en-US Fri, 02 May 2025 08:39:13 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 231819058 Who knows what the storm will blow in��

Casey's cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door is sways ominously in the wind. But she's a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window.

She’s young. She’s alone. And she’s covered in blood.

The girl won't explain where she came from or loosen her grip on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a turn for the worse.

The girl has a dark secret. One she’ll kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning.

In this taut, deadly tale of survival and desperation, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden explores how far one girl will go to save herself.]]> 288 Freida McFadden 1464260915 Amy 0 to-read 0.0
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/02
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]]> 230824619 With all hope of an appeal fading away, the fate of a condemned murderess takes a shocking turn in a breathtaking short story by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Housemaid.

Talia Kemper is on death row for murdering her husband. She had an alibi and no known motive, yet Talia’s unwavering protestations of innocence have always been ignored. Then one day in the visiting area, she sees a recognizable stranger she’s certain is her husband. It turns out the man she’s been convicted of killing may not be dead after all. But as the days tick away toward Talia’s execution, what will it take for her to be believed?

Freida McFadden’s Death Row is part of Alibis, a collection of stories about lies, truth, and deception. It’s just a matter of what you can get away with. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 74 Freida McFadden 1662532261 Amy 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Amy 4 3.94 2025
author: Amity Gaige
name: Amy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars. I LOVED the structure and different points of view that we got throughout this story. By the last ten or so minutes of the audiobook I swear I was holding my breath waiting to see what happens. SO good, and you really get to feel so much for these characters in such a short amount of time, even the side characters! There is one TINY THING I wish we could've seen, but it's just as good left to our imaginations.
]]> 220161224 The acclaimed author of the ��lyrical coming-of-age novel�� (Good Morning America) The People We Keep returns with a luminous new story of redemption, breaking generational curses, and the power of family in its truest form.

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.

Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.]]> 432 Allison Larkin 1668008416 Amy 0 to-read 4.37 2025
author: Allison Larkin
name: Amy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 218153840 A young woman's radicalization sparks a widespread movement and media frenzy in this explosive novel of youthful passion, political awakening and first love, by an extraordinary new talent.

“A lush, cinematic and propulsive novel filled with sex, violence, glamor and a true revolutionary spirit. It’s a towering literary achievement.�� (Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner)

Corsica, 1993. As a sun-drenched Mediterranean summer heads into full swing, beautiful and brash seventeen-year-old Severine Guimard is counting down the days until graduation, dreaming of stardom while smoking cigarettes and seducing boys in her class to pass the time. The pampered French-American daughter of a politician, Severine knows she’s destined for bigger things.

That is, until one night, Severine is snatched off her bike by a militant trio fighting for Corsican independence and held for a large ransom. When the men fumble negotiating her release, the four become unlikely housemates deep in the island’s remote interior. Eager to gain the upper hand, Severine sets out to charm her captors, and soon, the handsome, intellectual leader, Bruno, the gentle university student, Tittu, and even the gruff, unflappable Petru grow to enjoy the company of their headstrong hostage.

As Severine is exposed to the group’s political philosophy, the ideas of Marx and Fanon begin to take root. With her flair for the spotlight and newfound beliefs, Severine becomes the face of a radical movement for a global TV audience. What follows is a summer of passion and terror, careening toward an inevitable, explosive conclusion, as Severine steps into the biggest role of her life.

The Bombshell is an electric novel filled with seduction and fervor as it explores the wonders and perils of youthful idealism, the combustibility of celebrity, and the sublime force of young love.]]> 416 Darrow Farr 0593833244 Amy 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Darrow Farr
name: Amy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 432 Emily Henry Amy 5 4.18 2025
author: Emily Henry
name: Amy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Every one of my Emily Henry reviews is just me yelling that no one is doing it like her, but really, no one is doing it like her. I realize that not everyone is liking this as much as some of her others but I’m not quite sure why because this is so quintessentially Emily Henry it almost felt meta at times. I loved Margaret’s story and I loved all the side characters and the forays into other side relationships we always get in an Emily Henry book. I also don’t understand the complaints about the romance being a subplot, it felt just as front and center as any other Emily Henry book to me. I can’t decide yet where this will fit in my overall ranking of her books, but I loved it.
]]> 223889073 An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.�� She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.�� The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0593803671 Amy 0 to-read 4.28
author: Joan Didion
name: Amy
average rating: 4.28
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date added: 2025/04/28
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]]> 220195725 In this razor-sharp, diabolical debut thriller, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.

Julie Chan has nothing. Her twin sister has everything. Except a pulse.

Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier with nothing to lose, finds herself thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated at a young age, the identical twins were polar opposites and rarely spoke, except for one viral video that Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL). When Julie discovers Chloe’s lifeless body under mysterious circumstances, she seizes the chance to live the life she’s always envied.

Transforming into Chloe is easier than expected. Julie effortlessly adopts Chloe’s luxurious influencer life, complete with designer clothes, a meticulous skincare routine, and millions of adoring followers. However, Julie soon realizes that Chloe’s seemingly picture-perfect life was anything but.

Haunted by Chloe’s untimely death and struggling to fit into the privileged influencer circle, Julie faces mounting challenges during a weeklong island retreat with Chloe’s exclusive group of influencer friends. As events spiral out of control, Julie uncovers the sinister forces that may have led to her sister’s demise and realizes she might be the next target.]]> 320 Liann Zhang 1668067919 Amy 0 to-read 3.78 2025
author: Liann Zhang
name: Amy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
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]]> 207298106 Brought to you by Penguin.

Beloved award-winning actress Kelly Bishop, famous for playing the iconic Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls , finally tells the whole story of her six decades in show business.

Kelly Bishop’s storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing, but it is probably her role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.
Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future, sharing some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.
Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and powerful memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades.

]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 Amy 3 4.35 2024
author: Kelly Bishop
name: Amy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
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This was an interesting, quick read, but I will admit I wanted a tinyyyyy bit more Gilmore Girls lore!
]]> 30363824 A sexual history of the 1990s when the Baby Boomers took over Washington, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue. A definitive look at the captains of the culture wars -- and an indispensable road map for understanding how we got to the Trump Teens.

The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture.

In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.

The Naughty Nineties also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra.]]> 640 David Friend 0446556297 Amy 0 to-read 3.54 2017
author: David Friend
name: Amy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 215509873 Three siblings reckon with the darkness hidden within their family after multiple graves are discovered behind their childhood home.

When the Rawlins family matriarch unexpectedly dies, all three adult children rush home. What they find is a house bursting with grief, dark memories surfacing around each corner, and multiple bodies buried deep in the woods. The Rawlinses want to believe these discoveries point to a crime long past. But one of the graves behind Teague House is fresh, the earth disturbed just that week—and its inhabitant is a local woman they knew.

Is the youngest Rawlins sibling with something to hide guilty of her murder? Is his sister experiencing false memories of her late father digging near the graves? Why is their aunt in such a rush to leave town after her sister's funeral?

Enter private detective Maddie Reed, who has her own reasons for being curious about the bodies buried behind Teague House. Detective Reed sets out to unmask a killer—one she may have been hunting all her life.]]> 432 Stacy Johns 1464230935 Amy 0 to-read 3.58 2025
author: Stacy Johns
name: Amy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
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]]> 216522629 A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Douglas Stuart in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening.

Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.

James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.

Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.]]> 224 Seán Hewitt 0593802845 Amy 0 to-read 4.14 2025
author: Seán Hewitt
name: Amy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 216497092 Eleanor Pilcher is electric in her witty, funny, and heartfelt women’s fiction debut, following polar opposite best friends Beth and Serena. When demisexual Beth decides she’s done with being a virgin and enlists Serena’s help, her new personal journey just might be the thing to end their friendship for good.

Serena and Beth are best friends who couldn’t be more different—Beth is an avowed demisexual, who lacks confidence in her career and in her chances at a happy relationship due to her sexual orientation. Serena is a free spirit who oozes with confidence, both in her job and her sexual proclivities. And yet, since the moment they met, they knew they were platonic soulmates.

So, when Beth decides that she officially wants to take charge of her sex life and explore the things that scare her the most, Serena is more than happy to help. Speed-dating, sex therapy, tantra, a perplexed but ultimately very nice escort—it’s all on Beth’s Sexual Odyssey List.

But when Beth’s crush from her old job comes back and Serena’s favorite friend-with-benefits pushes for more than just sex, it throws their whole world into a tailspin. And suddenly, this sexual odyssey is more than a fun gag. It’ll set them down a course that’ll make them so much closer—or end their friendship for good.]]> 368 Eleanor Pilcher 0063412101 Amy 0 to-read 3.44 2025
author: Eleanor Pilcher
name: Amy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 204593461 An attorney and mother of two discovers her husband’s secret life—and it might cost them all their lives.

Everyone in Hemingway Grove, Illinois, knows David and Marcie Bowers.

David owns the local pub.

Marcie is a former big-city lawyer who practices family law.

When David jumps into Cotton River to save a drowning stranger, he’s celebrated as a hero. His muscled physique, shaved head, and piercing blue eyes are broadcast on every news outlet.

For most people, newfound fame is a lifeline.

For David Bowers, it’s a death sentence.

For Marcie Bowers, it’s a test.

A wife knows the difference between a loving husband and father and a cold-blooded assassin. Right?]]> 384 James Patterson 031640389X Amy 2
This book having an average rating of 4.2 cannot be real. ]]> 4.11 2024
author: James Patterson
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
TWO people worked on this book and it’s this badly written??? This has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a long time. I’ve really enjoyed David Ellis in the past but the writing and story here was truly insane. Did they think readers wouldn’t remember characters from page to page? They reintroduce everyone every other minute and it drove me crazy. “Our dog, Lulu.�� “Lulu, our dog.�� “The dog we have, Lulu was outside.�� PLEASE.

This book having an average rating of 4.2 cannot be real.
]]> 209456186 Vikram Seth and Thrity Umrigar meet Rebecca in this sweeping multi-generational debut novel by accomplished television executive Nayantara Roy, about a young Indian American book editor from Brooklyn who returns to Kolkata when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home, and the secrets that lie within it.


It’s the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family she thought she left behind sixteen years ago. Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author�� and occasional lover�� is suddenly determined to make things more serious.


As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of keeping everything under the surface. For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.]]> 448 Nayantara Roy 1643755846 Amy 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Nayantara Roy
name: Amy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216325984
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters�� friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.

A family story is, of course, only as honest as the person telling it. This family story in particular is fraught with secrets about kids and sex and jobs and why the Kenner matriarch had a gun in her underwear drawer. The biggest secret of all though is the secret of what happened between Jude and Fred to create such a rift between the two once-close middle sisters. Over the course of a sweltering Florida summer, the Kenner siblings will revisit what it means to be a family and, if they are smart and kind and lucky, come out on the other side better for having each other.

A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft.]]> 272 Lynn Steger Strong 0063390736 Amy 0 to-read 3.30
author: Lynn Steger Strong
name: Amy
average rating: 3.30
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 154462768
Eve Hatch is pretty content with her life. Her apartment in Brooklyn is cozy and close to her childhood best friend Willa, but far from her midwestern, traditional family who never really understood her. While her job is only dream- adjacent , she’s hoping her passion and hard work will soon help her land a more glamorous role. And sure, her most recent romantic history has consisted of not one but two disappointing men named Derek. At least she always knows what to expect…until she finds herself expecting after an uncharacteristic one-night stand.

The unplanned pregnancy cracks open all the relationships in her life. Eve's loyal��friendship with Willa is feeling off , right when she needs her most. And it’s Willa’s steadfast older brother, Shep, who steps up to help. He has always been friendly, but now he’s checking in, ordering her surprise lunches, listening to all her complaints, and is�� suddenly kinda hot? Then there’s the baby's father, who is supportive but conflicted. Before long, Eve is rethinking everything she thought she knew about herself and her world.

Over the course of nine months, as Eve struggles to figure out the next right step in her expanding reality, she begins to realize that family and love, in all forms, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.]]> 400 Cara Bastone 0593595718 Amy 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Cara Bastone
name: Amy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214282631 Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not

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

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again�� list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.]]> Cara Bastone 0593595742 Amy 5 4.29 2025
author: Cara Bastone
name: Amy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
I knew from the moment I started��5 star ENERGY
]]> 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Amy 0 to-read 4.40 2025
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Amy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 339218
Riders, the first and steamiest in the series, takes the lid off international showjumping, a sport where the brave horses are almost human, but the humans behave like animals.

The brooding hero, gypsy Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands the most difficult horse or woman becomes biddable, is driven to the top by his loathing of the beautiful bounder and darling of the show ring, Rupert Campbell-Black. Having filched each other's horses, and fought and fornicated their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences during the Los Angeles Olympics.]]> 919 Jilly Cooper 0552156175 Amy 0 to-read 3.95 1985
author: Jilly Cooper
name: Amy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1541856
Into the cut-throat world of Corinium television comes Declan O’Hara, a mega-star of great glamour and integrity with a radiant feckless wife, a handsome son and two ravishing teenage daughters. Living rather too closely across the valley is Rupert Campbell-Black, divorced and as dissolute as ever, and now the Tory Minister for Sport.

Declan needs only a few days at Corinium to realize that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, is a crook who has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous but domineering woman executive, to produce Declan’s programme. Declan and Cameron detest each other, provoking a storm of controversy into which Rupert plunges with his usual abandon.

As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered, and sex raises its (delicious) head at almost every throw as, in bed and boardroom, the race is on to capture the Cotswold Crown.]]> 716 Jilly Cooper 055215637X Amy 0 to-read 4.05 1988
author: Jilly Cooper
name: Amy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 339210 773 Jilly Cooper 2253141720 Amy 0 to-read 4.15 1991
author: Jilly Cooper
name: Amy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211109423
Finding true love is only a matter of time in this heartfelt and hilarious romantic comedy, starring Zoë Chao (The Afterparty), Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek), and a full cast!

Romance can be a little complicated when you get sucked into a wormhole. Just ask high school English teacher June Flint. One little solar flare happens and suddenly you find yourself 85 years in the future. Eighty-five years from your dream job. Your ailing mother whose only companion in this world is you. Your favorite stuffed-crust pizza from DeLucia’s on Sunday nights.

But when June’s cell phone inexplicably picks up a signal, she’s able to call back to the present—more specifically, four weeks before she accidentally time traveled. Problem is, the phone can only call one number: her work nemesis, gym teacher Mikey Shannon.

Now future June must help Mikey befriend present-day June to keep her from disappearing. But present-day June doesn't even want to be in the same room as Mikey, let alone become besties. And Mikey isn’t exactly...talkie. Yet he’s spending hours a day with future June on the phone, and even more time trying to befriend present-day June. Volunteering with June at school, check. Facing his fear of roller coasters to make June smile, check. Adopting a puppy and letting her name it. Check.

But what does succeeding in the present mean for future June, and for the serious feelings she and Mikey are starting to catch for one another? Stopping time travel is one thing—but can they stop themselves from falling in love?

Full list of narrators: Zoë Chao, Noah Reid, Josh Hurley, Beata Pozniak, Jim Seybert, Emily Lawrence, Tina Wolstencroft, Petrea Burchard, Joel Simler, Aaron Shedlock, Christian Barillas, Eric Yves Garcia, Alex Picard, Lorrie Grant, Andy Garcia-Ruse, Dominic Russo, Ian Hackney.

Available in Dolby Atmos on Audible.]]> 6 Cara Bastone Amy 0 to-read 3.84 2024
author: Cara Bastone
name: Amy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 216684509 Two sisters, four nights, one city.

April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war - so far. Over the next two months, it's going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished.

Many won't make it through, and no one who does will remain unchanged.

Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.]]> 288 Lucy Caldwell 1638931836 Amy 0 to-read 3.62 2022
author: Lucy Caldwell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 213974048 In this exciting historical romantasy in the spirit of The Hurricane Wars and The Time Traveler’s Wife—Outlander set in Japan—a young Scottish woman is magically transported to the last Samurai era, where she encounters ghosts from the past, her own Japanese ancestry, and a love that transcends time.

While in Japan researching her family’s history, a vicious typhoon sends Isla Mackenzie 128 years back in time, to the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion. There she meets her ancestors, and a charismatic samurai, Kei, with whom she unexpectedly finds romance.

But, unlike her Beloved, Isla knows about the looming Samurai rebellion—and Kai’s fate. Should she attempt to change history or somehow make her way back to the life she’d had before?

Compulsively readable, historically grounded, and irresistibly immersive, Gate to Kagoshima is an unforgettable tale of duty, and of timeless love.]]> 320 Poppy Kuroki 0063410877 Amy 0 to-read 3.26 2025
author: Poppy Kuroki
name: Amy
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 214537784 From the author of Gold Diggers, a biting examination of millennial adulthood, the often fraught conversations around fertility and reproduction, and the painful quest to forge an identity

Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It’s been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister’s while her similarly well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages, and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward—and finalize her divorce, ASAP.

There’s just one problem: Killian is missing. As Sanjana tries to track him down, she’s bombarded with unnerving calls from women seeking her advice on pregnancy and fertility. Soon, Sanjana comes face to face—literally—with what her life might have been if she’d chosen parenthood. And the road not taken turns out to be wilder, stranger, and more tempting than she imagined.

A darkly funny, vertiginous novel about the dilemmas of procreation, pregnancy, and parenting, Goddess Complex is both a twist-filled psychological thriller and a feminist satire of our age of GirlBosses turned self-care influencers, optimization cults, internet mommy gurus, egg freezing, and so much more.]]> 304 Sanjena Sathian 0593489772 Amy 0 to-read 3.58 2025
author: Sanjena Sathian
name: Amy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 215363236 A restaurateur lured by pandemic-era incentives moves her family to a seemingly idyllic town in Georgia.

The email message that lands in Billie Hope’s inbox seems like a gift from the universe. For $100 she can purchase a spacious Victorian home in Juliana, Georgia, a small town eager to boost its economy in the wake of the pandemic. She can leave behind her cramped New York City rental and some painful memories. Plus she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity.

After some phone calls and one hurried visit, Billie and her husband and daughter are officially part of the "Juliana Initiative." The town is everything promised, and between settling into her lavish home and starting a new restaurant, Billie is busy enough to dismiss misgivings.

Yet those misgivings grow. There’s something about Juliana, something off-kilter and menacing beneath its famous Southern hospitality. No matter how much Billie longed for her family to come here, she’s starting to wonder how, and whether, they’ll ever leave. ��]]> 362 Emily Carpenter 1496750543 Amy 0 to-read 3.76 2025
author: Emily Carpenter
name: Amy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 211003713 Sometimes fake dating your ex can turn into a second chance.

When Denzel “Denz�� Carter’s workaholic father and CEO of 24 Carter Gold unexpectedly announces his retirement, the competition is on for who will become his successor. To convince his judgmental family members that Denz is capable of commitment he impulsively lies about being in a serious relationship. Problem is the last serious relationship he was in hung him high and dry after leaving the continent.

Now Denz needs to find a fake boyfriend to bring to family functions and seal the deal on the CEO position. To do so he enlists the help of his best friend and roommate, Jamie. Someone his family already accepts in their inner circle. But when his BFF is a no-show, Denz is forced to turn to the last person he wants to be in a pretend (or any) relationship Braylon, the man who broke his heart.

Braylon’s sudden reappearance in Denz’s life turns everything upside down. But apparently, he needs Denz’s connections to the mayor to win his own promotion and Denz is currently up a creek without a paddle. So, they strike a deal. It’s all business, but between the funny texts and the confusing kisses soon enough Denz is struggling to separate business from the affairs of his heart.

In Julian Winters's I think They Love You, sometimes fake dating your way to success can mean finding the second chance at love you've needed all along.]]> 336 Julian Winters 1250326249 Amy 0 to-read 3.94 2025
author: Julian Winters
name: Amy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 217204419 “Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney’s vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity.��
��Booklist (starred review)

An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick for April

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting�� man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.

Thurber Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author John Kenney tells a funny, touching story about life and death, about the search for meaning, about finding and never letting go of the preciousness of life.]]> 304 John Kenney Amy 0 to-read 4.17 2025
author: John Kenney
name: Amy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 201479229 A transformational, transformative story about videogames, three queer friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive, from the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction

It is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.

18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith might be the first trans woman to ever work as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is in Brooklyn as well, working as a research assistant and part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is there, or that Abraxa, the third member of Invocation LLC, is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s grandparents�� Jersey City home. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.

This new book by Lambda Literary Fellow Jeanne Thornton, one of trans America’s brightest literary stars, queers our notion of nostalgia as it expertly blends literature with technology.]]> 496 Jeanne Thornton 1641296046 Amy 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Jeanne Thornton
name: Amy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 215805816 Part coming-of-age novel, part searing examination of a community finding itself, Small Ceremonies is a tantalizing and heartbreaking debut.

“I fear for our friendship, for the day it will end, wondering when that day will be . . .��

Tomahawk Shields (a.k.a. Tommy) and Clinton Whiteway are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future rife with possibility and greatness. The two friends play for their high school’s poor-performing hockey team, the Tigers, who learn at the start of the new season that the league wants them out. Their annual goal is now more important than to win their first game in years and break the curse.

As we follow these two Indigenous boys over the course of a year, we are given a panoptic view of Tommy and Clinton’s Winnipeg, where a university student with grand ambitions chooses to bottle her anger when confronted with numerous micro- (and not so micro-) aggressions; an ex-convict must choose between protecting or exploiting his younger brother as he’s dragged deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly; a lonely rink attendant is haunted by the memory of a past lover and contemplates rekindling this old flame; and an aspiring journalist does everything she can to uncover why the league is threatening to remove the Tigers. These are a sampling of the chorus of voices that depicts a community filled with individuals searching for purpose, leading them all to one fateful and tragic night.

Ferociously piercing the heart of an Indigenous city, Kyle Edwards's sparkling debut is a heartbreaking yet humour-flecked portrayal of navigating identity and place, trauma and recovery, and growing up in a land that doesn't love you.]]> 368 Kyle Edwards 0593701518 Amy 0 to-read 4.31
author: Kyle Edwards
name: Amy
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 186872399 As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s atmospheric new novel.

With the Great War finally behind them, thousands of civilians and business moguls alike flock to South Florida with their sights set on making a fortune. When wealthy industrialist Robert Barnes and his wife, Anna, build Marbrisa, a glamorous estate on Biscayne Bay, they become the toast of the newly burgeoning society. Anna and Robert appear to have it all, but in a town like Miami, appearances can be deceiving, and one scandal can change everything.

Years later following the tragic death of her parents in Havana, Carmen Acosta journeys to Marbrisa, the grand home of her estranged older sister, Carolina, and her husband, Asher Wyatt. On the surface, the gilded estate looks like paradise, but Carmen quickly learns that nothing at Marbrisa is as it seems. The house has a treacherous legacy, and Carmen’s own life is soon in jeopardy . . . unless she can unravel the secrets buried beneath the mansion’s facade and stop history from repeating itself.]]> 336 Chanel Cleeton 059344051X Amy 0 to-read 3.63 2024
author: Chanel Cleeton
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 196764063
Katelyn smiles around at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her thirty-sixth birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed��

She doesn’t remember the sweet taste of birthday cake icing, or how angry her best friend was at midnight, or the terrible things her husband said. She doesn’t remember the party at all.

When she asks her husband what happened the night of the party he says ‘nothing��. But her blood runs cold at the way his voice lilts slightly. The way it always does when he is lying.

Did someone at the party harm her?
What is her husband hiding?
Or did Katelyn herself do something terrible?

Only one thing is certain. Nobody can be trusted. And if Katelyn’s memories of the party do come back, it will tear them all apart��

This totally addictive psychological thriller will have you gasping at the twists and turns and unable to sleep until you know the truth. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Shari Lapena and The Perfect Marriage .]]> 246 Nicole Trope 1837908915 Amy 3 3.67 2023
author: Nicole Trope
name: Amy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
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review:
Kind of like a Freida McFadden book but worse.
]]> 53241064
Luckily, Quique’s prospects are each intriguing in their own ways. There’s stoner-jock Tyler Montana, who might be just as interested in Fabiola as he is in Quique; straight-laced senior class president, Ziggy Jackson; and Manny Zuniga, who keeps looking at Quique like he’s carne asada fresh off the grill. With all these choices, Quique is sure to forget about Saleem in no time.

But as the summer heats up and his deep-seated fears and anxieties boil over, Quique soon realizes that getting over one guy by getting under a bunch of others may not have been the best laid plan and living his truth can come at a high cost.]]> 390 Aaron H. Aceves 1534485651 Amy 0 to-read 4.04 2022
author: Aaron H. Aceves
name: Amy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 216522700 The Royal Tenenbaums meets Fleabag in this hilarious and dizzyingly smart debut about an over-the-top evangelical Texan family—and the daughter at its center racing to finish her very important novel before her ex-boyfriend finishes his.

It’s 2011, and twenty-three-year-old Joan West is not like the rest of her liberal peers in Austin, nor is she quite like her Tea Party Republican, God-loving family. Sure, she listens to conservative talk radio on her way to and from her internship at the Capitol. But she was once an America-hating leftist who kissed girls at parties, refused to shave, and had plenty of emotionless sex with jazz school friends—that is until a drug-induced mania forced her to return to her senses.

But above all Joan is a writer, an artist, or at least she desperately wants to be. Always in search of inspiration for her novel, she catalogs every detail of her relationships with men—including with her former muse slash current arch nemesis Roberto—and mines her very dysfunctional family for material. But when her beloved, credit card debt–racked cousin Wyatt finds himself in crisis, Joan’s worldview is cracked open and everything comes crashing down.

Funny, whip-smart, and often tender, Bitter Texas Honey introduces us to the unforgettable and indefatigable Joan West: ambitious, full of contradictions, utterly herself. As she wades through it all—addiction, politics, loss, and, notably, her father’s string of increasingly bizarre girlfriends—we witness her confront what it means to be a person, and an artist, in the world.]]> 336 Ashley Whitaker 0593476158 Amy 0 to-read 3.54 2025
author: Ashley Whitaker
name: Amy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 214269374 Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power from a "powerful new voice in British Literature�� (The Sunday Times).

Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.

An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers, Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true? Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, the book focuses in on what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.

The thrilling novel from one of the most acclaimed and incisive young novelists working today, Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.]]> 176 Natasha Brown 0593977300 Amy 0 to-read 3.43 2025
author: Natasha Brown
name: Amy
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 214152321 Shortlisted for The Women’s Prize �� Named a most anticipated book by Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly, The BBC, Daily Mail (London), and more

A darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions personal and political.

Meet the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.

First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone but is sometimes visited by Niaz, her Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose and yet manages to survive. Elizabeth’s daughters wound up in America: Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future, and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned housewife languishing in the chaparral-filled hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student in New York City trying to find deeper meaning by quietly giving away her belongings.

When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up in jail, the family’s upper-class veneer is cracked open. Shirin embarks upon a quest to restore the family name to its former glory, but what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow?

By turns satirical and philosophical, spanning from 1940s Iran to a splintered 2000s, The Persians upends the reader’s expectations while exploring questions about love, family, money, art, and how to find yourself and each other when your country is lost. Wry and witty, brazen and absurd, The Persians is a deeply moving reinvention of the American family saga.]]> 384 Sanam Mahloudji 166801579X Amy 0 to-read 3.50 2024
author: Sanam Mahloudji
name: Amy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 58016065
Everybody wants to live on Hogarth Street, the pretty, tree-lined avenue with its white houses. The new family, The Wests, are a perfect fit. Katherine and John* seem so in love and their gorgeous five-year-old twins race screeching around their beautiful emerald-green lawn.

But soon people start to notice: why don’t they join backyard barbecues? Why do they brush away offers to babysit? Why, when you knock at the door, do they shut you out, rather than inviting you in?

Every family has secrets, and on the hottest day of the year, the truth is about to come out. As a tragedy unfolds behind closed doors, the dawn chorus is split by the wail of sirens. And one by one the families who tried so hard to welcome the Wests begin to realise: Hogarth Street will never be the same again.

A completely gripping, twist-packed psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Sally Hepworth and Lisa Jewell.
(*there is a typo on the back cover that calls him Josh)]]> 247 Nicole Trope 1800198264 Amy 0 to-read 3.87 2021
author: Nicole Trope
name: Amy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 214152261 From Booker Prize finalist David Szalay, a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.

What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,�� brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation.

Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.]]> 368 David Szalay 198212279X Amy 0 to-read 3.92 2025
author: David Szalay
name: Amy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 214151232 A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.]]> 391 Silvia Park 1668021668 Amy 0 to-read 3.87 2025
author: Silvia Park
name: Amy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 213870131 When a husband asks his reluctant wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both—sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible

She’s happy and settled and productive and content in her full life—a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of “husband�� and “wife�� force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose.��

Using the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes. Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, Crush is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it’s possible to love—friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world’s good books, and most of all one’s own deep sense of purpose.]]> 288 Ada Calhoun 0593832027 Amy 0 to-read 3.01 2025
author: Ada Calhoun
name: Amy
average rating: 3.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 215805897 A stray cat brings together five strangers over the course of one fateful summer in this heartwarming novel about love, found family, and the power of connection.

Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the “crazy cat lady�� label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives—a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for.]]> 304 Tanya Guerrero 059387384X Amy 0 to-read 4.24 2025
author: Tanya Guerrero
name: Amy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 215362444 336 Katy Hays 0593875559 Amy 0 to-read 3.62 2025
author: Katy Hays
name: Amy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 215361984 Two people, one hotel room, and all the choices and complications that make up a life.

After six years of a stolen hour here, another there, tonight is going to be different—very different—for Nick Holloway and Jenny Parrish. They’ve booked a room in a new luxury hotel in Manhattan, where they’ll spend the entire night together for the first time. Expectations are running high for this brief reprieve from ordinary life: they both need a good bout of ravishing sex and witty conversation.

But that’s not what they get.

Because they’ve barely gotten started when a smoke alarm goes off. Nick is annoyed, but not worried about what must be only a minor glitch. Jenny is anxious, guilty—is karma coming for them at last?

This existential page-turner seamlessly shifts between Nick and Jenny’s perspectives as the reality of their situation becomes apparent, and all their secrets, evasions and regrets come spilling out. Stripped of their defenses, disagreeing about everything, these two flawed, funny, very different people are forced to be honest—with each other and themselves—about what they want, where they’ve screwed up, and whether their affair is really as casual as it seems.]]> 288 Eliza Kennedy 0593800834 Amy 0 to-read 3.53 2025
author: Eliza Kennedy
name: Amy
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211399742 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

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

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

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the "real story" through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary. But she can't stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy either. So, after a decade of silence, she's telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.

Inspired by the powerful love and hate that fuel Emily Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights, The Favorites is an exhilarating dance between passion, ambition, and what it truly means to win.]]> 672 Layne Fargo Amy 3 4.25 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: Amy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:
Really fast paced, but my overall feeling upon finishing was just: well, okay
]]> 211003802 A brand new suspense novel from "the master of the suburban scandal" (Samantha M. Bailey), Aggie Blum Thompson.

Neighbors Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa share more than playdates and coffee mornings on their tranquil street in East Bethesda. They confide their deepest secrets, navigate the challenges of motherhood together, and provide a support system that seems unbreakable.

But when Gwen's husband is found murdered after one of their weekly Friday night dinners, the peaceful quiet of their cul-de-sac shatters. The seemingly idyllic world of the three close-knit mom friends becomes a web of deception, betrayal, and revenge.

As the police investigate, the veneer of friendship begins to crack, revealing hidden tensions, clandestine affairs, and long-buried jealousies among the three women. With suspicions mounting and the neighborhood gripped by fear, Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa must confront the chilling truth about their husbands, and the sinister undercurrents in their own friendship.]]> 336 Aggie Blum Thompson 1250892031 Amy 3 3.85 2025
author: Aggie Blum Thompson
name: Amy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars. It’s so important to always have a mid thriller on deck. I did enjoy the fast pace of this one though, and I can never turn down a crazy friendship/neighbors who are close but conniving story, and this had all of that!
]]> 222376889 The Hazel Wood meets Laini Taylor in this gorgeous speculative tale of sisterhood, ghosts and old family curses.

Are the four Farthing sisters really descended from Persephone? This is what their aunt has always told that the women in their family can trace their lineage right back to the Goddess of the Dead. And maybe she's right, because the Farthing girls do have a ghost in the attic of their Manhattan brownstone —a kind and gentle ghost named Henry, who only they can see.

When one of the sisters falls in love with the ghost, and another banishes him to the Underworld, the sisters are faced with even bigger questions about who they are. If they really are related to Persephone, and they really are a bit magic, then perhaps it’s up to them to save Henry, to save the world, and to save each other.]]> 336 Katrina Leno 1250342902 Amy 0 to-read 4.53 2025
author: Katrina Leno
name: Amy
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218431658
What if there were a cure for the broken-hearted?

Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal.

Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects.

On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields—where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder—each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.

A high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person, posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are we willing to go in order to be healed?]]> 324 Nikki Erlick 0063349337 Amy 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Amy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222376885 WITH STARS IN HER EYES is break out author Andie Burke's (Fly with Me) next novel, a swoon-worthy sapphic romance about fresh starts and finding that one person who feels like home.

After a catastrophic career debut, cellist Courtney Starling escapes to her happy place—her best friend’s bookshop in Kansas. Shelving books and hosting book clubs in a place where nobody knows her stage name is the perfect respite.

Thea Quinn has just started her new piercing job at the tattoo shop next door. She moved to this quirky corner of Kansas for a fresh start, but despite the benefits of escaping family pressures, Thea's homesick. Maybe Thea needs to connect with potential friends over a new interest…like perhaps a historical romance book club run by a particular mysterious and sexy bookseller with a pixie cut?

Friendly meetings become stolen moments between the bookshelves, and suddenly Courtney and Thea's old problems feel eons away. But just as the chemistry between them heats to a combustion point, consequences from Courtney’s past arrive on her doorstep at exactly the wrong moment. New revelations and surprising connections take the pair from feeling joyfully lovestruck to star-crossed as both women must question what they’re willing to give up for happily ever after.]]> 368 Andie Burke 1250372526 Amy 0 to-read 3.65 2025
author: Andie Burke
name: Amy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214988499 After her sister is murdered, a woman infiltrates a support group for serial killers in this biting queer feminist debut thriller, perfect for fans of The Final Girl Support Group and My Sister, the Serial Killer.

When Cyra Griffin’s younger sister is murdered by a serial killer, Cyra knows better than to expect�� justice from the hands of the police department. With the investigation already dying its own slow death, Cyra follows the blood trail and finds her own way forward.��

Using insider information (don’t ask) Cyra infiltrates a support group for serial killers by pretending to be one herself in the hopes of finding the person who ended her sister’s life. Proving herself to them comes at a cost, but it’s one Cyra is willing to pay in the name of revenge.

Unfortunately, the dangerous men in the group aren’t the only obstacle in Cyra’s path for vengeance, and the further Cyra descends into the deadly world of serial killers, the harder it becomes to hold on to her own humanity.��

This dark, witty debut novel is a cunning homage to women’s wrongs that will have you wondering exactly how many monsters walk unseen among us.
]]> 320 Saratoga Schaefer Amy 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Saratoga Schaefer
name: Amy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210373324
Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions.

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak - the jokes you tell as you're dying and the ways laughing at a funeral softens the edges of our grief. An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.]]> 277 Dylin Hardcastle 1761562428 Amy 0 to-read 4.39 2024
author: Dylin Hardcastle
name: Amy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216750978
A small-town waitress and a big-city Broadway press agent swap homes to escape the messiness of their personal lives, only to find new purpose—and new love.

Tatum Ward and Eleanor Chapman lead totally opposite lives. Tatum’s never left her Midwestern hometown. She resides in a quaint guest cottage on her parents�� property while working part-time as a waitress, where she spends most shifts ignoring her feelings for a beautiful regular named June. Eleanor dedicates every waking hour to her high-profile press career, sacrificing personal relationships for professional success, save for the occasional hookup to fight off her loneliness. When both women’s lives unexpectedly blow up at the exact same time, they each need an escape, and fast.

In Tatum’s hometown, Eleanor expects a quiet hideaway where she can recharge. Instead she gets wrapped up in the family drama that Tatum left town to avoid, pulled in by Tatum’s charismatic older sibling, Carson, who charms Eleanor at every turn. Tatum ends up in Eleanor’s New York high-rise apartment with June. One week together in the big city might make it impossible for Tatum to avoid not just her true feelings for June, but her real dreams for her life.

Amid a friendship with a reclusive Hollywood actress and a complicated family reunion, Tatum and Eleanor each discover much more than they bargained for away from home. Their house swap won’t last forever, but it might be just long enough for both women to surrender their defenses and finally fight for the life—and love—they deserve.]]> 352 Bridget Morrissey 0593817125 Amy 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: Bridget Morrissey
name: Amy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222361430 Next up from break out author Andie Burke (Fly with Me) is WITH STARS IN HER EYES, a swoon-worthy sapphic bookstore romance about fresh starts and finding that one person who feels like home.

Seconds from a meteoric career launch, cellist Courtney Starling suffers a frightening migraine attack during a key performance. While harmful rumors fly, she escapes to her happy place—her best friend’s Kansas bookshop. Courtney’s working incognito when a scream sends her leaping off a shelving ladder to find the woman who screamed cowering near the register.

When Thea Quinn dropped in for a misdelivered package, she did not expect a mortifying encounter with a bearded dragon in front of an inconveniently attractive bookseller. Clutching an upcoming book club flyer and the tattered shreds of her dignity, she heads back to her new piercing job at the tattoo shop next door. She moved to this quirky place for a fresh start. But maybe the meet-disaster was a sign? Maybe Thea needs to branch out beyond her photography hobby and connect with new people…like at a historical romance book club run by a particularly mysterious and sexy bookseller with a pixie cut?

Friendly lunches become stolen moments between the bookshelves. Courtney and Thea's old problems feel ages away. But just as their chemistry heats to a combustion point, consequences from Courtney’s past arrive literally on her doorstep at exactly the wrong moment. New revelations and surprising connections take the pair from feeling joyfully lovestruck to confusingly star-crossed. Both women must decide what they’re willing to give up for happily ever after.]]> Andie Burke 1250372534 Amy 0 to-read 3.82 2025
author: Andie Burke
name: Amy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212808709 A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

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

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

So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...]]> 464 Ali Hazelwood Amy 4
I will say Pen and her whole thing with Lukas did annoy me after a while, and Scarlett started to sound grating too the book went on, thought it all wrapped up nicely in the end. ]]> 3.93 2025
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:
This was really cute! Definitely very steamy but also nothing like the pearl-clutching TikTok girls led me to believe?? When people say Gen Z are the new boomers I have to believe them. Anyway; I thought this had a really good balance between the relationship and the college/diving stuff. Also, I’m not saying all of Ali Hazelwood’s writing was once fanfic, but reading this so closely after Bride, she definitely had a Twilight era back in the day. Sorry but Lukas is Edward Cullen for 2025 and the same reasons people call him a red flag were being said in 2009 for Edward, I’m just saying! (And I ate it up now like I did then, because I had a Twilight era too.)

I will say Pen and her whole thing with Lukas did annoy me after a while, and Scarlett started to sound grating too the book went on, thought it all wrapped up nicely in the end.
]]> 50892338
A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn�� students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin�� and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.]]> 502 Tracy Deonn 1534441603 Amy 0 to-read 4.32 2020
author: Tracy Deonn
name: Amy
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Amy 0 to-read 3.65 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Amy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 131094213
And sure, it’s possible I’ve never touched a pair of skis before, but I’m an adaptable person.

I’ll figure it out.]]> 39 Anita Kelly Amy 3 4.13 2023
author: Anita Kelly
name: Amy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves:
review:
I love Anita Kelly and I could read about Moonie’s forever.
]]> 59131231
She certainly didn’t come for the karaoke. Even though the karaoke made her smile sometimes. All these young queers with their off-key, bouncy energy. They made Mal smile, too, June knew. Even if Mal tended to hide her smiles.��

But she saved them sometimes, for June.

Maybe Mal had secret smiles for other women, when June wasn’t around. There was probably no good reason for Mal Edwards, a bastion of stability and good sense, to see any kind of future with June anyway. Was it even fair to express feelings to a woman like that when you spent months away on the road?

But as another Pride weekend approaches, June’s fiftieth birthday and the eventual end of her long-haul trucking days loom��in her mind, nestled against the memories of Moonie’s nights gone by where it felt like June and Mal came close—close to something happening, something real. Until June would inevitably chicken out. Retreat once again to life on the road.��

It’s time for June to finally figure out her next act. And if she’s not brave enough to ask Mal Edwards to be part of it, she doesn’t deserve her, anyway.

After all. If you can’t tell a butch you love her during Pride, when the hell can you?]]> 95 Anita Kelly Amy 3 4.05 2022
author: Anita Kelly
name: Amy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
This was really cute, but probably the weakest of the three. It was really hard to tell the two POVs apart!
]]> 228241026 Ella has officially hit rock bottom.

After getting dumped by her girlfriend and soon-to-be ex-boss, Ella’s thirties have her feeling lost. In an attempt to cheer her up, her best friend colludes with her mother to send her to Sandy Springs, a wellness retreat on a remote Portuguese island. Ella can’t deny that sun, sand, and sea sound like the perfect combination to drown her sorrows.
But Sandy Springs is not a holiday.
It’s an alcohol-free, signal-less hellhole with an interfering cockerel called Bernardo. Forced to confront her life without any distractions, Ella’s urge to give up and float out to sea is stronger than ever. That is, until she meets Riley, the attractive yoga instructor, and things on the island start to shift.
Riley’s career is her solace, but even now she can't escape the memories that haunt her. When she comes across the fiery Ella, she realises just how much she’s been holding herself back.
As their feelings for each other grow, the two of them must make a decision: continue down a path of self-destruction or face some difficult truths. Can they resist temptation or will they risk everything for love in paradise?

After all, what harm could a holiday romance really do?]]> 383 Emily Wright 1739562488 Amy 0 to-read 4.16
author: Emily Wright
name: Amy
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222376849 A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.

Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.

But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.

Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.]]> 352 Alexandra Vasti 1250910986 Amy 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Alexandra Vasti
name: Amy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216247471 The exciting new contemporary romance—and her first to feature a queer romance—by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory

Avery Jensen is almost thirty, fresh off a breakup, and she’s tired of always being so uptight and well-behaved. She wants to get a hobby, date around (especially other women), flirt with everyone she sees, all the fun stuff normal people do in their twenties. One Avery doesn't know how to do any of that. She doesn't have a lot of dating experience, with men or women, and despite being self-assured at work, she doesn't have a lot of confidence when it comes to romance.

Enter Taylor Cameron,��Napa Valley's biggest flirt and champion heartbreaker. Taylor just broke up with her most recent girlfriend, and her best friend bet her that she can't make it until Labor Day without sleeping with someone. (Two whole months? Without sex? Taylor?!?!) So, she offers to give Avery flirting lessons. It will keep her busy, stop her from texting people she shouldn't. And it might distract her from how inadequate she feels compared to her friends, who all seem much more settled and adult than Taylor.

At first, Avery is stiff and nervous, but Taylor is patient and encouraging, and soon, Avery looks forward to their weekly lessons. She tells herself it's because the lessons are fun, not because she kind of might have a little bit of a crush on Taylor. Taylor doesn't even try to deny that she's intrigued by Avery, but she's still got a bet to win. With Taylor’s help, Avery is finally doing what she wants to flirting with lots of women, making friends, having fun! But after a while, it becomes impossible for Avery and Taylor to ignore their attraction to one another, despite them both insisting to themselves and everyone else that it isn't serious. When Taylor is forced to confront her feelings for Avery, she doesn't know what to do, how to deal with it, and most importantly, if she's already ruined the best thing she's ever had.]]> 416 Jasmine Guillory 0593100913 Amy 0 to-read 3.46 2025
author: Jasmine Guillory
name: Amy
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58604942
But when it’s not Penelope who walks through the door at Moonie’s, but the high school nemesis Aiden hasn’t seen in five years—well, things get a little more complicated.

For Kai Andrews, moving back home after his mother’s death has been harder and lonelier than he anticipated. And running into McCarstle again? That had certainly never been in his plans. But he deserves a night out, away from the responsibilities and grief that have been weighing him down. Sure, it appears McCarstle still hates his guts, for reasons Kai has never quite understood. But maybe, with a decent dose of pop music and Moonie’s magic, Kai can finally, finally make Aiden smile. Just this once. Just for tonight.

As a surprising, intimate night at Moonie’s brings Aiden and Kai closer together, a winter storm moves in. And what was meant to be a simple night out turns into over 24 hours of being snowed in together. Through confessions, memories, and games of Boggle, Aiden and Kai have to figure out if this unexpected second chance at connection was merely a temporary interlude—or if they can each come out better on the other side of the storm.]]> 148 Anita Kelly Amy 4 3.96 2021
author: Anita Kelly
name: Amy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this short second installment in the series! Currently inhaling everything Anita Kelly has to offer and I know I'll be sad to be done, like, tomorrow
]]> 219828380 A sapphic, fake dating, small town romance from Amazon top 50 best selling author, Hannah Cowan.

It was always the plan to come back home to Cherry Peak. But after being gone for four years, it’s apparently not as easy as I expected for things to go back to the way they used to be.

Instead, they get beyond complicated the moment I realize my brother’s house has paper thin walls and a general lack of privacy. Desperate for someplace else to stay, I move in with one of my brother’s friends. The only problem with that? Bryce can’t stand me.

Everyone in town calls her the Ice Queen, and over the first few days of living with her, I begin to understand why. She’s blunt, broody, and even cruel at times. But when I learn she could use some help in the dating department, I offer mine without a second thought.

It’s supposed to be a harmless favour, but somewhere along the line, Bryce stops being the woman who barely tolerates me, and starts becoming the one person who understands me best. The walls of ice she’s built up around herself start to crack, and the more I get to know what lies behind it, the more I realize how wrong I’ve been about her this entire time.

She might be frosty to everyone else, but to me . . . I think she’s the warmest person I’ve ever known.]]> 388 Hannah Cowan Amy 0 to-read 3.93
author: Hannah Cowan
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 675323
A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.

After You'd Gone follows Alice's mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family's heart.]]> 384 Maggie O'Farrell 0142000329 Amy 0 to-read 4.01 2000
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Amy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214229691 From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comes��Greenteeth,��a ��tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce.

Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor.

Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny's lake and Temperance's family, as well as the very soul of Britain.]]> 304 Molly O'Neill Amy 0 to-read 3.98 2025
author: Molly O'Neill
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58011355
Sam is good at being thirsty, though, especially when it's karaoke night at The Moonlight Café, otherwise known as Moonie’s to its largely queer regulars. Moonie’s is fun. Comfortable. Safe. Except for tonight, when one by one, all of Sam’s friends abandon them. Disappointed, they prepare to leave—until their #1 karaoke crush catches their eye...

For Lily Fischer, karaoke at Moonie's is the only time she can step outside of her quiet shell. When there’s a mic in her hand, she’s no longer merely a receptionist harboring big dreams. At Moonie's, Lily can pretend to be someone else: someone bold, who takes what she wants. And tonight, what Lily wants is the way Sam looks at her across the room as she sings her signature opening song, like they see her exactly as she wants to be seen. Like Moonie’s Lily is real.

As the night progresses, both Sam’s and Lily’s personal fears are tested, and the real world outside of Moonie’s looms. But maybe sometimes, the real world should be a little more like karaoke. It's not always about knowing all the right words or having the perfect voice. Maybe all Sam and Lily need is a little courage to pick up the mic, and sing anyway.]]> 124 Anita Kelly Amy 4 4.00 2021
author: Anita Kelly
name: Amy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
This was quick and adorable, like everything Anita Kelly writes
]]> 228691356 What is wrong meets what feels right in this romance set in Italy by the New York Times bestselling author of Deep End.

Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.

Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.

It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.

But not everything is as it seems—and clichés sometimes become plot twists.

When Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs—even if it’s a problematic one.]]> 416 Ali Hazelwood Amy 0 to-read 4.65 2025
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Amy
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 228256271 A Human hybrid and an Alpha Were claw against the bonds of fate in the highly anticipated companion novel to the New York Times bestselling Bride.

Serena Paris is orphaned, pack-less, and one of a kind. Coming forward as the first Human-Were hybrid was supposed to heal a centuries-long rift between species. Instead, it made her a target, prey to the ruthless political machinations between Weres, Vampyres, and Humans. With her enemies closing in on her, she has only one option left—if he’ll have her.

As Alpha of the Northwest pack, Koen Alexander commands obedience. His authority is so absolute, only a fool would threaten his mate. It doesn’t matter if Serena doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, nothing will stop him from keeping her safe.

But power-hungry Vampyres and Weres are not the only threats chasing Serena. Sooner or later, her past is bound to catch up with her—and Koen might be the only thing standing between her and total annihilation…]]> 432 Ali Hazelwood 0593955013 Amy 0 to-read 4.39 2025
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Amy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 173404080 Love & Other Disasters, named a "must-read" by USA Today, PopSugar, SheReads, and Harper Bazaar.��

When smart-mouthed Vanessa Lerner joins the high school basketball team Julie Parker coaches, Julie’s ready for the challenge. What she’s not ready for is Vanessa’s new foster parent, Elle Cochrane—former University of Tennessee basketball star. While star-struck at first, soon Julie persuades Elle to step into the unfilled position of assistant coach for the year.
��
Even though Elle has stayed out of the basketball world since an injury ended her short-lived WNBA career, the gig might be a way to become closer to Vanessa—and to spend more time with Julie, who makes Elle laugh. As the coaches grow closer, Elle has a hard time understanding how Julie is single. When Julie reveals her lifelong insecurity about dating and how she wishes it was more like sports—being able to practice first—it sparks an intriguing idea. While Elle still doubts her abilities as a basketball coach, helping Julie figure out dating is definitely something she can do. But as the basketball season progresses, and lines grow increasingly blurred, Julie and Elle must decide to join the game—or retreat to the sidelines.]]> 384 Anita Kelly 1538754916 Amy 5 to-read
Also, I think if you love Emily Henry's depth and characters and conversations, you will love any of Anita Kelly's books too.]]> 4.10 2024
author: Anita Kelly
name: Amy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:
I think this one was designed for me in a lab. A Taylor Swift title, fake dating, figuring out who you are, You've Got Mail references, a character with migraines???? The characters and their emotions were so real throughout the book, I cried more than once. I loooooved watching Elle and Julie realize that they are, of course, not "practice" dating but falling in love. I loved that there was no traditional third act breakup but a mutual reflection point and very real conversation. And, of course I loved revisiting the characters from prior books. I inhaled this, I hope Anita Kelly never stops writing.

Also, I think if you love Emily Henry's depth and characters and conversations, you will love any of Anita Kelly's books too.
]]> 209036698 One impulsive decision changes the lives of two best friends forever in a powerful novel of suspense by the USA Today bestselling author of The Last Caretaker.

If Lark and Mikki didn’t have each other, they’d have nothing in this miserable town. So the best friends stick together, working night shift at the highway travel stop, going nowhere fast. Until a stranger drops in, heading for Florida, and Mikki impulsively leaves with him, never to be seen again.

Eight years later, Lark is finally getting her life back together for the sake of her young daughter and Mikki’s lovably prickly grandma, who can no longer care for herself. People have almost stopped blaming Lark for Mikki’s disappearance, and she’s engaged to the nicest guy on highway patrol. But when the stranger who drove Mikki away reappears and asks for her, nobody knows what to believe.

As the search reignites, Lark fights to find out whether Mikki is really missing or doesn’t want to be found. But piecing together the chain of events set into motion that fateful night could threaten everything—and everyone—Lark has left.]]> 351 Jessica Strawser 1662510241 Amy 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Jessica Strawser
name: Amy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 48722413 'I wonder who among the crowd has just fallen in love, whose lover has just left them, who has just left someone without a word, who is happy, unhappy, who is afraid, who is confident, who is hoping for a brighter future. I cross the Seine, I walk with men and women who are anonymous and yet who are my reflection. We make up a single heart, a single cell. We are alive...'

In All Men Naturally Want to Know the author traces her blissful childhood in Algeria, a sun-soaked paradise, recalling long trips across the desert with her mother and sister and hazy summer afternoons spent on the beach with her friend Ali. But Nina's mother is French - moving to Algeria for love at a time when most Europeans were desperate to leave - and as civil war approaches, their sunny idyll gives way to increasingly hostile and violent outbreaks. When something unspeakable happens to her mother, the family flee to Paris.

In Paris, Nina lives alone. She is eighteen years old. It's the 1980s. Four nights a week she walks across Paris to a legendary women-only nightclub, the Katmandou. She sits alone at the bar, afraid of her own desires, of her sudden and intoxicating freedom. There she meets the glamorous, deeply troubled Ely, her volatile friends Lizz and Laurence, and the beautiful Julia, with whom she falls desperately in love. And, most importantly, she starts to write.]]> 192 Nina Bouraoui 0241447720 Amy 0 to-read 3.68 2018
author: Nina Bouraoui
name: Amy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6767519
A secret love which has a whole town talking ... and a small boy very worried.

Lydia Weekes is distraught at the break-up of her marriage. When her young son, Charlie, makes friends with the local doctor, Jean Markham, her life is turned upside down.

Charlie tells his secrets to no one but the bees, but even he can't keep his mother's friendship to himself. The locals don't like things done differently. As Lydia and the doctor become closer, the rumours start to fly and threaten to shatter Charlie's world.]]> 354 Fiona Shaw 0955647665 Amy 0 to-read 4.08 2009
author: Fiona Shaw
name: Amy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199373441 A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.

Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.

Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold. As Ayukta unspools these generations of women—whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival—she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.

What would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?

Sweeping, deeply felt and intergenerational, A Thousand Times Before is a debut as poetic as it is propulsive, as healing as it is heartbreaking, as it examines what it means to carry our past with us and to pass it on. Rooted in a tender love story, and spun with a tremendous amount of care, this book is a rare, remarkable feat from an incredible new literary talent.]]> 368 Asha Thanki 0593654641 Amy 0 to-read 3.63 2024
author: Asha Thanki
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004172 Meryl Wilsner's spicy f/nb romance, where two lifelong best friends go on a nonrefundable honeymoon together and discover sometimes to find a happily ever after, you just have to ask.

Elsie Hoffman has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a year and a half. Ginny Holtz has been in love with Elsie for almost a decade and a half.

When Elsie discovers her fiancé already planned their wedding and honeymoon as a surprise and she’s expected to be in a white dress in seven days, she swiftly realizes she’s let herself become too comfortable with a future she never wanted. She breaks things off, and a week later is on a plane to the Caribbean for her non-refundable honeymoon with her best friend Ginny instead.

Ginny thinks it’s high time Elsie learned how to speak up for herself. So, they make a deal with her. For the next week, Elsie can have whatever she wants, wherever, however, and whenever she wants it, as long as she asks. They never expected Elsie to want them.

What starts as choosing activities and taking selfies soon turns to toe-curling kisses and much, much more. But what happens when the honeymoon is over?

Meryl Wilsner’s My Best Friend’s Honeymoon is about not only learning to ask for what you want, but for the happiness you deserve.]]> 304 Meryl Wilsner 1250873320 Amy 2 3.40 2025
author: Meryl Wilsner
name: Amy
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
review:
I was so excited for this one and immediately downloaded an arc from netgalley once it was available, so I’m really sad that I dislike it as much as I do. The characters were so flat and not fleshed out at all, there was truly NO chemistry, no really believable friendship, even, and the pacing was wild. One minute nothing can happen and the next they’re sleeping together. I also couldn’t stand Elsie, it just seemed like she took advantage of Ginny at every turn. This one was not for me.
]]> 60142213 An emotionally powerful romance novel about two people finding love after struggling with addiction--ultimately discovering what it means to be completely and unapologetically themselves.

Elisheva Cohen has just returned to Brooklyn after almost a decade. The wounds of abandoning the Orthodox community that raised her, then shunned her because of her substance abuse, are still painful. But when she gets an amazing opportunity to study photography with art legend Wyatt Cole, Ely is willing to take the leap.

On her first night back in town, Ely goes out to the infamous queer club Revel for a celebratory night of dancing. Ely is swept off her feet and into bed by a gorgeous man who looks like James Dean, but with a thick Carolina accent. The next morning, Ely wakes up alone and rushes off to attend her first photography class, reminiscing on the best one-night stand of her life. She doesn't even know his name. That is, until Wyatt Cole shows up for class--and Ely realizes that the man she just spent an intimate and steamy night with is her teacher.

Everyone in the art world is obsessed with Wyatt Cole. He's immensely talented and his notoriously reclusive personal life makes him all the more compelling. But there's a reason why his past is hard for him to publicize. After coming out as transgender, Wyatt was dishonorably discharged from the military and disowned by his family. From then on he committed to sobriety and channeled his pain into his flourishing art career. While Ely and Wyatt's relationship started out on a physical level, their similar struggles spark a much deeper connection. The chemistry is undeniable, but their new relationship as teacher and student means desperately wanting what they can't have.

In this deeply romantic adult debut, bestselling author Victoria Lee creates stunningly genuine characters and crafts a love story that you won't ever forget.]]> 320 Victoria Lee 0593500512 Amy 0 to-read 3.93 2023
author: Victoria Lee
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203019749 259 Sarah Easter Collins 0593798333 Amy 0 to-read 3.74 2024
author: Sarah Easter Collins
name: Amy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202774975 Detective Elise King’s investigation into a woman’s murder is getting derailed by a reporter who insists on doing her own investigation in this nail-biting mystery from the author of Local Gone Missing.

When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine’s Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest society’s violence against women. Into the divide comes Kiki Nunn, whose aggressive newsgathering once again antagonizes Elise.

A single mother of a young daughter, Kiki is struggling to make a living in the diminished news landscape. Getting a scoop in the Simmons murder would do a lot for her career, and she’s willing to go up against not just Elise but the killer himself to do it.]]> 400 Fiona Barton 1984803077 Amy 0 to-read 3.74 2024
author: Fiona Barton
name: Amy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181344829 A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was��.

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.]]> 410 Ali Hazelwood Amy 4 3.98 2024
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:
I didn’t think I’d enjoy this nearly as much as I did, but the Twilight fan inside me couldn’t resist. I wish we’d gotten more of Misery and Lowe earlier on though, it wasn’t until about halfway through the book that they really even started talking, but once they DID, I couldn’t put this down.
]]> 219603177 One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family.��Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto��a luxury��train from Philadelphia to Chicago,��an overnight��journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.]]> 400 Riley Sager 0593472403 Amy 0 to-read 3.61 2025
author: Riley Sager
name: Amy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 Amy 0 to-read 4.27 2025
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Amy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 198563641 From the New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo, a podcast producer agrees to host a new series about modern dating—but will the show jeopardize her chance at finding real love?

Cecily Foster loves to make podcasts. She fiercely protects her colleagues, dearly adores her friends, and never misses dinner with her sister. But after a disastrous relationship with a colleague who stole her heart and her ideas, she’s put romantic love on hold.

When the boss who’s disappointed her again and again finally offers her the chance to host her own show, she wants to be thrilled. But there’s a catch—actually, two catches. First, the show will be about Cecily’s dating life. And second, she has to follow the guidance of influencer and newly minted relationship coach Eliza Cassidy, whose relentlessly upbeat attitude seems ready-made for social media, not real life.

Cecily would rather do anything other than put her singledom on display (ugh) or take advice from the internet (UGH). But when her boss hints that doing the show is the only way to protect a friend’s job, she realizes she has no choice.

To make matters more complicated, once she’s committed to twenty blind dates of Eliza’s choosing, Cecily finds herself unable to stop thinking about Will, a photographer she helped to rescue a very big and very lovable lost dog. Even though there are sparks between the two, Will’s own path is uncertain, and Eliza’s skeptical comments about Cecily’s decision-making aren’t helping. On the one hand, Will seems great. But on the other hand . . . don’t they all?

As Cecily struggles to balance the life she truly desires and the one Eliza wants to create for her, she finds herself at a crossroads. Can Cecily sort through all the advice and find a way to do what she loves without losing herself in the process?]]> 320 Linda Holmes 059359925X Amy 0 to-read 3.78 2025
author: Linda Holmes
name: Amy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.��

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

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

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Amy 0 to-read 4.41 2025
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Amy
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 21853621 Der Weltbestseller �� die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Amy 3 4.63 2015
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Amy
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
I feel like the last person standing who hadn’t read this and now I have. I think Kristin Hannah’s writing has gotten sooo much better in the ten years since this was published. The first half of this book really sucked me in, but it dragged in the second half and totally fell apart in the end, like she just ran out of steam. Vianne also annoyed me so much and there was really no redeeming that, especially once she called Beck “an innocent man.�� Ma’am, he is literally Nazi who deported your best friend???
]]> 199926331 Estranged exes must stick close together to save their best friend’s wedding after a string of disasters in this swoony and steamy second-chance romance.

Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago.

With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized.

What’s not on her list? Eli arriving from New York with a new rule-breaking attitude or the all-inclusive venue burning to the ground, leaving the bride and groom in dire straits. Nor does she anticipate Adam asking her and Eli to help him make a miracle happen. Together.

As Georgia and Eli rush up to Napa Valley to pull off the perfect wedding, their old chemistry comes back in technicolor. Somewhere between cake tastings gone wrong, disastrous DJ auditions, and Eli’s heated attention, Georgia starts recognizing the man she fell in love with before. And if she lets herself break her rules, she might find what they’re building isn’t the something old that ruined them—it’s a chance at something new.]]> 399 Jessica Joyce 0593548434 Amy 0 to-read 4.12 2024
author: Jessica Joyce
name: Amy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 77197
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.]]> 435 Robin Hobb 055357339X Amy 0 to-read 4.21 1995
author: Robin Hobb
name: Amy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201750803 A crackling, tender, and perfectly off-kilter novel about love, madness, illness, and recovery.Vita Woods is on the brink. She has a good job in London and a successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the future promising. Her sister, Gracie, is brilliant yet unreliable, her best friend and sparring partner; and she has a goldfish, Whitney Houston, a fantail who brightens even her darkest days. Because, as much as things are going right, the days are dark. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, she rarely makes it out of bed.Instead, she spends long hours in “The Pit”—a place of deep exhaustion and semi-consciousness, dead to the world and to herself. Vita has been sick for months with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can diagnose. And recently, her only companion, Luigi, has started showing up at her bedside, bringing snacks, romantic advice, and the promise of release. The issue is that he may be a ghost, an apparition of her sickly mind.Then, an unexpected mix-up pushes her into the path of her upstairs neighbors. As Vita finds friendship—and perhaps more—in the apartment above, she keeps sneaking up to see them, but something about her “condition�� is nagging at the edges of her mind. What if the problem is Vita herself? Because as far as anyone can prove…there’s nothing wrong with her.]]> 224 Kate Weinberg 0593717368 Amy 0 to-read 3.23
author: Kate Weinberg
name: Amy
average rating: 3.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 192724256
The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink—even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces—something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

The thing is, it's not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Will Claire finish off her blackmailer before her pursuer reveals all? Let the games begin . . .]]> 325 Joanna Wallace 0143136178 Amy 0 to-read 3.61 2023
author: Joanna Wallace
name: Amy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222376577 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six , Girl Dinner is a darkly-fun novel about power, lust, and eating your fill, as wealthy moms and sorority girls practice a sinister new wellness trend . . .

Good girls deserve a treat.

Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.

After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she's taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.

Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane's clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she's apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.

As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 368 Olivie Blake 1250883458 Amy 0 to-read 3.92 2025
author: Olivie Blake
name: Amy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50598
Rebekah Kettle is obsessed. Not with her quirky, adoring paparazzo boyfriend or the gossip columnist who wants to be her new best friend, but with someone she’s never even met—cult filmmaker Arthur Weeman. But when the window of an Upper East Side apartment provides her with a scandalous view into Weeman’s life, Rebekah has to does she give her new love the scoop of a lifetime—a photo of the compromised Weeman—or does she remain loyal to the man whose films have defined her life? Bold, daring, and deliciously twisted, Little Stalker is a hilarious story of voyeurism, obsession, and relationships—both real and]]> 352 Jennifer Belle 1594489467 Amy 0 to-read 3.51 2007
author: Jennifer Belle
name: Amy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221739867 From the author of A Good Happy Girl, a lesbian screwball comedy following two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic split—only to end up seeing the same woman

In Sweetener, recently separated wives, both named Rebecca, can’t seem to disentangle their lives. Lonely and depressed, Rebecca is scraping by as a part-time cashier at an organic grocery store. Despite having less than ten dollars in her bank account, she lists herself as a sugar mama on a lesbian hookup app. Enter Charlotte, a charismatic artist who, unbeknownst to Rebecca, is also dating her wife.

Meanwhile, the other Rebecca, a newly sober doctoral student, has renewed her efforts to foster a child. The catch? Because the Rebeccas are still legally married, she needs her wife to attend parenting classes with her as part of the approval process.

Neither of them asks whether this means they’re getting back together, but the idea alone sends Charlotte into a tailspin. As Charlotte navigates her desire for each Rebecca—or her desire for attention—her world becomes more and more Gumby-like and surreal. It doesn’t help that she’s been wearing a fake pregnancy belly to all of her dates, and only one of the Rebeccas knows it isn’t real.

Sumptuous, sticky, and slightly absurd, Sweetener brings together three women fixated on the fantasy of motherhood, and trying to figure out what kind of mother, partner, or sugar mama they want to be.]]> Marissa Higgins 164622258X Amy 0 to-read 5.00
author: Marissa Higgins
name: Amy
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 156023123
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 231 Sierra Greer 0063312697 Amy 4 3.81 2024
author: Sierra Greer
name: Amy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did! I loved following Annie as she became more and more human, and I hated Doug more with every page.
]]> 123193218 spending the night on a locked psychiatric ward.

Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out.

And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger.

Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D.

And now she might never escape.
]]> 348 Freida McFadden Amy 3 3.98 2023
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
Extra deranged given that this takes place in a locked psych ward. Sad to say my addiction to Freida books has to come to an end now, since I’m pretty sure this was the last one I had left to read.
]]> 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 Amy 5 4.06 2025
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Amy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:
I can’t believe this book is real and didn’t come directly from my own brain. Emily Austin is one of my favorite writers and she so perfectly captures what it’s like feeling like an alien in your family, especially as it regards politics.
]]> 58735031 The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony--until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case.

Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy.

Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera's cunning and quickness to crack the case.

A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL.
]]> 222 Juneau Black 0593315715 Amy 0 to-read 3.77 2015
author: Juneau Black
name: Amy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 193376382 172 Bridget Quinn 1797230328 Amy 0 to-read 4.19
author: Bridget Quinn
name: Amy
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Amy 0 to-read 3.62 2025
author: Virginia Feito
name: Amy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 224004595 A swoon-worthy sapphic romance following two women who are thrown together on a European adventure, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of the “sexy, insightful, and utterly charming�� (BuzzFeed) Kiss Her Once for Me.

Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells needs an escape. She’s desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all.

After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her two-hundred-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.

Fascinated by the woman who drunkenly came out to her on the plane, Mal offers to help Sadie relive the queer adolescence she missed out on as they walk the Camino. As Sadie develops her newfound confidence, Mal grapples with a complicated loss and unexpected inheritance. But as their relationship blurs the lines between reality and practice, they both must decide if they will forever part at the end of the tour or chart a new course together.

With “funny, poignant�� (Publishers Weekly, starred review) prose, Alison Cochrun explores the power of letting go of your past and realizing that it’s never too late to live as your authentic self.]]> 384 Alison Cochrun 1668021250 Amy 0 to-read 3.00 2025
author: Alison Cochrun
name: Amy
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223908226 A creeping story of sapphic obsession with Gothic undertones and a delicious mid-century feel, from the author of the Polari Prize-shortlisted Sunburn.

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings - Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy - arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.

After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.

But for one of the O'Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It's difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings...

Crackling with suspense, Heap Earth Upon It revisits the rural Ireland of Howarth's critically acclaimed debut and delves into claustrophobic relationships and tangled identities, leaving you wondering who to trust until the very last page. It combines the emotional intensity and slow-burn sapphic obsession of Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea and K. Patrick's Mrs S. with the unsettling gothic undertones of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Shirley Jackson's fiction.

'A tense and claustrophobic novel with gothic atmosphere which seeps into your bones like fog... A brutal exploration of the corrosive impact of shame and secrecy. Howarth knows her sapphic yearning!' RACHEL DAWSON, author of Neon Roses

'Dark, passionate and poised. A remarkable story of the way rural Ireland haunts and is haunted. Intense and thrilling' SOULA EMMANUEL, author of Wild Geese

** READERS LOVE SUNBURN **

‘Achingly beautiful, almost lyrical�� This was both sweet and heartbreaking �� I couldn’t put it down�� 5-star Reader Review

‘An addictive, honey-dipped queer love story�� 5-star Reader Review

‘Ever since I read this, I simply CANNOT stop thinking about it�� 5-star Reader Review

‘Completely heart-wrenching, devastating, all-consuming�� Spectacular�� 5-star Reader Review]]> 281 Chloe Michelle Howarth 0857309064 Amy 0 to-read 4.83
author: Chloe Michelle Howarth
name: Amy
average rating: 4.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216188969 The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.]]> 338 Freida McFadden Amy 3 3.99 2025
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:
Convinced that Miss McFadden has a Situations Wheel she spins as she writes her books because how else are we accomplishing this level of insanity 2-3 times a YEAR? Keep them coming though.
]]> 199349912 A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling, far from home, as she gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags

The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.

Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.]]> 240 Yasmin Zaher 1646222105 Amy 3
This quote in particular really stuck out to me: “I used to think that if people saw the real face of wickedness, not the mask, then the world would revolt. I used to be a proponent of transcparency. When Netanyahu and Trump were elected I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.”]]> 3.50 2024
author: Yasmin Zaher
name: Amy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars. This is definitely one for the "weird girls books" shelf, and I ate it up in one sitting. The summary makes it seem like the Birkin bag scheme is a much bigger part of the book than it is -- it's really just a blip in a longer journey of one woman's descent into madness as the two halves of her, the rich, chic, white-passing woman living in NYC, and the displaced Palestinian girl with no surviving family, diverge further and further. I really enjoyed the commentary this book had, and highlighted a lot as I went. It's really a timely book, and a reminder of why I want to continue to try and read more widely.

This quote in particular really stuck out to me: “I used to think that if people saw the real face of wickedness, not the mask, then the world would revolt. I used to be a proponent of transcparency. When Netanyahu and Trump were elected I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.��
]]>