Mari

Ephron is candid, sarcastic, and funny. The book almost reads like a future self giving advice to a past self. Loved it!

Gorgeous book–from Gothic mystery to Young Indiana Jones adventure–with characters I could cheer for throughout every page.

This book has an unexpected start but then the rest just rushed over me. The ebb and flow of Nora's decisions are believable and feel so personal. Regret over the roads not taken is common but Nora let herself be ruled by it, worn down to her last thread of sanity. The Midnight Library is an interesting concept elevated to an exploration of Self, identifying internal and external motivators, and a search for happiness that almost reaches Odyssean proportions. Nora's journey feels truly earned as she realizes throughout her many lives that her decisions and their consequences extend beyond herself. The definition of a “perfect” or “good” life is completely subjective and this book fearlessly runs the gamut. I'll definitely be reading this one again!

Forget breath of fresh air, this book is a wind tunnel of realness! “Relatable” is a vast understatement for what lies between these digital covers. I laughed, I got the feels, I felt personally attacked–everything necessary for memorable book I'd recommend to all my friends. There will be more than a few re-reads of this book in my near and distant future.

Classic Bex! Letting her good intentions get her into all sorts of mischief, including being completely lost on how to vibe with her newfound sister. Bex has this totally believable tendency to build up ideas in her head of how people/relationships should be that she overlooks the reality. I really love the Bex and Jess dynamic and wish there was more of them in the series.

This book serves a several purposes:

1) What happens after Bex and Luke's happily ever after Book 1.

2) Bex's personal growth when she realizes her sister Jess has different, unfamiliar passions and that's okay.

3) Bex's morality and emotional self-awareness out-shining her conspicuous consumerism.

4) The social rift when some friends become parents earlier than everyone else.

Love this book--it delivers on all promises and it's one of the best in the series.

I came for the time travel romance and stayed for the beautiful love letter to Cornwall. This book is as much a travel book as it is a work of fiction. Yet somehow the detailed setting didn't distract from the sweet characters and their wants and needs. This book is a delight from cover to cover.

Curiosity about the Trump White House alone is not enough momentum to finish this book. You also need pure madness. This story is as crazy, depraved, and depressing as you expect–expect laughs from the sheer absurdity of it all. Good writing and narration, though.

Interesting idea, beautiful writing, and interesting characters in the beginning.

Then, the main storyline and peripheral characters just lagged in comparison to the world building. I felt detatched from most characters except for Nancy and Jack. Towards the end the writing unexpectedly turns mechanical and procedural. The murder mystery lacked tension and its resolution was was anticlamactic at best. Nancy's resolution didn't feel emotional or earned.

Enjoyable read but I expected to rave about it with the way people talk about this book.

Never have I heard such a thorough examination full of research, data, and personal stories from all ages and sexual orientations on why men and women get judged, belittled, and considered less-than for being childfree.

Women probably catch more flack because somewhere, somehow our value has been solely tied to our vaginas instead of our individuality. Dr. Blackstone puts forth such a well-researched treatise from which we can draw our knowledgable conclusions. My conclusion? We, as a society, can do better.

But this book is more than all that–it breaks down the societal roles and contributions of both parents and non-parents through a historical and scientific lense.

This book reads like Freakonomics; it's accessible and full of interesting, historical insight into the world we find ourselves today. Parenting isn't just a logical, unquestioned next step for everyone–it's a choice. End stop.

Well-written and fascinating read, although the subject is almost just as hollow as her husband. I still don't completely understand Melania's mental gymnastics when it comes to politics, but when it comes to business and family, she's deceptively sharp and great and cutting people into and out of her life in a blink.

This started as a love letter to Creatives everywhere with keen insight on what makes us tick, but it ended with an extremely technical few chapters strictly for makers.

Slow build in the beginning as all good Gothic horror does, but whoo! That ending's fire. What a great spooky season read. A little Poe, a little Crimson Peak, and a lot of slowly unraveling sanity with a dash of the grotesque. Noemi's every nightmare and visceral reaction within the walls of the Taboada estate gave me chills.

This is such a fun read and a great alternate storyline from the movie! The attention to detail and abundance of Chinese folklore just enriches the story even more. I can't wait to read more of these What If stories.

This book took me from a complete cluster of disarray into a person that always has a clean inbox. In my wildest dreams I never thought that could be possible. What a sigh of relief! I also could never find my exact organizational strategy, but Carson's quiz about finding and defining a productivity style helped me realize I'm a combination of an Arranger and Planner. Sometimes the simplest, most basic approaches need to be read and re-read to be remembered and believed. The tone is a little dry, but overall this book is pretty darn helpful.

Excellent book about the pitfalls of the gig economy, consequences of tying healthcare to a job, and letting private companies get out of providing pensions.

The history behind one of the most infamous, petty sociopaths of our time undistilled and unapologetic. Excellent read.

This book is a hysterical read! Really, all this tidying up can be the source of so much anxiety/stress that we can afford to let go a little bit. The in-between-chapter quizzes are the best too. If I had one take-away from the books it's do what makes you happy, and don't lose sleep over what anyone else may think of a few dust bunnies, shoes by the door, etc.

Utterly enjoyable read if you love Mullally and Offerman. They meander all over the place, share philosophies on love and hot dogs (secret audio chapter people!), and crack a ton of adorable dirty jokes together. Add this one to your summer reading list.

This book is full of 1920s sparkle and longing—I love this classic story more from a queer Asian American point of view. Jordan Baker is everything—a dreamer, supportive, strong, adaptable, sensual. Watching the story play out from Louisville to West Egg with Baker at the center helped me come to some new realizations about Gatsby, Tom, Nick, and Daisy. With gin babies, speakeasies, and demoniac dancing around the periphery, this story stayed true to the class struggle, racism, and grime at the edges of 1920s glitz and glamour. Love this book! And I'll read The Great Gatsby again with new eyes because of it.

Enjoyable installment with some funny, altho disturbing convos in suburbia. Yet, why oh why can't even one of the best most badass characters, Emily, avoid procreating to achieve society's widely accepted lifescript of what a complete life should be? Unnecessary.

Love this ending more than movie! The book spends more time developing the characters, which made me warm up to them more. Also, Sophie is adorable and shouldn't have been left out of the movie. What's more Christmasy than a charming, bossy kid who knows everything? Whitley and Meghan both go on to be way more fulfilled personally and professionally together in the book than in the movie—just heartwarming.

What can I say--this book opens like Hunger Games with a strong, hunting-savvy female lead and then dives into full Beauty and the Beast mode with the addition of fairies and dark fairy bargains.

The story is very straightforward with minimal surprises and uses dark fairytale tropes to its advantage. The first half lags with aimless palace wandering, although gives Feyre a chance to process and settle in.

Some bits were clunky; repeating that fairies were unable to lie too often, the event in the middle of the book, and asking the hero to set snares outside her palace room like fairies wouldn't notice.

I especially enjoyed the beautiful and emotional writing during the blue fairy scene that furthers Feyre's character arc.

Then, the pacing picks up and is maintained through the end with some interesting tension-building challenges. The romantic bits are cute, well-placed and elegantly fade to black. Yet, I wish there were more sister-to-sister scenes with no-nonsense Nesta in the second half.

Best of all: It has an actual natural ending in spite of being a series. Solidly enjoyable read.

Incredible tableau of life in the 1960s southern marshes for the first half; the parallels between nature and human society with a slow-burning tension crackling in the air. Then, my heart ached for the entire second half. What an exceptionally written book with characters that live and breathe even after the last page.

Falling into this book solely based on my love for the Devil Wears Prada movie is my fault and no one else's. I loved the movie and decided to read this trilogy backwards just because I like to live dangerously. Emily's book is a little stronger, but dear lord, this installment is definitely the worst. Andy is so very whiney and insecure to the point that it made the book hard to read. Too much whining and many questionable decisions later ended with a return to the overhyped boyfriend from the Devil Wears Prada. And what is it with everyone getting pregnant? It's a cult. Can't we have female leads whose careers and personhood aren't defined by their children for once? Disappointment wears Prada.

I loved the mechanics and descriptions of witching. The lost histories of what bound these women together were fascinating, and the tragedies of othering that shaped their world drove the story pretty well. All the lore and fairy tales are beautifully written.

Then enter Juniper, a character that I just couldn't get behind the entirety of the book. Eve could've been written out completely, replaced with a witch sister and the story would've been about the same. Pacing suffered when some characters were on the lamb. Also, the suffragete storyline seemed completely forgotten to the detriment of the rest of the book.

The final set piece was interesting and ripe with tension, but the ending still somehow felt anticlimactic. I loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January, so maybe that's why this book disappointed me so much.