It's that time of year to start rushing to finish your reading goals!
I finished my goal back in March but it has been fun to see how many books I can read in a year if I hyper-focus on it!
This month was a good month for books! I have a lot of 5 star books, I can't remember the last time I had a 5 star rating this year (I'm joking I totally do - back in October.)
The following books have mostly been book club books, and have been enjoyable! For once they're not WWII-related, which is a nice break.
Enjoy my monthly reads and I hope my writing has improved!
Title: Survive the Night
Author: Riley Sager
Pages: 325
Rating: 4
Published: June 29, 2021
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Charlie is coping with a loss and needs to get out of town. Fast. She gets a ride with a man she's never met before and hell breaks loose.
This is the first book I've read by Riley Sager and initially, I wasn't enjoying this book but once I got to the end I ended up enjoying it.
What I enjoyed most about Survive the Night was that Charlie was a very unreliable narrator due to her coping mechanism to stress. Charlie has a hard time perceiving what is reality and what is a movie that's playing out before her. This crutch makes the events in the book adds an extra bit of danger to the situation since she can't be relied upon to be telling the truth.
What I didn't like about this book was the reason why the killer kills and chose their victims. It felt like it was forced due to how the villain had been described for most of the novel and their relationship with Charlie. I should have seen the twist coming but I didn't. The person you think is the villain you end up relating to the most.
Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to someone that wants a quick thriller.
Title: The Lost Apothecary
Author: Sarah Penner
Pages: 301
Rating: 5
Published: March 2, 2021
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Caroline and her husband have plans to go to London to celebrate their 10 year wedding anniversary; unfortunately only Caroline ends up going. The trip turns into a discovery of a small vial with a crude bear etched into it.
In the 18th century, Nella dispenses poisons to women that have been wronged by men. She gets into a predicament when a very wealthy patron comes in to purchase poison to kill her husband's mistress. This vial makes a dramatic journey through time until Caroline finds it in the banks of the Thames.
Caroline becomes obsessed with discovering the lost apothecary that the vial came from. With this obsession, she relearns a lot about herself that is outside of her failing marriage. In the process of discovering the apothecary, she is also discovering herself.
I listened to this book on audio and I really enjoyed the narrators. Some of the parts seemed super impossible but it was still a cute story of protecting women and self-discovery in different centuries.
Title: If We Were Villains
Author: M.L. Rio
Pages: 368
Rating: 5
Published: April 17, 2018
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Oliver and the six 4th year acting students live and breathe Shakespeare. At Delecher the 4th years are considered acting gods and they act it as well. But everything goes wrong when one of their own goes AWOL and starts abusing his fellow cast members. When the AWOL actor shows up dead in the lake, who out of the 7 were responsible?
This book spans 10 years and you view the story from Oliver's point of view. It starts with Oliver's release from prison and going back to the school where he was arrested for murder. He meets up with the cop that put him in prison to finally tell the truth about what happened that Halloween night ten years prior.
This book sucks you in and takes you through many twists and turns, making you question who was responsible for the murder of their fellow actor.
This book is a reread for me for book club and I love it more this time around than I did when I read it.
Title: You Had Me At Hola
Author: Alexis Daria
Pages: 387
Rating: 5
Published: August 4, 2020
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Jasmine is a rising Latinx telenovela star who is getting her big break as the lead role in a woman power telenovela. Her love interest in the show is starred by a world-famous telenovela actor, Ashton.
Throughout the shooting of the episodes, Jasmine is having a hard time connecting with Ashton due to him disappearing to his changing room after every scene. She confronts him one day and started to get him to open up. But Ashton is holding on to a big secret that has him terrified of reporters and fans. Will their blooming romance survive the secret?
I truly enjoyed listening to this book! The story was engaging and the characters were complex and had real-life problems, they weren't over the top telenovela issues. They were legitimate issues that would test any relationship.
I can't wait to read more about the Primas of Power and continue loving strong Latina women's books.
Title: The Fastest Way to Fall
Author: Denise Williams
Pages: 370
Rating: 5 stars
Published: November 2, 2021
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This novel is for every curvy girl who doesn't think they are loveable due to the shape of their body. This novel shows that it is okay to love your body, no matter what your size is.
Britta works for an online magazine and is desperate to get the last writing spot and move on from being an editor. She gets an idea approved about trying out a new fitness app that has a personal coach for each member, and the company is all about body positivity and does not focus on weight loss.
In the process, she meets Wes, her new fitness coach. They start chatting via the fitness app, then eventually move to a texting app, to giving each other their personal phone numbers. Their relationship kicks up a notch when Britta texts Wes for help and he rescues her from a nasty fall. After this rescue, they start seeing more and more of each other and fight their inner demons together.
This novel is a slow-burn romance and so worth it. Wes is everything you want in a love interest; super in shape, kind, a little troubled with his past, and oh so loveable.
Title: The Mistletoe Secret
Author: Richard Paul Evans
Pages: 242
Published: November 15, 2016
Rating: 1
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You can see why this book was turned into a Hallmark movie - it has all the fixings: two bitterly divorced people, love interest lives in the middle of nowhere where it snows and everybody knows each other, falling in love really fast and during Christmas.
Alex is recovering from a nasty divorce and on a night he couldn't sleep he found a blog written by a woman who writes about loneliness and how lonely she is. He decides that he is in love with this blogger and wants to meet her in person. He discovers that she lives in Montana and flies out there to find her. In the traditional Hallmark-style, he ends up finding his blogger and they fall in love.
This book was okay. It was a super quick read and it was a cute concept for a story. This is probably the one case where the movie may be better than the book.
Title: In Five Years
Author: Rebecca Serle
Pages: 266
Published: March 10, 2020
Rating: 2.5
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Dannie is a lawyer in New York that has her life planned out to the minute detail. She gets engaged to the man of her dreams and gets a dream job at the biggest corporate law firm. On the night she gets engaged she has a dream that takes place on December 15, 2025, and she finds herself in a different apartment with a different man. She wakes up from the dream and her life is turned upside down.
The story jumps to the summer of 2025 and Dannie and her fiance are still not married because she is still panicked about the dream she had 5 years prior. During the summer she receives devastating news about her best friend that turns her life upside down. Nothing is clear to Dannie anymore and her life feels like it's falling apart.
This book was marketed as a romance book but it's not the romance you're expecting. This honestly shouldn't be considered a romance book at all - it's all about the friendship between Dannie and her friend. I usually love a story with a strong female friendship but this one just feels like the love story was a con to get people to read the book.
Title: Seven Days of Us
Author: Francesca Hornak
Pages: 377
Published: October 16, 2018
Rating: 4
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The Birch family is forced into quarantine over Christmas when the eldest daughter, Olivia, came back from treating plague victims in Liberia. In forced proximity, Olivia, her sister Phoebe, and mom and dad (Andrew and Emma), secrets come out, and family dynamics change drastically when an unexpected guest barges into their quarantine.
This book surprised me in so many ways, I honestly didn't think I was going to like it but I really enjoyed it
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