Amy's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2025 09:18:49 -0700 60 Amy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 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 Amy 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Amy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pictures of You 197156017 If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choices? Imagine having a second chance with the one you never forgot.

From the author of the global breakout bestseller The Last Love Note comes the story of a young woman struggling to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident, and the man who gives up everything to help her.

When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she’s fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn’t around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver—whom she can't remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory, she’s left to connect the dots. But how?

Drew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband’s death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds.

This tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she’s seeing all the things she missed–and the life she gets to choose...again.]]> 416 Emma Grey 195850646X Amy 0 to-read 4.01 2024 Pictures of You
author: Emma Grey
name: Amy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love]]> 203680931 The author of the beloved international hit The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot returns with a funny, uplifting story about the power of friendship and finding love in unexpected places.

Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.

A true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, at 24 years old, has just lost the love of her life.

When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life.

A tale of friendship and kindness that reminds us that those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.]]> 304 Marianne Cronin 0063383519 Amy 0 to-read 4.31 2024 Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love
author: Marianne Cronin
name: Amy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am]]> 53968539 Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up

Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5�3" and 5�9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire. Julia Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life.

Cooke brings to life the story of Pan Am stewardesses� role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.]]> 288 Julia Cooke 0358251400 Amy 0 to-read 3.63 2021 Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am
author: Julia Cooke
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Broken Country 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.�

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Amy 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Broken Country
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Amy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Society of Lies 223641038 How far would you go to belong?

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion - it's been a decade since she graduated, and this visit is special because she will also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi.

But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya's worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on.

As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister's death, she begins to realise how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya's warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus - the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it.

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 400 Lauren Ling Brown 0593723376 Amy 0 to-read 3.67 2024 Society of Lies
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Amy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Morning in This Broken World 74898799 From the bestselling author of The Kindness of Strangers comes a poignant and life-affirming novel about our connections to the past, and the promise for the future during the least promising of times.

Grieving but feisty widow Vivian Laurent is at a late-in-life crossroads. The man she loved is gone. Their only daughter is estranged and missing. And the assisted-living facility where her husband died is going into quarantine. Living in lockdown with only heartache and memories is something Vivian can’t bear. Then comes a saving grace.

Luna, a compassionate nursing assistant and newly separated mother, is facing eviction. Vivian has a plan that could turn their lives around: return to her old home and invite Luna and her two children to move in with her. With the exuberant eleven-year-old Wren in her hot-pink motorized wheelchair and Wren’s troubled older brother, Cooper, the new housemates make for an unlikely pandemic pack, weathering the coming storm together.

Now it’s time to heal old wounds, make peace with the past, find hope and joy, and discover that the strongest bonds can get anyone through the worst of times.]]> 277 Katrina Kittle 1662510128 Amy 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Morning in This Broken World
author: Katrina Kittle
name: Amy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Rom-Commers 195790586 She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies―good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates―The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!―it’s a break too big to pass up.

Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone―much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.� Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script―it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter―even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules―and comes true?]]> 336 Katherine Center 1250283809 Amy 4 4.06 2024 The Rom-Commers
author: Katherine Center
name: Amy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:
I enjoy this authors writing style. Sweet but flawed characters, just a nice easy read.
]]> <![CDATA[Is She Really Going Out with Him?]]> 208894884
Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children.

From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman, and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?]]> 368 Sophie Cousens 0593718909 Amy 0 to-read 4.11 2024 Is She Really Going Out with Him?
author: Sophie Cousens
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Reader Standing: -The Story of a Man who Learned to Read at 54]]> 19795996 174 Archie Willard 1936332485 Amy 0 to-read 3.80 2013 The Last Reader Standing: -The Story of a Man who Learned to Read at 54
author: Archie Willard
name: Amy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Just Our Luck 215361843 A lottery ticket + donuts = love in this steamy new fake dating romance from beloved author Denise Williams.

Who needs love? Not Sybil Sweet. After years of bouncing from job to job in search of something that feels right and from man to man in search of something special, Sybil is embracing her role as the directionless, floundering member of her family. All she really wants now is a little financial stability and carb comfort. Lucky for her, she’s got just enough in the bank to buy a lottery ticket, and the late-night donut store is open.

Kiran Anderson abandoned his dreams of becoming a doctor to take over running his family’s bakery, and after two years of fighting a losing battle to save the place, he’s exhausted and broke. But when a whirlwind of a woman sweeps in late one night, flirty energy gives way to more…until she runs out the next morning, leaving behind her winning lottery ticket.

Lucky for Kiran, his attempt to return the ticket looks like a grand romantic gesture and goes viral, sending sales through the roof. In an effort to keep the store afloat and to get Sybil’s family off of her back, they agree to fake a relationship for three months. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars, finding each other might end up being the sweetest bit of luck for both of them.]]> 400 Denise Williams 0593641434 Amy 0 to-read 3.58 2025 Just Our Luck
author: Denise Williams
name: Amy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> More or Less Maddy 214151333 A breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal� life for a career in stand-up comedy.

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

With her signature “deep empathy and insight� (Booklist), Harvard-trained neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova has crafted another profoundly moving novel that makes complicated mental health issues accessible and human. More or Less Maddy is destined to become another classic like Still Alice.]]> 368 Lisa Genova 1668026163 Amy 0 to-read 4.23 2025 More or Less Maddy
author: Lisa Genova
name: Amy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Birthday Girl 39865941 New York Times Bestselling author Penelope Douglas comes a new forbidden love story...

JORDAN
He took me in when I had nowhere else to go.

He doesn't use me, hurt me, or forget about me. He doesn't treat me like I'm nothing, take me for granted, or make me feel unsafe.

He remembers me, laughs with me, and looks at me. He listens to me, protects me, and sees me. I can feel his eyes on me over the breakfast table, and my heart pumps so hard when I hear him pull in the driveway after work.

I have to stop this. It can't happen.

My sister once told me there are no good men, and if you find one, he's probably unavailable.

Only Pike Lawson isn't the unavailable one.

I am.

PIKE
I took her in, because I thought I was helping.

She'd cook a few meals and clean up a little. It was an easy arrangement.

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

The more I find my path crossing hers, though, the more she's becoming a part of me.

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

And her boyfriend's father.

Unfortunately, they both just moved into my house.

*BIRTHDAY GIRL is a stand-alone, contemporary romance suitable for ages 18+.
]]> 407 Penelope Douglas 1952646057 Amy 0 to-read 4.12 2018 Birthday Girl
author: Penelope Douglas
name: Amy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Breaking the Dark 215363279 In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True) launches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring the private detective Jessica Jones.

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.�

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins� new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura.]]> 400 Lisa Jewell 1368099815 Amy 0 to-read 3.84 2024 Breaking the Dark
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> What Does It Feel Like? 214312329
“What Does It Feel Like? is fiction, but it is my most autobiographical work to date. Eve’s story is my story.”—Sophie Kinsella

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.

As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.

Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.

“Why did I write such a personal book? I have always processed my life through writing. Hiding behind my fictional characters, I have always turned my own life into a narrative. It is my version of therapy, maybe. Writing is my happy place, and writing this book, although tough going at times, was immensely satisfying and therapeutic for me.”—Sophie Kinsella]]> 144 Sophie Kinsella 0593977564 Amy 4 4.26 2024 What Does It Feel Like?
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Amy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:
A quick read that was beautifully written and poignant.
]]> The Summer of Broken Rules 57690252
Unfortunately, Meredith's longtime boyfriend unexpectedly dumped her two weeks before the wedding, leaving her dateless. Luckily, she has the perfect distraction. Her family has a tradition of playing the ultimate game of Assassin every summer, and this year it will take place during the week of wedding festivities.

But her target just happens to be a very cute groomsman. She's determined to not let herself get distracted, not let herself be lost in another doomed relationship. But as the week progresses, she can't help falling for him, which may cost her not only the game, but also her heart.

Meredith's family's annual game of assassin at Martha's Vineyard during a summer wedding is the perfect chance to honor her sister's legacy, and finally join the world again. But when she forms an alliance with a cute groomsman, she's at risk of losing both the game� and her heart.]]> 304 K.L. Walther 1728210305 Amy 3 3.96 2021 The Summer of Broken Rules
author: K.L. Walther
name: Amy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:
Sweet, a little boring and cheesy- but not terrible.
]]> What Lies in the Woods 60784373
For decades afterward, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.]]> 336 Kate Alice Marshall 1250859883 Amy 0 to-read 3.93 2023 What Lies in the Woods
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> End of Story 202914347
So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.�

“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.�

Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.�

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.]]> 408 A.J. Finn 0062678450 Amy 3 3.03 2024 End of Story
author: A.J. Finn
name: Amy
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:
End of story- 4.5 stars. Beginning to middle of story- 2 stars. Averaged out to 3 stars. It was just too long, but end of story was a wild twist. I just can’t decide if I’d recommend this one bc of the long boring beginning.
]]> How to Walk Away 36249638
In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing long-held family secrets, devastating heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.]]> 302 Katherine Center 1250149061 Amy 4 4.06 2018 How to Walk Away
author: Katherine Center
name: Amy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:
I loved it. Characters were interesting and well developed. Totally rooting for the MC. I have enjoyed everything I’ve read from this author.
]]> The Dearly Beloved 43822731
Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not?

James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James's escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life.

The Dearly Beloved follows these two couples through decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, these four forge improbable paths through their evolving relationships, each struggling with uncertainty, heartbreak, and joy. It's a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives.]]> 342 Cara Wall 198210452X Amy 0 currently-reading 4.03 2019 The Dearly Beloved
author: Cara Wall
name: Amy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Turtles All the Way Down 35504431
Aza Holmes never intended to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Pickett’s son Davis.

Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.]]> 290 John Green 0525555366 Amy 4 3.88 2017 Turtles All the Way Down
author: John Green
name: Amy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/28
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:
This is an interesting book. A look into a complicated mind- it definitely felt to me like the main purpose of the book was to delve into that character.
]]> Showmance 204640532 "Showmance is ready for the big time...Beguelin crafts a story you never want to end.� —Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants

A down-on-his-luck Broadway playwright is banished to rural Illinois for a last chance at reviving his career in this hilarious queer rom-com about second chances, in love and in lifeNoah Adams’s career as a playwright is circling the drain, thanks to a scorching New York Times review of his first Broadway musical. So when a family emergency sends him back to his Podunk hometown of Plainview, Illinois, he figures he’ll hide out for a day or two and lick his wounds.  But to Noah’s absolute horror, his agent has secretly arranged for him to stage an amateur version of the career-ruining musical at the Plainview community theater. As though trying to work with a bunch of unsophisticated amateurs on his high-art production wasn’t enough, Noah seems to run into Luke, the bully from his high school years, everywhere he goes. Even worse, Luke has grown up to be downright gorgeous and beloved by all. But as rehearsals begin, Noah is surprised by the cast and crew’s insightful suggestions, the deep care and warmth of the town he’d dismissed, and the reality of what happened with Luke all those years ago. Filled with a colorful cast of Midwestern characters, SECOND ACTS is a queer rom-com about the humility, love, and humor that come with a second chance.]]> 336 Chad Beguelin 0143138391 Amy 0 to-read 3.85 2024 Showmance
author: Chad Beguelin
name: Amy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Husbands & Lovers 222725795 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724240 Amy 0 to-read 4.00 2024 Husbands & Lovers
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Amy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light]]> 204789541 In this candid and emotional memoir, Allison Holker opens up about her incredible dance career, her relationship with Stephen “tWitch� Boss, and the resilience that has carried her forward after his death.

Allison Holker was just eighteen when she found fame as a contestant on the reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Over the next several years, she had her first child, built a successful career as a professional dancer despite the industry being hostile to working moms, and fell in love with and married fellow dancer Stephen Boss, the former hype man and DJ of The Ellen DeGeneres Show known for his charisma and relentless positivity. Two more children and a wealth of professional opportunities for both Allison and Stephen followed, and the Bosses appeared to be one of the great Hollywood love stories.

Then, in December 2022, Stephen took his own life, leaving Allison to wrestle with unanswered questions, haunting what-ifs, and the heartbreaking realization that Stephen’s infectious joy was hiding pain, addictions, and self-doubt deeper than anyone knew.

For the first time, Allison reveals how she has navigated the emotional and financial aftermath of Stephen’s choice, guided their three children in their grief while managing the outpouring from a well-meaning public, and reopened herself to the next chapter in her professional and personal life. A beacon of hope and comfort for anyone experiencing grief—especially unexpected loss due to suicide—Allison’s story is an honest reflection on the pain of looking back on a complicated life and the resilience required to move into the future.]]> 240 Allison Holker 1400248949 Amy 0 to-read 3.60 2025 This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light
author: Allison Holker
name: Amy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Amy 4 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves:
review:
This book should be a real bummer- but it isn’t. It’s all about sad, real life terrible things that happen in people’s lives, but also about how the characters persevered. I really liked this book
]]> The Book of Longings 52698452 “I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus.�

Raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee, Ana is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. She yearns for a pursuit worthy of her life, but finds no outlet for her considerable talents. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other’s spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart.

Their marriage unfolds with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, James and Simon, and their mother, Mary. Here, Ana’s pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to the Roman occupation of Israel, partially led by her charismatic adopted brother, Judas. She is sustained by her indomitable aunt Yaltha, who is searching for her long-lost daughter, as well as by other women, including her friend Tabitha, who is sold into slavery after she was raped, and Phasaelis, the shrewd wife of Herod Antipas. Ana’s impetuous streak occasionally invites danger. When one such foray forces her to flee Nazareth for her safety shortly before Jesus’s public ministry begins, she makes her way with Yaltha to Alexandria, where she eventually finds refuge and purpose in unexpected surroundings.

Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman’s bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place, and culture devised to silence her.]]> 416 Sue Monk Kidd 052542976X Amy 2 4.21 2020 The Book of Longings
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Amy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2020/11/13
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
Beautifully written, but I couldn’t get into this at all.
]]> Husbands & Lovers 199223201 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724224 Amy 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Husbands & Lovers
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Amy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, #1) 175828
Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on this complicated and perplexing case of conspiracy, corruption, and a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.]]> 464 William Kent Krueger 0671016970 Amy 0 3.89 1998 Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, #1)
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Amy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:
Did not finish. Couldn’t get into this one, sadly
]]> The Last Letter 40045986
Beckett,

If you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have.

I need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride.

My little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair.

And here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family.

Please don’t make her go through it alone.

Ryan]]> 426 Rebecca Yarros 1640635335 Amy 4 4.43 2019 The Last Letter
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Amy
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars ⭐️. All the feels here. Can’t wait to talk about it at February book club. Best read of the year so far
]]> The Ghostwriter 217506549 368 Julie Clark 1464221286 Amy 0 to-read 4.25 2025 The Ghostwriter
author: Julie Clark
name: Amy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Last Resort 220239038 From the bestselling author of The Quiet Tenant comes a propulsive new thriller: Fifteen years ago, Frida and her brother escaped a cult. Now her brother is the prime suspect in a murder investigation—and it isn’t the first time.
Innocence doesn't bail you out; it just makes you easier to trap.

Frida and Gabriel arrive seeking a fresh start at the stunning Ara Hotel in the secluded desert of Escalante, Utah. Once so close they were able to finish each other’s sentences, they’ve grown apart in recent years after a sudden, unspeakable tragedy. Now, at the luxe resort, they are ready to reconnect between dips in the pool and hikes on spectacular desert trails. It all feels like paradise—until the dead body of a beautiful young woman who was vacationing at the Ara with her powerful, much older husband is discovered.

When the local police arrive and suspicion quickly falls on Gabriel, Frida is forced to revisit memories from their upbringing in a cloistered cult in upstate New York, their dramatic escape, and the scandal that followed. Frida’s belief in Gabriel’s innocence never wavered at the time, but now even she can’t ignore the evidence mounting against him.

Alternating between past and present timelines, Our Last Resort builds toward a shattering climax that uncovers the fate of the murdered Ara guest and poses the question: how well do we ever really know those we love? Taut, gripping, and intense, Clémence Michallon’s latest suspense novel is a nail-biter until the last page, cementing her status as a major new talent in the genre.]]> 320 Clémence Michallon 0593802764 Amy 0 to-read 3.69 2025 Our Last Resort
author: Clémence Michallon
name: Amy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Ferry Out 219301720 On a trip to the tropical paradise where her fiancée died, a young woman begins to suspect the death was no accident—and the killer’s still on the island—in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Reese's Book Club pick We Were Never Here.

When Abby decided to come to Isla Colel, she wasn't sure what—if anything—she'd find. She only knew that she needed to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died, to try and make sense of everything that happened. 

The island is nothing like Abby expected; though it was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane a few years earlier left it a shell of its former self, with only a few locals and expats remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now only runs every week or so.

There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter's last days.  Before she can see him, though, he vanishes from the island. Hours turn to days with no sign of him, and the other expats are chillingly cavalier about his disappearance.

As her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts, and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life. And the deeper she gets in the close-knit expat community, the more she suspects one of them is Eszter's killer—and will do anything to keep the truth buried. But will she discover who it is before she becomes the island’s next victim?]]> 320 Andrea Bartz 0593597974 Amy 0 to-read 3.45 2025 The Last Ferry Out
author: Andrea Bartz
name: Amy
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Maid's Secret (Molly the Maid, #3)]]> 216351856 When a daring art heist takes place at the Regency Grand, Molly’s life is threatened. The question is who’s out to get her, and why? Long-buried secrets will be revealed in this intriguing and heartwarming novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

A wedding. A heist. A secret.

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away. 

But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone's surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.

The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well�.

Together with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spellbinding whodunnit that will capture and warm your heart.]]> 336 Nita Prose 0593875419 Amy 0 to-read 4.03 2025 The Maid's Secret (Molly the Maid, #3)
author: Nita Prose
name: Amy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paradise Problem 214152483
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West� Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.]]> 368 Christina Lauren 1668017733 Amy 0 to-read 4.14 2024 The Paradise Problem
author: Christina Lauren
name: Amy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sounds Like Love 219301746 A hitmaking songwriter and a bitter musician share a startling and inexplicable connection that they’ll do anything to shake, in the next sparkling, magical book from Ashley Poston.

Joni Lark is living the dream. She’s one of the most coveted songwriters in LA…and she can’t seem to write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it.

When she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes that the sand, the surf, and the concerts at The Revelry, her family’s music venue, will spark her inspiration. But when she gets there, nothing is how she left it. Her best friend is avoiding her, her mother’s memories are fading fast, and The Revelry is closing.

How can she think about writing her next song when everything is changing without her?

Until she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it—belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with hangups of his own.

Surely, he’s a figment of her overworked imagination.

But then the very real man attached to the voice shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s aggravating and gruff on the outside—nothing like the sweet, funny voice in Joni’s head—and he has a plan:

They’ll finish the song haunting them both, break their connection, and hope they don’t risk their hearts in the process.

Because that song stuck in their heads? Maybe it’s there for a reason.]]> 384 Ashley Poston 0593641000 Amy 0 to-read 4.35 2025 Sounds Like Love
author: Ashley Poston
name: Amy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Still Beating 198717645 WARNING: This book contains subject matter that may be sensitive for some readers. There is dark and triggering content between these pages. 18+ only. Please read responsibly.

When Cora attends her sister’s birthday party, she expects at most a hangover or a walk of shame. She doesn’t anticipate a stolen wallet, leaving her stranded and dependent on Dean—her arch nemesis and ultimate thorn in her side.

And she really doesn’t anticipate waking up in shackles in a madman’s basement.

To make matters worse, Dean shares the space in his own set of chains.

After fifteen years of teasing, insults, and practical jokes, the ultimate joke seems to be on them. The two people who always thought they’d end up killing each other must now work together if they want to survive.

But Cora and Dean have no idea their abductor has a plan for them. A plan that will alter the course of their relationship, blur the line between hate and love, and shackle them together with far more than just chains.]]> 314 Jennifer Hartmann Amy 0 to-read 4.35 2020 Still Beating
author: Jennifer Hartmann
name: Amy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Novel Love Story 199261152 A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction� literally.

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

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

Because it is.

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

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

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

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593640977 Amy 0 to-read 3.63 2024 A Novel Love Story
author: Ashley Poston
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Hope This Finds You Well 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]> 338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 Amy 0 to-read 3.75 2024 I Hope This Finds You Well
author: Natalie Sue
name: Amy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Glimmering Stars 123252117 Inspired by a true story, two teens kidnapped by an African warlord find salvation through love in a powerful and healing historical novel from the #1 bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley.

Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army.

In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence’s upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she’s pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony’s war.

At the lowest points of their lives, certain they’ll never go home, Anthony and Florence meet by chance, fall in love, and begin to dream of surviving their captivity. They devote their lives to helping their fellow child soldiers escape bondage and return to their families and redemption by following the stars.

By turns tender, shocking, moving, desperate, and ultimately triumphant, Florence and Anthony’s story is an epic drama of humanity, a life-affirming tale, and an experience readers will never forget.]]> 475 Mark T. Sullivan 1542038103 Amy 0 to-read 4.63 2024 All the Glimmering Stars
author: Mark T. Sullivan
name: Amy
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Amy 4 4.24 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Amy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
This book took me a MONTH to read. It is in my opinion too long. BUT- the last 1/3 was worth it to me. The writing is beautiful, the characters are well developed, the plot is rich, and it really comes together in the end. Believable- not so much. But I was ok with that. I think this would be an amazing movie.
]]> <![CDATA[The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing]]> 64631561 New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors� credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,� showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.]]> 319 Lara Love Hardin 1982197668 Amy 0 4.46 2023 The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
author: Lara Love Hardin
name: Amy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
No ratings for memoirs. This book was heartbreaking, inspiring, and eye opening. A look into the life of a mother, wife, addict, college graduate- yes, that’s all the same person. This book is a lesson in not judging until you’ve walked In another person’s shoes. I would highly recommend this one
]]> The Fall Risk 223199392 Two good neighbors make the best of a bad Valentine’s Day in a funny and improbably romantic short story by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much. But when disaster traps them one flight up and no way down, an outrageously precarious predicament forces a tree-loving guy and a rattled girl next door to embrace their captivity. Soon their defenses are breaking away. Considering how close they both are to the edge, Charlotte and Seth could be in danger of falling—in love.]]> 82 Abby Jimenez 1662529082 Amy 0 to-read 4.12 2025 The Fall Risk
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Amy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Both Die at the End (Death-Cast, #1)]]> 33385229
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.

Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.]]> 389 Adam Silvera 0062457799 Amy 3 3.76 2017 They Both Die at the End (Death-Cast, #1)
author: Adam Silvera
name: Amy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:
I’m in a book slump- nothing is really blowing my skirt up lately. This book was just “meh� for me. It wasn’t awful, I finished it, it just wasn’t great. I’m on the fence for whether I would recommend it or not- which probably means I shouldn’t. I hope to find something that pulls me out of this reading slump. Even my book life feels like winter
]]> <![CDATA[The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks]]> 60305888 I, Maggie Banks, solemnly swear to uphold the rules of Cobblestone Books.

If only, I, Maggie Banks, believed in following the rules.

When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.

And in Maggie's world, book rules are made to be broken.

To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything.

Maggie will have to decide what's more important: the books that formed a small town's history, or the stories poised to change it all.]]> 336 Shauna Robinson Amy 3 3.74 2022 The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks
author: Shauna Robinson
name: Amy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
This book was fine. It mostly kept my interest and was a nice book about a books
]]> <![CDATA[God Didn't Make Us to Hate Us: 40 Devotions to Liberate Your Faith from Fear and Reconnect with Joy]]> 213943201 A first-of-its-kind devotional for the disenchanted, disillusioned, and deconstructed

Countless Christians are deconstructing the fear-based faith they were handed, but many don’t want to give up on God—they want to love and be loved by Jesus without hateful or abusive theology. If you’re one of those believers, this feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming devotional will take you on a journey of spiritual re-enchantment. Featuring 40 devotions on God’s radical and liberating salvation, it’s here to help you heal your church hurt, restore your sense of community, and embrace Jesus’s heart-healing forgiveness. Move beyond rigid religion and reconnect with the undeniable truth that predates and will outlive all the toxic theology in the God made you to love you.]]> 240 Lizzie McManus-Dail 0593850882 Amy 0 to-read 4.80 God Didn't Make Us to Hate Us: 40 Devotions to Liberate Your Faith from Fear and Reconnect with Joy
author: Lizzie McManus-Dail
name: Amy
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gray After Dark 204787816 A merciless wilderness. A harrowing attack. A desperate escape.

When a tragic accident sidelines Miley's dreams of Olympic gold, she takes a summer job at a mountain guest lodge.

The Frank Church Wilderness is remote, but it’s the perfect place to train and recover. Local lore about a staffer who died years ago doesn’t scare her. But it should.

Miley’s plans take a terrifying detour when she’s abducted during a morning run. Held captive in a desolate off-grid cabin, she’ll have to use her athletic prowess, cunning mind, and courage to survive. But as the nightmare at the cabin escalates, Miley is forced to form an unlikely alliance and attempt a risky escape.

Can she outwit her captors and survive the wilderness before it’s too late?

Inspired by true events, Gray After Dark is a pulse-pounding psychological thriller with a finale that will leave you breathless.]]> 370 Noelle W. Ihli Amy 0 to-read 4.23 2024 Gray After Dark
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: Amy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Lion Women of Tehran 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.�

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]> 327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 Amy 0 to-read 4.47 2024 The Lion Women of Tehran
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Amy
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

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

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Amy 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Amy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Curve in the Road 38721898 From USA Today bestselling author Julianne MacLean comes a suspenseful, emotionally charged novel that explores the secrets and hidden truths within a seemingly perfect marriage.

Abbie MacIntyre is living the dream in the picturesque Nova Scotia town she calls home. She is a successful surgeon, is married to a handsome cardiologist, and has a model teenage son who is only months away from going off to college.

But then one fateful night, everything changes. When a drunk driver hits her car, Abbie is rushed to the hospital. She survives, but the accident forces unimaginable secrets out into the open and plagues Abbie with nightmares so vivid that she starts to question her grip on reality. Her perfect life begins to crack, and those cracks threaten to shatter her world completely.

The search for answers will test her strength in every way—as a wife, a career woman, and a mother—but it may also open the door for Abbie to move forward, beyond anger and heartbreak, to find out what she is truly made of. In learning to heal and trust again, she may just find new hope in the spaces left behind.

Book club discussion questions are included in the book.]]> 269 Julianne MacLean 1503904458 Amy 0 to-read 3.74 2018 A Curve in the Road
author: Julianne MacLean
name: Amy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Favorites 211399784 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Amy 0 to-read 4.19 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Amy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan]]> 219603154 This evidence-based, user-friendly guide presents a 30-day digital detox plan that will help you set boundaries with your phone and live a more joyful and fulfilling life.

“I wrote The Anxious Generation to help adults improve the lives of children. Many readers have asked me for a version of the book aimed at helping adults and teens help themselves. Catherine Price has written the best such book.”—Jonathan Haidt

Do you feel addicted to your phone? Do you frequently pick it up “just to check,� only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Does social media make you anxious? Have you tried to spend less time mindlessly scrolling—and failed? If so, this book is your solution.

Award-winning health and science journalist and TED speaker Catherine Price presents a practical, evidence-based 30-day digital detox plan that will help you break up—and then make up—with your phone. The goal: better mental health, improved screen-life balance, and a long-term relationship with technology that feels good.

This engaging, user-friendly guide explains how our smartphones and apps are designed to be addictive and how the time we spend on them is increasing our anxiety and damaging our abilities to focus, think deeply, form new memories, generate ideas, and be present in our most important relationships. Next, it walks you through an effective and easy-to-follow 30-day plan that has already helped thousands of people worldwide break their phone addictions and feel more fully alive.

Whether you need help for yourself or for your family, friends, students, colleagues, clients, or community, How to Break Up with Your Phone is the ultimate guide to digital detoxing. It’s guaranteed to help you put down your phone—and come back to life.]]> 240 Catherine Price 0593837169 Amy 0 to-read 4.06 2018 How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan
author: Catherine Price
name: Amy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)]]> 213558169 The next thrilling suspense featuring Will Trent and Sara Linton from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and After That Night!

Everyone here is a liar, but only one of us is a killer�

A secluded cabin retreat

For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night.

A murderer in their midst

Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying�.Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.

Who killed Mercy McAlpine?

It soon becomes clear that normal rules don’t apply at McAlpine Lodge, and Will and Sara are going to have to watch their step at every turn. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock…]]> 464 Karin Slaughter 0063336731 Amy 0 to-read 4.15 2024 This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Authenticity Project 55789067
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other in real life at Monica's café.

The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.

The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for--and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.]]> 400 Clare Pooley 1984878638 Amy 0 to-read 3.88 2020 The Authenticity Project
author: Clare Pooley
name: Amy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Woman in Me 201009490
In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 277 Britney Spears Amy 0 3.77 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Amy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:
No ratings for memoirs, but this book was really sad. I just felt overwhelmingly sad for Brittany and her lack of support and love from the adults in her life. I hope that she is able to find some joy and peace in her future.
]]> <![CDATA[I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman]]> 8765
The woman who brought us "When Harry Met Sally"..., "Sleepless in Seattle", "You've Got Mail", and "Bewitched," and the author of best sellers "Heartburn," "Scribble Scribble," and "Crazy Salad," discusses everything -from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can't stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there's no quick fix for that.

Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the JFK years ("I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at") and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton - from a distance, of course. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.

Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, "I Feel Bad About My Neck" is a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.]]> 139 Nora Ephron 0307264556 Amy 3 3.72 2006 I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
author: Nora Ephron
name: Amy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:
This book was funny at times, made me groan with camaraderie at times, and made me yawn a few times. I think you’d have to be over 40 to enjoy much about the book- but I didn’t dislike it.
]]> <![CDATA[ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD]]> 180352087 Hi, friend! Welcome to the ADHD club.

You're here because, like me, you've been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—which, by the way, just might be the worst name for a condition ever—and you're trying to figure out how to make your life a little more manageable. Or because, like my wife, Kim, you love, teach, or work with someone who has ADHD, and you're trying to figure out how to best support them.

The world isn't built for ADHDers, and navigating it can wear us down. But we'll let you in on a little secret: having ADHD doesn't have to be a burden. It can actually be a superpower that propels you to creative heights and allows you to achieve more than you ever thought possible.

We want to give you a new perspective on ADHD, whether it's your own brain or a friend or family member's that you're trying to understand. We hope you come away with strategies you can employ to make things a little easier. (We also hope you laugh out loud, at least once or twice.)

Most of all, we want you to silence that voice that whispers that you're broken or a mess or a failure. None of that is true. You have ADHD—and that makes you awesome.

—Penn Holderness]]> 292 Penn Holderness 1400338611 Amy 4 4.22 2024 ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD
author: Penn Holderness
name: Amy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:
I love the Holderness family. This book was very insightful while also being lighthearted about a serious topic. I definitely learned some things while also enjoying listening to Penn and Kim.
]]> Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1) 199368721 She's been driving him wild for years . . . the good kind of wild.

The kind of wild that comes with wanting your best friend's little sister and knowing you can't have her.

Forbes may have labeled Ford Grant the World's Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he's her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend's sister, Rosie Belmont.

After living in the city, Rosie came blasting back into town like a storm. Beautiful, messy, and chaotic. And one wide-eyed, desperate plea for a job is all it takes for Ford to hire her. He vows to keep her at arm's length. Tries to stick to scowls and grumpy one-liners. But with her, verbal sparring is a type of foreplay―friction that soon turns to blistering heat.

Ford knows damn well he shouldn't cross this line. But shouldn't and can't are two very different things.

And the only thing he truly can't do is resist her.]]> 402 Elsie Silver 0349441626 Amy 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1)
author: Elsie Silver
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gone Tonight 61884937
Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother's past or background. But when Ruth's desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth's carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.]]> 338 Sarah Pekkanen 1250283973 Amy 0 to-read 3.78 2023 Gone Tonight
author: Sarah Pekkanen
name: Amy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Third Gilmore Girl 207298106 “Come for the Gilmore Girls anecdotes, stay for the revealing truths about what it takes to build a lifelong career in and out of Hollywood� (The A.V. Club) in this candid and captivating memoir from award-winning and beloved actress Kelly Bishop, spanning her six decades in show business from A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls, and much more.

Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.

Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.

Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 Amy 0 to-read 4.35 2024 The Third Gilmore Girl
author: Kelly Bishop
name: Amy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Killing Cold 211004079 A woman invited to her wealthy fiance’s family retreat realizes they are hiding a terrible secret—and that she’s been there before, by the bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods.

A whirlwind romance.
When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives.

Stay away from Connor Dalton.
Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

I’ve been here before.
Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the Daltons do not lose, and discovering what happened at Idlewood may cost Theo everything.]]> 291 Kate Alice Marshall 1250343054 Amy 0 to-read 3.80 2025 A Killing Cold
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: Amy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Shelterwood 198563674 A sweeping novel inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought to protect children caught in the storm of land barons hungry for power and oil wealth.

Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn’t have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home as wards. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the rugged Winding Stair Mountains, the notorious territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, Ollie and Nessa form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to stay one step ahead of those who seek to exploit them . . . or worse.

Oklahoma, 1990. Law Enforcement Ranger Valerie Boren O’dell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to balance a career and single parenthood. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than she’s faced with local controversy over the park’s opening, a teenage hiker gone missing from one of the trails, and the long-hidden burial site of three children deep in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the neighboring Choctaw Tribal Police but soon collides with old secrets and the tragic and deadly history of the land itself.

In this emotional and enveloping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val traverse the wild and beautiful terrain, each leaving behind one life in search of another.]]> 368 Lisa Wingate 0593726502 Amy 3 3.81 2024 Shelterwood
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Amy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:
I liked, not loved this book. The 2 timelines kept it interesting- though I found the 1990’s parts more interesting. I listed and read this book and I preferred the book to the audiobook.
]]> Slow Dance 198530925
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 400 Rainbow Rowell 0063380196 Amy 0 to-read 3.63 2024 Slow Dance
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Girl I Was 218171630 “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.�

Alexis Spencer will use any inspirational quote to rationalize her failures and shortcomings. Her closest friends are a distant memory, and her college debt is still as high as the day she left—but that’s all fine and dandy, because “whatever will be, will be.� However, when Alexis loses her job and her relationship on the same day, there’s no quote strong enough to help her cope. In typical fashion, she blames the world for her problems, including her younger self, who should have tried harder. Feeling sorry for herself, Alexis finds a bottle of vodka from her college days and goes on a bender, blacking out in the process. Only this time she doesn’t wake up at home—or even in the right city. In fact, she isn’t even in the right year.]]> 304 Jeneva Rose 0778387488 Amy 0 to-read 3.69 2021 The Girl I Was
author: Jeneva Rose
name: Amy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Family Family 211003886 “Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?�

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.

Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.

Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help–and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother�

The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.]]> 400 Laurie Frankel 1250236827 Amy 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Family Family
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Invisible Girl 56269832 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

�I absolutely loved Invisible Girl� Lisa Jewell has a way of combining furiously twisty, utterly gripping plots with wonderfully rich characterization—she has such compassion for her characters, and we feel we know them utterly� A triumph!� —Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone returns with an intricate thriller about a young woman’s disappearance and a group of strangers whose lives intersect in its wake.

Young Saffyre Maddox spent three years under the care of renowned child psychologist Roan Fours. When Dr. Fours decides their sessions should end, Saffyre feels abandoned. She begins looking for ways to connect with him, from waiting outside his office to walking through his neighborhood late at night. She soon learns more than she ever wanted to about Roan and his deceptively perfect family life. On a chilly Valentine’s night, Saffyre will disappear, taking any secrets she has learned with her.

Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his thirties and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct—accusations he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure.

Owen lives across the street from the Fours family. The Fours have a bad feeling about their neighbor; Owen is a bit creepy and suspect and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Could Owen be responsible? What happened to the beautiful missing Saffyre, and does her disappearance truly connect them all?

Evocative, vivid, and unputdownable, Lisa Jewell’s latest thriller is another “haunting, atmospheric, stay-up-way-too-late read� (Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author).]]> 384 Lisa Jewell 1982137347 Amy 0 to-read 3.80 2020 Invisible Girl
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Perfect Son 52616342
Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until the evening when two detectives show up at her front door.

A high school girl has vanished from Erika's quiet suburban neighborhood. The police suspect the worst--murder. And Erika's teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive.

Erika has always sensed something dark and disturbed in her seemingly perfect older child. She wants to believe he's innocent, but as the evidence mounts, she can't deny the truth--Liam may have done the unthinkable.

Now she must ask herself:

How far will she go to protect her son?]]> 373 Freida McFadden Amy 0 to-read 4.03 2019 The Perfect Son
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Answer Is No 219876684 In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?

Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 Amy 0 to-read 3.94 2024 The Answer Is No
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Amy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Amy 2 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Amy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
This book’s Saving grace- the audiobook was performed by Meryl Streep. Best part was the cherry and apple farm bits and the last few chapters tying it all up. It was mostly tedious and boring- with a bit of interest thrown in here and there. I think an unpopular opinion- but it’s how I felt about this one.
]]> The Keeper of Happy Endings 57429914 An enchanting novel about fate, second chances, and hope, lost and found, by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Last of the Moon Girls.

Soline Roussel is well schooled in the business of happy endings. For generations her family has kept an exclusive bridal salon in Paris, where magic is worked with needle and thread. It’s said that the bride who wears a Roussel gown is guaranteed a lifetime of joy. But devastating losses during World War II leave Soline’s world and heart in ruins and her faith in love shaken. She boxes up her memories, stowing them away, along with her broken dreams, determined to forget.

Decades later, while coping with her own tragic loss, aspiring gallery owner Rory Grant leases Soline’s old property and discovers a box containing letters and a vintage wedding dress, never worn. When Rory returns the mementos, an unlikely friendship develops, and eerie parallels in Rory’s and Soline’s lives begin to surface. It’s clear that they were destined to meet—and that Rory may hold the key to righting a forty-year wrong and opening the door to shared healing and, perhaps, a little magic.]]> 415 Barbara Davis 1542021480 Amy 0 to-read 4.47 2021 The Keeper of Happy Endings
author: Barbara Davis
name: Amy
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Where There's Smoke 22131009 The Boston Globe). Now, in this original short story, available exclusively as an eBook, Picoult introduces Serenity Jones, one of the fascinating characters from her eagerly awaited new novel, Leaving Time.

Even as a child, Serenity Jones knew she possessed unusual psychic gifts. Now, decades later, she’s an acclaimed medium and host of her own widely viewed TV show, where she delivers messages to the living from loved ones who have passed. Lately, though, her efforts to boost ratings and garner fame have compromised her clairvoyant instincts. When Serenity books a young war widow to appear as a guest, the episode quickly unravels, stirring up a troubling controversy. And as she tries to undo the damage—to both her reputation and her show—Serenity finds that pride comes at a high price.]]> 41 Jodi Picoult Amy 2 3.52 2014 Where There's Smoke
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Amy
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
2.5 stars. It was ok- not as good as I expect from Picoult.
]]> <![CDATA[The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie]]> 216476388 My husband is dead.

I attended his funeral. I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground. (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.) And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car.

My point is, Grant is gone. And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really ever bothered to ask him about. He is never coming back.

So why do I still see his face everywhere I go?

The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie is an utterly addictive, unputdownable, nail-biting, absolutely gripping psychological thriller novella with a shocking, breathtaking, heartstopping, spine-chilling twist that you won't see coming, will leave you stunned, and will literally have you picking your jaw up off the floor and bringing it to the nearest hospital for major facial reconstructive surgery.]]> 152 Freida McFadden Amy 3 3.34 2024 The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Beware- this is NOT your typical Freida McFadden book. It is satire- think the movie Airplane, but in a book. If you like that kind of thing, this will make you laugh, groan, and shake your head
]]> The Little Liar 112975105 333 Mitch Albom 0062406655 Amy 0 to-read 4.54 2023 The Little Liar
author: Mitch Albom
name: Amy
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Say You'll Remember Me 217182552 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.]]> 368 Abby Jimenez 1538759195 Amy 0 to-read 4.25 2025 Say You'll Remember Me
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Amy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Don't Let Him In 220160814 Three women are connected by one man in this kaleidoscopic thriller.

Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Ratcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together—much to Ash’s dismay.

Martha is a small-town florist with dreams of expansion. She lives with her second husband Al, her baby, and two sons from her prior marriage. But they never seem to have any money, and with his constant traveling for work, she feels like a single parent—especially when an emergency makes her realize something needs to change.

But Nick and Al may not be who they say they are, leading these three women on a shocking collision course, wishing they had heeded a warning: Don’t let him in.]]> 368 Lisa Jewell 1668033879 Amy 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Don't Let Him In
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Amy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Famous Last Words 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 Amy 0 to-read 3.73 2025 Famous Last Words
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Amy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> Beautiful Ugly 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

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

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

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

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Amy 0 to-read 3.65 2025 Beautiful Ugly
author: Alice Feeney
name: Amy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We All Live Here 213243915 The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> 450 Jojo Moyes 1984879324 Amy 0 to-read 3.88 2025 We All Live Here
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Amy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Amy 0 to-read 3.84 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Amy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In a Holidaze 50892287 Alternate cover edition can be found here

One Christmas wish, two brothers, and a lifetime of hope are on the line for hapless Maelyn Jones in In a Holidaze, the quintessential holiday romantic novel by Christina Lauren, the New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners..

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…but not for Maelyn Jones. She’s living with her parents, hates her going-nowhere job, and has just made a romantic error of epic proportions.

But perhaps worst of all, this is the last Christmas Mae will be at her favorite place in the world—the snowy Utah cabin where she and her family have spent every holiday since she was born, along with two other beloved families. Mentally melting down as she drives away from the cabin for the final time, Mae throws out what she thinks is a simple plea to the universe: Please. Show me what will make me happy.

The next thing she knows, tires screech and metal collides, everything goes black. But when Mae gasps awake…she’s on an airplane bound for Utah, where she begins the same holiday all over again. With one hilarious disaster after another sending her back to the plane, Mae must figure out how to break free of the strange time loop—and finally get her true love under the mistletoe.

Jam-packed with yuletide cheer, an unforgettable cast of characters, and Christina Lauren’s trademark hijinks, this swoon-worthy romantic read will make you believe in the power of wishes and the magic of the holidays.
]]> 307 Christina Lauren 198212394X Amy 4 3.65 2020 In a Holidaze
author: Christina Lauren
name: Amy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
Loved this sweet little romance to end the year!
]]> The Maidens 45300567
Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.

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

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life.]]> 337 Alex Michaelides 1250304458 Amy 4 3.61 2021 The Maidens
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Amy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
This is my third book by this author and I really like the psychological thriller, twists and turns of his writing. A good one as I wind down my 2024 reading/listening
]]> Society of Lies 202102003 How far would you go to belong?

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion - it's been a decade since she graduated, and this visit is special because she will also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi.

But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya's worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on.

As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister's death, she begins to realise how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya's warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus - the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it.

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 384 Lauren Ling Brown 059372335X Amy 0 to-read 3.48 2024 Society of Lies
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Amy
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1New York Times bestselling 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 Amy 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Amy
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Five People You Meet in Heaven]]> 3431
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"]]> 196 Mitch Albom 0786868716 Amy 5 4.00 2003 The Five People You Meet in Heaven
author: Mitch Albom
name: Amy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️. Great book- thought provoking and poignant.
]]> The Boxcar Librarian 214325867 🎧Run Time = 13 hours and 20 minutes

A brand-new 2025 release from an author whose writing “historical fiction fans will adore� (New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin): The stories of three women converge in 1936 Montana when editor Millie Lang arrives from DC to work on a series of travel books � only to find a town riddled with mystery, corruption, and secrets.


Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana.

When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to what happened to Colette Durand.

Inspired by the fascinating, true history of Missoula’s Boxcar Library, the novel blends the story of the strong, courageous women who survived and thrived in the rough and rowdy West with that of the power of standing together to fight for workers� lives. And through it all shines the capacity of books to provide connection and light to those who need it most.]]> 464 Brianna Labuskes 006337630X Amy 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The Boxcar Librarian
author: Brianna Labuskes
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Amy 3 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Amy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/11
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars. I enjoyed this book and it was funny and thought provoking- but bc it was short stories I didn’t find myself being pulled to read it. After I read one and was finished- I was content to put it down and wait a day for the next, which isn’t bad- it just took me awhile to finish.
]]> A Fire Sparkling 43236275 432 Julianne MacLean 1542006228 Amy 0 to-read 4.24 2019 A Fire Sparkling
author: Julianne MacLean
name: Amy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]> 240 Catherine Newman 0063345161 Amy 3 3.55 2024 Sandwich
author: Catherine Newman
name: Amy
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars ⭐️. This book is different. Nothing really happens, but it’s still kind of poignant and a little funny and a bit sad too. It’s hard to describe, really. It’s short- I’d recommend it. I’m not feeling like it super resonated with me- but I did enjoy it.
]]> Crow Mary 62918680
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.

The winter trading season passes peacefully. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota—despite Farwell’s efforts to stop them. Mary, hiding from the hail of bullets, sees the murderers, including Stiller, take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that brings out the worst and best in the cast of unforgettable characters and pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.

Crow Mary sweeps across decades and the landscape of the upper West and Canada, showcasing the beauty of the natural world, while at the same time probing the intimacies of a marriage and one woman’s heart.]]> 348 Kathleen Grissom 1476748470 Amy 0 to-read 4.28 2023 Crow Mary
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Amy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Archer's Voice 32822135
Archer's Voice is the story of a woman chained to the memory of one horrifying night and the man whose love is the key to her freedom. It is the story of a silent man who lives with an excruciating wound and the woman who helps him find his voice. It is the story of suffering, fate, and the transformative power of love.]]> 377 Mia Sheridan 1538727374 Amy 3 4.14 2014 Archer's Voice
author: Mia Sheridan
name: Amy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
I liked the 2 main characters a lot and their love story. But there was a LOT of open door romance and I could have done with less of that- the author’s vocabulary choices felt kinda raunchy to me.
]]> The Frozen River 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Amy 4 4.38 2023 The Frozen River
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Amy
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars. Read this for December book club and loved it. It felt like a mix of mystery and historical fiction. Amazing, strong female characters that were really well developed. I’ll check out more by this author- and her notes at the end made it even better knowing her writing process and what was fictional and what was real.
]]> <![CDATA[The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year]]> 204982650 Knives Out gets a holiday rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter.

The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room three days before Christmas.

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan

She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.

He’s Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)

But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.

That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.

She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 303 Ally Carter 0063276739 Amy 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
author: Ally Carter
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> End of Story 213847223
So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.�

“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.�

Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.�

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.]]> 416 A.J. Finn 0062678469 Amy 0 to-read 3.07 2024 End of Story
author: A.J. Finn
name: Amy
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You]]> 55737894 An informative, blisteringly funny, somewhat cranky and always spot-on guide to perimenopause and menopause by the award-winning sex ed/health educator and author of S.E.X.
If you don't know award-winning sex educator and all-around badass Heather Corinna, let them introduce themselves and their new book:
"I'm going to do what I've done for millions of people of all ages with sex and relationships: to simplify and share solid, explicit information, to provide support and be sensitive, and to help make everyone feel less alone and get us all through hard, thorny, touchy stuff so we can make it to the other side. I'm going to do this in a similar way I've done it for sex and relationships in my work over the last couple decades for young people and adults alike: by talking out loud, shamelessly and frankly, about what others are afraid or ashamed to, much in the way your favorite loudmouth aunt might have if she made this kind of stuff her life's work and if your family also didn't always apparently forget to invite her to everything."
Corinna has been on the cutting edge of health for more than twenty years, always talking about what people are most afraid, ashamed, or embarrassed of. What Fresh Hell Is This? is no different. It's a companion for everyone who's reached this "what to expect when you're not expected to expect anything" time of life. It's a health-forward, feminist, no b.s. (and damn funny) perimenopause guide for the generation that time forgot (aka GenXers), offering straightforward descriptions of our bodies, minds, lives and what's going on with them during this time of hormonal chaos. Heather Corinna tells you what to expect and what to do, all while busting some myths and offering real self-care tips so you can get through this. With practical, clear information that also includes affected populations who have long been left out of the discussion, like those with disabilities, queer, transgender, nonbinary and other gender-diverse people, the working class and other marginalized folks, What Fresh Hell Is This? an accessible and inclusive guide for anyone who is experiencing the hot fire of perimenopause.]]> 324 Heather Corinna 0306874768 Amy 0 to-read 3.91 2021 What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You
author: Heather Corinna
name: Amy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1)]]> 61827543 Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective� work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could � because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands � Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.]]> 339 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593549228 Amy 0 to-read 4.01 2023 Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1)
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Amy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Spare Room 209786379 Staying with a friend and her husband is sexier—and deadlier—than anyone could have imagined, in this provocative domestic suspense novel

Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare: She’s friendless and jobless, and the lockdown has her trapped in a tiny apartment with the man she gave up everything for, who’s just called off their wedding. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend Sabrina—now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband.

When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts—until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her.

At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous . . . and if she might be next.]]> 384 Andrea Bartz 1984820516 Amy 1 3.04 2023 The Spare Room
author: Andrea Bartz
name: Amy
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
This book was pervy with an annoying main character. I don’t know why I finished it- I didn’t like this book and wouldn’t recommend it.
]]> The Golden Spoon 61273344
The author of numerous best-selling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,� Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, although no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. Things go awry as the baking competition begins. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned too high—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.]]> 288 Jessa Maxwell 1668008009 Amy 4 3.44 2023 The Golden Spoon
author: Jessa Maxwell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
If you look reality cooking shows and whodunit books- this marries the two. It was great.
]]> I Must Betray You 56970272 Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.]]> 321 Ruta Sepetys 198483603X Amy 4 4.38 2022 I Must Betray You
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Amy
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:
Classified as YA but it has all the emotions. Great book for fans of historical fiction
]]> <![CDATA[Host for the Holidays (Christmas Escape)]]> 62799144
Madi

After two years and zero proposals, my relationship could use a little spark. Paris during the holidays seems like just the ticket—one perfect, final opportunity for my boyfriend to take things to the next level.

The fact that he’s rented me the tiny servant quarters in the apartment of a very good-looking Frenchman is . . . puzzling. And when he asks that Frenchman to take me around the city while he’s busy at work trainings? Color me confused.

Is this some sort of pre-engagement test? If so, I’m not sure I’m doing too hot.

é

Offering to host my friend’s vacation rental means making sure the first review is five solid, sparkling stars. When the guest who shows up is a beautiful American woman, I’m thinking my task might be more enjoyable than I thought. Until I find out she has a boyfriend. Madi deserves to have an amazing time in Paris, though, so I’m more than happy to oblige when the guy asks me to show her the city.

It’s cool. I’m cool. This is all for that five-star review�


� Host for the Holidays is a closed door romance full of fun, chemistry, and a generous dash of the magic of Paris]]> 378 Martha Keyes Amy 0 to-read 4.03 2022 Host for the Holidays (Christmas Escape)
author: Martha Keyes
name: Amy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Amy 3 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Amy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
My feelings about this book are a bit complicated. I liked it. But I felt like there was just too much that wasn’t important- making it FAR longer than it needed to be. But the last half- I wanted to pick up and see what would happen. We read this for book club in November and sadly, I didn’t get it finished before we met. Most people didn’t like it much- but a few of us did. The sheer number of changing narrators and time periods made it hard to keep up with, especially in the first half. But the last half- I had a much better feel for the characters and how they connected.
]]> <![CDATA[Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 Amy 2 4.07 2024 Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Amy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:
Unpopular opinion- I didn’t really like this book. I will admit it could have been just the wrong time for me and I was reading another book with several characters. But there were too many characters for me and it felt like the author just thought- I need to throw EVERY political/social issue into one book. This one missed for me
]]>