Susan Scribner
3.5 stars. After several well-regarded YA books ([b:Darius the Great Is Not Okay 37506437 Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius The Great, #1) Adib Khorram https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520460519l/37506437.SX50.jpg 58014975]), Adib Khorram turns the heat up to 11 in his first adult romance. In fact, the numerous sex scenes between Farzan and David, as well as the food and wine descriptions, crowd out the actual romance. Yes there is an unusual meet-cute, a friends-with-benefits-catch feelings, and a brief (page-wise) third act breakup. But I wanted more sweet moments, like the MCs watching My Big, Fat Greek Wedding together or Farzan's two besties teasing him about his lovesick facial expressions. YMMV if you want the details of the dickings, or if you can identify a wine's grape, region, and vintage from a few sips. And props to Khorram for setting the story in Kansas City, a delightful place that deserves to known for something other than its (American) football team.
I do have a soft spot for awkward but cute smart guys, and Charlie needed his own HEA after being bullied in [b:The Amazing Alpha Tau Pledge Project 195724834 The Amazing Alpha Tau Pledge Project (Alpha Tau, #3) Lisa Henry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1691782045l/195724834.SY75.jpg 197604099]. Probably my favorite book in the series, or at least the one that killed the fewest number of brain cells.
I was in the type of head space that called for a low angst, undemanding romance, and Halo fit the bill. On the E.M. Lindsey spectrum, this is definitely on their sweeter, softer side, although it still packs enough of an emotional punch to wring a tear or two from my cynical eyes.
I thoroughly enjoyed Nathan Tavares' 2022 debut novel, [b:A Fractured Infinity 60852190 A Fractured Infinity Nathan Tavares https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650477507l/60852190.SY75.jpg 93397711], so I was eager to read this follow up. Sadly, after struggling to finish it, I have to conclude that Welcome to Forever is just not my cup of tea. While Fractured Infinity combined a love story with a fairly basic science fiction plot, this novel goes all in on the sci-fi, which baffled and frustrated me.The book takes place on an exhausted, dying Earth. Fox is a memory editor, whose jobs at NIL/E Technologies involving erasing unpleasant memories from clients' brains and writing code so that entirely new (and always happy) memories can be inserted instead. His personal trainer husband, Gabe, can jump into clients' bodies and exercise for them so they look fit without the effort. In this brave new world, people can download their consciousness and plug it into a new body, forever averting final-death. But recently (maybe?) a bomb exploded near Fox's apartment, releasing a memory virus. Fox doesn't remember anything about his past, including Gabe. He finds himself at the Center for Memory Recovery, where he apparently checked himself in to recover his damaged “memory code” with the help of trained therapists. That summary covers approximately 10% of the book. I'm not sure I could describe the other 90% even if I wanted to. The plot isn't linear, jumping from Fox's experiences at the Memory Center to flashes of the past that his brain is starting to remember. But some of the memories feel like they belong to someone else...okay, you officially lost me. I struggled through discussions of memorystreams, mippers, sahusynics, and rez tech. Fox and Gabe are together. Now they're not. Now they're....other people? The Evil NIL/E Corporation, who operates all of this technology, is searching for Khadija Banks, pioneer of the technology turned revolutionary. But who are the true bad guys? Which parts of the narrative really happened, and which were dreams, fake memories, or something else? And, most importantly, what the hell does that ending mean?The book raises seriously existential questions about whether we are more than the sum of our memories, but I couldn't comprehend Tavares' answers. I think if I tackled it again, I might get a clearer picture of what exactly was going on, but I'm not motivated enough to do so. YMMV if you are more of a sci-fi devotee instead of a casual (and befuddled) reader like me. ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for objective review.
It seems like there was quite a bit of controvery about the behavior of this author and her reaction to some negative or not quite glowing reviews. I'm going to ignore all of that and focus on the book itself. I don't need to love the artists who are in my favorite band or the actors in my favorite movies. Sometimes living in the Information Age is more of a curse than a blessing.
This is a cute, fast read with genuine feeling and humor. It's not great literature, but it kept me well entertained for 24 hours. I guessed the twist in the story, as I suspect many readers will, but that didn't keep me from being moved when the heroine finally realized the truth. I would say the novel is more cleverly written than well written, but it's impressive for a self-published effort.
My late mother adored Barbra Streisand so I read this book in her memory. Or rather, I skimmed through it, pausing when Babs talked about a movie I liked or an interesting affair. The memoir should have been half as long, but that would have required that La Streisand relinquish some control. Which, as demonstrated repeatedly, she does not do. I think the most telling anecdote in the whole book is when she rewrites several of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics for an album. Stephen F*cking Sondheim! Only the greatest Broadway composer and lyricist of the 20th century!
Recommended if you want to read about hundreds of other times she was right and other people were wrong, design and fashion described in excruciating detail, and letters from famous people praising her to the rafters.
A pleasant end of year surprise, a new to me author with a thoughtful, occasionally humorous romance between transmasc unemployed, recently sober comedy writer Eli and his cishet former BFF/boyfriend Nick, general manager of a restaurant and divorced dad. Eli hasn't visited his hometown of New Port Stephen, Florida in many years for a variety of reasons, hateful anti-trans legislation being only the most recent. The plot invests an equal amount of space to Eli's relationship with his inadvertently hurtful parents, Nick's love for and fears about his four year old daughter, and the peculiarities of a second chance at love with someone whose whole identity has changed.
Could have used fewer Big Misunderstandings, but there were plenty of scenes with the two MCs being kind to each other, which frankly goes a long way for me these days. The action takes place around the holidays but they're not the driving force for the plot. The real happy ending is that Eli and Nick's future together lies in a better, bluer state.
The novel had a great premise but a mediocre execution. The writing was pedestrian at best and the author told when he could have showed. For example, we didn't need to be told that IOI is an evil, heartless corporation - it's clear from the moment we learn they want to charge a monthly fee for access to the OASIS. Likewise the author should have made the reader do a little work to piece things together, instead of spelling out the entire bleak futuristic premise in the first few pages.
In spite of these weaknesses, Ready Player One is a quick, run read that doesn't require any knowledge of gaming (although familiarity with 1980's pop culture helps). Our hero is easy to root for given his underdog status, even if he doesn't have a lot of depth. There's a sweet nerd romance that helped keep me interested and a rousing finish.
I was looking for something a little different and Ready Player One fit the bill nicely. It will make a great movie.
I read these individually when they were first released in 2010. They were my favorite books by this author, with smart, strong-willed women, and men who appreciated their intelligence, not just their looks. Each couple is on a quest to save magic relics before they fall into the hands of the Heirs of England, who want to use them to claim power for their country over all others. There are adventures, exotic locations, magic and Really Bad Guys, plus just enough humor and sex. The H/H generally start out with some mistrust, then work together towards their goal and fall in love gradually. There are no Big Misunderstandings and plenty of communication - the challenges they face are sufficient that they don't need a lot of artificial obstacles to their relationships. My favorites are #1, Warrior for the dashing ex-soldier Gabriel and #3, Rebel for the indigenous attorney with something extra Nathaniel. Unfortunately after three books that featured inventor Catullus Graves in a supporting role, the series conclusion Stranger that focuses on him is a bit of a let-down, with too much magic and not enough of his brilliant Wild, Wild West-type gadgets. But we do get to see all of the couples from the previous books, so that's something.This bundle is frequently on sale (I got it for $1.99) but even at full price it's well worth the cost. Zoe Archer seems to have moved on from steampunk (or maybe it has fallen out of fashion) to straight historicals (writing as [a:Eva Leigh 8886093 Eva Leigh https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1439934306p2/8886093.jpg]), but if she ever wants to re-visit this genre I'll be first in line.
Books like this make me so mad. The entire plot is based on the fact that nobody will tell the heroine the truth about a diary she has found. The heroine's grandmother and others in the book know all of the plot's secrets, but when the heroine asks them directly, she is told repeatedly “this is your journey,” “you'll find the answers in time,” “it's not my story to tell,” etc. So she (very slowly) reads the diary so that the book will last for 300 pages.
Also, after learning how people in the past made devastating choices after jumping to conclusions, she does the exact same thing with the man she allegedly loves. Although there is so little interaction between the two characters and so little chemistry that it's hard to have any investment in their romance.
A frustrating and unsatisfying read.
A lot of readers felt the main characters were rich, spoiled yuppies with First World problems. That didn't bother me, but I failed to feel much of a connection to the heroine or understand why she was considered so appealing to her husband and ex-lover. She was a good mother but ultimately whiny and selfish; her husband was a saint for putting up with her. Despite the unsympathetic heroine, the book was well-written and an interesting look at a brief moment in recent history before the economic bubble burst.
Very difficult book to rate. It was unlike anything else I've read. Morgenstern has an amazing imagination and a unique voice. The descriptive passages of the circus tents were spellbinding. The plot and narrative structure are devilishly clever. But the characters were more symbols than three-dimensional individuals, and the love story left me rather cold. I'm going with 4 stars because the book did leave a lasting impression, but not quite the one I had hoped for.
This is a very silly “re-imagining” of Pride & Prejudice that bears very little resemblance to the original source. Darcy and Elizabeth meet cute and part, then meet again on a ship bound for America and enter into a marriage of convenience. When the voyage is over, will their marriage be annulled or will they admit they have come to love each other? Might have worked as a romance novel featuring hero and heroine with different names, but fails completely anytime the plot attempts to mirror P&P, despite the author's occasional use of dialogue taken straight from Austen. Darcy especially is a weak copy of the source material and walks around like a lovesick fool. When he gives his famous proposal speech to what turns out to be an empty cabin, the book hit the wall with a bang. I'm not sure why I keep reading these P&P sequels and adaptations; very few of them are any less than awful.
Well-written down-to-earth but romantic. The hero needed some improvement and needed an earlier, stronger grovel.
DNF. [b:The Five People You Meet in Heaven 3431 The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388200541l/3431.SX50.jpg 2561472] crossed with [b:What Color Is Your Parachute? 2022: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success 58841040 What Color Is Your Parachute? 2022 Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success Richard Nelson Bolles https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1629771421l/58841040.SX50.jpg 92682163] from a Japanese perspective (less rugged individualism and more community-focused). Sadly, very little of the book takes place in the library. Not my cuppa.
In this “speculative memoir,” Jami Nakamura Lin uses Japanese, Okinawan, and Taiwanese folklore to illuminate significant life events - her long struggle with bipolar disorder, her miscarriage and then subsequent birth of a daughter, and the loss of her beloved father from cancer at age 57. As folklore changes over time depending on the storyteller and the audience, so does the way Nakamura Lin processes her memories. The presence of demons, gods, and ghosts allows for brief glimpses of her ancestors and the complex dynamics between her three cultures. Each chapter is enriched by modern illustrations of the folktales, created by Jami's sister Cori. The Night Parade can be read fairly quickly, but you will want to linger over the prose, maybe even returning to the previous page to savor its power.
In the presence of a story, if the story is a good one, time collapses. Though throughout the telling, I have worried: what is there to say, there is nothing new t0 say, death and grief are the oldest stories under the sun. But my horror is not of death, where the living and the ones they mourn are irrevocably dispatched to different timelines. It is of the death of memory.
Liked it a lot, didn't quite love it. Not sure it was worth 700 pages to get to the bittersweet ending (Kiram and Javier are definitely together, but they are forced to live in exile, away from friends and family). Proud, tormented heroes aren't really my catnip, but Javier redeems himself from a fair amount of asshole behavior in part 1, and Kiram is just wonderful from start to finish. The relationships between the Hellions are some of the best parts of the book, and I appreciated especially how Kiram and Nestor are finally able to tell each other how much their friendship means (in an appropriately male way of course). Some of the plotting seemed odd - I wish we had seen Javier's training with Alizadeh, and the abrupt way that Kiram learns the identity of the bad guy felt like a cop out - but the exploration of the different cultures and belief systems was fascinating. Not sure I am ready to jump into the next two books ([b:Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book One 19455351 Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book One (Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, #1) Ginn Hale https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405289342l/19455351.SY75.jpg 27542593]) because they are a significant time investment, but I'll keep them on a list of books I would like to read on vacation.
Bageant succeeds at what J.D. Vance allegedly accomplished with [b:Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis 27161156 Hillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1463569814l/27161156.SY75.jpg 47200486]; an honest look at small town working-class America, with an insider's insight into why they seemingly vote against their own interests. Bageant is not particularly kind towards his fellow self-professed rednecks, but his real anger is directed towards the rich and middle class - both Democrats and Republicans - for their part in maintaining “a cheap, unquestioning, and compliant labor force paying high rents and big medical bills,” and “investing in developing such a labor force by not investing in the education and quality of life for anyone but their own.” Bageant was suitably alarmed by George W. Bush's election. For his sake, I'm glad he passed before the ascendency of Trump, but I can't help but wonder what he would have said about the new depths to which we have sunk.
Catherine McKenzie is my new go-to author for better than average chick lit - entertaining, predictable, but slightly thought-provoking fluff. Recommended for readers who like Marian Keyes or Anna Maxted.
Epistolary novels are my catnip, so I was surprised and disappointed that this one left me feeling meh. I didn't buy the Instalove between V and J, the sex scenes were too long and explicit for my taste, and the pacing of the first half was agonizingly slow. I had similar reactions to Davin's sci-fi trilogy, [b:Edge of Nowhere 40657166 Edge of Nowhere (Nowhere, #1) Felicia Davin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1530122151l/40657166.SY75.jpg 63189990] and [b:Out of Nowhere 48708199 Out of Nowhere (Nowhere, #2) Felicia Davin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1572924996l/48708199.SY75.jpg 74060137] (I never even started the third installment), so I must sadly admit that her writing style doesn't vibe with my reading preferences.
4.5 stars. One of the best Weiner novels in at least ten years (and I've read them all). She ditches the suspense-lite plots that were shoehorned into the past few releases, and the result is a page-turning, character-based story with plus-sized (and fine with it) heroine, interesting family dynamics and several potential love interests. Lots of humor, sex, and emotionally rich moments. And it all takes place on a two-week bike tour of my home state of New York!
Weiner has become more forgiving over the years; there's more to the MC's stereotypical overbearing Jewish mother than meets the eye, and the mother/daughter relationship evolves as they both try to understand each other's point of view. One thing Weiner has not mellowed out on is her feminism; the realities of living in a post-Roe nation are played out in a very personal way (Perhaps having a full-page quote from the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights is a little much though).
Docked half a star for Weiner's decision to have several chapters narrated by secondary characters who are part of the cycling tour. I can understand narratively why she did this, but it sacrifices pages that might have better served as interactions between the MC and LI, or examples of the MC's own personal growth.
There are two things I was hoping find in the pages of Bernie Taupin's memoir: 1) juicy stories about his partnership with the brilliant, outrageous Elton John, and 2) insights about how Taupin wrote the lyrics to some of Elton's most memorable songs. There's very little of the former, which, fair, Elton has his own memoir ([b:Me 44303730 Me Elton John https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553526563l/44303730.SY75.jpg 68837791]), and Taupin is too good of a friend to resort to salacious gossip. But there's only a limited amount of the latter too, with brief mentions of a handful of songs. Instead, the bulk of the book is Taupin regaling the reader with stories of his own escapades with BFFs like Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Cher, and other less-famous buds. There are also lengthy detours into music history, descriptions of the many exotic locations he's visited, and odes to his lifelong dream of becoming an American cowboy. I skimmed through the book, looking for references to Elton and their songs, but Taupin's dense, rambling prose made that task a slog. Without Elton's music, the words lose all their magic.
Historically moderately interesting, but one-dimensional characters and deadly dull narrative. We know nothing really about Hannah and Isaac. How did they meet? Why do they love each other? How did Hannah become a midwife? What happened to her parents? I have no reason to root for either character (other than the fact that the author tells me I should) because they don't come alive at all. If this wasn't a book club selection I would never have finished it.
Okay, this was free, so I can't really complain, but it was obviously a self-published effort that screamed “amateur writer,” featuring cliched writing and characters, a hero who was hapless more than helpful and an icky 20 year age difference between hero and heroine. I do not feel any need to pay for the remaining books in the series.
The sweet if somewhat somber story of a young widow gradually coming back to life with the help of her meddling family and a fledgling dog-walking business. Secondary plot involves the heroine's sister, a new mom who is struggling to find herself and recapture the magic of her marriage. Worth the price of the book just for the widow's kooky next door neighbors, a not-quite domesticated rock-n-roll family who deserve their own novel. Not quite as dog-centric as the author's previous novel, Lost Dogs & Lonely Hearts, but still quite a few entertaining pet moments.