Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

Casey McQuiston has become one of the most talked about writers over the last few years, as her debut novel, RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE, took the book communities (and my!) breath away. Her second novel, ONE LAST STOP, came out just a few weeks ago, and needless to say, had a lot of expectations to fulfill.

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.
Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all. (Synopsis from Goodreads.com)

Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations. I was initially weary of this story because of the sci-fi elements that I do not usually enjoy, but the time travelling part of the plot was actually one of my favourite elements of the story. Instead, I had a lot of trouble with the actual romance. I have recently discovered my dislike for the “love at first sight” romance trope. I much prefer “friends to lovers” or “hate to love”, because with those tropes, the characters form some sort of connection and/or chemistry between them before they, inevitably, fall for each other. While I liked both August and Jane, the two main characters in this story, I had hard time placing them together in a romantic way, at least until the very, very end of the story. To me, the romance fell short, which is obviously very unfortunate, because the romance is the central plot in this novel.

I will admit, that while I like and enjoy McQuiston’s writing style, a lot of the stuff in this novel went straight over my head. There were a lot of random plot lines that were mixed into this story, especially at the end, which made me start to skim the last quarter of the novel (and that’s after I had already spent three straight days working through it!). A lot of the plot lines were unnecessary to me, and had a few of them been eliminated, I might have ended up enjoying the romance more!

The one things I REALLY enjoyed about this novel was August’s friend group. August’s roommates were some of the most fun and enjoyable characters to read about. There personalities and interests were all very different from one another, which I think made them work together that much better. I would normally say I would like to have read more about the side characters, but because of the length of this novel, the information that McQuiston shared about them was the perfect amount.

Overall, this novel really disappointed me, and I ended up giving it a 2/5 star rating. Because of how much I loved RW&RB, I will definitely pick up the next book McQuiston writes, because I’m hoping that my dislike of this book is a fluke. I should mention that I am the unpopular opinion when it comes to this book, so if it does interest you, I’d still recommend checking it out.

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

And more importantly, welcome to my review of my new favourite book of all time. Yes, you read that correctly! I have been waiting for a book to hit my feelings like a truck, and boy oh boy, this one did just that.

Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget and seven days to get it all back again… From the author of The Perfect Find, this is a witty, romantic, and sexy-as-hell new novel of two writers and their second chance at love.
Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York.
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York’s Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can’t deny their chemistry-or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva’s not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered. . .
With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual. (Synopsis from Goodreads.com)

This book was absolute perfection from beginning to end. It really is a true work of art. Tia Williams has created a near perfect story, with perfect pacing and writing, which all go along with wonderful new characters that readers become attached to right off the bat.

All of the characters in this novel pull all of the elements of the story together. The amount of characters in this book was surprisingly on the higher side when it comes to literary fiction/contemporary novels, but each character was important to the flow of the story. Even though Eva and Shane are the two main characters in this story, my favourite character was Audre, Eva’s daughter. She was very mature and incredibly self-aware for her young age, but she still had many juvenile characteristics which made her character seem so realistic. Audre and I shared a lot of similar traits when I was her age (at least from what I can remember), which made her character so enjoyable to me. Some of my other favourite characters were Cece, Eva’s editor, and Ty, one of Shane’s students. But of course, this story would not have been so great if I didn’t absolutely love Eva and Shane together as a couple, and as individuals. Eva and Shane are one of my favourite fictional couples ever, and each scene between them served as a masterclass for the perfect amount of lust, tension, and true love.

The writing style of this novel was one of my favourite aspects of it. Throughout the novel, there are many flashbacks to the time when Eva and Shane were high school lovers, and going through in immeasurable amount of harm and sadness. Both of them were addicts, and dealing with terrible home lives. At the same time, the reader is witnessing them re-connect after several years apart, and watching them fall for each other all over again as grown adults. The contrast between these two timelines was quite stark, but also very necessary to include to make sure that the reader understands how both characters have developed and grown immensely overtime.

Words truly cannot express how much I loved this book. I rated it 5/5 stars, but would’ve given it 500/5 if I could have! If this book interests you in any way, be sure to check it out at your local library or bookstore, as it releases in bookstores today! Thanks to HBG Canada for sending me a finished copy of this beautiful book!

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

Last year, I read Emily Henry’s 2020 release titled, BEACH READ, and I absolutely fell in love with it. It was my second-favourite book of 2020, and is one of my favourite books of all time. The review I wrote and published on my blog for the book was my favourite review I wrote last year, and still manages to get quite a few reads to this day! Needless to say, Henry’s 2021 publication, PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION, was my most anticipated book of this year. Over the past few weeks I have been in quite the reading slump, but this book managed to get me out of it, as I read the entirety in under 24 hours!

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong? (Synopsis from Goodreads.com)

Emily Henry has done it again! A fantastic book, with incredibly kind and relatable characters and a really great plot line. While I still like BEACH READ better, I actually prefer the characters in this book. Poppy and Alex were two characters that I could see being real-life friends with. They were written very successfully, as I could clearly picture them in my mind and place them in different groups of people that I have in my life. Poppy’s personality is very similar to mine, as she had a great sense of humour and always remembered every tiny detail of each trip she took with Alex. Alex is someone that I could definitely see being friends with. He had a very serious personality, but Poppy managed to bring out the best in him whenever they were together. By the end of the novel, I loved reading about his more soft and emotional side, as he went through a lot of character development over the 12-years that this story covers.

The entirety of this book centres around my absolute favourite romance trope, friends-to-lovers! Both Poppy and Alex were friends before romance sparks began, and like all friends-to-lovers romances, the angst and questioning was so delicious!

At the beginning of the story, I was actually quite unsure if this specific novel was appropriate to read during these times. One thing (among others) that the pandemic has taken from us is the ability to travel. Since this book essentially revolves around several different trips Alex and Poppy go on, I was really worried that this entire book was going to depress me, as it the travel aspect would overshadow the romance and make me feel sad. However, that was not the case! I really enjoyed the snippets of each trip the reader was exposed to throughout the story, and none of the trips made me feel lonely or miserable. Henry only focuses on one or two events per trip, so there is not an influx of unnecessary detail given to the reader. If anything, this book made me excited to go on vacations once we are safely able to do so!

The writing style and pacing of this novel was perfection. Emily Henry has fantastic writing abilities that seem to make all of the aspects of both her previous novel and this novel seem real. This book is written in first-person perspective in the voice of Poppy, which I always enjoyed reading from. I loved being able to go inside Poppy’s head throughout this story, which is why I always prefer first-person perspective in all of my romance reads!

All of that being said, the one element of the story that took down my rating was the ending. I found the ending to be quite rushed and anti-climactic. While all romance novels typically have the same ending, I knew what to expect from the ending. That being said, there are a few events that lead up to the conclusion that I felt were rushed and not as dramatic as they were leading up to be. I would have liked a bit more “shock value”, even the conclusion of the story was still satisfying overall.

Emily Henry introduces readers to two loveable characters that share a lifetime of memories that readers will not soon forget! I gave this book a 4.25/5 stars, and would recommend it to all travel lovers who need a dose of romance and travel in their reading life!

Good Night Book Owls!

Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

2021 is going to be a fantastic year for mystery/thriller releases, and I was so fortunate to receive an eARC of one of the most anticipated thrillers of the year, EVERY LAST FEAR by Alex Finlay!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

“They found the bodies on a Tuesday.” So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears.
After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why.
The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.
When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.

Even though I have read many mystery/thrillers over the past few years, I really enjoyed this one! Around the 55% mark of this book, I predicted the main plot twist, but I still found the overall evolution of the story/plot line very enjoyable.

This is a very complex mystery/thriller, so much so that if I had a very “type A” personality, I probably would have created a fancy character chart to keep track of who is attached to who and so on. That being said, if you’re not somebody who enjoys creating those while reading, you should still be able to keep track of the characters very well. I really enjoyed all of the characters in this story. The flashbacks with the Pine family were super interesting, and I found myself really caring about all of the main characters. Matt, the only surviving Pine son that is not in prison, is one of my new all-time favourite thriller characters. I really cared about his journey, and was rooting for him throughout the entirety of the novel. Sarah Keller, the FBI agent on this case, was my favourite character in this novel, as I found her character very compelling and layered.

The writing and pacing of this novel was excellent. This novel was written in my favourite narrative style, which is when a book is divided into chapters that focus on a single character, but are written in third-person. I’m not always a huge fan of first-person writing, so I always seem to enjoy this writing style a lot more. Additionally, I thought that the pacing of this book was great. I never found myself bored, and appreciated that each scene was important to the overall flow of this story.

Overall, I really enjoyed this new thriller, and rated it 4/5 stars. If you are interested in reading this book, it is available in bookstores today! Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel in exchange for a review.

Good Night Book Owls!