Tag: recipes

Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier ~ Book Review

Morgan

Jar of Hearts with blondies and daisies

Minotaur Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: June 12, 2018
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

Jar of Hearts was far more disturbing than I expected. The story hits the ground running as Geo is arrested for helping cover up the murder of her best friend, by her then boyfriend, Calvin, 14 years previously. The reader knows from the onset that the main character is guilty, which automatically made this stand out from other thrillers.

The storyline is broken into sections based on Geo’s life: before going to jail, during her time in jail, and after she gets out. There are also substantial flashbacks to when she first met Calvin, all leading up to the killing of her best friend, Angela. The story explores their abusive relationship and the lifelong impact it had on Geo. It was interesting to see the evolution of Geo’s character throughout these time frames.

I definitely didn’t see where this story was going until pretty late in the game. Looking back, there were hints along the way, but nothing I picked up on. The entire book, but the ending in particular was exceedingly twisted and horrific. The descriptions of Calvin’s violence, including rape, physical and verbal abuse, and murder, were detailed and disturbing. If these topics are especially triggering, this book should definitely be avoided. It was hard for me to get through certain scenes, but the ultimate cohesion of the story was impressive.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Buy Jar of Hearts at an indie bookstore near you
Jar of Hearts on Goodreads

Book Review, Nonfiction, Uncategorized

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell ~ Book Review

Morgan

Julie & Julia with blondies

Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: September 1, 2005
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I’m generally a big fan of food writing, and I’ve heard about Julie and Julia, both the book and the movie, for years, so I decided to give it a try. I knew the general concept: Julie Powell attempts to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a year. I really enjoyed the way that the Project, as it is called throughout the book, helped give Julie’s life structure and meaning during a time when she felt aimless. She’s stuck at a job she’s not passionate about and living in a crappy apartment in New York City with no concrete direction for her life. This very unique choice of a challenge started off as just something to apply herself to, but ended up being so much more for Julie. As her blog chronicling the Project garners more attention, she is approached by media outlets, and obviously, eventually gets a book deal.

As much as I liked this overarching theme of finding a creative outlet to help feel fulfilled, the minutiae of the book felt painfully repetitive to me. I understand that there are only so many ways to say that cooking some french dish did not go according to plan, but I found myself skimming entire sections because I felt like I had read them already. I definitely think this book could have been cut down considerably, and packed a more substantial and concise punch.

Conceptually, I enjoyed this book, and it was interesting hearing about a blogger before blogging was all the rage, but after a while, it lost my interest.

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Buy Julie and Julia at an indie bookstore near you
Julie and Julia on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

Dear Emmie Blue by Lia Louis ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dear Emmie Blue with jam cookies

Atria Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: July 14, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

I was not emotionally ready for this book. Dear Emmie Blue is a love story, but it’s so much more than that. First off, the concept is adorable: Emmie sends a red balloon with a note on it up into the sky when she is struggling deeply as a teenager. When Lucas finds the balloon and emails her, he becomes her ‘Balloon Boy’ and thus begins a lifelong friendship. Adorable. Before you decide you have the plot entirely figured out from the synopsis: you don’t.

Lia Louis is an incredibly talented writer. Her descriptive language lit up my senses, I could practically feel, smell, and hear the scenes she depicted. The way she captures falling in love, through Emmie, was incredibly relatable and real. I don’t know if there’s a word like ‘tearjerker’ but about feeling butterflies in your stomach, but that’s what this book did for me. That being said, it is also a tearjerker. This isn’t a fluffy romance. Emmie’s past haunts her heartbreakingly through her story, and the losses she experiences in the present are painful. Louis does such an incredible job of creating unique, detailed characters, that the loss of one of them to Emmie felt like a loss to me as well. I was also obsessed with the dialogue in this story. The banter and cheeky comments between friends and love interests had me fully smiling as I read.

I think I’m still reeling a little from this book, as I’m having trouble consolidating all my thoughts. It is, overall, a beautiful story. The theme of finding your own chosen family was such a unique and wonderful addition to the book. This type of love further bolsters its classification as a ‘love story.’ To summarize, I fell in love with this book: the writing, the characters, the dialogue, the complex and bittersweet storyline. It made me physically feel a wide range of emotions in a way that books are rarely able to do. Grab some tissues, read this book, and then let me know so we can gush about it more.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Buy Dear Emmie Blue at an indie bookstore near you
Dear Emmie Blue on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, thriller, Uncategorized

The Safe Place by Anna Downes ~ Book Review

Morgan

The Safe Place with Lemon Bars
Minotaur Books
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: July 14, 2020 (Thanks to BookishFirst for my ARC)
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

I love an atmospheric thriller. When the setting takes on a life of its own, I am all about it (which I think I’ve reiterated in many reviews). The Safe Place absolutely has this characteristic. Emily, our down on her luck, broke, jobless protagonist jets off to a sprawling estate in France to be a housekeeper for a virtual stranger. Emily falls into a very overused thriller character mold, but I was mostly able to look past that as the story ramped up. Her ditziness and inability to take control of her life made me believe that her character would accept a job abroad when the handsome, charming CEO of the company she used to work for, Scott, offers it up suddenly. His special treatment makes her weak at the knees, and I could perfectly see how Scott’s charisma would have someone like Emily dangerously spellbound.

One aspect of the writing that really stood out to me is Downes’s ability to write incredibly unique characters. In sharp contrast to Emily’s airheadedness, was Scott with his shocking yet subtle self-injury practices. The constant state of pain he forces himself into allows the reader to see that he is deeply unsettled, and made me want to know why. Once Emily arrives at Querencia, the French estate, she meets Scott’s wife Nina and daughter Aurelia. Nina seems glamorous at first, but her compulsions about her daughters safety and mysterious illnesses indicate that all is not what it seems.

Emily is cut off from the outside world little by little, and believes she is forging a close connection with both Nina and Aurelia. The more she observes about their lives and their mysterious family house, which she is not supposed to enter, the more Emily begins to question what is really going on in their little slice of paradise. The contrast between the description of the beautiful setting and Nina and the house’s sinister qualities and occasional eerie scent of rot and decay, had shivers running up and down my spine.

The twists in this book strayed away from those common to other thrillers. I couldn’t guess all how the clues and secrets fit together and I was pleasantly shocked as the story unfolded. 
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5
Buy The Safe Place at an indie bookstore near you
The Safe Place on Goodreads