Tag: book review blog

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

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction
Read if you liked: Hello, Beautiful

Pineapple Street focuses on the lives of three women who are all, whether through blood or marriage, part of the ultra-wealthy Stockton family. Each one, Darley, Sasha, and Georgiana treats her approach to her wealth and its impact on her life differently. I liked the way that their relationship with money impacted how they approached life and treated/were treated by those around them.

It took me a little while to be able to keep the characters and their perspectives straight, particularly since the main three all interacted with the same secondary set of family members. I understand that this was an exploitation of entitled rich people, but that made it was maybe a little to successful because it made me not really care about them.

I appreciated the deep dive into these three women, but the lack of significant action to push the story along was notable the whole way through and the way they all supposedly had changed for the better at the end was pretty thin. An interesting character exploration for sure, but it didn’t feel like the kind of story that hadn’t been done before.

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Buy Pineapple Street at an indie bookstore near you
Pineapple Street on Goodreads

Book Review, Romance

The Roommate by Rosie Danan ~ Book Review

Morgan

Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪

I feel like The Roommate was trying to be edgy and just not delivering. The protagonist, Clara, is from a high society east coast family and we meet her as she’s moving across the country to room with her childhood friend who she’s been in love with forever. Instead, she ends up rooming with Josh, a porn star. What would her upper crust family say if they could see her now?!

I found Clara immensely unlikable. She was obsessed with her family image and it seemed like she kept harping on the same few details about herself over and over. Her ‘flaws’ were mentioned so many times and I wished that space has been used to further the action in the story.

There was not enough of a lead up to the romance for me, and I didn’t feel like there was a deep connection between Clara and Josh. It felt very surface level and yet they spoke about it as if it was much more.

I’ll give this book credit for having a story arc that I haven’t quite seen before, but the pacing was off to the point that it was almost a DNF.

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The Roommate on Goodreads
Buy The Roommate at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner ~ Book review

Morgan

Historical Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

The London Séance Society takes place in 1870s Europe and focuses on the spiritualists who abounded at the time. Lenna Wickes agrees to take up an apprenticeship with renowned spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire in an effort to get clarity about her sister’s death. The two are summoned to investigate the death of one of the members of the London Séance Society and soon find themselves questioning what to believe.

I felt totally immersed in the setting of this story, as expected from a Sarah Penner book. Both the location and the time period were depicted in a way that made me innately understand how the story took place within their context. It was atmospheric and totally drew me in.

Lenna’s skepticism made her an interesting narrator and I was eager to uncover with her what parts of the spiritualism she was learning about were real and how it all tied into her sister’s death. The second narrator, Mr. Morley of the London Séance Society was less compelling and I found his sections a bit dry.

As intriguing as I found the premise of this story, it felt more drawn out than it needed to be. If it had been tightened up a bit, I think I would have been more intrigued, but I was growing kind of tired of the mystery as it went on.

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

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.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Georgie, All Along at an indie bookstore near you
Georgie, All Along on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore ~ Book Review

Morgan

Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

What a wacky enjoyable read this was – especially over audio. A decade after the disappearance of acclaimed magician Violet Volk, podcast host Cameron is desperate to secure an interview with Violet’s sister, Sasha. Sasha was left to pick up the pieces after her sister vanished, and has done her best to distance herself from Violet in the ensuing years. This feat is made all the more difficult by Sasha’s daughter Quinn who is very much still enamored by the aunt who vanished.

The book focuses mainly on the ten-year anniversary and the news articles, events, and of course, podcasts that discuss Violet. The audiobook included a number of different narrators, one for each medium, which made this so much fun to listen to. It really was like listening to an elongated podcast most of the time.

Although the mystery of what happened to Violet is central to the story, this was much more a character study of her and Sasha. It included flashbacks showing how Violet’s rise to fame impacted them both and showed the dark sides to Violet that were hidden to her adoring fans.

The story definitely requires you to suspend reality throughout, but especially at the end. I’ll admit, the ending didn’t do the rest of the story justice for me, but the book had Montimore’s signature quirk and was truly fun to listen to.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Acts of Violet on Goodreads
Buy Acts of Violet at an indie bookstore near you

Book Review, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese ~ Book Review

Morgan

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

Cutting for Stone is a sweeping historical fiction that covers generations. It is primarily the story of Marion and Shiva, twins whose mother, a nun, dies during childbirth, and whose father, a surgeon, runs away with no acknowledgement that the children are his. The two are raised in Ethiopia near the mission hospital where they were born and Marion develops a love for medicine that leads him to follow in his father’s footsteps.

I was in awe by how much depth and breadth this book was able to cover, from the backstory of the twins’ parents through their childhood and into their adult lives. I found the personal stories and character details compelling. There were also sections dealing with political unrest and turmoil and I found these parts a bit more difficult to follow. I wished there had been amore historical context to set the stage.

There were parts of this book that moved a bit slowly and could have been cut down. The section set during the twins’ childhood was much longer than that of their adulthood and I would have liked some more balance to get to know them once they were older. There were also a lot of really graphic medical scenes and doctor jargon that I skimmed over. They didn’t add to the book for me and took me out of the story when they popped up.

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

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark ~ Book Review

Morgan

Sourcebooks Landmark
Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

I love a good con artist and Meg Williams is a great one. Popping up in different towns under different names, she gets close to her targets and their friends and has them eating out of the palm of her hand before she takes what she wants of theirs and disappears. Kat, a reporter, has had her eyes on Meg for years. When she finally sees an opportunity to get close to her, Kat begins to realize that there’s more to Meg than meets the eye.

The backstory behind Meg and her actions was really interesting and made me appreciate her genius all the more. I enjoyed getting narration by both her and Kat so I could see how Meg’s image differentiated from her true motivations.

Although this is classified as a thriller, I hesitate a little to call it one. There are a lot of questions swirling around Meg and her actions which I guess could be considered thrilling, but not in the traditional sense of the genre. It felt like more of a character study of these two women. Personally, I found Meg much more compelling and well-developed than Kat, who seemed naïve and whiny most of the time.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Lies I Tell at an indie bookstore near you
The Lies I Tell 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

Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas ~ Book Review

Morgan

Bloomsbury Publishing
Fantasy
Release Date: May 5, 2015
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

The hype is so real!! For some reason I was convinced that I wasn’t much of a fantasy person (despite loving Harry Potter), but A Court of Thorns and Roses proved that very wrong. When Feyre accidentally kills a faerie disguised as a wolf, she is forced to live out the rest of her days in the faerie world, or lose her life.

I got major Beauty and the Beast vibes as Feyre begins to get to know her captor, Tamlin and explores his grounds and her new world. The world-building wasn’t too overwhelming, and I was able to get sucked into the story fairly quickly.

The romance in this book was so unexpected and well done. It was a pretty main theme throughout the story as Feyre learns more about Tamlin and his past. I loved the setting of Tamlin’s estate and the atmosphere it set (I got a Bridgerton feel).

The action picks up a lot in the last quarter of the book and the pacing change kept me completely invested until the end. I will absolutely be picking up book two.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy A Court of Thorns and Roses at an indie bookstore near you
A Court of Thorns and Roses on Goodreads