Tag: book reviewer

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.

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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, 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.

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

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

The Housemaid is a pretty standard domestic thriller, but man did it suck me in. Millie, recently out of prison, is desperate to find employment and thinks she hit the jackpot when Nina Winchester hires her as a live-in housemaid. Although her attic room that has a lock on the outside is a littttle concerning, Millie’s just thankful to not be living in her car anymore. Soon, Nina’s unpredictable cruelty begins to weigh on Millie.

This was the kind of thriller where I knew things were not as they seemed, but I was always one step behind. I had a general sense that the relationships within the household were being influenced by something I was in the dark about and I couldn’t stop reading until I knew more. There’s a perspective shift from Millie to Nina partway through the book that I was not expecting but loved. Getting the opposite perspective put the first half of the book wonderfully into perspective.

Ultimately, the ending of this book really sealed the deal for me. Even though we did get some different points of view throughout, the ending showed just how much calculation and manipulation were going on behind the scenes and it was so satisfying. I will definitely be reading more Freida McFadden!

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Buy The Housemaid at an indie bookstore near you
The Housemaid 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, 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

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

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.

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Buy Our Missing Hearts at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio ~ Book Review

Morgan

Flatiron Books
Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

What a perfect fall read. If We Were Villains takes place at an elite boarding school and centers on a group of seniors in the acting program. We know early on that our protagonist, Oliver, ends up in jail for murder, and we learn through flashbacks what led to him being convicted.

As with many academia-centered books, there are a lot of central characters and, as is usual for me, I found it hard to keep track of everyone. There are a lot of changing intra-group dynamics and those were focused on more than the actual background or characteristics of each particular person. I wish I had gotten a chance to really know them all a bit more.

The atmosphere of this book is fantastic. I could practically feel the creaky old boarding school drenched in the legacy of thespians past. The acting program focuses solely on Shakespeare, so there are a lot of passages interspersed throughout the story. This is fun to some extent, but I found myself skimming them toward the end. I do think they were creatively intertwined with the narrative, but it was a little over the top for me.

This one was kind of a mixed bag for me. Overall, I thought the setting was incredibly interesting and well crafted, but I wish the characters had more development and I was not satisfied with the ending.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy If We Were Villains at an indie bookstore near you 
If We Were Villains on Goodreads