Format: Audio/eBook

Recent Reads | Five and By Way of Sorrow

Posted June 18, 2026 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

Man, this was so underwhelming and I’m bummed! I saw this book gain some steam online and get really favorable reviews, so I decided to pick it as my Aardvark book for the month. I wasn’t initially interested but the hype got to me a little bit. The premise sounds good and thrilling: you know one of the main characters (there are five of them) will die at the train stop, but won’t know who until the end. The book goes between the train platform in present day and character-based chapters that are really summaries of each character’s life. The idea is a psychological thriller (?) with a strong character study element. Unfortunately it just didn’t work for me. I saw some reviews praising the deep psychological elements – can you forgive these people for their sins? Were you rooting for one person to die instead of the others? All of the characters have made mistakes and aren’t likable, so the reader is supposed to grapple with the morality of it all. The character chapters were just rundowns of the person’s life and the mistakes they made. Yes, they were all unlikable to various degrees but it didn’t really make me feel anything. I thought their problems were pretty stereotypical and predictable, so nothing really shocked me? Don’t go into this book expecting a tense thriller at all. I definitely enjoyed the chapters on the train platform way more than the character ones because that’s where it actually felt like […]

Mini Reviews: A Perilous Undertaking, The Plot, and Her Last Breath

Posted April 4, 2026 / Bite-Sized Reviews, Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’m not sure when I’ll finish this long ass series but I’m proud I prioritized the second book fairly quickly! I continue to enjoy Veronica and Stoker’s slow-burn (I’m assuming) romance. I don’t think I paid a ton of attention when reading (so I forgot who characters were) and the mystery was fine. The lower rating is probably due to my reading slump and lack of interest in reading much of anything, but to be fair – other books have managed to keep my attention when this one didn’t as much. Happy to move onto the next within a few months though! This was a good albeit predictable read. I did enjoy the mystery of trying to figure out what the twist in the novel-within-the-novel was going to be, but the bigger reveals toward the end were more obvious afterwards. I read like 95% of this in one day so I didn’t find it slow like other readers (though the book club deadline helped lol). My other friends in book club agreed that it was super predictable but we are all curious enough to read the sequel! I have a feeling it will follow a similar trajectory though, which would be a little annoying and possibly repetitive. Like with most Taylor Adams books, the story seems so closed off and straightforward. I kept asking myself how he was going to find twists within this plot line, or keep the book interesting. I really didn’t think it was possible but I […]

Recent Reads | Wild Dark Shore and A Curious Beginning

Posted January 22, 2026 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

This is a book I’ve been very intimidated by but was determined to read at some point. I’ve found that I always enjoy literary mysteries more than I expect to, so this was somewhat of a pleasant surprised (but also expected in some ways). The book follows a tight cast of characters in a remote area, which was incredibly atmospheric. I knew I wanted to read this one in the winter given the chilly Antarctica location. Rowan washes ashore the remote island currently inhabited by the Salt family. How did she get there? What or who is she looking for? Dom and his three kids appear to be hiding secrets of their own as well. There were a lot of little mysteries but this was by no means a fast-paced thriller. Emphasis on the “literary” in “literary mystery.” There was a heavy scientific / climate change element to this book that I appreciated. The Salt family are the only remaining people/scientists on this island protecting the seed bank and have only a few weeks left before they move back to a mainland. Each of the kids has a special interest area, whether its whales or biology or penguins, and it was cool to see how their life was on the island. Again, super atmospheric – I felt like I could picture everything (and would love to see this as a movie!). I really loved the writing style and would be eager to read more by McConaghy, if I can pluck […]

Recent Reads | She Didn’t See It Coming and The Sandy Page Bookshop

Posted September 25, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I went into this thinking that Shari Lapena was the author of another book I read and strongly disliked, so I was hoping to be proven wrong and enjoy more of her books. Turns out I was thinking of Mary Kubica. I have a ton of Lapena’s books on my TBR but this was the first I’ve read – not sure I’ll run to her backlist. Bryden, a wife and mother living in a high-rise in Albany, goes missing one day without a trace. Her husband Sam and a bunch of other characters are suspects and/or trying to figure out what happened to her. There were a decent amount of POVs here that I thought added to the story, but there were so many characters included as red herrings with no logical connections to the overall plot, and it ended up being kind of stupid by the end. Loose ends galore. Again, I know the point of a red herring, but I thought there’d be at least some loose connection where it would make sense to include the person. This was super underwhelming and an incredibly stereotypical domestic thriller. I generally didn’t mind the ride but the ending took a lot of wind out of the story. I predicted quite a bit of what happened. This was exactly what I expected it would be and fit the bill for an end-of-summer predicable beach read. I was really craving a Cape Cod setting and this delivered; the element of the MC […]

Recent Reads | Not Quite Dead Yet and Mean Moms

Posted August 22, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I’m a huge fan of Holly Jackson and have loved all of her books (I still haven’t read one of them though), so I was really looking forward to her adult debut mystery. The concept sounded so interesting: the main character is attacked in an attempted murder and the aneurysm in her brain will trigger within the week, so she has less than seven days to try to solve her own murder before she dies. I loved the idea that she’s really “not quite dead yet” and by the time she does die, it will be literally her solving her own murder. I started this book via audio when I was setting up our new house and unpacking, so I managed to read the first third of it in one sitting. However, the audiobook narrator was utterly terrible. I thought her normal voice and Jet’s narration were perfectly fine but the voices she used for other characters were SO bad. She was basically using weird accents and caricatures of how normal people talk. Her mom, sister-in-law, and friend all had horrific voices and I couldn’t bring myself to listen to any more of it. I read the rest of the book physically. Jet goes out on the case with her childhood best friend, Billy, and they get really close during this time period. It makes her inevitable fate even sadder honestly. I’ll say my biggest issue with this book is that I really did not like Jet – she was […]

Recent Reads | Parents Weekend and One Golden Summer

Posted June 9, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I’ve had books by Alex Finlay on my TBR for a long time – I don’t know why this one is the one I finally read but I think it maybe gave me a good sense for his writing and overall style. I’m definitely interested in reading more books by him now! This was good. The story follows a parents weekend at a college in California. Five students (of parents attending the weekend) go missing and a newly relocated FBI agent, Keller (I guess she’s from some of his other books), is on the case. Many of them are rich and powerful so there are theories about why these kids were taken, by who, how, and – most important – where they are. A few things kinda bugged me (lots of red herrings and plot points that didn’t do anything) but overall I liked the format and writing. I did predict whodunnit. The more middling reviews I read, the more I think I should have lowered my rating to the 3.5 range… but honestly it kept me engaged the whole time. I was curious to read more and thought the multiple POVs were decent, albeit a little confusing. I’ll be especially curious to read more books featuring Keller! Carley Fortune is soooo good. I was really craving a summer read like this thanks to a conversation with my friend Jackie, and this totally hit the spot. I wrote a TTT about this and a summer bucket list within the last week […]

Recent Reads | Insignificant Others and The Measure

Posted May 14, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

My reading slump is slowly getting busted by really addicting, fun reads! This was no exception. It’s been a long time since I was this engaged in a book/romance where I just wanted to keep reading. I added this to my TBR completely on a whim when I saw it involved my favorite topic – parallel/time loop/Groundhog Day kind of things, then requested both formats on Libby. When Lena and her boyfriend break up instead of getting engaged, she heads back to visit her aunt off the coast of Seattle, falling asleep in her guest house. When she wakes up, she’s in Paris with a man claiming to be her husband. The next day, the same thing – new city, new husband. She recognizes all of these men from casual encounters at parties or on a train or from high school so she quickly realizes that this is a taste of what her life would be like if she had taken a different path or gone out on that date she declined. I would say that this is a bit more on the literary side because the romance part is honestly kind of minimal despite what the plot may suggest. There wasn’t enough time to get to know each man or feel much chemistry, though some days were better than others. She learned a lesson from each dude and then moved on the next morning to the next person, trying to find a way back to her life. The moral […]

Recent Reads | The Maid’s Secret and Great Big Beautiful Life

Posted April 29, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

This series is a really fun time. Molly the Maid has solved now 3.5 mysteries around the Regency Grand Hotel and I thinkkk this may be her final one? Not sure if other books have been announced but this really feels like a last book. This was another generally enjoyable installment in this series, but definitely my least favorite. The story alternates between Molly’s daily life/the overall mystery and her gran’s diary entries. Unfortunately I wasn’t super invested in either timeline, but I especially didn’t enjoy the diary entries. I thought they were so boring. Yes, it helps move the story along in some ways, but I wasn’t at all invested. I think the main mystery was a little lame as well. I never felt like the stakes were really high and the story was just kind of plodding along. I think the series has run its course from a plot perspective but I have to be honest – I would read additional books if they were to come out. As I’ve said a hundred times before, there are a few authors where I am ANXIOUSLY awaiting their next release and can guarantee I’ll read them during pub week (or early enough if I get an egalley). These days that includes Emily Henry, Christina Lauren, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carley Fortune, and Abby Jimenez. Typically these authors (for the most part) get fairly rave reviews but Henry and Jimenez always do…especially for me. 2025 has been weirdly polarizing for those two […]

Recent Reads | The Searcher and The Lodge

Posted April 7, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

My book club is really getting me out of my comfort zone at times but so far it hasn’t been a successful endeavor lol. I guess I just know what I like, and this kind of book is not it. The books that were already on my TBR when we selected them have generally worked out pretty well, and the two books I’ve read ONLY because of the club… not so much. Why do we need to read about annoying men? This book follows Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop who moves to Ireland to fix up an old house and live quietly post-divorce. When a young boy approaches him one day and asks for help looking for his missing brother, Cal can’t resist helping him out. Unfortunately, this was SO INCREDIBLY BORING. I could truly sum up the plot in three sentences (just add one to the paragraph above that describes the ending) and yet I had to read almost 500 pages. Even the reveal at the end was incredibly obvious. Most reviews were surprised by it but I thought it was pretty glaring who was involved. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I just don’t like reading about men. Or cops / ex-cops. Or guns and hunting. Unfortunately all three of these things were present in spades. Tana French wrote Cal Hooper in a way that a lot of men write women – stereotypically and frustratingly. Did we really need to hear about him adjusting […]

Recent Reads | A Killing Cold and The Five Year Lie

Posted February 19, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I’ve been saying for years that I need to read a Kate Alice Marshall book and I’m glad I finally did! Apparently it just took me getting it in my BOTM. (By the way, I am getting much better at reading those…) The book follows Theo as she heads to her new fiance’s remote cabin in the woods to meet his family for the first time in their whirlwind romance. The mysterious, uber-wealthy family has spent years of summers and Christmases at their compound with cabins up in Vermont. When she finds a photo of herself in the abandoned cabin, memories of her childhood slowly come back. Is it possible she’s somehow been there before? I really loved this one and read the majority of it in a day. I found myself continually turning the pages to see what happened next. I was suspicious of the entire family at different points in the book and it really wasn’t what I expected to be honest. I think the majority of things I could discuss would be spoilery so I’ll just say that the atmosphere of this book was really well-done and perfect to read on a snowy weekend like I did! Some things were a little convenient (fate? IYKYK) and didn’t seem realistic at all. There were a couple of explanations for those things but do think the reader needs to suspend their disbelief to really buy into it. I ended up really liking the end of the book and the […]