Tag: cake

Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris ~ Book Review

Morgan

Behind Closed Doors Flatlay with Cake

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: August 9, 2016
Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I had a lot of free time when I was reading this book. For that reason, I flew through it, which made me falsely believe, at first, that I loved it. However. After a little internal reflection, I realized that I think I really just kind of missed reading thrillers. I’ve been trying to branch out more in my genre selection this year, so it’s been a minute since I read one of my classic picks (honestly not much more than a minute, but it feels like a long time to me). I recently read my first B.A. Paris book, and although that was a flop for me, I thought I’d give her a second chance. My main issue with this book, was that it felt forced, like the classic tropes of the genre were being hammered into my brain. The perfect husband? Who wants his wife to marry him quickly and then stop working and give up everything she loves? Who manipulates her friends and family until they truly believe she no longer cares about them? This is the story of Grace and Jack. And a thousand other domestic thriller couples.

Despite this somewhat scathing introduction, the story was well written. I was sucked in, and couldn’t wait to see how Grace ultimately triumphed as I knew she would based on the predictability of this plotline. I liked the classic approach to a domestic thriller, and the addition of Grace’s sister, Millie, added an interesting twist. Millie has Down’s Syndrome, and is ultimately the one who Jack is after. He hopes that by pretending to be doting friends to Millie, he and Grace will ultimately obtain custody of her when she turns 18 and he will thus have someone he can wholly control. I’m not sure how you get into such a twisted mindset, but Paris writes it with sickening clarity.

I also appreciated how everything tied together in this book. When we initially meet the couple as they host a dinner party, we know that Grace is acting peculiar, but it’s hard to tell why. Why does everything need to be perfectly cooked? Why does her husband dote over the painting she created that is hung on their wall? Why does she need to finish all the food on her plate? Each detail comes back later, as Grace walks us through the depth of Jack’s abuse, and the ways she has tried to either fight, or acquiesce to him.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with Book

Although there wasn’t really much action in this book, I liked the way it slowly built on itself, offering the reader more and more insight into Grace and Jack’s relationship. It is first depicted as the fairytale Grace believe it is, and then we delve deeper and deeper into just how manipulative and terrifying Jack really is.

All in all, I would not recommend this book, but it was a decent thriller. The depth and detail was well written, but it was predictable, and not terribly unique to the genre. Read it if you feel like it, but don’t rush out to buy it. Maybe instead, use your reading time to bake a cake, like this crowd-pleasing Insane Peanut Butter Cup Cake. It may be time intensive, but it will never disappoint.

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Buy Behind Closed Doors on Amazon
Behind Closed Doors on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Holiday, Humor

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners by Gretchen Anthony ~ Book Review

Morgan

Flatlay of Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners with cake

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners by Gretchen Anthony
Park Row
Genre: Fiction/Humor/Holiday 
Release Date: October 16, 2018
Book Rating: 🍪🍪

This is not the type of book I would typically choose of my own accord, but I was sent an ARC, and the festive cover vibe and swirly calligraphy intrigued me, it is December after all. The first few chapters of this book absolutely delighted me. Gretchen Anthony is a master at creating a unique and delightfully humorous narrative voice. The style of her prose was refreshingly unlike anything I’ve read before. The main character of this story is the matriarch of the family, Violet Baumgartner. (Is it just me, or is this name weirdly similar to Violet Baudelaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?? What’s up with these very unique, yet clearly not that unique Violets?).

Scattered throughout the book, are excerpts from Violet’s annual ‘Evergreen Tidings,’ holiday letters in which she writes extensively about her family, bragging shamelessly about how incredible and flawless each and every member is. Violet’s narrative makes it clear that she is utterly oblivious to the way that she puts her family up on a pedestal, and it made me kind of hate her, but I also got a lot of amusement out of each of her chapters.

The book alternates narrators, switching between various members of the Baumgartner family and close friends, but no voice is quite as strong as Violet’s. As much as I enjoyed the humor in this writing and the countless laugh-out-loud anecdotes (I would include some specifics, but I haven’t checked my advanced reader’s copy against the final published version, so I’ll refrain), that was the entire highlight of the book for me. When I closed the book, I honestly had no idea what had happened throughout the nearly 400 pages.

The main issue the Baumgartners are dealing with is Violet’s daughter, Cerise, and her partner, Barb, being pregnant. Violet is obsessed with figuring out who the father is, but the conversation surrounding this ‘problem’ seemed to me to happen over and over again, and I guessed who the father was a few hundred pages before the family figured it out. The back and forth between Cerise and her mother and then Cerise and Barb got repetitive quickly. There was also a random group of protesters setting up art installations throughout the narrative, some missing eyeglasses from Cerise’s best friend Kyle’s nonprofit, and Barb’s inappropriate and intoxicated parents popped in for a hot minute somewhere along the way.

The novel ended with a big reveal about the aforementioned protestors, and the missing glasses. It turns out, both things were orchestrated by Kyle’s ex-fiancé whom I did not care about in the least. Overall, this book did not leave me feeling festive and amused like I hoped, I was more so frustrated and disappointed that the strength of the writing did not translate into a more captivating narrative. It felt to me as if I read about the same disastrous dinner party/social event/baptism about seven different times.

Pumpkin cake with caramel frosting and book in background

Nonetheless, this browned butter pumpkin cake with salted caramel frosting, recipe brought to you by Cooking Classy, helped to lift my spirits (although I would suggest making more frosting than the recipe calls for if you’re a frosting fiend like I am… and full disclosure, I did not make my own caramel for this recipe, but rather “cheated” slightly by buying salted caramel sauce in a jar to save myself some stress). I do hope to read something else of  Gretchen Anthony’s in the future, she is truly a gifted writer, however this story, unlike this cake, was just not for me.

Book Rating: 🍪🍪
Buy Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners on Amazon
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen ~ Book Review

Morgan

Flatlay of Anonymous Girl Book and Insane Peanut Butter Cup Cake

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Publication Date: January 8, 2019
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Let me preface this review by saying that I am a HUGE fan of this author team’s first publication, The Wife Between Us. That book is up there on my list of absolute favorite psychological thrillers ever, and I read a lot of psychological thrillers. That being said, I had no idea there was a second book in the making until a crisp, untouched paperback ARC of An Anonymous Girl landed on my desk. When I receive any new book, it’s usually enough to put me in a good mood for the rest of the day, so my general book-nerdy excitement coupled with the realization of who this book was by had me bouncing off the walls, and I am not a generally bouncy person.

Needless to say, my expectations were high, which for me, doesn’t usually work out in my favor. I folded a nice solid crease in the first page the minute I got home, and dug in, and I read this guy fast. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen know how to build suspense and make a reader ask ‘what is really happening?’ The primary way that they do so, is by splitting up chapters between narratives. In and of itself, this is not an unusual tactic for an author to pursue, however, what makes it stand out in their writing is how extremely, unnaturally different the narrators are. Our protagonist is Jess, a young New Yorker, still grappling to find her footing in the city and in her career, strapped for money and living with the ever present guilt of a snap decision she made years ago. She has demons for sure, and she deals with them primarily by sleeping with men she doesn’t know, but the majority of her character traits are somewhat relatable.

Dr. Shields, on the other hand, narrates her chapters with a bone-chilling authority that makes you feel like you’re a five year old kid being reprimanded for stealing a cookie before dinner. Page after page after page. It’s impressive. The authors’ use of the second person voice in her segments is incredibly effective and unnerving. You know where Dr. Shields stands at all times, and it is always somewhere with more authority than you. Her segments had me looking over my own shoulder even when the book was closed.

The split in voice is what made this book most compelling for me. It was almost as if, bear with me here, there were two authors. Which could very easily lead me off on a tangent about how the whole co-author thing works, because I have enough trouble making writing decisions with myself. (Seriously, how do you pull a fictional story like this out of two different brains and somehow end up with one cohesive, enthralling narrative? I digress).

Getting back on track, this tale follows Jess as she *spoiler alert* decides to take the place of a stranger in an anonymous research project on ethics (ah, the irony) in order to make some extra, and much needed cash. The project ends up being not so anonymous, and not so ethical, and by the end of the story Jess’s life has been completely rerouted to fulfill Dr. Shields’ own personal agenda.

This novel is twisty and twisted, there is no denying that, however, it didn’t have that big “mic drop” moment that I was expecting from the authors given their last book (like I said, it’s never a good thing when my expectations get too high). I would be remiss if I didn’t commend this book for taking a unique approach to the psychological thriller. I’ve found that a lot of books in the genre tend to stick to very similar trends and motifs, so the ethical study situation had me thrown for a loop. Overall, An Anonymous Girl is another notable accomplishment by a tremendously talented author team.

Insane Peanut Butter Cup Cake with book

It felt appropriate to pair this book with the Insane Peanut Butter Cup Cake (recipe by Cookies and Cups) because not only are they both filled with unexpected layers (peep that hefty peanut butter frosting layer running through the middle of this cake), and finished all too soon, they also keep you guessing. How, you might ask, does a cake keep one guessing? Well this masterpiece somehow manages to contain 11 cups of powdered sugar. No, that is not a typo: ELEVEN. I still don’t fully understand how that’s possible, but if you’re planning to try making this epic dessert (which I highly recommend), you’re probably going to need to buy three bags of the stuff. I promise you it’s worth it, but if you’re simultaneously reading while devouring this treat, five to ten napkins may be appropriate companions. #treatyourshelf

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Buy An Anonymous Girl on Amazon
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