Read moreWhen seventeen-year-old Eliza Lin’s essay about meeting the love of her life unexpectedly goes viral, her entire life changes overnight. Now she has the approval of her classmates at her new international school in Beijing, a career-launching internship opportunity at her favorite magazine…and a massive secret to keep.
Eliza made her essay up. She’s never been in a relationship before, let alone in love. All good writing is lying, right?
Desperate to hide the truth, Eliza strikes a deal with the famous actor in her class, the charming but aloof Caz Song. She’ll help him write his college applications if he poses as her boyfriend. Caz is a dream boyfriend — he passes handwritten notes to her in class, makes her little sister laugh, and takes her out on motorcycle rides to the best snack stalls around the city.
But when her relationship with Caz starts feeling a little too convincing, all of Eliza’s carefully laid plans are threatened. Can she still follow her dreams if it means breaking her own heart?
Cossette’s January Wrap Up // a letter from coco
hello, dear friends 💌 how are you? i feel like it’s been a while since we’ve had a proper little chit chat, so grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever your preferred drink is, and get cozy 🧸
Read moreARC Review: Do I Know You? by Emily Wibberly & Austin Siegemund-Broka
Read moreEliza and Graham are anticipating an anything-but-sexy, weeklong getaway to celebrate their five-year anniversary. Nestled on the Northern California coastline, the resort prides itself on being a destination for those in love and those looking to find it. For Eliza and Graham, it might as well be a vacation with a roommate.
When a well-meaning guest mistakes Eliza and Graham for being single and introduces them at the hotel bar, they don’t correct him. Suddenly, they’re pretending to be perfect strangers and it’s unexpectedly…fun? Eliza and Graham find themselves flirting like it’s their first date, and waiting with butterflies in their stomach for the other to text back.
Everyone at the retreat can sense the electric chemistry between Eliza and Graham’s alter egos. But when their scintillating game of roleplaying ends, will they still feel the heat?
ARC Review: Last Violent Call by Chloe Gong
Read moreIn A Foul Thing, Roma and Juliette have established themselves as the heads of an underground weapons ring in Zhouzhuang, making a living the way they do best while remaining anonymous in their quiet life.
But when they hear about Russian girls showing up dead in nearby towns, they decide to investigate – and discover that this mystery is closer to home than they ever imagined . . .
In This Foul Murder, Benedikt and Marshall have been summoned by Roma to find the elusive scientist, Lourens, and bring him to Zhouzhuang. Time is of the essence aboard the week-long Trans-Siberian Express, but when someone is murdered on board, Benedikt and Marshall convince the officer in charge they are investigators and promise they can solve the murder if he doesn’t stop the train.
But as they dig deeper, they realize that the murder might having surprising ties to their own mission . . .
ARC Review: Central Place by Delia Cai
Read moreAudrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny town in central Illinois where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé, Ben. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she’s become, from those she left behind.
But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audrey’s relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother’s astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she’s shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there’s Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.
Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey’s proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she’s worked toward and everything she’s imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?
Let’s Talk: Cossette’s 2023 Reading Goals, Content Goals & Tracking
Happy New Year, dear friends! I hope your 2023 is off to a great start, and is filled with lots of good reads, fun adventures, and good health. Personally speaking, I’m so glad to be back after a bit of a break — It’s definitely one I needed, and I’m excited for what the new year brings. Over this break, I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted my 2023 to look like as a reader, a blogger, and a bookstagrammer, and also started my reading journal. I thought it’d be fun to share some of my goals for the year with y’all here!
Read moreLet’s Talk: Cossette’s 23 Most Anticipated 2023 Releases
Hi, hello friends! With 2022 coming to an end, I thought it’d be fun to highlight my most anticipated releases for 2023. 2023 has so many incredible books coming out, and there so many other books I wanted to list but couldn’t!
Read moreReview: Beach Read by Emily Henry
Read moreAugustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
Let’s Talk: Cossette’s Top 10 Reads of 2022
It’s been a really great reading year so far, and as of today, I’ve read 276 books! Beta reads and rereads aside, I still managed to read a lot of wonderful books, and thought it’d be fun to reflect on my favorite new reads of 2022 so far. I didn’t count any 2023 ARCs on this list, just because I felt like it wouldn’t be fair!
Read moreARC Review: They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey
Read moreCarlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.
Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life–literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle’s aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James’ world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.
Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become. They’re Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.