Hi sweet friends! I spent the first half of April on vacation, and used a good chunk of my downtime to catch up on a few upcoming releases. While on vacation, I ended up reading five books, and starting The Odyssey on audiobook. I thought it’d be fun to share some mini reviews for most of my reads with the caveat that I’m withholding the review for one of the books I read due to the ongoing St. Martin’s Press boycott.
Read moreMini Reviews: Plays Inspired by Shakespeare/Shakespeare Retellings
Y’all knew I couldn’t let April pass without some sort of Shakespeare related post! As I do every April, I had a lot of Shakespeare related reads on my TBR, and something I’ve wanted to do for a long time is read plays that are either Shakespeare retellings or inspired by Shakespeare.
I ended up reading 4 plays this week, and I thought it was really interesting to see how different playwrights interpreted and adapted Shakespeare’s works. While I didn’t get to as many plays as I was hoping to this week, I did finally read some that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, which I’m definitely happy about!
Read moreMini Reviews: Recent Mystery/Thriller Reads (No Body, No Crime Readathon Wrap Up)
Happy Thursday, friends! We all know that I love a good readathon — it combines two of my favorite things; reading and competition. To be clear, I do not see a readathon as a competition between me and another person, it’s a competition between my schedule and how many books I can read in during the readathon schedule. Because of this, I’m always looking for new readathons and I got SO excited when I heard about the No Body, No Crime thriller focused readathon, hosted by nobodynocrimebookclub on Instagram. It combined even more of my favorite things; readathons, thrillers and Taylor Swift, truly it felt like a readathon just for me.
The readathon was from April 4th – 7th, and included 4 prompts. The prompts were: Isolated Setting, New Release, Favorite Trope, and Good For Her/Revenge. Firstly, love those prompts, it gives you so many options, and I knew right away which books I would be putting on my TBR.
Spoiler alert — this was my most successful readathon to date! Not only did I complete the readathon in the allotted amount of time and check off three books from my owned TBR, but all of these books got at least a 4 star rating. Honestly, you can’t ask for a much more successful readathon experience!
Since I enjoyed all of these books so much, I figured it only made sense that I would write up some mini reviews, so get cozy and keep reading to hear my thoughts on the four novels I read over the weekend!
Read moreBlog Tour & Review: The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson
From the author of the multimillion bestselling A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series and Five Survive comes a new true-crime fueled mystery thriller about a girl determined to uncover the shocking truth about her missing mother while filming a documentary on the unsolved case.
Lights. Camera. Lies.
18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.
But the case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.
Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And – could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .
From world-renowned author Holly Jackson comes a mind-blowing masterpiece about one girl’s search for the truth, and the terror in finding out who your family really is.
ARC Review: How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
Read moreHelen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.
Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…
Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.
Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all.
When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet… the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.
Review: The Catch by Amy Lea
Read moreIn a last-ditch effort to rescue her brand from the brink of irrelevance, Boston fashion influencer Melanie Karlsen finds herself in a rural fishing village on the east coast of Canada. The only thing scarier than nature itself? The burly and bearded bed-and-breakfast owner and fisherman, Evan Whaler—who single-handedly disproves the theory that Canadians are “nice.”
After a boating accident lands Evan unconscious in the hospital, Mel is mistaken for his fiancée by his welcoming yet quirky family, who are embroiled in a long-standing feud over the B&B. In a bold attempt to mend family fences, Mel agrees to fake their engagement for one week in exchange for Evan’s help with her social media content.
Amid long hikes and campfire chats, reeling in their budding feelings for each other proves more difficult by the day. But is Mel willing to sacrifice her picture-perfect life in the city for a chance at a true, unfiltered love in the wild?
Mini Reviews: Recent Mystery Reads
Hi friends! I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately (as I write this post I’ve finished my 41st book of the year!) and I thought it would be fun to do some mini reviews!
After reading a lot of romance in the beginning and middle of February, I’ve shifted gears and been focusing on mystery/thrillers, so I thought I’d share some short reviews of some of the ones I’ve read in the last 2 or so weeks.
Read moreARC Review: Happily Never After by Lynn Painter
Read moreWhen Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!”
During anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wasting their lives, from hurting each other. He’s a modern-day hero. And Sophie wants in.
The two love cynics start working together, going from wedding to wedding, and Sophie’s having more fun than she’s had in ages. She looks forward to every nerve-racking ceremony saving the lovesick souls of the betrothed masses. As Sophie and Max spend more time together, however, they realize that their physical chemistry is off the charts, leading them to dabble in a little hookup session or two—but it’s totally fine, because they definitely do not have feelings for each other. Love doesn’t exist, after all.
And then everything changes. A groom-to-be hires Sophie to object, but his fiancée is the woman who broke Max’s heart. As Max wrestles with whether he can be a party to his ex’s getting hurt, Sophie grapples with the sudden realization that she may have fallen hard for her partner in crime.
ARC Review: Funny Story by Emily Henry
Read moreDaphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
Review: That’s Not My Name by Megan Lally
She thought she had her life back. She was wrong. It was a mistake to trust him.
Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there―or who she is. A passing officer takes her to the police station, and not long after, a frantic man arrives. He’s been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos. He is her father. Her name is Mary. Or so he says.
When Lola slammed the car door and stormed off into the night, Drew thought they just needed some time to cool off. Except Lola disappeared, and the sheriff, his friends, and the whole town are convinced Drew murdered his girlfriend. Forget proving his innocence, he needs to find her before it’s too late. The longer Lola is missing, the fewer leads there are to follow…and the more danger they both are in.
Read more