en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 07:26:01 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 52588078
When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.]]> 432 Elin Hilderbrand 0316420042 Vanessa 5 4.12 2020
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
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]]> 13356706 THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Ěý
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

--back cover]]> 407 J.R.R. Tolkien 0547928211 Vanessa 5 4.44 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 61340209 The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.

Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.]]> 144 Olga Ravn 0811234827 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.73 2018
author: Olga Ravn
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8337
Little House in the Big Woods takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She shares the cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their lovable dog, Jack.

Pioneer life isn’t easy for the Ingalls family, since they must grow or catch all their own food as they get ready for the cold winter. But they make the best of every tough situation. They celebrate Christmas with homemade toys and treats, do their spring planting, bring in the harvest in the fall, and make their first trip into town. And every night, safe and warm in their little house, the sound of Pa’s fiddle lulls Laura and her sisters into sleep.

The nine books in the timeless Little House series tell the story of Laura’s real childhood as an American pioneer, and are cherished by readers of all generations. They offer a unique glimpse into life on the American frontier, and tell the heartwarming, unforgettable story of a loving family.]]> 224 Laura Ingalls Wilder 0060885378 Vanessa 4 childrens-books 4.21 1932
author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1932
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: childrens-books
review:

]]> 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Vanessa 4 4.08 2019
author: Ann Patchett
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
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]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Vanessa 5 4.61 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
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]]> 15096164
WHY CAN'T HE MAKE CONTACT WITH HIS FAMILY IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD? WHY DOESN'T ANYONE BELIEVE HE IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS? AND WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF THE ELECTRIFIED FENCES ENCIRCLING THE TOWN? ARE THEY KEEPING THE RESIDENTS IN? OR SOMETHING ELSE OUT?

Each step toward the truth takes Ethan further from the world he knows, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.....]]> 307 Blake Crouch 1612183956 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.93 2012
author: Blake Crouch
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Vanessa 0 4.15 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
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]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.Ěý

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Vanessa 0 memoir 4.24 2024
author: Ina Garten
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: memoir
review:
Loved it! Love food memoirs and interesting people. Ina has lived an incredible life, and remains down to earth.
]]> 48855
In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe� of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
--back cover]]> 283 Anne Frank Vanessa 0 currently-reading, nonfiction 4.19 1947
author: Anne Frank
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, nonfiction
review:

]]> 207298822
“Sharing food is one of the purest human acts.�

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.

Now, in What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating—in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.

Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable to the comfortingly domestic and to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialised in this diary are a prism for him to reflect on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks—and mourns—the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and steels himself for what is to come.

Whether it’s duck a l’orange eaten with fellow actors and cooked by singing Carmelite nuns, steaks barbequed at a gathering with friends, or meatballs made by his mother and son and shared at the table with three generations of his family, these meals give shape and add emotional richness to his days.

What I Ate in One Year is a funny, poignant, heartfelt, and deeply satisfying serving of memories and meals and an irresistible celebration of the profound role that food plays in all our lives.]]> 368 Stanley Tucci 1668055686 Vanessa 0 nonfiction 3.85 2024
author: Stanley Tucci
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: nonfiction
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]]> 50398 Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody." Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

The story's unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.

Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is a lighthearted, yet unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.]]> 260 Jane Austen 1593082649 Vanessa 3 3.85 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1817
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
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]]> 61812422 New York Times BestsellerĚý

The long-awaited next book from actress and New York Times bestselling author of The Rural Diaries, Hilarie Burton Morgan. Through memoir essays and magical practices, Grimoire Girl connects us to the enchantment that exists inside us all.

Since childhood, Hilarie Burton Morgan has felt the call to record, keep, and catalogue life in all its strange wonder. It was a whimsical habit, with no clear goal. And then, when she became a mother, the importance of all that collecting snapped into focus.Ěý

In an effort to patchwork together an anthology of traditions, curiosity, and magical thinking that she could pass down, Burton Morgan realized she was crafting a grimoire.Ěý

In her most intimate book yet, Burton Morgan shares how she’s creating an inheritance of mischief and magic that will outlive her. What’s more, she shows readers how they too can look at the elements of their lives and collect the pieces into a tangible collection of a lifetime of learning. Because in its purest form, a grimoire was a guide to keep you alive.

Like the grimoires of old, full of life-saving wisdom, these pages record the people, places, ideas and habits that have kept Burton Morgan alive, in her signature voice that is at once honest, witty, and charming. Accompanied by whimsical two-color illustrations by Olivia Faust, the book also includes Simple Spells, which are ways to bring magic into your daily create an altar that delights and inspires, practice candle magic and poetry spells, make an oracle deck, or channel your inner kitchen witch with recipes and potions.

So begin creating your own inheritance, take a long look inward and decide...

What wisdom will be written on the pages of your Grimoire?]]> 222 Hilarie Burton Morgan 0063222760 Vanessa 0 to-read 4.19 2023
author: Hilarie Burton Morgan
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208840265 A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.

In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.

An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders� assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership� were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.

Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.]]> 303 Bethany Joy Lenz 1668067307 Vanessa 0 memoir 4.27 2024
author: Bethany Joy Lenz
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: memoir
review:
Fascinating. I don't rate memoirs but would recommend this one.
]]> 44890084 352 Tom Selleck 0062945769 Vanessa 0 memoir 3.77 2024
author: Tom Selleck
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Vanessa 4 3.98 2024
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
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]]> 123087784 The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.�

With fifty-two original color artworks by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world.]]> 270 Margaret Renkl 1954118465 Vanessa 0 nonfiction 4.17 2023
author: Margaret Renkl
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: nonfiction
review:

]]> 209711470
Ěý]]> 288 Pamela Anderson 0316573485 Vanessa 5 nonfiction 4.32
author: Pamela Anderson
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: nonfiction
review:

]]> 52623750 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593189481.

An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.]]> 241 Katherine May Vanessa 0 nonfiction, to-read 3.82 2020
author: Katherine May
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: nonfiction, to-read
review:

]]> 57233514 here

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •ĚýLook for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.
Ěý
In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.�
Ěý
Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart.
Ěý
Praise for Summer Sisters
Ěý
“Compulsively readable . . . [Blume’s] powers are prodigious.��The New York Times Book Review
Ěý
“As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing �How Sweet It Is.� You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.��Chicago Tribune
Ěý
“An exceptionally moving story that can leave the reader laughing and crying . . . sometimes at the same time . . . Blume creates a rich tapestry of characters.��The Denver Post
Ěý
“Blume’s characters still tend to hover after the book is set aside. . . . She catches perfectly the well-armored love between longtime female friends.��The Seattle Times]]> 399 Judy Blume 0385337663 Vanessa 3 3.78 1998
author: Judy Blume
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
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]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante Vanessa 4 4.08 2011
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 176443541 Based on her "Modern Love" piece ("She Put Her Unspent Love in a Cardboard Box"), this extraordinary memoir tells the astonishing story of a mother's last gifts to her daughter, and the wisdom and love she bestowed upon her from beyond the grave.

Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when Gwen was just three years old. Defying the odds, she lived another eight years—during which time she filled a chest with gifts and letters to Gwen and her brother, Jamie, for every major milestone and birthday through age thirty. The day Gwen got her driver's license. The day she graduated from high school. Gwen is now in her thirties and, when Did I Ever Tell You? begins, three unopened boxes remain: engagement, marriage, and first baby. Two decades after her passing, Gwen's mother's extraordinary efforts created a lifelong conversation beyond the grave.

Did I Ever Tell You? is Crying in H Mart meets The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs. This is not just a gorgeously written mother-daughter story. It's also the story of a family riven by grief and mental illness, and a story of a young woman's navigation through both. It's a book about family and legacy; and it's one that emphatically declares, as Gwen's mother does in a particularly powerful letter, that "Love is stronger than death."]]> 288 Genevieve Kingston 1668006294 Vanessa 0 memoir 4.29 2024
author: Genevieve Kingston
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> 207298106 Brought to you by Penguin.

Beloved award-winning actress Kelly Bishop, famous for playing the iconic Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls , finally tells the whole story of her six decades in show business.

Kelly Bishop’s storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing, but it is probably her role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.
Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future, sharing some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.
Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and powerful memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades.

]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 Vanessa 0 memoir 4.35 2024
author: Kelly Bishop
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: memoir
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]]> 110391 Librarian note: See alternate cover editions here and here.

The Duke and I is a romance set in the Regency era.

In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable� but not too amiable.

Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen.

Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar.

The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule...]]> 384 Julia Quinn 0380800829 Vanessa 3 3.80 2000
author: Julia Quinn
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 43582376 A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.]]> 450 Bill Bryson 0385539304 Vanessa 5 nonfiction 4.30 2019
author: Bill Bryson
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: nonfiction
review:

]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Vanessa 5 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Vanessa 4 4.5 stars 4.11 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars
]]> 127280964
Picture a lovely cottage on a cliff, with sloping lawns, walking paths, and beautiful flowers. It’s Gabe and Pippa Gerard’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Over the past several months, Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge.

Until one day, he doesn’t. When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral. . . .Did the victim jump? Was she pushed? And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate . . . lie? As the perfect façade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel. Because sometimes, the most convincing lies are the ones we tell ourselves.]]> 352 Sally Hepworth Vanessa 3 3.5 stars 3.69 2022
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars
]]> 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X Vanessa 3 4.11 2017
author: M.L. Rio
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 200028726 From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and—thanks to the cottage’s ancient plumbing—septic too.

This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]> 240 Catherine Newman 0063345161 Vanessa 4 3.54 2024
author: Catherine Newman
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Vanessa 0 currently-reading, nonfiction 4.36 2014
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: currently-reading, nonfiction
review:

]]> 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Vanessa 0 to-read 4.44 2025
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57569788 Drew Barrymore has always done things in her own unique way--including how she cooks, lives, and finds happiness at home. In her first lifestyle and cookbook, Drew shares recipes, stories from her life, and personal photos that show how she lives a healthy, delicious, and joyful life through her own rebellious brand of homemaking.

In her first lifestyle book, Drew Barrymore will take you inside her kitchen and her life, sharing thirty-six amazing recipes, from Soft-Scrambled Yuzu Kosho Eggs to Brie and Apple Grilled Cheese to Harissa Spaghetti, which she developed along with chef Pilar Valdes, a personal friend and a regular guest on Drew's CBS talk show.

The book will also feature beautiful photos, many taken by Drew herself, as well as personal essays and stories about how Drew found her way in the kitchen, learned to cook, planted a garden and raised her first chickens. And, of course, how she learned to slow down, turn to nature as a teacher, always remembering to be humble and present while celebrating the joys of her family and friends around the table, both during special occasions as well as amidst the beautiful chaos of everyday life!]]> 240 Drew Barrymore 0593184106 Vanessa 4 3.52 2021
author: Drew Barrymore
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:
I like Drew Barrymore. I love cook books, memoirs, gardens, and lifestyle content. Some of the negative reviews consider the quantity of recipes too low. Others enjoyed Drew's essays on her life and not the food. The cover doesn't claim to be a straightforward cook book or a memoir. Right under the title it lists food, family, and life. There's a bit of everything and the timeline is the COVID years. I have had this on the shelf for a few years not knowing much about it. This was the right time for me to read it. I would not want to read about COVID even in small increments last year or any earlier.
]]> 15798121 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms, the debut novel he published as a twenty-three-year-old prodigy.
Ěý
Of all his characters, Capote once said, Holly Golightly was his favorite. The hillbilly-turned-Manhattanite at the center of Breakfast at Tiffany’s shares not only the author’s philosophy of freedom but also his fears and anxieties. For Holly, the cure is to jump into a taxi and head for Tiffany’s; nothing bad could happen, she believes, amid “that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.�
Ěý
Other Voices, Other Rooms begins as thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to rural Alabama to live with his estranged father—who is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his eccentric family and finds a kindred spirit in a defiant little girl. Despite its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence, this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel revels in small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.]]> 304 Truman Capote 0812994361 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.78 1958
author: Truman Capote
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Vanessa 0 currently-reading, nonfiction 4.36 2024
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: currently-reading, nonfiction
review:

]]> 42369 80 Eleanor Estes 0152052607 Vanessa 5 children-early-chapter-books 4.10 1944
author: Eleanor Estes
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1944
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: children-early-chapter-books
review:
Unexpected depth and childhood familiarity.
]]> 89724 Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.]]> 152 Shirley Jackson 0143039970 Vanessa 4 3.93 1962
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 39988 “The Trunchbull� is no match for Matilda!

Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world...

For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Miss ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will, and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter-pilot, chocolate historian, and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World's No. 1 Storyteller.]]> 240 Roald Dahl 043512398X Vanessa 5 children-early-chapter-books 4.33 1988
author: Roald Dahl
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: children-early-chapter-books
review:

]]> 41150487
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?]]> 448 Casey McQuiston 1250316774 Vanessa 4 4.06 2019
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 Vanessa 0 memoir 4.26 2024
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: memoir
review:
I don't rate memoirs. This is one I would recommend though.
]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum Vanessa 0 to-read 3.94 2022
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible � a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Vanessa 0 to-read 3.63 2025
author: Alice Feeney
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 196890737
A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads —Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?]]> 11 Emily Henry Vanessa 0 to-read 4.11 2024
author: Emily Henry
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201751300 An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.]]> 416 Evan Friss 0593299922 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.92 2024
author: Evan Friss
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38980
Is she ever in for a surprise.

First mom announces that she's dating Mia's Algebra teacher. Then Dad has to go and reveal that he is the crown prince of Genovia. And guess who still doesn't have a date for the Cultural Diversity Dance?]]> 283 Meg Cabot 0613371658 Vanessa 5 3.81 2000
author: Meg Cabot
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 29984659 New York Times bestselling author and “Queen of Suspense� Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke—television producer Laurie Moran puts everything on the line to help a woman she thinks was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Casey Carter was convicted of murdering her fiancé—famed philanthropist Hunter Raleigh III—fifteen years ago. And Casey claims—has always claimed—she’s innocent. Although she was charged and served out her sentence in prison, she is still living “under suspicion.� She hears whispers at the grocery store. She can’t get a job. Even her own mother treats her like she’s guilty. Her story attracts the attention of Laurie Moran and the Under Suspicion news team—it’s Casey’s last chance to finally clear her name, and Laurie pledges to exonerate her.

With Alex Buckley taking a break from the show—cooling his potential romance with Laurie�Under Suspicion introduces a new on-air host named Ryan Nichols, a young legal whiz with a Harvard Law degree, Supreme Court clerkship, experience as a federal prosecutor, and regular stints on the cable news circuit. He’s got a big reputation and the attitude to match it. Ryan has no problems with steering—and stealing—the show, and even tries to stop Laurie from taking on Casey’s case because he’s so certain she’s guilty.

An egomaniacal new co-host, a relentless gossip columnist who seems to have all the dirt (and a surprising informant), and Casey’s longstanding bad reputation: Laurie must face this and more to do what she believes is right, to once and for all prove Casey’s innocence—that is, if she’s innocent� The Sleeping Beauty Killer will keep you guessing until the very end.]]> 321 Mary Higgins Clark Vanessa 4 crime-and-mystery 4.06 2016
author: Mary Higgins Clark
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: crime-and-mystery
review:
3.5 stars. I guessed the killer at the start. Since I am enjoying MHC books I will keep reading them. This is the second one and still reading a third. If they are all this predictable I'll just give the star rating without saying, "Guessed correctly again!" Ha
]]> 35297310
The immediate suspect is her boyfriend who had a bitter argument with her at the party. Then there is a twenty-year-old neighbor who was angry because she didn’t invite him to the party.

Or is there someone else who has not yet been seen on the radar?

Kerry’s older sister Aline, a twenty-eight-year-old guidance counselor, is determined to assist the Prosecutor's Office in learning the truth. She does not realize that now she is putting her own life in danger...]]> 256 Mary Higgins Clark 1501171682 Vanessa 4 crime-and-mystery 3.63 2018
author: Mary Higgins Clark
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: crime-and-mystery
review:
3.5 stars. I don't recall ever reading a book by this author, yet I already had an expectation of what the experience would be. It feels like a Lifetime movie playing out and I'm here for it! Super easy to follow, predictable, and enjoyable. What I do find odd is that I am currently reading a much older book of MHC and was surprised by both stories having a girl at the beginning throwing a party and a boy that likes the girl in each book is not invited. Nothing else was the same but it threw me off for a moment.
]]> 18775359 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781476712840.

When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.

Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?

This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid Vanessa 5 3.91 2014
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 60896180
The fiercely-anticipated sequel to the #1 New York Times bestseller Once Upon a Broken Heart, starring Evangeline Fox and the Prince of Hearts on a new journey of magic, mystery, and heartbreak

Not every love is meant to be.

After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she'll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.

But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.

Instead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline’s life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts. Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she’s not sure she can�
.]]> 416 Stephanie Garber 1250874742 Vanessa 5 4.64 2022
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/05
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 170650 318 Mary Higgins Clark 0671758896 Vanessa 0 currently-reading 3.94 1991
author: Mary Higgins Clark
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 208503280 She's looking for the perfect man. He's looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim...

A dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden proves that crimes of passion are often the bloodiest…]]> 368 Freida McFadden 1728296226 Vanessa 4 3.95 2024
author: Freida McFadden
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves:
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Not perfect but sometimes suspending some disbelief still makes for an exciting read.
]]> 42201547 Buffy The Vampire Slayer is reimagined under the guidance of series creator Joss Whedon!

This is the Buffy Summers you know, who wants what every average teenager wants: friends at her new school, decent grades, and to escape her imposed destiny as the next in a long line of vampire slayers tasked with defeating the forces of evil...only this time around, her world looks a lot more like the one outside your window.

Eisner Award winner Jordie Bellaire (Redlands) and Russ Manning Award winner Dan Mora (Go Go Power Rangers, Hexed),Ěýalong with series creator Joss Whedon (Marvel’s The Avengers), bring Buffy into a new era with new challenges, new friends, and a few enemies you might already recognize. But the more things change, the more they stay the same as the Gang faces brand-new Big Bads, and the threat lurking beneath the perfectly manicured exterior of Sunnydale High confirms what every teenager has always known: high school truly is hell.]]> 128 Jordie Bellaire 1684153573 Vanessa 5 4.00 2019
author: Jordie Bellaire
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 61250159 An imprisoned prince. A vengeful queen. And a battle that will determine the future of Elfhame.
Ěý
Prince Oak is paying for his betrayal. Imprisoned in the icy north and bound to the will of a monstrous new queen, he must rely on charm and calculation to survive. With High King Cardan and High Queen Jude willing to use any means necessary to retrieve their stolen heir, Oak will have to decide whether to attempt regaining the trust of the girl he’s always loved or to remain loyal to Elfhame and hand over the means to end her reign—even if it means ending Wren, too.
�
Ěý
With a new war looming on the horizon and treachery lurking in every corner, neither Oak’s guile nor his wit will be enough to keep everyone he loves alive. It’s just a question of whom he will doom.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black comes the stunning blood-soaked conclusion to the Stolen Heir duology.
Ěý]]> 359 Holly Black 0316592730 Vanessa 4 4.5 stars 3.88 2024
author: Holly Black
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars
]]> 59365380 "This book is wonderfully inclusive, and depicts a distinct and expressive cast of LGBTQIA characters and people of color." � School Library Journal

In the bewitching Tea Dragon Society series, two-time Eisner Award-winning creator K. O’Neill offers three stories featuring the enchanting world of Tea Dragons. Now collected in a beautiful box set with brand-new box cover art, readers can experience The Tea Dragon Society, The Tea Dragon Festival, and The Tea Dragon Tapestry from start to finish. This charming and peaceful trilogy is heartwarming, inclusive, and absolutely magical.Ěý

The Tea Dragon Society
After discovering a lost tea dragon in the marketplace, Greta learns about the dying art form of tea dragon caretaking from the kind tea shop owners, Hesekiel and Erik. As she befriends them and their shy ward, Minette, Greta sees how the craft enriches their lives—and eventually her own.

The Tea Dragon Festival
Rinn has grown up with the Tea Dragons that inhabit their village, but stumbling across a real dragon turns out to be a different matter entirely! Aedhan is a young dragon who was appointed to protect the village, but fell asleep in the forest eighty years ago. With the aid of Rinn’s adventuring uncle Erik and his partner Hesekiel, they investigate the mystery of his enchanted sleep... But Rinn’s real challenge is to help Aedhan come to terms with feeling that he cannot get back the time he has lost.

ĚýThe Tea Dragon Tapestry
Join Greta and Minette once more for the heartwarming conclusion of the award-winning Tea Dragon series! Over a year since being entrusted with Ginseng's care, Greta still can't chase away the cloud of mourning that hangs over the timid Tea Dragon. Meanwhile, Minette receives a surprise package from the monastery where she was once training to be a prophetess. Told with the same care and charm as the previous installments of the Tea Dragon series, The Tea Dragon Tapestry welcomes old friends and new into a heartfelt story of purpose, love, and growth.]]> 336 Kay O'Neill 1637150741 Vanessa 4 4.58 2022
author: Kay O'Neill
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Vanessa 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61884844 A whip-smart, propulsive debut about infidelity, backstabbing, and murderous intrigue, set against an exclusive summer haven on Fire Island
None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder?
Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court, and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single friend, Rachel Woolf, is looking to meet her match, whether he's the tennis pro-or someone else's husband. But even with plenty to gossip about, this season starts out as quietly as any other.
Until a body is discovered, face down off the side of the boardwalk.
Stylish, subversive and darkly comedic, this is a story of what's lurking under the surface of picture-perfect lives in a place where everyone has something to hide.]]> 272 Emma Rosenblum 1250887003 Vanessa 3 3.32 2023
author: Emma Rosenblum
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
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]]> 27362503
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up � she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating� rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan � her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.]]> 386 Colleen Hoover 1668021048 Vanessa 5 4.11 2016
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 227002 186 Barbara Pym 0330326481 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.90 1978
author: Barbara Pym
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28186250
In this highly anticipated new cookbook, Angela shares wildly delicious recipes that are perfect for busy lifestyles, promising to make plant-based eating convenient every day of the week—including holidays and special occasions! Filled with more than 100 family-friendly recipes everyone will love, like Oh Em Gee Veggie Burgers, Fusilli Lentil-Mushroom Bolognese, Apple Pie Overnight Oats, Mocha Empower Glo Bars, and the Ultimate Flourless Brownies, Oh She Glows Every Day also includes easy-to-make homemade staples; useful information on essential pantry ingredients; tips on making recipes kid-, allergy-, and freezer-friendly; and so much more.]]> 352 Angela Liddon 0143196510 Vanessa 0 to-read 4.19 2013
author: Angela Liddon
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Vanessa 0 3.81 2018
author: Sally Rooney
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 126918202 Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)]]> 296 Jennifer Marie Thorne Vanessa 0 to-read 3.84 2024
author: Jennifer Marie Thorne
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60417483 Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish. ]]> 304 Louise Kennedy 0593540891 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.91 2022
author: Louise Kennedy
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 198563729 Daphne and Amber Parrish are thrust back into each other’s lives upon the resurgence of a long-forgotten threat, forcing a vicious game of cat and mouse where everything is on the line, in this thrilling sequel to the million-copy-bestselling Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish.

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time—and money—is vanishing.

Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson Parrish, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer to allow him supervised visits. Once out of prison, Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.

When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, the three of them find unlikely allies in one another, but who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.

With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.]]> 336 Liv Constantine 0593599926 Vanessa 4 3.75 2024
author: Liv Constantine
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves:
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]]> 127282554 An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all

Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X Vanessa 4 3.39 2024
author: Lottie Hazell
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 18333581 40 Sarah J. Maas Vanessa 0 to-read 4.21 2013
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199797848 A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.

Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.

Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.

When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.

Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet- and celebrity-obsessed world.]]> 352 Anna Dorn 1668047179 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.89 2024
author: Anna Dorn
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201750857 Anne is starting to grow up, but she's still disappointed with her red hair -- it's one of her lifelong sorrows. One day, she buys a bottle of hair dye in order to have raven black hair like her best friend and kindred spirit, Diana. Unfortunately, the dye ends up turning her hair green! This upset causes Anne to start focusing on improving herself inside, rather than her looks . . . and leads to a new dream taking shape: Anne wanting to become a teacher! She joins a club for students studying to get into Queen's College. But can Anne overcome her fear of failing? And how can she study hard when pesky Gilbert is distracting her?

Lovingly adapted by Kallie George with beautiful nostalgic illustrations by Abigail Halpin, this series is perfect for fans of Anne, new and old.]]> 72 Kallie George 0735272131 Vanessa 4 4.42
author: Kallie George
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 123239396 240 Kenan Thompson 0063348063 Vanessa 0 memoir 3.82 2023
author: Kenan Thompson
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Vanessa 0 memoir 3.74 2024
author: Patric Gagne
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> 45730529 A fully illustrated and authorized episode guide celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the hit-television show Friends, including a look behind-the-scenes of cult-favorite episodes, exclusive photos from Warner Bros., brand new interviews with show creators Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and set designer John Shaffner, and more.

The beloved show Friends introduced the world to six young New Yorkers living together, falling in love, breaking up (cue Ross's "We were on a break!"), and getting into hilarious shenanigans, which became an instant classic formula that inspired dozens of "hangout sitcoms" long after the show's reign. But no sitcom has ever come close to the series that started it all, spawning iconic looks like "the Rachel" and timeless catchphrases like "How you doin'?" while creating a cultural sensation that catapulted the cast members to instant mega-stardom.

Throughout the show's ten- season run, viewers watched Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, and Joey navigate their twenties and thirties with unwavering friendship, determination, and, of course, plenty of sarcasm. Friends Forever takes fans back to the set where it all began with exclusive photos of the sitcom that won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series, eleven People's Choice Awards, and a Golden Globe for Jennifer Aniston for Best Lead Actress in a Television Series. This fully illustrated episode guide will treat readers to nostalgic flashbacks of the top one hundred episodes and sneak peeks of how popularly referenced lines from the show came to be. Friends Forever also boasts new interviews with show creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman on how the show got its start and set designer John Shaffner who reveals his inspirations behind the iconic looks behind Monica’s and Rachel’s apartment and Central Perk.



It's no wonder why the Friends cast was chosen by TV Guide readers as the Best Comedy cast of all time, while countless other publications such as Vanity Fair　named the show one of the best sitcoms of all time.



Fun, hilarious interactives include:



Joey’s fake resume vs real one




Countdown to the funniest Thanksgiving foods




Trivia game Q&A from "The One with the Embryos" (Seriously, what is Chandler Bing’s job?)




Follow Ross’s infidelity trail from "The One with the Morning After"




Who’s that celebrity? A comprehensive guide to some of the most famous celebrity guest stars from all ten seasons]]> 240 Gary Susman 0062976443 Vanessa 4 4.5 stars<br /> 4.35 2019
author: Gary Susman
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars

]]> 290458
On aĚýhill on the outskirts of Sweet Valley sits aĚýbeautiful old Victorian house. It stood empty until aĚýfew weeks ago, when a big family moved in . . .Ěýthe perfect clients for Elizabeth and JessicaĚýWakefield's new baby-sitting service . . . .

Identical twins Elizabeth andĚýJessica Wakefield and their friends have learned oneĚýthing from baby-sitting for the Riccoli dreams can come true . . . and so can nightmares. WhenĚýthe fire in Andrew Riccoli's dream turned to realĚýflames, the twins took action. They killed theĚýevil creature--half girl, half monster--in the kids'Ěýnightmares.

Before she killedĚýthem.

Now that theĚýbeast is dead, the Riccoli kids will have sweetĚýdreams again. Or so they think. But the creaturesĚýhas left the kids' nightmares to terrorize them inĚýreal life.

And waking nightmaresĚýare the scariest of all.]]> 245 Francine Pascal 0553483447 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.77 1996
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 290482
When identical twinsĚýElizabeth and Jessica Wakefield began baby-sitting for theĚýRiccoli family, they soon learned of the kids' badĚýdreams. Overactive imaginations, they thought.ĚýBut slowly, the terrifying truth becomesĚýundeniable. The nightmares are real. Something evil is inĚýthe kids' house and in their dreams. SomethingĚýthat wants them dead.

ElizabethĚýand Jessica try to keep the Riccoli kids fromĚýfalling asleep, but how much longer can any of themĚýstay awake? There's only one thing left to do: TheĚýbaby-sitters and the kids must enter the deadlyĚýworld of their dreams. And morning is a long timeĚýaway.]]> 135 Francine Pascal 0553482041 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.68 1996
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 540071 Book Two in the Frightening Four miniseries

On a hill on the outskirts of Sweet Valley sits a beautiful old Victorian house. It stood empty until a few weeks ago, when a big family moved in...the perfect clients for Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield's baby-sitting service....

Identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield and their friends from Sweet Valley Middle School thought they'd landed their dream job when they started babysitting for the Riccoli kids. But little by little, their dream job is turning into a nightmare.

Andrew Riccoli dreams that someone tried to set fire to his room—and wakes up in a cloud of smoke. Then Gretchen Riccoli dreams she's falling—and wakes up at the bottom of the mansion's dark, winding staircase. The babysitters are getting scared...too scared to close their eyes in the Riccoli mansion.]]> 134 Francine Pascal 0553482033 Vanessa 0 to-read 3.71 1996
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15745753 "So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we're 16."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
"I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.]]> 328 Rainbow Rowell 1250012570 Vanessa 4 3.92 2012
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 412362 Headed for trouble...

Regina Morrow and Bruce Patman have been going together for months. But when beautiful, devious Amy Sutton is paired up with Bruce on a school project, she schemes to steal him away from Regina. Little by little Bruce's resistance to Amy's charm begins to crumble.

Regina is furious when she discovers that Bruce has been seeing Amy behind her back. Hurt and betrayed, she turns to Justin Belson, a troubled senior at Sweet Valley High. Regina's friends are worried. They think Justin and his crowd are bad news - it's rumored that some of them are drug users. Is Regina on a dangerous course?]]> 150 Francine Pascal 0553267035 Vanessa 5 3.58 1987
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 31076583 229 Sarah J. Maas 168119631X Vanessa 3 3.77 2019
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/28
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 412360
To complicate matters, shy, quiet DeeDee is also after Bill. But Jessica has the upper hand. If Bill even looks at DeeDee, Hurricane Jessica blows him overboard and back into her arms. Can Bill escape Jessica's undertow, or is he in over his head?]]> 134 Francine Pascal 0553250922 Vanessa 3 3.41 1984
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 60560037
In her first collection, she gives us nine beautifully crafted love stories. Girl meets boy camping outside a movie theater. Best friends debate the merits of high school dances. A prince romances a troll. A girl romances an imaginary boy. And Simon Snow himself returns for a holiday adventure.

It’s a feast of irresistible characters, hilarious dialogue, and masterful storytelling—in short, everything you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell book.]]> 282 Rainbow Rowell 1250855411 Vanessa 4 short-stories 3.94 2022
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 61447046 645 Jessa Hastings Vanessa 4 4.24 2022
author: Jessa Hastings
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 16315
The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That is until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection.

Suspicion naturally falls on the old man’s young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiancé of the late millionaire’s granddaughter.]]> 276 Agatha Christie 031298166X Vanessa 0 to-read 4.07 1949
author: Agatha Christie
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58690308 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens� life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters� trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]> 377 Emily Henry 0593334833 Vanessa 0 currently-reading 4.09 2022
author: Emily Henry
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 38601
But no one is more shattered than Elizabeth's twin, Jessica. As she keeps watch over the silent body of her sister, she's overwhelmed by despair. Without Elizabeth, can life go on?]]> 160 Francine Pascal 0553276727 Vanessa 4 3.56 1984
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 127305853 De la autora superventas de El Ruiseñor , una historia de mujeres valientes decididas a arriesgar su vida por los demás en uno de los momentos más peligrosos de la historia.

Inspiradas por el coraje. Ligadas por la amistad. Unidas por la esperanza.

«Las mujeres pueden ser heroínas». Cuando Frankie McGrath, estudiante de enfermería de veinte años, oye por primera vez estas inesperadas palabras, siente una revelación. Criada en el idílico y soleado sur de California y protegida por sus conservadores padres, siempre se ha enorgullecido de hacer lo que se espera de ella, de ser una buena chica. Pero en 1966 el mundo está cambiando y, de repente, su vida parece abrirse a nuevas posibilidades. Cuando su hermano parte para combatir en Vietnam, ella se une de manera impulsiva al Cuerpo de Enfermeras del Ejército para seguirle.

Allí, Frankie se siente igual de inmadura e inexperta que los jóvenes enviados para luchar, y se ve abrumada por el caos y la destrucción de la guerra. Además, un trauma inesperado la golpea al volver a casa, el de encontrar un país cambiado y dividido, un país que quiere olvidar. Frankie descubrirá el verdadero valor de la amistad y el dolor que puede causar un corazón roto.

***NĂşmero 1 en las listas de best sellers de The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, la AsociaciĂłn de LibrerĂ­as Independientes, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, Audible y Los Angeles Daily News***

Sobre la novela han
«De nuevo, Hannah ilumina con su luz a mujeres que la historia ha ignorado».
People Magazine

«Hannah está en su mejor momento en esta novela».
The New York Times

«Conmovedora y excepcionalmente documentada».
Stephen King

«±Ę´Ç»ĺ±đ°ů´Ç˛ő˛ąÂ».
Matt Haig, autor de La biblioteca de la medianoche

«Kristin Hannah, una de las mejores narradoras de nuestro tiempo, aborda una de las más crueles y viles guerras del último Vietnam. Las mujeres de la guerra revela la enorme contribución y los horribles sacrificios de las enfermeras militares que sirvieron en ella... Nunca una novela de guerra se ha metamorfoseado tan profundamente en una historia sobre el corazón humano».
Delia Owen, autora de La chica salvaje

«Este libro es ficción histórica en su mejor versión. Tan conmovedor, tan desgarrador, y, sin embargo, en última instancia, optimista. ¡Bravo!».
Nicholas D. Kristof, ganador del Premio Pulitzer y coautor de La mitad del cielo

«Deslumbra con su sacrificio; y eleva el ánimo con su heroísmo... Un importante y largamente esperado tributo a las valientes enfermeras que sirvieron en Vietnam».
Bonnie Garmus, autora de Lecciones de quĂ­mica

«Los fans de los libros históricos protagonizados por mujeres van a disfrutar esta magnética novela».
Publishers Weekly

Please This audiobook is in Spanish.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Vanessa 0 to-read 4.58 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1528926 Greenery Street can be read on two levels: it is a touching description of a young couple's first year together in London, but it is also a homage - something rare in fiction - to happy married life. (It therefore makes an excellent wedding or anniversary present.)

Ian and Felicity Foster are shown as they arrive at 23 Greenery Street, an undisguised and still unchanged Walpole Street in Chelsea. Their uneventful but always interesting everyday life is the main subject of a novel that evokes the charmingly contented and timeless while managing to be both funny and profound about human relations. They struggle with their neighbours (who borrow without asking, and fail to return, first a step-ladder, then a fish-kettle and finally, the fruit-knives) and negotiate 'the chasm which separates the sexes'; financial crises ('Horrible, loathsome money, why must it come and spoil everything like this?'), Grandmamma's pearls ('They're the most hideous things you've ever seen in your life') and the acceptance of clandestine affairs ('Marriage isn't all jam, you know') serve to strength the bonds of their marriage.]]> 392 Denis Mackail Vanessa 0 to-read 3.88 1925
author: Denis Mackail
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7896527 Meet Celaena Sardothien.

Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, Celaena, an assassin, is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king’s champion.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.]]> 406 Sarah J. Maas Vanessa 4 4.19 2012
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: fantasy-adventure, fantasy-romance
review:

]]> 260060 Has Jessica gone too far?

Elizabeth Wakefield knows her beautiful twin can handle almost any guy—most boys are just no match for Jessica's seductive charms. But Scott Daniels, Jessica's latest love, is more of a man than a boy, much older and much more experienced than anyone Jessica's ever dated.

When Jessica sneaks off to a college beach party with Scott, Elizabeth's afraid of what could happen. And when her twin sister isn't back by morning, Elizabeth's fear turns to alarm. Why has she stayed out all night long?]]> 144 Francine Pascal 0553275682 Vanessa 4 3.37 1984
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 15839976 "I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]> 382 Pierce Brown 0345539788 Vanessa 0 4.26 2014
author: Pierce Brown
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
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]]> 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston Vanessa 4 4.17 2023
author: Ashley Poston
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves:
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]]> 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Vanessa 4 4 1/2 stars 4.08 2023
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves:
review:
4 1/2 stars
]]> 412253
But Elizabeth is just as determined to make Robin a sorority sister, and the twins become locked in a struggle that develops into the biggest power play at Sweet Valley High. Who will prevail? Which twin will triumph? What happens when sisters go head-to-head?]]> 150 Francine Pascal 0553251430 Vanessa 0 3.47 1983
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves:
review:
Ok, I couldn't rate this one. This was mean girls before there was a movie. I enjoy the series for what it is but this book could definitely be triggering to some. The whole story is a horrible message to impressionable young people about their weight. It was brutal the way Robin was treated.
]]> 38520
Or has Bruce gotten his hooks into Jessica? Elizabeth, Jessica's twin, notices a big change in her sister. Suddenly Jessica's following Bruce everywhere and dropping everything just to spend time with him.

Elizabeth doesn't trust Bruce one bit—he's arrogant, demanding, and way too fast. Jessica can usually hold her own with any guy, but this time Elizabeth's afraid her sister may be going too far...]]> 149 Kate William Vanessa 4 3.49 1983
author: Kate William
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 53029302 Nostalgic fans of the Miyazaki film and newcomers alike--soar into the modern classic about a young witch and her clever cat that started it all!

Half-witch Kiki never runs from a challenge. So when her thirteenth birthday arrives, she's eager to follow a witch's tradition: choose a new town to call home for one year.

Brimming with confidence, Kiki flies to the seaside village of Koriko and expects that her powers will easily bring happiness to the townspeople. But gaining the trust of the locals is trickier than she expected. With her faithful, wise-cracking black cat, Jiji, by her side, Kiki forges new friendships and builds her inner strength, ultimately realizing that magic can be found in even the most ordinary places.

Blending fantasy with the charm of everyday life, this enchanting new translation will inspire both new readers and dedicated fans.]]> 193 Eiko Kadono 1984896660 Vanessa 4 4.17 1985
author: Eiko Kadono
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 60092579 Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance from the author of the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet.

Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.

When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

Then Noah starts to see a different side of Rae Rose—she's Amelia: kindhearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye. He can't help but get close to her. Soon she'll have to return to her glamorous life on tour, but until then, Noah will show Amelia all the charming small-town experiences she's been missing, and she'll help him open his heart to more.

Amelia can't resist falling for the cozy town and her grumpy tour guide, but even Audrey had to leave Rome eventually.]]> 320 Sarah Adams 0593500784 Vanessa 0 romcom 3.88 2022
author: Sarah Adams
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: romcom
review:

]]> 59708060
As their romance blossoms into something neither were anticipating, Daisy, Christian, and Julian each have to come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. As their relationships intersect and tangle, they all learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.]]> 436 Jessa Hastings Vanessa 5 4.09 2021
author: Jessa Hastings
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 412238
When Jessica discovers the truth about Enid's past, she knows the crown is within her grasp.ĚýĚýShe doesn't care that Enid is her twin sister Elizabeth's best friend—or that revealing the secret may cost Enid both her reputation and the boy she loves.

Only Elizabeth can save Enid from Jessica's vicious gossip—but can she stop her scheming twin in time?]]> 118 Kate William 0553239716 Vanessa 3 3.49 1983
author: Kate William
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 529252 Will Jessica steal Todd from Elizabeth?

Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are identical twins at Sweet Valley High. They're both popular, smart, and gorgeous, but that's where the similarity ends. Elizabeth is friendly, outgoing, and sincere—nothing like her snobbish and conniving twin. Jessica gets what she wants—at school, with friends, and especially with boys.

This time, Jessica has set her sights on Todd Wilkins, the handsome star of the basketball team—the one boy that Elizabeth really likes. Elizabeth doesn't want to lose him, but what Jessica wants, Jessica usually gets ... even if it ends up hurting her sister.

Meet the Wakefield twins, their guys, and the rest of the gang at Sweet Valley High....]]> 182 Francine Pascal 0553250337 Vanessa 5 3.57 1983
author: Francine Pascal
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 1240904 Revisit � if you dare! � one of the best-loved pop-up books of all time, now more gleefully ghoulish then ever with the addition of several spooky surprises.

Come in, Doctor. Yes, it is a quaint old place - chilly, though...

The owner of the Haunted House is unwell, and it's not surprising. There's a ghoul in the cupboard, an octopus in the sink, a crocodile in the bath, and in every room, a sinister black cat watching it all with roving eyes. Every page of this thrilling pop-up book is packed with spine-tingling surprises, culminating in a spectacular final spread complete with a creepy creaking saw.

Since 1979, hundreds of thousands of readers have taken this scared-silly tour of one of the best-selling pop-up books of all time. This is one Haunted House that remains as innovative and exciting today as it was twenty-six years ago-but now offers even more tantalizing twists.]]> 12 Jan Pieńkowski 1844288749 Vanessa 5 4.42 1979
author: Jan Pieńkowski
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 60435878 Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular.

By the time Carrie retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Slam titles. And if you ask her, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father as her coach.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning, British player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked the 'Battle-Axe' anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.]]> 384 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158687 Vanessa 5 4.19 2022
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Vanessa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/05
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves:
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]]> 8909152 "Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you..."

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now—reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be "internet security officer," he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers—not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.

When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can't help being entertained—and captivated—by their stories.

By the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself.

What would he say . . . ?]]> 323 Rainbow Rowell Vanessa 3 3.86 2011
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Vanessa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/02
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves:
review:
It was ok. The premise sounded like a funny romantic comedy and that was my expectation. The tone was more serious and I just didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Landline.
]]>