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I’m a sucker for a story with a whisper of magical realism. In The Good Part, Lucy is tired of struggling through her days as a defeated-feeling twenty-six year old. When she stops into a little shop to hide from the rain and notices a whimsical wishing machine, she makes a wish to skip ahead to the good part of her life. When she wakes up, Lucy finds that her wish has been granted.

I was definitely stresseddd for Lucy at times as she tries to adjust to her new life in the future and scared that she would really screw things up. There were moments, particularly with her husband, that were heartbreaking as she tries to communicate her reality while also feeling utterly disconnected from the life around her. I was obsessed with the fact that her little son was trying so hard to help her find her time machine. Their relationship was so sweet and I loved its unconventional nature.

Lucy quickly realizes that skipping out on a huge chunk of her life is perhaps not exactly what she wanted for herself. As she grows closer to the new people in her life, she’s forced to decide if she wanted to go back in time and get to live out all those missed years even though there is no guarantee that her actions will lead her back to this exact future.

Spending time with Lucy and her friends and family was such a joy. I loved the support systems around her and seeing everyone’s attempts to help her. The dilemma she has to deal with was especially thought-provoking and made my heart hurt for her in the way only great writing can do.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction/Magical Realism

I went into Shark Heart with highhh expectations. Usually, I really enjoy books set in the normal world but with one fantastical element, and this one fit the bill. Lewis, a newlywed, is diagnosed with a mutation that will cause him to transform into a shark within a year. Together, he and his wife Wren face the tremendous grief that comes with his diagnosis as they both lose grasp of the lives they had expected for themselves.

The chapters and narration in this book were short and to the point. For me, it helped express how rapidly things were changing in Lewis and Wren’s life and the times when all they could focus on was a singular event signaling that Lewis’s mutation was escalating. I was able to wrap my head around this strange world, but I would have appreciated a little more world-building to explain what supports were in place for people dealing with mutations and how common they were.

In the middle of the book, the storyline changes completely, moving back into the past to Angela, Wren’s mother. This part of the book did not tie neatly into Lewis and Wren’s section and really threw off the story for me. Although it wasn’t a poorly written plot line, I just didn’t get how it fit into the rest of the story. I would have preferred more depth into Lewis and Wren’s lives before and during the mutation.

This one definitely left my heart aching and deeply explored the ideas of loss and grief through a bizarre lens that somehow worked. I read it within 48 hours and even though I did enjoy it, it left me wishing there had been a little more to it.

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

Book Review, Fiction

Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead by Emily Austin ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction
Similar to: Really Good, Actually

This book is like anxiety incarnate. It is semi-stream of consciousness of 28-year old Gilda who accidentally ends up with a job at a Catholic church where she hides the fact that she is atheist and a lesbian. Her thoughts constantly whirl around death and worst-case scenarios and she has trouble understanding how her actions affect other people.

I found Gilda’s perspective fascinating (and sometimes relatable) and the format of her thoughts was very unlike many of the books I tend to read. The speed at which her thoughts spiraled kept me going.

Gilda’s internal activity makes up a lot of the book, but I found everything else to be unremarkable. There was nothing to invest me in the plot outside of her head, which made it hard to care about what was happening in her life.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead at an indie bookstore near you
Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead 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, 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.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
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.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
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.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
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.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy A Psalm for the Wild-Built at an indie bookstore near you
A Psalm for the Wild-Built on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

The Night Shift is based around two different massacres, one in 1999 at a Blockbuster, with only one survivor, and one fifteen years later at an ice cream shop with again, only one survivor. Ella, the first survivor, is now a therapist and meets with the new survivor, Jess, only to discover that the killer whispered the same thing to both of them before leaving the crime scenes.

There are a lot of narrators in this book, including a detective, a lawyer, and the brother of the original suspect. In my opinion, it was too many. It was hard for me to keep track of everyone and it felt like the obvious red herring suspect was being dangled in my face for far too long.

I enjoyed the setup of the book and was excited to start drawing parallels between the two events. I think I’m partially to blame for not loving the story overall – I had a hard time focusing on it and that kept me from fully following the many threads and details introduced. That being said, I expect a really good thriller to fully enthrall me, and this one did not.

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

Book Review, mystery, thriller

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dutton
Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

If you watched The Woman Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,  a Netflix show satirizing the thriller genre, the premise of The House Across the Lake will feel a little on the nose. Casey’s life has gone off the rails. Following the drowning of her husband at their lake house, she starts drinking heavily, causing her acting career to go off the rails and her to flee back to the lake house for privacy. Out of curiosity, she begins spying on the couple across the lake and begins to believe that something sinister is at play.

Sager created a rich setting with the lake community and Casey’s big empty house. The story is shadowed by the fading news of several nearby disappearances that keep Casey constantly on edge. Her excessive drinking makes her a classic unreliable narrator, and I enjoyed trying to untangle what was real and what she was extrapolating, as well as which of her neighbors could be trusted.

I was really into this book until about two-thirds of the way in when it took a kind of supernatural twist that I was not feeling. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t like ghost-y stuff in thrillers. If I couldn’t theoretically have guessed the twist before it happened, it’s not my kind of read. Despite how enthralled I was with the beginning of this book, the twist really lost me.

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