Thanks so much to the author, BookSparks, and Henry Holt & Company for the complimentary finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts and participation in this blog tour. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
TW : discussion of suicidal thoughts and attempts, drug use and abuse
“‘But seriously, I repeat: This is a work of fiction. That you might speculate as to the identity of certain key characters does not alter the fact that all of the characters in this book, including incidental ones, their names, the dialogue, the locales, and all of the events recounted, are fictional products of the author’s imagination. …’ – My publisher’s attorney”
Y’all, after starting with that disclaimer (or I should say pair of disclaimers, as that is the second one on the page – they are quite serious about telling people this book is fiction) I was really ready for a laugh out loud read. The author, Byron Lane, used to work as the personal assistant to Carrie Fischer, and this book is a fiction inspired by his time working with her.
Honestly, hearing that, I was hooked before I even picked up the book. That being said, it took me a bit of time to really get into this one. I enjoyed it once I got past about the first third of the book, but that first third was a bit slow in my opinion. I felt like I was kind of telling myself to just get through the beginning, and that once he started the job it would pick up. And it did for the most part, but that first third was just very slow for me, which definitely kept it from a 5 star read in my opinion.
All of that out of the way, let’s talk about what I liked about the book. Once I did get through that first third, I got much more of the laugh-out-loud read that I was expecting. At times it almost felt satirical – although it is hard to guess if that was the writing style, or if that just comes with telling a story about a celebrity as wild as Carrie Fischer was, fiction or otherwise. I loved getting to read about some of the strange interactions and shenanigans that these two characters got into, and getting to watch their weird relationship develop.
That being said, I didn’t really much enjoy the character of Kathi, the celebrity that our lead, Charlie, works with. Charlie on the other hand was a fairly enjoyable character, and I liked getting to read about his growth throughout the story as he started to really care for Kathi. But she was such a destructive character right from the beginning, and didn’t really show a ton of growth even up until the end of the book. Some, in the sense of growing her relationship with Charlie, but she was still that same destructive energy at the end that she was in the beginning – and not just towards herself, but in a few ways toward the people in her life as well.
Now, do I think that she was specifically written that way, and that it was on purpose on the author’s part? Honestly I do. I think that while he was working for Carrie Fischer he saw sides of her that we as the public, even as her fans, would never have had the opportunity to see. And maybe didn’t want to see. She was a real, and flawed, and deeply troubled person, not just a celebrity. And mot just Princess Leia. And while, yes, this is a work of fiction, you can tell that he was really writing from a real place, with real emotions, and real love and respect for her. And that is what I loved so much about this book.
Overall, I would recommend this read to my friends and fellow readers, and just tell them to work to get through that first third. In my opinion, the rest of the book made that first bit worth it. But I don’t think that you should go into this book expecting to get the insider-scoop, and come away with secrets about Carrie and her life. I think that you should go into this book expecting to get some laughs, and expecting to get a glimpse at some real emotion being put onto the page. I think that the best way to read this book is with a Coke Zero, and maybe in a stolen hotel bathrobe or something to make you feel ridiculously luxurious, but also a bit like you’re breaking the rules.
All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my blog at tacklingtbr.home.blog
This story was an absolute gem of a read! Once I saw that movie on Netflix I knew that I needed to go back and read the books! And honestly, I am so glad that I did. It was just so cute, and it absolutely drew me in and kept me wanting to read, even though I had already seen the movie. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything even though I was already pretty sure I knew where it was going, you know?
The characters in this story are seriously so sweet. And although my memory of young-adult me related to Laura Jean like crazy (slightly anxious hopeless romantic that reads romance novels and watches too much Golden Girls and Sixteen Candles? Hi, it’s 16 year old me), Kitty seriously stole the show in my opinion! This little sister was everything that I assume mine would be if I had one (what can I say, I’m the baby). She is super sassy and sometimes thinks that she’s much older and wiser than everyone else in the room, no matter who they are. I would keep reading these books just for more Kitty alone!
All in all I really enjoyed this sweet, quick read and can’t wait to read the other two books in the series. I would definitely recommend this book to friends or other readers who enjoyed the movies, or if they just need a quick, light read that they can get through in a weekend. I think the perfect place to read this book would be curled up staying nice and cozy in a beautiful ski lodge somewhere. I mean, that’s what Laura Jean would do, right?
All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
TW : very fat-phobic comments and situations, mention of sexual assault
You guys. I love watching The Bachelor and all of the spin-offs in the franchise. I do. I am not afraid to admit it. But that being said, I really wish that the franchise was so much more inclusive than it is currently. So this book is everything that I ever could have hoped for and more.
First, let’s talk about the way that this book tells this story. We do get a good portion of the story told from our female lead Bea’s perspective. Her thoughts and emotions, her conversations, her experiences, all of that. But we also get so many other types of story telling. We get some of Bea’s blog posts, conversations in a fantasy-football-type-group for the reality show that she is on, we get text and email conversations, we get online news articles, we get everything! I loved it so much. And it made this such a quick and easy read!
Now let’s talk about Bea. I loved her. She was such a strong a sassy woman, who you know has been through some real crap and come out the other side stronger and wiser, and by the time the story starts she is a boss-ass woman who doesn’t take other people’s shit. Mostly. Obviously she isn’t perfect as a character or as a feminist or whatever. She still gets caught up and lets people make her feel small sometimes. Sadly, who doesn’t? But I think watching her struggle through those moments when she couldn’t be strong, and still finding her way through them, made her all the more real and lovable. No one can be strong all of the time. And I loved getting to be a part of this journey with her. I would seriously read so many books about her and her blog and her life.
Overall I really, really loved this book. I can already tell that this is going to be a contender for my favorite read of 2020. It has moments that I was laughing out loud, it had moments that I was tearing up reading it, it had everything that I could have been looking for out of this read. It had some serious moments, some not so serious moments, and a really cool and bad-ass plus sized female lead. Honestly, I would recommend this book to just about everyone. Hey you, go read this book! I think that the perfect way to read this book is with a glass of wine, a group of girlfriends (maybe a book club?) and some really fun and trashy TV playing in the background.
All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
Listen to me discuss this book more in depth on the new episode of The Same Page Podcast, which will be released on Wednesday 9/30! Find us on iTunes and Apple Podcasts by searching The Same Page.
TW : steamy read, some medium strength language, estranged parent, some toxic masculinity
You guys. I am honestly so mad that I waited so long to read this one. This was almost a perfect read. This is the rom-com written specifically for romance readers, but that none romance readers would also potentially enjoy. So obviously, I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. I flew through this book in two sittings.
One thing that I really liked about this book was how it took the “second-chance romance” trope on it’s head a bit. When you pick up a second-chance romance book it typically involves a first love coming back and becoming your new co-worker, or the boy who broke your heart accidentally becoming your next door neighbor, or the like. And I love those books and stories. Who doesn’t at least once in their lives daydream about what it would be like it *that* ex happened to come back into our lives, see us thriving, and realize what a fool they were for letting us go? I have definitely been there. But coming at the idea of a second-chance romance from the perspective of a couple who is technically still “together,” since they are still married, was a really interesting way to change it up! I loved seeing this different side of that trope that I already love.
All in all, I seriously loved this book. Like, not only would I recommend it, but I want to make my husband and my friends and also just about everyone else in my life read this. I mean it, I really loved it. I would have started reading the second book the next day if I had a copy of it already. I can’t wait to read the second book, and I can’t wait for the third book in the series to come out. I think that this book should be read under a cozy blanket with a beer (or something equally stereo-typically “manly”) in the early evening.
Hi there, friends! I read both of these awesome books back in July as a part of the Reading Rush, but I never got around to posting my reviews! Since I read them both so close together, practically one right after the other, I decided to just include both reviews in the same blog post. Let me know if you like this format for series that I may fly through like that in the future as well!
Now, without further ado, let’s jump into those reviews!
All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown – Review: 5 stars
TW: chronic pain, discussion of emotional abuse
This was such a fun enemies-to-lovers read! I think my favorite thing about this read was the characters. Chloe was such a charming female lead! She is a young woman dealing with chronic pain, and trying to reinvent her life after a near death experience. And sure, maybe we can’t all relate to that exact story line, we’ve all gone through some sort of reinvention throughout our lives, which made hers a really fun and sweet story to follow. I also really loved the brief interactions that we got with Chloe’s sisters. They seemed like the three of them would have been hilarious to grow up with! All three of them are sassy, witty, and strong women that honestly, I kind of wished I was related to. I’m so glad that the next two books in the series follow her sisters, so that I get to spend time with each of them!
I do want to say that I love how it handles the diversity of it’s characters – basically never is the fact that the female lead, Chloe, is a person of color a main plot point in the way that a lot of stories make it when they are aiming to tell diverse stories. And I don’t mean that in a negative way at all – the stories with race at the center are also incredibly important, and I think that people should be reading more of them. But this wasn’t one of those stories, it was a contemporary romance. Her race wasn’t something that seemed like it needed to be explained or made relevant, she just was who she was, and looked how she did, and it felt subconscious as I was reading it, just like it would if you were reading a similar story with a white character in the lead. And while I love reading black stories where the race of the person in the lead may be a key factor in the plot (and again, I think it is important to read those stories as well to get more perspective), I also love this sort of diversity and representation. I think both types of representation are incredibly important – the struggles that people of color face every day, and stories like this that could just as easily be about our own best friend.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a next contemporary romance read! You may be able to guess how the story goes before you necessarily get to the ending, but the journey to get there is so sweet and engaging that I don’t think they would regret the read at all. I think that the perfect setting to read this book would be taking a page out of Chloe’s book – some really comfy pajamas (maybe even a onesie!) and with lots and lots of dark chocolate at the ready.
Take a Hint, Dani Brown – Review: 5 Stars
TW : character processing grief, anxiety attacks
Oh. My. GOSH. I think I’m in love with the Brown sisters. Truly. I really loved Get a Life, Chloe Brown and thought that there was no way the sequel could top it (I mean, sequels are never as good, right?) but I almost think I might like Take a Hint, Dani Brown even better! Or maybe I just want to be Danika Brown when I grow up. Yeah, that might be part of it too.
Dani Brown is a bisexual, full-figured, bad-ass of a woman of color, and dang if she doesn’t know it! She is such a strong and confident character that she was almost addicting to read about – I absolutely needed to know what was going to happen to her next, and I needed to immediately get to the end to make sure she would get her Happily Ever After. Now throw Zafir into the mix, and it was a really great friends-to-lovers and fake-dating story! I think Zafir is definitely my latest book boyfriend. He is a former professional athlete and hopeless romantic with a heart of gold, who reads romance novels and runs his own charity. Ummm what? I loved him. And getting to see this story from both of their perspectives was so much fun, getting to see all of their sassy banter and clashing personalities meld with their intense sexual tension to create a really charming and steamy romance that I just couldn’t get enough of. And I mean it when I say steamy. I would say it is about a 4 out of 5 on the steamy scale.
I also really loved the parts of this story that circled around social media, since that is why they initially start their fake-dating journey. We get to see a couple of the comments that people are leaving on posts about them, and watch them give an interview to see if they are really #CoupleGoals, and it was all just so very sweet. I honestly just devoured this book.
Overall I would definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone looking for a fun contemporary romance that they could potentially read and finish in a weekend. I can’t wait for the last book in the series to come out! You know I’m going to be buying and reading it that same night! I would say that the perfect way to read this book would be with a big cup of tea (or glass of wine, both good) in your favorite over-sized t-shirt and in your favorite spot on the couch. Just make sure that you get comfy, because if you’re like me you won’t want to put it down!
Thanks so much to the author, BookSparks, and Chronical Prism Publishing for the complimentary finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts and participation in this blog tour. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my Goodreads.
Synopsis from Goodreads:
In just seven years, Jaime Schmidt went from making natural products in her Portland, Oregon kitchen to turning her brand into a household name and selling her company in a nine-figure acquisition. Supermaker is her guide to business and career development on your own terms.
Through unfiltered storytelling and instructive takeaways, the acclaimed entrepreneur, founder of Schmidt’s Naturals, and icon of the Maker Movement shares how you too can start or grow your own business with her secrets on marketing, sales growth, product development, customer engagement, scaling operations, and partnerships.
Following Jaime’s journey from market stand to global brand, readers will take away:
• The keys to establishing a financially successful business for entrepreneurs and professionals ready to go from maker to magnate. • Tactical approaches to branding, PR, sales, marketing, culture development, and team management. • Candid advice and storytelling from an industry disruptor and proven executive.
Following her growth from kitchen to acquisition, Supermaker is a riveting mix of inspiration, the honest airing of mistakes, and indispensable instruction.
• A go-to guide for the passion-to-profit journey. • The perfect read for aspiring entrepreneurs, makers, creatives, and anyone with an interest in selling their products online, retail strategy, or digital marketing. • Great for anyone who enjoyed Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie, Craft, Inc: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco, and The Girls’ Guide to Starting Your Own Business: Candid Advice, Frank Talk, and True Stories for the Successful Entrepreneur by Caitlin Friedman.
Review: (3 Stars)
I was so excited to jump into this book! Last year, in December 2019, I started my own small shop on Etsy, and it has been a crazy just under a year trying to figure it out as I went along. So I was so excited to be chosen to be a part of the blog tour for this book, and learn all of the things that Jaime had done early on in her business’s life, and how she made it what it is now.
I flew through the first half of the book, because I found it all so fascinating. The stories about her starting at craft fairs and farmers markets, to going in to her local shops to learn the process of getting her products on those first store shelves. Watching her in the middle of the learning process that is a constant once you pass the moment of “I like making this product, and I think that people would be interested in buying it” and are trying to figure out what comes next and what you would like the future of that business to look like. I got some answers to a few questions that I have had in my own experiences, and some answers to a few questions that I didn’t know that I had, and even a few answers to questions that I haven’t gotten far enough in my process yet to have been curious about.
All of that being said, once I got into about the second half of this book I hit a bit of a wall that I found myself really having to push through to the finish line and the last chapter. And that is nothing against the book, but I think that at this point in my own process only the first half of the book was really aimed at me and my business. Let me start off this portion by saying that we have very different types of businesses, Jaime and I, so it wasn’t like the whole book was going to be a one to one comparison. But more so than that, about halfway through the book is when she and her business really started to blow up – being able to shop it at target, moving into really large production spaces, hiring more and more staff members, etc. And that just isn’t a place that I see myself ever going with my own business. The biggest I could ever see my shop, in my absolute wildest dreams for my business, would be a small storefront with myself and at most one other person selling things that are still each made by my own hand. So by the time the book was all about her bringing in business partners and giving interviews on television, or being mentioned by celebrities in magazines, it just became a little bit more difficult for me to get through and I ended up finding myself putting it down in favor of my other reads.
Overall I would say that this was a fairly interesting book, written very narratively, and with lots of categorized tips and tricks from someone who made something really huge and international truly out of nothing. I would say that this book may be more interesting for you if you see yourself wanting to really take your business and make it something very big like Jaime did. Otherwise, if you’re a small business like me, maybe you’ll get more out of the first half than the second half. I am very glad that I read it, and there are a few tips and bits of inspiration that I have taken from the book since having read it. So if you are in that situation, it will just be up to you to decide for yourself if it is something worth picking up and reading, if you will potentially only be getting the information out of that one half.
About the Author (from Goodreads):
Jaime Schmidt is the acclaimed entrepreneur, investor, and Maker Movement icon that started out making natural products in her kitchen, and in short time, grew her brand into 30,000+ stores and sold it in a nine-figure acquisition.
Suffice to say, she’s got quite the story to tell. Not only about how she did it, but all the unbelievable twists and turns along the way that threatened to sink her business.
Through unfiltered storytelling and instructive takeaways learned during her growth from maker to magnate, Supermaker shares Jaime’s secrets to financial success, marketing, operations, sales growth, product development, PR, partnerships, and customer engagement.
Following Jaime from kitchen to acquisition, Supermaker: Crafting Business on Your Own Terms is a riveting mix of inspiration, the honest airing of mistakes, and indispensable instruction.
Thanks so much to the author and BookSparks for the gifted finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest review and participation in the end of summer #SRC2020 blog tour. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my blog at tacklingtbr.home.blog
TW : attempted murder, kidnapping, self-harm, death of a child, childhood trauma, gaslighting
This was a really interesting and thrilling read – a read that kept me up way past my bedtime on my last night because I needed to finish it and know how it ended before I went to sleep. It started out as a bit of a slow burn, and it took me a little while to really feel drawn in, but once the hook really got me the pages practically turned themselves, and I devoured the last half of the book.
Lets talk characters. Basically none of the characters in this book (aside from Aurelia, she’s just a child) seemed like objectively good people all the way through. Not even Emily, who is the heroine of the story. Even if the intentions had been good from the beginning, everyone had things going on, things they had done or ways that they were treating people, that seemed a bit questionable. And I think that this made all of the characters that much more interesting to read. Now obviously Emily is the most “traditionally good” character (I just think she could have been better to her parents. She was kind of a jerk to them every time we saw her interact with them, and I don’t know that I think they deserved that), and I enjoyed getting to see the story unfold through her eyes. But it isn’t only told through her point of view, we also get the husband Scott’s perspective as well, which made some of the slightly slower parts read a bit faster than they could have. His chapters felt a little bit like a peak at the wizard behind the curtain, since you know from the beginning that he is at the very least aware of whatever is happening, but at the same time he doesn’t really reveal anything so you still get to uncover the secrets along with Emily.
Now, I will say that I guessed the ending pretty early on. About 1/3 of the way into the book I turned to my husband and said “I feel like its either going to be A or B” and it ended up being the second option that I gave him. So if you are a reader that doesn’t like being able to guess the ending, then know going in that it may be a problem for you with this particular book. But that being said, I personally didn’t find that it drastically changed my enjoyment of the reading process. It just felt more like the book was confirming my theories, rather than being surprised by what was happening.
All in all, I would recommend this book to my friends. There are a few pretty serious trigger warnings attached to this read (see above), and I even found myself a bit affected by some of them closer to the end of the book while I was reading (even though none of them related to anything I have personally experienced, so I wasn’t quite sure why) so just be aware of that before jumping in. I think that the perfect way to read this book would be with a delicious, fancy wine (possibly a glass, possibly the whole bottle) by a pool or some other beautiful body of water. I mean, come on. Ignoring all of the crazy, thriller-y shenanigans, Querencia seems like a perfect place to spend a summer.
Thanks so much to the author, Libro.fm, and Dreamscape Media for the complimentary advanced audio copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my blog at tacklingtbr.home.blog
TW : estranged parent, discussion of cancer
This book was so much fun! As far as tropes go, fake-dating to real-romance isn’t one that I typically go out of my way to reach for, but I tend to read a good amount of them anyway. And this was a really fun example of it! This book made me laugh out loud in more than one place, and it gave me feels in a few other places as well.
The characters are far from perfect, but that is what I loved so much about them. Luc is a deeply flawed and troubled character, but it made him so much for fun to read than someone that you can only aspire to relate to. As for Oliver, he is the type of character that on the surface seems perfect but slowly becomes less perfect as the book goes on, which was also really fun. I thought that the chemistry was pretty believable, even if the arrangement that began the relationship seemed less than realistic. But as less-than-realistic as it could be, there were enough moments that felt really, truly raw and human that it made the relationship so much more believable, and that made it something that as I listened I needed to learn more about and see what happened next for them.
Let’s talk secondary characters. Luc’s mom (and his mom’s curry, equally a character in my eyes) almost stole the whole show for me. The scenes at her house were just so funny! It really felt like I remember feeling when I would bring boys home for dinner with my family – it was embarrassing, it was silly, and sometimes it was even difficult to get through. These scenes read just those same ways, and made them some of my favorite parts of the whole book!
Luc’s friends are also very big parts of the story, but they weren’t always quite as much fun as his mom was, at least in my opinion. You could tell that Luc had pushed his friends to the side a bit in recent years, and maybe hadn’t fostered those relationships in a healthy way, and so his friends seemed a bit “over it” with everything until the end of the story. I think we’ve all had at least one friendship where that has happened – maybe you or your friend got really drawn in to a relationship, and by the time that relationship ended the friendship had suffered because of it. That made the friendships feel fairly realistic, but it just wasn’t as much fun to read as the mom scenes. And that’s nothing against the writing, only saying that until the relationships with his friends thawed a bit (I would say about 3/4 of the way through the book) they just weren’t the characters whose scenes I looked forward to. Except for Alex, Luc’s innocent and incredibly gullible co-worker. He was hilarious and I want to know everything there is to know about him.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this story! I would recommend reading it, but I might specifically recommend the audiobook – the narrator’s voice was so soothing and nice to listen to, and his different voices to make each of the characters distinctly different were really great. Also, bonus point, if you listen to the audio you get to listen to the British accents. Which is always a good thing in my book! I think that the perfect setting to listen to this book in would be on an afternoon that you decide to take a long drive through somewhere beautiful just for the fun of it.
All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
TW: loss of a loved one, depression, use of medications, mention of miscarriage, grief
This book was a roller coaster of emotions that I was not quite prepared for when I picked it up. Sometimes when I am reading a book for a book club discussion, or if I’ve heard enough of my friends telling me that I have to read it, then I won’t always look much into the book before I read it. And sometimes, like was the case with Lydia Bird, I barely even read the synopsis on the back before I picked it up. So I wasn’t necessarily prepared for all of the emotional turmoil that this book would bring up. So what I would say for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, is read the description before you decide to read it, and make sure it’s something that you’re in the mood for!
I thought Lydia was a really interesting character, and I enjoyed getting to see the different sides of her depending on what she was feeling or experiencing. This book is split into chapters of when she is awake and in the real world, and chapters of when she is asleep and experiencing some sort of parallel version of reality. Because of that we got to meet two different versions of almost all of the other characters as well. Sometimes it was hard to decide if I was enjoying the asleep or awake chapters better, and every once in a while I even had to remind myself that they were two separate “worlds” and storylines. But they were written in such a way that it wasn’t usually too difficult to remember which reality she was in.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for a bit of a heavier read. This is definitely a book that you will want to take your time with, to really think about and sink your teeth into as you read, so I wouldn’t recommend that people try to read it entirely in a weekend. It was a beautiful and interesting story about a woman’s journey through loss and grief, her great love, and if she will be able to get that part of her back again. I would say the perfect setting to read this book would be cuddled under a blanket with your love, and with a very large glass of wine. With all of the emotions in this book, you’ll probably need it!
Thanks so much to the authors and publishers of these amazing books, as well as to Booksparks, for these complimentary finished copies in exchange for my honest thoughts and participation in this blog tour. { partner } All opinions are entirely my own. All of my reviews and tours can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.
Emily Proudman just lost her acting agent, her job, and her apartment in one miserable day.
Emily is desperate.
Scott Denny, a successful and charismatic CEO, has a problem that neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can fix. Until he meets Emily.
Emily is perfect.
Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn’t play along, the consequences could be deadly.
Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downs’s debut is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell.
Welcome to paradise…will you ever be able to leave?
About the Author (From Goodreads):
ANNA DOWNES was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, but now lives just north of Sydney, Australia with her husband and two children. She worked as an actress before turning her attention to writing. She was shortlisted for the Sydney Writers Room Short Story Prize (2017) and longlisted for the Margaret River Short Story Competition (2018). The Safe Place was inspired by Anna’s experiences working as a live-in housekeeper on a remote French estate in 2009-10.
Link to Purchase on Amazon:
Friends & Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
(Check back here for my full review, to be added later!)
Book Description from Goodreads:
An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post‘s Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Pick).
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.
Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.
About the Author (from Goodreads):
J. Courtney Sullivan is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Commencement, Maine, The Engagements, and Saints For All Occasions. Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. The Engagements was one of People Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2013 and an Irish Times Best Book of the Year. It is soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon and distributed by Fox 2000, and it will be translated into 17 languages. Saints For All Occasions, was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Washington Post, a New York Times Critic’s Pick for 2017, and a New England Book Award nominee. Her fifth novel, Friends and Strangers, will be published in June 2020. Courtney’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, Real Simple, and O: The Oprah Magazine, among many others. She is a co-editor, with Courtney Martin, of the essay anthology Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. In 2017, she wrote the forewords to new editions of two of her favorite children’s books: Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. A Massachusetts native, Courtney now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
From Michele Campbell, the bestselling author of It’s Always the Husband comes a new blockbuster thriller in The Wife Who Knew Too Much.
Tabitha Girard had her heart broken years ago by Connor Ford. He was preppy and handsome. She was a pool girl at his country club. Their affair should have been a summer fling. But it meant everything to Tabitha.
Years later, Connor comes back into Tabitha’s life—older, richer, and desperately unhappy. He married for money, a wealthy, neurotic, controlling woman whom he never loved. He has always loved Tabitha.
When Connor’s wife Nina takes her own life, he’s free. He can finally be with Tabitha. Nina’s home, Windswept, can be theirs. It seems to be a perfect ending to a fairy tale romance that began so many years ago. But then, Tabitha finds a diary. “I’m writing this to raise an alarm in the event of my untimely death,” it begins. “If I die unexpectedly, it was foul play, and Connor was behind it. Connor—and her.”
Who is Connor Ford? Why did he marry Nina? Is Tabitha his true love, or a convenient affair? As the police investigate Nina’s death, is she a convenient suspect?
As Tabitha is drawn deeper into the dark glamour of a life she is ill-prepared for, it becomes clear to her that what a wife knows can kill her.
About the Author (from Goodreads):
Michele Campbell is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School and a former federal prosecutor in New York City who specialized in international narcotics and gang cases.
A while back, she said goodbye to her big-city legal career and moved with her husband and two children to an idyllic New England college town a lot like Belle River in IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND. Since then, she has spent her time teaching criminal and constitutional law and writing novels.
She’s had many close female friends, a few frenemies, and only one husband, who – to the best of her knowledge – has never tried to kill her.
A hilariously heartfelt novel about living life at full force, and discovering family when you least expect it, influenced in part by the author’s time as Carrie Fisher’s beloved assistant.
Charlie Besson is about to have an insane job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon. THE Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s worst dressed list. She needs an assistant. He needs a hero.
Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and an award winning actress, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in the iconic blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known for another role: crazy Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Fabulously so.
Charlie gets the job, and embarks on an odyssey filled with late night shopping sprees, last minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows, Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own leading role?
Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane’s A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.
In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She’s grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she’d like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.
Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son’s happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.
Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.
Link to Purchase on Amazon:
The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder
(Check back here for my full review, to be added later!)
Book Description from Goodreads:
For readers of Warlight and The Invisible Bridge, an intimate, harrowing story about a family of German citizens during World War II.
In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right-he is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max’s condition. Meanwhile, miles away, her younger son Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home.
The Vanishing Sky is a World War II novel as seen through a German lens, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family’s participation-involuntary, unseen, or direct-in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father’s time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family.
About the Author (from Goodreads):
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado Springs.
Her first novel The Vanishing Sky (Bloomsbury, July 2020) is inspired by events in her own family history.
Her story collection Rise came out in 2012. Her short stories have been included in the Pushcart Prize anthology and the PEN/O. Henry Prize anthology and have been performed on Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts.”
Link to Purchase on Amazon:
The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O’Neal
(Check back here for my full review, to be added later!)
Book Description from Goodreads:
From the Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids comes a story of four generations of women grappling with family betrayals and long-buried secrets.
It’s been years since Zoe Fairchild has been to the small Devon village of her birth, but the wounds she suffered there still ache. When she learns that her old friend and grandmother’s caretaker has gone missing, Zoe and her fifteen-year-old daughter return to England to help.
Zoe dreads seeing her estranged mother, who left when Zoe was seven to travel the world. As the four generations of women reunite, the emotional pain of the past is awakened. And to complicate matters further, Zoe must also confront the ex-boyfriend she betrayed many years before.
Anxieties spike when tragedy befalls another woman in the village. As the mystery turns more sinister, new grief melds with old betrayal. Now the four Fairchild women will be tested in ways they couldn’t imagine as they contend with dangers within and without, desperate to heal themselves and their relationships with each other.
About the Author (from Goodreads):
Barbara O’Neal is the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling writer of women’s fiction. She lives in Colorado with her partner, a British endurance athlete.
Tackling TBR 