
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
3.5 stars
I love Emily Henry but this one didn’t keep my interest as much as I would have liked. I still loved the dialogue and the characters and I will read all of Henry’s books for as long as she publishes.
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Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book has everything I love: librarians, libraries, book stores, books! Sunshine and grumpy love. It’s sweet and joyful and I love that all the secondary characters are fleshed out, lovely and memorable. I love that the cat is too!
If you love books as much as I do, it will be hard not to love this book! My favorite part was how she knew whether each of her dates had a library card or not! 🙂 🙂
with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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Of Flame and Fury by Mikayla Bridge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I know everyone is looking for their next romantasy read and I think they will find Of Flame and Fury scratches that itch in the best way possible. Strong, female lead, palpable chemistry and constant bickering, evil, rich geniuses and phoenixes! What more can you ask for?! Oh and creative, crazy races!
I really loved every moment I spent with this story, I loved the main characters, I loved the secondary characters, I loved the phoenix, Savita. I loved the creativity. I loved the pacing.
I know everyone will enjoy this one.
with gratitude to netgalley and Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a really unique read, for me. I kept trying to figure out where it was going and I totally could not guess. Especially the last third of the book really takes it up a notch. I really enjoyed the dual-timeline of when these friends first got together to do the research and the current day dinner party. I liked how each of them seemed a bit off and yet not enough not to feel 3-dimensional. I felt like there were enough clues spread throughout to keep me interested and yet not so much that I guessed what was going to happen.
These stories always require a bunch of suspension of disbelief which is not a problem for me. It was entertaining and kept my interest, that’s all I care about truly.
with gratitude to netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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The Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Steve Cavanagh and Eddie Flynn can do no wrong in my book. I love these novels and really enjoy reading the court scenes, reading the secondary characters, and the crazy crazy plots Cavanagh comes up with.
This was one of the hardest to read with all the strong racism and radicalism especially with the author’s note in the end and I thought about putting it down several times. But I made my way all the way to the end and Cavanagh’s books never disappoint.
with gratitude to netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the story of a family where the mom falls in love with another woman and in the 1980s, in their community and in the eyes of the law, that’s not acceptable. So Dawn has to make hard choices. Terrible choices. And her husband also makes terrible choices. Choices that hurt them and their beautiful daughter.
This quiet, short booked packed a lot in. I loved the quiet writing even if the topic was devastating. I didn’t think the characters were developed enough for me to feel like I was empathizing. I wanted to follow along more, I wanted to root for them all even though they were caught in a terrible situation. But I felt like I was watching it all from a distance.
I was terrified to read how much of the law was anti-LGBTQ only 40 years ago and it’s terrifying what can happen to families if this becomes true again.
with gratitude to netgalley and Scribner for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If you’ve read Pittard’s previous book, this one will not come as a major surprise. It has a similar choppy style where the story is shared in bits and pieces and also the story won’t be a surprise to you because it’s the same plot her previous book was about. Obviously it’s the next phase but, to me, it felt mostly repetitive and there was noting revelatory in it.
I like her writing style and enjoy reading it but I did not really enjoy this mesh of real life/fiction and the characters/life she shared. I felt nothing was as deeply explored as I would have liked.
with gratitude to netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a quiet, lovely book that started out with focusing on family and wealth and what it meant to enter a family as a third wife when your husband already has grown children. And there were bits that made me mad when she didn’t stand up for herself and bit that made me feel devastated.
But then the book moved to being about community, creating your own community and the loneliness so many of us carry in so many ways and how we can help each other and how most of us just need to talk to someone.
It was a warm and surprising book and I really enjoyed my time with it.
with gratitude to netgalley and Scribner for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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First Wife’s Shadow by Adele Parks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
3.5 stars, interesting thriller. twists and turns but also not the ending i thought it would have. liked it!
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The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I love Rachel Joyce. I love her rich and three-dimensional characters. I love her immersive stories. I love how when you finish her novel, you are left with a feeling of being full after a delicious meal. The Homemade God is full of adult children whose lives are stunted because they have continually revolved around their father.
Their father who marries a very young woman that none of them have met and dies soon after. Now they travel to Italy to figure out what happened, who this woman is, and how their father died. And they each come undone one by one. The time on the island changes each of them in irrevocable ways. This is a story about family, and the roles we can slip into and stay stuck in for a long, long time. The hold our parents can have on us. The pieces of ourself that we give up along the way, never to realize how much of it we’ve sacrificed.
It’s a beautiful story, beautifully told. That I grew to love each of those unlikable characters serves as a testament to the powerful storytelling and character building talent of Joyce.
with gratitude to netgalley and The Dial Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was an interesting story about what happens when a critic who loves giving terrible reviews (and is even more despicable for other reasons) finally gets his due when an artist decides to make her whole show about what he did to her.
There’s a lot to unpack in this story about art, self-expression, payback, what’s ok to criticize, family, trauma, and one’s reputation. I felt that the story was both slow and the characters were all not-likable which made it hard to feel sorry for them and for what was happening to them. It created a distance between me and the story. It was still really interesting and a lot of food for thought.
with gratitude to netgalley and Doubleday for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am a huge Stiefvater fan and could not wait to read her adult debut. Even though this plot seemed a bit weird, I knew that I would find the writing enjoyable.
And I wasn’t wrong.
There was so much of Stiefvater’s attention to detail, her quirky characters, her unusual storylines. I loved June as a main character. I loved all the Gilfoyle stories and I loved each of the unique characters along the way and I really liked the twist. Even though this was historical fiction, it was more because it felt like a Stiefvater novel.
I wasn’t crazy about the water under the hotel and never truly understood its significance to the story line. I am sure this is my miss but in my opinion it didn’t add much to the story.
with gratitude to netgalley and Viking for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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projects for twenty twenty-five
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projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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