Author: Gretchen McNeil

Review Round Up | The Lucky Dog Matchmaking Service and Ten

Posted September 14, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments
Review Round Up | The Lucky Dog Matchmaking Service and Ten

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 absolutely loved the last series I read from Beth Kendrick, and was a pretty big fan of one of her standalones as well. It took me a while to figure out what book to read that had an animal name in it for the Reading Quest, but I was happy to remember THE LUCKY DOG MATCHMAKING SERVICE as a light summery contemporary. I found the audio on Hoopla for the few days I was commuting into work recently and finished up with the physical copy afterwards. Anyways, this book was pretty good. It’s perfect for a dog-lover. And by dog-lover, I mean someone dog-obsessed. That person is not really me. I like them enough, but (don’t judge me) animals aren’t my thing as much as other people. I was frequently frustrated with Lara’s attitude about the dogs, their behavior, and her ex. I don’t know how I always come across adult contemps where the parents are basically like toddlers and the main character gives into their every whim, or falls for their traps. Her mom was so irritating and clearly didn’t care about bonding with her daughter. Her dad was the type of person who would fly into her life and then fly out whenever he wanted, […]

Review: Get Dirty

Posted August 3, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments
Review: Get Dirty

I had suuuuper mixed (okay, fine, more negative) feelings about the first book, but was absolutely determined to read this one. All other issues aside, I NEEDED to know who the killer was. I had a few people in mind after the first book… and that cliffhanger GOOD GOD. I figured I should give this one a slightly better rating than the first one because for some reason I kind of liked it a bit more, but it technically all comes down to the same issues. The pacing was still an issue, the girls still felt like cardboard cut-outs of typical high schooler stereotypes (except maybe even worse this time around because there was pretty much no personality at all), and… the worst thing of all… my theory was correct. If you know me at all, you’d know that (a) I don’t read a lot of mystery/murder/thriller books and (b) I am ridiculously AWFUL at falling for red herrings and can literally never figure out who the killer is. Ever. Well, except in this case. In summary, if I’m able to figure out who the killer was in your mystery book, then it wasn’t that great of a mystery.  I liked how everything wrapped up but essentially everything else from the book wasn’t very memorable. I just finished the audio this morning (July 2nd, at the time of writing this DUH) and I can’t even remember what the fuck happened throughout the book. I feel like there was even LESS of […]

Review: Get Even

Posted February 20, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments
Review: Get Even

Pardon my language, but what the actual fuck? I struggled with this book because I alternated between loving it and hating it throughout. Rating this one is a struggle for me and is based purely on comparison. I literally went to my ratings page and compared the book to the books under the 2.5 stars and 3 stars categories. I was leaning strongly towards 3.5 throughout the book, but towards the end found it slipping to 3… and now based on the final ending, it’s dangerously close to 2.5 territory. (Endings are very important to me!) So ummm where do I begin? This book was interesting. It’s about a group of girls who start “Don’t Get Mad” (…get even) in order to right some wrongs committed by people in their school. They target bullies and as a result do some bulling themselves. Whatever. Okay. The hypocrisy of these kind of things don’t bug me that much. Then, someone turns up dead and the members of DGM are the main suspects. The school is trying to figure out who’s in the group, while the girls are trying to figure out who the murderer is. But let me tell you – these girls are kind of stupid and annoying. They have the typical group of “opposite” girls from each circle in the school. Olivia, the popular drama star with a crappy home life; Bree, the rebel with a politician father; Kitty, the “Asian girl who isn’t good at math” (that’s exactly how […]