Category: Book Reviews

Review Round Up | Date Me Bryson Keller, Four Days of You and Me, and The Boyfriend Project

Posted June 24, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! Oh man, this book was EXACTLY what I needed. I’d been struggling with reading during quarantine (and honestly was behind on my challenge BEFORE too) so Chris suggested I take a break from the book that was taking me forever and putting me in a slump, and read something quick and fun. I was able to sit down and read DATE ME, BRYSON KELLER in one sitting on a Monday night and it was exactly the kick in the pants I needed to read more and finish April stronger. The story is about a dare that popular guy, Bryson Keller, takes on at the end of their senior year. He vows to date one person per week until spring break, based on whoever asks him out first on Monday morning. He shows up late to school and royally messes up Kai’s morning, so he randomly spits out “date me, Bryson Keller” and to his surprise, Bryson says yes. Kai is a closeted gay teen who really just wants to experience having a boyfriend and see what it’d be like to hang out with Bryson all week. Needless to say, sparks fly between the two boys and it was THE CUTEST. I was literally squealing multiple times throughout […]

Review Round Up | The Guest List, A Castle in the Clouds, and Incomparable

Posted May 28, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I was trying to get back into reading so I decided to follow my mood. I joined Book of the Month specifically so I could get an early copy of THE GUEST LIST and read it ASAP. In the end, totally glad I did! It didn’t fully grab me right from the beginning like I was hoping, but I sat and read the majority of the book in one sitting on a beautiful Saturday afternoon on my porch. The story follows a wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. There are a few points of view: Jules (the bride), Olivia (the sister of the bride/maid of honor), Johnno (the best man and childhood friend of the groom), Hannah (the plus one – her husband Charlie is Jules’s best friend), and Aiofe (the wedding planner who owns the island venue with her husband). The final 40% of the book was a whirlwind of twists and secrets. I love when mystery/thrillers have shorter chapters at the end that rapidly go back and forth between points of view as things come together. I’ve had this issue lately where I figure out at least part of the “mystery” or whodunnit, so the endings of suspense stories have been […]

Reviews: Killing November and Hunting November

Posted May 20, 2020 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I have to say, Dahlia’s review on Goodreads is what really made me make sure to push KILLING NOVEMBER up on my TBR. To be fair, I haven’t read THE CONSPIRACY OF US (yet) but the PRIVATE part? Yes please. I miss that series and continue to put off reading it for various reasons. I decided to dive into this one when I saw my library had a digital copy coming available soonish, and it was ready at the end of January. I thought I would lump my review in with the sequel, which was due to come out a few months after I read book one. So here we are! I was intrigued and confused SO much at the beginning of this novel – it was completely fascinating to try to figure out what the hell was going on. No electricity, so much secrecy about everything… damn. I would have run for the hills the moment I arrived there (although it sounds like that would’ve been impossible)! The main character, November, ends up at this boarding school and is told by her ex-CIA father that she’ll be there for a few weeks while he goes to “help” her Aunt Jo with something. The place has no electricity and technology, is shrouded in secrets (the location is literally like Hogwarts and hidden somehow in the mountains), and has the sketchiest teenagers I’ve ever read about. Her roommate, Layla, is one of the oddest ones initially and it was so wild […]

Blog Tour: The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly

Posted May 10, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Review This book was so dang cute! I sometimes use the word “predictable” as a compliment, and that’s the case here. I WANTED this book to be a badass girl trying to take down gender norms and rules at the medieval-themed restaurant, and also have solid elements of friendship and maybe romance. This book met all of my expectations and was exactly like I predicted it would be, and that made me so happy! I also really appreciated how diverse in representation this was, really across the board. Kit herself came from a very poor family and it was ingrained in a lot of the things she did or the decisions she made. I really enjoyed the strong relationships between her and her family too. Kit’s mom and brother were very present and always working together to make sure they could pay the bills and get food on the table. They were a team and she had a nice, open relationship with both of them, even when she struggled to tell the truth to her friends. She had a diverse group of friends/wenches (lol) at the restaurant also trying to become knights. Kit really struggled throughout the story in trying to figure out how to break it to everyone that they likely wouldn’t actually be able to make a tournament happen. This felt real to me because she was so determined to make it happen and didn’t want to let anyone down, but she knew she eventually would have to. […]

Review Round Up | Beach Read, A Deadly Inside Scoop, and The Summer of Impossibilities

Posted May 4, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! Woo, boy. I had HIGH expectations for this book. A few bloggers/booktubers I follow closely loved this one (and Madalyn told me I’d love it) so I was really preparing to be wowed. And I totally was. This book exceeded my lofty expectations. January, a romance writer, and her college nemesis and literary fiction writer, Gus, end up neighbors in a sleepy Michigan beach town for the summer. January is getting through the death of her father and all of the secrets she’s learned in the wake of his passing, all while trying to clear his house (and second life) and write a new book. She’s not feeling very romance-y at the moment and when her and Gus meet up, they decide to swap genres for the summer and see if that breaks their writer’s block. Naturally, they get closer throughout the summer, and take each other on genre-relevant field trips so the other person really learns what they should be writing about. I LOVED that this book was very much a typical romance book (and sort of a love letter to the genre) while also managing to invent new tropes. Who knew that TWO grumpy main characters could be so perfect?! Usually you have one grumpy and […]

ARC Reviews: The Honey-Don’t List and The Happy Ever After Playlist

Posted April 16, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I’ve said it many times before that I came aboard the Christina Lauren train pretty late – I started reading their books with THE UNHONEYMOONERS, which seems to be their first full departure from the straight-up romance novels they were writing earlier. They’ve shifted toward rom-coms with evidently less sexytimes. I’ve seen a lot of people move away from their books as a result, preferring their earlier works, but I enjoyed their latest releases (the first and only books I’ve read by this pairing). THE HONEY-DON’T LIST centers around characters dealing with a “if-Chip-and-Joanna-Gaines-had-major-issues” kind of situation. The married couple in question, Russell and Melissa, became famous through their design skills and have been only increasing in popularity over the years. When Russell starts misbehaving and creating a potential PR nightmare, their two assistants have to wrangle everything and keep them on track during their book tour… a book about marital advice, nonetheless. Carey and Jim have different reasons for working with these two and dealing with the trainwreck, and also have very different feelings about how to do everything (at first). This was cute and enjoyable – another “just what I needed” read for me. I’ll say that I definitely thought this was going to be a bit more enemies/rivals-to-more but that element was practically nonexistent. There was a tiny bit of friction for like three chapters but I found that Carey and James quickly became friendly and more. The two of them were pretty meh overall too… They […]

Review Round Up | Ghosted, With Malice, and All the Stars and Teeth

Posted April 8, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I realized I forgot to review this one after finishing so here’s a quick review from what I remember – you know my bookish memory is garbage… Thanks Goodreads for holding my initial thoughts 😉 This book was a wild ride. It spent so much of the book thinking I had everything figured out and was really pissed that it was going to be that cliche and boring. I definitely ended up being wrong! It was almost the opposite of my prediction, without getting into spoilers. There were lots of twists and turns and suspense. The beginning of the book was just okay for me. I wasn’t overly interested in the chapters that had them getting to know each other and connecting when they first met. They were only together for about a week but fell in instalove pretty quickly. I got REALLY addicted to this one, though, while trying to figure out why he ghosted her. I was racing to finish this and see how everything wrapped up. Overall, this one took a little while for me to get into because I wasn’t overly invested in the couple in the early stages, but I absolutely couldn’t put it down once the story picked up, trying to […]

Blog Tour: Super Adjacent

Posted April 2, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

More purchase links: Bookdepository | iTunes | Kobo | Google Books Follow the rest of the tour HERE! Review I enjoyed Crystal Cestari’s last book series so I was excited to see a new book coming out from her! This one is also set in Chicago and has some element of magic or paranormal. In this case, there are characters with superpowers that work for Warrior Nation; they’re not in hiding or anything. Claire has always wanted to work with them and finally lands her dream internship with the organization. A romance blooms between her and the newest recruit, Joy aka Girl Power. The other main character is Bridgette. She has spent years dating Vaporizer and playing second-fiddle to his superpowers, so she’s ready to move on from being associated to the organization. The story centers around these two girls as they have to rally together and save the city when all of the WarNat heroes go missing. This plot point really didn’t begin until around the 50% mark so I personally am wondering why it was in the book synopsis? I kept waiting for it to happen in the earlier chapters. Either way, there was some nice buildup of the relationships (how Claire and Bridgette meet, how Claire and Joy spark a relationship, how Bridgette and Matt end their relationship, etc.) before the rest of the novel kicked off. The ending genuinely surprised me! I got caught up in a red herring for sure, so I didn’t see it coming. […]

Blog Tour: The Sea Glass Cottage

Posted March 27, 2020 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

More Purchase Links: Harlequin // Indiebound // Books-a-Million Target // Walmart // Google // iBooks // Kobo Review I’ve adored reading the Haven Point series by RaeAnne Thayne over the past several years; I get so excited when I see a new installment announced. I thought it would be fun to branch out and explore other stories by her. THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE was the perfect way for me to do so! I didn’t realize the setting of Sanctuary Bay was used in her other novels as well – I would totally have read those first. Either way, this works nicely as a standalone novel. The story centers around Juliet, her daughter Olivia, and her granddaughter Caitlin. There’s also a POV from Cooper, a childhood friend of Caitlin’s late mother. The three women are trying to live in the same house as Juliet recovers from surgery. Olivia comes down to help her mother and work at the family’s garden center in the interim. Caitlin is fifteen and has lived with Juliet since her mother’s passing when she was a kid. The relationships are strained between the three women for various reasons, primarily based in past issues. I enjoyed all of the characters reconnecting and the town had a few great side characters, like Henry, Melody, and Jake. I have to say that most of the characters had some pretty sad backstories, which was challenging and sometimes a bit of a downer to read. I say this primarily because of the current virus […]

Review Round Up | Undercover Bromance, The June Boys, and Marriage on Madison Avenue

Posted March 23, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! DNF: 33% While I enjoyed the first book in this series, I certainly didn’t love it like everyone else. I didn’t really like Liv, the previous MC’s sister, at all either. She was incredibly stubborn and overprotective to me. Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled when she was the lead character for book two. She proved to be just as irritating in this one – maybe even more so since we were in her head. I enjoyed Mack as a character and thought he was way sweeter than his “smooth guy” persona implied from the previous story. I loved how quick he was to use his resources to help Liv take down the shitty restaurant owner she previously worked for. I didn’t read the synopsis of this one fully and was really just excited to see how book two would go, so I wasn’t fully aware that this had the heavier topic of sexual assault/harassment at the forefront. I didn’t realize it was central to the plot for whatever reason. I just couldn’t read it. Also, the first book had cute inserts from the romance that the book club was reading, and showed how it related to the story itself. This book didn’t have that in the […]