Tag: book lifestyle

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

I finished this book and was left very confused as to how a book centered entirely around an on-again-off-again relationship could maintain my interest for so long (it’s a big book!). I prefer action, rather than character driven books, but something about BJ Ballantine and Magnolia Parks really did it for me. They were once the “it” couple but after a disastrous betrayal, they’ve reverted to being just friends (albeit friends who sometimes have sleepovers in the same bed).

Magnolia Parks is very Gossip Girl-esque, focused on an elite squad of young adults as they navigate the London social scene of the 1%. Magnolia has an uncanny ability to name the designer and name of any piece of clothing anyone is wearing and although this seemed a bit like a device to name a bunch of fancy designers, it was also kind of an endearing quirk. BJ was less likable as he constantly slept with different women in an obvious attempt to get Magnolia out of his system.

Even though this is very over the top drama and focuses on relationships, it isn’t a fun romance. This book is so messy and pretty much every relationship in it is toxic (think cheating and manipulation), but I couldn’t look away. I’m not really one for reading a series, but I’ll definitely be picking up book two, which I believe focuses on one of Magnolia’s friends, to see what happens next with this chaotic group.

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Magnolia Parks on Goodreads
Buy Magnolia Parks at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Women by Kristin Hannah ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Historical Fiction

When Frances, “Frankie’s” brother leaves to serve in Vietnam during the war, she makes the bold decision to follow him and become an army nurse. Arriving in Vietnam, she is faced with horror and chaos she never could have imagined but, bolstered by the other nurses who become fast friends, Frankie soon finds intense meaning and pride in her work.

This book was wholly immersive and captivating. It’s clear Hannah did an extensive amount of research before writing this book and I felt like I could see everything Frankie was experiencing perfectly. Frankie is a heroic and believably flawed character. There are moments she is so admirable and moments when she makes decisions that are so clearly wrong for her. Her life during and after Vietnam was not easy, and the book follows her as she is met with hurdle after hurdle.

I absolutely adored the friends Frankie made in Vietnam and the way they showed up for her over and over even as they each chose different paths upon their return to the states. The bond of their shared experiences made for such a tigh friendship that was depicted wonderfully. All of the characters in fact, were so well written, detailed and nuanced, whether that made me love them or hate them.

Toward the end of the book, there are a lot of BIG THINGS that happen to Frankie back to back. This is when the story lost me a fraction. It just felt like too much crammed in too little of a timeline. Other than that, this is an incredible read.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

This Spells Love by Kate Robb ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪
Genre: Romance

When Gemma finds herself drunk and crying over her breakup, she enlists the help of her sister, aunt, and best friend Dax to help her conduct a cleansing spell to erase her ex from her life. Lo and behold, Gemma wakes to find out that it was a little too powerful, and has sent her to an alternate reality where not only does her ex not know who she is, neither does Dax.

I appreciated the message behind this story about being thankful for the things you have in your life at the present moment. As Gemma sees what her life could be, she has to weigh that reality against the relationships she has lost because of the spell.

The romance in this book was so unrealistic. Dax goes from thinking Gemma is breaking into his store to suddenly being really into her pages later. Their flirting was so cringey and nothing about the relationship felt organic.

One thing that I love about this kind of book is seeing the person who time/line travels needing to navigate their new life and inevitably making mistakes. This was almost entirely glossed over in this book. Gemma picked everything up way too quickly, eliminating what could have been a great opportunity for more connection between her and her friends and family.

If you’re interested in a timeline hopping story, I’d suggest finding another one.

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Buy This Spells Love at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery

There are so many layers to this book. It starts off with a missing person. Mia’s father, Adam, fails to return from a walk with her younger brother, Eugene, who is nonverbal. The family begins to work together to try to uncover anything hinting at Adam’s whereabouts.

As they go through his things, they find notebooks indicating that Adam was fascinated by the psychology behind happiness, and determining ‘happiness quotients.’ This took up a large portion of the book, and honestly, there were whole sections I kind of skimmed. I found the science interesting to an extent, but it didn’t feel like it was moving the story along.

The other big focus of the book is on Eugene and how he was misunderstood as someone with autism and Angelman syndrome. It goes in depth about the different types of teaching and learning they have explored to try to help Eugene communicate. The research that must have gone into this narrative was tremendous and it painted a really powerful picture of the difficulty and frustration Eugene, and others like him, deal with.

Each piece of this book was interesting on its own, but as a whole, it felt like too many BIG THINGS to fit into one book. Together, they bogged the narrative down somewhat and made it feel slow.

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Buy Happiness Falls at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Magical Realism
Read if you liked: The Wishing Game

Zoey arrives at her late-mother’s apartment with the hope that it will help her feel close to her and understand her life more. Upon her arrival at the Dellawisp, she meets a cast of quirky neighbors. When one of them dies in a tragic accident, the neighbors begin to come together and the magic that surrounds the Dellawisp becomes more apparent.

Some of Zoey’s new ‘neighbors’ just so happen to be ghosts and their narration is scattered throughout the story providing insight and perspective to the living characters who they haunt. The whole cast of characters really made this book sparkle. From the secretive estranged sisters, to the shy chef, to the elusive owner of the Dellawisp himself, the group became an unexpected family as they work together to clean out the apartment of the deceased resident in an effort to uncover the secret story she so often mentioned hiding.

The magic of the Dellawisp, which hosts a group of magical birds called dellawisps, was so palpable as was the larger community on Mallow Island. The lore surrounding the island’s famous recluse author was another level of mystery that tied the community together and kept me reading.

I loved the way individual one-on-on resident relationships were explored, each completely different and nuanced. We slowly come to learn the hardships and demons that each person is dealing with and to watch them soften as they open up.

This was a very character-driven story and as such, it felt fairly slow to me and I didn’t find the reveals to be terribly intriguing. That said, it was a very lovely, heartwarming, and unusual tale with a setting that truly came to life in a way that few books are able to achieve. 

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

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The New Couple in 5B By Lisa Unger ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller
Read if you liked: Lock Every Door

Rosie and Chad’s lives are forever changed when they inherit a luxury apartment in the esteemed Windermere in New York City from Chad’s late uncle. Initially, Rosie couldn’t be more thrilled at their change of circumstances, but as she learns more and more about the building’s dark past, she begins to suspect there’s something deeply disturbing still happening there.

There have been a lot of thrillers in recent years that focus on a creepy old building that seems to take on a life of its own. In my opinion, those other thrillers approach the premise a lot better than this one. The supernatural elements seemed very plot device-y and thrown in to try to do all the heavy lifting of making the Windermere seem spooky.

I had trouble connecting with the main characters, which made it difficult for me to get invested in their story. That said, the mystery surrounding their neighbors and the constant surveillance in the building intrigued me.

The story is told with alternating timelines and I was holding my breath to see how they tied together. The plotline set in the past is what kept me invested in unraveling the connections between past and present occurrences.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The New Couple in 5B at an indie bookstore near you
The New Couple in 5B on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Twisted Love by Ana Huang ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romance

I gotta stop getting excited about these super-hyped-on-social-media romance books. Alex Volkov has everything: brains, looks, inexplicable ability to sing, but he’s haunted by demons from his past. Ava Chen is his best friend’s little sister who’s just unreliable enough that her brother asks Alex to look out for her. Surprise, surprise, instead of doing that he sleeps with her.

Alex really did not seem appealing to me. He felt very flat and one dimensional and too possessive and focused on how kinky he is in bed. Both main characters have dark pasts but deal with it in completely opposite ways. I was interested to see how that would play out as the story went on. I will say I didn’t see the twist coming and it added a much needed level of depth and complexity to the story that I appreciated and was exciting and compelling and complicated.

Other than that, I didn’t really care about the characters and it felt like the story was trying too hard to be something it wasn’t (unclear quite what).

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Buy Twisted Love at an indie bookstore near you
Twisted Love 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, Fiction, thriller

Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Koller Croft ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

Stone Cold Fox has all the makings of the kind of thriller that I love, including a conniving female protagonist manipulating a man to get what she wants. Bea is both a high powered career woman and *this close* to marrying into Collin Case’s wealthy family. Bea grew up watching her mom use and be used by men in an attempt to get ahead in life and it is clear that Bea learned a lot from her, but holds a lot of resentment for the things her mom made her do, which slowly come to light throughout Bea’s story.

I devoured this book, but I had some trouble with Bea’s main conflict with Collin’s childhood best friend Gale, who has it out for her. There interactions didn’t seem realistic and felt forced into the narrative to me. I can’t exactly pinpoint what it was about them, but this part of the story– and particularly how it ended– left something to be desired.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Stone Cold Fox at an indie bookstore near you
Stone Cold Fox on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Our Missing Hearts by Celest Ng ~ Book Review

Morgan

Penguin Press
Genre: Dystopian Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Our Missing Hearts is dystopian fiction that feels a little too on the nose. Bird’s mom left when he was nine and he lives with his father who works at a library. They are under strict laws meant to preserve American culture and anyone who strays out of line is punished. Particularly, the authorities target people and art of Asian descent and have even been known to remove children from households deemed anti-American.

When Bird receives a cryptic drawing he knows is from his mother, he begins to dig into what really happened surrounding her leaving and decides to try to find her.

Bird’s story is interspersed with flashbacks told through his mother’s lens that show how America ended up in the place it is at in the present, and how her poetry became seen as rebellious. I wish there had been a bit more depth to her perspective, as it did not feel as fully explored as Bird’s sections did.

The world-building in this book was integrated seamlessly and was detailed enough to understand the landscape the story was taking place in without feeling overwhelming. It was hard not to draw parallels between the corruption and racism illustrated and the real present day. Ng did an excellent job of crafting similarities that were just different enough to seem jarring, but that could also easily relate to the real world.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Our Missing Hearts at an indie bookstore near you
Our Missing Hearts on Goodreads