Stefanie's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 22 Mar 2025 09:46:12 -0700 60 Stefanie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Curvy Girl Summer (Curve, #1) 154986013
Aaliyah is determined to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a boyfriend. And after a failed blind date, the local bartender, Ahmad, suggests she joins a dating app.

Filled with lies, catfish, and fetishizing, the wild world of online dating makes Aaliyah think she’s in over her head.

And she is. But with her two best friends and a protective bartender by her side, what could go wrong?

Everything.

Everything could go wrong.

And that’s the problem.

Because as Aaliyah is set on finding exactly what she’s looking for, she ends up finding something she never expects.]]> 368 Danielle Allen 1250331048 Stefanie 5 4.17 2024 Curvy Girl Summer (Curve, #1)
author: Danielle Allen
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Wahala 59971313 An incisive and exhilarating debut novel of female friendship following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group—the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda.

Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one� (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends.

Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be.

Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.� Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not.

When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Hong Kong! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi, and Boo’s close friendship begins to crack.

A sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal, Wahala (trouble) is an unforgettable novel from a brilliant new voice.]]> 383 Nikki May 0063084260 Stefanie 4 3.78 2022 Wahala
author: Nikki May
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)]]> 61111295 In this heart-fluttering romance by Kristina Forest, a shy bookworm enlists her charming neighbor to help her score a date, not knowing he's the obscure author she's been corresponding with.

Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming an editor of children's books but has been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over e-mail turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won't let herself entertain--until he ghosts her.

Months later, still crushed but determined to take charge of her life, Lily seeks a date to her sister's wedding. And the perfect person to help her is Nick Brown, her charming, attractive new neighbor, whom she feels drawn to for unexplainable reasons. Little does she know that Nick is an author--her favorite fantasy author.

Nick, who has his reasons for using a pen name and for pushing people away, soon realizes that the beautiful, quiet woman from down the hall is the same Lily he fell in love with over e-mail months ago. Unwilling to complicate things even more between them, he agrees to set her up with someone else, though this simple favor between two neighbors is anything but--not when he can't get her off his mind.]]> 403 Kristina Forest 0593546431 Stefanie 0 currently-reading 3.80 2023 The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)
author: Kristina Forest
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Blackbirds 27688469 New York TimesĚýbestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey delivers his next delectable, erotic romance
Ěý
They call themselves the Blackbirds. Kwanzaa Browne, Indigo Abdulrahaman, Destiny Jones, and Ericka Stockwell are four best friends who are closer than sisters, and will go to the ends of the earth for one another. Yet even their deep bond can’t heal all wounds from their individual pasts, as the collegiate and post-collegiate women struggle with their own demons, drama, and desires.
Ěý
Trying to forget her cheating ex-fiancĂ©, Kwanzaa becomes entangled with a wicked one-night stand—a man who turns out to be one in five million. Indigo is in an endless on-again, off-again relationship with her footballer boyfriend, and in her time between dysfunctional relationships she purses other naughty desires. Destiny, readjusting to normal life, struggles to control her own anger after avenging a deep wrong landed her in juvi, while at the same time trying to have her first real relationship—one she has initiated using an alias to hide her past from her lover. Divorced Ericka is in remission from cancer and trying to deal with two decades of animosity with her radical mother, while keeping the desperate crush she has always had on Destiny’s father a secret... a passion with an older man that just may be reciprocated.Ěý
Ěý
As the women try to overcome� or give into� their impulses, they find not only themselves tested, but the one thing they always considered their friendship.]]> 528 Eric Jerome Dickey 1101984112 Stefanie 0 currently-reading 4.12 2016 The Blackbirds
author: Eric Jerome Dickey
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207617566 In a world without white people, what does it mean to be black?

One day, a cataclysmic event all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 300 Cebo Campbell 1668034948 Stefanie 0 currently-reading 4.00 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> How to Read a Book 62365896 A charming, deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle�

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book Ěýis an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.Ěý .Ěý]]> 288 Monica Wood 0063243679 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.21 2024 How to Read a Book
author: Monica Wood
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Goodnight Beautiful 50175311
Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. The pharmacist's wife, contemplating a divorce. The well-known painter whose boyfriend doesn’t satisfy her in bed. Who could resist listening? Everything is fine until the French girl in the green mini Cooper shows up, and Sam decides to go to work and not come home, throwing a wrench into Sam and Annie's happily ever after.]]> 289 Aimee Molloy 0062881922 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.70 2020 Goodnight Beautiful
author: Aimee Molloy
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Mixtape 55747432
Emery has never felt more alone. Raising her daughter is both her pleasure and her pain as she struggles to hold on to her job as a bartender and keep a roof over their heads. With no one to help them—no support system—any unexpected expense or late bill could turn their whole world upside down.

Reeling from the death of his twin brother and bandmate, rock star Oliver Smith is trying to drink his problems away. Apparently he isn’t very good at it; they follow him wherever he goes. Also in hot pursuit are the paparazzi, who catch Oliver at his lowest low.

He could have walked into any bar in California, but he walked into hers. Emery helps Oliver lose the crowd, and they find themselves alone: two people whose paths are marked with loss and pain. However, they hold an unshakable hope for healing. They find solace together, but can their love withstand the world?]]> 333 Brittainy C. Cherry 1542018358 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.19 2021 The Mixtape
author: Brittainy C. Cherry
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[And Then Life Was Beautiful (Hanson Family Book 1)]]> 176773528 Couri Mitchell

August Hanson was the silent type, the kind who spoke through his actions and not his words.

He possessed enough power to make me feel safe and secure.

I was ready to open up and share the parts of myself I’d never shared with another, and then I got hit with a truth that changed everything.

There was a slight chance he’d still want me, only he had to accept our baby, too.


August Hanson

Couri Mitchell was my type, the kind you married the first chance you got.

She possessed enough power to silence the chaos around me.

I was ready to grab ahold of her and never let go, and then I got hit with a truth that changed everything.

There was a slight chance she’d still want me, only she had to accept my daughter, too.]]> 416 Asia Monique Stefanie 0 to-read 4.54 And Then Life Was Beautiful (Hanson Family Book 1)
author: Asia Monique
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Again 60454662
I've loved him since I was thirteen years old, and like a foolish little girl, I believed that our love would carry us through everything. Every challenge. Every obstacle. Every heartbreak. But that was before I knew anything about pain and the challenge of overcoming crushing disappointment. Before I knew that loving someone doesn't always mean you get to have them, sometimes it means you have to let them go.

Now, thanks to my sister marrying his brother at a romantic resort in Mexico, he's back in my orbit. Making me question the choice I made all those years ago, reminding me of our history every time he looks me in the eye, touching me like I still belong to him, and demanding that I give him another chance.

In my life.
In my bed.
In my heart.

And as tempted as I am to say yes, there's still a part of me that can't forget what it was like to let him go, to live with our broken forever haunting me.

I survived losing him once, but I'm not so sure I can do it again.]]> 160 J.L. Seegars Stefanie 0 to-read 4.02 Again
author: J.L. Seegars
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Stefanie 0 to-read 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Rotation 59088370
Ghanaian-American Angela Appiah has checked off all the boxes for the “Perfect Immigrant Daughter.�

- Enroll in an elite medical school
- Snag a suitable lawyer/doctor/engineer boyfriend
- Surround self with a gaggle of successful and/or loyal friends

But then it quickly all falls apart: her boyfriend dumps her, she bombs the most important exam of her medical career, and her best friend pulls away. And her parents, whose approval seems to hinge on how closely she follows the path they chose, are a lot less proud of their daughter. It’s a quarter life crisis of epic proportions.

Angie, who has always faced her problems by working “twice as hard to get half as far,� is at a loss. Suddenly, she begins to question everything: her career choice, her friendships, even why she's attracted to men who don't love her as much as she loves them.

And just when things couldn’t get more complicated, enter Ricky Gutierrez� brilliant, thoughtful, sexy, and most importantly, seems to see Angie for who she is instead of what she can represent.

Unfortunately, he’s also got “wasteman� practically tattooed across his forehead, and Angie’s done chasing mirages of men. Or so she thinks. For someone who’s always been in control, Angie realizes that there’s one thing she can’t plan on: matters of her heart.


]]> 352 Shirlene Obuobi 0063209144 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.64 2022 On Rotation
author: Shirlene Obuobi
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Take My Hand 55650158 Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench.

Montgomery, Alabama 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients are children—just 11 and 13 years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart. Until one day, she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten.That must not be forgotten.

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.]]> 359 Dolen Perkins-Valdez 0593337697 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.36 2022 Take My Hand
author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Glory Be (Glory Broussard Mystery, #1)]]> 101016900 The first in a crime series set in the Louisiana bayou, introducing the uncensored amateur sleuth Glory Broussard.

It’s a hot and sticky Sunday in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Glory has settled into her usual after-church routine, meeting gamblers at the local coffee shop, where she works as a small-time bookie. Sitting at her corner table, Glory hears that her best friend—a nun beloved by the community—has been found dead in her apartment. When police declare the mysterious death a suicide, Glory is convinced that there must be more to the story and, with her reluctant daughter, with troubles of her own, in tow, launches a shadow investigation in a town of oil tycoons, church gossips, and a rumored voodoo priestess. As a Black woman of a certain age who grew up in a segregated Louisiana, Glory is used to being minimized and overlooked. But she’s determined to make her presence known as the case leads her deep into a web of intrigue she never realized Lafayette could harbor.]]> 271 Danielle Arceneaux 1639364846 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.74 2023 Glory Be (Glory Broussard Mystery, #1)
author: Danielle Arceneaux
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]> 309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Only This Beautiful Moment 61941000 From the Stonewall Honor–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Darius the Great Is Not Okay.

2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself.

1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country’s burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse—he’s forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed.

1939. Bobby, the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he’s thrust into has a dark side.

Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.]]> 400 Abdi Nazemian 0063039370 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.43 2023 Only This Beautiful Moment
author: Abdi Nazemian
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Canto Contigo 127280435 When a Mariachi star transfers schools, he expects to be handed his new group's lead vocalist spot—what he gets instead is a tenacious current lead with a very familiar, very kissable face.

In a twenty-four-hour span, Rafael Alvarez led North Amistad High School’s Mariachi Alma de la Frontera to their eleventh consecutive first-place win in the Mariachi Extravaganza de Nacional; and met, made out with, and almost hooked up with one of the cutest guys he’s ever met.

Now eight months later, Rafie’s ready for one final win. What he didn’t plan for is his family moving to San Antonio before his senior year, forcing him to leave behind his group while dealing with the loss of the most important person in his life—his beloved abuelo. Another hitch in his plan: The Selena Quintanilla-Perez Academy’s Mariachi Todos Colores already has a lead vocalist, Rey Chavez—the boy Rafie made out with—who now stands between him winning and being the great Mariachi Rafie's abuelo always believed him to be. Despite their newfound rivalry for center stage, Rafie can’t squash his feelings for Rey. Now he must decide between the people he’s known his entire life or the one just starting to get to know the real him.

Canto Contigo is a love letter to Mexican culture, family and legacy, the people who shape us, and allowing ourselves to forge our own path. At its heart, this is one of the most glorious rivals-to-lovers romance about finding the one who challenges you in the most extraordinary ways.]]> 352 Jonny Garza Villa 1250875757 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Canto Contigo
author: Jonny Garza Villa
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> The Haters 201627012 The bestselling author ofĚýThe PartyĚýand The Drowning Woman returns with a twisted tale of fame, obsession, and the dark recesses of social media.

Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She’s on top of the world—until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender.

Rattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn swallows the sick feeling in her stomach and resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. The reviewer is so articulate and convincing that soon, Camryn’s book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her?

As the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows? The troll’s actions are escalating, and when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her—and finally learn why she's being targeted.]]> 342 Robyn Harding 1538766108 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.56 2024 The Haters
author: Robyn Harding
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Lost Man's Lane 176443476
For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true—particularly since the PI is investigating the most shocking crime to hit Bloomington, Indiana, in decades. A local woman has vanished, and the last time anyone saw her, she was in the backseat of a police car driven by a man impersonating an officer.

Marshall Miller’s internship puts him at the center of the action, a position he relishes until a terrifying moment that turns public praise for his sharp observations and uncanny memory into accusations of lying and imperiling the case. His detective mentor withdraws, friends and family worry and whisper, and Marshall alone understands that the darkness visiting his town this summer goes far beyond a single crime. Now his task is to explain it—and himself.

Lost Man's Lane is a coming-of-age tale of terror.]]> 516 Scott Carson 1982191457 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Lost Man's Lane
author: Scott Carson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Good Dirt 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Good Dirt
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Good Material 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 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.85 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> This Motherless Land 199531828 READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a “vibrant� (Charmaine Wilkerson) decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park: Jane Austen meets The Vanishing Half

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.]]> 352 Nikki May 0063084295 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.22 2024 This Motherless Land
author: Nikki May
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
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]]> Sweetness in the Skin 194897179 A Jamaican girl is determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime.

Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing); her aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin); and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse.

Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam. In a moment of ingenuity she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade—but when her school and her mother find out what she’s up to, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers.]]> 368 Ishi Robinson 0063334879 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.29 2024 Sweetness in the Skin
author: Ishi Robinson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
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]]> James 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 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.47
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]]> Last Couple Standing 41781197
The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable?

To maximize their chance at immunity, Jessica and Mitch try something radical. Their friends� divorces mostly had to do with sex—having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people—so they decide to relax a few things. Terms are discussed, conditions are made, and together the Butlers embark on the great experiment of taking their otherwise happy, functional marriage and breaking some very serious rules.

Jessica and Mitch are convinced they’ve hit upon the next evolution of marriage. But as lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they each start to wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake. What follows is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and completely surprising to them both. Because sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.]]> 288 Matthew Norman 1984821067 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.56 2020 Last Couple Standing
author: Matthew Norman
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Perfect Peace 6969591
When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon� be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.�

From this point forward, Perfect’s life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events—while the rest of his family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.]]> 352 Daniel Black 0312582676 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.29 Perfect Peace
author: Daniel Black
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.29
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]]> Isaac's Song 210719174 The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peace returns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late �80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy. At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.

Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.]]> 320 Daniel Black 133509041X Stefanie 0 to-read 4.30 2025 Isaac's Song
author: Daniel Black
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.30
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]]> Don't Cry for Me 57938995
As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay.

But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.Ěý

With piercing insight and profound empathy, acclaimed author Daniel Black illuminates the lived experiences of Black fathers and queer sons, offering an authentic and ultimately hopeful portrait of reckoning and reconciliation. Spare as it is sweeping, poetic as it is compulsively readable, Don't Cry for MeĚýis a monumental novel about one family grappling with love's hard edges and the unexpected places where hope and healing take flight.]]> 301 Daniel Black 133542573X Stefanie 0 to-read 4.34 2022 Don't Cry for Me
author: Daniel Black
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
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]]> Grown Women 139560194 400 Sarai Johnson 0063294435 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.32 2024 Grown Women
author: Sarai Johnson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Unexpected Diva 212421045
Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia’s Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza’s happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza’s world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Eliza’s inheritance is contested by her mother’s white cousins, leaving her few options. She can marry her longtime beau, Lucien, though she has no desire to be a wife and mother. Or she can work as a tutor for rich families. Her mother’s dying wish was for Eliza to pursue her talent and become a professional singer, but that grand vision now seems out of reach.

When a chance performance on a steamboat to Buffalo, New York, leads to a surprising opportunity, fearless Eliza seizes her moment. Within a year she is touring America, singing to packed houses, and igniting controversy wherever she goes. In a country captivated by “the Swedish Nightingale� Jenny Lind, Eliza is billed by tour promoters as “the Black Swan.� An unlikely diva, Eliza is tall, dark-skinned, and robust of figure compared to the petite European prima donna, but even the harshest critics can’t deny Eliza’s extraordinary gift. Menaced by racist crowds, threatened by slave-catchers who kidnap free Black people, Eliza lives a public life full of risk, but one which also holds the promise of great riches, and the freedoms those buy.

From the churches of Philadelphia to Queen Victoria’s salon in Buckingham Palace, Eliza Greenfield will blaze her own path—with a voice that no listener will ever forget.]]> 432 Tiffany L. Warren 0063322137 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.15 2025 The Unexpected Diva
author: Tiffany L. Warren
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Harlem Rhapsody 212806640 The extraordinary story of Jessie Redmon Fauset whose exhilarating world of friends, rivals, and passions all combined to create the magic that was the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Personal Librarian.
Ěý
In 1919, as civil and social unrest grips the country, there is a little corner of America, a place called Harlem where something special is stirring. Here, the New Negro is rising and Black pride is evident everywhere…in music, theatre, fashion and the arts. And there on stage in the center of this renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset, the new literary editor ofĚýthe preeminent Negro magazine The Crisis.
Ěý
W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder and editor of The Crisis, has charged her with discovering young writers whose words will change the world. Jessie attacks the challenge with fervor, quickly finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends.ĚýUnder Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives, the writers become notable and magazine subscriptions soar. Every Negro writer in the country wants their work published in the magazine now known for its groundbreaking poetry and short stories.Ěý
Ěý
Jessie’s rising star is shining bright�.but her relationship with W.E.B. could jeopardize all that she’s built. The man, considered by most to be the leader of Black America, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Their torrid and tumultuous affair is complicated by a secret desire that Jessie harbors � to someday, herself, become the editor of the magazine, a position that only W.E.B. Du Bois has held.
Ěý
In the face of overwhelming sexism and racism, Jessie must balance her drive with her desires. However, as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.]]> 400 Victoria Christopher Murray 0593638484 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.12 2025 Harlem Rhapsody
author: Victoria Christopher Murray
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
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]]> The Christmas Catch 209174390
Benched with a career-ending injury, NFL wide receiver Jahleel Walker is forced to return to his hometown of Peachwood Bay, Georgia, during the holidays to heal, despite his rocky relationship with his father. Nothing shocks him more than running into Lucille "Bebe" Gordon.

Bebe Gordon came home to Peachwood Bay three years ago with a divorce certificate and her daughter. When Jahleel returns--for the first time in eight years--all the memories of the past come rushing back. The connection between them is still strong, but Jahleel has no plans to stay in Peachwood Bay, and Bebe won't risk him leaving her again. As their hometown's Christmas festivities bring them together, Jahleel must decide if he's only home for the holidays or if the Christmas spirit that brought them together will last all through the year.]]> 224 Toni Shiloh 0764244698 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.46 2024 The Christmas Catch
author: Toni Shiloh
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Sweet Lowcountry Proposal (Brides of Lowcountry, #2)]]> 60380752
As an archivist at Charleston’s Black history museum, Marcus shines a light on the stories of forgotten people. Researching history is better than dealing with his own heartache—and the guilt he has over the role he may have inadvertently played in the death of Jaslene’s sister.

Jaslene never thought she’d cross paths with Marcus again, but her need for an affordable office space brings her to the museum which is faced with the threat of closure. As they work together to save it, their buried feelings slowly reignite. They soon realize there is still room in their hearts for love...if only they can overcome their past.]]> 352 Preslaysa Williams 0063236982 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.33 2022 A Sweet Lowcountry Proposal (Brides of Lowcountry, #2)
author: Preslaysa Williams
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> A Lowcountry Bride 55200710
A heartwarming Avon debut of love, forgiveness, and new beginnings set in the beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry.

Maya Jackson has worked for Laura Whitcomb, Inc, a renowned New York City bridal gown brand, for years and dreams of becoming Head Designer. She has the talent; she just needs a chance to showcase her unique style. Due to an illness, she’s always prioritized her career over her personal life until her father fractures his hip and Maya returns to Charleston, South Carolina. While home for only a few months, she’s thrilled to find an opportunity at the local bridal gown boutique, never expecting sparks to fly with its owner...

A military veteran and widowed father, Derek Sullivan hopes to save Always a Bride from bankruptcy in order to preserve the legacy of his mother. He also wants to reconnect with his estranged, twelve-year-old daughter, who is still recovering from the loss of her mother. The last thing he needs is a relationship with a beautiful, smart, complicated woman who will be leaving soon.

When Derek begins to fall for the lovely Maya, he knows there’s no future. But destiny has its own plans, and these two lonely people with big hearts discover that coming home to love is the best gift life can give.Ěý]]> 352 Preslaysa Williams 0063040298 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.32 2021 A Lowcountry Bride
author: Preslaysa Williams
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Outdrawn 198542200
Noah Blue’s finally got her foot in the door. After clawing her way to the top of the charts with her webcomic, she’s garnered enough attention to earn a full-time position at a comic company re-launching their cult classic comic: Queen Leisah.

Queen Leisah is predicted to be an instant bestseller with movie deals already in the making. Things are falling into place. There’s nowhere to go but up…as soon as she gets one person out of her way.

Sage Montgomery has always been the best artist in every building she’s stepped foot in. Raw talent’s gotten her webcomic to the top of the charts every month for the past eight years. She’s been the best for as long as she can remember. Sure, her career has plateaued but that can be fixed with a big, mainstream comic.

She was promised full creative control over Leisah. Instead, she got a shared credit with the one artist who’s been breathing down her neck since college. The one artist who has a fighting chance of being better than her. Sage and Noah have to work as a team � or, at least appear to work as a team. They thought the hardest part of the relaunch would be drawing together. But that’s easy in comparison to resisting their feelings for each other.

__

Outdrawn is a slow-burn, rivals-to-lovers sapphic romance. This book is a standalone.]]> 328 Deanna Grey Stefanie 0 to-read 4.15 2023 Outdrawn
author: Deanna Grey
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Romantic Agenda 58656040 Joy is in love with Malcolm.
But Malcolm really likes Summer.
Summer is in love with love.
And Fox is Summer’s ex-boyfriend.

Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he's met the love of his life—and no, it's not Joy—she's heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.

Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?]]> 336 Claire Kann Stefanie 0 to-read 3.78 2022 The Romantic Agenda
author: Claire Kann
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
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]]> A Novel Christmas 204294849 256 Charity Shane 195795051X Stefanie 0 currently-reading 3.46 2024 A Novel Christmas
author: Charity Shane
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> A Love Song for Ricki Wilde 173404023
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

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

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

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

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 352 Tia Williams 153872670X Stefanie 0 3.98 2024 A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
author: Tia Williams
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Personal Librarian 55556786 The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian--who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white--her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go--for the protection of her family and her legacy--to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 347 Marie Benedict 0593101553 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.31 2021 The Personal Librarian
author: Marie Benedict
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
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]]> We Have a Secret 219326503 'We Have a Secret' explores the depths of love and tragedy, chronicling the journey of Helena and her four wonderful children as they face JoĂŁo's devastating cancer diagnosis.

Helena reveals the complexities of cancer and its profound effects on their family. This story opens your eyes to their first-hand experiences and raw emotions, delving into the heart-wrenching pain of grief and loss and its long-term impact.

Through her candid narrative, Helena shares a poignant and inspiring journey that is a testament to their strength, resilience, and enduring love.

'We Have a Secret' is more than a memoir; it is a tribute to Joao and a testament to the human spirit, commemorating her beloved husband, the family affectionately called Lord Vilar.

Join Helena as she opens her heart to share their touching experiences, offering solace and understanding to others facing similar trial]]> 138 Helena Vilar Stefanie 0 to-read 5.00 We Have a Secret
author: Helena Vilar
name: Stefanie
average rating: 5.00
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]]> <![CDATA[The Education of Nia Simone Bijou]]> 17263851 Eric Jerome Dickey, author of fourteen New York Times bestselling novels, imagines the formative college years of one of his most popular heroines, Nia Simone Bijou.

From her first days at Virginia’s Hampton University, impressionable, creative Nia falls smitten with Chris Eidos Alleyne, an athlete and a scholar.

“Love is sweet nothings and beautiful promises,� Nia writes in her journal. What her girlfriends know, and her mother doesn’t, is that Chris’s expression of love is deeply physical. Wielding powerful charisma, Chris soon has Nia abandoning innocence for experience.

Believing that Chris will reward her sacrifices with lifelong commitment, Nia thrills to her newfound pleasures. She knows in her heart that each act of intimacy draws them ever closer. But when the Big Man on Campus learns to take what is freely given, without regard to love, Nia finds herself newly enrolled in Heartbreak 101.

The Education of Nia Simone Bijou is a rousing tale of youthful passion, once kindled, never extinguished.]]> 106 Eric Jerome Dickey Stefanie 0 to-read 4.05 2013 The Education of Nia Simone Bijou
author: Eric Jerome Dickey
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
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]]> A Twisted Tale Anthology 113277272 Disney's New York Times best-selling series presents a rich anthology filled with all-new what-if twists, such as What if Snow White learned magic? What if Mulan became the emperor's advisor? And what if Remy the rat met Colette first?

Edited by New York Times best-selling author, Elizabeth Lim, this Twisted Tale anthology features sixteen twisted short stories with new takes on fan-favorite Disney films. Swoon as Ariel and Eric meet right after the Little Mermaid saves her prince; join Tiana and Naveen on a race to get back to Maldonia; take a ride on a pirate space ship with Jim Hawkins; and uncover just what power Tinker Bell's pixie dust holds.

Written by veteran Twisted Tale authors, Elizabeth Lim, Liz Braswell, Jen Calonita, and Farrah Rochon, and featuring captivating contributions from best-selling authors, Livia Blackburne, M.K. England, Micol Ostow, and Kristina Perez, this collection filled with magic, intrigue, and charm is a must-have for Disney and fairy tale fans alike.]]> 576 Elizabeth Lim 1368080413 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.98 2023 A Twisted Tale Anthology
author: Elizabeth Lim
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> Storm: Dawn of a Goddess 199701503 Before she was the super hero Storm of Marvel's X-Men, she was Ororo of Cairo—a teenaged thief on the streets of Egypt, until her growing powers catch the eye of a villain who steals people's souls.

Few can weather the storm.

As a thief on the streets of Cairo, Ororo Munroe is an expert at blending in—keeping her blue eyes low and her white hair beneath a scarf. Stealth is her specialty . . . especially since strange things happen when she loses control.

Lately, Ororo has been losing control more often, setting off sudden rainstorms and mysterious winds . . . and attracting dangerous attention. When she is forced to run from the Shadow King, a villain who steals people's souls, she has nowhere to turn to but herself. There is something inside her, calling her across Africa, and the hidden truth of her heritage is close enough to taste.

But as Ororo nears the secrets of her past, her powers grow stronger and the Shadow King veers closer and closer. Can she outrun the shadows that chase her? Or can she step into the spotlight and embrace the coming storm?]]> 304 Tiffany D. Jackson 0593308859 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.02 2024 Storm: Dawn of a Goddess
author: Tiffany D. Jackson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)]]> 210163199 From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller and viral TikTok phenomenon, The Pumpkin Spice Café, comes a brand new spicy romance set in Dream Harbor!

When a secret message turns up hidden in a book in the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, Hazel can't understand it. As more secret codes appear between the pages, she decides to follow the trail of clues� she just need someone to help her out.

Gorgeous and outgoing fisherman, Noah, is always up for an adventure. And a scavenger hunt sounds like a lot of fun. Even better that the cute bookseller he's been crushing on for months is the one who wants his help!

Hazel didn’t go looking for romance, but as the treasure hunt leads her and Noah around Dream Harbor, their undeniable chemistry might be just as hot as the fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns the bookstore sells�

The Cinnamon Bun Book Store is a cozy romantic mystery with a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:
� opposites attract
� small town
� forced proximity
� he falls first]]> 370 Laurie Gilmore 0008641579 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.89 2024 The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bookshop Sisterhood: A Heartwarming Tale of Friendship, Secrets, and New Beginnings.]]> 169046441
When life rewrites the story, only friendship will see them through.

After years of hard work, four best friends—Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie—are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends.

But before they can cut the ribbon, their worlds are upended.

Toni receives devastating news just months before her wedding, while Celeste’s struggling marriage threatens to collapse completely. Leslie learns a shocking secret about her family, and a lotto ticket changes Yasmeen’s life—but not for the better.

As the bookstore’s grand opening fast approaches, the four women must lean on each other now more than ever to navigate their grief and uncertainty. And together, they’ll learn that sometimes, even life’s most unexpected plot twists can lead to beautiful new beginnings.]]> 352 Michelle Lindo-Rice 0778310388 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.24 2024 The Bookshop Sisterhood: A Heartwarming Tale of Friendship, Secrets, and New Beginnings.
author: Michelle Lindo-Rice
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice]]> 429124 336 April Sinclair 0380727943 Stefanie 5 3.96 Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice
author: April Sinclair
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> They Dream in Gold 196841871 A “luminous� (Tara Conklin) literary debut following two dreamers, one intercultural family, and the diasporic pursuit of home.

When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968―his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away―their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour’s soaring Senegalese melodies continue to break new ground, keeping time with the sound of revolution and taking him and Bonnie from Paris to Rio and Switzerland, it seems as though happiness might finally be around the corner for them both.

Then Mansour goes missing. His Spanish tour was only meant to last three weeks, but three months later, he and his band have not returned. In his absence, Bonnie reckons with her memories of him, and comes to understand that the hopes of so many women―her mother and grandmother; his mother, aunt, childhood friend―rest on her perseverance. Stirred by the life growing inside her, Bonnie puts a plan in action to find him.

Spanning two decades and moving through the hotbeds of the African diaspora, They Dream in Gold is an epic yet intimate exploration of the migrant hunger for belonging and a powerful, intergenerational testament to our shared humanity, for lovers of Tara Stringfellow’s Memphis and Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice.]]> 432 Mai Sennaar 1638931100 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.69 They Dream in Gold
author: Mai Sennaar
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> The True Love Experiment 62625433 Sparks fly when a romance novelist and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the perfect Hollywood love story and take both of their careers to the next level—but only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script.

Felicity “Fizzy� Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached.

Fizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she’s spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?

Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass—unless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.

The True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzy’s debut in The Soulmate Equation. But when the lights come on and all eyes are on her, it turns out the happily ever after Fizzy had all but given up on might lie just behind the camera.]]> 413 Christina Lauren Stefanie 5 4.23 2023 The True Love Experiment
author: Christina Lauren
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> Acts of Forgiveness 154462829
Every American waits with bated breath to see whether or not the country’s first female president will pass the Forgiveness Act. The bill would allow Black families to claim up to $175,000 if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves and for ambitious single mother Willie Revel the bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption. A decade ago, Willie gave up her burgeoning journalism career to help run her father’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia and she has reluctantly put family first without being able to forget who she might have become. Now, she's back living with her parents and her young daughter while trying to keep her family from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots while also helping save their beloved home and her father’s life work?

In order to qualify, she must first prove that the Revels are descended from slaves, but the rest of the family isn’t as eager to dig up the past. Her mother is adopted; her father doesn't trust the government and believes working with a morally corrupt employer is the better way to save their business; and her daughter is just trying to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school without attracting unwanted attention. It’s up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save her family—but as she delves into their history, Willie begins to learn just how complicated family and forgiveness can be.

With powerful insight and moving prose, Acts of Forgiveness asks how history shapes who we become and to consider the weight of success when it is achieved despite incredible odds—and ultimately what leaving behind a legacy truly means.]]> 320 Maura Cheeks 0593598296 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.68 2024 Acts of Forgiveness
author: Maura Cheeks
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> The Mayor of Maxwell Street 133206574 When a rich Black debutante enlists the help of a low-level speakeasy manager to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the two are thrust into the dangerous world of Prohibition-era Chicago.

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore with Chicago at its beating heart.

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America,� a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapults his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family’s presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for the Chicago Defender , sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Now, her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

Charming and mysterious, Jay Shorey strives to balance his connection to the Chicago underworld with his desperate yearning for the refinement and protection of high society. Born to a murdered bi-racial couple in rural Alabama, he knows firsthand what it means to be denied a chance at the American dream. When a tragic turn of fate gave Jay a rare path out, he took it without question. He washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and never looked back, until now.Ěý

When Nelly’s and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the Mayor and bring about a lasting change in a corrupted city. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for. And yet, as with all things in America, there is a price to be paid. What risk is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all?Ěý

Debut author Avery Cunningham’s stunning novel is at once an epic love story, a riveting historical drama, and a brilliant exploration of Black society and perseverance when the �20s first began to roar.]]> 528 Avery Cunningham 1368093000 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.52 2024 The Mayor of Maxwell Street
author: Avery Cunningham
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> Here Comes the Sun 26530351
At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman.

As they face the impending destruction of their community, each woman fighting to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom she craves must confront long-hidden scars. From a much-heralded new writer, Here Comes the Sun offers a dramatic glimpse into a vibrant, passionate world most outsiders see simply as paradise.]]> 352 Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn 1631491768 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.85 2016 Here Comes the Sun
author: Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> Homegoing 27071490 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.]]> 305 Yaa Gyasi Stefanie 0 to-read 4.48 2016 Homegoing
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> When I Think of You 192724118 In this sweeping second chance romance from debut author Myah Ariel, the unexpected spark of two former flames may force them to choose between their dreams and each other.

Kaliya Wilson has paid her dues. But all the years behind the reception desk at a flashy film studio have only pushed her movie-making dreams further out of reach. That is, until a surprise reunion presents an opportunity that could make her career, or break her heart…a second time.

It’s been seven years since Kaliya’s whirlwind college romance with Danny Prescott went up in flames. While her passions have stalled, his career is taking off. So when the hot shot director reappears to offer her a job on his next production, it’s a shock to the system. Working with Danny may recapture the intensity of their film school days, but trusting him again won’t come as easily.

As the pair allows themselves the openness and vulnerability to entrust their deepest truths to each other, the possibility of a true connection draws ever closer. But when Hollywood politics and scandal threaten to sink the production and her career, Kaliya may have to risk everything to do what’s right—even if it means letting go of the second chance love of a lifetime.]]> 368 Myah Ariel 0593640594 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.84 2024 When I Think of You
author: Myah Ariel
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> <![CDATA[A Gamble at Sunset (Betting Against the Duke, #1)]]> 181037645
When a duke discovers the woman he loves was tricked into marrying another, the master chess player makes the now-widowed Viscountess the highest-stakes wager of his life in a last-ditch effort to win her affection: he will find husbands for her two sisters—or depart forever. Thus begins a sparkling new series from acclaimed author Vanessa Riley.

Georgina Wilcox, a wallflower with hidden musical talents, is furious when her reclusive older sister—the recently widowed Viscountess—refuses sorely needed help from the Duke of Torrance, the only gentleman who has shown kindness to the bereft Wilcox sisters. Georgina decides to get back at her sister and shock the Viscountess by kissing the first willing stranger she meets in the enchanting gardens of Anya House. Unfortunately, her sister is not the sole witness. A group of reporters and the ton’s leading gossips catch Georgina in a passionate embrace with a reticent composer, Lord Mark Sebastian.

The third son of an influential marquis, the tongue-tied Mark is determined to keep the scandal from ruining Georgina’s reputation and his own prospects of winning the celebrated Harlbert’s Prize for music. Under the guise of private voice lessons, the two embark on a daring gamble to fool the ton into believing that their feigned courtship is honorable while bolstering Georgina’s singing genius to captivate potential suitors. Sexist cartoons, family rivalries, and an upcoming ball test the fake couple’s resolve. Will their sudden fiery collaboration—and growing attraction—prove there’s nothing false about a first kiss and scandalously irresistible temptation?]]> 336 Vanessa Riley 1420154850 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.46 2024 A Gamble at Sunset (Betting Against the Duke, #1)
author: Vanessa Riley
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> Unwind (Unwind, #1) 764347 Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives.

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.]]> 337 Neal Shusterman Stefanie 0 to-read 4.17 2007 Unwind (Unwind, #1)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> Beach Read 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

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

They’re polar opposites.

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

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806734 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.99 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/23
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]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Stefanie 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/23
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]]> One True Loves 27189194
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.

That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid Stefanie 0 to-read 4.03 2016 One True Loves
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)]]> 58527403 423 Jessa Hastings 1737281198 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.68 2021 Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)
author: Jessa Hastings
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Hathor and the Prince (The DuBells, #3)]]> 150247412
Hathor Du Bell has always fought to break free from the shadow left by her revered older sister, Aphrodite. It has been two years since Hathor’s debut, and while Aphrodite is a duchess, Hathor has been left with the most boring, incomparable suitors of the ton. With the London season coming to a close, Hathor’s anxieties reach a peak. Will she be the only Du Bell unable to find her perfect match?

Then Hathor’s wildest dream comes true when the Queen announces she’ll be presenting Prince Wilhelm Augustus Karl Von Edward of Malrovia during the week-long society event at the Du Bells� Belclere Castle. But the dream quickly crumbles when Hathor is face to face with the prince, and he is nothing like she imagined.

A flirtatious rivalry sparks a genuine romance, meanwhile Hathor fights to make a name of her own, despite society’s expectations of her. Amidst the grand balls and growing feelings, the final events of the season promise to be the most romantic and shocking of them all.]]> 368 J.J. McAvoy 0593500083 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.11 Hathor and the Prince (The DuBells, #3)
author: J.J. McAvoy
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.11
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Verity and the Forbidden Suitor (The DuBells, #2)]]> 61606714 A spirited and independent heiress defies the expectations of society to chase happily ever after in this irresistible romance from the author of Aphrodite and the Duke.

With her brother, the Duke of Everely, married off to the beautiful and charming Aphrodite Du Bell, Verity Eagleman feels more alone than ever within the cold halls of the family estate. So when she's invited to stay in the Du Bells' clamorous, boisterous home, she leaps at the chance.

When Verity crosses paths with Theodore Darrington, the doctor who saved her brother's life, she can't help but notice how her heart flutters anytime he is near. But as the estranged bastard son of the Marquess of Whitmear, Theodore is forbidden to pursue anyone of the noble set. Despite being popular amongst the ton for both his heroic efforts and handsome charm, Theodore knows that no amount of social capital will allow him to be with the woman he secretly loves. Luckily for him, Verity has never cared much for the rules of society. . . .

A forbidden romance blossoms as Verity and Theodore give in to their all-consuming passion, with any thought of scandal flung to the side. But when the concerns of their friends and family begin to loom over their love, will they truly be able to break the rules?]]> 400 J.J. McAvoy 0593500067 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Verity and the Forbidden Suitor (The DuBells, #2)
author: J.J. McAvoy
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Aphrodite and the Duke (The DuBells, #1)]]> 59811821 A jilted beauty and a regretful duke discover that second chances can be divine in this diverse Regency romance for fans of Bridgerton

Second chances are even sweeter. . . .

Aphrodite Du Bell has always resented her name. While the members of the ton, and even the queen herself, praise her warm brown skin, perfect curls, and exquisite features, Aphrodite can't help but think that living up to the literal goddess of beauty is asking a bit much. Her renowned loveliness certainly didn't stop the love of her life from jilting her and marrying another woman four years ago.

When Aphrodite's formidable mother summons her back to London to aid in her sister's debut, she has no choice but to acquiesce. But Aphrodite is determined to ignore one man in particular: Evander Eagleman, the Duke of Everely, the man who devastated her all those years ago. Yet why does her guileless heart still flutter at the sight of him?

Evander Eagleman lost his chance for true love, but now that he is an unattached widower, he is determined to win back Aphrodite's trust--and her hand in marriage. But just as the couple make strides to mend old wounds, Evander's true reason for rejecting Aphrodite threatens their coveted future . . . and even their lives.
]]> 384 J.J. McAvoy 0593500040 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.62 2022 Aphrodite and the Duke (The DuBells, #1)
author: J.J. McAvoy
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Peanuts Mad Libs: World's Greatest Word Game]]> 24877830 48 Mickie Matheis 0843183314 Stefanie 0 to-read 5.00 2015 Peanuts Mad Libs: World's Greatest Word Game
author: Mickie Matheis
name: Stefanie
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> Esperanza Rising 89763 304 Pam Muñoz Ryan 043912042X Stefanie 5 4.03 2000 Esperanza Rising
author: Pam Muñoz Ryan
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[It's Not All Downhill From Here]]> 52697911 But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha will have to summon all her strength, resourcefulness, and determination to keep on thriving, pursue joy, heal old wounds, and chart new paths. With a little help from her friends, of course.]]> 285 Terry McMillan 1984823760 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.10 2020 It's Not All Downhill From Here
author: Terry McMillan
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> Tiny Imperfections 51918673 The Wedding Date meets Class Mom in this delicious novel of love, money, and misbehaving parents.

All’s fair in love and kindergarten admissions.

At thirty-nine, Josie Bordelon’s modeling career as the “it� black beauty of the �90s is far behind her. Now director of admissions at San Francisco’s most sought after private school, she’s chic, single, and determined to keep her seventeen-year-old daughter, Etta, from making the same mistakes she did.

But Etta has plans of her own–and their beloved matriarch, Aunt Viv, has Etta’s back. If only Josie could manage Etta’s future as well as she manages the shenanigans of the over-anxious, over-eager parents at school–or her best friend’s attempts to coax Josie out of her sex sabbatical and back onto the dating scene.

As admissions season heats up, Josie discovers that when it comes to matters of the heart–and the office–the biggest surprises lie closest to home.]]> 322 Alli Frank 0593085027 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.63 2020 Tiny Imperfections
author: Alli Frank
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> Queen Charlotte 61423072 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn and television pioneer Shonda Rhimes comes a powerful and romantic novel of Bridgerton's Queen Charlotte and King George III's great love story and how it sparked a societal shift, inspired by the original series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, created by Shondaland for Netflix.

“We are one crown. His weight is mine, and mine is his…�

In 1761, on a sunny day in September, a King and Queen met for the very first time. They were married within hours.

Born a German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was beautiful, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent� not precisely the attributes the British Court had been seeking in a spouse for the young King George III. But her fire and independence were exactly what she needed, because George had secrets� secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the monarchy.

Thrust into her new role as a royal, Charlotte must learn to navigate the intricate politics of the court� all the while guarding her heart, because she is falling in love with the King, even as he pushes her away. Above all she must learn to rule, and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society. She must fight—for herself, for her husband, and for all her new subjects who look to her for guidance and grace. For she will never be just Charlotte again. She must instead fulfill her destiny� as Queen.]]> 352 Julia Quinn 0063305089 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.15 2023 Queen Charlotte
author: Julia Quinn
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> In the Unlikely Event 24357287 NATIONAL BESTSELLERĚýâ€� The author of Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret returns with an adult novel that takes us back to the 1950s and introduces us to the town where she herself grew up, where a community is left reeling after a real-life tragedy when a series of airplanes fell out of the sky.“Makes us feel the pure shock and wonder of living.... Judy Blume isn’t just revered, she’s revolutionary.â€� —The New York Times Book Review “No one captures coming-of-age milestones…like Blume.â€� —The Boston GlobeHere she imagines and weaves together a vivid portrait of three generations of families, friends, and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed during one winter. At the center of an extraordinary cast of characters are fifteen-year-old Miri Ammerman and her spirited single mother, Rusty. Their warm and resonant stories are set against the backdrop of an extraordinary real-world tragedy. Gripping, authentic, and unforgettable, In the Unlikely Event has all the hallmarks of this renowned author’s deft narrative magic.]]> 402 Judy Blume 1101875054 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.81 2015 In the Unlikely Event
author: Judy Blume
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Deenie 18891605 164 Judy Blume Stefanie 0 to-read 4.17 1973 Deenie
author: Judy Blume
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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]]> Angel of Greenwood 58532240
Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family’s financial situation is in turmoil.

Though they’ve attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can’t turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon.

But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the Black community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.]]> 304 Randi Pink 1250821290 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.45 2021 Angel of Greenwood
author: Randi Pink
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> Finding Fraser 29355193
That he was fictional hardly entered into it.

At 29, Emma Sheridan's life is a disaster and she's tired of waiting for the perfect boyfriend to step from the pages of her favorite book. There's only one place to look, and it means selling everything and leaving her world behind. With an unexpected collection of allies along the way, can Emma face down a naked fishmonger, a randy gnome, a perfidious thief, and even her own abdominal muscles on the journey to find her Fraser?

What people are saying about FINDING FRASER...

"Jamie Fraser would be Deeply Gratified at having inspired such a charmingly funny, poignant story--and so am I." -Diana Gabaldon, author of the New York Times Bestselling OUTLANDER series

"I loved this book. It transported me to a Scotland I wished I'd grown up in. Everything about it is a delight, and it's all authentic--the environment, the characters, the dialogue and the sheer enjoyment of it all." - Jack Whyte, best-selling author of, most recently, THE GUARDIANS OF SCOTLAND series

"FINDING FRASER is for everyone who ever fell in love with a fictional character. Dyer blends humor, a love of Scotland, and romance into a page turner that will keep readers cheering on the main character and turning pages." -Eileen Cook, Author of REMEMBER, and other books for teens and adults

"FINDING FRASER is an absolute must-read for any Outlander fan. The story is both hilarious and romantic, as well as guaranteed to have readers turning the pages until the wee hours to discover if the heroine finds her very own Jamie Fraser." - Laura Bradbury, author of the best-selling MY GRAPE ESCAPE series]]> 390 K.C. Dyer 0399584374 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.80 2015 Finding Fraser
author: K.C. Dyer
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> Race to Fire Mountain 58719218 144 Remi Blackwood 1338790323 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.61 Race to Fire Mountain
author: Remi Blackwood
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.61
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Finally Seen 61957367 From the New York Times bestselling author of Front Desk comes a “involving, realistic� (Booklist, starred review) middle grade novel about a young girl who leaves China to live with her parents and sister, after five years apart, and learns about family, friendship, and the power of being finally seen.

My sister got to grow up with my parents. Me? I grew up with postcards from my parents.

When ten-year-old Lina Gao steps off the plane in Los Angeles, it’s her first time in America and the first time seeing her parents and her little sister in five years! She’s been waiting for this moment every day while she lived with her grandmother in Beijing, getting teased by kids at school who called her “left behind girl.� Finally, her parents are ready for her to join their fabulous life in America! Except, it’s not exactly like in the

1. School’s a lot harder than she thought. When she mispronounces some words in English on the first day, she decides she simply won’t talk. Ever again.
2. Her chatty little sister has no problem with English. And seems to do everything better than Lina, including knowing exactly the way to her parents� hearts.
3. They live in an apartment, not a house like in Mom’s letters, and they owe a lot of back rent from the pandemic. And Mom’s plan to pay it back sounds more like a hobby than a moneymaker.

As she reckons with her hurt, Lina tries to keep a lid on her feelings, both at home and at school. When her teacher starts facing challenges for her latest book selection, a book that deeply resonates with Lina, it will take all of Lina’s courage and resilience to get over her fear and choose a future where she’s finally seen.]]> 301 Kelly Yang 1534488359 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.68 2023 Finally Seen
author: Kelly Yang
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)]]> 61411161 In this heart-fluttering romance by Kristina Forest, a shy bookworm enlists her charming neighbor to help her score a date, not knowing he's the obscure author she's been corresponding with.

Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming an editor of children's books but has been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over e-mail turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won't let herself entertain--until he ghosts her.

Months later, still crushed but determined to take charge of her life, Lily seeks a date to her sister's wedding. And the perfect person to help her is Nick Brown, her charming, attractive new neighbor, whom she feels drawn to for unexplainable reasons. Little does she know that Nick is an author--her favorite fantasy author.

Nick, who has his reasons for using a pen name and for pushing people away, soon realizes that the beautiful, quiet woman from down the hall is the same Lily he fell in love with over e-mail months ago. Unwilling to complicate things even more between them, he agrees to set her up with someone else, though this simple favor between two neighbors is anything but--not when he can't get her off his mind.]]> 414 Kristina Forest 059354644X Stefanie 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)
author: Kristina Forest
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Almost There 61447677 383 Farrah Rochon 1368090516 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.23 2022 Almost There
author: Farrah Rochon
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Offer From a Gentleman (Bridgertons, #3)]]> 59340141 Sophie Beckett never dreamed she'd be able to sneak into Lady Bridgerton's famed masquerade ball—or that "Prince Charming" would be waiting there for her! Though the daughter of an earl, Sophie has been relegated to the role of servant by her disdainful stepmother. But now, spinning in the strong arms of the debonair and devastatingly handsome Benedict Bridgerton, she feels like royalty. Alas, she knows all enchantments must end when the clock strikes midnight.

Who was that extraordinary woman? Ever since that magical night, a radiant vision in silver has blinded Benedict to the attractions of any other—except, perhaps, this alluring and oddly familiar beauty dressed in housemaid's garb whom he feels compelled to rescue from a most disagreeable situation. He has sworn to find and wed his mystery miss, but this breathtaking maid makes him weak with wanting her. Yet, if he offers her his heart, will Benedict sacrifice his only chance for a fairy tale love?

]]> 483 Julia Quinn Stefanie 0 to-read 4.19 2001 An Offer From a Gentleman (Bridgertons, #3)
author: Julia Quinn
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Orange Mint and Honey 2767967
When Shay was growing up, Nona was either drunk, hungover, or out with her latest low-life guy. So Shay barely recognizes the new Nona, now sober and with a positive outlook on life, a love of gardening, and a toddler named Sunny. Though reconciliation seems a hard proposition for Shay, something unmistakable is taking root inside her, waiting to blossom like the morning glories opening up in Nona’s garden sanctuary.

Soon Shay finds herself facing exciting possibilities and even her first real romantic relationship. But when an unexpected crisis hits, even the wise words and soulful melodies of Nina Simone may not be enough for solace. Shay begins to realize that, like orange mint and honey, sometimes life tastes better when bitter is followed by sweet.]]> 324 Carleen Brice 0345499069 Stefanie 1 sooner-than-later-to-read 4.00 2008 Orange Mint and Honey
author: Carleen Brice
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves: sooner-than-later-to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seven Days in Seattle (Let It Rain, #1)]]> 202550731 One week. No strings. No names. No feelings. What could go wrong?

Rain

This Seattle meeting will change my life…just not the way I expected.

Instead of focusing on my presentation, I’m dealing with a cheating boyfriend and sister who bailed on me. The only good thing to happen is when a stranger at a bar offers a pretty distraction: a one-night stand, no strings attached, no questions asked. A distraction from my mess of a life is exactly what I need�.

But our one-night stand turns into a week-long affair. He only wanted sex, no feelings, no last names, no talk about business, nothing personal. And I was fine with that. Until I wasn’t.

Nik

I don’t have time for relationships. I have a company to run, a legacy to uphold, a reputation to protect. I only care about power and success. I don’t do dates and I don’t do tomorrows. I only do one-night stands with women who know the rules and don’t ask for more.

But then I met Rain at a bar. She’s beautiful, smart, and sassy. And suddenly, I want more. The more time we spend together, the more I want from her. Her name. Her story. Her dreams. And I was fine with that. Until I wasn’t.

Fate is about to punish us for staying anonymous…by throwing us into each other’s lives in the worst possible way.

“Seven Days In Seattle,� a contemporary romance, is Book 1 of the “Let it Rain� series.]]> 274 Rita A. Gordon Stefanie 0 to-read 4.10 Seven Days in Seattle (Let It Rain, #1)
author: Rita A. Gordon
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Four Eids and a Funeral 180634069
Let’s get one thing straight: this is a love story.

These days, Said Hossain spends most of his time away at boarding school. But when his favorite hometown librarian Ms. Barnes dies, he must return home to New Crosshaven for her funeral and for the summer. Too bad being home makes it a lot harder to avoid facing his ex-best friend, Tiwa Olatunji, or facing the daunting task of telling his Bangladeshi parents that he would rather be an artist than a doctor.

Tiwa doesn’t understand what made Said start ignoring her, but it’s probably that fancy boarding school of his. Though he’s unexpectedly staying through the summer, she’s determined to take a page from him and pretend he doesn’t exist. Besides, she has more than enough going on, between grieving her broken family and helping her mother throw the upcoming Eid celebration at the Islamic Center—a place that means so much to Tiwa.

But when the Islamic Center accidentally catches fire, it turns out the mayor plans to demolish the center entirely. Things are still tense between the ex-friends but Tiwa needs Said’s help if there’s any hope of changing the mayor’s mind, and Said needs a project to submit to art school (unbeknownst to anyone). Will all their efforts be enough to save the Islamic Center, save Eid, and maybe save their relationship?]]> 321 Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé 1250890144 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.62 2024 Four Eids and a Funeral
author: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Queen Bee (The Diamonds, #1) 57750279

Lady Ela Dalvi knows the exact moment her life was forever changed—when her best friend, Poppy, betrayed her without qualm over a boy, the son of a duke. She was sent away in disgrace, her reputation ruined.

Nearly three years later, eighteen-year-old Ela is consumed with bitterness and a desire for . . . revenge. Her enemy is quickly joining the crème de la crème of high society while she withers away in the English countryside.

With an audacious plan to get even, Ela disguises herself as a mysterious heiress and infiltrates London’s elite. But when Ela reunites with the only boy she’s ever loved, she begins to question whether vengeance is still her greatest desire.

In this complicated game of real-life chess, Ela must choose her next move: Finally bring down the queen or capture the king’s heart?]]> 368 Amalie Howard 0593650328 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.83 2023 Queen Bee (The Diamonds, #1)
author: Amalie Howard
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Whole Song and Dance 182506534
It’s her first semester majoring in musical theater at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, and Nasrin spends her days prepping for auditions, sweating through dance classes, and belting her heart out for the viral streaming show she’s been cast in. But on calls with her maman and baba, she’s the golden child who put her theater dreams aside to follow in their entrepreneurial footsteps as a business major.

At least her whole life isn’t a lie—she is taking a single business course. Except she’s kind of failing it. Nasrin needs to bring her grade up fast if she’s going to keep her parents in the dark, so she grudgingly signs up for tutoring with the infuriatingly smug and annoyingly attractive Max. And yet . . . as the semester rushes by, the sparks of anger that first flew between them start to turn into a very different kind of spark. The kind she definitely does not have time for.

Except when Nasrin’s charmingly devious cousin takes an interest in Max too, Nasrin has to figure out exactly what has been an act, and what’s for real. Can Nasrin decide what—and who—is truly worth fighting for, and find a way to step into the spotlight as her full self?]]> 320 Sarvenaz Tash 1368090435 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.63 2023 A Whole Song and Dance
author: Sarvenaz Tash
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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

The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass.]]> 372 Abby Jimenez Stefanie 0 to-read 3.85 2019 The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Not So Meet Cute (Cane Brothers, #1)]]> 58995736
The quintessential question asked to every couple. And the answer is usually some bubbly, lovey dovey tale of being struck in the bum by Cupid’s arrow.

My meet cute (well not so meet cute) is slightly different. I was trolling a wealthy neighborhood in Beverly Hills, searching for someone to take me as their bride, you know, to make my arch nemesis jealous who consequently just fired me.

He was stomping around the block like some sort of gorgeous ogre, mumbling about a business deal gone wrong and attempting to finagle his way out of it.

And that’s when we bumped into each other.

There were no sparks.

Not even a hint of blossoming love.

But next thing I knew, I was scarfing down free chips and guac, listening to this man lay out all of his problems which led to his big ask . . . he wanted me to be his Vivian Ward, you know, from Pretty Woman--minus the frisky behavior.

We’re talking about living in a mansion, intimate double dates, and pretending we were head over heels in love . . . and engaged. Can you imagine?

The absolute audacity.

But people do crazy things when they’re desperate. And I reeked of desperation. So, I struck up a deal.

My one big mistake, though . . . big . . . HUGE? I accidentally fell for the incomparable Huxley Cane.]]> 404 Meghan Quinn Stefanie 0 to-read 3.94 2021 A Not So Meet Cute (Cane Brothers, #1)
author: Meghan Quinn
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

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

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.26 2022 Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dial A for Aunties (Aunties, #1)]]> 53310061 What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?

You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business�"Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!"—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers.

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?]]> 299 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593336739 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.68 2021 Dial A for Aunties (Aunties, #1)
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Keeper of Main Street]]> 198530970 Was bedeutet es, eine Schwarze Frau in Amerika zu sein?

1954, Bailey Dowery, eine Schwarze Schneiderin, ist mit der Gabe der „zweiten Sicht� Sobald sie eine ihrer Kundinnen berührt, erfährt sie Visionen über deren Wünsche, Ängste und Zukunft. Sie arbeitet für die Frauen der lokalen Ölbarone und fertigt edle Roben und Brautkleider für die Elite der Stadt an. Trotz der Warnungen ihrer Tante, sich aus den Angelegenheiten der Weißen herauszuhalten, hilft Bailey gelegentlich, wenn Bräute sie um ihre besondere Hilfe bitten. Als Elsa Grimes, Tochter eines der reichsten Ölbarone Oklahomas, um Baileys Dienste bittet, wird diese mit einer erschreckenden Wahrheit konfrontiert. Schon bald wird ein Mann ermordet aufgefunden und Elsa als Verdächtige inhaftiert. Bailey gerät in einen Strudel aus Lügen und Geheimnissen und ihr wird klar, dass ihr Talent genauso gefährlich wie es ein Geschenk sein kann …]]> 289 Trisha R. Thomas 0063344165 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.68 The Secret Keeper of Main Street
author: Trisha R. Thomas
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.68
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Queenie 36586697
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.]]> 330 Candice Carty-Williams Stefanie 0 3.83 2019 Queenie
author: Candice Carty-Williams
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
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review:

]]> Razorblade Tears 54860585 A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss.

Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250252708]]> 336 S.A. Cosby Stefanie 0 to-read 4.08 2021 Razorblade Tears
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Stefanie 0 to-read 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Maame 60784605 Shortlisted for the TikTok Book Awards in the Book of the Year, 2023 and the Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ Debut and Fiction Book of the Year, 2023.

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts�: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her life on the line.

Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.]]> 320 Jessica George Stefanie 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Maame
author: Jessica George
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> Only For The Week 152572612
And now a toast from the maid of honor, Janelle Cross!

Hi everyone, thank you for being here.

Some of you may know me as the sister of the bride.

Some of you may know me as the ex-girlfriend of the groom.

But I'm willing to bet none of you know me as the woman secretly sleeping with the best man.

I am.

I know, I'm just as surprised as you.

It was only supposed to be for the week; but every kiss, adventure, and stolen moment with Rome Martin feels like it could last forever.

Oh well. What happens in Tulum stays in Tulum.

Right?]]> 238 Natasha Bishop 173775343X Stefanie 3 4.34 2023 Only For The Week
author: Natasha Bishop
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
review:

]]> One Blood 65211088
Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her Maw Maw. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie—a woman who firmly left behind her “undesirable� Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Thrust into the world of the Black and socially ambitious, Grace finds herself trapped in a society of stifling respectability, fancy teas, and coveted debutante balls. Feeling like a fish out of water, Grace’s only place of sweet comfort is with the smart, handsome son of one of the society’s grand dames. However, when Dale gets caught up in a racial police killing and Grace ends up pregnant, she is quickly hidden away and his is promptly shipped off to college. Then in the ultimate act of betrayal, Grace is deceived by Hattie and her brand new baby girl is given up for adoption.

Beautiful, intelligent and fierce, Delores a.k.a. Lolo has never had it easy. Her life has been riddled with pain and loss. Once she makes it up north, she puts aside her dream of being a model to do what she has to do to survive as a woman with little money and no get married and have a family of her own. And she will tell lies and keep secrets to obtain it. Then Lolo does have it a doting husband, a beautiful son and daughter, and a lovely home. When secrets start to spill out and she and her family slowly begin to unravel, Lolo is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her dream intact and those she loves together.

When Lolo’s headstrong daughter, Rae discovers that she is adopted, it is just one secret among others that her family is keeping. Not out of a desire to deceive, but out of a determination to survive and protect. When Rae finds out that she is about to become a mother herself, she knows that there is an important reckoning that must be faced about herself and her two mothers.

Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate struggle with generational trauma and healing.]]> 432 Denene Millner 1250276195 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.11 2023 One Blood
author: Denene Millner
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 Stefanie 5 4.44 1996 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves: steffie-suite-my-favorites, to-read
review:

]]> Little Women 372311 388 Louisa May Alcott 0517214628 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.22 1868 Little Women
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1868
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/03
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]]> Second House from the Corner 29939261
Felicia Lyons, a ­­­­­­­ stressed out stay-at-home mom, struggles to sprint ahead of the demands of motherhood while her husband spends long days at the office. Felicia taps, utters mantra, and breathes her way through most situations but on some days, like when the children won’t stop screaming her name or arguing over toy trucks and pretzel sticks, she wonders what it would be like to get in her car and drive away.

Then one evening the telephone rings, and in a split second the harried mother’s innocent fantasy becomes a hellish reality. The call pulls her back into a life she’d rather forget. Felicia hasn’t been completely honest about her upbringing, and her deception forces her return to the Philadelphia of her childhood, where she must confront the family demons and long buried secrets she thought she had left behind.

From a phenomenal fresh voice in fiction, comes the compelling story of what happens when the dream falls apart. It’s the unforgettable tale of love, loss, rediscovery, and the growing pains of marriage.]]> 320 Sadeqa Johnson 1250115914 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.61 2016 Second House from the Corner
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> Yellow Wife 54304031 Wench and Twelve Years a Slave, this harrowing story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia.

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.]]> 278 Sadeqa Johnson 1982149108 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.41 2021 Yellow Wife
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> The House of Eve 61273858 From the award-winning author of Yellow Wife, a daring and redemptive novel set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.]]> 384 Sadeqa Johnson 1982197366 Stefanie 0 to-read 4.23 2023 The House of Eve
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Stefanie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> Sorry, Bro 59455502 An Armenian-American woman rediscovers her roots and embraces who she really is in this vibrant and heartfelt queer rom-com by debut author Taleen Voskuni.

When Nar’s non-Armenian boyfriend gets down on one knee and proposes to her in front of a room full of drunk San Francisco tech boys, she realizes it’s time to find someone who shares her idea of romance.

Enter her mother: armed with plenty of mom-guilt and a spreadsheet of Facebook-stalked Armenian men, she convinces Nar to attend Explore Armenia, a month-long series of events in the city. But it’s not the mom-approved playboy doctor or wealthy engineer who catches her eye—it’s Erebuni, a woman as equally immersed in the witchy arts as she is in preserving Armenian identity. Suddenly, with Erebuni as her wingwoman, the events feel like far less of a chore, and much more of an adventure. Who knew cooking up kuftes together could be so . . . sexy?

Erebuni helps Nar see the beauty of their shared culture and makes her feel understood in a way she never has before. But there’s one teeny problem: Nar’s not exactly out as bisexual. The clock is ticking on Nar’s double life, though—the closing event banquet is coming up, and her entire extended family will be there, along with Erebuni. Her worlds will inevitably collide, but Nar is determined to be brave, determined to claim her happiness: proudly Armenian, proudly bisexual, and proudly herself for the first time in her life.]]> 354 Taleen Voskuni 0593547306 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.62 2023 Sorry, Bro
author: Taleen Voskuni
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lavash at First Sight 195888833
Twenty-seven-year-old Nazeli “Ellieâ€� Gregorian enjoys the prestige of her tech marketing job but is sick of the condescending Patagonia-clad tech bros, her micromanaging boss, and her ex-boyfriend, who she’s forced to work with every day. When Ellie’s lovingly overbearing parents ask her to attendĚýPakCon—a food packaging conference in Chicago—to help promote their company and vie to win an ad slot in the Superbowl (no big deal), she’s eager for a brief change and a delicious distraction.

At the conference, she meets witty, devil-may-care Vanya Simonian. Ellie can’t believe how easy it is to talk to Vanya and how much they have in common—both Armenian! From the Bay Area! Whose families are into food! Their meet-cute is cut short, however, when Ellie’s parents recognize Vanya as the daughter of the owners of their greatest rival, whose mission (according to Ellie’s mother) is to whitewash and package Armenian food for the American health-food crowd.
Ěý
Sworn as enemies, Ellie and Vanya must compete against each other under their suspicious parents' scrutiny, all while their feelings for each other heat to sizzling temps.]]> 304 Taleen Voskuni 0593547322 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.62 2024 Lavash at First Sight
author: Taleen Voskuni
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> A Novel Love Story 199261152 A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction� literally.

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

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

Because it is.

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

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

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

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593640977 Stefanie 0 to-read 3.62 2024 A Novel Love Story
author: Ashley Poston
name: Stefanie
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/01
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