en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 07:08:14 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 63834978 An intimate, sharply funny novel about a couple heading toward their wedding, and the three friends who may draw them apart

Meet Celine and Luke--for all intents and purposes the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more inter­ested in piano than in domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. And Vivian (a wedding guest), as the only one with any emotional distance, observes her friends like ants in a colony. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after--but does it lie at the end of an aisle?]]> 240 Naoise Dolan Tamara 0 tbr-own, currently-reading 3.34 2023
author: Naoise Dolan
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: tbr-own, currently-reading
review:

]]> 123429195
Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there―or who she is. A passing officer takes her to the police station, and not long after, a frantic man arrives. He's been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos. He is her father. Her name is Mary. Or so he says.

When Lola slammed the car door and stormed off into the night, Drew thought they just needed some time to cool off. Except Lola disappeared, and the sheriff, his friends, and the whole town are convinced Drew murdered his girlfriend. Forget proving his innocence, he needs to find her before it's too late. The longer Lola is missing, the fewer leads there are to follow…and the more danger they both are in.]]> 297 Megan Lally 1728270111 Tamara 0 to-read 4.05 2023
author: Megan Lally
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213243908 A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 448 B.K. Borison 0593641191 Tamara 0 to-read 4.08 2025
author: B.K. Borison
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40381392 A love worth fighting for. A dream worth dying for. An ending worth waiting for.

It’s been two months since the Fates were freed from a deck of cards, two months since Legend claimed the throne for his own, and two months since Tella discovered the boy she fell in love with doesn’t really exist.

With lives, empires, and hearts hanging in the balance, Tella must decide if she’s going to trust Legend or a former enemy. After uncovering a secret that upends her life, Scarlett will need to do the impossible. And Legend has a choice to make that will forever change and define him.

Caraval is over, but perhaps the greatest game of all has begun. There are no spectators this time—only those who will win, and those who will lose everything.

Welcome, welcome to Finale . . . all games must come to an end.]]> 478 Stephanie Garber 1250157668 Tamara 4 4.14 2019
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 60714999 Human or vampire, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always � always � guard your heart.

The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.

But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.

Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown� and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.

But there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone � but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love.

The Serpent and the Wings of Night is the first book in a new series of heart-wrenching romance, dark magic, and bloodthirsty intrigue, perfect for fans of From Blood and Ash and A Court of Thorns and Roses.]]> 504 Carissa Broadbent Tamara 0 to-read 4.30 2022
author: Carissa Broadbent
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36329818
After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister, Scarlett, from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name.

The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more—and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets…including her sister's. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning, and sacrifice, but now the game is asking for more. If Tella can’t fulfill her bargain and deliver Legend’s name, she’ll lose everything she cares about—maybe even her life. But if she wins, Legend and Caraval will be destroyed forever...

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . the games have only just begun.]]> 451 Stephanie Garber 125009531X Tamara 3 4.12 2018
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 35900387 No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart. ]]> 390 Gail Honeyman 0008172145 Tamara 4 tbr-do-not-own 4.17 2017
author: Gail Honeyman
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: tbr-do-not-own
review:
Less quirky coming-of-age and more existential than the Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ blurb let on. Regardless, a captivating read!!
]]> 27883214 A legendary competition.
A mesmerizing romance.
An unbreakable bond
between two sisters.

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . beware of getting swept too far away.]]> 407 Stephanie Garber 1250095255 Tamara 4 tbr-own 3.97 2016
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: tbr-own
review:

]]> 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Tamara 1 tbr-own 4.18 2025
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 1
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: tbr-own
review:
Had to take a deep breath and count down from 20 after finishing this book
]]> 221200339
A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.

Dolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.]]> 320 Dolly Alderton 0241988683 Tamara 0 to-read 3.83 2020
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63247365
“Emotional, relatable and binge-worthy." –Tessa Bailey

“I’ll read anything she writes. An absolute star." –Emily Henry

“I was hooked on the very first page. Don't miss this one!" � Carley Fortune

Two writers with a complicated history end up working on the same TV show. Can they write themselves a new ending? A sexy and emotional enemies-to-lovers romance guaranteed to pull on your heartstrings and give you a book hangover from brilliant new voice Yulin Kuang

Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.

Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers� room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except�

Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.

Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all.

When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet� the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.]]> 384 Yulin Kuang Tamara 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Yulin Kuang
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 78433 The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.]]> 637 Margaret Atwood Tamara 0 to-read 3.96 2000
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55004093 What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.]]> 392 Peng Shepherd 0062910698 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.62 2022
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.61 2023
author: James Islington
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 61242426
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success � not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.05 2022
author: Travis Baldree
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 174547967 From the number one bestselling author Catherine Doyle comes the most fiery enemies-to-lovers romantasy of the year. Perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Leigh Bardugo and Stephanie Garber.  

In the dark underbelly of a beautiful city, two rival assassins are pitted against each other in a deadly game of revenge, where the most dangerous mistake of all is falling in love�

In Fantome, a kingdom of cobbled streets, flickering lamplight, beautiful buildings, and secret catacombs, Shade-magic is a scarce and deadly commodity controlled by two enemy the Cloaks and the Daggers � the thieves and the assassins. On the night of her mother’s murder, 17-year-old Seraphine runs for her life. Seeking sanctuary with the Cloaks, Sera’s heart is set on revenge. But are her secret abilities a match for the dark-haired boy whose quicksilver eyes follow her around the city?

Nothing can prepare Sera for the moment she finally comes face-to-face with Ransom, heir to the Order of Daggers. And Ransom is shocked to discover that this unassuming farmgirl wields a strange and blazing magic he has never seen before� Among rumours of monsters stalking the streets and the rival guilds grappling for control of Fantome’s underworld, Sera and Ransom are drawn together by something more than just magic and must face a deadly choice - forgiveness or vengeance? Kiss or kill? Dagger or Flame?  ]]> 509 Catherine Doyle 1398528455 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.87 2024
author: Catherine Doyle
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.73 2023
author: Ava Reid
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 57912066 Five are now members of the Society.
Two paths lie before them.

All must pick a side.

Alliances will be tested, hearts will be broken, and The Society of Alexandrians will be revealed for what it is: a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way.]]> 560 Olivie Blake 1250855128 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.51 2022
author: Olivie Blake
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.03 2002
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 181123944 GIRLS follows the story of two sisters - Mattie and Nora - and the thorny relationship with their famous late mother, brilliant yet deeply troubled artist Ingrid Olsen.

As they embark on an all-or-nothing road trip across the US to preserve Ingrid's legacy, they start to unpick the scars of the past - and realise that the ties that bound them, might also break them.

Told partly in interview form, GIRLS is as devastating as it is hilarious, as tender and moving as it is shocking - this is a book that will stay with you long after you have turned the final pages.]]> 320 Kirsty Capes Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.05
author: Kirsty Capes
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.00 2019
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 181703864
After a nasty breakup, Tasha is convinced that her Christmas is ruined. When she goes to a Christmas tree lot to find some holiday spirit, she is surprised to stumble upon some holiday magic.

Bruce, Ash, and Forest are cursed Christmas trees, who only want to give her some holiday cheer.
But after she takes them home for the holidays to enjoy in their human form, will she keep them for the year? Or will she return them back to the lot?
Can all three guys show her what it means to be truly loved and will their love be enough to break the curse?





Note: This is a novella.]]> Tanya Lynn Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.06 2023
author: Tanya Lynn
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 384 Emily Henry 059344129X Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.23 2025
author: Emily Henry
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 58340706
Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunder—she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets.

But nothing comes for free, especially magic.

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure Blunder from the dark magic infecting it. And the highwayman? He just so happens to be the King’s nephew, Captain of the most dangerous men in Blunder…and guilty of high treason.

Together they must gather twelve Providence Cards—the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.]]> 399 Rachel Gillig 0316312487 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.26 2022
author: Rachel Gillig
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 217536270
In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn't much a girl wouldn't do for a glass of water.

Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen's reservoirs for as long as she can remember.

But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone.

When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently re-opens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares... but it turns out they're real, and Saeris has landed herself in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.

The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist's magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him . . . or her.

Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he's the only way Saeris is going to make it home.]]> 624 Callie Hart 1538774194 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.30 2024
author: Callie Hart
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Tamara 0 tbr-own, currently-reading 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: tbr-own, currently-reading
review:

]]> 204906164 A touching and deeply funny debut about starting over sober only to discover life’s biggest messes are still waiting right where you left them.

The very last person anyone should worry about is Emma. Yes, hi, she’s an alcoholic. But she’s officially been sober for one entire year. That’s twelve months of better health. Fifty-two whole weeks of focusing on nothing but her nine-to-five office job, group meetings, and avoiding the kind of bad decisions that previously left her awash in shame and regret. It’s also been 365 days of not dating. And with her new dating profile, Emma, 26, of New York is ready to put herself back out there.

Except—was dating always this complicated? And did Emma’s mother really have to choose now to move in with her new boyfriend? Being assigned to plan her office’s holiday party feels like icing on the suddenly very overwhelming cake until her estranged father reappears with devastating news. Icing, meet cherry on top. But then there’s Ben, the charming IT guy who, despite Emma’s awkwardness and shortcomings, seems to maybe actually get her? Sobriety is turning out to be far from the flawless future Emma had once envisioned for herself, but as she allows herself to open up to Ben and confront difficult past relationships, she’s beginning to realize that taking things one day at a time might just be the perfectly imperfect path she’s meant to be on.

Bittersweet and darkly hilarious, Ava Robinson’s debut novel about navigating sobriety and complicated family dynamics is witty, heartbreaking, and profoundly relatable.]]> 352 Ava Robinson 0778310590 Tamara 4 3.83 2024
author: Ava Robinson
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 62816044 Two villains, one girl, and a deadly battle for happily ever after.

Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out . . . but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.

Blood will be shed, hearts will be stolen, and true love will be put to the test in A Curse for True Love, the breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Once Upon A Broken Heart trilogy.]]> 386 Stephanie Garber 1250851203 Tamara 4
-1 star for the way this book had me stressed 99% of the time and also Apollo’s povs ]]> 4.14 2023
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
2025 is the year for getting emotionally eviscerated by YA Romantasy series !!

-1 star for the way this book had me stressed 99% of the time and also Apollo’s povs
]]> 55987278 How far would you go for happily ever after?

For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings... until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.

Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic but wicked Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.

But after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with an immortal is a dangerous game—and that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she’d pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after or the most exquisite tragedy...]]> 408 Stephanie Garber 1250268397 Tamara 4 yearning = off the charts 4.06 2021
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
yearning = off the charts
]]> 50175419 An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer

Ava moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.

When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands.

Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her. Ava has been carefully pretending that Julian is nothing more than an absentee roommate, so when Julian announces that he’s returning to Hong Kong, she faces a fork in the road. Should she return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?

Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice.]]> 243 Naoise Dolan 0062968742 Tamara 5 favorites 3.20 2020
author: Naoise Dolan
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 665 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Tamara 4 favorites
*The nonsense in question:
- "___ for the win"x20 in the first 5 ish chapters
- reciting fun history facts while crossing the parapet to drive home the fact that Violet is smart and cool and educated and NOT like other girls
- excessive swearing and "flipping the middle finger" to the point where these supposed 20-something year olds sound like middle schoolers who just learned "the f-word"
- Dain
- Violet being inexplicably h*rny for 99% of the book, arguably to a fault
- "godS" "oh godS" "thank godS"
- the dragon s*x scene (??)
- Xaden being described as smelling like mint every third page
- the "Violence" nickname, (which kind of ate 99% of the time, but in the middle of war (??) bffr)
- Violet Not-Like-Other-Girls Sorrengail being described as weak and frail and a liability but also defying all odds and winning everything all the time since she's essentially the second coming of Christ

I promise I loved this book, I'm just a hater at my core and can't let the cringe slide]]> 4.56 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
This book is the definition of a guilty pleasure read - objectively absurd but also endearingly reminiscent of early 2010s Wattpad and mainstream YA fiction, so the nonsense* amazingly works for the book rather than against it. I had way too much fun reading this and was fully locked in (mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually) for the entirety of the story. It was an entertaining, hilarious, and all-around immersive experience. I bought the second book about halfway through and I am eager to uncover the dumpster fires that lie ahead in Violence's narrative!!

*The nonsense in question:
- "___ for the win"x20 in the first 5 ish chapters
- reciting fun history facts while crossing the parapet to drive home the fact that Violet is smart and cool and educated and NOT like other girls
- excessive swearing and "flipping the middle finger" to the point where these supposed 20-something year olds sound like middle schoolers who just learned "the f-word"
- Dain
- Violet being inexplicably h*rny for 99% of the book, arguably to a fault
- "godS" "oh godS" "thank godS"
- the dragon s*x scene (??)
- Xaden being described as smelling like mint every third page
- the "Violence" nickname, (which kind of ate 99% of the time, but in the middle of war (??) bffr)
- Violet Not-Like-Other-Girls Sorrengail being described as weak and frail and a liability but also defying all odds and winning everything all the time since she's essentially the second coming of Christ

I promise I loved this book, I'm just a hater at my core and can't let the cringe slide
]]> 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 Tamara 5 favorites 3.91 2023
author: Claire Daverley
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
Complete and utter emotional damage
]]> 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller Tamara 5 favorites 4.30 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
sparknotes <<< iliad fanfic
]]> 36206591 The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501190539 Tamara 5 favorites 4.23 2018
author: Christina Lauren
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

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

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

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

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

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

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston Tamara 4 favorites 4.18 2023
author: Ashley Poston
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 34948440 Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.]]> 385 Holly Black Tamara 5 favorites 3.99 2018
author: Holly Black
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
I fear I’m in my YA fantasy era
]]> 59729042 A novel 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.

Babel is 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 its knowledge 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?]]> 560 R.F. Kuang Tamara 5 favorites 4.14 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
oh boy I am never going to shut up about this book !!
]]> 59808071 Not every love is meant to be.

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

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

Instead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline’s life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts. Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she’s not sure she can...]]> 416 Stephanie Garber 1250268427 Tamara 5 favorites The only book to ever exist 4.49 2022
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: favorites
review:
The only book to ever exist
]]> 62994279 She's his opposite in every way...and the greatest temptation he's ever known.

Reserved, controlled, and proper to a fault, Kai Young has neither the time nor inclination for chaos—and Isabella, with her purple hair and inappropriate jokes, is chaos personified.

With a crucial CEO vote looming and a media empire at stake, the billionaire heir can’t afford the distraction she brings.

Isabella is everything he shouldn’t want, but with every look and every touch, he’s tempted to break all his rules…and claim her as his own.

***

Bold, impulsive, and full of life, Isabella Valencia has never met a party she doesn’t like or a man she couldn’t charm...except for Kai Young.

It shouldn’t matter. He’s not her type—the man translates classics into Latin for fun, and his membership at the exclusive club where she bartends means he’s strictly off limits.

But she can’t deny that, beneath his cool exterior, is a man who could make her melt with just a touch.

No matter how hard they try, they can’t resist giving into their forbidden desires.

Even if it costs them everything.

King of Pride is a steamy opposite attract, forbidden billionaire romance. It's book two in the Kings of Sin series but can be read as a standalone.

Contains explicit content and profanity. Recommended for mature readers only. ]]> 358 Ana Huang Tamara 2 yawn 3.92 2023
author: Ana Huang
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
yawn
]]> 6219656
“The Lottery� stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery� has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
]]> 30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Tamara 4 midsommar vibes 4.08 1948
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
midsommar vibes
]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Tamara 2 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
Overly-ambitious but fell short in everything this book tried to be (sci-fi, romance, social commentary, spy thriller..)
]]> 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Tamara 4 4.33 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves:
review:
Take a shot every time Violet measures time in heartbeats or suppresses the bile rising in her throat
]]> 32874746
A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras.

But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students� world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.]]> 370 M.L. Rio Tamara 3 4.00 2017
author: M.L. Rio
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:
Love a good dark academia story but these theater kids were so boring and predictable
]]> 49084724
And when they suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But has anything really changed? She’s always been alone, hasn’t she?

Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan who is still two months shy of eighteen. Sent to live with him and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, in the mountains of Colorado, Tiernan soon learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore. As the three of them take her under their wing, teach her to work and survive in the remote woods far away from the rest of the world, she slowly finds her place among them.

And as a part of them.

She also realizes that lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.

One of them has her.

The other one wants her.

But he�

He’s going to keep her.

*Credence is a new adult standalone novel suitable for readers 18+.]]> 470 Penelope Douglas 1660089050 Tamara 3 3.58 2020
author: Penelope Douglas
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
a dumpster fire that i couldn't look away from
]]> 10956 250 Jeffrey Eugenides 0747560595 Tamara 5 3.81 1993
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
a life-ruining experience softened by beautiful prose
]]> 59108922 The much-acclaimed BookTok sensation, Olivie Blake's The Atlas Six--now newly revised and edited with additional content.

� The tag #theatlassix has millions of views on TikTok

� A dark academic debut fantasy with an established cult following that reads like THE SECRET HISTORY meets THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

� The first in an explosive trilogy

The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.

Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 410 Olivie Blake 1250854555 Tamara 3 3.68 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:
Not sure how to feel about this one. There was an irritating lack of world-building, essentially no plot, nor character development and the pace was extremely inconsistent. The vibes, however, were superb and the last chapter alone was intriguing enough to make me forget the suffering I endured within the 350 preceding pages. I unfortunately can’t go on without finding out what happens next so I’ll absolutely be reading the rest of the trilogy but i’m hesitant to immediately subject myself to further torment, especially after skimming the reviews. 3.5 �️
]]> 9916169
While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin’s secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman—and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future. For even as she delves into the secrets of Olena’s life, Daryna grapples with the suspicious death of a painter who just may be the latest victim of a corrupt political power play.

From the dim days of World War II to the eve of Orange Revolution, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is an “epic of enlightening force� that explores the enduring power of the dead over the living.]]> 756 Oksana Zabuzhko 1611090113 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.09 2009
author: Oksana Zabuzhko
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 30819227 A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother's gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the Soviet era name of the Ukranian city of Luhansk, mixing magical realism and exhilarating road novel in poetic, powerful, and expressive prose.

]]> 458 Serhiy Zhadan Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.95 2010
author: Serhiy Zhadan
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 54870131 Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet—but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping.

We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma.

The economy says we must always consume even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure.

The planet says we consume too much: in America, we burn the earth’s resources at a rate five times faster than it can regenerate. And despite efforts to “green� our consumption—by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power—we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions.

Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping?  Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? At first this question took him around the world, seeking answers from America’s big-box stores to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then the thought experiment came shockingly the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt, and MacKinnon’s ideas were tested in real time.

Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to An investment in our physical and emotional wellness. The pleasure of caring for our possessions. Closer relationships with our natural world and one another. Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will embolden you to envision another way.]]> 336 J.B. MacKinnon 0062856022 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.16 2021
author: J.B. MacKinnon
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 11408650
It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed.

There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been
through, she can fall in love.

She’s wrong.]]> 456 Michelle Hodkin 1442421789 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.01 2011
author: Michelle Hodkin
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.88 1872
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.02 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 5152478
In her most powerfully moving novel since Speak, award-winning author, Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia's struggle, her painful path to recovery, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the most important thing of all—hope.]]> 278 Laurie Halse Anderson 067001110X Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.96 2009
author: Laurie Halse Anderson
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 53285047 We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

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.

Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library]]> 305 Mona Awad 0525559752 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.43 2019
author: Mona Awad
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.61 2021
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.94 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 53331577 Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.

Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.]]> 325 Madeline Martin 133528480X Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.07 2021
author: Madeline Martin
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 36133254 For readers of THE COWS, SWEETBITTER or CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS - as well as for fans of FLEABAG or SEARCH PARTY - Caroline O'Donoghue's debut is a gothic, darkly witty novel about sex, power, work and being a young woman in a man's world.

"I don't know why it never occurs to me to ask for more: to be taken to dinner, or to be given a promise, or at the very least, an explanation of why things aren't working out with his wife. I know exactly what Jolly would say: I know because I've written words to mistresses before. Hundreds of them."

On the day of her 26th birthday, Jane is recently single, adrift at her job, and intrigued by why Clem - her much older, married boss - is singing to her.

Meanwhile her alter-ego, the online agony aunt Jolly Politely, has all the answers. She's provided thousands of strangers with insightful and occasionally cutting insights to contemporary life's most vexing questions.

When she and Clem kiss at a party, Jane does not follow the advice she would give to her readers as Jolly: instead she plunges head-first into an affair. One that could jeopardise her friendships, her career and even her life.]]> 352 Caroline O'Donoghue 0349009902 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.69 2018
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 43587154 JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.]]> 540 Fonda Lee 0316440884 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.06 2017
author: Fonda Lee
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Tamara 4 4.06 2023
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Tamara 3 It was fine idk 3.99 2020
author: Emily Henry
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:
It was fine idk
]]> 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Tamara 4 existential crisis core 4.21 2024
author: Emily Henry
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/23
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves:
review:
existential crisis core
]]> 86121173 She’s the wife he never wanted…and the weakness he never saw coming.

Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.

Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.

The billionaire CEO never planned to marry�
until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.

Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.

There’s only one problem: now that he has her...he can't bring himself to let her go.

***
Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.

Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society.

Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.

While the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.

Craving his touch was never part of the plan.

Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.

King of Wrath is a steamy billionaire/arranged marriage romance. It contains explicit sexual content, profanity, and mild violence. Recommended for mature readers only.]]> 407 Ana Huang 1728289726 Tamara 3 4.11 2022
author: Ana Huang
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves:
review:
Not incredibly original or groundbreaking but a decently good time as expected!!
]]> 199261152 A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction� literally.

Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.

But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel�

Because it is.

This place can’t be real, and yet� she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.

Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.

Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593640977 Tamara 1 Biggest letdown of 2024 3.62 2024
author: Ashley Poston
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
Biggest letdown of 2024
]]> 202102084 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.

The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. 

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.  

The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 

But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 

She does not know this yet. But she will.]]> 320 Ava Reid 0593722566 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.46 2024
author: Ava Reid
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 75555793 *The Sunday Times and Global number one bestseller*
*Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards*
*A Book of the Year in The Times, the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Financial Times*

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young - but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?]]> 337 Sally Rooney 0571365442 Tamara 4 3.50 2021
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves:
review:
I have such a soft spot for melodramatic, pretentious and almost entirely insufferable Sally Rooney characters <3
]]> 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.35 2017
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 75665887 Can they stop hating each other long enough to fall in love?

A commitment-phobe and a hopeless romantic clash over and over again--until heartbreak and unexpected chemistry bring them together in this clever enemies-to-friends-to-lovers debut romance.

When Ari and Josh first meet, the wrong kind of sparks fly. They hate each other. Instantly.

A free-spirited, struggling comedian who likes to keep things casual, Ari sublets, takes gigs, and she never sleeps over after hooking up. Born-and-bred Manhattanite Josh has ambitious plans: Take the culinary world by storm, find The One, and make her breakfast in his spotless kitchen. They have absolutely nothing in common . . . except that they happen to be sleeping with the same woman.

Ari and Josh never expect their paths to cross again. But years later, as they're both reeling from ego-bruising breakups, a chance encounter leads to a surprising connection: friendship. Turns out, spending time with your former nemesis is fun when you're too sad to hate each other--and too sad for hate sex.

As friends-without-benefits, they find comfort in late-night Netflix binges, swiping through each other's online dating profiles, and bickering across boroughs. It's better than romance. Until one night, the unspoken boundaries of their platonic relationship begin to blur. . . .

With sharp observations and sizzling chemistry, You, Again explores the dynamics of co-ed friendship in this sparkling romantic comedy of modern love in all its forms.]]> 448 Kate Goldbeck 059344812X Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.55 2023
author: Kate Goldbeck
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 60784729 From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.

When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.

Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey, one of our most acclaimed literary innovators, pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.]]> 416 Catherine Lacey Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.83 2023
author: Catherine Lacey
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 26892110
After all, she was a normal American herself, once.

That was a long time ago, of course—before the time she calls “adoption day,� when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.

Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.

In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power.

Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library—and with it, power over all of creation.

As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her.

But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.]]> 390 Scott Hawkins 0553418629 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.06 2015
author: Scott Hawkins
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 18162954 An enchanting short story from Madeline Miller that boldly reimagines the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion.

In ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece � the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen � the gift of life. Now his wife, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own and yearns for independence.

In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, Galatea is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost...]]> 27 Madeline Miller 1408848147 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.93 2013
author: Madeline Miller
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.32 2016
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 147865
She gets into Boston University, Alex gets into Harvard, and everything is falling into place, when on the eve of her departure, Rosie gets news that will change their lives forever: She's pregnant by a boy she'd gone out with while on the rebound from Alex.

Her dreams for college, Alex, and a glamorous career dashed, Rosie stays in Dublin to become a single mother, while Alex pursues a medical career and a new love in Boston. But destiny is a funny thing, and in this novel, structured as a series of clever e-mails, letters, notes, and a trail of missed opportunities, Alex and Rosie find out that fate isn't done with them yet.

Sometimes you have to look at life in a whole new way...

From the bestselling author of PS, I Love You comes a delightfully enchanting novel about what happens when two people who are meant to be together just can't seem to get it right.]]> 512 Cecelia Ahern 0786891084 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.95 2004
author: Cecelia Ahern
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 17347634 A newer edition of ISBN 978-0143124542 can be found here.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?]]> 369 Jojo Moyes 0670026603 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.26 2012
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.49 2021
author: Andy Weir
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.69 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 44418194 A powerful curse forces the exiled Queen of Faerie to choose between ambition and humanity in this highly anticipated and jaw-dropping finale to The Folk of the Air trilogy from a #1 New York Times bestselling author.He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the thronePower is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan's betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her twin sister, Taryn, whose life is in peril.Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict's bloody politics.And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity . . .]]> 321 Holly Black Tamara 5 4.35 2019
author: Holly Black
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
I will never emotionally recover from this series
]]> 39009348 You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.

The first lesson is to make yourself that strong.

Jude has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were biddable. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her, even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.

When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a faerie world.]]> 369 Holly Black Tamara 5 4.23 2019
author: Holly Black
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves:
review:
Ngl Cardan’s tail is always a jump scare for me
]]> 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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.12 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 60217302 He'll do anything to have her...including lie.

Charming, deadly, and smart enough to hide it, Christian Harper is a monster dressed in the perfectly tailored suits of a gentleman.

He has little use for morals and even less use for love, but he can’t deny the strange pull he feels toward the woman living just one floor below him.

She’s the object of his darkest desires, the only puzzle he can’t solve. And when the opportunity to get closer to her arises, he breaks his own rules to offer her a deal she can’t refuse.

Every monster has their weakness. She’s his.

His obsession.
His addiction.
His only exception.

**

Sweet, shy, and introverted despite her social media fame, Stella Alonso is a romantic who keeps her heart in a cage.

Between her two jobs, she has little time or desire for a relationship.

But when a threat from her past drives her into the arms—and house—of the most dangerous man she’s ever met, she’s tempted to let herself feel something for the first time in a long time.

Because despite Christian’s cold nature, he makes her feel everything when she’s with him.

Passionate.
Protected.
Truly wanted.

Theirs is a love twisted with secrets and tainted by lies…and when the truths are finally revealed, they could shatter everything.

Twisted Lies is a steamy, medium to slow burn fake dating romance. It is the fourth and final book in the Twisted series but can be read as a standalone.

WARNING: Contains a morally gray male MC, explicit content, violence, profanity, and topics that may be sensitive to some readers. Please see inside the book for a detailed list. Recommended for 18+ ]]> 530 Ana Huang Tamara 3 4.20 2022
author: Ana Huang
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:
In no world did this book need to be 500+ pages. The first 300 could have easily gotten the point across in a 2 paragraph email
]]> 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.35 2022
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 127280850
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 392 Emilia Hart 1250842727 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.02 2023
author: Emilia Hart
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 18045891
Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)]]> 254 Gillian Flynn 0297851535 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.05 2006
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.87 2024
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 34234631 My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.

Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable.

Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death.]]> 33 Sally Rooney 0571351956 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.76 2016
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 49083140
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention�

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.]]> 304 Eliza Clark 1910312649 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.74 2020
author: Eliza Clark
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 50358134 A psychological thriller about two teenagers teaming up with the FBI to track down juvenile serial killers.

In 1982, two teenagers—serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell—are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases. From the start, Emma and Travis develop a quick friendship, gaining information from juvenile murderers that even the FBI can't crack. But when the team is called in to give advice on an active case—a serial killer who exclusively hunts teenagers—things begin to unravel. Working against the clock, they must turn to one of the country's most notorious incarcerated murderers for help: teenage sociopath Simon Gutmunsson. Despite Travis's objections, Emma becomes the conduit between Simon and the FBI team. But while Simon seems to be giving them the information they need to save lives, he's an expert manipulator playing a very long game...and he has his sights set on Emma.]]> 400 Ellie Marney 0316497835 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 3.93 2020
author: Ellie Marney
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
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 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.09 2020
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 22609317
As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

But Ani has a secret.

There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.

With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all� and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears.

The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?]]> 338 Jessica Knoll 1476789630 Tamara 4 3.50 2015
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Tamara 1 4.11 2021
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
review:
Olive consistently got on my nerves and the bonus chapter with Adam's pov made me physically cringe bc it was 100% giving creepy incel discord daddy internal monologue
]]> 54985743 Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806750 Tamara 5 3.85 2021
author: Emily Henry
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 205745414
Twenty-two-year-old, tattooed, smoking-hot leader of the Renegades.

Five time X Games medalist.

The world is his playground—especially this year—and for the next nine months I’m stuck as his tutor on the Study at Sea program.

He’s too busy staging worldwide stunts for his documentary to get to class.

But if I can’t get him to take academics seriously, I’ll lose my scholarship…if I don’t lose my heart first.

Six unlikely friends on a nine-month cruise with the Study at Sea program will learn that chemistry is more than a subject and the best lessons aren’t taught in the classroom…but in the heart.]]> 416 Rebecca Yarros 1649377339 Tamara 4 3.92 2016
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 98653925 James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.

For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.

Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.]]> 389 James Frankie Thomas 1419769146 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-do-not-own 4.06 2023
author: James Frankie Thomas
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read, tbr-do-not-own
review:

]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 4.26 2022
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Tamara
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 Tamara 0 to-read, tbr-own 3.76 2017
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read, tbr-own
review:

]]> 39555142 JORDAN

He took me in when I had nowhere else to go. He doesn’t use me, hurt me, or forget about me. He listens to me, protects me, and sees me. I can feel his eyes on me over the breakfast table, and my heart pumps so hard when I hear him pull in the driveway after work.

I have to stop this. It can’t happen.

My sister once told me there are no good men, and if you find one, he’s probably unavailable. Only Pike Lawson isn’t the unavailable one.
I am.

PIKE

I took her in, because I thought I was helping. As the days go by, though, it’s becoming anything but easy. I have to stop my mind from drifting to her and stop holding my breath every time I bump into her in the house. I can’t touch her, and I shouldn’t want to.

But we’re not free to give into this. She’s nineteen, and I’m thirty-eight.

And her boyfriend’s father.

Unfortunately, they both just moved into my house.]]> 349 Penelope Douglas Tamara 1 3.85 2018
author: Penelope Douglas
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 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.]]> 384 Coco Mellors 1635576814 Tamara 2 3.70 2022
author: Coco Mellors
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
Pretentious but not in the good way
]]> 56688531 He hates her...almost as much as he wants her.

Gorgeous, cocky, and fast on his way to becoming a hotshot doctor, Josh Chen has never met a woman he couldn’t charm—except for Jules f**king Ambrose.

The beautiful redhead has been a thorn in his side since they met, but she also consumes his thoughts in a way no woman ever has.

When their animosity explodes into one unforgettable night, he proposes a solution that’ll get her out of his system once and for all: an enemies with benefits arrangement with simple rules.

No jealousy.

No strings attached.

And absolutely no falling in love.

**

Outgoing and ambitious, Jules Ambrose is a former party girl who’s focused on one thing: passing the attorney’s bar exam.

The last thing she needs is to get involved with a doctor who puts the SUFFER in insufferable…no matter how good-looking he is.

But the more she gets to know him, the more she realizes there’s more than meets the eye to the man she’s hated for so long.

Her best friend’s brother.

Her nemesis.

And her only salvation.


Theirs is a match made in hell, and when the demons from their past catch up with them, they’re faced with truths that could either save them …or destroy everything they’ve worked for.

Twisted Hate is a steamy enemies with benefits/enemies to lovers romance. It's book three in the Twisted series but can be read as a standalone.

Warning: It contains explicit content, profanity, and topics that may be sensitive to some readers. For details, please see content notes inside the book. Recommended for 18+.]]> 522 Ana Huang Tamara 4 3.98 2022
author: Ana Huang
name: Tamara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/29
date added: 2024/05/29
shelves:
review:
Alex Volkov redemption arc..?
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