tia ❀'s bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 12:20:35 -0700 60 tia ❀'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 tia ❀ 5 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 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 tia ❀ 4 4.26 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, arc-reviews
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

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

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

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 382 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 tia ❀ 5 4.66 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Everything I Know About Love 34427921
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming a grown up, journalist and former Sunday Times dating columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod-Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you've ever been able to rely on, and finding that that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out. It's a book about bad dates, good friends and - above all else - about recognising that you and you alone are enough.

Glittering, with wit and insight, heart and humour, Dolly Alderton's powerful début weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age - while making you laugh until you fall over. Everything I know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.]]> 336 Dolly Alderton tia ❀ 4 4.15 2018 Everything I Know About Love
author: Dolly Alderton
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 tia ❀ 5 4.55 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stop Me If You've Heard This One]]> 214986196 From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.

Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.

Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent—a much older lesbian magician—who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act—and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.

Equal parts bravado, tenderness, and humor, and bursting with misfits, magicians, musicians, and mimes, Stop Me If You've Heard This One is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.]]> 272 Kristen Arnett 0593719778 tia ❀ 4 3.70 2025 Stop Me If You've Heard This One
author: Kristen Arnett
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, arc-reviews, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Dark Places 5886881
Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back?

She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find.

Who did massacre the Day family?]]> 424 Gillian Flynn 0307341569 tia ❀ 2 3.95 2009 Dark Places
author: Gillian Flynn
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2-stars, 2025-reads, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Bury Your Gays 195790870 From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale�"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.]]> 295 Chuck Tingle 1250874653 tia ❀ 4 4.14 2024 Bury Your Gays
author: Chuck Tingle
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Old Flame 61272703 A highly anticipated new novel exploring what it means to be a woman in her many forms—daughter, friend, partner, lover, and mother.

Emily writes for women’s catalogs for a living, but she’d rather be writing books. She has a handsome photographer boyfriend, but she actively wonders how and when they will eventually hurt each other. Her best work friend Megan is her lifeline, until Megan is abruptly laid off. When her world is further upended by an unplanned pregnancy, Emily is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever.

What will she sacrifice from her old life to make room for a new one? What fires will she be forced to extinguish, and which will keep burning? Old Flame is a story about the essential—and often existential—choices that define a woman’s life at every level, from which dress to wear to when to have a child to how to be in the world.]]> 320 Molly Prentiss 1501121588 tia ❀ 3 3.83 2023 Old Flame
author: Molly Prentiss
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Say You'll Remember Me 216437557 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer comes a new playful yet deeply emotional contemporary romance.

There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong�

. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 0349442827 tia ❀ 2 rtc ! 4.25 2025 Say You'll Remember Me
author: Abby Jimenez
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2024-reads, arc-reviews, 2-stars
review:
rtc !
]]> Finders Keepers 219301783
Last week, Nina Hunnicutt was a professor about to move into a gorgeous new apartment with her long-term boyfriend. Now, she’s single, unemployed, and living with her parents. Even more surprising is the fact that Quentin Bell, her childhood neighbor (and okay, fine, crush), is also back in town—and wants to resume the treasure hunt that ended their friendship almost two decades ago.

Hoping the reward promised to whoever finds the rumored riches left behind by the town’s eccentric turn-of-the-century seltzer magnate will help her get her life back on track, Nina agrees. Granted, last time the search resulted in a broken heart and seventeen years of silence. But Nina’s older and wiser now—surely things will be different.

Except, Quentin is also older and wiser…not to mention distractingly handsome. As they resume their hunt, Nina and Quentin begin to rediscover all the things they once loved best about each other. But unlike the treasure, the secrets that left them empty-handed the first time refuse to stay buried. If there’s any hope of finding what they’re looking for—and for a future together—Nina and Quentin will have to be brave enough to excavate their past as well.]]> 400 Sarah Adler 0593817427 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.11 2025 Finders Keepers
author: Sarah Adler
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Spirits (Ghosted, #1) 222279220 “Good Spirits is an absolute knockout. A new Borison book feels like coming home in the best way. She's truly in a league of her own.� � Hannah Grace, New York Times bestselling author of Icebreaker

The USA Today bestselling author of Business Casual, B.K. Borison is back with a whimsical new holiday romance—this time with a magical twist—that will have everyone falling in love with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

He’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. She’s not exactly Scrooge.

Ghost of Christmas Past Nolan Callahan intends to spend this holiday haunting like every other—get in, get out, return to his otherwise aimless existence as a ghost awaiting the afterlife. But when he’s faced with Harriet York, the sweetest assignment he’s ever had, he suddenly finds himself wishing for a future.

Harriet York has no idea why she’s being haunted. She’s a good person—or, at least, she tries to be. A people pleaser to her core, she always does what’s expected of her. But as she and Nolan begin to examine her past, they discover there are threads that bind them together� and realize there might be more to moving on than expected.

With the deadline of Christmas Eve fast approaching, will they find the key to their futures in each other’s pasts? Or will they stay firmly in the present, indulging in their unexpected, spirited connection?

Filled with magic, mayhem, and cozy holiday charm, this swoony romance is B.K. Borison’s best yet!]]> 384 B.K. Borison 0063430401 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.59 2025 Good Spirits (Ghosted, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wrath of the Dragons (Fear the Flames, #2)]]> 220687874 Fear the Flames.

In the explosive sequel to the bestselling romantasy Fear the Flames, two fated lovers must unite against warring kingdoms to defend their home and crowns from those who wish to destroy them.

Cayden Veles, renowned Demon Commander of Vareveth, overthrew the throne to save Elowen Atarah, the woman he searched for since childhood. Now he’s determined to fulfill his quest for revenge against her father, even if it means forcing the only person he’s ever wanted into a marriage of political convenience.

Elowen Atarah has everything she thought she’d ever want. Finally reunited with her dragons, she now has an army to enact vengeance, but as events transpire, she begins contemplating if she wants more. As her father’s only living heir, the Imirath throne is her right and destiny. But fighting and winning a war will require trusting Cayden Veles, her partner in crime and now king to her queen; the man she both longs for and doubts, especially after opening her heart only to become a pawn in his game.

Navigating the shifting allegiances amongst all the kingdoms of Ravaryn will require all their strategy and strength, with devastating and bloody attacks on one side and cutthroat diplomacy for alliances on the other. But Elowen and Cayden must find a way to stand strong within the power they’ve gained, or risk losing everything.

Delving deeper into a vast and ever-changing world, Wrath of the Dragons will take you on a journey filled with epic battles and a tender, angsty love for the ages.]]> 544 Olivia Rose Darling 0593873920 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.53 2025 Wrath of the Dragons (Fear the Flames, #2)
author: Olivia Rose Darling
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Annie Bot 215989058
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 240 Sierra Greer 0063312700 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.89 2024 Annie Bot
author: Sierra Greer
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Year of Yes 29540318 Grey's Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder and Catch, reveals how saying YES changed her life -- and how it can change yours too. With three hit shows on television and three children at home, Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say no when invitations arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No. And to an introvert like Shonda, who describes herself as 'hugging the walls' at social events and experiencing panic attacks before press interviews, there was a particular benefit to saying no: nothing new to fear. Then came Thanksgiving 2013, when Shonda's sister Delorse muttered six little words at her: You never say yes to anything. Profound, impassioned and laugh-out-loud funny, in Year of Yes Shonda Rhimes reveals how saying YES changed -- and saved -- her life. And inspires readers everywhere to change their own lives with one little word: Yes.]]> 352 Shonda Rhimes 1471157326 tia ❀ 4 4.04 2015 Year of Yes
author: Shonda Rhimes
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)]]> 51901147
The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 541 Suzanne Collins tia ❀ 4 3.99 2020 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 tia ❀ 3 3.94 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Not Quite Dead Yet 220223963 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder—now a hit Netflix series—returns with her first novel for adults: a twisty thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder.

In seven days Jet Mason will be dead.

Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has time.

Until Halloween night, when Jet is violently attacked by an unseen intruder.

She suffers a catastrophic head injury. The doctor is certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a deadly aneurysm.

Jet has never thought of herself as having enemies. But now she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her former best friend turned sister-in-law, her ex-boyfriend.

She has at most seven days, and as her condition deteriorates she has only her childhood friend Billy for help. But nevertheless, she’s absolutely determined to finally finish something:

Jet is going to solve her own murder.]]> 400 Holly Jackson 059397705X tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.43 2025 Not Quite Dead Yet
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping]]> 182484370
Sera Swan was once one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her magical Guild. Now she ( slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Aunt Jasmine run an inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep the talking fox in check, and longs for the magical future she lost.

When she learns about an old spellbook that holds the secret to restoring her power, she turns to Luke Larsen, a gorgeous historian who might just be able to help her unlock the book’s mysteries. Luke, who has his own reasons for staying at the inn, never planned on getting involved in the madcap goings-on around him and certainly had no intention of letting certain grumpy innkeepers past his icy walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he not only agrees to help, but also finds himself thawing .

Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone... and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.]]> 352 Sangu Mandanna 0593439376 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.66 2025 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.38 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Best Worst Thing 223614649 From a stunning new voice in romance, Lauren Okie’sThe Best Worst Thingis an intimate story about starting over, second chances, and two people who cannot help falling into each other’s orbit once again.

All things considered, Nicole Speyer has a pretty amazing life. At least that’s what she tells herself. She’s got a beautiful house, a relatively successful fertility podcast, and a perfect husband, Gabe. The only thing that’s less than ideal is her years-long struggle with infertility—and how, with every passing day, she and Gabe seem to drift a little further apart.

But then, mere hours after a Hail Mary embryo transfer to her gestational carrier, Nicole discovers Gabe’s been sleeping with their dog walker, and her world turns upside down. Suddenly, a jobless, childless, and now-husbandless Nicole finds herself at the doorstep of somebody she tried to say goodbye to a long time ago.

Logan Milgram: a former colleague with serious golden retriever energy who happens to be laugh-out-loud funny, a colossal nerd, and legitimately kind of hot. When Logan opens his door that night, it’s like no time has passed. And as they fall back into each other’s lives, Nicole starts recognizing herself in the mirror again. She even begins to like what she sees. And then, like a cruel joke, she gets the news she’s spent a lifetime waiting for: her surrogate is finally pregnant.

As her relationship with Logan develops from a blast-from-the-past fling into something much deeper, Nicole struggles to balance her past, present, and future. Racing against the clock, she must learn to forgive her body for falling short and recognize that sometimes, it’s the biggest betrayals in life that set us free. With everything on the line, can Nicole accept love from the greatest man she’s ever known . . . even if it’s nothing like the story she’d written for herself?]]> 416 Lauren Okie 0063432676 tia ❀ 0 currently-reading 4.61 The Best Worst Thing
author: Lauren Okie
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.61
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters]]> 123204337 He/She/They clearly and compassionately addresses fundamental topics, from why being transgender is not a choice and why pronouns are important, to more complex issues including how gender-affirming healthcare can be lifesaving and why allowing trans youth to play sports is good for all kids. With a relatable narrative rooted in facts, science, and history, Schuyler helps restore common sense and humanity to a discussion that continues to be divisively coopted and deceptively politicized.

Schuyler Bailar didn’t set out to be an activist, but his very public transition to the Harvard men’s swim team put him in the spotlight. His choice to be open about his transition and share his experience has touched people around the world. His plain-spoken education has evolved into tireless advocacy for inclusion and collective liberation. In He/She/They, Schuyler uses storytelling and the art of conversation to give us the essential language and context of gender, meeting everyone where they are and paving the way for understanding, acceptance, and, most connection. He/She/They is more than a book on allyship; it also speaks to trans folks directly, answering the question, “does it get better?”with a resounding yes, celebrating radical trans joy. Myth-busting, affirming, compassionate, and fierce, He/She/They is a crucial, urgent--and lifesaving--book that forever changes the conversation about gender.]]> 384 Schuyler Bailar 0306831872 tia ❀ 5 4.59 2023 He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters
author: Schuyler Bailar
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, audiobook-bangers
review:

]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 tia ❀ 0 currently-reading 3.67 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 tia ❀ 4 2025-reads, 4-stars 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)]]> 211164792 Two feuding second-grade teachers (and neighbors) find themselves teaming up in this rivals-to-lovers romance.

Emily Walker hates having her carefully crafted world disrupted by anyone, most of all her legendary nemesis, Jack Bennett. He's the opposite of the wonderful heroes she dreams up in her double life as a romance writer, which is why Emily was perfectly happy when Jack left Rome, Kentucky, mid-school year, with his fiancée. The last thing Emily saw coming was Jack’s return at the start of the summer after calling off the wedding and ending his relationship, but he’s here to stay—as her colleague and her neighbor.

Jackson Bennett is glad to be back, eager to renovate his house and work on the next mystery novel under his bestselling pen name. But when he realizes he’s now neighbors with the one woman who has always pushed his buttons, he discovers something he’s even more excited for—thwarting Emily and her petty plans to sabotage his return.

With their chemistry-fueled animosity at an all-time high, Emily accidentally sends an email to their school’s principal that could reveal her secret literary side hustle. She needs to steal back her manuscript, and Jack—she hates to admit—is just the man to help her. Surprisingly, Jack agrees. Will their unlikely alliance put an end to their rivalry? Or could it lead to a steamy plot twist they never saw coming?]]> 384 Sarah Adams 0593723694 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.08 2025 Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)
author: Sarah Adams
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.82 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Yours, Eventually 216522680 A mesmerizing debut novel set in a tightly knit Pakistani American community where a young doctor gets an unexpected second chance with the first love she never got over when he becomes one of the most eligible bachelors in town.

The Ibrahim family is facing a crucial moment: Their patriarch just lost his fortune as the result of a Ponzi scheme, and the family is picking up the pieces. At the family’s core is Asma—successful doctor and the long-suffering middle daughter who stepped into the family center after the death of her beloved mother years ago. Despite what the prying aunties think, Asma is living the life she has always wanted, fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a doctor . . . or so she thinks.

In walks Farooq Waheed, Asma’s college sweetheart whose proposal was cruelly rejected by Asma’s aunt and father. Now, eight years later, Farooq has made his fortune by selling his Silicon Valley startup and is widely considered one of the most eligible bachelors in California. As he enters Asma’s social orbit, she finds herself navigating a tricky landscape—her pushy sisters, gossiping aunties, and her father’s expectations—on her path to reconciling the past and winning Farooq back in the present. If there is still time.

Yours, Eventually is a story about a young woman finding the courage to follow her heart and coming to the realization that living your life according to what other people think is no life at all.]]> 400 Nura Maznavi 059347581X tia ❀ 3
I absolutely loved the pakisanti american rep and how deeply woven the family dynamics tied into our female main character’s motives/struggles]]> 3.61 2025 Yours, Eventually
author: Nura Maznavi
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2025-reads, arc-reviews, 3-stars
review:
this sht is so frustrating and I blame Jane Austen. second chance romance has me PUNCHING the air sometimes even tho it’s my fav trope

I absolutely loved the pakisanti american rep and how deeply woven the family dynamics tied into our female main character’s motives/struggles
]]> Feast While You Can 207567782 For readers of Nightbitch and We Ride Upon Sticks, this strange and sexy novel of queer love in a small town is an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life are monsters ready to possess us all.

In the valley at the intersection of three towering mountains sits Cadenze, an ugly, remote town with little to its name. It's filled with tourists in the summer and dead the rest of the year, when most of its residents surrender to a sleepier existence. Except, that is, for whatever is lurking in the caves...

Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, and for many generations, so was every member of her family. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party much like every other, Angelina runs into Patrick's ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. Perhaps enticed by Jagvi’s arrival, an ancient evil lying dormant in those caves is awakened, and soon Angelina’s small, contained world begins to shatter.

As the monstrous force grows bolder, it infiltrates Angelina’s life. It talks with her dog’s mouth; it guzzles on her memories; it controls Angelina from the inside. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it � the final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak, and mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her?]]> 304 Mikaella Clements 153874225X tia ❀ 4 3.89 2024 Feast While You Can
author: Mikaella Clements
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 tia ❀ 5
2/24/24: was itching to read a tear worthy 5 star read in 2024 (bc I haven’t had a 5star yet this year ]]> 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2023-reads, 5-stars, lifetime-favorites, physical-tbrcompleted, 2024-reads, 2025-reads
review:
2/23/25: apparently late February is when I spiral so much that I need a happy place reread. I cried SIX (6�) times this year hahahahah let’s just chalk it up to grad school application stress haahah

2/24/24: was itching to read a tear worthy 5 star read in 2024 (bc I haven’t had a 5star yet this year
]]> Promise Me Sunshine 214269328 Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not

Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of... a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again� list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.]]> 416 Cara Bastone 0593595734 tia ❀ 3 2025-reads, 3-stars 4.27 2025 Promise Me Sunshine
author: Cara Bastone
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars
review:

]]> The Blanket Cats 213870117 Seven struggling customers are given the unique opportunity to take home a “blanket cat� . . . but only for three days, the time it’ll take to change their lives.

A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers the unique opportunity to take home one of seven special cats, whose “magic� is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket.

In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.

But like all their kind, the “blanket cats� are mysterious creatures with unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t really what they need. Three days may not be enough to change a life. But it might just change how you see it.]]> 272 Kiyoshi Shigematsu 0593852699 tia ❀ 4 3.42 2008 The Blanket Cats
author: Kiyoshi Shigematsu
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Mr Salary 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 tia ❀ 4 3.76 2016 Mr Salary
author: Sally Rooney
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
started off annoyed at the character dynamics and was left disappointed by how short this was bc I wanted more. the relationship I have w Rooney books is confusing but I love it
]]> Funny Feelings 123395266
When falling in love is the punchline�

Farley Jones is a loud, chaotic, and hilariously clever standup comedian on the way to stardom. The only thing she loves more than the rush of telling jokes in front of a revved-up audience is her hot older manager Meyer, though he doesn’t have a clue. Keeping her feelings hidden from him is agony (a tragedy, even―in lieu of flowers, please send cash...) but Meyer has been Farley’s closest and most treasured friend, not to mention vital to the trajectory of her career. She can’t risk ruining their relationship by telling him how she truly feels. After all, who else would have the patience to put up with a hot mess like her?

A former standup star himself, single father Meyer Harrigan left the stage years ago in order to focus on raising his deaf daughter Hazel. Farley has been everything to them since she came into their lives three years ago, and despite his grumpiness, his protectiveness over Hazel, and his disdain for public attention, Meyer will do anything to make her standup dreams come true.

When the biggest opportunity of Farley’s career comes along and forces the pair to fake-date in order to stir up publicity, it doesn't take long for their act to bring all those other funny feelings out into the open. Like most matters of the heart, it quickly begins to feel like anything but a joke.

Touching on the creative spirit and all that comes with sharing that gift, Tarah DeWitt's Funny Feelings is a swoony story about friendship, love, and looking for the laugh in life.]]> 320 Tarah DeWitt 1250329361 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.66 2022 Funny Feelings
author: Tarah DeWitt
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 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 tia ❀ 4 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: 2024-reads, physical-tbrcompleted, 4-stars
review:

]]> Slipstream 221757386 In the high-speed world of Formula 1, documentarian Lilah teams up with racing driver Arthur Bianco for a whirlwind of revenge—and perhaps something more.

Lilah Graywood never imagined she’d be spending her summer amidst the roaring engines and adrenaline-fueled world of Formula 1 racing. As a serious documentarian, her passion lies in capturing the raw, unfiltered truth. But when her best friend, business co-owner, and secret boyfriend Max decides to pivot their documentary company to film the Ignition Energy Drink Racing team, Lilah is thrust into a world she despises. Her disdain turns to fury when Max blindsides her, not only ending their relationship but also threatening the company she painstakingly built.

Enter Arthur Bianco, the charismatic and enigmatic F1 reserve driver whose career is as tumultuous as the races he dreams of winning. Initially, Lilah is supposed to document Arthur’s relegation to backup driver, but together they concoct a plan to take control of Max’s documentary, each with their own motives—Lilah’s revenge and Arthur’s redemption. Their secret alliance promises to change the narrative, both on and off the track.

As they navigate the glamorous circuits and behind-the-scenes secrets of Formula 1, an unexpected speedbump forces Lilah and Arthur’s partnership to evolve into a fake relationship that feels all too real. The chemistry between them is off-limits and undeniable, and as Arthur’s cinematic comeback plays out over the hot globe-trotting summer, Lilah finds herself drawn to his true charm and hidden vulnerability. But as the cameras roll and the world watches, Lilah must confront her own feelings and the reality that no script can dictate the course of true love.

Slipstream is a captivating tale of love, revenge, and the unexpected turns life takes. With its blend of humor, heart, and high-speed drama, this contemporary romance is a must-read for anyone who believes in the power of second chances and the thrill of the chase.]]> 352 Madge Maril 1668098776 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Slipstream
author: Madge Maril
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pretty Girls 30227219
Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.

Claire is convinced Julia's disappearance is linked.

But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same...]]> 419 Karin Slaughter 0062499556 tia ❀ 0 dnf 4.11 2015 Pretty Girls
author: Karin Slaughter
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: dnf
review:
DNF58% 2/16-18 this book is SO BONKERS (NEGATIVE CONNOTATION)
]]> Seven Days in June 55648820
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781538719107.]]> 336 Tia Williams tia ❀ 5 3.98 2021 Seven Days in June
author: Tia Williams
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 tia ❀ 4 4.21 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Our Infinite Fates 210395729 The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.

They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers.

The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 tia ❀ 0 dnf 3.80 2025 Our Infinite Fates
author: Laura Steven
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Finding Me 58687126
This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.]]> 304 Viola Davis 0063037327 tia ❀ 5 4.54 2022 Finding Me
author: Viola Davis
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, audiobook-bangers, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Shark Heart 62919375
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with her college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds.]]> 416 Emily Habeck 1668006499 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.96 2023 Shark Heart
author: Emily Habeck
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Can't Get Enough 218372325 “Kennedy Ryan pours her whole soul into everything she writes, and it makes for books that are heart-searing, sensual, and life affirming.”―EMILY HENRY, #1 New York Times bestselling author Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She has phenomenal friends, a loving family, and a thriving business that places her in the entertainment industry's rarefied air. Your vision board? She’s probably living it.

She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions—always striving upward.And in the midst of everything, she's facing her toughest challenge caring for an aging parent.

Who has time for romance? From her experience, there's a low ROI on relationships. She hasn't met the man who cankeep up with her anyway. Until...him.

Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. From their first charged glance at the summer's hottest party, Hendrix feels like she’s met her match. Only he can’t be. Mav may be the first to make her feel this seen and desired and appreciated, but he’s the last one she can have. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.

But when Maverick gives chase—pursuing her, spoiling her,understandingher—is it time to let herself have something more?


A deeply moving and personal novel about sacrifice, self-reliance, and finding true happiness from “one of the finest romance writers of our age.� �Entertainment Weekly]]> 448 Kennedy Ryan 1538772809 tia ❀ 5 4.52 2025 Can't Get Enough
author: Kennedy Ryan
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, arc-reviews
review:

]]> The Great Believers 45304101 A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year.]]> 421 Rebecca Makkai 073522353X tia ❀ 5 made me cry otw to work 4.26 2018 The Great Believers
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, audiobook-bangers, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
made me cry otw to work
]]> Cross My Heart 214152422 She has his dead wife’s heart; the one she wants is his. The author of The Family Plot brings her signature prose to a twisty novel about a heart transplant patient who becomes romantically obsessed with her donor’s husband.

Rosie Lachlan wants nothing more than to find The One.

A year after she was dumped in her wedding dress, she’s working at her parents� bridal salon, anxious for a happy ending that can’t come soon enough. After receiving a life-saving heart transplant, Rosie knows her health is precious and precarious. She suspects her heart donor is Daphne Thorne, the wife of local celebrity author Morgan Thorne, who she begins messaging via an anonymous service called DonorConnect, ostensibly to learn more about Daphne. But Rosie has a secret: She’s convinced that now that she has his wife’s heart, she and Morgan are meant to be together.

As she and Morgan correspond, the pretense of avoiding personal details soon disappears, even if Rosie’s keeping some cards close to her chest. But as she digs deeper into Morgan’s previous marriage, she discovers disturbing rumors about the man she’s falling for. Could Morgan have had something to do with his late wife’s death? And can Rosie’s heart sustain another break—or is she next?]]> 309 Megan Collins 1668048078 tia ❀ 4 3.62 2025 Cross My Heart
author: Megan Collins
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Conversations with Friends 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 tia ❀ 3 3.74 2017 Conversations with Friends
author: Sally Rooney
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1)]]> 40916679
Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.

But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?

Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.]]> 433 Holly Jackson 1405293187 tia ❀ 5 4.30 2019 A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1)
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, audiobook-bangers, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2)]]> 51335759
With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.

But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the very same night the town hosted a memorial for the sixth-year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh.

The police won't do anything about it. And if they won't look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town's dark secrets along the way... and this time everyone is listening. But will she find him before it's too late?]]> 413 Holly Jackson 1405297751 tia ❀ 5 4.27 2020 Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2)
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/10
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, audiobook-bangers, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[As Good As Dead (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3)]]> 56905097 The finale to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series. By the end of this mystery series, you'll never think of good girls the same way again...

Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars.

Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle... and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears...]]> 500 Holly Jackson 0593379853 tia ❀ 3 4.20 2021 As Good As Dead (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3)
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/13
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Five Survive 68684067 From the author of the multimillion-copy bestselling A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series comes a new blockbuster thriller about a road trip that turns deadly.

Eight hours. Six friends. Five survive.

Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: Her best friend - the older brother - his perfect girlfriend - a secret crush - a classmate - and a killer.

When their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident. They have been trapped by someone out there in the dark, someone who clearly wants one of them dead.

With eight hours until dawn, the six friends must escape, or figure out which of them is the target. But is there a liar among them? Buried secrets will be forced to light and tensions inside the RV will reach deadly levels. Not all of them will survive the night. . . .]]> 389 Holly Jackson 0593651057 tia ❀ 4
At the book’s 75% mark, things start to pick up FAST and secrets get outed QUICKLY and the story starts to puzzle together INTENSELY and I could NOT. PUT. THIS. DOWN - new important information is constantly unraveled and you just get SUCKED IN - I had to listen to the book at 1.9x speed after that because I just needed to know so badly!!! Yaknow when you’re physically reading a book and you cover the next page because you know your brain will automatically try to read what’s happening next. Since I couldn’t do that with the audiobook I HAD to speed read through it because everything felt so intense, I guess that’s the best word I can find for my reading experience. Everything about this book was awesome - even Oliver, who you learn to despise, was a great character BECAUSE he was written so well to be a villain. As someone who is a big weenie when it comes to thrillers/mystery, I find it unlikely I’ll ever be disappointed when picking up one of her books.]]> 4.12 2022 Five Survive
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/06
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2023-reads, audiobook-bangers, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
Holly Jackson’s writing consistently packs a punch. Her execution of suspense and the mind games she puts us through, in the head of her main character, really pull you into her stories as a reader. You learn to love her main characters, I grew to like all of the poor souls stuck in the RV (OBVIOUSLYYY except for Oliver. All my homies hate Oliver) - even if they aren't good people - and was alwayssss curious as to what was going to happen next or what secret would be revealed next. I love how Jackson PUTS YOU in Red’s head without it feeling claustrophobic and you get a good sense of how her brain works and how quickly she picks up on minute details - which is perfect to string together this thriller. I felt so much empathy for Red and her journey in grieving and loved the relationship between her and Maddie.

At the book’s 75% mark, things start to pick up FAST and secrets get outed QUICKLY and the story starts to puzzle together INTENSELY and I could NOT. PUT. THIS. DOWN - new important information is constantly unraveled and you just get SUCKED IN - I had to listen to the book at 1.9x speed after that because I just needed to know so badly!!! Yaknow when you’re physically reading a book and you cover the next page because you know your brain will automatically try to read what’s happening next. Since I couldn’t do that with the audiobook I HAD to speed read through it because everything felt so intense, I guess that’s the best word I can find for my reading experience. Everything about this book was awesome - even Oliver, who you learn to despise, was a great character BECAUSE he was written so well to be a villain. As someone who is a big weenie when it comes to thrillers/mystery, I find it unlikely I’ll ever be disappointed when picking up one of her books.
]]> <![CDATA[Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5)]]> 62649000 Welcome to the murder mystery party of the year! Fans of the hit series A Good Girl's Guide to Murder will love Pip's final detective case in this mystery novella from #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Jackson.

Six suspects. Three hours. One murder...

Pip is not in the mood for her friend's murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920's fancy dress and pretending that their town is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder.

But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn't the only case on her mind ...]]> 119 Holly Jackson 0593426215 tia ❀ 4
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Childrens for this arc in exchange for an honest review!]]> 3.75 2021 Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5)
author: Holly Jackson
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/24
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2023-reads, 4-stars, arc-reviews, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
What a fun prequel!! I’ve read all of Holly Jackson’s work and love how she’s always leaving you guessing. It was nice getting back into Pip’s inquisitive, investigative brain - and to the fun dynamic seeing her and her friends letting loose (or as loose as Pip can get with her senior capstone coming). Along the way, you have a feeling that Jackson is going to pull the rug out from below you and it always keeps you on your toes!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Childrens for this arc in exchange for an honest review!
]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 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 tia ❀ 5 4.16 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/15
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, audiobook-bangers, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

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

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

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

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

In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.]]> 384 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158687 tia ❀ 5 BANGGERRR 4.19 2022 Carrie Soto Is Back
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/08
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, audiobook-bangers, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
BANGGERRR
]]> <![CDATA[Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1)]]> 16085481
When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn't know is that Nick's family home happens to look like a palace, that she'll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia's most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back.

Initiated into a world of dynastic splendor beyond imagination, Rachel meets Astrid, the It Girl of Singapore society; Eddie, whose family practically lives in the pages of the Hong Kong socialite magazines; and Eleanor, Nick's formidable mother, a woman who has very strong feelings about who her son should—and should not—marry.

Uproarious, addictive, and filled with jaw-dropping opulence, Crazy Rich Asians is an insider's look at the Asian JetSet; a perfect depiction of the clash between old money and new money; between Overseas Chinese and Mainland Chinese; and a fabulous novel about what it means to be young, in love, and gloriously, crazily rich.]]> 403 Kevin Kwan 0385536976 tia ❀ 4 3.91 2013 Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1)
author: Kevin Kwan
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2021/04/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
my villain origin story is myself comparing books to their movie adaptions..I WISH I would stop but I am incapable and my brain has to compare them. BUT THIS WAS ENJOYABLE I loved how we got so much more of Astrid than I expected!! Thats my favorite part of the series so I was really excited about the series :)
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 tia ❀ 4 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, audiobook-bangers, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Such a Fun Age 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X tia ❀ 3 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone, #1)]]> 41945163
Planning her best friend's wedding is bittersweet for Kristen—especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He's funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family someday. Kristen knows he'd be better off with someone else, but as their attraction grows, it's harder and harder to keep him at arm's length.

The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass.]]> 372 Abby Jimenez tia ❀ 3 3.85 2019 The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone, #2)]]> 50208350 The Friend Zone.

Two years after losing her fiancé, Sloan Monroe still can't seem to get her life back on track. But one trouble-making pup with a "take me home" look in his eyes is about to change everything. With her new pet by her side, Sloan finally starts to feel more like herself. Then, after weeks of unanswered texts, Tucker's owner reaches out. He's a musician on tour in Australia. And bottom line: He wants Tucker back.

Well, Sloan's not about to give up her dog without a fight. As their flirty texts turn into long calls, Sloan can't deny a connection. There's no telling what could happen when they meet in person. The question is: With his music career on the rise, how long will Jason really stick around? And is it possible for Sloan to survive another heartbreak?]]> 401 Abby Jimenez tia ❀ 2 4.14 2020 The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone, #2)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, 2-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> People We Meet on Vacation 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 tia ❀ 3 3.85 2021 People We Meet on Vacation
author: Emily Henry
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2021-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 tia ❀ 5 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/13
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)]]> 44019067 The first rule of book club: You don't talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.]]> 352 Lyssa Kay Adams 1984806106 tia ❀ 3 2022-reads, 3-stars 3.86 2019 The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)
author: Lyssa Kay Adams
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/15
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2022-reads, 3-stars
review:

]]> Anywhere With You 221251782 From the beloved author of Four Weekends and a Funeral, a nostalgic, heartwarming romance about a Type-A woman who road trips through the Minnesotan woods with her non-committal childhood best friend . . . only for their long-suppressed sparks to burn like wildfire.

Twenty-nine year old Charley Beekman is thriving. Is she financially strapped, languishing in her legal career, and very likely the youngest divorcee at the Ruth's Chris Steakhouse on a Friday night? Yes. But, now that she's accepted the inherent flaws that lie in all romanticrelationships, she finally has life all figured out! She's definitely due for an upswing.

So when her free-spirited sister announces her plan to elope with her messy on-again-off-again childhood sweetheart, Charley knows she has to stop the wedding, even if it means road-tripping into the northern woods of Minnesota in a camper van with her childhood best friend, Ethan, who’s as gorgeous as he is chronically unreliable.

But when their cozy journey ignites a spark she's tried to ignore for years, Charley tries to write off her feelings as fleeting. Because after failing at marriage so spectacularlywith the most responsible man she's ever known, Charley definitely shouldn't risk it all for her non-committal, nomadic, musician best friend . . . right?]]> 368 Ellie Palmer 0593714326 tia ❀ 0 currently-reading 4.23 Anywhere With You
author: Ellie Palmer
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 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 tia ❀ 4 2025-reads, 4-stars 3.70 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> Unromance 212924099 not a meet-cute but a chance encounter with a charming man whom she will sleep with exactly onceand go on her way. Easy enough...until she runs into him again at a Christmas market straight out of a Hallmark holiday movie.]]> 343 Erin Connor 153875942X tia ❀ 3 3.81 2025 Unromance
author: Erin Connor
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> On the Same Page 195096868 Riley Beckett met Gianna Mäkinen � drop-dead gorgeous influencer, trilingual, daughter of world-famous models, yes, that Gianna Mäkinen � their first year at Boston University, and it changed everything for the both of them. After all, when you find the person who just gets you, nothing feels quite "the same" right?


And in the ten years since, Riley has come to depend on Gianna more than anyone else in her life. She knows Gianna just as well as she knows herself � maybe better, some days. She knows Gianna is incredibly sex-positive, she knows Gianna doesn't do romance or relationships, and she knows nothing could ever come between them.


This is what makes sense to her, all of this is status-quo. But when a holiday party mix-up sets in motion a domino effect of changes to these previously inalienable truths, Riley has to question everything she thought she knew about their relationship. What, exactly, does Gianna mean to her after all?

]]> 468 Haley Cass tia ❀ 0 dnf 4.36 2023 On the Same Page
author: Haley Cass
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: dnf
review:
Dnf@20% this is insanely long and convoluted for what it’s supposed to be. maybe someone can convince me to pick it back up bc the ratings are so high lol
]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar tia ❀ 4 3.87 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Deep End 212806981 A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.

So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...]]> 447 Ali Hazelwood 0593550447 tia ❀ 4 Big handed MMC, emotionally distraught FMC, smut (her best written so far imo), and a laughable villainous side character considering the setting/universe LMFAO. AND I ATE IT UPPP just a good time all around

Plus the audiobook narrators were fantastic]]> 4.11 2025 Deep End
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobook-bangers, 4-stars
review:
BY FARRR my favorite adult Ali hazelwood (check and mate, you’ll always have my heart). Devoured in less than 24 hours and had all the classic hazelwood facets you’d expect:
Big handed MMC, emotionally distraught FMC, smut (her best written so far imo), and a laughable villainous side character considering the setting/universe LMFAO. AND I ATE IT UPPP just a good time all around

Plus the audiobook narrators were fantastic
]]> <![CDATA[The Wedding Menu (Love & Other Recipes)]]> 181510232
One year ago, Amelie had it all.

Almost engaged to her high school sweetheart, close to her childhood best friend, and cooking at her dad's restaurant: her life was exactly what she’d ordered.

Until Ian, an opinionated wedding-hater, popped up out of nowhere and proved she might like something off menu.

***

One year later, Amelie has lost it all.

She’s unemployed, single, and taking a break from her friendship. As for Ian? He’s gone too.

When she visits Ian's hometown to teach at a week-long cooking conference, she hopes for a fateful meet-cute. But their reunion is far from joyful when Amelie discovers Ian is the son of her father's business rival.

Even bigger fiasco? He only wants friendship.

Amelie has one week to change his mind, and if the truth of why her whole life fell apart remains hidden, their love story might even end with a wedding.

The Wedding Menu is a steamy, dual-timeline, laugh out loud romcom about weddings, secrets, and French delicacies. It features two friends who should be rivals but keep choosing each other against all odds.]]> 486 Letizia Lorini tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.14 2023 The Wedding Menu (Love & Other Recipes)
author: Letizia Lorini
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Boulder 49236083
La protagonista d'aquesta novel·la és una dona atreta per la solitud com per un imant. Es guanya la vida en un buc, la situació perfecta: una cabina, l'oceà, moltes hores per encara el buit i algún port per conèixer dones. Fins que una la reté, se l'emporta entre les quatre parets d'una casa i l'embarca en la gestació assistida d'una criatura. ¿Què en farà, la maternitat, de l'amant coneguda en un bar?

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname “Boulder.� When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already 40 and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no―and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.

With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.

Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her preeminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world―and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.]]> 128 Eva Baltasar 8439736967 tia ❀ 4 2025-reads, 4-stars 3.89 2020 Boulder
author: Eva Baltasar
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> The Prospects 193556691 The pressure cooker of minor league baseball leads to major chemistry in this exhilarating, sexy, and triumphant rivals to lovers debut romance.

Hope is familiar territory for Gene Ionescu. He has always loved baseball, a sport made for underdogs and optimists like him. He also loves his team, the minor league Beaverton Beavers, and, for the most part, he loves the career he’s built. As the first openly trans player in professional baseball, Gene has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of—that is, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to the Beavers, destroying the careful equilibrium of Gene’s life.

Gene and Luis can’t manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it, but in the close confines of dugout benches and roadie buses, they begrudgingly rediscover a comfortable rhythm. As the two grow closer, the tension between them turns electric, and their chemistry spills past the confines of the stadium. For every tight double play they execute, there’s also a glance at summer-tan shoulders or a secret shared, each one a breathless moment of possibility that ignites in Gene the visceral, terrifying kind of desire he’s never allowed himself. Soon, Gene has to reconcile the quiet, minor-league-sized life he used to find fulfilling with the major-league dreams Luis makes feel possible.

A joyful, heartfelt debut rom-com revealing what’s possible when we allow ourselves to want something enough to swing for the fences.]]> 384 K.T. Hoffman 0593596862 tia ❀ 5 4.22 2024 The Prospects
author: K.T. Hoffman
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> You Should Be So Lucky 196774347 We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.]]> 400 Cat Sebastian 0063272806 tia ❀ 0 to-read, physical-tbr 4.27 2024 You Should Be So Lucky
author: Cat Sebastian
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read, physical-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> They Never Learn 124948406 From the author of the “raw, ingenious, and utterly fearless� (Wendy Walker, USA TODAY bestselling author) Temper comes a dynamic psychological thriller about two women who give bad men exactly what they deserve.

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan…until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay...and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

Featuring Layne Fargo’s trademark “propulsive writing style� (Kirkus Reviews) and “sinister, of the moment� (Chicago Review of Books) suspense, They Never Learn is a feminist serial killer story perfect for fans of Killing Eve and Chelsea Cain.]]> 349 Layne Fargo tia ❀ 0 dnf 3.86 2020 They Never Learn
author: Layne Fargo
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: dnf
review:
DNFing at 59%. this is really triggering (TW sexual assault, rape, victim blaming) and I know it's the antagonists' dialogue being purposefully ignorant / triggering and this is definitely a feminist serial killer story and the writing is fantastic and I just finished Layne Fargo's newest release The Favorites which was absolutely a blast but I cannot read this anymore. personal preference!
]]> When Women Were Dragons 58783802 A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.]]> 367 Kelly Barnhill 0385548222 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.79 2022 When Women Were Dragons
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)]]> 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 tia ❀ 5 4.09 2025 First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, arc-reviews
review:
B K BORISON THE WOMAN THAT YOU ARE
]]> My Friends 217163697 #1New York Timesbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 tia ❀ 5
Up there with the Beartown series as one of my favorite Backman books for sure <3]]> 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars, arc-reviews
review:
Reading a book written by Fredrik Backman is truly a difference experience than reading other books. His storytelling is fantastic and so, so earnest. Compelling. Gut wrenching. Memorable. My favorite author does it again

Up there with the Beartown series as one of my favorite Backman books for sure <3
]]> Flirting with Disaster 211399750 She needs a divorce from her husband—but a hurricane threatens to dredge up their stormy, passionate past in this sizzling reimagining of Sweet Home Alabama from the bestselling author of Say You'll Be Mine.

It's been years since Meena has seen her husband, Nikhil . . . years since they first laid eyes on each other back home in Texas, years since they eloped in Las Vegas and she felt true happiness. A high-powered lawyer on Capitol Hill, ready to move on (or at least, she thinks so) with another successful lawyer, Shake, Meena has returned home. This time, finally, to obtain a divorce.

But there's one thing Meena couldn't have accounted for: a hurricane forming in the Gulf, veering right toward them, giving them no choice but to hunker down in the home they had built together. Suddenly, she finds herself trapped amid gale-force winds and pelting rain with the man she once loved.

As they spend more time together, Meena begins to remember everything that drew her to Nikhil: His small-town charm, his thoughtful nature. . . his absurdly good looks. But things make sense with Shake. He’s steady and ambitious and wants exactly what she wants. She’ll stick to her plan, come hell or high water. But will her windswept heart make the right choice, when the storm settles and the eye passes over?

With sharp observations about second chances at love, ambition and Indian American identity, and with characters who share an undeniable chemistry, Flirting with Disaster is a modern romance with the sensibility of a classic.]]> 320 Naina Kumar 0593723902 tia ❀ 4 3.59 2025 Flirting with Disaster
author: Naina Kumar
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:

]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58724816 Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife, Miri, knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was the crew was supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.

By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us and the love that compels us, nevertheless, toward one another. Fathomlessly inventive and original, Julia Armfield’s debut novel is a portrait of marriage as we’ve never seen it before.]]> 228 Julia Armfield 1250229898 tia ❀ 4 2025-reads, 4-stars 3.69 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars
review:
what the fuck did I just read (I loved it)
]]> Hunted 41118520 She only went off the trail for a moment...

22-year-old Eileen goes missing while hiking in the remote Ashlough Forest. Five days later, her camera is discovered washed downriver, containing bizarre photos taken after her disappearance.

Chris wants to believe Eileen is still alive. When the police search is abandoned, he and four of his friends create their own search party to scour the mountain range. As they stray further from the hiking trails and the unsettling discoveries mount, they begin to believe they’re not alone in the forest� and that Eileen’s disappearance wasn’t an accident.

By that point, it’s too late to escape.]]> 450 Darcy Coates tia ❀ 3 2025-reads, 3-stars 4.03 2018 Hunted
author: Darcy Coates
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: 2025-reads, 3-stars
review:

]]> The Favorites 211399784 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 tia ❀ 4 4.19 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: 2025-reads, 4-stars, audiobook-bangers
review:
it’s 3am im so tired but I couldn’t stop listening. this is somehow the most exhausting but fun read, the drama is nonstop
]]> Immaculate Conception 217453576 From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.

Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 304 Ling Ling Huang 0593850432 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.23 2025 Immaculate Conception
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Disappoint Me 218153678 An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity.

“Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other.”� Torrey Peters, author of Detransition Baby

“I don’t know why I feel like I’ve been caught doing something dirty. Cheating on queerness. Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.�
Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn’t these be the best years of her life? Why doesn’t it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships—familial and romantic—that make us who we are.]]> 320 Nicola Dinan 0593977874 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.17 2025 Disappoint Me
author: Nicola Dinan
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Violin Conspiracy 58386733 A mystery about a Black classical musician whose family heirloom violin is stolen on the eve of the most prestigious classical music competition in the world.

Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise. Then with the international Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—fast approaching, his prized family heirloom is stolen. Ray is determined to get it back. But now his family and the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray's great-grandfather are each claiming that the violin belongs to them. With the odds stacked against him and the pressure mounting, will Ray ever see his beloved violin again?]]> 345 Brendan Slocumb 0593315413 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.06 2022 The Violin Conspiracy
author: Brendan Slocumb
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth)]]> 213111930
There’s a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us . . . It’s love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things.

What happens when the Zusak family opens their home to three big, wild, street-hardened dogs—Reuben, more wolf than hound; Archer, blond, beautiful, destructive; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm?

The answer can only be chaos: There are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property damages, injuries, hospital visits, wellness checks, pure comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that must be read to be believed.

There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love—and the joy and recognition of family.

Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth) is a tender, motley, and exquisitely written memoir about the human need for both connection and disorder, a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty—but also the visceral truth of the natural world—straight to our doors and into our lives and change us forever.]]> 240 Markus Zusak 0063426072 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.02 2024 Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth)
author: Markus Zusak
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Heart of Winter 211025449
Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together—at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.

But when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.

In this bighearted and profound portrait of a marriage, Jonathan Evison explores seventy years of big moments in subtle ways, elegantly braiding the Winters� turbulent history with their present-day battles, showing us how the oddly paired college kids became parents, fell apart and back together, andgrew into the Abe and Ruth of today. Endlessly heartwarming and moving, The Heart of Winter is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments.]]> 368 Jonathan Evison 059347354X tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The Heart of Winter
author: Jonathan Evison
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sunburn 75715117 Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.

Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.]]> 288 Chloe Michelle Howarth 0857308416 tia ❀ 5 2025-reads, 5-stars 4.33 2023 Sunburn
author: Chloe Michelle Howarth
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: 2025-reads, 5-stars
review:
starting off 2025 with a book so good that I’ll be chasing this feeling for the rest of the year. My GOD
]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Love Song for Ricki Wilde 212924176
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 368 Tia Williams 1538726718 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.00 2024 A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
author: Tia Williams
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour]]> 199793676 A rollicking, unforgettable romance about two strangers finding love despite their best efforts as they embark on a sweeping matchmaking tour through Việt Nam, perfect for readers of Carley Fortune and Abby Jimenez.

What’s a few weeks to a lifetime of promise?

Evie Lang’s life is in shambles. On the heels of losing her beloved aunt, she's unceremoniously fired from her poetry professorship by her secret boyfriend. Lacking income and inspiration, she's stuck in Ohio with no idea how to move forward—until hope arrives in a surprising letter.

Auntie Hảo left Evie the deed to her San Francisco row house, a place full of Evie’s happiest memories. The catch? To inherit, she must go on a pre-arranged matchmaking tour in Việt Nam. The last thing Evie wants is to spend time with a group of strangers looking for love. But she can't resist the chance to finally visit her family’s native home.

A world away, Adam Quyền has a chip on his shoulder. He’s working around the clock as CMO for his sister’s elite matchmaking business, a job complicated by her insistence that he knows nothing about love. He’s desperate to prove himself, so when she challenges him to join the inaugural tour, he reluctantly agrees.

Adam thinks Evie is chaotic and unpredictable. Evie thinks Adam is grumpy and uptight. But from the bustling streets of H� Chí Minh City to the soaring waterfalls in Đà Lạt, they keep getting thrown together, their animosity charged with attraction…and they discover that true love may be out there, if they are willing to take a leap.

Two stubborn hearts, one whirlwind adventure, Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour is a story of how loving (and living) bravely can lead you to the most unexpected places—and the most imperfectly perfect loves.]]> 304 Nora Nguyen 0063381508 tia ❀ 0 dnf dnf@39% 3.39 2024 Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour
author: Nora Nguyen
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: dnf
review:
dnf@39%
]]> <![CDATA[She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)]]> 48727813 Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner
Astounding Award Winner
Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Hugo Award Finalist
Locus Award Finalist
Otherwise Award Finalist

"Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

"A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…�

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness�

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621798 tia ❀ 0 to-read 3.87 2021 She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness]]> 33113683
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman’s exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Told using expressive artwork that invokes both laughter and tears, this moving and highly entertaining single volume depicts not only the artist’s burgeoning sexuality, but many other personal aspects of her life that will resonate with readers.]]> 144 Kabi Nagata 1626926034 tia ❀ 0 to-read 4.11 2016 My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness
author: Kabi Nagata
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Break-Up Pact 195790535 Two best friends who haven’t spoken in ten years pretend to date after break-ups with their respective exes go viral, in this delightfully fun and deeply emotional novel.

June and Levi were best friends as teenagers—until the day they weren’t. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they've barely spoken in years.

But after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own—a photo of them together has the internet convinced they're a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June’s shop get back on its feet and make Levi’s ex realize that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they're in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.

Two viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn’t come with real feelings. Right?]]> 320 Emma Lord tia ❀ 2
also, I’m a big fan of Emma Lord’s YA Tweet Cute, so I went into this w high hopes. Probably one of the blandest, most cliche contemp adult romances I’ve ever read !]]> 3.33 2024 The Break-Up Pact
author: Emma Lord
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: 2-stars, 2024-reads, arc-reviews
review:
I wish I was kidding when I say this book took me A YEAR TO FINISH. approved on netgalley in 12/23 and thank god I don’t have to bring it w me into 2025

also, I’m a big fan of Emma Lord’s YA Tweet Cute, so I went into this w high hopes. Probably one of the blandest, most cliche contemp adult romances I’ve ever read !
]]> House of Hollow 54613751
Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous � and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.]]> 292 Krystal Sutherland 059311034X tia ❀ 4 2024-reads, 4-stars 4.03 2021 House of Hollow
author: Krystal Sutherland
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: 2024-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> Only If You're Lucky 60891867
And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

A tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal—another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.]]> 371 Stacy Willingham 1250887933 tia ❀ 2 2-stars, 2024-reads 3.54 2024 Only If You're Lucky
author: Stacy Willingham
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: 2-stars, 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1)]]> 60717747 It's difficult to find a husband in Regency England when you're a young lady with only half a soul.

Ever since she was cursed by a faerie, Theodora Ettings has had no sense of fear or embarrassment - a condition which makes her prone to accidental scandal. Dora hopes to be a quiet, sensible wallflower during the London Season - but when the strange, handsome and utterly uncouth Lord Sorcier discovers her condition, she is instead drawn into dangerous and peculiar faerie affairs.

If Dora's reputation can survive both her curse and her sudden connection with the least-liked man in all of high society, then she may yet reclaim her normal place in the world. . . but the longer Dora spends with Elias Wilder, the more she begins to suspect that one may indeed fall in love, even with only half a soul.

Bridgerton meets Howl's Moving Castle in this enchanting historical fantasy, where the only thing more meddlesome than faeries is a marriage-minded mother.

Pick up HALF A SOUL, and be stolen away into Olivia Atwater's charming, magical version of Regency England!]]> 304 Olivia Atwater tia ❀ 4 2024-reads, 4-stars 4.04 2020 Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1)
author: Olivia Atwater
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: 2024-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Old Flames and New Fortunes (Moonville, #1)]]> 194803816
So, when the shop’s potential financier shares news of his wedding, Romina jumps on the opportunity to discuss buying the business. What better place to negotiate a deal than at a wedding, even if she has to fake-date her chaotic colleague Trevor to get an invitation? But all hell breaks loose when she discovers Trevor’s soon-to-be stepbrother is none other than Alex, her high school sweetheart. Her greatest love. The boy who, eleven years ago, broke her heart, and who now thinks she and Trevor are dating.

What starts as an innocent misunderstanding becomes a week-long fake dating scheme, as Romina resolves to make Alex pay for breaking her heart. The only issue? She can’t deny their still-burning connection. Caught between proving to Alex what he lost, and coming clean and risking her business, Romina must decide whether giving Alex another chance means going back on herself, or finally releasing her hold on the past.]]> 384 Sarah Hogle 0593715055 tia ❀ 2 2-stars, 2024-reads 3.51 2024 Old Flames and New Fortunes (Moonville, #1)
author: Sarah Hogle
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: 2-stars, 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (Hart and Mercy, #1)]]> 58510253
Mercy never has a moment to herself. She’s been single-handedly keeping Birdsall & Son Undertakers afloat in defiance of sullen jerks like Hart, who seems to have a gift for showing up right when her patience is thinnest.

After yet another exasperating run-in with Mercy, Hart finds himself penning a letter addressed simply to “A Friend�. Much to his surprise, an anonymous letter comes back in return, and a tentative friendship is born.

If only Hart knew he’s been baring his soul to the person who infuriates him most � Mercy. As the dangers from Tanria grow closer, so do the unlikely correspondents. But can their blossoming romance survive the fated discovery that their pen pals are their worst nightmares � each other?]]> 449 Megan Bannen 0356518655 tia ❀ 4 2024-reads, 4-stars 4.04 2022 The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (Hart and Mercy, #1)
author: Megan Bannen
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: 2024-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]> Final Girls 32796253
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.]]> 352 Riley Sager 1101985364 tia ❀ 4 this book is fking bonkers 3.81 2017 Final Girls
author: Riley Sager
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: 2024-reads, 4-stars, physical-tbrcompleted
review:
this book is fking bonkers
]]> All the Dangerous Things 60784636
Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn’t slept in a year.

Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. In hopes of jarring loose a new witness or buried clue, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster—but his interest in Isabelle's past makes her nervous. His incessant questioning paired with her severe insomnia has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood, making Isabelle start to doubt her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance, as well as second-guess who she can trust... including herself. But she is determined to figure out the truth no matter where it leads.]]> 326 Stacy Willingham 1250803853 tia ❀ 3 2024-reads, 3-stars 4.04 2023 All the Dangerous Things
author: Stacy Willingham
name: tia ❀
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: 2024-reads, 3-stars
review:

]]> The White Book 40338442
In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book offers a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and of our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.]]> 157 Han Kang 0525573062 tia ❀ 4 2024-reads, 4-stars 3.85 2016 The White Book
author: Han Kang
name: tia ❀
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: 2024-reads, 4-stars
review:

]]>