jess's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 21 Mar 2025 23:38:27 -0700 60 jess's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]>
303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 jess 5 4.32 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: jess
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/21
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<![CDATA[The Decagon House Murders (House Murders, #1)]]> 25561888 228 Yukito Ayatsuji 1508503737 jess 3 3.79 1987 The Decagon House Murders (House Murders, #1)
author: Yukito Ayatsuji
name: jess
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
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<![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop]]> 215149232
For the first few months all Yeongju does is cry, but the long hours in the shop also give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and store. As she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she eases into her new setting. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that connect them all, she finds her new story as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop transforms into an inviting space for lost souls to rest, heal, and remember it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again.]]>
320 Hwang Bo-Reum 1639736379 jess 0 to-read 3.76 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: jess
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
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Small Rain 205363938 A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.]]>
306 Garth Greenwell 0374279543 jess 0 to-read 4.06 2024 Small Rain
author: Garth Greenwell
name: jess
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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<![CDATA[Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)]]> 217536270
In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn't much a girl wouldn't do for a glass of water.

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

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

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

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

Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he's the only way Saeris is going to make it home.]]>
624 Callie Hart 1538774194 jess 0 dnf 4.30 2024 Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1)
author: Callie Hart
name: jess
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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Green Dot: A Novel 133287138 Madeleine Gray takes a scalpel to millennial malaise, office romance, and infidelity, and the result is a brainy, gutsy, nervy—and hilarious—wonder of a novel.�
—Meg Howrey, author of They're Going to Love You

An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing

At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife—and that she has no idea Hera exists.

With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.]]>
299 Madeleine Gray 1250890586 jess 0 dnf 3.71 2024 Green Dot: A Novel
author: Madeleine Gray
name: jess
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

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

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

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

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]>
384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 jess 4 3.82 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: jess
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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The Cut 211003716
A historic hotel long past its prime and huddled along The Cut, a questionable Lake Erie beach, isn’t Sadie Miles� ideal place to raise a toddler while also navigating her second pregnancy. After finally fleeing her abusive ex-fiancé, though, Sadie’s new housekeeping position and free room at L’Arpin Hotel are the best she can manage.

On her first night, Sadie runs to help a guest struggling in the hotel’s pool only to find the water calm and empty when she gets there, leaving her with a lingering unease. When a guest then goes missing and her manager insists they simply left without checking out, Sadie suspects he’s covering up darker goings-on in the hotel.

After her ex, Sadie won't let anyone convince her that what she’s experiencing isn’t real again. So, she keeps digging, quickly uncovering suspicious interactions with the staff, mysteriously vanishing security cameras, more missing guests, and things that go bump in the night...and drip in the walls, slither in the tub, and squirm in the halls. Everything isn't as it seems within the dim hallways of L’Arpin. Sadie has nowhere to go and nowhere to hide; she'll need to keep her wits about her to survive and keep her toddler and unborn child safe from whatever lurks nearby.]]>
304 C.J. Dotson 1250335442 jess 0 to-read 3.27 The Cut
author: C.J. Dotson
name: jess
average rating: 3.27
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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All the Sinners Bleed 61884832 A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction� (The Washington Post).]]>
338 S.A. Cosby 1250831911 jess 0 to-read 4.19 2023 All the Sinners Bleed
author: S.A. Cosby
name: jess
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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<![CDATA[Grave Empire (The Great Silence, #1)]]> 214175244 Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.

A new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.

But dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north, while in the south, the Empire's proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.

Worse still is the message brought to the Empress by two heretic monks, who claim to have lost contact with the spirits of the afterlife. The monks believe this is the start of an ancient prophecy heralding the end of days-the Great Silence.

It falls to Renata Rainer, a low-ranking ambassador to an enigmatic and vicious race of mermen, to seek answers from those who still practice the arcane arts. But with the road south beset by war and the Empire on the brink of supernatural catastrophe, soon there may not be a world left to save . . .]]>
527 Richard Swan 0316577006 jess 0 to-read 4.25 2025 Grave Empire (The Great Silence, #1)
author: Richard Swan
name: jess
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
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The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]>
490 Liz Moore jess 4 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: jess
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
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The List 45011563 Six names.
Six people set to die.


Six months later, they were gone. But the list maker was far from done with their town.
Like clockwork, new lists come out every six months. To keep their names off of them, the citizens go to extraordinary lengths and keep terrifying secrets.
Someone is controlling their town. But who? And, most importantly, why?

When Connor and Jordyn Atwood move to Bates, they see firsthand how far their new neighbors are willing to go to protect themselves. Will the Atwoods succumb to their newfound surroundings? Or will they fight to protect the town they now call their home?
With everything at stake and no one to trust, the Atwoods quickly learn the list maker has one important rule: do what you're told...or find your name on The List.]]>
292 Kiersten Modglin jess 2 3.91 2016 The List
author: Kiersten Modglin
name: jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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<![CDATA[The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5)]]> 40603587
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4]]>
400 Andrzej Sapkowski jess 0 currently-reading 4.12 1993 The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: jess
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: currently-reading
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Roadside Picnic 331256
First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.]]>
145 Arkady Strugatsky 0575070536 jess 4 4.16 1972 Roadside Picnic
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: jess
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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<![CDATA[The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1)]]> 18874651
Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for.]]>
269 Nora Sakavic jess 2 3.99 2013 The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1)
author: Nora Sakavic
name: jess
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
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If I Disappear 53066531 When her favorite true crime podcast host goes missing, an adrift young woman plunges headfirst into the wild backcountry of Northern California and her own dangerous obsession.

Sera loves true crime podcasts. They make her feel empowered in a world where women just like her disappear daily. She's sure they are preparing her for something. So when Rachel, her favorite podcast host, goes missing, Sera knows it's time to act. Rachel has always taught her to trust her instincts.

Sera follows the clues hidden in the episodes to an isolated ranch outside Rachel's small hometown to begin her search. She's convinced her investigation will make Rachel so proud. But the more Sera digs into this unfamiliar world, the more off things start to feel. Because Rachel is not the first woman to vanish from the ranch, and she won't be the last...

Rachel did try to warn her.]]>
296 Eliza Jane Brazier 0593198220 jess 3 3.11 2021 If I Disappear
author: Eliza Jane Brazier
name: jess
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
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Asunder 195791081 We choose our own gods here.

Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.

Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.

And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.]]>
432 Kerstin Hall 1250625432 jess 4 4.16 2024 Asunder
author: Kerstin Hall
name: jess
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/20
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Pretty Girls 40017404 Librarian’s note: This is an updated cover image for Kindle.
See previously published cover here.


#1 internationally bestselling author Karin Slaughter returns with a sophisticated and chilling psychological thriller of dangerous secrets, cold vengeance, and unexpected absolution, in which two estranged sisters must come together to find truth about two harrowing tragedies, twenty years apart, that devastate their lives.

Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

Powerful, poignant, and utterly gripping, packed with indelible characters and unforgettable twists, Pretty Girls is a masterful thriller from one of the finest suspense writers working today.]]>
432 Karin Slaughter jess 2 4.14 2015 Pretty Girls
author: Karin Slaughter
name: jess
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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Set the Record Straight 67915836
Evan was recently dumped by her fellow teacher fiancée for a mutual co-worker and is still trying to figure out where it all went wrong. So when she gets the news the happy new couple will be hosting the staff's holiday party- she feels utterly horrified by her single status and looks for a quick solution.

Together, these two life-long friends make a plan to get through the gallery opening and holiday party by pretending to date one another. Easy... right?

That is until Clara starts developing real feelings for Evan, shocking herself. All the while Evan realizes that perhaps pretending to date your straight best friend, who you've had a crush on for half your life- isn't the best idea.]]>
142 Hannah Bonam-Young jess 3 4.05 2022 Set the Record Straight
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
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Monstrilio 62888191 A literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.]]>
336 Gerardo Sámano Córdova 1638930368 jess 5 4.12 2023 Monstrilio
author: Gerardo Sámano Córdova
name: jess
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/30
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<![CDATA[Murder on Black Swan Lane (Wrexford & Sloane, #1)]]> 33024260 In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist form an unlikely alliance to expose unspeakable evil . . .

The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect.

An artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume A.J. Quill. When Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing. But he has a proposal—use her sources to unveil the clergyman’s clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London’s intellectual enclaves to trap a cunning adversary—before they fall victim to the next experiment in villainy . . .]]>
370 Andrea Penrose jess 3 4.26 2017 Murder on Black Swan Lane (Wrexford & Sloane, #1)
author: Andrea Penrose
name: jess
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/23
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Make the Season Bright 206180603
It's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée, and she’s doing more than okay. Sure, her single mother never checks in, but she has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true. As the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado—it is much cozier and quieter than Manhattan, and it would guarantee more practice time for the quartet’s upcoming tour. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister Adele also brought a friend home—and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton. All Brighton Fairbrook wanted was to have the holliest, jolliest Christmas—and try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers—which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. Charlotte and Brighton are soon entrenched in horseback riding and cookie decorating, but Charlotte still won’t talk to her. Brighton can hardly blame her after what she did. After a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together—Brighton on guitar, Charlotte on her violin—and it all feels painfully familiar. But it’s all in the past and nothing can melt the ice in their hearts...right?]]>
342 Ashley Herring Blake 0593550595 jess 2 3.60 2024 Make the Season Bright
author: Ashley Herring Blake
name: jess
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
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having sex with your fiance and then leaving them at the alter like three hours later is actually insane
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Thrum 216009057 122 Meg Smitherman jess 3 4.13 2024 Thrum
author: Meg Smitherman
name: jess
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
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When You Least Expect It 62404966 ASIN moved from less recent edition

Caroline Parker knows three things to be true. First, she is going to be Boston's most sought after divorce attorney by thirty-five. Second, given how terrible her romantic track record is, falling in love isn't in the cards for her. And third, Christmas only brings her bad luck - being broken up with not once, not twice, but three times during the holidays is proof enough of that.
When she runs into Hannah Dalton on Christmas Eve, she has no reason to believe her luck will change. After all, though Hannah is probably the most gorgeous woman she’s ever seen, she’s also straight. And married to Caroline’s work rival.
While being hired by Hannah throws her for a loop, winning a divorce case and sticking it to her ex-colleague should be enough of a thrill. But as the months slip by, bringing her closer to both Hannah and her adorable daughter Abbie, the lines between attorney and client begin to blur. And she could have never predicted just how much she wants them to.]]>
248 Haley Cass jess 4 4.21 2020 When You Least Expect It
author: Haley Cass
name: jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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Plot Twist 201776886 In this lighthearted romp through New York City, two clashing authors must blend their differences to prove every story is worth telling and that some genres—like people—work better together.

Siobhan Harris doesn’t think of her minimum-wage life in Manhattan as aspirational, but when her debut novel is published, she becomes an instant bestseller and a romance sensation. With fame comes foes, however, and Siobhan finds herself embroiled in a Twitter feud that’s about to change the course of her career just as it’s beginning.

An established crime novelist, Marcel Black is savvy in the ways of the publishing world but less than an expert on the merits of romance. So when his opinions are publicly challenged by the fresh-faced Siobhan, Marcel doubles down until their heated back-and-forth ends with an influencer’s challenge: to put their genres� compatibility to the test, Siobhan and Marcel should write a book together.

To leave their mark, this unlikely pair will have to contend with differences in taste, style, and experience…and the building tension between them that’s looking a lot less like enemies� contention and a lot more like a love connection.]]>
371 Carmen Sereno 1662516606 jess 4 3.69 Plot Twist
author: Carmen Sereno
name: jess
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
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<![CDATA[He Sees You When You're Sleeping]]> 221303983 Why choose between naughty or nice in this steamy, suspenseful Christmas-themed stalker romance that’s perfect for dark romance readers seeking a spicy, festive read. 

It’s the night before Christmas and I’m alone in the house�

Popular jewelry influencer Chloe Hallman is steeling herself to spend another holiday on her own. Instead, she finds herself drawn to two different guys� a smoldering hot fan of her secret, seductive online persona, and a sexy fireman named Jack who looks out for her in their NYC neighborhood.

She has no idea that I know her better than she knows herself. Her deepest secrets, her darkest desires—she's careful, but I’ve been watching, never leaving footprints in the snow outside her home.

Jack was the first responder to the accident that stole a beautiful young woman's family two Christmases ago, and he's been quietly guarding her ever since. When Jack uncovers Chloe’s secret account, his obsession only grows. Both he and Chloe are drawn to the darkness that mirrors their own.

She’s my Christmas wish come true. And I'm hers. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Will Chloe’s Christmas be a tale of fiery passion...or a dangerous game with a man whose love knows no bounds?

He Sees You When You're Sleeping is a dark romance with a morally grey male lead. Some themes may be disturbing to readers. Please check the content warnings at the beginning of the book.

Tropes: Stalker romance, Acquainted in real life, Christmas romance, Fireman romance, Morally grey MMC, He falls first, Kink friendly]]>
313 Alta Hensley 0063433974 jess 2 3.65 2024 He Sees You When You're Sleeping
author: Alta Hensley
name: jess
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves:
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<![CDATA[What You Are Looking for is in the Library]]> 123191812 For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a charming, internationally bestselling Japanese novel about how the perfect book recommendation can change a readers� life.

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose.

In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?]]>
223 Michiko Aoyama jess 5 4.23 2020 What You Are Looking for is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: jess
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
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Darkly 208430757
As Dia and her fellow interns delve into the heart of Darkly, they discover hidden symbols, buried clues, and a web of intrigue. Who are these other teens, and what secrets do they keep? Why were any of them really chosen? The answers lie within the twisted labyrinth of Darkly.]]>
399 Marisha Pessl 0593706552 jess 4 3.71 2024 Darkly
author: Marisha Pessl
name: jess
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
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<![CDATA[The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club #1)]]> 58815966
Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…]]>
352 Robert Thorogood 1728250536 jess 4 3.98 2021 The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club #1)
author: Robert Thorogood
name: jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
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Piercing 14288 A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup

A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami—a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, and award-winning author—has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan’s most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.]]>
192 Ryū Murakami 014303863X jess 3 3.69 1994 Piercing
author: Ryū Murakami
name: jess
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
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Lonely Castle in the Mirror 54633167
Delving into their emotional lives with sympathy and a generous warmth, Lonely Castle in the Mirror shows the unexpected rewards of reaching out to others. Exploring vivid human stories with a twisty and puzzle-like plot, this heart-warming novel is full of joy and hope for anyone touched by sadness and vulnerability.]]>
355 Mizuki Tsujimura 0857527274 jess 5 4.25 2017 Lonely Castle in the Mirror
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: jess
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Fate of the Sun King (Artefacts of Ouranos, #3)]]> 195436605
With the Heart Crown now in her possession, Lor must navigate the dangers of being an heir on the run, knowing more than one power-hungry ruler is after her blood. When she returns to Aphelion to unlock her magic and recover her family's legacy, it becomes clearer than ever that all that’s gold doesn’t sparkle. No stranger to battles, she continues to fight her attraction to the Aurora Prince, understanding this might be the one she finally loses.
As the past mixes with the present, Lor uncovers the truth about the Artefacts and their role in shaping her destiny. Now, her future hangs in the balance, leaving her closer than ever to getting everything she's ever wanted... or losing it all forever.]]>
556 Nisha J. Tuli 1538767686 jess 3 4.00 2024 Fate of the Sun King (Artefacts of Ouranos, #3)
author: Nisha J. Tuli
name: jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Rule of the Aurora King (Artefacts of Ouranos, #2)]]> 194848599 Full of pulse-pounding action, steamy enemies-to-lovers romance, and glittering fae magic, the epic second installment of the Artefacts of Ouranos series is perfect for fans of romantasy favorites like A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Fourth Wing.

“I am not his conquest. I am not his to claim. I am my own castle.�

Freed from the golden clutches of the Sun King, Lor now finds herself in the hands of Nadir, the Aurora Prince. Convinced she’s hiding something, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make her talk. But Lor knows the value of secrets—she’s been keeping them her entire life—and she’s not letting hers go without a fight.

When Lor and Nadir team up to search for a lost item that holds the key to her past and her future, she isn’t sure she can trust him. All she knows is she won’t fall for another royal fae’s promises again.

With the Sun King determined to reclaim her, Lor must keep on the move, but nowhere is safe. Not until she destroys him and the Aurora King. But she soon learns that the future of Ouranos depends on much more than avenging her shattered legacy.

ձ>
514 Nisha J. Tuli jess 3 4.15 2023 Rule of the Aurora King (Artefacts of Ouranos, #2)
author: Nisha J. Tuli
name: jess
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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<![CDATA[Trial of the Sun Queen (Artefacts of Ouranos, #1)]]> 194848627 A Court of Thorns and Roses meets The Fourth Wing  in this pulse-pounding, enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance—with fae magic, high-stakes trials, and a dark prince—from Booktok favorite author Nisha J. Tuli. 

Ten women. A deadly contest. Only one can win the Sun King's heart.
Lor has endured twelve long years of torment under the Aurora King’s rule. Her only desire is to escape and pay him back for every moment of misery she's endured.

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

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

Now Lor must win, because if she loses, she dies. Or worse, she'll be returned to the evil—and now vengeful—Aurora King.]]>
407 Nisha J. Tuli jess 3 4.11 2023 Trial of the Sun Queen (Artefacts of Ouranos, #1)
author: Nisha J. Tuli
name: jess
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/17
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Ink Blood Sister Scribe 62967342 In this spellbinding debut novel, two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family's library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection--a tale of familial loyalty and betrayal, and the pursuit of magic and power.

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .

In the great tradition of Ninth House, The Magicians, and Practical Magic, this is a suspenseful and richly atmospheric novel that draws readers into a vast world filled with mystery and magic, romance, and intrigue--and marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in speculative fiction.]]>
484 Emma Törzs 0063253488 jess 5 4.20 2023 Ink Blood Sister Scribe
author: Emma Törzs
name: jess
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
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<![CDATA[Heir of Uncertain Magic (Whimbrel House, #2)]]> 61252380
Thanks to house tamer Hulda Larkin, the mischief infesting Whimbrel House has calmed. But if Hulda’s job is done, what does that mean for Merritt Fernsby, inheritor of the remote Narragansett Bay estate, who’s only now coming to terms with his enchanted place in the world?]]>
300 Charlie N. Holmberg 1662508689 jess 4 4.17 2023 Heir of Uncertain Magic (Whimbrel House, #2)
author: Charlie N. Holmberg
name: jess
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
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<![CDATA[Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House, #1)]]> 60596112
Hulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms has been trained in taming such structures in order to preserve their historical and magical significance. She understands the dangers of bespelled homes given to tantrums. She advises that it’s in Merritt’s best interest to make Whimbrel House their ally. To do that, she’ll need to move in, too.

Prepared as she is with augury, a set of magic tools, and a new staff trained in the uncanny, Hulda’s work still proves unexpectedly difficult. She and Merritt grow closer as the investigation progresses, but the house’s secrets run deeper than they anticipated. And the sentient walls aren’t their only concern—something outside is coming for the enchantments of Whimbrel House, and it could be more dangerous than what rattles within.]]>
347 Charlie N. Holmberg 1662500335 jess 4 4.15 2022 Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House, #1)
author: Charlie N. Holmberg
name: jess
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves:
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The Teller of Small Fortunes 207610813 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences�

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]>
336 Julie Leong 0593815904 jess 0 to-read 4.09 2024 The Teller of Small Fortunes
author: Julie Leong
name: jess
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Crown Prophecy 219649961 When she’s hired into the kitchen of the magic-Wielding royal family, she thinks the most challenging part of her new routine will be hiding her position from her magic-hating mother. She certainly doesn’t expect to get entangled in the affairs of the crown prince.
Then Prince Evander surprises her� instead of the selfish, arrogant royal she expected, he’s witty and kind and shares her love of reading. Quinn finds herself more drawn to him than she should be, especially considering he has a duty to preserve the magic of the kingdom by marrying one of the Wielders competing for his hand.
But the contest is masking a darker truth, and the duo finds themselves working together to decipher a cryptic prophecy that might be their only chance of saving the kingdom. Battling a tidal wave of forbidden feelings, Quinn and Evander are left to reckon with the possibility that the mystery that binds them may also be the ruin of everything they love.]]>
350 Meg Acuna jess 0 to-read 4.18 The Crown Prophecy
author: Meg Acuna
name: jess
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)]]> 139391940 A spicy small-town romance and TikTok phenomenon, perfect for fans of Hannah Grace and Stephanie Archer.

When Jeanie's aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor's gossip at all costs. But Jeanie's arrival disrupts Logan's routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie's happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won't fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes�

The Pumpkin Spice Café is a cozy romantic mystery for fans of Gilmore Girls, with a grumpy x sunshine dynamic, a small-town setting and a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:

� grumpy x sunshine
� small town
� found family
� spicy]]>
373 Laurie Gilmore 0008610665 jess 2 3.36 2023 The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: jess
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
review:
logan was so annoying good god
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<![CDATA[What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)]]> 58975864 From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]>
159 T. Kingfisher jess 2 4.00 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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Home Before Dark 50833559 What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?]]>
389 Riley Sager 1524745170 jess 3 4.05 2020 Home Before Dark
author: Riley Sager
name: jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:

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Ghost Radio 3707819
Ghost Radio is a terrifying novel about a ghost-story call-in radio show that inadvertently opens a doorway into the paranormal, giving voice to the dead and instigating an epic battle for the souls of the living

From the cramped bowels of a dimly lit radio station, Ghost Radio is beamed onto the airwaves. More than a call-in show to tell scary stories about vampires and poltergeists, Ghost Radio is a sanctuary for those sleepless denizens of the night, lost halfway between this world and the next.

Joaquin, the hip, melancholy host, sits deep in a fog of cigarette smoke, fielding calls from believers and detractors alike. He is joined in the booth by his darkly beautiful girlfriend, Alondra, and his engineer, Watts. Soon what began as an underground cult sensation is primed to break out to mainstream audiences. When a huge radio conglomerate offers to syndicate the show and Ghost Radio becomes a national hit with an expanding legion of hardcore fans, neither Joaquin, Alondra, nor Watts is remotely prepared for what is about to happen.

Though a charismatic host, Joaquin remains a skeptic even as he begins to notice a curious and troubling phenomenon—he feels himself drawn further and further into the terrifying stories he solicits on the radio. Slowly he loses control over his reality and finds himself unable to distinguish between the real world and the world populated by the nightmares on Ghost Radio. He is forced to confront his past and his own mortality in order to save that which is most precious to him and repair the crumbling wall between the living and the dead.]]>
353 Leopoldo Gout 0061242683 jess 2 3.06 2008 Ghost Radio
author: Leopoldo Gout
name: jess
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:
this book pissed me off. i listened to the audiobook version and i'm giving it two stars based solely on that bc pedro pascal did a great job but unfortunately not even he could save this mess.
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<![CDATA[Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery]]> 56660256 Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

Connecticut, 1666.

An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector.

The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil.

To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.

Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan � one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.]]>
312 Brom jess 5 4.26 2021 Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery
author: Brom
name: jess
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)]]> 54816556 Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess's traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters � but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.]]>
540 Tasha Suri 0316538515 jess 0 to-read 4.14 2021 The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)
author: Tasha Suri
name: jess
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
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If It Makes You Happy 210521813
I, on the other hand, don’t–at all–have anything figured out.

Trust me, I didn’t think taking over my mom’s dream bed and breakfast in Copper Run Vermont was going to be easy. It should be a good place to heal after my divorce. But apparently my scones belong in the garbage with my small talk skills. As pointed out by none other than Cliff.

Cliff is inescapable. He knows exactly what people need–always. His charm, the way he wears flannel, and even his pastries, make not wanting to be friends with Cliff and his daughters pretty hard.

Friends? I can make friends. That’s safe.

Except I’m leaving in three months to pass the inn off to my little sister and get the promotion in Seattle I’ve been working towards.

So ask me why I’m thinking about kissing my hot neighbor.]]>
510 Julie Olivia jess 5 4.36 2024 If It Makes You Happy
author: Julie Olivia
name: jess
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves:
review:

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The Teller of Small Fortunes 207611551 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences�

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]>
336 Julie Leong 0593815912 jess 0 to-read 3.82 2024 The Teller of Small Fortunes
author: Julie Leong
name: jess
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1)]]> 48908401
When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal: a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water, and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals.

Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order: “Don’t let her die. We are coming.� Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she and the queen will be granted their freedom.

But no one has ever survived.

With an incurable plague sweeping Zalindov, a mysterious new inmate fighting for Kiva’s heart, and a prison rebellion brewing, Kiva can’t escape the terrible feeling that her trials have only just begun.

From bestselling author Lynette Noni comes a dark, thrilling YA fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, and Sabaa Tahir.]]>
409 Lynette Noni 0358436346 jess 4 4.26 2021 The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1)
author: Lynette Noni
name: jess
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
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The Stone Witch of Florence 203747795
1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift—harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return. Ginevra obliges, assuming the city’s leaders are finally ready to accept her unorthodox cures amid a pandemic. But upon arrival, she is tasked with a much different she must use her collection of jewels to track down a ruthless thief who is ransacking Florence’s churches for priceless relics—the city’s only hope for protection. If she succeeds, she’ll be a recognized physician and never accused of witchcraft again. But as her investigation progresses, Ginevra discovers she’s merely a pawn in a much larger scheme than the one she’s been hired to solve. And the dangerous men behind this conspiracy won’t think twice about killing a stone witch to get what they want…]]>
368 Anna Rasche 0778310450 jess 0 to-read 3.62 2024 The Stone Witch of Florence
author: Anna Rasche
name: jess
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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Private Rites 199313102 From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else


It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.]]>
327 Julia Armfield jess 5 3.85 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: jess
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/02
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<![CDATA[This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom, #1)]]> 60788099 Clashing empires, forbidden romance, and a long-forgotten queen destined to save her people—Tahereh Mafi’s first in an epic, romantic trilogy inspired by Persian mythology.

To all the world, Alizeh is a disposable servant, not the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom forced to hide in plain sight.

The crown prince, Kamran, has heard the prophecies foretelling the death of his king. But he could never have imagined that the servant girl with the strange eyes, the girl he can’t put out of his mind, would one day soon uproot his kingdom—and the world.

Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Tomi Adeyemi, and Sabaa Tahir, this is the explosive first book in a new fantasy trilogy from the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-nominated author Tahereh Mafi.]]>
528 Tahereh Mafi 0062972456 jess 0 to-read 3.98 2022 This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom, #1)
author: Tahereh Mafi
name: jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
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That's Not My Name 123429195
Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there―or who she is. A passing officer takes her to the police station, and not long after, a frantic man arrives. He's been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos. He is her father. Her name is Mary. Or so he says.

When Lola slammed the car door and stormed off into the night, Drew thought they just needed some time to cool off. Except Lola disappeared, and the sheriff, his friends, and the whole town are convinced Drew murdered his girlfriend. Forget proving his innocence, he needs to find her before it's too late. The longer Lola is missing, the fewer leads there are to follow…and the more danger they both are in.]]>
297 Megan Lally 1728270111 jess 4 4.05 2023 That's Not My Name
author: Megan Lally
name: jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
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In the Garden of Monsters 203854081 336 Crystal King 0778310574 jess 0 to-read 3.52 In the Garden of Monsters
author: Crystal King
name: jess
average rating: 3.52
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Immortal Dark (Immortal Dark Trilogy, #1)]]> 204593711
It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.

To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.

When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.]]>
432 Tigest Girma jess 3 3.67 2024 Immortal Dark (Immortal Dark Trilogy, #1)
author: Tigest Girma
name: jess
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/18
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So Thirsty 203608552 A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life.

Her husband surprises her with a birthday weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi.

Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.

The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.]]>
304 Rachel Harrison 0593642546 jess 4 3.50 2024 So Thirsty
author: Rachel Harrison
name: jess
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/12
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The Night Guest 127306444
Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same � have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?]]>
197 Hildur Knútsdóttir 1250322049 jess 4 3.30 2021 The Night Guest
author: Hildur Knútsdóttir
name: jess
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
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The Only One Left 62703226 At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope


Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life


It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer�I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,� Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead


As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.]]>
383 Riley Sager 0593183223 jess 4 4.12 2023 The Only One Left
author: Riley Sager
name: jess
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/11
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Do Me a Favor 156709253
Until she meets her new neighbor.

Hudson Daws, the handyman next door, lives on a farm with his parents and two adult children. He’s the opposite of everything she’s ever known. His happily chaotic life includes biker barbecues, an escape artist dog, and adorably menacing goats. He’s also got a sinfully sexy smile and a rumbling bass voice that makes her shiver. He inspires her.

From their first meeting, the two fall into an escalating cycle of favors, paybacks…and attraction, even though Willa’s trying to keep her distance.

They both have their own pasts to deal with. Now, they just have to figure out if they have a future.

A delectable rom-com about a widowed cookbook writer and a divorced handyman who find that it’s never too late for a fresh start.]]>
299 Cathy Yardley 1662517092 jess 3 3.74 2024 Do Me a Favor
author: Cathy Yardley
name: jess
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/09/05
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A Bánh Mì for Two 200982333 In this sweet sapphic romance about two foodies in love, Vivi meets Lan while studying abroad in Vietnam and they spend the semester unraveling their families' histories—and eating all the street food in Sài Gòn.

In Sài Gòn, Lan is always trying to be the perfect daughter, dependable and willing to care for her widowed mother and their bánh mì stall. Her secret passion, however, is A Bánh Mì for Two, the food blog she started with her father but has stopped updating since his passing.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese American Vivi Huynh, has never been to Việt Nam. Her parents rarely talk about the homeland that clearly haunts them. So Vivi secretly goes to Vietnam for a study abroad program her freshman year of college. She’s determined to figure out why her parents left, and to try everything she’s seen on her favorite food blog, A Bánh Mì for Two.

When Vivi and Lan meet in Sài Gòn, they strike a deal. Lan will show Vivi around the city, helping her piece together her mother’s story through crumbling photographs and old memories. Vivi will help Lan start writing again so she can enter a food blogging contest. And slowly, as they explore the city and their pasts, Vivi and Lan fall in love.]]>
224 Trinity Nguyen 1250910838 jess 3 3.85 2024 A Bánh Mì for Two
author: Trinity Nguyen
name: jess
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/04
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You're Safe Here 199798281 Wellness, motherhood, and technology converge in a future California as three women’s seemingly innocuous decisions have consequences greater than they could imagine.

In 2060, the WellPod is the latest launch from the largest tech company the world has ever seen—a fleet of floating personal paradises scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean, focused entirely on health, solitude, and relaxation. Created by an enigmatic founder who will stop at nothing to ensure her company’s success, it is the long-awaited pinnacle of wellness technology. For newly pregnant Maggie, the six-week program is the perfect chance to get away…especially since the baby isn’t her partner’s.

Noa Behar isn’t a perfect fiancée. She’s too distracted, too focused on her work in helping program the WellPod to give Maggie the attention she deserves. But when she discovers something rotten beneath WellPod’s shiny exterior—a history of faulty tech and dangerous cover-ups—she knows one thing: She’ll do whatever it takes to keep Maggie safe.]]>
320 Leslie Stephens 166803431X jess 3 3.31 2024 You're Safe Here
author: Leslie Stephens
name: jess
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/23
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I Was a Teenage Slasher 199798522
It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA � they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself � from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber � for all of Lamesa, Texas.

Be happy you weren’t there.

Be happy you’re only reading about it.]]>
373 Stephen Graham Jones 1668022249 jess 1 3.54 2024 I Was a Teenage Slasher
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: jess
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/08/11
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my first one star review of the year (it's august!). i cannot express how much i hated this.
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The Complete Works 8444917 This eBook of 'Complete Works' by Edgar Allan Poe has been tested on below parameters across ALL devices (including Kindle, Android, iBook, Cloud Readers etc.). It works 100% perfectly as required.

SUCCESSFUL TESTS RESULTS ACROSS ALL DEVICES:

1) Active Footnotes & Endnotes with One-Click navigation.

2) Active Table of Contents.

3) Word Wise � Enabled.

4) Illustrations & Tables (if any) are available with ZOOM feature on double-click.

5) Formatted for Faster Reading experience with easy Font & Page adjustments.

NOTE: This is an unabridged content. Spelling errors or Typos (if any) have been corrected as per Amazon standards.

About “Complete Works� by 'Edgar Allan Poe' *

The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 � October 7, 1849) include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing.These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism.Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism and allegory.Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface; works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art.Poe pursued originality in his works, and disliked proverbs.He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy.His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Though known as a masterly practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre; he was following a long-standing popular tradition.

* - This content has been taken from GoodReads.com."

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Edgar Allan Poe jess 4 4.52 1849 The Complete Works
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: jess
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1849
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
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Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

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

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

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

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

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]>
304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 jess 4 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: jess
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/07
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Jar of Hearts 36315374
When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong—one of the most popular girls in school—disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser—now a detective with Seattle PD—finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it?]]>
311 Jennifer Hillier 1250154197 jess 4 4.09 2018 Jar of Hearts
author: Jennifer Hillier
name: jess
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
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Such a Bad Influence 198509143
Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister @evelyn, a lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age on the family YouTube channel after a viral video when she was five. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family business—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.

Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence, Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.

As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, and podcast episodes, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?]]>
336 Olivia Muenter 1683694015 jess 4 3.39 2024 Such a Bad Influence
author: Olivia Muenter
name: jess
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/08/01
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The Midnight Feast 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at� The Midnight Feast.]]>
354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 jess 3 3.55 2024 The Midnight Feast
author: Lucy Foley
name: jess
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
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The Echo of Old Books 62060274
With no trace of how these mysterious books came into the world, Ashlyn is caught up in a decades-old literary mystery, beckoned by two hearts in ruins, whoever they were, wherever they are. Determined to learn the truth behind the doomed lovers� tale, she reads on, following a trail of broken promises and seemingly unforgivable betrayals. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story—and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.]]>
431 Barbara Davis 1542038154 jess 4 4.27 2023 The Echo of Old Books
author: Barbara Davis
name: jess
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
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One of the Good Guys 181694466 If most men claim to be good, why are most women still afraid to walk home alone at night?

Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole upends his life. He leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama, and relentless careerism that curdled his relationship and mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She’s living a short walk from Cole’s seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. Although Cole still can’t figure out what went wrong with his marriage, and Leonora is having trouble acclimating to the hostile landscape, the pair forges a connection on the eroding bluff they call home.

Then two young female activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora suddenly find themselves in the middle of a police investigation--and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. And as the tension escalates alongside the search for the missing women, they quickly realize that they don’t know each other that well after all.]]>
289 Araminta Hall 1638931550 jess 2 3.47 2024 One of the Good Guys
author: Araminta Hall
name: jess
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
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<![CDATA[DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)]]> 194036469
For Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at the store is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including DallerGut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.

A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.]]>
243 Lee Mi-ye 1035412748 jess 3 3.66 2020 DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)
author: Lee Mi-ye
name: jess
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
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I Hope This Finds You Well 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

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

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

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

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]>
338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 jess 5 3.75 2024 I Hope This Finds You Well
author: Natalie Sue
name: jess
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
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It Had to Be You 201102402 Two contract killers, each with a hit out on the other, must fight their growing attraction as they face off in an epic game of lust and murder across Western Europe.When Eva and Jonathan hook up on the sleeper train from Florence to Paris, they think they’ll never see each other again. Which is too bad, because neither has ever felt a spark like this for another person. But love isn’t on the agenda in their line of work. Six months later, they run into each other in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. This meeting is not by chance, because Eva has been hired to kill Jonathan. She’s a contract killer, but what she doesn’t know is that he is too.Their meeting kicks off a high-stakes cross-continent adventure across Western Europe. There will be tourism. There will be bodies.  Eva and Jonathan might even fall for each other.As the two get closer to completing their assignments, it becomes clear that they are also being hunted—by something even more dangerous than love. . .]]> 384 Eliza Jane Brazier 0593438922 jess 4 3.57 2024 It Had to Be You
author: Eliza Jane Brazier
name: jess
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
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Middletide 199798457
One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Out of money and motivation, thirty-three-year-old Elijah returns to his empty childhood home to lick the wounds of his futile writing career. Hungry for purpose, he throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, the extraordinary girl from the nearby reservation whom he betrayed but was never able to forget.

As the town of Point Orchards turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder in this scintillating literary thriller that seeks to uncover a case of love, loss, and revenge.]]>
288 Sarah Crouch 166803509X jess 3 3.48 2024 Middletide
author: Sarah Crouch
name: jess
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
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Swiped 199797614
Gwen Turner has made a bloody mess of her life. She recently broke up with the best man she’s ever known for reasons even she can’t admit to herself and quit a lucrative job to open her own coffee shop. To top it all off, her best friend is getting married and leaving her behind in singlehood.

Along with too much cheap wine and bad reality TV, Gwen turns to a dating app to help fill the void in her life. Swiping through the few eligible bachelors left in town, she spends her evenings out on one disastrous date after another. But when a string of murders suddenly occurs in her small coastal English city, she’s shocked by the connection between each of the victims—they’ve all been on a date with her.

Before she knows what’s happening, Gwen finds herself the main suspect in a serial killer’s murderous spree, and the only way she can clear her name is to track down her former dates (even those that have ghosted her) and unmask a killer before it’s too late.]]>
304 L.M. Chilton 1668045702 jess 3 3.41 2023 Swiped
author: L.M. Chilton
name: jess
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
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The Golden Spoon 61273344
The author of numerous best-selling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,� Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, although no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. Things go awry as the baking competition begins. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned too high—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.]]>
288 Jessa Maxwell 1668008009 jess 4 3.44 2023 The Golden Spoon
author: Jessa Maxwell
name: jess
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/14
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<![CDATA[Bad Blood (Witches of Nightfall, #1)]]> 205155862 He’s also my only hope.

I have to stop my sister from marrying his brother. A loveless, arranged marriage would kill her, but she’s determined to go through with it to keep our family safe. Nightfall tradition demands a witch and vampire marriage—ASAP—or we’re out.

Darcy’s solution?
We pretend we’re a love match, trick our siblings into confessing they don’t want to tie the knot, and sort out how to save the town once the wedding bells are silenced—permanently.

It’s not a bad plan. In theory.
If only hate-banging Darcy weren’t my new favorite hobby. If only he’d kept his secretly kind heart under wraps and this fake love had stayed fake...

Bad Blood is a red hot, enemies-to-lovers Standalone romance. Formerly titled My Big Fat Bloodsucker Wedding. Same addictive read, new title and cover.]]>
284 Bella Jacobs jess 2 3.87 2022 Bad Blood (Witches of Nightfall, #1)
author: Bella Jacobs
name: jess
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/12
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Between Two Fires 13543121
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.]]>
432 Christopher Buehlman 1937007863 jess 4 4.20 2012 Between Two Fires
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: jess
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter 826300
For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse.

As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can.]]>
401 Kim Edwards 0141030143 jess 0 to-read 3.42 2005 The Memory Keeper's Daughter
author: Kim Edwards
name: jess
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
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<![CDATA[The Unhoneymooners (Unhoneymooners, #1)]]> 43341641
Starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal

Named a “Must-Read� by TODAY, Us Weekly , Bustle , BuzzFeed , ŷ , Entertainment Weekly , Publishers Weekly , Southern Living, Book Riot, Woman’s Day , The Toronto Star, and more!

For two sworn enemies, anything can happen during the Hawaiian trip of a lifetime—maybe even love—in this romantic comedy from the New York Times bestselling authors of Roomies .

Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky from inexplicable mishaps to a recent layoff, her life seems to be almost comically jinxed. By contrast, her sister Ami is an eternal champion...she even managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests. Unfortunately for Olive, the only thing worse than constant bad luck is having to spend the wedding day with the best man (and her nemesis), Ethan Thomas.

Olive braces herself for wedding hell, determined to put on a brave face, but when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. Suddenly there’s a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo.

Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui. After all, ten days of bliss is worth having to assume the role of loving newlyweds, right? But the weird thing is...Olive doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, the more she pretends to be the luckiest woman alive, the more it feels like she might be.

With Christina Lauren’s “uniquely hilarious and touching voice� ( Entertainment Weekly ), The Unhoneymooners is a romance for anyone who has ever felt unlucky in love.]]>
429 Christina Lauren jess 4 4.09 2019 The Unhoneymooners (Unhoneymooners, #1)
author: Christina Lauren
name: jess
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
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Our Wives Under the Sea 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]>
240 Julia Armfield 152901722X jess 4 3.75 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: jess
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/22
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The Rom-Commers 195790586 She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

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

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

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter―even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules―and comes true?]]>
336 Katherine Center 1250283809 jess 4 4.06 2024 The Rom-Commers
author: Katherine Center
name: jess
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
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<![CDATA[Daughter of the Bone Forest (Witch Hall, #1)]]> 111673263 Two girls reluctantly bound by fate must weather a dangerous courtship as a prophesied war grows ever closer in Jasmine Skye's high-stakes, queernormative dark fantasy debut, Daughter of the Bone Forest.

Rosy is a bone familiar, gifted with the power to shift into animals marked with exposed bone. She spends most of her days in the magical Bone Forest, caring for her feral grandmother and hiding her powers to avoid conscription by the Witch King’s army. Until the day that Princess Shaw, a witch known as Death’s Heir, visits the Forest. When Rosy saves Shaw’s life, the princess offers her the chance to attend the prestigious school, Witch Hall, as payment. Though Rosy is wary of Shaw’s intentions, she cannot pass up the opportunity to find the cure for her grandmother’s affliction.

But at Witch Hall, Rosy finds herself embroiled in political games she doesn't understand. Shaw wants Rosy for her entourage, a partner to help lead the coming war. All Rosy wants is to stay out of trouble until she can graduate and save her grandmother, but she can't deny her attraction to Shaw or the comfort Shaw’s magic gives her. Will Rosy give in to her destiny, or will the Bone Forest call her home once and for all?]]>
432 Jasmine Skye 1250872456 jess 4 4.29 2024 Daughter of the Bone Forest (Witch Hall, #1)
author: Jasmine Skye
name: jess
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/18
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Where Waters Meet 61261086 A daughter discovers the dramatic history that shaped her mother’s secret life in an emotional and immersive novel by Zhang Ling, the bestselling author of A Single Swallow.

There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.

Struggling with the loss, Phoenix comes across her mother’s suitcase—a memory box Rain had brought from home. Inside, Phoenix finds two old photographs and a decorative bottle holding a crystalized powder. Her auntie Mei tells her these missing pieces of her mother’s early life can only be explained when they meet, and so, clutching her mother’s ashes, Phoenix boards a plane for China. What at first seems like a daughter’s quest to uncover a mother’s secrets becomes a startling journey of self-discovery.

Told across decades and continents, Zhang Ling’s exquisite novel is a tale of extraordinary courage and survival. It illuminates the resilience of humanity, the brutalities of life, the secrets we keep and those we share, and the driving forces it takes to survive.]]>
281 Zhang Ling 1662509014 jess 3 3.86 2023 Where Waters Meet
author: Zhang Ling
name: jess
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/12
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The Black God's Drums 38118138 Rising SFF star P. Djèlí Clark brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life in his immersive debut novella The Black God's Drums

In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air � in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.

But Creeper also has a secret Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.

Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.

“Asinewy mosaic of Haitian sky pirates, wily street urchins, and orisha magic.Beguiling and bombastic!� —Scott Westerfeld, New York Times bestselling author

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]>
112 P. Djèlí Clark 1250294703 jess 4 4.02 2018 The Black God's Drums
author: P. Djèlí Clark
name: jess
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
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Here For The Cake 205838692 A spicy, sassy, and swoony fake dating romantic comedy from Amazon Charts bestselling author Jennifer Millikin.

A week on an island sounds like the stuff of beach dreams, but for Paisley Royce, it's a nightmare. Her little sister is marrying her ex-college sweetheart, and Paisley is serving as maid of honor. To add insult to injury, nobody will let Paisley forget she’s single.

Bachelorette weekend changes everything when she runs into her old college frenemy, Klein Madigan.

Klein is still intelligent and funny, and somehow time has only made him more attractive.

Paisley is Klein’s ‘one that got away�, not that he’d ever admit it to her. A colossal misstep (and one terrible kiss) in college sealed their fate.

Or so they thought.

Klein’s an aspiring author allergic to social media. Paisley owns a digital marketing agency.

A brilliant plan is hatched: A trip across the country for a week of faking out her family in exchange for her firm marketing his work.

One hastily scrawled and signed contract on a bar napkin later, Paisley and Klein embark on a journey of tension, only one bed, and fake dating shenanigans.

Paisley’s goal is to survive the week.

Klein’s plan is to enjoy the sun, sand, and wedding cake.

But then there’s a scorching kiss to make up for that bad one in college.

And another kiss in a lighthouse during a thunderstorm. A gentle palm on Paisley’s lower back, and a reassuring hand squeeze under the table.

Everyone is convinced Klein and Paisley are the real deal, but as the week wears on, they begin to wonder if the only people they’re kidding are themselves.]]>
472 Jennifer Millikin jess 4 4.34 Here For The Cake
author: Jennifer Millikin
name: jess
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
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Projections 126918738
Love may last a lifetime, but in this dark historical fantasy, the bitterness of rejection endures for centuries.

As a young woman seeks vengeance on the obsessed sorcerer who murdered her because he could not have her, her murderer sends projections of himself out into the world to seek out and seduce women who will return the love she denied―or suffer mortal consequence. A lush, gothic journey across worlds full of strange characters and even stranger magic.

Sarah Porter’s adult debut explores misogyny and the soul-corrupting power of unrequited love through an enchanted lens of violence and revenge.

Also by Sarah
Vassa in the Night
When I Cast Your Shadow
Never-Contented Things]]>
452 S.E. Porter 0765396777 jess 4 3.46 2024 Projections
author: S.E. Porter
name: jess
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/08
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Earthlings 50269327
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]>
247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 jess 3 3.59 2018 Earthlings
author: Sayaka Murata
name: jess
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/05/22
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<![CDATA[LOVE SONGS AND FERRY TALES: A Small-Town Romantic Comedy (A Greensea Island Adventure Book 1)]]> 200209135
Jac
It's been a not-so-great year. Divorce. Check. Living on Pennies. Check. All I need is a quiet summer back at my childhood home on Greensea Island--sitting on the deck with a glass of rosé, savoring one of Dad's legendary charcuterie boards, and catching up on all the Sherman Family news. But instead, I find myself in an unexpected conversation with a random British guy in my parents' kitchen who just casually mentioned he's rented their house for the summer. My carefully laid out plan has just hit a turbulent wave.

Johnny
She honestly doesn't know who I am. I can see it in her gigantic green eyes. I didn't get the oh-my-gosh-you're Johnny-Nickel eyes or the swoon here-are-my-underpants look. She's standing at the end of the kitchen counter, brown hair in one of those cattywampus buns, in an oversized white tee hanging off one shoulder and ripped jeans. Looking hella sexy even if she tried to stab me with a house key when I walked in. I just wonder how long I can keep my true identity hidden from her....

And now they're stuck together...for better or worse!

Love Songs and Ferry Tales is a hidden identity, forced proximity, closed door rom-com with a quirky small town and an anonymous gossip reporter. You won't want to miss it!]]>
244 Julie Farley 0989222780 jess 3 3.78 LOVE SONGS AND FERRY TALES: A Small-Town Romantic Comedy (A Greensea Island Adventure Book 1)
author: Julie Farley
name: jess
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
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<![CDATA[Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir]]> 53060552 "There is no writer quite like Dolly Alderton working today and very soon the world will know it.�-- Lisa Taddeo, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Three Women

“Dolly Alderton has always been a sparkling Roman candle of talent. She is funny, smart, and explosively engaged in the wonders and weirdness of the world. But what makes this memoir more than mere entertainment is the mature and sophisticated evolution that Alderton describes in these pages. It’s a beautifully told journey and a thoughtful, important book. I loved it.�--Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and City of Girls

The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride

When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.

]]>
368 Dolly Alderton 0062968807 jess 3 3.90 2018 Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir
author: Dolly Alderton
name: jess
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
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An Excellent Host 212436950
Somewhere in Brooklyn, a feast awaits its guests, a man cannot believe his great good luck, and ancient gods get ready to receive their due in this horror-fantasy updating of Greek myths.

An exclusive paperback for Indie Bookstore Day, featuring a new story from Chelsea G. Summers, the bestselling author of A Certain Hunger. Signed by the author.]]>
69 Chelsea G. Summers 196188416X jess 0 to-read 4.01 2024 An Excellent Host
author: Chelsea G. Summers
name: jess
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
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<![CDATA[Five Broken Blades (The Broken Blades, #1)]]> 200982383 It’s the season
for treason�

The king of Yusan must die.

The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.

He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.

And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.

They can agree on murder.

They can agree on treachery.

But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.

Let the best liar win.]]>
474 Mai Corland 1649376901 jess 4 3.81 2024 Five Broken Blades (The Broken Blades, #1)
author: Mai Corland
name: jess
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
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Ink Blood Sister Scribe 200141872 416 Emma Törzs 006325347X jess 0 to-read 3.97 2023 Ink Blood Sister Scribe
author: Emma Törzs
name: jess
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/13
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One for My Enemy 61254078 From New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes a tale of two rival witch families in modern day New York City, fighting to maintain control of their respective criminal ventures.

On one side of the conflict are the Antonova sisters, each one beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother, the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants known only as Baba Yaga. On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose community extortion ventures dominate the shadows of magical Manhattan.

After twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side. As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.

If, that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.


Also by Olivie Blake
Alone with You in the Ether
Masters of Death

The Atlas Six
The Atlas Paradox
]]>
432 Olivie Blake 1250884853 jess 0 to-read 3.82 2019 One for My Enemy
author: Olivie Blake
name: jess
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/10
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<![CDATA[Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)]]> 48716961 "A brilliant debut, full of everything I love: a sparkling and fully realized heroine, an intricate and deadly system of magic, and a searing romance that kept me reading long into the night. Serpent & Dove is an absolute gem of a book." —Sarah J. Maas, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Court of Thorns and Roses series

Bound as one, to love, honor, or burn. Book one of a stunning fantasy duology, this tale of witchcraft and forbidden love is perfect for fans of Kendare Blake and Sara Holland.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

As a huntsman of the Church, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. But when Lou pulls a wicked stunt, the two are forced into an impossible situation—marriage.

Lou, unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, must make a choice. And love makes fools of us all.

Set in a world of powerful women, dark magic, and off-the-charts romance, book one of this stunning fantasy duology will leave readers burning for more.]]>
544 Shelby Mahurin 0062878034 jess 0 to-read 4.05 2019 Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)
author: Shelby Mahurin
name: jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/10
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Cleopatra and Frankenstein 60784819
Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.]]>
384 Coco Mellors 1639730702 jess 0 to-read 3.67 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: jess
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/10
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Worry 176443441
It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls� mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.]]>
304 Alexandra Tanner 1668018616 jess 4 3.32 2024 Worry
author: Alexandra Tanner
name: jess
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/06
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Patricia Wants to Cuddle 59093587 The contestants of a reality television dating show compete for love—and their lives—in this pulse-pounding and viciously funny fiction debut from the GLAAD Award-winning author of Real Queer America.

When the final four women in competition for an aloof, if somewhat sleazy, bachelor's heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they mentally prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and of course, the salacious drama that viewers nationwide tune in to eagerly devour. Each woman came on 'The Catch' for her own reasons—brand sponsorships, followers, and yes, even love—and they've all got their eyes steadfastly trained on their respective prizes.

Enter Patricia, a temperamental, but woefully misunderstood local, living alone in the dark, verdant woods and desperate to forge a connection of her own. As the contestants perform for the cameras that surround them, Patricia watches from her place in the shadows, a queer specter haunting the bombastic display of heterosexuality before her. But when the cast and crew at last make her acquaintance atop the island's tallest and most desolate peak, they soon realize that if they're to have any hope of making it to the next Elimination Event, they'll first have to survive the night.

A whirlwind romp careening toward a last-girl-standing conclusion and a scathing indictment of contemporary American media culture, Patricia Wants to Cuddle is also a love story: between star-crossed lesbians who rise above their intolerant town, a deeply ambivalent woman and her budding self-actualization, and a chosen family of misfit islanders forging community against all odds.]]>
256 Samantha Allen 163893004X jess 4 3.52 2022 Patricia Wants to Cuddle
author: Samantha Allen
name: jess
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/05/04
shelves:
review:

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Evening Is the Whole Day 2154433 340 Preeta Samarasan 061887447X jess 0 to-read 3.65 2008 Evening Is the Whole Day
author: Preeta Samarasan
name: jess
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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One Last Word 181109954 288 Suzanne Park 0063216094 jess 0 to-read 3.21 One Last Word
author: Suzanne Park
name: jess
average rating: 3.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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Thinly Veiled 122823455
Freshly escaped from her unfulfilling and unnecessarily stressful criminal past of drug dealing and theft (and the manipulative ex-boyfriend associated with it), the stunningly beautiful, foul-mouthed romantic Claire Branson needs a fresh start. Routine. Monotony. An authentic happiness that could feel…simple. She needs her chaotic life to go right for once - please, and thank you. Claire never expected her run of bad luck to turn so quickly. After moving to the Appalachian small town of Salem, Virginia, a spur-of-the-moment visit to a nearby tavern leads to new, unforeseen possibilities when she opens the front door and locks eyes with Luke Turner, the smoking hot, steel-grey eyed bartender at the run-down watering hole.

Luke could be the simplicity that Claire longs for � he’s undeniably sexy, sarcastically sweet, and, above all, radiating innocence. But with Claire’s dark past festering under the gauze of her quick getaway, will Luke be able to keep his innocence? And, more importantly, will they get out of everything alive?

Thinly Veiled is a steamy slow burn romance novel with a dark, adventurous edge that keeps fans of suspenseful romance novels turning pages, wondering if that ‘happily ever after� ending will ever really come for Claire and Luke…while their passionate soirees will leave us all begging for more of their steamy love scenes.]]>
347 Eliza Modiste jess 2 3.82 Thinly Veiled
author: Eliza Modiste
name: jess
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
review:
the dialogue in this book felt like it was written by chatGPT
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Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]>
400 Emily Henry jess 4 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:

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