Tag: reading

Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction

Worthy by Jada Pinkett Smith ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Genre: Memoir

When a memoir starts by recounting an experience with ayahuasca, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Jada Pinkett Smith’s memoir recounts her life, starting with drug dealing while growing up in Baltimore, through the present. Jada’s life is anything but conventional. She talks us through her marriage that’s not really a marriage with Will Smith, her journey with spirituality, and motherhood. I find it so odd that she and Will named their children after themselves, but it’s very telling of how she comes across in her memoir (in my opinion, very self absorbed without any reflection on her actions).

Jada’s life is such a far cry from mine and because of that I found much of it fascinating if hard to wrap my head around. She tells everything exactly as she experienced and understood it, again, with no self-reflection.

Between chapters, Jada often introduces therapy-esque exercises she encourages readers to participate in. Things like telling your friends you love them or reflecting on XYZ in your life. I found this so bizarre – she’s not a therapist and reading her story made me not ever want to take advice from her, so why was she qualifying herself to be preaching these exercises to readers? It was a majorrr turn off and made her come across to me as completely full of herself.

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Worthy on Goodreads
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Book Review, Memoir, Nonfiction

Down the Drain by Julia Fox ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Memoir

I read Down the Drain for a book club having no idea who Julia Fox is and, to be honest, I still don’t really know who she is. This memoir follows Julia’s life from the time she’s very young to present day. It paints a picture of a child who was denied love from her parents and forced to fend for herself from a young age.

Her time in NYC featured lots of drugs, a sugar daddy, and her escapades as a dominatrix. From there, we follow Julia to New Orleans and are chaotically introduced to friends who seem to come out of nowhere. It was a little hard to keep up with the pacing.

This is an overview of Julia’s life without any reflection. She tells her story exactly as it happens. It was fascinating to read about a journey so different from mine and to see how she was able to fight for herself and become famous (for what exactly, I’m still not sure). It was hard to see her make the same mistakes over and over without commenting on that at all, but I guess that’s either not the kind of book she wanted to write, or that self-awareness doesn’t exist. I think she woke up one day and said “I’m going to write a memoir” and that was all the forethought that went into it.

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Buy Down the Drain at an indie bookstore near you
Down the Drain on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Mistakes We Never Made by Hannah Brown ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

Mistakes We Never Made is the road trip journey of Emma and her will-they-won’t-they friend Finn as they attempt to track down a runaway bride, Sybil, in the days leading up to the wedding. I love me a road trip story, but this one reallyyy dragged. Emma kept making dumb decisions and assumptions about where Sybil was, like I could have found this woman faster. That said, I did enjoy her conversations with Finn and watching them untangle their past and the problems that had stood in the way of them getting together.

There were a lot of loose ends in this book which really frustrated me. We never fully figured out what went down with Emma and Finn on prom night, which is harped on incessantly, and we don’t even find out what happens with Sybil?? It felt like lazy writing! Like no one wanted to take the time to figure out what happened.

Parts of this book were fun flirty romps around the the country, but I cannot recommend it just for those sections.

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Buy Mistakes We Never Made at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Heiress By Rachel Hawkins ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller
Read if you liked: Daisy Darker

When Ruby McTavish died, she left her entire fortune and her estate, Ashby House, to her adopted son Camden, who turned down his inheritance and chose to lay low with his wife, Jules. Upon his uncle’s death though, the couple is summoned to Ashby house where the whole family is waiting to discuss the fortune and next steps.

The narration is split into three perspectives, that of Camden, Jules, and the late Ruby. Each voice is so distinct and their points of view and motivations completely different. Weaving them together made for such a layered story. Camden questions his adoption and Ruby’s motivation while Jules feels cautiously optimistic that her luck could change given Camden’s family wealth. Ruby’s voice was probably my favorite. She was sarcastic and witty and her story was startling and surprising at every turn.

There were so many twists in this book but each one made sense and added an exciting element to the story. I loved never knowing who the characters truly were and what was driving their motivations. The story goes as far back as Ruby’s childhood, when she was briefly kidnapped as a girl, and builds from their creating a rich backstory to the present action.

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Buy The Heiress at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Science Fiction
Read if you liked: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

To be back with Sibling Dex and Mosscap was such a joy. I loved A Psalm for the Wild-Built and truly questioned whether a sequel could give me the same peaceful/warm squishy feelings. In this story, the two are headed into the cities to allow Mosscap to learn more about humanity. Its arrival is heralded with much excitement anywhere it goes, a very new and somewhat overwhelming experience for both of our main characters.

Since this book was more focused on towns and cities, it lost some of the charm of wandering the forests in peace that I so loved in the first book. For about the first half, I was discouraged that this would keep me from fully enjoying the story, but wouldn’t you know it, Sibling Dex and Mosscap felt the exact same was as I did.

This was another philosophical, heartwarming, thoughtful story set in a world that is nuanced and fascinating. I usually find it a slog to read through a bunch of world building, but in this case, I loved uncovering more and it added so much depth to the book.

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Buy A Prayer for the Crown-Shy at an indie bookstore near you
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction

Talk about an unlikeable, delusional main character!! When June Hayward’s loose friend and literary darling Athena Liu dies suddenly, June steals her latest manuscript and finishes it herself under a pen name. What follows is a darkly humorous exploration of cultural appropriation, racism, and June’s utter lack of accountability.

Athena’s books focused on the trauma of her Chinese characters, a niche she felt pressured by the publishing industry to play into time and time again. June, writing under the name Juniper, leaves her race ambiguous and only tells anyone she is white when asked directly. Rumors begin to swirl on social media accusing her of stealing Athena’s work, kicking off a whole new cycle of crazy.

Kuang does an incredible job of writing characters who are unlikeable. She paints an uncomfortable picture of the publishing industry’s interactions with marginalized authors. Her dialogue is painfully good at getting to the heart of this story and I could not stop listening (to the audiobook). It’s cringe-worthy in a way that verges on satire.

June is so selfishly focused on her own success and using her intellect to get out of negative situations. I was holding my breath to find out what would lead to her eventual final downfall, but I never could have seen the ending coming. It left me utterly shook and continued, all the way to the last paragraph, to hammer home the themes and messages that played out through the entire book.  

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

Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

Wallace lived to work. He was seen as ruthless by all those around him and kept most everyone at arm’s length. When he finds himself at Charon’s Crossing, a tea shop owned by Hugo who informs Wallace that he’s dead, Wallace begins to question whether he ever really lived.

Conceptually, I loved the idea of this magical tea shop and the cast of characters who owned it ferrying ghosts to the afterlife on the side. It was charming and whimsical and I enjoyed seeing them interact with customers and explain how things worked to Wallace.

I found there to be a lot of characters to keep track of, and to me things seemed a little jumpy. Wallace suddenly becomes a better person, a romance pops up out of nowhere, the rules of their universe change. These big moments didn’t feel believable to me because they happened seemingly without build-up. 

This was a sweet book, but it was kind of slow and I didn’t take too much away from it besides a contented warm fuzzy feeling.

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Buy Under the Whispering Door at an indie bookstore near you
Under the Whispering Door 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
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Book Review, Fiction

All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fiction
Similar to: Remarkably Bright Creatures

Hubert Bird lives a life of solitude, rarely leaving his home or interacting with other people, contrary to what he tells his grown daughter on their weekly phone calls. When she tells him she’s coming for a visit, Hubert finds himself suddenly scrambling to create a semblance of the social life he has made up.

Oh man, this book threw me for a loop. Hubert is sweet and lonely and unsure of himself. I loved the unlikely friendships he stumbled into. They were unexpected and I appreciated how although his life became more full, it in no way resembled the life he’d made up for himself. There was a big focus on the universal feeling of loneliness, hence the title, and it was special to see how it bonded and brought together people very different from one another.

There was a twist in this book that I in no way saw coming and reframed everything we knew about Hubert. It was interesting from a narrative perspective, but added a lot more heaviness to the story.

This is also a split narrative that explores Hubert’s relationship with his wife and how racism played into their lives. I appreciated this background and the way that it informed Hubert’s character, but I also wished there was more time spent exploring that earlier timeline.

Overall, this was a heavy, thought-provoking, somewhat slow-moving narrative with captivating characters who I fell in love with.

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Buy All the Lonely People at an indie bookstore near you
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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

the Soulmate by Sally Hepworth ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Similar to: The Family Game

When Gabe and Pippa moved to their new home they had no idea that the nearby cliffs were a popular suicide spot. Gabe has found himself an unexpected mediator, talking people literally off a cliff. Until one day, he doesn’t. When Pippa sees him, arms outstretched by the cliff and then finds out the victim is someone from their past, she begins to question how much she knows about her husband.

This is a split narrative telling the story from Pippa’s perspective and from Amanda, the dead woman’s perspective as she views the aftermath of her death, particularly her husband’s response. There were also flashbacks to the early days of each couple’s relationship. I found it a little hard to distinguish between the couples’ stories, especially in the beginning, which made things a little confusing.

There were a lot of layers and lies woven into the relationships and I was consistently intrigued to untangle what was really going on, but I didn’t find the ending to ultimately be very compelling. I didn’t expect the twist, but I also didn’t care all that much.

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Buy The Soulmate at an indie bookstore near you
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