en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 19:02:33 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 220500719
But that path yet again sets her on a collision course with Draven Ryat. While the rebellion plots a daring scheme, important people start turning up dead. Draven is tasked with solving the murders. Selena is trying to help the killer. If either one of them fails, they will face dire consequences.

When blood stains the ice and dangerous secrets are brought to light, Selena must decide if she is willing to doom Draven in order to achieve her own goals. After everything that has happened between them, their relationship is already complicated. But now, with their very lives on the line, their tangled feelings for each other might destroy them both.]]> 418 Marion Blackwood 9198904302 MaryBeth 3 4.25
author: Marion Blackwood
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 214269328 Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not

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

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again�� list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.]]> 416 Cara Bastone 0593595734 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.23 2025
author: Cara Bastone
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 213243908 A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

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

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

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 448 B.K. Borison 0593641191 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: B.K. Borison
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 212378273
London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.

Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan—a once-glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.

Louise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever. Inspired by the true story of Lévitan, Last Twilight in Paris is both a gripping mystery and an unforgettable story about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love to transcend in even the darkest hours.]]> 336 Pam Jenoff 0778307980 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: Pam Jenoff
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 217477109 A fae rebel. A ruthless dragon commander.
And a deadly trial that will turn their lives upside down.

Trapped in the Seelie Court by a forest of thorns, Selena Hale lives at the mercy of the dragon shifters. Her only chance to gain her freedom is by entering the Atonement Trials: a deadly competition that pits fae magic users against each other. Only three people can win, and Selena intends to be one of them.

There is only one problem. Draven Ryat, the ruthless commander of the dragon shifter army, is determined to make her lose.

He symbolizes everything that she hates, and if he finds out that she is also a member of the secret fae rebellion, he will not only mess with her chances to win, he will kill her. But the more time she spends with him, the more she finds herself inexplicably drawn to him.

And nothing is more dangerous in a lethal trial than a distracted heart.

Especially one that beats for the enemy…]]> 372 Marion Blackwood 9198904264 MaryBeth 4 4.00 2024
author: Marion Blackwood
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
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]]> 199285128 Kennedy

I’m the only woman on staff for the Windy City Warriors, and after years of putting up with a sexist lead doctor, I’m desperate to land my dream job with a new team next year. All I have to do is maintain my professional reputation for my final season in Chicago.

But a Las Vegas run-in with the team’s shortstop threatens it all, leaving me with a fuzzy memory and a ring on my left hand.

Now, not only am I legally bound to the most persistent man I’ve ever met, but thanks to Isaiah’s scheme to save my job, I have to pretend the whole thing was a planned elopement and not a drunken mistake.

Isaiah Rhodes is reckless, impulsive, and frustratingly charming. He’s also my brand-new husband.

They got the saying wrong. What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas�� sometimes it follows you right back home.


Isaiah

As the shortstop for Chicago’s professional baseball team, I’ve had my fair share of fun. But that all ended the day Kennedy Kay became a single woman.

I’ve crushed on the team’s athletic trainer for years. I’ve flirted to no avail, so imagine my surprise when I woke up in Sin City with a ring on my finger and my favorite redhead in my bed.

We agree to stay married for one baseball season, just long enough to keep her job safe, but in my mind, I’m using our time together to prove to her I’m husband material.

Kennedy might be reluctant to join in on our game, but it’s one I refuse to lose.

So come on, wife�� play along.]]> 384 Liz Tomforde MaryBeth 4 4.44 2024
author: Liz Tomforde
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> 199335111
I’m a single dad and starting pitcher for Chicago’s MLB team.
I’m stretched too thin, but I don’t want help raising my son.

Each of his previous nannies only lasted a few weeks before I let them go.
Now, my coach is putting his foot down by hiring the one person I can’t fire—his daughter.

Miller Montgomery is the last woman I should fall for. Too wild, too young, and too unattached.

Chicago is just a quick stop for her. I thought I’d be counting down the days until she left, but summer feels too short when I start thinking about forever.


Miller

As a high-end pastry chef who recently won the most prestigious award in my industry, I’m desperate to prove I deserve it. But with a new title comes new pressure, and I can’t create a fresh and inspiring dessert to save my life.

With only two months to get back on track, I should be focusing in the kitchen, but instead, I let my dad talk me into using my time off to nanny for his star player’s kid.

Kai Rhodes forgot how to have fun, and I’m eager to jog his memory. But when he and his son start to feel like home, I have to remind us both that my time in Chicago ends with the summer.

Besides, I’ve always been a runner, and the last thing I want is to get caught.]]> 408 Liz Tomforde 139972858X MaryBeth 4 4.37 2023
author: Liz Tomforde
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> 203237161
If your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, Bennet Taylor is failing miserably . . . with a big emphasis on the miserable. Where’s that zest she keeps hearing about? She’s a temp worker in New York City with no direction, no future, and no social life. And at the painful center of this listlessness is grief over the death of her first love.

When Bennet runs into Henry Adams just hours after standing him up for a first date, she makes an alcohol-fueled confession: She’s not ready to date. In fact, it’s been years since she felt passion for something. Not even pottery, or organized sports—not anything. Rather than leaving her to ruminate, Henry jumps at the opportunity for adventure: Bennet needs to find a passion for life, and Henry will help her find it. Every Saturday, they’ll try something new in New York City. As friends, of course.

As their “passion project�� continues, the pair tackle everything from carpentry to tattooing to rappelling off skyscrapers, and Bennet feels her guarded exterior ebbing away. But as secrets surface, Bennet has to decide what she wants, and if she’s truly ready to move on. With emotional resonance and sparkling banter, Passion Project is a fun, flirty, thoughtful story of finding a spark—and igniting happiness.]]> 368 London Sperry 0143138561 MaryBeth 5 3.95 2025
author: London Sperry
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
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4.5⭐️ but rounding up because this is the first book I’ve underlined anything in since grad school.
]]> 217074544 Three women, connected by one of the most brutal mass slayings in US history.

Lucy is sick of turning the other cheek. Ten years ago, an anti-Mormon mob drove her family and friends from their homes in Illinois. But now, the tables have turned. Rumor has it, some of those same men are traveling through Utah on their way to California. And this time, Lucy won’t run.

Katrina knew the trek west would be difficult. But she had no idea she’d be walking straight into hell. The young mother of four is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect her family from the violence closing in, but the battle to survive will be more harrowing than anything she can imagine.

Sally has just been “gifted�� to a man she barely knows—as his fourth wife. Trapped and lonely, she tries to make the best of her new life. But when her husband insists on joining a group of religious zealots�� plans for revenge, she’s forced to reconsider her loyalties. Even if it means putting her own life on the line.

Based on true events, None Left to Tell is the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.]]> 383 Noelle W. Ihli MaryBeth 4 4.21 2024
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 208430658 Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power.

Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?

A standalone dark academia brimming with mystery, tragedy, and the damning echoes of the past. For fans of Leigh Bardugo, V. E. Schwab, and Fullmetal Alchemist.

(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)]]> 430 M.L. Wang 0593873351 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.40 2023
author: M.L. Wang
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 210411871 A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine

2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever.

1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies.

A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.]]> 337 Emilia Hart 1250280826 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.81 2025
author: Emilia Hart
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217536270
In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn't much a girl wouldn't do for a glass of water.

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

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

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

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

Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he's the only way Saeris is going to make it home.]]> 624 Callie Hart 1538774194 MaryBeth 4 4.29 2024
author: Callie Hart
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
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]]> 52584241 ��Fast Girls is a compelling, thrilling look at what it takes to be a female Olympian in pre-war America. Rich with historical detail and brilliant story-telling, the book follows three athletes on their path to compete �� and win �� in a man’s world.  Brava to Elise Hooper for bringing these inspiring heroines to the wide audience they so richly deserve.”—Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics and The House Girl

Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany.

This inspiring story is based on the real lives of three little-known trailblazing women Olympians.  Perfect for readers who love untold stories of amazing women, such as The Only Woman in the Room, Hidden Figures, and The Lost Girls of Paris.

In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team.

From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life.

These three athletes will join with others to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin.���ձ�> 512 Elise Hooper 0062937995 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.83 2020
author: Elise Hooper
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214268980 The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel Magnifique returns with another glittering dark fantasy about a deadly mystery that spans worlds and a teenage girl who must risk everything to uncover the truth.

Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.

Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words Your father was innocent.

To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.

Her secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation��or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.]]> 400 Emily J. Taylor 0593404548 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: Emily J. Taylor
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60869516 Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless.

When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.]]> 217 Jon Krakauer MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.13 1996
author: Jon Krakauer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1898
Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.

Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.]]> 368 Jon Krakauer MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.24 1997
author: Jon Krakauer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30288282 If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.]]> 346 Chloe Benjamin 0735213186 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.68 2018
author: Chloe Benjamin
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 44593125
He knows how to score, on and off the ice...

Allie Hayes is in crisis mode. With graduation looming, she still doesn’t have the first clue about what she's going to do after college. To make matters worse, she’s nursing a broken heart thanks to the end of her longtime relationship. Wild rebound sex is definitely not the solution to her problems, but gorgeous hockey star Dean Di Laurentis is impossible to resist. Just once, though, because even if her future is uncertain, it sure as heck won’t include the king of one-night stands.

It’ll take more than flashy moves to win her over...

Dean always gets what he wants. Girls, grades, girls, recognition, girls…he’s a ladies man, all right, and he’s yet to meet a woman who’s immune to his charms. Until Allie. For one night, the feisty blonde rocked his entire world—and now she wants to be friends? Nope. It’s not over until he says it’s over. Dean is in full-on pursuit, but when life-rocking changes strike, he starts to wonder if maybe it’s time to stop focusing on scoring…and shoot for love.]]> 384 Elle Kennedy MaryBeth 4 4.10 2016
author: Elle Kennedy
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 209568782
As a chart-topping country singer with a recent streak of bad press it’s hard to find any peace. But I find it in Rose Hill. With a little boy and a little girl who steal my heart just as thoroughly as their dad.

Weston Belmont.

The man is a shameless flirt. He oozes confidence and masculinity in a way that’s downright distracting. And in bed? He’s addictive.

Everything with him is wild and impulsive and I’m desperate to regain some control.

But no one has supported me like West does. And no one has ever made me feel as loved as he does either.

So, while my brain says settling down with a small-town horse trainer is impossible�� my heart says I’m right where I belong.

Still, my life as a celebrity haunts me. It has the power to pull us apart.

I can see in his eyes that wants me to stay. And I want that too.

But I know better than anyone that we don’t always get what we want.]]> 464 Elsie Silver 1464220824 MaryBeth 4 4.24 2024
author: Elsie Silver
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 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.]]> 466 Elsie Silver 0349441626 MaryBeth 4 3.98 2024
author: Elsie Silver
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves:
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]]> 210395729 They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

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

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

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 MaryBeth 5 3.76 2025
author: Laura Steven
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
Felt a little like a cross between Night Circus and Addie Larue…basically I’m the target audience for this book.
]]> 58958806 From USA Today bestselling author and the author of The Highland Fling, comes a brand new hockey romance about a wayward traveler falling in love with her ex-boyfriend's half-brother. Steamy and unapologetically witty.

Five hockey players, a cabin in the woods . . . and little old me, Winnie Berlin.

Sounds like the start of a fantasy, right? But it's not. It's my reality.

It all started when I got lost in the middle of the Canadian Rockies. A wicked thunderstorm sent my car mud sliding into a ditch and for a girl whose survival skills involve finding the nearest Starbucks, I was in deep trouble.

Forced to abandon my car in search of help, I stumbled upon a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Soaking wet, irritated, and in desperate need of a hot shower, I knocked on the door for help only to be greeted by five boisterous, burly, and insanely attractive men.

Not just men.

Professional hockey players.

I hit the motherload of fantasies, right? Wrong.

Because as it turns out, one of them is my ex-boyfriend's half-brother. And when I end up crashing in their spare bedroom for the night, things take a very unexpected turn.

I'm not sure any amount of survival skills can protect my heart from Vancouver Agitators star goalie, Pacey Lawes. But as long as we kiss and don’t tell, maybe everything will be okay . . .]]> 414 Meghan Quinn MaryBeth 2 3.99 2021
author: Meghan Quinn
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
This, uh, was not for me. Probably closer to a 2.5 star read and I normally round up but��
]]> 176443045
Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.

When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days nor return to a place where she’s already been.

From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s...

Fiercely independent and hopeful, yet full of longing, Aubry Tourvel is an unforgettable character fighting her way through a world of wonders to find a place she can call home. A spellbinding and inspiring story about discovering meaning in a life that seems otherwise impossible, A Short Walk Through a Wide World reminds us that it’s not the destination, but rather the journey—no matter how long it lasts—that makes us who we are.]]> 400 Douglas Westerbeke 1668026066 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.48 2024
author: Douglas Westerbeke
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15790842
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?]]> 544 Kate Atkinson 0316176486 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.76 2013
author: Kate Atkinson
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52089753 From author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love.

When Leeds meets Layla, he’s convinced he’ll spend the rest of his life with her—until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla’s behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that’s just one of many inexplicable occurrences.

Feeling distant from Layla, Leeds soon finds solace in Willow—another guest of the B&B with whom he forms a connection through their shared concerns. As his curiosity for Willow grows, his decision to help her find answers puts him in direct conflict with Layla’s well-being. Leeds soon realizes he has to make a choice because he can’t help both of them. But if he makes the wrong choice, it could be detrimental for all of them.
]]> 305 Colleen Hoover 1542000181 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.63 2020
author: Colleen Hoover
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215092266 still doesn’t know what to do about the massive crush he has on his cleaner. Lottie’s clumsy and really crap at her job, but her laugh is infectious, her smile lights up the room, she’s insanely good at chess, and he can’t stop thinking about her.

Aware of the power imbalance, he sets out to make her his, and he thinks he’s getting somewhere until she seriously betrays his trust. So now he tells himself he hates her, and he makes sure everyone knows it. But once Ollie realizes that his privilege and self-absorption have made him entitled and completely blind, he’s determined to win Lottie back. A fake engagement might be a bit extreme, but his family had been getting its way for five hundred years, and the Duke of Buckingham was no different from his ancestors.

Lottie’s life is a struggle. She’s had to fight for everything since going into foster care at the age of twelve. The Duke of Buckingham, wouldn’t understand struggle if it smacked him in the face. He’s got money and family coming out of his ears; she has twenty quid in her current account and no family other than her traumatized, selectively mute eight-year-old little sister, whom Lottie is determined to keep safe.

She doesn’t have time for handsome Dukes with silver tongues. So she tells herself she’s not heartbroken when he turns on her like she knew he would, putting everything she worked so hard for in jeopardy. She needs to concentrate on survival. But Lottie underestimates just how charming Ollie can be. Or what a formidable opponent his centuries-old, innate arrogance makes him.

This is a billionaire, enemies to lovers, fake engagement, grumpy boss, contemporary romance.

Trigger warnings for assault, mentions of domestic violence and past childhood neglect. ]]> 338 Susie Tate 1068682027 MaryBeth 4 4.14 2024
author: Susie Tate
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
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]]> 214249697
But Lucy’s lonelier in London than she’s even been in her tiny village back home. The boy she grew up with has been replaced by a powerful, ruthless, extremely attractive man who doesn’t tolerate incompetence and who no longer seems to find Lucy’s quirks cute. Instead, he lectures her almost daily on her general crapness, and seems blind to the bullying she endures from his colleagues.

For Felix, agreeing to employ Lucy was a mistake. This shy bookworm with her head in the clouds, who wears tattered jumpers, carries multiple pens in her hair and has an obvious crush on him must be by far the worst assistant in London. But he’s always had a soft spot for the quirky little girl who lived in her own world and told the best stories. Well, now that little girl is all grown up�� and he can’t stop thinking about her.

After Felix gives in to his bone-deep longing for his best friend’s little sister, he starts to feel more than he has in years. But Lucy has secrets, and Felix has trust issues. When his inability to trust her leads to a terrible betrayal and places Lucy in danger, Felix is faced with losing her forever. Because the new, hardened, traumatised Lucy is nothing like the daydreaming pushover she once was��

This is a full length, brother's best friend, grumpy billionaire boss romance.

Trigger warning for workplace harassment and assault.

Warning �� there is swearing throughout this book.

Praise for
"As a reader who loves a betrayal and subsequent grovel this story was 'chef's kiss'."
"10 out of 10! Everything you could ever want or need in a romance book."
"This author grabs you by the heart, gives it a good shake and slowly but beautifully puts it back together again with some heart-breaking and heart-lifting scenes."
"Vibe of a secret crush/she falls first/ he falls harder tale and Is laced with mistaken angst and wonderful scenes of grovel."
"Excellent, 5 stars all the way."
"This book was so great that I read it all the way through in one day."
"This was a heartfelt, angsty and emotional story told in the wonderful, dulcet tones of Susie's brace of creativity and stellar story-telling finesse."
"Yet another winner by Susie Tate."
"Fantastic book."]]> 314 Susie Tate 1068682019 MaryBeth 3 3.97 2024
author: Susie Tate
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
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]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]> 448 Mario Puzo MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.39 1969
author: Mario Puzo
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40669501 538 T.J. English MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.14 1990
author: T.J. English
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 182486315 From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Jo Piazza, comes a transporting novel rooted in the author's own family history about a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect . . .

Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.

Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn’t long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger.

As Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight.]]> 384 Jo Piazza 0593474163 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Jo Piazza
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60217777 The stakes are even higher in this epic, romantic conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Crimson Moth duology.

A WITCH...
Rune Winters is on the run. Ever since the boy she loved, Gideon Sharpe, revealed who she was and delivered her into enemy hands, everyone wants her dead. If Rune hopes to survive, she must ally herself with the cruel and dangerous Cressida Roseblood, who’s planning to take back the Republic and reinstate a Reign of Witches—something Cressida needs Rune to accomplish.

A WITCH HUNTER...
Apparently it wasn’t enough for Rune to deceive Gideon; she’s now betrayed him by allying herself with the witch who made his life a living hell. Gideon won’t allow the Republic to fall to the witches and be plunged back into the nightmares of the past. In order to protect this new world he fought for, every last witch must die—especially Rune Winters.

AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE...
When Rune makes Gideon an offer he can’t refuse, the two must pair up to accomplish dangerous goals. The more they’re forced into each other’s company, the more Gideon realizes the feelings he had for Rune aren’t as dead and buried as he thought. Now he’s faced with a terrible choice: sacrifice the girl he loves to stop a monster taking back power, or let Rune live and watch the world he fought so hard for burn.

In Kristen Ciccarelli's Rebel Witch, the exciting conclusion to The Crimson Moth duology, love has never been so deadly.]]> 464 Kristen Ciccarelli MaryBeth 5 4.23 2025
author: Kristen Ciccarelli
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
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]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett MaryBeth 4 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
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]]> 59417433 This is not your typical love story.

It’s a story of almosts and could-have-beens.
Of friendship that teeters on the edge of something more.
Of passion so intoxicating, it burns.

Jamie and B are two hearts caught in the tangle of bad timing and unspoken words. Their connection defies labels—too deep for friendship, too tangled for love. Over a decade of moments, choices, and missed opportunities, they find themselves drawn together like a moth to a flame, even when the world—and their own mistakes—keep pulling them apart.

Is it obsession? Destiny? Or just self-destruction with a pretty face?

Sometimes, love isn’t about finding the right person—it’s about the moment when everything aligns.
But what if that moment never comes?

This special edition features:
* A Love Letter to Whiskey (the full, heart-wrenching story)
* Love, Whiskey (Jamie’s side, plus an extended epilogue)
* Bonus content, including behind-the-scenes stories, fun facts, and letters from the author and audiobook narrator]]> 608 Kandi Steiner MaryBeth 5 4.23
author: Kandi Steiner
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 210481677
Elite ballerina Allie Rousseau is no stranger to pressure. With her mother’s eyes always watching, perfection was expected, no matter the cost. But when an injury jeopardizes all she’s sacrificed for, Allie returns to her summer home to heal and recover. But the memories she’s tried to forget rush in and threaten to take her under.

As a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Hudson Ellis knows that hesitation can mean the difference between life and death. He’s always prided himself on being in the right place at the right time, especially when it came to Allie Rousseau…until the night he left for basic. After the biggest regret of his life, the secrets he keeps mean he can never be with the one woman he wants more than his next breath.

When Hudson’s niece shows up on Allie’s doorstep, desperate to find her birth mother, Allie finds herself in an unimaginable position. Allie and Hudson’s past and present might be endlessly complicated. The thread that tied them to each other all those years ago may have unraveled, but the truth could pull them back together, or drive them apart forever.]]> 464 Rebecca Yarros 1662514700 MaryBeth 4 4.18 2024
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER �� An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“P������ Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story�� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 MaryBeth 5 4.5, rounding up! 4.17 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
4.5, rounding up!
]]> 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 MaryBeth 4 4.17 2025
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
This is definitely a world building, transitional book. Some plot holes (I was fine with it), lots of new people that don’t matter, but DEFINITELY setting us up for the next two books. Took me about 100-150 pages to really get into it, but once the plot gets moving, it moves. Still very invested in our main squad of characters and their stories.
]]> 16054217 The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.]]> 561 Deborah Harkness 0670025593 MaryBeth 4 4.15 2014
author: Deborah Harkness
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/04
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:

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

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

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.]]> 325 Madeline Martin 133528480X MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.07 2021
author: Madeline Martin
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45294613
Edward's story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery--one that will lead him to the answers of some of life's most profound questions: When you've lost everything, how do find yourself? How do you discover your purpose? What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 340 Ann Napolitano 198485478X MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.03 2020
author: Ann Napolitano
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.87 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.]]> 390 Scott Hawkins 0553418629 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.06 2015
author: Scott Hawkins
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025454 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.�� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 352 Fiona Davis 0593474279 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Fiona Davis
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56449476 An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.

“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…��

Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.

Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.]]> 346 Lynda Rutledge 1542023351 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.34 2021
author: Lynda Rutledge
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X MaryBeth 5 4.04 2022
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> 53205888 Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.]]> 376 T.J. Klune 1250217342 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.11 2021
author: T.J. Klune
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.17 2024
author: T.J. Klune
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> 60321053 In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-20th century—featuring a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw��

��Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family’s motto��Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)—is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.]]> 188 Elspeth Barker 1668004615 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.92 1991
author: Elspeth Barker
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> 149105520 The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own―until it all came undone.]]> 272 Michael Lewis 1324074337 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.72 2023
author: Michael Lewis
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 35068705
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

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

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

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]> 545 R.F. Kuang 0062662597 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.16 2018
author: R.F. Kuang
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 204222579 In this whip-smart workplace romance from the author of Chick Magnet, a former teen star and an accidental intimacy coordinator have a plan to fix their images—and falling in love would ruin everything.

Cole James’s reputation as Hollywood’s favorite himbo no longer suits him. His fans can’t separate the real man from the character he played on a soapy teen drama decades ago. But that’s going to change with Waverley, the hit streaming historical romance series.

Maggie Niven hates her own notoriety. Fired for directing a divisive play, Maggie takes her fight against censorship public. When Hollywood comes calling, she becomes the new intimacy coordinator for Waverley. But it’s harder than she imagined to focus on the job.

Cole isn’t what she expected—and Maggie is more than he dreamed of. As filming gets underway, the cast’s old traumas lead to real intimacy, and Cole and Maggie struggle with feelings they shouldn’t have. Having an affair on set could destroy his comeback and her new career.

The show must go on. But if Cole and Maggie want a happy ending, they’ll have to start doing things their own way.]]> 316 Emma Barry 1662520840 MaryBeth 3 3.57 2024
author: Emma Barry
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

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

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

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune MaryBeth 5 4.37 2020
author: T.J. Klune
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
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]]> 84943172
She’s a distraction, that’s what she is.

I’m the newest Captain of the Devils, Chicago’s NBA team, and the last thing I needed this year was for Indy Ivers, my sister’s best friend, to move into my apartment. She’s messy, emotional, and way too tempting.

But when the team’s General Manager vocalizes his blatant disapproval of my promotion to Captain, referring to me as an unapproachable lone wolf with no work-life balance, I can’t think of a better way to convince him otherwise than pretending to date my outgoing roommate.

The only problem? Faking it feels far too natural.

Having a fake girlfriend wasn’t supposed to be messy but having Indy under my roof and in my bed is complicated, especially when she wants all the romantic parts of life that I could never give her.


INDY

I never imagined I’d be living with my best friend’s brother, NBA superstar Ryan Shay. Even more unbelievable? He needs me to act as his loving girlfriend who’s suddenly changed him into a friendly and approachable guy.

Because, well…he’s not. He’s controlling of his space and untrusting of others.

Our arrangement isn’t one-sided, though. I’m in a wedding coming up, one where every one of my childhood friends, including my ex-boyfriend, will be in attendance, and there’s no better date than my ex’s celebrity hero.

Blurred lines make it almost impossible to separate real from fake. Falling for my roommate was never part of the deal, especially when Ryan is quick to remind me that he doesn’t believe in love.

I’m a romantic and can’t help fantasizing that he’ll change, but soon enough, I find myself questioning if sharing a roof with my best friend’s brother was the right move after all]]> 499 Liz Tomforde MaryBeth 4 4.39 2023
author: Liz Tomforde
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
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]]> 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 MaryBeth 4 4.11 2024
author: Alison Espach
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> 60714999 Human or vampire, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always �� always �� guard your heart.

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

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

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

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

The Serpent and the Wings of Night is the first book in a new series of heart-wrenching romance, dark magic, and bloodthirsty intrigue, perfect for fans of From Blood and Ash and A Court of Thorns and Roses.]]> 504 Carissa Broadbent MaryBeth 4 4.30 2022
author: Carissa Broadbent
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 209455843
Sure, Dom was Josh’s life-long best friend. He’s also the infuriating man who broke Maddie’s heart back when she was naïve enough to give it to him. But since Dom insists on following the rules and Josh didn’t leave much room for Maddie to argue the matter, they embark together on a farewell trip that spans thousands of miles, exploring new places and revisiting their complicated history along the way.

After a snowstorm leads to a shared bed, Maddie starts to wonder if her brother might be matchmaking from the grave. But when grief also reopens old wounds between them, Maddie will need more than Josh’s ghostly guidance to trust Dom again.]]> 432 Lauren Connolly MaryBeth 5 4.06 2024
author: Lauren Connolly
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> 123007281
But Thea’s world is turned upside down as she struggles to navigate her newfound magic and uncover the secrets of her past. Slowly, she begins to untangle the truth about her family, her powers and the evil that threatens to engulf the kingdom.

When Wilder Hawthorne returns to be her official mentor, everything changes. Dark forces are gathering, and he will stop at nothing to prepare her for the challenges to come, even if it means breaking her.

As war looms and their quest for answers leads master and apprentice deeper into danger, the undeniable connection between them intensifies �� defying all odds, but also threatening to tear them apart.

With secrets unravelling and evil closing in, Thea and Wilder fight to save the world, and each other. The fate of the realms rests in their hands �� will they emerge victorious, or will the darkness consume them both?

Full of action, adventure and steamy romance, Vows & Ruins is the second book in the spellbinding epic romantic fantasy series, The Legends of Thezmarr and is perfect for fans of The Bridge Kingdom, From Blood and Ash and The Witcher.]]> 536 Helen Scheuerer 1922903051 MaryBeth 4 4.05 2023
author: Helen Scheuerer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> 27213329
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.

Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.]]> 277 Angela Duckworth 1443442313 MaryBeth 4 4.07 2016
author: Angela Duckworth
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> 216437557 disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong��

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

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 0349442827 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.12 2025
author: Abby Jimenez
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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.]]> 432 Emily Henry MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Emily Henry
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217245639
I never anticipated Charlie Florek.

Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.

Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.

Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.

Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.]]> 400 Carley Fortune 0593638913 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.51 2025
author: Carley Fortune
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
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]]> 219301810 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.]]> Ashley Poston 0593641019 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: Ashley Poston
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry MaryBeth 5 4.21 2024
author: Emily Henry
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
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]]> 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 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.45 2025
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 MaryBeth 5
]]> 4.06 2024
author: Kirsten Miller
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves:
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The dedication says “for all the good people down South”…and on this day of a really crappy week, I’m reminded that 41,000 people in my hometown voted against Speaker Mike Johnson’s re-election. They are who I thought of most while reading this book.


]]> 52129515 Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.]]> 333 Glennon Doyle 1984801252 MaryBeth 3 3.98 2020
author: Glennon Doyle
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves:
review:
2.5⭐️ but rounding up. This book was NOT for me. I hated most of it. If you loved this book and took things away from it, I LOVE that for you. But I am not the audience.
]]> 63905241
Women are forbidden to wield blades, so she has trained in secret her entire life. Now racing against the clock, she fights to secure her place in the elite guild charged with the protection of the five kingdoms.

The sparring and hazing of the new trainees border on deadly, but even more dangerous is her growing attraction to Wilder Hawthorne, her unwilling warrior chaperone.

All around them, schemes are afoot and darkness looms.

Will Althea pass the perilous initiation test and take her place as a champion of Thezmarr �� or will the invading evil snatch away her dream before it starts?]]> 550 Helen Scheuerer 1922903027 MaryBeth 4 4.20 2023
author: Helen Scheuerer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves:
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]]> 216857785
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.]]> 352 Malcolm Gladwell 0316575801 MaryBeth 4 4.03 2024
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
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]]> 75665914
What if one little wish changed everything?

When Gemma gets dumped by her long-term boyfriend, she reacts the way any reasonable twenty-eight-year-old would: by getting drunk with her sister, kooky aunt, and best friend, Dax. After one too many margaritas, they decide to perform a love- cleansing spell, which promises to erase Gemma’s ex from her memory. They follow all the instructions, including a platonic kiss from Dax to seal the deal.

When Gemma wakes up, she realizes that this silly spell has worked. Not only does it seem that she never dated her ex, but the rest of her life is completely unrecognizable. The worst part: Dax has no idea who she is.

To reverse the spell and get back to her old life, Gemma must convince her once-best-friend-now-near-stranger to kiss her. But as she carries out her plans, she finds herself falling for him—hard. Soon, Gemma begins to wonder whether she even wants to go back to the way things once were. What if Dax was The One all along?]]> 352 Kate Robb 0593596536 MaryBeth 4 3.78 2023
author: Kate Robb
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

Nothing can prepare Sera for the moment she finally comes face-to-face with Ransom, heir to the Order of Daggers. And Ransom is shocked to discover that this unassuming farmgirl wields a strange and blazing magic he has never seen before�� Among rumours of monsters stalking the streets and the rival guilds grappling for control of Fantome’s underworld, Sera and Ransom are drawn together by something more than just magic and must face a deadly choice - forgiveness or vengeance? Kiss or kill? Dagger or Flame? ���ձ�> 509 Catherine Doyle 1398528455 MaryBeth 3 3.86 2024
author: Catherine Doyle
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
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]]> 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 MaryBeth 5 4.15 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 45756920 283 Elle Kennedy MaryBeth 3 3.91 2015
author: Elle Kennedy
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
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]]> 45484397
All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.]]> 360 Elle Kennedy MaryBeth 4 4.17 2015
author: Elle Kennedy
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
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]]> 33230889
Instant New York Times Bestseller

theSkimm Book Club Pick!

The stunning new novel from the international #1 bestselling author — a searing, spellbinding blend of cold-case thriller and psychological suspense.

Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind��

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father �� Pikeville's notorious defense attorney �� devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself �� the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again �� and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized �� Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever��

Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart, The Good Daughter is fiction at its most thrilling.]]> 519 Karin Slaughter 0062430262 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.10 2017
author: Karin Slaughter
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200338241
Shane just moved into her apartment building and seems dedicated to sleeping his way through her entire cheerleading squad. Sure, he’s a tall, gorgeous hockey player, but he’s messing with her turf. This calls for some ground rules: no parties in her apartment, leave her teammates alone, and—most importantly—leave her alone.

What Diana doesn’t realize is that Shane’s sick of hookups and tired of being on the rebound after his long-term girlfriend called it quits. He wants a relationship. And when his ex comes back into the picture, he pretends he has one to make her jealous…and who better to play the girlfriend role than his sassy new neighbor?

Despite Diana’s reluctance to break her rule, a fake relationship is the perfect solution for her own ex issues, and soon she can’t deny something is sizzling between her and Shane. Something hot and completely unexpected.

And it might just be getting a little too real.]]> 498 Elle Kennedy MaryBeth 4 4.16 2024
author: Elle Kennedy
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> 60909831
Chicago hockey isn't complete without me - everyone's favourite player to hate. I know my role, and I play it well. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy spending the majority of my game time in the penalty box before leaving the arena with a new girl on my arm each night.

What I don't like is the new flight attendant on our team's private plane. She works for me, not the other way around. But I'll be sure to remind her of that, and I can guarantee, by the end of the season, she'll be begging to quit her job.

But every road trip blurs the lines, and I can't quite figure out if I keep pushing that flight attendant call button in order to push her buttons, or if it's more than that.

STEVIE

I've been a flight attendant for years. I thought I'd seen it all, but when my new job lands me onboard working for the most egotistical and self-righteous diva in the NHL, I start to second guess everything. Including the promise I made to myself of never hooking up with an athlete again . . . no matter how annoyingly tempting he may be.

Evan Zanders is unfiltered, unapologetic, and too attractive for his own good. He loves his image, but I hate everything about it.

Everything but him.]]> 603 Liz Tomforde MaryBeth 4 3.98 2022
author: Liz Tomforde
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves:
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]]> 123255391
Ryder is six-foot five, built, opinionated, rude…and sexy as hell. But he's still the enemy.

Briar's new hockey co-captain has his reasons, though. The men's team just merged with a rival program, leaving Ryder with an angry roster where everyone hates one another's guts. To make matters worse, the summer coaching spot he's angling for with the legendary Garrett Graham is out of reach after he makes the worst possible first impression on his hero. So, really, this compromise with Gigi is win-win. He helps her make the national team, she puts in a good word with her dad.

The only potential snag? This bone-deep, body-numbing, mind-spinning chemistry they're trying to ignore. It's a dangerous game they're playing, but the risks just might be worth it.

Et pourtant, il y a un gros hic ! L'alchimie profonde, qui étouffe le corps et fait tourner l'esprit, qu'ils essaient d'ignorer. C'est un jeu dangereux auquel ils jouent, mais les risques pourraient bien en valoir la peine.]]> 498 Elle Kennedy 1990101186 MaryBeth 4 4.18 2023
author: Elle Kennedy
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:
Honestly, if it's a romance, don't trust my ratings unless I give it a 5. Writing wise this is probably a 2, but guilty pleasures and all that nonsense.
]]> 111673828 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and set in the world of A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab opens a new door into perilous adventure and tangled schemes with The Fragile Threads of Power.

Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power, and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast, and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory―Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.

But barely a glimpse of them have been seen in the last seven years―and a new Antari named Kosika has appeared in White London, taking the throne in Holland's absence. The young queen is willing to feed her city with blood, including her own―but her growing religious fervor has the potential to drown them instead.

And back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one determined to correct the balance of power by razing the throne entirely.

Amidst this tapestry of old friends and new enemies, a girl with an unusual magical ability comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.

Her name is Tes, and she's the only one who can bring them together―or unravel it all.]]> 648 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387492 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.25 2023
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200033357 New York Times bestselling authors of The Unhoneymooners.

One typo, and a boy and girl connect by chance. Wishing each other a happy Valentine’s Day isn’t the end. In fact, it becomes a friendly annual tradition—with rules: no pics, no real names, nothing too personal. As years pass, the rules for their email “dates�� are breaking, and they’re sharing more than they imagined—including the urge to ask��what if we actually met?

Christina Lauren’s The Exception to the Rule is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute, irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 101 Christina Lauren 1662519893 MaryBeth 4 4.21 2024
author: Christina Lauren
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
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]]> 127152907
Then she spots her seatmate, who is anything but ordinary. Nate Phelan sports dark hair, blue eyes, and a deliciously rugged charm that Izzy can’t resist. Their connection is undeniable. Izzy never believed in destiny before, but she does now.

Just ninety seconds after takeoff, their plane goes down in the Missouri River.

Their lives change. They change. Nate goes on to a career in the military while Izzy finds her way into politics. Despite a few chance encounters over the years, the timing never feels right.

Then comes a high-stakes reunion in Afghanistan, where Nate is tasked with protecting Izzy’s life.

He’ll do anything to keep her safe. And everything to win her heart.]]> 348 Rebecca Yarros 1662511566 MaryBeth 4 4.22 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 198716261 A forbidden, secret affair proves that all’s fair in love and science.

Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through - and he's a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can't stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business - one that plays for keeps.]]> 384 Ali Hazelwood 1408728915 MaryBeth 3 3.59 2024
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
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]]> 203518955 Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series.

Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.

Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.

On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past, and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.]]> 444 Deborah Harkness 0593724771 MaryBeth 0 currently-reading 3.95 2024
author: Deborah Harkness
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 200689749 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help the fellow guests make it off the island alive��

Vacation Checklist: Pack swim trunks. Apply sunscreen. Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he's never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should've sprung for the travel insurance), Dan's holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?]]> 350 M.J. Wassmer 146421803X MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.81 2024
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199927030 The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons�� investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.]]> 352 Meg Shaffer 0593598873 MaryBeth 5 3.78 2024
author: Meg Shaffer
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
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]]> 338691
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets...]]> 293 Louise Penny 0312948557 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.86 2005
author: Louise Penny
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 90587135
Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never gains an ounce, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, hair feathered into a style thirty years old, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap. On top of that, Crissy’s daily diet of Adderall and Valium leaves her more than a little tipsy, her Senator boyfriend has gone back to his wife, and her entire career rests on resembling a dead woman. And yet, fans see her for the gifted chameleon she is, showering her with gifts, letters, and standing ovations night after night. But when Crissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, and when Richie Morley, the owner of the Buckingham Palace Casino, is savagely murdered, Crissy’s carefully constructed kingdom comes crashing down all around her. A riveting tale of identity, obsession, fintech, and high-tech mobsters, The Princess of Las Vegas is an addictive, wildly original thriller from one of our most extraordinary storytellers.]]> 400 Chris Bohjalian 0385547587 MaryBeth 0 currently-reading 3.39 2024
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 20764879
Now, restless after having given up his smuggling habit, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks as she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games--an extravagant international competition of magic meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries--a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port.

And while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night will reappear in the morning. But the balance of magic is ever perilous, and for one city to flourish, another London must fall.]]> 512 Victoria E. Schwab 0765376474 MaryBeth 4 4.20 2016
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves:
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]]> 29939230 Witness the fate of beloved heroes - and enemies.

THE BALANCE OF POWER HAS FINALLY TIPPED...
The precarious equilibrium among four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise.

WHO WILL CRUMBLE?
Kell - once assumed to be the last surviving Antari - begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. And in the wake of tragedy, can Arnes survive?

WHO WILL RISE?
Lila Bard, once a commonplace - but never common - thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible.

WHO WILL TAKE CONTROL?
And an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown while a fallen hero tries to save a world in decay.]]> 624 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387468 MaryBeth 4 4.30 2017
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 36206591 The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

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

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

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

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501190539 MaryBeth 5 4.23 2018
author: Christina Lauren
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 MaryBeth 4 3.83 2023
author: James McBride
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 127542189
Sadie Thatcher’s life has fallen apart in spectacular fashion. In one fell swoop, she managed to lose her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend—all thanks to her big mouth. So when a fortune teller offers her one wish, Sadie jumps at the chance to redo her awful year. Deep down, she doesn’t believe magic will fix her life, but taking a leap of faith, Sadie makes her wish, opens her eyes, and . . . nothing has changed . And then, in perhaps her dumbest move yet, she kisses her brother’s best friend, Jacob.

When Sadie wakes up the next morning, she’s in her former apartment with her former boyfriend, and her former boss is expecting her at work. Checking the date, she realizes it's January 1 . . . of last year .  As Sadie navigates her second-chance year, she begins to see the red flags she missed in her relationship and in her career. Plus, she keeps running into Jacob, and she can’t stop thinking about their kiss . . . the one he has no idea ever happened. Suddenly, Sadie begins to wonder if her only mistake was wishing for a second chance.
���ձ�> 336 Melissa Wiesner MaryBeth 4 3.95 2023
author: Melissa Wiesner
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 32718027
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...]]> 532 S.A. Chakraborty 0062678108 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.12 2017
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197577126 This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won’t give into temptation. This summer will be different.

Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.

It’s easier said than done.

Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.

If Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.

When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.]]> 368 Carley Fortune 0593638883 MaryBeth 5 3.94 2024
author: Carley Fortune
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Marjan Kamali
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie�� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 MaryBeth 5 4.58 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story��

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.85 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 191755077 Ten women. A deadly contest. Only one can win the Sun King's heart.

Lor has endured twelve long years of torment under the Aurora King’s rule. Her only desire is to escape and pay him back for every moment of misery she's endured.

When a surprise release finds her in the hands of the rival Sun King, Lor is thrust into the spotlight as she competes against nine other Tributes for the role of queen. If she wins his heart, she'll earn her freedom and finally get her revenge.

But Lor doesn't belong in the Sun Queen Trials. Not only does she not understand why she was freed, she isn’t a citizen of the Sun King’s court. The other Tributes resent her presence and will stop at nothing to ensure Lor is removed from the competition, permanently.

Now Lor must win, because if she loses, she dies. Or worse, she'll be returned to the evil—and now vengeful—Aurora King.]]> 400 Nisha J. Tuli 1538767481 MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.81 2023
author: Nisha J. Tuli
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204624472 A scorching new fantasy romance that ignites the pages with relentless danger, forbidden passion, and the intoxicating allure of enemies to lovers.

Fleeing my father's cruelty, the wicked king who robbed me of a future, I face death in the streets, caught between a rebellion and a tyrant's reign.

Captured by those sworn to kill me, the rebels remain blind to my true identity—the missing daughter of the despised king. Faced with an impossible choice, I stand before them: join the rebels or face their blades.

Yet, Dacre, the son of the ruthless rebellion commander, becomes torn between suspicion and a desire that mirrors my own. He allows no one to touch me, tries to protect me, yet threatens me at every turn.

As secrets are weaved beyond our hidden realm, a fierce battle unfolds within me. As I get closer to the rebels, and their cause, my loyalty to my kingdom clashes with my undeniable devotion to Dacre and the burning connection between us.

In a world where love and hate are two edges of the same blade, I find myself caught in a delicate dance between forbidden desire and my looming destiny.]]> 364 Holly Renee MaryBeth 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Holly Renee
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123471760 When old secrets catch fire, everything will burn.

In a mortal world colonized by the gods and ruled over by the Descended, their cruel offspring, Diem Bellator yearns to escape the insular life of her poor village.

Her mother’s sudden disappearance—and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past—offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock the web of mysteries her mother left behind.

With the dying King’s handsome, mysterious heir watching her every move, and a ruthless mortal alliance recruiting her to join the growing civil war, Diem will have to navigate the unwritten rules of love, power, and politics in order to save her family—and all of mortalkind.

Spark of the Everflame is the first book in The Kindred's Curse Saga, a four-book fantasy romance series. This slow burn, enemies-to-lovers epic is perfect for lovers of magic, dragons, angst, and banter and will appeal to fans of books like A Court of Thorns and Roses, From Blood and Ash, Gild, and The Serpent & the Wings of Night.]]> 438 Penn Cole MaryBeth 0 to-read 4.20 2023
author: Penn Cole
name: MaryBeth
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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