Tag: bookworm

Book Review, Fiction

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

Culpability is an ambitious fictional exploration of the increasing role of AI in our lives and the ethical considerations around it. The book starts with a family getting into a car crash that kills two people. Who was driving? Was it technically the autonomous car, or teenage Charlie who was in the driver’s seat? In the wake of the incident, the family retreats to a rented house on the Chesapeake Bay to try to lay low and process what happened. As each one grapples with the fallout, we slowly learn that they are all harboring secrets related to the crash.

The family drama and secrets kept me most drawn to this story. Although I didn’t really like any of the characters, I wanted to know what they were hiding from one another and how it was all going to come to light. That part of the story did not disappoint. Lorelei, Charlie’s mother, is a leader in the AI space adding an extra wrinkle to the discussion about AI within the story and influencing perspectives and motivations.

Despite a very interesting and timely premise, I felt like this book had a lack of focus that kept it from totally working for me. There was a whole second ‘incident’ with Charlie that popped up partway through the story and seemed totally weird and unnecessary. For me, it took away from the main issues at the center of the book, in terms of both technology and the family drama.

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Buy Culpability at an indie bookstore near you
Culpability on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E. Smith ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪

Genre: Fiction

        Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude Endicott were once bound together by the annual trips with their elusive mother, to a different state every year. They are suddenly brought back together by Jude, who initiates a new family trip, though their mother is long gone.

        I finished this book about a week ago and I can hardly remember it. The characters felt unrealistic to me, each one packed with stereotypes to try to make them feel distinct which actually just made them feel one-dimensional. It created a distinct lack of ability to care about what happened to them – maybe that’s also partially because I didn’t care for most of them. I also didn’t buy that they’d all just drop everything to fly to North Dakota.

        Central to the plot is three big secrets that Jude wants to get off her chest to her siblings. This was the most compelling part of the book for me (the rest felt very low on plot). We get flashbacks to the family’s road trips over the year that help to inform and provide context around the secrets.

        I’m kind of grasping at straws as to what else to say about this one because it was so forgettable for me.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf

Buy Fun for the Whole Family at an indie bookstore near you

Fun for the Whole Family on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Release Date: May 5, 2026 (Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC)

I can always count on Gillian McAllister to deliver a thriller I can’t look away from. Caller Unknown is no exception. Simone leaves the UK to meet her daughter, Lucy, in Texas for a camping trip. On their first morning there together, Simone wakes up to find that Lucy has been kidnapped. What follows is a test of just how far she is willing to go for her daughter.

This story completely hit the ground running. McAllister does an incredible job of, in very little time, investing me fully in Lucy and Simone’s relationship and painting a picture of their personalities. It made me completely buy into Simone’s actions and reactions once her daughter disappears.

I had no idea where this story was going to go from chapter to chapter. There are a lot of different segments to the story that all felt very different to me, but each was just as compelling as the last. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire story.

We’re mostly reading from Simone’s point of view and the narrative does a good job of weaving in her relationship with her husband as well as snippets from her past that round her out really well and help inform her motivations.

This was a five star read until the end, part of which I found to be a touch unconvincing.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Yours for the Season by Emily Stone ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I was feeling ready for a light read so I picked up my first holiday romance of the year. In Yours for the Season, Mel’s ex, Finn, begs her to go on his family’s Christmas trip to Scotland with him and she…. says yes? From the get-go, I found her character hard to connect with because of that choice. She rationalizes it because she would otherwise be alone for the holidays. Call me crazy, but I’d much rather be alone.

The story bounces back and forth between their present day experience in Scotland and their past relationship. I enjoyed the parts set in the present. The forced proximity made for a cute build up of romance. Everything felt very cozy and festive with Finn’s family and I liked the holiday vibes.

The segments outlining Finn and Mel’s relationship when they were together didn’t do enough to make me care about them as a couple. There wasn’t enough chemistry for me to root for them and Finn’s decision to break up with her and the way he did it felt really poorly thought out.

This wasn’t a total loss because it did help me get in the holiday spirit, but there are other holiday romances that do a lot more.

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

Book Review, Fiction, Magical Realism

The Second Chance Cinema by Thea Weiss ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Magical Realism

One night, Ellie and her fiancé Drake come across a glamorous old school cinema they’ve never seen before only to discover that the one thing it’s showing is memories from each of their lives. After their first showing, they struggle to decide if they should return and risk uprooting secrets they’ve been keeping from each other.

I love movies and I love magical realism, so by all accounts this book should have been totally my thing. I really struggled with the main characters though. They felt incredibly one dimensional to the point where I didn’t care about them or really buy into their love story. There kept being things set up as big secrets from their pasts and I kept waiting to be shocked, but everything felt very blasé to me.

The main redeeming element of this book was the cinema because I could perfectly imagine its glitzyness and I liked the zany employees there. It felt like much more of a fleshed out world and concept than the rest of the book. I would have loved to spend more time there, rather than out in ‘real life’ with Ellie and Drake.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Second Chance Cinema at an indie bookstore near you
These Summer Storms on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Science Fiction

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

        The Dream Hotel follows Sara as she is detained on her way home from a conference abroad. She lives in a world where the Risk Assessment Administration can monitor people’s dreams and put them in a retention center if it’s believed that, based on those dreams, they could become a threat.

        Sara has a husband and infant twins at home and is desperate to get back to them. She soon begins to realize that all the other women detained with her believe themselves innocent as well and yet their stays are lengthened time and time again by a deeply faulty system.

        There is so much in this book that is reflective of our actual current reality, making this all the more horrifying to read about. The details about how personal data was twisted and used against the women made me uncomfortable and deeply aware of how much of my own data is floating around.

        Despite the really fascinating premise and set up, this book was incredibly slow. I felt like I was reading the same chapter over and over again. I’m sure to some extent this was intentional, to reflect the monotony of Sara’s life, but it was way too extreme. I also found the characters to be kind of one dimensional. They each had their “thing” that defined them, but I didn’t feel I knew them beyond that.

        Phenomenal world-building and ideas, but really challenging pacing and amount of plot.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf

Buy The Dream Hotel at an indie bookstore near you

The Dream Hotel on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

The Compound by Aisling Rawle ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fiction

I was obsessed with the concept behind this book. It takes place on the ‘set’ of a reality show much like Love Island in which contestants must pair up into couples as a safety net to remain on the show. The compound they are staying with starts out trashed from the previous season of contestants and with few supplies and they must complete tasks or challenges to gain things, which they often then promote to watchers back home.

The setting of this compound was so vivid to me and I loved the way it changed throughout the story as contestants were rewarded or punished for their actions. It was also clear that the outside world was in some way dystopian, making the motivation to stay on the show and in the compound that much greater. I love it when a setting feels almost like a character in itself and that was definitely the case in this one.

Lily, our narrator, is extremely beautiful but doesn’t have much else going for her (in her own words). She doesn’t really have much of a personality, but I think that was largely the point. She’s exactly the type of vain, fame-hungry person you might expect to be on this kind of show. I appreciated getting to know the other contestants through her eyes and trying to figure out who would be trustworthy.

I’m a big fan of reality tv, which I think added to my enjoyment of the premise, but the unsettling, cutthroat nature of the game upped the ante. There were elements of desperation in the game that reminded me of The Hunger Games in the best way.

I was expecting there to be a little more to the ending, which is why this didn’t quite make it to five stars, but I loved it nonetheless.

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

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Thriller

When Ted meets Lily on a flight, he finds himself confessing to her that his wife, Miranda, is cheating on him. After a throwaway comment expressing his anger, Lily offers to help him kill Miranda. Slowly, we begin to learn that there might be much more to Lily’s interest in helping Ted.

I enjoyed the parts of this book narrated by Lily. We hear about her dark childhood and she speaks in such a matter of fact way about her twisted thoughts and actions. It allowed me to really get inside her head and understand her motivations. Miranda’s sections on the other hand seemed pretty surface level. Ted as a narrator had no real personality and I had trouble caring about him.

The storyline was very twisty with a lot of layers, which I enjoyed. That said, I didn’t find any of it super gripping or particularly shocking. This was a pretty good thriller, but nothing I would go out of my way to recommend.

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

Book Review, Fiction

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

I’ve seen this book around forever and I don’t know why it took me so long to pick it up. Now that I’ve finished it, I keep kind of getting it mixed up with I Hope This Finds You Well, which I read earlier this year and is also primarily a workplace focused story about someone who doesn’t quite fit in with her colleagues around her.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine did an exceptional job at getting inside of Eleanor’s head and showing the reader how she came to the conclusions she did and why other people might find her thought processes odd. She strikes up an unexpected friendship with the IT guy at work, Raymond, and it was really heartwarming to watch them open up to each other. I really appreciated seeing her realize that maybe the things she believed about herself and her future were not all true.

Eleanor has frequent phone calls with her ‘Mummy’ and we slowly learn about the abuse she suffered as a child. There was a lot more to this part of the story than I was expecting and it helps to inform Eleanor’s actions in the present-day narrative.

This was a surprising and unusual book where not all that much happens plot-wise, but the main character is interesting enough that I stayed invested and a whole lot happens in terms of her growth.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine at an indie bookstore near you
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

It’s hard to write a review of Finding Grace without giving away a major twist in the book – but don’t worry, it happens very early on. The story is told from the perspective of Honor, who has a daughter named Chloe, and a husband, Tom, but longs for another child. She is so close to getting what she wants until suddenly, the unthinkable happens and the entire story is flipped on its head.

The rest of the book is kind of a weird twisted, suspenseful romance. I was so shocked by the initial twist in this book and completely sucked in by Tom’s compulsive behavior. This was the kind of book where you feel utterly sickened by characters’ actions, so much so that you can’t look away.

I will say, toward the end of the book I was completely fed up with Tom and felt like his behavior had gone off the tracks to the point where it wasn’t really enjoyable to read about. But overall, a suspenseful and unexpected story start to finish.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Finding Grace at an indie bookstore near you|
Finding Grace on Goodreads