Amanda
A little light on plot, but it is a novella, so. Likotsi was one of my favorite characters in [b:A Princess in Theory 35271238 A Princess in Theory (Reluctant Royals, #1) Alyssa Cole https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1501702014s/35271238.jpg 56629976] and it was so great to see her get a happy ending! This entire series is just wonderful and I can't wait for the next book.
(Ugh, Goodreads, stop making it so hard to put your review with the right edition!)
Anyway, this is probably like 4.5 stars - I really liked it, but it took me ages to read, both because my stupid library holds just kept coming in and because most of the time I try to read in bed now I fall asleep in five minutes and retain almost nothing. (Hashtag mom life?) I like Portia a whole lot and I identify with her hot-mess-trying-to-be-better self. I wish the book had focused a little more on the psych aspects of that, not just the sobriety. If I remember, there are some quick mentions of ADHD and a call to her therapist, but that's about it. I also wish there'd been just a little more of Jamie and Cheryl, who seemed like great characters but weren't quite as developed as I'd like. I loved the effortless diversity of the characters and the setting. The ending was a little bit rushed, but I loved the world of this book so much I didn't even mind that! General caveat: if you're one of those people who demands complete accuracy in your romance, this is probably not the book for you, as some of the peerage details aren't correct. But then, everyone seems to be fine with a Regency England crawling with hot young available dukes (miraculously with all their teeth and free of STDs), so... let's not get bogged down here. This book is delightful.
Meh, it was fine? It took me forever to start but wasn't hard to read at all. I wanted more interviews with players who weren't Tom Brady - I can't stand the Patriots, but even if you like them, it's hard to say he's a super-compelling interview. I feel like this book tried to cover too much, and it would've been more interesting if it had focused on maybe the past two seasons (or maybe even just the 2017-18 season, with the Patriots FINALLY losing a Super Bowl and all the Kaepernick stuff). As it is, there's some of that in there, but there's a lot more about various owners' meetings and gossip about their various girlfriends, which: ¯_(ツ)_/¯. The most interesting things were about the teams trying to move to LA, and about the last two seasons, which were kind of shoehorned in at the end, particularly the 2017-18 season. More Eric Reid, less Tom Brady, please.
Kind of a memoir crossed with something like Expecting Better (which Goodreads won't let me link to, but everyone who may be pregnant someday should absolutely read) crossed with a Mary Roach book. The writing is engaging and fun; I definitely learned a lot that I didn't know before, even after having been pregnant. Some of this is just fun trivia, like facts about the placenta and the composition of breast milk, but I'm actually kind of upset that I got through an entire pregnancy and almost a year of motherhood without ever being taught about the anatomy of the pelvic floor. A recurring theme of the book is the shocking lack of attention or research focused on pregnancy and birth - there's still so much that we don't know about these things, because no one has ever cared enough to fund the research into it. I really enjoyed this, especially the chapter about microchimerism.
(3.5, rounding up) Better than The Summer Wives, not as good as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, if we're placing this on a scale of historical fiction I've read this year. This feels like a book that should be made into a movie (or miniseries, especially considering there are more books coming) - that's not an insult at all, but this is so sweeping and decade-spanning and full of beautiful scenery and dresses and mansions that it feels like something for a prestige cable channel to air. As usual in things like this, I found the historical characters more interesting than the present-day ones, though as the stories started to converge near the end, I found myself getting more invested in Marisol. The history of Cuba was also interesting, and not something I knew very much about before reading this. As beach-style reads go, this is a solid choice and it will probably make you want to eat ropa vieja. Or have a rum cocktail.
Half spy novel and half romance and not really enough of either for me. The spy narrative was interesting, until it kind of just petered out in a twist (a twist that, while it made sense, would have been pretty much impossible for the reader to see coming, even in retrospect, I think, which seems a little unfair). As far as the romance, the entire story is told from Beatriz's perspective in first-person, so I didn't think there was much depth to the love interest and no real idea of what he saw in her, which made it hard to connect to the love story to me. And also I just really don't like infidelity in my romances, and sleeping with an engaged man when you know he's engaged definitely counts for me. It might be in character but there are so many other reasons these characters couldn't be together besides that, ugh. For such a dynamic, interesting character as Beatriz was in [b:Next Year in Havana 34374628 Next Year in Havana Chanel Cleeton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498524468s/34374628.jpg 55459615], she seemed oddly passive here, which is a real disappointment. I hate to rate anything this low, but I just don't feel like this book knew what it wanted to be, and so it ended up not being much of anything.
I liked this, but I wonder if I'd like it more if I'd read it in a more focused way - I kind of dipped in and out over a few weeks, so I kept forgetting who characters were or where Less was in any given chapter, but that's very much on me and not the book's fault. I loved the narrator's voice and I binged the last 75 pages or so (from Morocco on), and it was just so satisfying and the strangest, sweetest little love story at the end of it all, which was unexpected and so charming.
(Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.)
I loved this and I wish it had been even longer - I tried to read it more slowly but before I knew it I had finished. I'm neither an adoptee nor an adoptive parent, but I am a parent (which is still weird to say!) and the theme of parenthood forcing you to reflect on who you are and what you want your children to inherit from you really resonated with me, especially as we're raising a boy in this incredibly toxic culture. Nicole writes so beautifully and with such clarity that I really felt that I was with her on every step of her journey to discover her birth family. I can't wait to read the next thing she writes, whether memoir, fiction, or anything else!
Well, this was a hell of a book to finish on the night before the midterms. I hope the paperback has an additional chapter about the midterms and the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, because my god, this stuff just never stops anymore, does it? I love the intersectional perspective here and the specific callouts to white women in particular - one section heading is “What's Wrong With White Women?”, which made me laugh out loud. This fight has been going on for a long time, even though a lot of WW only seemed to realize it in November 2016 - the history here is really great and encouraging, even as it points out how few past activists lived to see the changes they fought for come to pass. Traister is one of my favorite political writers and her insight here is as on point as ever.
(4.5 stars, rounding up) So so good - I even liked the kids, which isn't always a guaranteed thing. Half-star off is because of the pacing, which has a lot of plot crammed in at the end, but it doesn't really detract from everything else about how great this is. The first two books in this series have been incredible and I can't wait for the next one. If you like historical romances, you need to be reading Tessa Dare.
Fascinating - I really appreciated how this included the history of private and for-profit prisons in America (particularly the South) along with the author's experience. Somehow I've been working as a defense attorney for years now and had no idea about the history of the prison system, which is frankly embarrassing on my part and points to a need to read further. I think this is a good starting point for that type of reading. I also really enjoyed (that's not the right word, but still) the author's experience working undercover as a guard. I wish he'd gone a little more in-depth on how he feels working there changed him, particularly considering he'd been held in solitary confinement himself in Iran. As it is, that part ends pretty abruptly, and I wish there'd been more detail in that regard. Overall, though, this is really interesting and definitely worth your time.
Phenomenal and upsetting and hopeful and heartbreaking, all at once. (Content warning for physical and emotional abuse, along with some pretty intense descriptions of injuries, though I don't think any of it was gratuitous or unnecessary.) This book is so compelling and intense. Totally lives up to all the hype around it, which is hard to do. It's simply incredible, clear-eyed and so well-written, never wallowing in the strangeness of the story, which makes it all the more fascinating and believable. Even if this isn't normally your sort of book (it is mine - for some reason I love nonfiction about fundamentalism) you should read this. It's not fun, per se, but it's wonderful nonetheless.
(Disclosures: I won this ARC in a Goodreads giveaway, and unrelated to that, the author is a friend.)
If you liked The Wedding Date, you'll love this book even more! The Proposal is a perfect romantic comedy in book form - I love Nik and all her friends, and while I don't know if there are more books planned with this cast of characters, I'd be first in line to read anything starring Courtney, Dana, or Angela - I wish there had been more of all of them, but what we got was perfect. The world of this book seemed more fully realized than in The Wedding Date, and I think part of that is because of the supporting characters and the subplots. I want to hang out with Nik and her friends, which is a great feeling to have about the main character of a book like this. The romance is so good and so satisfying, of course, and I closed this book with a big grin on my face. Someone needs to option this for a movie, like, NOW.
(Also, if you got hungry reading The Wedding Date, prepare yourself - this book made me crave Mexican food like nothing else. Romance, cupcakes, and taquerias: what could be better?)
Fascinating and heartbreaking. (Though content warnings: for sexual assault, particularly by use of GHB/Rohypnol; murder/abduction - the descriptions aren't graphic overall but it's a big part of the story, unfortunately, so be advised.) The author is a longtime foreign correspondent for the British press, and seems to do a good job telling the story without turning it into “look at those strange foreigners” gawking or exploitation.
(4.5 stars, probably, rounding up.) Loved this one! Love Ledi and Likotsi so much - I know the next book in the series is about Portia, but I hope there's a way in the future to go back to Likotsi's story, because I need her to get a happy ending so much. This book had a whole lot going on, what with the secret-prince and the bizarre epidemic and the evil uncle poisoning everyone but it mostly came together really well. The villain's motives and how they played into why Ledi and her parents fled weren't all that satisfying to me, honestly, but I wasn't reading this for that stuff. I was reading for Ledi and her discovery of her family and heritage, and her learning how to let people in after being hurt so many times in foster care. And also because I pictured Thabiso in my head as M'Baku from Black Panther. This is a wonderful romance novel that was like a breath of fresh air - I've loved everything I've read by Alyssa Cole, and oops, I just bought the second book in this series. And preordered the third.
Fake-relationship is one of my favorite tropes and this was a delightful twist on that premise. I haven't read many American-set historicals (an occasional cowboy or two, but I don't think I've read anything in the Gilded Age like this), so this was a nice change of pace from the usual Regency/Victorian settings (which I still love, but variety is good). I can't speak to the accuracy of the Deaf representation in this book, but it was fascinating to learn about the development of hearing aids and ASL during this time period. I also really liked the heroine and how she gradually learns to create and enforce boundaries for herself and learns that she's stronger than she thinks. I haven't read anything by this author before, but I definitely want to keep an eye on her!
(2019 summer romance bingo: “next door neighbor”; could also count for “heroine smells like a flower.”)
(Full disclosure: the author is a friend.) This book is so much fun, like a perfect Netflix rom-com in written form (the best recent rom-coms I've seen were on Netflix, that is completely a compliment). I loved how Alexa had a job that mattered to her just as much as Drew's and I loved that the climactic scene took all that into account. So good, so satisfying, fizzy and fun.
Fun, with just the right amount of melodrama and some surprising twists in the story. I found Monique much less compelling of a character than Evelyn (or Harry or Celia, for that matter), but luckily the book focused a lot more on Evelyn. It's also fun to play spot-the-influence with Evelyn - I'm far from an expert on Old Hollywood, but there's Rita Hayworth and Elizabeth Taylor all over, along with some others who would probably be spoilers to note. If you like [b:Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema 20821197 Scandals of Classic Hollywood Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema Anne Helen Petersen https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398028966s/20821197.jpg 40167073] (the book or the topic), you'll probably enjoy this.
It is absolutely staggering how far you can get in life if you're a cute blonde girl with no shame and the ability to remind powerful men of their daughters. The Theranos technology literally never worked, but that didn't stop Walgreens from putting it in their stores or people like Henry Kissinger and James Mattis from supporting Elizabeth Holmes (including one board member believing her word over his own grandson who worked in the lab, which is just heartbreaking to me). This is a fascinating story, particularly the last third or so, which is all about how hard Theranos fought to keep the author from writing his first article exposing the fraud.
(Also, someone who practices civil law will have to tell me if David Boies's actions in this whole thing are considered ethical - taking shares in a company and a seat on the board as payment certainly seems sketchy to me, but it's certainly not my area.)
I mean, it was fine? Definitely more about plot than character, definitely a beach-type read. I was expecting something along the lines of [b:Big Little Lies 19486412 Big Little Lies Liane Moriarty https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1492239430s/19486412.jpg 27570886], but this leans much harder into the melodrama and hardly at all into the comedy/satire I liked so much in BLL. I wanted more of the high-society drama in 1951 - I managed to guess the big reveal pretty early on, and from that point, the tension/suspense around the murder just kind of slowly melted away. None of the characters really came to life for me, either; the closest to doing so was Isobel in 1951, but even she really faded in the 1969 chapters. I don't regret reading this, and it was well-written and compelling, but it's not one that will stick with me, I think.
(4.5, rounding up)
Took a trope I'm not a big fan of and made it into a great, enjoyable summer read. Love the diverse cast (though I can't speak to accuracy of representation, this is #ownvoices) and that Stella doesn't need to be “fixed” or change who she is to get to her HEA. I was rooting for these two all the way through.
I don't know why the only character who used first person here was one of the MC's college friends who had little to do with the main plot. I also don't know why the whole thing with the college professor was in there, or why so much time was spent on Sam and Nancy, who were both terrible people and unengaged parents. But the worst thing here was spoiler and content warning for violence having an unhinged parent of a rejected student come in and threaten the MC with a gun? And having the gun go off accidentally and injure the MC? And it's all kind of related in a lighthearted tone and kind of as a deus ex machina to get a deserving scholarship student admitted to the school? I mean. WHAT. I know this book came out before Parkland, but it's certainly post Columbine and Sandy Hook. I am absolutely not here for the silver linings of school shootings, even nonfatal, even accidental. It's so tone deaf, I can't even comprehend how it got published. I wasn't hugely into this book before, but after that I was all the way out. Nope. It's a shame, because some of the satire is well done and I found myself rooting for Kate, but no. Absolutely not.