For the first 25%, I thought I was going to give this five stars, but the tension sort of petered out as it went along. I still had a good time, but iFor the first 25%, I thought I was going to give this five stars, but the tension sort of petered out as it went along. I still had a good time, but it didn't end as well as it began. Still, will definitely read more from Cait Nary.
Merged review:
For the first 25%, I thought I was going to give this five stars, but the tension sort of petered out as it went along. I still had a good time, but it didn't end as well as it began. Still, will definitely read more from Cait Nary....more
Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a cute, fun time. I love Alicia Thompson's characteThanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a cute, fun time. I love Alicia Thompson's characters and her dialogue. I liked how detailed this got in a way that made it feel like it was really happening. I didn't love the main conflict, which was that the MC becomes embroiled in A Situation where she is one person to her love interest online and another in person. (This involves her drunk heckling said man while he plays professional baseball, and she makes him cry!)
Unfortunately, this did suffer a bit from my reading it side by side The Rom-Commers, which I could not put down, whereas I found this one easier to put down. The stakes just seemed much lower here emotionally (I don't mind lack of plot stakes but the emotional ones still need to be there).
I will very much continue to read this author's books! In fact, reading her second one starting tomorrow.
I was at a bit of an emotional remove from this one, and I don't know why, but it was still a fun time. Julie was v. relatable and Elle made my heart I was at a bit of an emotional remove from this one, and I don't know why, but it was still a fun time. Julie was v. relatable and Elle made my heart hurt. I skipped all the sex scenes.
Read Harder Challenge 2024: Read a book by an author with an upcoming event (virtual or in person) and then attend the event. (Saw them at the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books and got this book signed!)...more
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
I'm seriously so torn on whether to round thisThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
I'm seriously so torn on whether to round this one up or down. I'd written this author off after reading their first book, which didn't work for me at all. But this premise sounded really cute and I'd seen some good-ish reviews, so I thought I'd give them another shot. And this is indeed a much better book than their first! (I still don't want to read their second, and probably won't read any more after this.) But it's also pretty flawed in a way that made it really hard to fall into the story.
I liked the first half of this quite a bit, as Phoebe and Grace got to know each other. Grace is the ten year veteran and Phoebe the energetic rookie. And then the author decided that really doubling down on the miscommunication trope would be a great idea, resulting in the extremely agonizing-to-read result of one of the characters thinking they are dating for a whole month and the other having no idea. On top of this, one of the characters is so mistrustful it verges on paranoia, and is on the autism spectrum disorder (without knowing it). And all of this sort of sploots together in a way that was embarrassing and distressing. The end sort of made up for it, but I had already checked out. It was too much for one story. Just the paranoia/mistrust on the one character's part would have been too much for me.
When their chemistry is working, though, the book was very absorbing. The sex scenes in here are SEX SCENES. Although like other reviewers, it got a bit frustrating to see them constantly using sex to distract from actually communicating.
Worth noting, I did the audio version, which made it easier to overlook the very extensive internal monologues other people seemed to have such trouble with, judging by other reviews, but also I didn't really like either narrator, and they didn't enhance the story for me. I particularly think the narrator for Phoebe was a mismatch.
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was really fun, but it did that thing where oneThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was really fun, but it did that thing where one of the MCs couldn't fathom that the other could ever love them, all evidence to the contrary (and there was SO MUCH EVIDENCE HE LOVD HER HOLY SHIT), so I couldn't give it five stars. I understand that low self-esteem is a thing that happens IRL, but I feel like it should be more subtle than it was here, where it made the otherwise lovely MC seem kind of dumb. Other than that, this book was SO MUCH FUN. I loved that the two main characters actually talked to each other. I loved how weird Alfie was, and how gruff. I love how they kept surprising each other. This is one of those books that doesn't have much plot, and while I kind of wish it had more, the dynamic between the characters is what I love about romance, and here that was absolutely great. They were funny together.
I absolutely 100% pictured Roy Kent the entire time, as I was no doubt meant to.
This was very wholesome. I have been a fan of Gene Luen Yang's work for a while now, and I try to read all of his graphic novels (I have given up on hThis was very wholesome. I have been a fan of Gene Luen Yang's work for a while now, and I try to read all of his graphic novels (I have given up on his superhero comics work; there is too much of it). So when the Read Harder Challenge said I had to read a nonfiction YA comic, I was excited to finally be able to fit this one in.
Dragon Hoops is a memoir of Yang's time shadowing the Bishop O'Dowd High School basketball team as they try to finally win the California State Championship (Yang taught math there for seventeen years before he left to pursue comics writing full-time). Yang was and is a nerd who has never been interested in sports before, but something about the chatter in the school halls (and as he confesses in the notes at the back of the book, his son joining his school's basketball team) leads him to ask the coach, Lou, if he can shadow them to see if the team's experiences would make a good book. And he soon realizes they will.
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It's fun watching Yang experience sports for the first time, and in such an up close and personal way. He talks to all the team coaches, and as many players that are willing, to understand why they are on the team and what it means to them, among many other things. The book covers the full basketball season. Along with Yang's experiences and that of the players and coaches, we also get intermittent chapters on the history of basketball, all of which were really fun. Yang has a good time poking at critics of progress and change in the sport (which of course reflects the progress in society at large). He has a running gag of old historically contemporary white men doing commentary:
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Yang's style is very understated, but he uses that understated style to effectively tackle the issues of race and class and sexism that crop up for the kids whose stories he's following. Two particular team members, a South Asian Punjabi named Jeevan and a Chinese kid who goes by "Alex" in America because most American can't pronounce his real first name, Qianjun. Every now and then Yang gets roped into the casual racism as well.
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But while that stuff is important to the story, the main feature here is the team and the game, and what it means for them to strive to be the best, and what happens when they are (or aren't).
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Read Harder Challenge 2022: Read a nonfiction YA comic....more
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
Don't go in expecting another thriller like Ace of SpThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
Don't go in expecting another thriller like Ace of Spades and you'll be fine. This is more of a straight mystery than Íyímídé's debut; it is slower paced and there is both more passing of actual time in the story, and time spent with characters just talking to each other. In a way, it's a lot more atmospheric than Ace of Spades. It sort of traded in the propulsive speedy plot for something more considered and setting focused. Her school, Alfred Nobel Academy, feels like it was a lot of fun to create, and the elaborate school politics and a student body full of rich kids and scholarship kids is the perfect place to tell a story like this one.
Our main character is Sade Hussein, orphan, whose father just died weeks before she enters a prestigious English boarding school. She has been homeschooled her entire life, and her childhood was marked by multiple tragedies. Right away there's a sense that she is at the school for a purpose, even if it's just to try on independence for the first time (her father never would have let her come). But this is a narration style, that while pretty close, does keep some things back from the reader, and the result of that is that we often see Sade doing things without explanation that we wonder about. I thought it was very clever. The prose, while nothing stunning, does its job, and I was liking the characters I was supposed to like within about fifty pages. This is quite a long book for YA, but it reads pretty fast.
The audiobook narration of this was great. Natalie Simpson did a wonderful job, and I would be more likely to check out a book if I saw she had narrated it.
Even though I liked this book slightly less than her debut, I will definitely read more of this author's stuff. What's she's doing with YA is super interesting, and I'm still super interested to see what kinds of books she starts coming out with as a more seasoned author. ...more
Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. It has not affected the content of my review.
Oh, hey, look at that. Five stars. I think no one iThanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. It has not affected the content of my review.
Oh, hey, look at that. Five stars. I think no one is more surprised about that rating than me after slowly making my way through this over the past two and a half months. But really, I was only slow because I didn't expect to get this ARC, so I was reading it in between other books when I had time. But more importantly, this is an e-book so my attention span while reading it was like that of a fruit fly, because that's just how my brain deals with e-books. I am fairly certain if I'd had a hard copy of this, or if I'd been listening to the audiobook, I would have gotten through it in a couple of days. It's compulsively readable, and ridiculously well-paced, and even as you're compelled to read about what happens to Carrie and her comeback, you're also yelling at the page and telling her to get it together.
This is historical fiction, it pains me to say, that is set in 1995—a year which I remember, so how is that allowed to be historical fiction, please? And it does have very 90s vibes. Carrie Soto is 37 years old, and has been retired from professional tennis for almost a decade. When Nikki Chan overtakes Carrie as the record-holder for most Grand Slam wins, Carrie becomes determined to make a comeback, and win back her record. Perhaps more importantly, to her at least, to prove to everyone that she is THE BEST.
About the first third of the book shows us Carrie's life before retirement, and the second two-thirds chronicles her striving to get back into shape, and win at least one more slam while her body can still handle it. If she does so, she will be the oldest (sigh) woman to do so. Carrie is . . . something else. She is fierce, determined, incredibly talented, dogged, and brusque. She is Difficult with a capital 'D'. The media dubbed her the Battle Axe her first go-round, but now they've just taken to calling her The Bitch. But all Carrie cares about is winning. Her father is her coach, and he is an excellent one. Their relationship is the center of the novel, and it was painful to see him realizing too late how Carrie's need to win has taken over her life.
At first, I wasn't super in love with this because Carrie was so difficult. I have so many lines highlighted where I'm constantly trying to talk back to this fictional character, and maybe pound some perspective into her head, but she is stubborn. But because of the difficultness and the stubbornness, when her character growth does come, it's extremely satisfying.
Also, I am just a sucker for a sports story. Can't pay attention to a real sports game to save my life, but you give me a a sports movie or book and I'm gonna be there for it, every time. It's not really a surprise that TJR did such a good job with this book, which speaks of heavy research, and deep character work. So when it came time to click the star-rating, I found I really couldn't give it any less than five stars, and now I have to have a my own copy when it comes out. I'm also very intrigued by the audiobook, which like Daisy Jones, is full cast.
Looks like TJR has another bestseller on her hands, as if there were any doubt. But I think it will be deserved....more
Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for the ARC! It hasn't affected the content of my review.
I was slightly skeptical of thisThanks to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for the ARC! It hasn't affected the content of my review.
I was slightly skeptical of this book going in, as I always am with YA these days, but I couldn't resist the premise. I'm really glad I gave in to my impulse on this one, because this book was really cute, and surprisingly emotionally harrowing at the same time. The premise here is that Atherton's star quarterback died in a drunk driving accident over the summer, and the coach has found his replacement in Jack Walsh, who is to everyone's shock, a girl. She's extremely talented, and she just wants the chance to play football and be part of a team. That no one accepts her, and in some cases actively plot against her, is not a great feeling.
The only person who is even somewhat nice to her is Amber, a cheerleader who is gunning hard for Captain next year (they are both juniors) and who is a closeted queer girl in a fake relationship with her also queer friend Miguel, another player on the football team. Amber has spent all of high school trying her hardest not to rock the boat, especially since so many of her classmates are homophobic, including her best friend Cara, whose family is uber-religious but stepped in to be a sort of second family for Amber when her single mom needed the help. Just a soup of conflict up inside Amber. Of course, the two are drawn together and quickly fall for each other, in a very cute way. (Amber calls Jack's glasses cute, and can't resist flirting with her, then straight up telling her she was flirting, promptly and accidentally outing herself.)
I was mostly surprised by how intense the homophobia and misogyny is towards Jack, and surrounding Amber. All the queer characters are out to their families, but none want to take the step to come out to the community as a whole, lest they end up friendless and ostracized like Jack. Haunting the whole thing is the ghost of Robbie, the dead quarterback, who was an asshole (he was blackmailing Miguel about being gay, among other charming behaviors), but who is now being sanctified by his teammates, the cheerleaders, and the other students. They refuse to give Jack credit when they start winning games, and the fact that she's a girl has everything to do with it. And even Amber and Miguel don't feel like they can stand up for her, because of the perceived consequences.
I was a bit worried that the conflict Adler created was too much to be resolved in the book, but she made it work, with only a little bit of handwaving. Most of it was just well-constructed plot, and you end the book knowing that Amber and Jack have their Happily-For-Now.
I hadn't read anything by Dahlia Adler before this, but I would definitely consider reading more from her in the future, even though none of her previously published books are calling to me at the moment....more
So I’ve been bemoaning this all over Goodreads for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve been in a five-star drought since 2022 started. (I wonder if it’s bSo I’ve been bemoaning this all over Goodreads for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve been in a five-star drought since 2022 started. (I wonder if it’s because the last book I read in 2021, Harrow the Ninth, was one of the most five-star books I’ve ever read, and the universe is just balancing itself out . . . )
I’ve been waiting, impatiently, to see what book would capture my emotions enough for me to slap that coveted five-star rating on, as I’ve definitely gotten much more picky over what I will give five stars to since I joined Goodreads in 2008, and definitely since I started reviewing almost every book I read when I joined Cannonball Read. By this time last year, though, I had given out five five-star ratings, so I was getting genuinely worried*. A couple have gotten close in the first twenty-five days of January, but always biffed it in the end. This book was the opposite. It snuck up on me. It made me love these characters while I wasn’t paying attention, and by the end when everything came together I was just so satisfied (I could use other words here, but I don’t want to spoil anything without spoiler tags).
*This is a dumb thing to worry about, but I generally stack January and February with books I’m really looking forward to reading, so it makes sense that there would be more five-star ratings concentrated there.
This is just a story really well told. And it is a genuine pleasure to read one of those, no matter the genre.
Here, Moriarty takes on some of the trappings of the mystery genre, when Delaney family matriarch Joy goes missing. Her phone was left behind under the bed, none of her belongings are missing, and the only evidence they have of her whereabouts is an almost unintelligible text saying she was going “OFF-GRID”. Left behind are her four adult children: Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke, along with grumpy, untalkative husband Stan. They are a tennis family. Both Joy and Stan played professionally, and when they married they started their own tennis school, which they have just sold for quite a bit of money, and are now officially retired. Only, neither of them are taking to retirement well, and it seems that all that free time, along with mysterious houseguest Savannah, who shows up shoeless and injured on their doorstep one night, acts as a catalyst for some long-simmering family tensions.
Mostly, the story is told from Joy’s point of view about six months in the past, and from the four kids’ POVs in the present, as their worry for their missing mother turns into a police investigation, digging up old secrets of course, but also making all the Delaneys face up to things about themselves they maybe haven’t wanted to face until now, and reevaluating things they’d long thought settled. There are occasional interludes from random people adjacent to the Delaneys, like hairdressers, neighbors, pedicurists, and also POVs from the two detectives searching for Joy, and eventually, investigating her murder.
As I said above, this book snuck up on me. I loved Joy from the first page, but the rest of them took a bit longer, and by the end of the book I was incredibly invested in the fate of this family not only as a whole, but in the happiness of each member individually. Moriarty really does have a talent for making characters come to life on the page, and she writes flawed people very well, in the way that you see their flaws, but they only make them feel more human and not less likable for it. In fact, she frequently takes unlikable characters and makes you fall for them anyway.
This part will be spoilers.
(view spoiler)[Perhaps the best thing Moriarty does with this book, though, is play on the reader’s emotions through the use of mystery/crime tropes. The entire book is preparing you for Joy’s death to be discovered, and your attention is directed by the narrative to interpret everything you see as evidence for or against WHAT HAPPENED TO JOY and WHO DID IT and WHY. But in the end she uses those expectations against you, and even if you see it coming, it’s still a complete pleasure the moment Stan, who is moments from being arrested for her murder, turns to see Joy standing in the doorway and bursts into joyful tears. We see not only in that moment how much he does love her, but how important it is to us as readers that these people work things out. We also have gone on this journey with these characters, and we too love Joy. It’s such a relief when she makes it home alive, and then Moriarty (perhaps indulgently, but I do not care one bit) spends the remainder of the novel nudging the other main characters in better directions for their lives. The kicker is the epilogue, where we find out something about houseguest Savannah that just places the perfect last note to the story (hide spoiler)].
I really, really enjoyed this one. Maybe I will finally get around to the rest of Moriarty’s backlist this year....more
This is one of the best anthologies I've ever read. If you like Arthuriana, this is a must read. If you like anthologies just for the variety, this coThis is one of the best anthologies I've ever read. If you like Arthuriana, this is a must read. If you like anthologies just for the variety, this collection is a winner. I don't think I will ever give an anthology five stars, because I've yet to find one where I like every story, but this one comes pretty close. There were only two stories in here I didn't like.
What makes Sword Stone Table so great is that the authors chosen really had their creativity flowing. Maybe it was the challenge they were set. This is a collection that features retellings, reimaginings, and stories inspired by the King Arthur mythos, with emphasis on queer, multiracial, gender-focused voices. You know, all the people left out or done dirty by the original stories. Not a single story, even the ones I didn't like, felt predictable or rote. They really felt reimagined. I five starred a bunch of them, which is super rare for me with anthologies.
My review of each individual story is in my Status Updates/activity for the book.
Read Harder Challenge 2022: Read an anthology featuring diverse voices....more
I was disappointed by this one, I don't think through any fault of the book. I was really looking forward to it because of the premise, but it wasn't I was disappointed by this one, I don't think through any fault of the book. I was really looking forward to it because of the premise, but it wasn't really to my tastes, though I think what the author did with it was interesting. It just didn't resonate with me.
So what we've got here is two exes both running for homecoming king. Jeremy is trans (and newly out) and a cheerleader, and Lukas is the boyfriend dumped over the summer. They used to be the school's power couple and now they barely speak to each other. Lukas has no idea why Jeremy dumped him, and Jeremy has issues with masculine insecurity that he tries to exorcize by being the most obnoxious person in any room. I thought Lukas was sweet for most of the book, but Jeremy can be a real asshole, and is very emotionally immature and self-absorbed. They're both pretty typical teenagers. When they both decide to run for homecoming, all this clashes, and escalates.
What Ellor was trying to do with this book, and honestly, I think they succeeded, is tell a story about how dealing with all this stuff like coming out, navigating sexual politics, the pressure to self-educate about gender and sexuality issues, what it means to be a man (especially if you are trans), all while still being a teenager and maturing as a person, is A LOT. And not every person is going to handle it perfectly, or even well. Jeremy definitely doesn't. Even Lukas, who is a lot more emotionally mature than Jeremy, does some pretty boneheaded things here.
I'm not a fan of angsty YA fiction, or angsty stories in general, and there was a lot of angst here. I also just don't feel super compelled by the idea of someone who is a thoughtless jerk learning not to be. I also personally don't have a lot of patience for people who aren't emotionally intelligent or mature, so Jeremy was particularly grating to me ((view spoiler)[especially when he breaks up with Lukas, getting genuinely mad at him for misgendering him before he's even come out (hide spoiler)]). So while I can see what Ellor did well here, it's not something that gels with my sensibilities.
Not unhappy I read this, but won't be revisiting. ...more
I was a bit nervous for this one! We've got a middle-aged white guy writing from the POV of a protagonist with a pretty specific disability (SMA, a deI was a bit nervous for this one! We've got a middle-aged white guy writing from the POV of a protagonist with a pretty specific disability (SMA, a degenerative disease*) that he doesn't share, and I wasn't familiar with Leitch as a writer, but this was the only BOTM the month it came out that interested me, so I took a chance, and I'm glad I did! I thought the whole thing was very sensitively done, and I thought Daniel ended up being a great character. SMA is something that he lives with, but he as a person is not his disease, and he has an extremely rich inner life, and a pretty rich outer one as well. He has a great caregiver, a loving mother, a job that he can do from home that supports him well, and a great best friend. He also loves the place he lives, and he has a measure of independence that makes him feel satisfied with his life.
*The author's notes share that the author is familiar with SMA because his son's best friend has the disease.
Daniel is pretty much homebound, although he can leave the house with assistance, and he has a very specific routine. He begins seeing a girl outside his house at the same time every morning who appears to be walking to class (he lives in a college town), and one day he sees her get into a car with a man. The next day the girl has made the news as having disappeared, and Daniel suddenly has to decide what to do about the knowledge he has.
This book is sort of a hybrid creation: part character study, part mystery/thriller, part general fiction. Daniel sort of falls backwards into investigating the crime, and accidentally becomes involved in a way he didn't expect. The book takes care to navigate how his SMA and life in a wheelchair complicates suddenly being involved in the plot of a thriller, but we also see pretty clearly a slice of Daniel's life, and how his SMA does and doesn't affect his everyday existence. My favorite part was probably the relationships that Daniel has with Travis, his stoner best friend who he's known since he was a baby, and his caregiver, Marjani. He loves both of them, and they both love him, even though the dynamics are different as one is a friend and one is an employee. Daniel is realistic about his medical condition and what it means for his future, but the book never descends into maudlin territory.
Well dang what a wet raspberry of a book to end the year on. I have a couple more I'm trying to finish so hopefully at least one will be a banger, butWell dang what a wet raspberry of a book to end the year on. I have a couple more I'm trying to finish so hopefully at least one will be a banger, but this was not what I wanted it to be. Personal drama in a friend group as a basis for a thriller is just really, really not my thing. Especially when you don't like any of the characters that make up the group, as was the case here for me. Not even the spooky, eery, chilly atmosphere could make up for it. And also, I like books about sports, but the MC's attitude about her sport and how competitive she was killed most of that enjoyment for me.
Take this review with a grain of salt, of course. If I would have known that this was the kind of book it would be, I probably wouldn't have read it, and I know all that drama is like catnip to some people.
So our main character is Milla, a former pro-snowboarder who had to give it up and has been drifting through life ever since, but after an invitation from one of her old snowboarding friends (none of whom she's seen since IT ALL WENT DOWN) agrees to a reunion of sorts at their old stomping grounds, a small resort in the alps near a glacier. We quickly learn that one of them, Saskia, has been missing and presumed dead for ten years, and another is a quadriplegic. But why and who and how? And now they are trapped on the glacier in a snowstorm, and someone is playing tricks on them.
I mean, I do make it sound good. I just didn't care all that much! But, if you like this sort of thing, this is probably a really good one to check out....more
This is my favorite thing John Green has written. I loved it so much I let it start getting me behind in reviews agai**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 20/30
This is my favorite thing John Green has written. I loved it so much I let it start getting me behind in reviews again. I kind of hope he never goes back to writing fiction. (In fact, in the introduction to this book he expresses the sentiment that he might not! I don't have the book with me right now to reference, but he talks briefly about his frustration with readers confusing him with his characters, and how more and more writing fiction feels like lying to him, and he's more and more drawn to the pleasures of nonfiction -- again, this is all from memory, it sounded way better in the book.) My favorite stuff of his has never been his fiction, but his podcast with his brother, and his YT videos.
Anyway, the conceit here is that he reviews different things from the Anthropocene, our current geologic (human-centered) age. He does so on a five star scale, in part to poke fun at the idea of the five star rating system. It's based on his podcast of the same name, which I've only listened to once. I much prefer it in book form. Some of the essays here were updated podcast episodes but many were new. I enjoyed all of them.
This book does my favorite thing which is to combine tones and genres. It's funny and sad and silly and heartfelt. It talks about tiny unimportant things and big scale things. It's part memoir, part humor, part satire, part history. It's a very vulnerable book, and a mischievous one. And the range of things he reviews is appealing on its own. Some from memory: "Auld Lang Syne," The World's Biggest Ball of Paint, Velociraptors, Kentucky Bluegrass, Googling Strangers, a hot dog stand in Iceland, Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest (two hot dog essays! John, what's up?), Plague, CNN, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Jerzy Dudek's famous save. I will be reading it again, and I hope he publishes The Anthropocene Reviewed, Part Two some day.
I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars....more
I was pretty into this at first but then my interest waned like a third of the way through and never really came back. Certainly it didn't help that II was pretty into this at first but then my interest waned like a third of the way through and never really came back. Certainly it didn't help that I was reading another stellar romance* at the same time and this one doesn't hold up to it. This wasn't bad, though! Just not great.
*The Heart Principle, in case you were curious.
This is the second book in Rochon's adult romance series, following The Boyfriend Project, which I also generally liked but had some issues with (mainly that I liked the friendship and job aspects way more than the romance itself). Here I liked the romance more, but the good tension Rochon built up at the beginning was punctured way too soon for me. I also thought it ended up being a bit scattered thematically at the end. One of the things that drew me to the book at the beginning was the all too real way Rochon was writing about Taylor and her financial struggles. I've had those lean years where you don't know where the money will be coming from next, and you have to decide what to pawn, and which bills not to pay. But that aspect entirely fell away, sort of replaced by Taylor's struggle to accept she had a learning disorder, and to fit in with her family.
Anyway, this is ostensibly a book about a fake relationship, but I don't think it took advantage of that trope at all, and maybe would have been better off without it. It felt forced at the beginning why they were even doing it (and introduced yet another narrative problem for Taylor, in her fear of trusting Jamar because of what a past client had done to her after she slept with him). And the actual fake relationship lasts for all of ten minutes, and is not a source of tension or conflict in the book. They enter into a sexual relationship soon after the fake dating starts, and then five minutes after that they decide they're doing this for real, so what was the point. With all of that shoved in there, the genuinely affecting scenes where Jamar had to deal with the lingering guilt over the death of his best friend Silas years before didn't hit as hard as they could have otherwise.
I think I'm going to finish out this series but I may not be reading more of Rochon's books in the future. ...more
Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
For the first like 15% of thi**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 8/30
Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
For the first like 15% of this book, I was giddy with how much I was enjoying it. I was like YES THIS BOOK and highlighting stuff and writing notes. Then the shine wore off a little. And then there were some bits at the end that made me roll my eyes. So overall, this was an average reading experience, with some very high highs and a couple lows. Mostly, the book does very well by our favorite Russian Bromance Book Club member.
Vlad absolutely deserved his own book after the author didn't even give him a name for most of two books. And forced him to be the butt of many a scatological joke. (Her author's note say she only did it because readers wanted her to.) Turns out he's not even lactose intolerant! He's gluten intolerant, and now he can eat his beloved cheese again. (There's a delightful subplot in here about an underground cheese market that sells illegal cheeses, and I have to tell you, I want that to be real. Somebody hook me up.)
Long the most sensitive and empathetic of the book club, it turns out Vlad's living out several of the many tropes in his beloved books, including: the marriage of convenience and friends to lovers. His wife Elena, whom no one has ever met, married him seven years before so she could leave Russia. They've been friends since childhood, but Vlad is secretly in love with her. He has been pining for years, and he initially joined the Bromance Book Club to try and win her over. But after an incident at Mack's wedding where Vlad finally got up the courage to ask her for a real marriage, it turns out she's going back to Russia to be a journalist, and Vlad in turn descends into a depression (this involves the illegal cheeses). ALSO he's writing a romance novel!
Vlad himself is an utter delight. I was less enamored with Elena. I think the author could have done more character work on her beyond "obsessed with what happened to her father who was probably murdered". I did like how much she cared for Vlad, and the little glimpses of her desire to have friends and a family. I wish that had been played up more, and there was less of the dire journalism plot involving her investigation into her father's disappearance.
One thing that just really did not work for me was Vlad's romance novel. There are really only two excerpts from it, but I thought they were pretty boring. Also, I didn't like that the book club decided to help him with it. It would have been much more satisfying if he had done it all on his own. That was more than made up with all the lovely stuff in here with the book club (Colton and Vlad's friendship is lovely in this book). And I loved Vlad's neighbors, and how Vlad just attracts random neighborhood animals with his presence. There's a weird tone in these books that I've never exactly been able to put my finger on where they seem to deliberately not take place in the real world, and slightly unreal things happen all the time (like Bromance Book Clubs, and men that attract animals with their presence) but then the author also decides to put weirdly harsh things in there like sexual harassment and sexual assault storylines, and Russian crime gangs kidnapping and disappearing people. It never clicks all the way for me.
Anyway, despite its flaws, I will continue to read this series because the moments it delights me make up for the occasional weirdness in the tone and eyeroll worthy climactic moments (Elena seemed ridiculously obtuse to me at a key emotional turning point).
Sometimes you just meet a book you don't really click with and there's not a reason for it, it just is. I think this is one of those times! I had a peSometimes you just meet a book you don't really click with and there's not a reason for it, it just is. I think this is one of those times! I had a perfectly fine time reading this book, but I was never compelled by it. The stakes, for me, felt too low. This was especially sad because my fellow reviewers who have read this have loved it nearly universally, and also because I loved loved loved the first book in Dade's Marysburg series when I read it a couple of months ago; I just took it for granted that I would love this one, too.
Our two main characters are Tess Dunn, who is spending her 40th birthday with her best friend on vacation on a small Florida island resort, and Lukas Carlsson, a former professional tennis player felled by injuries who now makes his living giving tennis lessons to resort guests. Their meet-cute occurs in the ocean, when Tess's bikini top decides to take off into the wild blue yonder, and Lukas rescues her from flashing a bunch of children with her ample bosom. This meet-cute should have gotten me! But it didn't. like the rest of the book, I do not know why.
Dade does a great job showing us how these two people could break down each other's walls and develop real intimacy over the course of the two weeks Tess is on the island, although even if I had really dug the book I think I wouldn't have been able to buy an 'I Love You' as quickly as they manage it. (view spoiler)[I wish there had been more of a time jump after Tess left the island and they continued their relationship, and THEN Lukas made his big move. I would have found that more emotionally believable. But that's really the only concrete complaint I have. (hide spoiler)]
Other people with different tastes will and have liked this more than I do so don't let my lukewarm review deter you.
Quick review for a fun book with a good backbone. This was a Book of the Month selection a couple months back, and I’m glad because I don’t think I woQuick review for a fun book with a good backbone. This was a Book of the Month selection a couple months back, and I’m glad because I don’t think I would have ever gotten around to it otherwise. Head Over Heels is a romance, but that’s just a portion of it. Most of the book follows heroine Avery’s emotional journey back from a crushing injury, one that ruined her career as a professional gymnast right on the eve of her chance to compete at the Olympics (the injury actually happens at her last event in the Olympic trials). She spends the years after that floundering. When a break-up gives her the excuse to shake her life up again, she moves back to her hometown. A chance encounter gets her a job opportunity that reignites her love for gymnastics, and forces her to reckon with parts of her past she’s been ignoring. It also allows her to reunite with her childhood crush, a fellow gymnast who did end up making it to the Olympics, and who is now a coach himself.
I was very compelled by Avery’s story. I LOVE reading stories about people who are good at things, and for some reason reading about people playing and working hard at and excelling at sports is one of those things that really works for me. It works very well here. In fact, I wish there had been more technical details included than there actually were, though I’m sure that would have been a tough sell for an editor. The general public isn’t as interested in the nitty gritty details as I am. But there are still some of those to go around!
The book also deals with sexism and abuse in the sport of gymnastics. Avery ends up coaching a young Olympic hopeful who is caught up in an abuse scandal, similar to the real-life one a couple of years back. Avery’s coach was not physically abusive towards her or her best friend and teammate Jasmine (who hasn’t fared perfectly in her life, despite making it to the Olympics) but emotional abuse was prevalent. One of the best things about this book was the healing of Avery and Jasmine’s friendship.
If you like romance, gymnastics, the Olympics, reading about characters overcoming injustice, abuse, and trauma, or all of the above, this may be a good one to check out....more
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