I just finished Great Expectations and I give it ⚐⚐⚐ 3/4 stars.
Cunningham was a staffer in the Obama administration, and also worked on his first campaign, and so this book is a fictionalized account of the first campaign along with a young man's experiences growing up in Chicago and New York. I liked the campaign stuff but the other stuff was a bit too philosophical for me.
I just finished The Unseen World and I give it 🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎.
I have to say, I am late to the Liz Moore party but it is a party that you must join as well. I think she is one of the best writers working right now. This story is about a girl, Ada, who finds out as a teen ager that her father, diagnosed with early onset dementia, is not who he said he was. But who is he? I loved this book.
I just finished A Novel Summer and I give it 📕📕📕 1/2.
I was hoping Jamie Brenner would be the 'successor' to the Elin Hilderbrand reign of summer fiction but alas it is not to be. This was a cute book, but there were so many eye rolls in it. It's the story of three women who are friends--one lives in Provincetown, one vacations in Provincetown, and one is friends with the vacationer and worked in the bookshop owned by Full timer's parents. As the book opens, the third woman has just published her first book (one year out of college) and it becomes a RUNAWAY BEST SELLER (eye roll) and then friend #2 reads it and figures out that it's basically her biography (eye roll) so she gets mad at #3. #3 has writer's block so she moves to P-town to work in #1's parents' book shop, which #1 has been running while the parents were travelling, but now #1 is pregnant and is put on bed rest so #3 has to run it. Following the plot yet? In the meantime, #3's ex boyfriend's new girlfriend is OPENING ANOTHER BOOKSHOP! (eye roll) and #3 is mad. In the meantime, again, #2 and #3 are both sleeping with THE SAME FAMOUS AUTHOR WHO IS VACATIONING IN PTOWN (eye roll)! And then #3 gets OVER her writer's block only to write a novel that is, instead of #2's life, is #1's life! And then #1 gets mad (eye roll).
On top of all this, there is some very, very poor copy editing (example: descriptions of people's clothing changes over the course of a few paragraphs) so that is also an eye roll.
If you like eye-rollers, this is a book for you!
I just finished The House of Mirrors and give it 🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞.
I'm a big Erin Kelly fan and I just loved this book! I had to order it from the UK but it was worth every penny! It's a family story about a family that harbors a secret, one that sent a father to prison and that threatens the relationship between their daughter and her fiance. I was worried that the 'big twist' about halfway through would ruin the book but it made it so very much richer. If you haven't read any Erin Kelly, this is a great one to read as well as the Skeleton Key.
I just finished Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant and I give it 👀👀👀. That's three stars, by the way!
This book was positioned as a fun tell-all about nannying for wealthy people, but it wasn't. Here is what I wrote on NetGalley:
This book is a memoir of the author's time working as a nanny for very wealthy families in NYC and contrasting that with her own upbringing in a working class family. While the writing is fine, I kept feeling that Kiser wanted to be seen as the Stephanie Land of nannying, but neither her backstory nor her insights into the lives and challenges of her wealthy employees bring this book up to that level.
I just finished The Man in Black and I give it ★★★★.
I love Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway series (sadly ended) and the Harbinder Kaur series, so of course I had to get this book (I had to get it from the UK, it doesn't come out in the US until October). It's good of course, some stories about Ruth and Nelson, a couple about Harbinder, a few stand alones, a bit spooky, all in all a good collection. I took off one star because several of these have been published elsewhere so I was kind of disappointed that they were recycled.
I just finished the Accidental Bestseller and I give it 📘📘📘.
I had mentioned that I would give another book of Wax's a chance (in my search for the next Elin H book) and so I read this one. It's about four authors who are close friends. When one of the four is struggling with a book deadline, the other three agree to 'chip in' some chapters of the book (which they really shouldn't do, given their publishing contracts). The chapters also gave away some BIG secrets in each woman's life.
The problem with this book (and this is a spoiler) was that the women were SHOCKED that someone figured out that they all participated in the book and that there was FALLOUT. This had me rolling my eyes.
The women weren't particularly interesting or even easy to tell apart. In the hands of someone like Elin H, this would have been a terrific book (and it would be set on Nantucket to boot). Sorry Wendy Wax, I'm done with you.
I just finished Black Bird Oracle and I give it 🕯🕯🕯1/2.
Let me start by saying I LOVED the Discovery of Witches trilogy--just loved it. Loved that the focus was on both magic and history, with a little romance thrown in. Let me next say I HATED the TV adaptation, which made it all romance and violence and I thought the two main characters (Diana and Matthew) were horribly cast. I didn't like Time's Convert (book 4), I found it boring. So now we have book 5, which returns to the story of Diana and Matthew. The couple, along with their Bright Born twins Pip and Becca, are about to head to England for the summer when Diana is summoned to the home of her father's family. She goes, and she learns some stuff, and learns more stuff, and has a little tussle, and learns stuff, and has a tussle, and learns stuff, and has a tussle, and learns stuff, and has a tussle. There's a lot on her father's backstory, which fills stuff in (but it's all told from the father's side of the family, so you have to wonder....) and there's nothing really BAD that happens--oh no, the author holds onto that until the final pages of the book, so now we have to wait for, oh, four years, to find out what happens.
I like Harkness' writing, but I find the sex scenes a blend of old fashioned and icky, and yes, Diana and Matthew are hot for one another, we got that.
Disappointing.
I just finished Long Bright River and I give it ★★★★1/2.
I didn't like this book as much as I liked The God of the Woods, but I really liked it. I have read the description numerous times and never chose to read it because, honestly, it sounded so depressing and most of the book was--Michaela (Micky), a police officer, searches for her sister Kacey, a junkie, in Philadelphia. At the same time, she is trying to figure out who is murdering women in her precinct. Cheery, huh? The book draws the characters expertly, and the writing is sharp and distinctive.
I just finished The Californians and I give it 🎨🎨🎨🎨 1/2.
The Californians is a sprawling story about two California familes and how they intersect over almost a century. There are three intertwined stories, but the primary ones belong to Klaus (a silent film director who moves over to television) and Di (Klaus' granddaughter, a contemporary artist). The story begins with Tobey, related to the actor who starred in Klaus' biggest tv hit, stealing some of Di's paintings from his father's house after fleeing a wildfire. The story of the paintings are the basis for the rest of the book, but it's also about family, art, commerce, politics, and the choices we make to invent and re-invent ourselves. I really liked it.
I've just finished One Italian Summer and I give it ☼☼☼☼.
I've read a few Rebecca Searle books and liked them, and I liked this one too. You basically have to suspend belief when you read her books, but if you can do that this is a light and frothy story with minimal serious undertones. Katy travels to Positano in Italy on a trip she was supposed to take with her mom, but sadly her mom died a few weeks before the trip. Katy goes anyway, and guess what? She meets her mom! Her mom when her mom was 30 and spent the summer in Positano. Katy also meets a fascinating man (and she's pondering separating from her husband even before she meets the fascinating man). Anyway, I read this book in about 2 1/2 hours and it was well worth it.
I just finished The God of the Woods and I give it 🧸🧸🐻🐻🐻. I loved this book.
The plot is that a camper disappears in the woods, 15 or so years after her brother disappeared (and was never found). The camp is owned by a very wealthy family, and both children are members of the family. There's so much in this book about wealth and privilege, families and their intricacies and how they mess you up, families we make--I just loved this book. It was tense and wonderful. I now want to read everything Liz Moore has ever written!
I just finished The Ministry of Time and I give it ⏰⏰⏰ 1/2.
What WAS this book? I can't even describe it. I was fascinated by the time travel parts: people from the past are retrieved and sent to the modern time where they're given a 'bridge' to help them adjust to the present time. I loved the relationship between the narrator (the bridge) and her expat. But I never really got the WHY for the time travel, and then all of a sudden it's a violent spy-type thing that I didn't get either. The writing was great, there's just a lot I just couldn't figure out in this book.
I just finished Mediocre Monk and I give it 🧘🧘🧘 1/2.
This book is a memoir of Lindsley's six months experience the Thai Forest Tradition of Buddhism. In this tradition, men live a monastic experience that begins with meditation in the morning, work, alms (going out in the community and collecting food/money from people in the village), more work, the one meal a day, and then basically 12 hours of silent meditation and sleeping until the next morning. He begins at a fairly large monastery and then goes to a very small one. Lindsley writes of his struggles and of the people he meets, and he writes well, but the reader doesn't know exactly why he has chosen to do this, and if he will do this for the rest of his life. Throughout the memoir, little hints as to why he is there pop up, but it isn't til the very end that we learn the reason why he went and whether he stayed or not.
I think learning all this made me feel a bit cheated by the book--knowing the reason why he joined wouldn't have made any difference in the course of the book, but knowing about his ultimate motivations would have, which I'm sure he struggled with. So I felt like he wasn't as authentic as he could be. The writing is good, I learned a lot about buddhism (well, in retrospect, probably not a whole lot) but as I mentioned, I feel a bit cheated.
I just finished Speech Team and I give it 📖📖📖 1/2 stars.
This book is about a group of 30-somethings who reunite after one of their fellow members of their High School speech team commits suicide. In his suicide note, the friend mentioned that their speech team coach said something offensive to him in High School. The four surviving members get in touch and it turns out the the coach said horrible things to all of them, and those things all influenced their lives moving forward. So the question is: can we ever leave High School behind? I liked it but didn't love it.
I just finished Enlightenment and I give it ☄☄☄☄.
Perry wrote 'The Essex Serpent' and if you liked that book you'll like this one, but it is a bit of an odd read. In modern day Essex, newspaper reporter Thomas is living a dull and unhappy life. He attends church at a conservative place called Bethesda, where he befriends Grace, the daughter of a very conservative man. The story involves (to some degree) how Thomas discovers the story of a woman who discovered a comet, but it also is a story of how we discover who we are and what we want to be. It's a thick story that may put off a lot of people--there's science, and there's religion, and there's some very descriptive writing--but I liked it.
I just finished The Examiner and I give it 🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌.
I'm a huge JH fan, but I had no idea she had a new book coming out. When I saw it was a 'read now' on NetGalley I was so excited! I really like this book. First, I like that Hallett uses the epistolary format, using emails, message platforms and 'reports' to tell the story. Second, like her other books, there's an interesting cast of characters that are easy to tell apart, even without the devices used in traditional storytelling. Third, there's something untoward happening but it's hard to figure out exactly what it is, until the twists start happening. AND THERE ARE TWISTS GALORE! They all make sense and it's such a fun ride. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!
