Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Review Round Up | The Night Swim, Admission, and Recommended for You

Posted November 13, 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 forgot to cancel BOTM and ended up with a rogue credit to use. The very small synopsis on the website seemed addicting and up my alley (I mean, any book about a true crime podcaster will win me over). However, after I selected it and headed to Goodreads, the heavier subject matter (that I usually avoid- sexual assault and rape) became apparent. It’s out of my wheelhouse and comfort zone, generally speaking, but I decided to go with it anyways. I’m really glad I did! Yes, it was hard to read at times, especially because both stories or “timelines” in this feature sexual assault. It was a super addicting book that I never wanted to put down, which is huge for me in 2020. Actually, all three of the books here did that for me! The main character, Rachel, is visiting a small beach town in North Carolina to follow a rape trial for the third season of her podcast. While there, a former local tracks her down and leaves mysterious messages for Rachel, begging her to solve the mystery of her own sister’s rape and murder 25 years prior. The two stories were similar and because intertwined in ways I didn’t see coming. Overall, really […]

Review Round Up | Summer at Lake Haven, Today Tonight Tomorrow, and Then She Was Gone

Posted October 14, 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’m always thrilled to return to Haven Point! I started this one and then realized there was a prequel novella about the leading man’s sister that should be read first, so I paused and finished that up quickly. Ian is in town for his sister Gemma’s wedding. He rents a house next to Samantha and she’s immediately smitten with his two cute kids. The kids, in turn, are smitten with the puppies she’s temporarily taking care of! Ian and Samantha get off on the wrong foot but they grow to be friends (and then more) throughout the story, of course. I’ll be honest – they were super dry and boring. Their conversations were repetitive and offered too much information about Ian’s research on salmon (yup). I was always a bit tired of them talking, which isn’t what you need from main characters you’re supposed to be rooting for in a romance! As always, the charming Haven Point setting won major points for me. The two of them were on Lake Haven and went hiking to see some waterfalls, which led to some nice scenery descriptions. The rest of the town and the Helping Hands group were always excellent too. I won’t spoil the ending, but it was […]

ARC Reviews: Sunshine on Silver Lake and 10 Things I Hate About Pinky

Posted August 24, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I’m always so thrilled to come home to Sweetwater Springs! This series has catapulted its way into my favorites list and continues to cement that spot with each new book. This is one of the best ones too, IMO! I loved that this was both fake dating AND (kinda) second chance romance AND childhood-friends-to-more. All of my tropes rolled into one in a way that made sense! Emma and Jack were close friends (almost more) in their younger years, until Jack blew her off for her senior prom. They did reconcile and remained friends throughout their adult lives living in Sweetwater Springs, but neither one of them would take the plunge into something more. When Jack suddenly has his nephew in his care for the summer, it’s easy for him to pretend (for his sister’s sake) that Emma is his girlfriend. Naturally, things progress into more. Emma is currently struggling with turning 30 and the bad feelings it provides about her mother’s untimely passing and battle with cancer. I REALLY enjoyed both of these characters and thought their friends-to-more relationship developed incredibly naturally. As always, there wasn’t any minor drama to split the couple up and I was never frustrated by miscommunication. Rains generally does a great job of giving the characters actual problems that need to be worked through to cause the “breakup” moment in the book. This one was short-lived too. Sweetwater Springs continues to be a fun, cute setting, and I love that we keep getting introduced […]

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 […]

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 | 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 […]

ARC Reviews: Girls with Razor Hearts and In Five Years

Posted March 9, 2020 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Yup, this was just about as wild and powerful as expected, and the perfect way to kickoff my reading year. I chose it as my first book of 2020 because I love starting things off on a perfect note, or at least with a book I can safely assume will be in the 4.5-5 star range! Mena and the other girls have escaped Innovations, on the road to enacting their revenge against the evil corporation and academy that trained them to be obedient little girls like society wants. This is an incredibly feminist story, obviously, and offers dystopian-like connections to our own world. Young is masterful with this – she makes you realize immediately where she’s drawing inspiration from our world, but manages to make this near-future feel like a possibility. I think there are some elements of this that are possibly a little too on the nose and preachy but it really makes sense coming from Mena’s point of view (somewhat spoilery reasons if you haven’t read the first book – but I will say it’s primarily because Mena and the other girls haven’t been outside in the real world to know what it’s like. You’re seeing it through their inexperienced eyes.). I loved (and obviously hated because this book is not necessarily a walk in the park) the moments where they would think they could trust someone or think that a man would be helpful and then realize he may be almost as bad as the rest of […]

Review Round Up | The King of Crows, Starting Over at Blueberry Creek, and All Eyes on Us

Posted February 27, 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! Spoilers for the previous books and tiny early-book spoilers for this book. HO BOY. I can’t believe this series is over! As sad as I am that I didn’t start way back when it first came out, I’m glad I had the experience of the Diviners Readalong to keep me going and break up these huge books. I did a little refresher before diving into the final installment though, since I read the third book back in November. I really liked how the beginning/middle of the book went, with all of the Diviners split up and trying to get to the same place. The groupings were wild and entertaining: Henry, Memphis, and Bill near the flooded Mississippi River and on trains; Theta, Evie, *someone*, and Isiah with the circus; and Ling and Jericho traveling with a band. It created some fun dynamics and new friendships/alliances among everyone while journeying across the country. The King of Crows, the Shadow Men, Roy, and Jake Marlowe fucked with them every step of the way. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory but let me say there were a few parts of this that totally broke my heart! I am truthfully really happy with how the book ended though and […]

ARC Review: Of Curses and Kisses

Posted February 6, 2020 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I am a member of Sandhya’s Street Team because I support her and love her books. However, this book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review. When I first saw the announcement for this book and series, I was straight-up over the moon. It immediately became one of my top most anticipated reads. When I was accepted to join Sandhya’s street team and was given an egalley of this book, I was even MORE excited. I dove into it pretty quickly. Unfortunately I didn’t FINISH it just as quickly, but I’ll get into that later. As you can see from this post, I was so effing excited: Like… excuse my French but are you fucking kidding me? I need this series more than I need the air I breathe. Everything about this is perfect and has me written all over it. The author, the boarding school setting, the fairytale retellings, the possible fake dating/hate-to-love trope… Good lord. I’ve been turning a corner on Royal-related books lately and this one will 100% be perfect for me. I just know it. I was in a bit of a slump in September 2019 when I started reading this (woof) and unfortunately that hindered my interest in it. I put it aside for maybe a week or two after starting because I had a few other required reads to sneak in between. When I picked it back up in October, I wasn’t quite as excited to keep reading. The premise […]

Holiday Reviews: The White Christmas Inn and Royal Holiday

Posted December 25, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Story I really enjoyed this one, even more than I had hoped! The story is kind of a “slice of life” that takes place at a Vermont inn during the few days around Christmas. There were a lot of characters but I think there wasn’t TOO much detail about each of them, which ended up being a good thing. I was able to really just enjoy peeking in through the windows of this inn during the story. There was just enough backstory to feel invested in each of them. Molly, a writer of children’s books, comes to the inn in the hopes she’ll be able to finish her next book. She meets Marcus and his two girls and quickly falls for the small family. Hannah, who was set to get married at the inn over the holiday period, is sent reeling when her fiance calls it off. She luckily has her parents and maid of honor with her, as well as a reunion with her childhood friend Luke, to get her thought the heartbreak. Jeanne and Tim are the owners of the inn and struggling, both in their marriage and with the business itself. I loved reading about everyone’s different stories and the smaller side characters who come into play, like the grumpy British traveler and empty-nesters staying there too. Again, writing all of this further emphasizes how many characters and plotlines there are in such a short book, but it was really a nice quick snapshot of everyone’s lives […]