I just finished Very Bad Company and I give it ★★★★ 1/2.
I really liked Rosenblum's first book (Bad Summer People) and I liked this one as well! It's the story of an executive retreat of a tech company that is about to be sold, and how all the people react to the sale. There's also a mysterious death which brings all kinds of bad secrets out. No one is perfect and some characters are awful but this was a fun read.
I just finished Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Dolan and I give it ★★★.
I thought this book would be a story of whether one child killed another, and how an intrepid reporter figured it out. Instead, it was a character study of a bitter and poor family from Ireland. Not quite my cup of tea.
I just finished Lucky and I give it 📙📙 1/2.
The only reason I kept reading this book is because it was set in my hometown (St. Louis), very very close to the neighborhood where I grew up. This is a fake memoir of a not-successful folk singer who made a lot of money through a few lucky breaks and then just....doesn't do a lot. She engages with her family, she sleeps with lots and lots of guys, she writes really bad lyrics. NOTHING. HAPPENS. There's a weird twist at the end which made little sense. If you didn't go to high school with me, you probably don't need to read this book.
I just finished The Manor House and I give it ☝☝☝☝.
This is a twisty, plot driven mystery--who killed lottery winner Tom? Was it his wife Nicole, his friend who needed money (Patrick), the vagrant in the woods, the weird housekeeper Kitty, or the sketchy couple Olly and Sasha? I kept reading til I found out who it was, and then I kept reading AFTER because there were two more twists after the killer is revealed! So many twists! I liked this book of twisty mystery.
I just finished Expiration Dates and I give it 💗💗💗💗.
I'm really not a romance reader, and I think it might be stretching to call it a romance, but I was charmed by this book and read it in a few hours. It's not great literature, but it is a very sweet story. The premise is: Production Assistant Daphne receives a slip of paper whenever she meets a potential boyfriend that has the boyfriend's name and the length of time that the relationship will last. So yeah, you kind of have to suspend belief from the git-go with this book. Anyway, we learn about a few of the 'short term' boyfriends and then Daphne meets Jake. Jake's note has no length of time on it--it's just blank. What does that mean? How does Daphne know if Jake is indeed the one? Daphne is a smart and enjoyable character, even when there is kind of a big swerve about two-thirds of the way through the book. Anyway, after so many police procedurals this was a great palate cleanser of a book.
I just finished Being Henry and I give it ☆☆☆☆.
This memoir is pretty good. Certainly I remember The Fonz from Happy Days (its first few years were when I was in High School and then I had a hiatus during college, but I probably watched it a bit after maybe? I don't recall. Anyway, this is an interesting book how Winkler dealt with fame, how he got stereotypes and found it hard to get another job after Happy Days, how he got into directing, and how therapy helped him deal with his career issues as well as his family issues (his parents seemed like real pieces of work). He seems like a generally nice guy, if a little anxious, and he certainly loves his family and friends. I think I got this for $2 or so on Amazon and it was certainly worth that!
I just finished EIMFHKS and I give it ⁍⁍⁍.
I don't like books with chatty first person narrators, I don't like the 'oh look I'm pulling back the curtain' feeling of Ernest, I was struggling to keep up with all the characters, and this is just not the book (or series) (sadly) for me.
I don't like Richard Osman either.
I just finished My Latest Grievance and I give it ☆☆☆ 1/2.
I know I said I was done with my revisiting of Elinor's books but this one came across on the Unlimited so I gave it another read. I remembered very little about it, except the main character/narrator has the same voice as in all her other books. It was ok. It was more interesting to read as my campus had unionized (the main character's parents are union organizers at a college). But other than that, this was just an ok book.
I just finished End of Story and I give it 🗡🗡🗡🗡.
I liked "The Woman in the Window" and I liked this book more. Nicky is invited to visit an author she idolizes--Sebastian Trapp--and to write what is supposed to be a 'private memoir' for a dying man. Trapp's first wife and son went 'missing' twenty years prior, and Nicky, a mystery aficionado, wonders if she might find out what really happened. At the house, she meets not only Trapp, but his second wife Diana, his daughter Maddy, and his nephew Fred. As she starts to put the puzzle pieces together, truths start to arise for her and for other members of the family. If you like mysteries, and mysteries about mysteries, this book might be of interest to you.
