en-US Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:13:45 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 mihaela 4 4.5 4.17 2019
author: Alex Michaelides
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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review:
4.5
]]> 13641208 Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."]]> 251 George Saunders 0812993802 mihaela 0 to-read 3.98 2013
author: George Saunders
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> 217468978
Историята на един баща, един син и едно последно разсъмванe �� милостива и безмилостна едновременно.

„Таз�� книга няма лесен жанр �� пише Георги Господинов, �� тя трябва сама да си го изобрети. Както смъртта няма жанр. Както животът. Както градината. Роман елегия, роман градина, мемоар или мемороман �� има ли значение за ботаниката на тъгата. История за отиващите си бащи в един отиващ си свят. За тези трагични пушачи, често отсъстващи, вкопчени в шнорхела на цигарата, плуващи в други води и облаци. За баща ми, който крепеше на раменете си тонове минало и не спираше да го разказва. Тази Шехерезада �� баща ми. Сега миналото се пропуква тихо и започва да се срутва върху мен с всичките си следобеди. Не книга за смъртта, а за живота, който чезне. Има разлика.��

Четири години след „Времеубежище�� Георги Господинов представя „Градинарят и смъртта�� �� първата си книга след Международната награда „Букър�� (2023).]]> 216 Georgi Gospodinov 6191869134 mihaela 5 4.75 2024
author: Georgi Gospodinov
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune mihaela 4 4.5 4.37 2020
author: T.J. Klune
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
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4.5
]]> 37939276 80 Katerina Stoykova-Klemer 6197153335 mihaela 0 to-read 4.66 2018
author: Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/09
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]]> 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 mihaela 0 to-read 3.65 2023
author: Grady Hendrix
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/24
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]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 mihaela 3 4.12 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
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]]> 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X mihaela 0 currently-reading 4.33 1965
author: Frank Herbert
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> 17259690
Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for.]]> 237 Nora Sakavic 1301529044 mihaela 0 to-read 4.03 2013
author: Nora Sakavic
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
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]]> 22328546 This is a world divided by blood—red or silver.

The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change.

That is until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power.

Fearful of Mare's potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.

But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance—Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart.]]> 388 Victoria Aveyard 0062310631 mihaela 3 3.98 2015
author: Victoria Aveyard
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/01/05
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]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 mihaela 0 to-read 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/26
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]]> 10956 250 Jeffrey Eugenides 0747560595 mihaela 0 to-read 3.81 1993
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/26
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]]> 241823
In "Women Who Run With the Wolves," Dr Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairytales and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.]]> 537 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 0345409876 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.12 1992
author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/18
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]]> 46199 Listy do mlodego poety 80 Rainer Maria Rilke 0486422453 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.32 1929
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/16
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]]> 88340 Letters to Milena, which begin essentially as a business correspondence but soon develop into a passionate "letter love." Milena Jesenská was a gifted and charismatic woman of twenty-three. Kafka's Czech translator, she was uniquely able to recognize his complex genius and his even more complex character. For the thirty-six-year-old Kafka, she was "a living fire, such as I have never seen." It was to her that he revealed his most intimate self. It was to her that, after the end of the affair, he entrusted the safekeeping of his diaries.

Newly translated, revised, and expanded, this edition contains material previously omitted because of its extreme sensitivity. Also included for the first time are letters and essays by Milena Jesenská, herself a talented writer as well as the recipient of these documents of Kafka's love, anxiety, and despair.]]> 298 Franz Kafka 0805208852 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.10 1952
author: Franz Kafka
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> 11395597
Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness. It's a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the Universe as Cosmic Dustbin.

It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.]]> 230 Jeanette Winterson 0307401243 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.99 2011
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 32822135
Archer's Voice is the story of a woman chained to the memory of one horrifying night and the man whose love is the key to her freedom. It is the story of a silent man who lives with an excruciating wound and the woman who helps him find his voice. It is the story of suffering, fate, and the transformative power of love.]]> 377 Mia Sheridan 1538727374 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.14 2014
author: Mia Sheridan
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> 28954189 Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art�� of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

An alternate cover edition of ISBN: 9781442472426]]> 435 Neal Shusterman mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.32 2016
author: Neal Shusterman
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X mihaela 0 to-read 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
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]]> 59366193 All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.]]> 384 Mona Awad 1982169672 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.78 2021
author: Mona Awad
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.22 2012
author: Gillian Flynn
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.22 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.22 1929
author: Virginia Woolf
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> 17675462 “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,�� Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.��

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.]]> 409 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424925 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.05 2012
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.70 2022
author: Coco Mellors
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 57605091 572 Mariana Zapata mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.24 2021
author: Mariana Zapata
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born �� a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam �� and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.05 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world �� suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, �� but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]> 176 Osamu Dazai mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.99 1948
author: Osamu Dazai
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.66 2015
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 46041199 A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,�� she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning�� birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance]]> 163 Cho Nam-Joo 1631496700 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.17 2016
author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 49471138 A slick, twisty YA page-turner about the daughter of a con artist who is taken hostage in a bank heist.

Nora O’Malley’s been a lot of girls. As the daughter of a con-artist who targets criminal men, she grew up as her mother’s protégé. But when mom fell for the mark instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con: escape.

For five years Nora’s been playing at normal. But she needs to dust off the skills she ditched because she has three problems:

#1: Her ex walked in on her with her girlfriend. Even though they’re all friends, Wes didn’t know about her and Iris.

#2: The morning after Wes finds them kissing, they all have to meet to deposit the fundraiser money they raised at the bank. It’s a nightmare that goes from awkward to deadly, because:

#3: Right after they enter bank, two guys start robbing it.

The bank robbers may be trouble, but Nora’s something else entirely. They have no idea who they’re really holding hostage…]]> 356 Tess Sharpe 0593111095 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.04 2021
author: Tess Sharpe
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/16
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]]> 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.75 2022
author: Julia Armfield
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806734 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.99 2020
author: Emily Henry
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/16
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.��

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.52 2020
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 53260224 This explosive book of history and cultural criticism argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and all colonized women. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Taking us from the slave era—when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves—through the centuries of colonialism—when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics—to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars

Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.]]> 284 Ruby Hamad 194822674X mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.56 2020
author: Ruby Hamad
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war��. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier�� experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.04 1928
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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]]> 41951626 Impossible love between two girls —one human, one Made.
A love that could birth a revolution.

After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, Designed to be the playthings of royals, took over the estates of their owners and bent the human race to their will.

Now, Ayla, a human servant rising the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging the death of her family�� by killing the Sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier. Crier, who was Made to be beautiful, to be flawless. And to take over the work of her father.

Crier had been preparing to do just that—to inherit her father’s rule over the land. But that was before she was betrothed to Scyre Kinok, who seems to have a thousand secrets. That was before she discovered her father isn’t as benevolent as she thought. That was before she met Ayla.

Set in a richly-imagined fantasy world, Nina Varela’s debut novel is a sweepingly romantic tale of love, loss and revenge, that challenges what it really means to be human.]]> 464 Nina Varela 0062823965 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.12 2019
author: Nina Varela
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 58891551
As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.]]> 390 Douglas Stuart 0802159559 mihaela 0 to-read 4.38 2022
author: Douglas Stuart
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde mihaela 0 to-read 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> 774330 Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara, the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times. Pevear and Volokhonsky masterfully restore the spirit of Pasternak's original--his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone--in this beautiful translation of a classic of world literature.]]> 510 Boris Pasternak 0099448424 mihaela 0 to-read 3.69 1957
author: Boris Pasternak
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/10
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]]> 193540910
Alistair Caddell is a young, established novelist and university student who is accused of murder shortly after the release of his third novel: “If the Nightingale Sleeps.��

Bribed with the lifestyle he's always dreamt of and pursued by an unexplainable paranormal force, Ellis races against the clock of justice in an attempt to clear Alistair’s name by finding out what happened in 1993. But as their relationship bleeds into dangerous territory and both men are forced to make questionable decisions, Ellis and Alistair must take accountability for their past sins, and face the dark truths they've been hiding from one another since their separation many years ago.]]> 400 Kieran Dimitri mihaela 0 to-read 4.64
author: Kieran Dimitri
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.64
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/20
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]]> 75302266 Angharad—Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him—is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny.

But musty, decrepit Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task, and its residents are far from welcoming. Including Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar determined to expose Myrddin as a fraud. As the two rivals piece together clues about Myrddin’s legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them—and the truth may bring them both to ruin.]]> 378 Ava Reid 0063211505 mihaela 0 to-read 3.73 2023
author: Ava Reid
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 mihaela 0 currently-reading 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/05
shelves: currently-reading
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 mihaela 3 4.09 2022
author: Emily Henry
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/05
date added: 2023/10/05
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review:

]]> 40874032 A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.]]> 402 Victoria E. Schwab mihaela 3 4.17 2013
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2023/09/30
shelves:
review:
I literally had such high expectations for this book to the point where I was /rampaging/ bookstores to find it. I wouldn't say I'm disappointed but it definitely lacks what it takes to be a 4/5 star read and sadly I'm only giving it 3.5
]]> 60321513
When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.

It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.

But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.]]> 512 Rin Chupeco 1982195711 mihaela 0 to-read 3.94 2022
author: Rin Chupeco
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44294655
But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.]]> 250 Chelsea G. Summers mihaela 0 to-read 3.73 2019
author: Chelsea G. Summers
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 mihaela 5 favourites 4.17 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/14
date added: 2023/09/14
shelves: favourites
review:
cried uncontrollably on the train for the last twenty pages. the amount of thought and emotion this book invoked in me is intangible. Babel's the best thing i've ever laid my eyes on i can't even explain what's happened to me
]]> 13262783 Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone A wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.]]> 322 David Levithan 0307931889 mihaela 3 3.91 2012
author: David Levithan
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/09/04
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]]> 17927395
Nor has Feyre forgotten her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court. As Feyre navigates its dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms—and she might be key to stopping it. But only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future—and the future of a world cleaved in two.

With more than a million copies sold of her beloved Throne of Glass series, Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her seductive and action-packed series to new heights.]]> 626 Sarah J. Maas mihaela 4 4.60 2016
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
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]]> 16096824
Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre's presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever.]]> 419 Sarah J. Maas 1619634449 mihaela 4 4.17 2015
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/09/04
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]]> 13335037
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.]]> 487 Veronica Roth 0062024035 mihaela 3 4.13 2011
author: Veronica Roth
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/09/04
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]]> 99561 Before. Miles “Pudge�� Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps�� even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.]]> 221 John Green 1435249151 mihaela 3 3.97 2005
author: John Green
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> 96259 Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness�� of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”]]> 80 Richard Siken 0300107897 mihaela 5 favourites what just happened to me. 4.35 2005
author: Richard Siken
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/20
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: favourites
review:
what just happened to me.
]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction �� but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 mihaela 0 to-read 4.18 2019
author: Samantha Shannon
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35606560 256 Rupi Kaur 1449486797 mihaela 3 4.09 2018
author: Rupi Kaur
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/20
date added: 2023/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 39216527 A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.]]> 160 Jenny Hval mihaela 0 to-read 3.49 2009
author: Jenny Hval
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 mihaela 0 to-read 3.91 2023
author: Claire Daverley
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29236380
Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.]]> 416 Kathleen Glasgow 1101934719 mihaela 0 currently-reading 3.94 2016
author: Kathleen Glasgow
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 36336078 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.]]> 248 André Aciman 1786495252 mihaela 5 4.08 2007
author: André Aciman
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/20
date added: 2023/06/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 59366244
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,�� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?�� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!��), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 304 Jennette McCurdy 1982185821 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.42 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls�� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins �� someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects�� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling mihaela 4 4.42 1998
author: J.K. Rowling
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/27
date added: 2023/05/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 mihaela 2 this was such a let down :/

going in, I had these huge expectations, which honestly isn't the novel's fault but still I'd rather make it clear that it's not my prejudices affecting my opinion ]]> 4.02 2021
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2023/05/18
date added: 2023/05/19
shelves:
review:
2 stars
this was such a let down :/

going in, I had these huge expectations, which honestly isn't the novel's fault but still I'd rather make it clear that it's not my prejudices affecting my opinion
]]> 30107793 Двадесет години по-късно българин пътува към Сараево, за да се срещне със сръбския преводач на книгата си. Скоро се озовават в кръчма и неусетно заговарят за войната. С напредването на часовете празните бутилки на масата се увеличават, а отдавна погребани тайни излизат на повърхността.
Две нощи. Четири съдби. Всички водещи до най-важните въпроси.
Кой запали тази война? И кой спечели от нея?]]> 186 Георги Бърдаров mihaela 4 4.56
author: Георги Бърдаров
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/16
date added: 2023/04/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 43263680
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs�� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 mihaela 4 4.00 2019
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/18
date added: 2022/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 mihaela 0 to-read 4.12 1993
author: Lois Lowry
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X mihaela 0 to-read 3.81 2014
author: Celeste Ng
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58353827 Declan
I’m destined to become the next CEO of my family’s media empire.
The only problem? My grandfather’s inheritance clause.
Fulfilling his dying wish of getting married and having an heir seemed impossible until my assistant volunteers for the job.
Our marriage was supposed to be the perfect solution to my biggest problem.
But the more we act in love for the public, the more unsure I feel about our contract.
Caring about Iris was never part of the deal.
Especially not when breaking her heart is inevitable.

Iris
My plan to marry Declan was simple in theory.
Move in together. Throw a wedding. Have a baby.
We set rules to prevent any kind of issues.
Ones that were never meant to be broken, no matter how much Declan tempts me.
But what happens when our fake relationship bleeds into our real one?
Falling in love was never an option.
At least not for me.]]> 435 Lauren Asher mihaela 3 4.20 2022
author: Lauren Asher
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/04
date added: 2022/09/04
shelves:
review:
although i'm rating this 3 stars, it was a lot better than the fine print (i literally cried??). this book is now one of my guilty pleasures
]]> 50892338
A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn�� students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin�� and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.]]> 502 Tracy Deonn 1534441603 mihaela 4
(there are tiny spoilers here that don't really matter! read at your own risk though)

loved the worldbuilding, the concert, the subject matter and the premise. Bree's character build is good but her heritage and her ancestors' history touched me deeply and i couldn't get enough of the chapters that focused on her abilities, experiences as a black woman in the world, grief and loss. it was portrayed very beautifully and it's the first time i read a fantasy YA that enveloped these topics well.

the King Arthur legend is a magic system that i wasn't familiar with (at all) before reading legendborn! to be honest it didn't really enthrall me all that much but it was like a breath of fresh air after all the fairies bs that's very overdone at this point. i was definitely confused at times but in the end it all clicked together finally and overall left a nice first impression in me

another thing, Selwyn Kane is 80% responsible for me getting through the first half of this successfully. at one point i was struggling a lot and thank lord that he flirted with Bree because i could not handle her feelings for Nick any longer... and here we go about the things i didn't like:

i feel like this could've done a lot better as adult fantasy, or at least the YA clichés could've been omitted. some parts were unnecessary and didn't contribute anything important. i also wish Alice's friendship with Bree was developed more - it had a lot of potential but stayed just that... potential. Alice is an amazing character that I definitely to see more of in the sequel

now... the love triangle. i won't lie and tell you jealousy isn't an excellent touch to a love story but the instalove with Nick had me so underwhelmed. i like Nick a lot but it was obvious from the beginning he's not the better guy out of the two...Bree had little chemistry with him and to be fair i'm glad! but that's a conversation for another time when I've read the sequel lol hopefully she ends up with you know who (not voldemort thank u very much)

anyway i'm very excited for the second book! Legendborn has a lot of potential to become a big name in YA fantasy (as it should)

p.s ik the book is known on tiktok already but please nobody tell /the/ tiktok girlies about selwyn kane i beg]]> 4.32 2020
author: Tracy Deonn
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/02
date added: 2022/09/02
shelves:
review:
there are reviews on here that summarise my exact thoughts better than i even could but i'm still going to try and give my two cents

(there are tiny spoilers here that don't really matter! read at your own risk though)

loved the worldbuilding, the concert, the subject matter and the premise. Bree's character build is good but her heritage and her ancestors' history touched me deeply and i couldn't get enough of the chapters that focused on her abilities, experiences as a black woman in the world, grief and loss. it was portrayed very beautifully and it's the first time i read a fantasy YA that enveloped these topics well.

the King Arthur legend is a magic system that i wasn't familiar with (at all) before reading legendborn! to be honest it didn't really enthrall me all that much but it was like a breath of fresh air after all the fairies bs that's very overdone at this point. i was definitely confused at times but in the end it all clicked together finally and overall left a nice first impression in me

another thing, Selwyn Kane is 80% responsible for me getting through the first half of this successfully. at one point i was struggling a lot and thank lord that he flirted with Bree because i could not handle her feelings for Nick any longer... and here we go about the things i didn't like:

i feel like this could've done a lot better as adult fantasy, or at least the YA clichés could've been omitted. some parts were unnecessary and didn't contribute anything important. i also wish Alice's friendship with Bree was developed more - it had a lot of potential but stayed just that... potential. Alice is an amazing character that I definitely to see more of in the sequel

now... the love triangle. i won't lie and tell you jealousy isn't an excellent touch to a love story but the instalove with Nick had me so underwhelmed. i like Nick a lot but it was obvious from the beginning he's not the better guy out of the two...Bree had little chemistry with him and to be fair i'm glad! but that's a conversation for another time when I've read the sequel lol hopefully she ends up with you know who (not voldemort thank u very much)

anyway i'm very excited for the second book! Legendborn has a lot of potential to become a big name in YA fantasy (as it should)

p.s ik the book is known on tiktok already but please nobody tell /the/ tiktok girlies about selwyn kane i beg
]]> 35796008
At the same time, Kazi, a legendary former street thief, is sent by the queen to investigate transgressions against the new settlements. When Kazi arrives in the forbidding land of the Ballengers, she learns that there is more to Jase than she thought. As unexpected events spiral out of their control, bringing them intimately together, they continue to play a cat and mouse game of false moves and motives in order to fulfill their own secret missions.

Mary E. Pearson's Dance of Thieves is a new YA novel in the New York Times bestselling Remnant Chronicles universe, in which a reformed thief and the young leader of an outlaw dynasty lock wits in a battle that may cost them their lives—and their hearts. ]]> 512 Mary E. Pearson 1250159016 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.11 2018
author: Mary E. Pearson
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 55648820
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...

With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781538719107.]]> 336 Tia Williams mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.98 2021
author: Tia Williams
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.86 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.26 1866
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 45300567
Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life.]]> 337 Alex Michaelides 1250304458 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.61 2021
author: Alex Michaelides
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 58527403 423 Jessa Hastings 1737281198 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.68 2021
author: Jessa Hastings
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 50548197
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) �� until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate�� or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.]]> 320 Naomi Novik 0593128486 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.93 2020
author: Naomi Novik
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 42815544
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.]]> 307 Mona Awad 0525559736 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.53 2019
author: Mona Awad
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 41219 A beautiful hardback edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel. A romance, a literary quest, a modern classic.

A pair of young scholars investigate the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story.]]> 555 A.S. Byatt 0679735909 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.89 1991
author: A.S. Byatt
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 49203397 The Secret History meets Call Me by Your Name in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonizingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father's recent death. Paul sees his wealthy, effortlessly charming Julian as his sole intellectual equal - an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. He idolizes his friend for his magnetic confidence. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian also is volatile and capriciously cruel. An admiration isn't the same as trust.

As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared with the brutality they are capable of inflicting on one another. Separation is out of the question. But as their orbit compresses and their grip on one another tightens, they are drawn to an act of irrevocable violence that will force the young men to confront a shattering truth at the core of their relationship.

Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire.]]> 460 Micah Nemerever 0062963635 mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 3.96 2020
author: Micah Nemerever
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X mihaela 0 high-priority-tbr 4.09 2020
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: high-priority-tbr
review:

]]> 38633526
Our life is brief . . .

While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin.

As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it’s the only place she should be. Against her mother’s wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education.

As she quickly discovers, the institute’s "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want.

A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of speculative fiction—brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey—is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Max Barry’s Lexicon, and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.]]> 408 Marina Dyachenko 0062694596 mihaela 0 to-read 4.00 2007
author: Marina Dyachenko
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42603984
Welcome to Niveus Private Academy, where money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because anonymous texter, Aces, is bringing two students' dark secrets to light.

Talented musician Devon buries himself in rehearsals, but he can't escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Head girl Chiamaka isn't afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power.

Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they're planning much more than a high-school game...]]> 470 Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé 1474967531 mihaela 0 to-read 4.15 2021
author: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50268032
Hetty and Ness, best friends since childhood, have left suburban Melbourne for the first time to live abroad. Hetty is charming and captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. In the student quarter of Toronto, the pair take a room in a share house full of self-assured creatives. Hetty disappears into barkeeping work and a whirlwind nightlife, while Ness drifts aimlessly.

But when Ness finds Hope one day in the art gallery, an intense affair develops. There are new friends, too, and a job: at last her life starts to make some sense. And Hetty’s starts spectacularly to fall apart, in a mess of bad drugs and bad men.

As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty’s character—abusive relationships, a dangerous obsession with bodies of water—become ever stronger. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.

Beautifully written and intimate, Cherry Beach is a revelatory story of friendship and desire.]]> 240 Laura McPhee-Browne 192226850X mihaela 0 to-read 3.82 2020
author: Laura McPhee-Browne
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56597885 356 Sally Rooney 0374602603 mihaela 0 to-read 3.53 2021
author: Sally Rooney
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3103
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).

Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]> 256 E.M. Forster 0393310329 mihaela 0 to-read 4.07 1971
author: E.M. Forster
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48037
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day�� Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.]]> 108 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 0809510839 mihaela 0 to-read 3.88 1872
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57658071 Rowan
I'm in the business of creating fairy tales.
Theme parks. Production companies. Five-star hotels.
Everything could be all mine if I renovated Dreamland.
My initial idea of hiring Zahra was good in theory, but then I kissed her.
Things spiraled out of control once I texted her using an alias.
By the time I realized where I went wrong, it was too late.
People like me don't get happy endings.
Not when we're destined to ruin them.

Zahra
After submitting a drunk proposal criticizing Dreamland's most expensive ride, I should have been fired.
Instead, Rowan Kane offered me a dream job.
The catch? I had to work for the most difficult boss I'd ever met.
Rowan was rude and completely off-limits, but my heart didn't care.
At least not until I discovered his secret.
It was time to teach the billionaire that money couldn't fix everything.
Especially not us.

The Fine Print is the first book in a series of interconnected standalones following three billionaire brothers.]]> 450 Lauren Asher mihaela 2 3.92 2021
author: Lauren Asher
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/08/27
date added: 2022/08/27
shelves:
review:
alright i need to STOP believing my fyp for real. there was so much that bothered me while reading this that i don't even wanna think about it anymore so there's not gonna be a detailed review with all my criticism this time
]]> 57917042 Edinburgh, 1817. Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry.

Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die.

When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, the university will allow her to enroll. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books �� she’ll need bodies to study, corpses to dissect.

Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living, then.

But Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets. Hazel and Jack work together to uncover the secrets buried not just in unmarked graves, but in the very heart of Edinburgh society.

A gothic tale full of mystery and romance about a willful female surgeon, a resurrection man who sells bodies for a living, and the buried secrets they must uncover together.]]> 338 Dana Schwartz mihaela 0 to-read 3.81 2022
author: Dana Schwartz
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3 309 J.K. Rowling 0439554934 mihaela 4 4.47 1997
author: J.K. Rowling
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/22
date added: 2022/08/22
shelves:
review:
ugh i LOVE harry potter. last time i read this i was probably about 10 and it got my full attention until the last page exactly as it has it rn (dare i say i'm having more fun now that i've grown up)... it wouldn't be surprising if i start reading the second book soon because i'm all about that hp world now
]]> 38462 here.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.]]> 159 James Baldwin mihaela 0 to-read 4.31 1956
author: James Baldwin
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 635635 From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women.

"Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard." ��The New York Times

Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.]]> 271 Angela Y. Davis 0394713516 mihaela 0 to-read 4.58 1981
author: Angela Y. Davis
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/21
shelves: to-read
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 mihaela 3 4.06 2019
author: Casey McQuiston
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/17
date added: 2022/08/17
shelves:
review:
i liked it, i mean it's a romance so said romance was written pretty well and that's all that got me through... the other stuff
]]> 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 mihaela 3 idk how to rate this one 4.11 2021
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/23
date added: 2022/08/16
shelves:
review:
idk how to rate this one
]]> 775346
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents�� yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.]]> 624 Donna Tartt 1400031699 mihaela 0 to-read 3.47 2002
author: Donna Tartt
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44074800 Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.]]> 410 Grady Hendrix mihaela 0 to-read 3.78 2020
author: Grady Hendrix
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35068705
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]> 545 R.F. Kuang 0062662597 mihaela 5 4.16 2018
author: R.F. Kuang
name: mihaela
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/15
date added: 2022/08/15
shelves:
review:
i simply couldn't put this book down. best fantasy i've ever read r u serious
]]> 58065414 Then. Twentysomething writer Chani Horowitz is stuck. While her former MFA classmates are nabbing book deals, she's in the trenches writing puff pieces. Then she's hired to write a profile of movie star Gabe Parker. The Gabe Parker--her forever celebrity crush, the object of her fantasies, the background photo on her phone--who's also just been cast as the new James Bond. It's terrifying and thrilling all at once... yet if she can keep her cool and nail the piece, it could be a huge win. Gabe will get good press, and her career will skyrocket. But what comes next proves to be life-changing in ways Chani never saw coming, as the interview turns into a whirlwind weekend that has the tabloids buzzing.

Now. Ten years later, after a brutal divorce and a heavy dose of therapy, Chani is back in Los Angeles, laser-focused on one thing: her work. But she's still spent the better part of the last decade getting asked about her deeply personal Gabe Parker profile at every turn. No matter what new essay collection or viral editorial she's promoting, it always comes back to Gabe. So when his PR team requests that they reunite for a second interview, she wants to say no. She wants to pretend that she's forgotten about the time they spent together, years ago. But the truth is that those seventy-two hours are still crystal clear, etched in her memory. And so... he says yes.

Chani knows that facing Gabe again also means facing feelings she's tried so hard to push away. Alternating between their first meeting and their reunion a decade later, this deliciously irresistible novel will have you hanging on until the last word.

A restless young journalist with big dreams interviews a Hollywood heartthrob--and, ten years later, it's clear that their time together meant more than meets the eye in this sexy, engrossing adult debut novel. ]]> 352 Elissa Sussman 0593357329 mihaela 0 to-read 3.55 2022
author: Elissa Sussman
name: mihaela
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>