Alma's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 01:38:02 -0700 60 Alma's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Talking at Night 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie ’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just ’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 Alma 0 to-read 3.91 2023 Talking at Night
author: Claire Daverley
name: Alma
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ransom Canyon (Ransom Canyon, #1)]]> 204906163 In the remote west Texas town of Ransom Canyon, family can be made by blood or by choice.

Rancher Staten Kirkland, the last descendant of Ransom Canyon’s founding father, is rugged and practical to the last. No one knows that when his troubling memories threaten to overwhelm him, he runs to lovely, reclusive Quinn O’Grady…or that she has her own secret that no one living knows.

Young Lucas Reyes has his eye on the prize—college and the chance to become something more than a ranch hand's son. But one night, one wrong decision, will set his life on a course even he hadn't imagined.

Yancy Grey is running hard from his troubled past. He doesn’t plan to stick around Ransom Canyon, just stay long enough to learn the town’s weaknesses and how to use them for personal gain. Only Yancy, a common criminal since he was old enough to reach a car’s pedals, isn’t prepared for what he encounters.

In this dramatic series, the lives, loves and ambitions of four families will converge, set against a landscape that can be as unforgiving as it is beautiful, where passion, property and pride are worth fighting—and even dying—for.

Ransom Canyon

Book 1: Ransom Canyon
Book 2: Rustler's Moon
Book 3: Lone Heart Pass
Book 4: Sunrise Crossing
Book 5: Wild Horse Springs
Book 6: Indigo Lake
Book 7: Mistletoe Miracles
Book 8: Christmas in Winter Valley]]> 304 Jodi Thomas 1335016899 Alma 0 to-read 3.58 2015 Ransom Canyon (Ransom Canyon, #1)
author: Jodi Thomas
name: Alma
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 218572920 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 ’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.]]> 427 Emily Henry Alma 5
I loved reading the flashback scenes from Margaret, the Ives family heiress and socialite that journalists Alice & Hayden are both trying to write a book for about her publicized and scandalous life. Her story and background got so deep, including her love story & the story about what happened to Laura, her sister. Laura’s story needs to be talked about more!

I got emotional multiple times throughout the book, during the flashbacks, but also during the time Alice spends with her mother and while reading about her feelings towards their bond. Also during the times that Hayden was just being the great big beautiful man that he is.

Hayden seems tough on the outside, but is such a beautiful, caring, kind, thoughtful, & funny soul once you get to know him. The way he cares for others stuck out to me so much. Same goes for Alice, who is much more extroverted but holds all these same qualities. I found myself relating to her.

I did not expect the twist at the end at all, but things did tie together beautifully and left me a teary eyed mess on my couch.

I love how this story feels like an exploration through multiple families, friends, love stories, and generations on life. All the great & big beautiful parts about it, and everything that makes life what it is. ❤️]]> 4.33 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Alma
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
This was a little different for Emily Henry, but in the best ways. While yes, we did follow a main romance in this book, we also followed the complex lives of multiple characters. Between the familial issues of all the main characters (Alice, Hayden, & Margaret), the themes of familial bonds, grief, love, and life all shined through and came together in the most beautiful ways.

I loved reading the flashback scenes from Margaret, the Ives family heiress and socialite that journalists Alice & Hayden are both trying to write a book for about her publicized and scandalous life. Her story and background got so deep, including her love story & the story about what happened to Laura, her sister. Laura’s story needs to be talked about more!

I got emotional multiple times throughout the book, during the flashbacks, but also during the time Alice spends with her mother and while reading about her feelings towards their bond. Also during the times that Hayden was just being the great big beautiful man that he is.

Hayden seems tough on the outside, but is such a beautiful, caring, kind, thoughtful, & funny soul once you get to know him. The way he cares for others stuck out to me so much. Same goes for Alice, who is much more extroverted but holds all these same qualities. I found myself relating to her.

I did not expect the twist at the end at all, but things did tie together beautifully and left me a teary eyed mess on my couch.

I love how this story feels like an exploration through multiple families, friends, love stories, and generations on life. All the great & big beautiful parts about it, and everything that makes life what it is. ❤️
]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Book: A Must-See, Can’t-Miss, Won’t-Forget Guide to Nantucket]]> 223790658 The Blue Book, the Queen of the Beach Read � and dare we say the Queen of Nantucket � offers readers practical, fun, insider from drive-on beaches to late-night dance bars; from romantic getaways to family outings; from where to find the best oysters to where to buy the best beach towel. Interspersed with scenes from Elin’s novels set at the locations she recommends, with charming watercolor illustrations throughout, The Blue Book lets readers plan the perfect getaway� and live like the characters in an Elin Hilderbrand novel.]]> 144 Elin Hilderbrand 0316595837 Alma 0 to-read 5.00 The Blue Book: A Must-See, Can’t-Miss, Won’t-Forget Guide to Nantucket
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Alma
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One True Loves 27189194
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

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

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

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

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid Alma 4 Don’t talk to me. So good. 4.03 2016 One True Loves
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Alma
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/15
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
Don’t talk to me. So good.
]]> <![CDATA[It Starts with Us (It Ends with Us, #2)]]> 60393672 Before It Ends with Us, it started with Atlas. Colleen Hoover tells fan favorite Atlas’s side of the story and shares what comes next in this long-anticipated sequel to the “glorious and touching� (USA TODAY) #1 New York Times bestseller It Ends with Us.

Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil coparenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date.

But her excitement is quickly hampered by the knowledge that, though they are no longer married, Ryle is still very much a part of her life—and Atlas Corrigan is the one man he will hate being in his ex-wife and daughter’s life.

Switching between the perspectives of Lily and Atlas, It Starts with Us picks up right where the epilogue for the “gripping, pulse-pounding� (Sarah Pekkanen, author of Perfect Neighbors) bestselling phenomenon It Ends with Us left off. Revealing more about Atlas’s past and following Lily as she embraces a second chance at true love while navigating a jealous ex-husband, it proves that “no one delivers an emotional read like Colleen Hoover� (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author).]]> 323 Colleen Hoover 1668001225 Alma 0 3.80 2022 It Starts with Us (It Ends with Us, #2)
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Alma
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/24
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reckless (The Powerless Trilogy, #2)]]> 204514529 512 Lauren Roberts Alma 3 4.01 2024 Reckless (The Powerless Trilogy, #2)
author: Lauren Roberts
name: Alma
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:
The ending pushed the rating up a bit, although I saw it coming. The rest of the book seemed like it kept dragging on. Nevertheless, I am excited to see how the story continues in the next book.
]]> Passion Project 203237161
If your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, Bennet Taylor is failing miserably . . . with a big emphasis on the miserable. Where’s that zest she keeps hearing about? She’s a temp worker in New York City with no direction, no future, and no social life. And at the painful center of this listlessness is grief over the death of her first love.

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

As their “passion project� continues, the pair tackle everything from carpentry to tattooing to rappelling off skyscrapers, and Bennet feels her guarded exterior ebbing away. But as secrets surface, Bennet has to decide what she wants, and if she’s truly ready to move on. With emotional resonance and sparkling banter, Passion Project is a fun, flirty, thoughtful story of finding a spark—and igniting happiness.]]> 368 London Sperry 0143138561 Alma 0 to-read 3.94 2025 Passion Project
author: London Sperry
name: Alma
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Academy 223541023 #1 bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand teams up with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham, to deliver a dishy, page-turning novel following an intertwined cast of characters over the course of one drama-filled year at a New England boarding school.

It’s move-in day at Tiffin Academy and amidst the happy chaos of friends reuniting, selfies uploading, and cars unloading, shocking news America Today just ranked Tiffin the number two boarding school in the country. It’s a seventeen-spot jump � was there a typo? The dorms need to be renovated, their sports teams always come in last place, and let’s just say Tiffin students are known for being more social than academic. On the other hand, the campus is exquisite, class sizes are small, and the dining hall is run by an acclaimed New York chef. And they do have fun—lots of parties and school dances, and a piano man plays in the student lounge every Monday night.

But just as the rarefied air of Tiffin is suffused with self-congratulation, the wheels begin to turn � and then they fall off the bus. One by one, scandalous blind items begin to appear on phones across Tiffin’s campus, thanks to a new app called ZipZap, and nobody is safe. From Davi Banerjee, international influencer and resident queen bee, to Simone Bergeron, the new and surprisingly young history teacher, to Charley Hicks, a transfer student who seems determined not to fit in, to Cordelia Spooner, Admissions Director with a somewhat idiosyncratic methodology � everyone has something to hide.

As if high school wasn’t dramatic enough...As the year unfolds, bonds are forged and broken, secrets are shared and exposed, and the lives of Tiffin’s students and staff are changed forever. The Academy is Elin Hilderbrand’s fresh, buzzy take on boarding school life, and a thrilling new direction from one of America’s most satisfying and popular storytellers.]]> 432 Elin Hilderbrand 031656785X Alma 0 to-read 4.04 The Academy
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Alma
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Deep Cuts 214269394
Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.]]> 277 Holly Brickley 0593799089 Alma 0 currently-reading 3.76 2025 Deep Cuts
author: Holly Brickley
name: Alma
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Promise Me Sunshine 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 Alma 4 4.29 2025 Promise Me Sunshine
author: Cara Bastone
name: Alma
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
I love Miles so much and I hope everyone has a Miles in their lives. I’m so obsessed with how hilarious Cara Bastone’s writing and characters are. This book has a heavy overarching theme of grief so be mindful of that before reading. I really liked the NYC setting. I enjoyed reading this!!!
]]> Small Rain 205363938 A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.

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

This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.]]> 306 Garth Greenwell 0374279543 Alma 0 to-read 4.06 2024 Small Rain
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Alma
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ready or Not 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 loyalfriendship 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 Alma 4 Shep has to be one of the most perfect book boyfriends I have ever read about!!! Acts of service girlies you will loveee him.
Eve’s dialogue throughout the book was so funny and enjoyable. It made the book fly by.
Bastone’s writing is beautifully lyrical at times and she knows how to stick in those amazing metaphors and quotes that after you read them you’re like “how tf could anyone even think of that?!�
]]> 3.96 2024 Ready or Not
author: Cara Bastone
name: Alma
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
You know the book is good when it is entirely about one of my least favorite tropes and still gets 4 stars.
Shep has to be one of the most perfect book boyfriends I have ever read about!!! Acts of service girlies you will loveee him.
Eve’s dialogue throughout the book was so funny and enjoyable. It made the book fly by.
Bastone’s writing is beautifully lyrical at times and she knows how to stick in those amazing metaphors and quotes that after you read them you’re like “how tf could anyone even think of that?!�

]]> Tell Me What You Did 209823382
Poe Webb, host of a popular true crime podcast, invites people to anonymously confess crimes they've committed to her audience. She can't guarantee the police won't come after her "guests," but her show grants simultaneous anonymity and instant fame—a potent combination that's proven difficult to resist. After an episode recording, Poe usually erases both criminal and crime from her mind.

But when a strange and oddly familiar man appears on her show, Poe is forced to take a second look. Not only because he claims to be her mother's murderer from years ago, but because Poe knows something no one else does. Her mother's murderer is dead.

Poe killed him.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Dead Girl in 2A and The New Neighbor comes a chilling new thriller that forces the question: are murderers always the bad guys?]]> 420 Carter Wilson 1464226229 Alma 4 3.76 2025 Tell Me What You Did
author: Carter Wilson
name: Alma
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:
I mean this was just a really cool and different concept. I was hooked the entire time.
]]> Before We Were Strangers 23309634
We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House.

You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more.

We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other.

Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding�

I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello.

After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half?

M

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection� post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City.]]> 310 Renee Carlino 1501105779 Alma 3 4.02 2015 Before We Were Strangers
author: Renee Carlino
name: Alma
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:
This was cute but a lot of parts didn’t add up or seemed kinda unrealistic for me
]]> <![CDATA[Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age]]> 216247514 From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal and provocative exploration of how technology companies have reshaped human language, and, if we let them, could steal it from us

When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive teaching A.I.-powered machines to write and talk like human beings. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to get machines to communicate for us. But if this came to pass, would it be liberation or subjugation?

Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with this question. In 2021, she used a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.

The experience, revealing both the appeal and the danger of corporate-owned language machines, forced Vara to interrogate how technology has changed how she uses language, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal�s first Facebook reporter, to testing early versions of ChatGPT—all while adding to the trove of human-created material that Big Tech exploits. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral A.I. experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates Big Tech’s incursion into our lives, while proposing that by harnessing the collective imagination that taught us to communicate in the first place, we might invent a nobler, freer relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.]]> 352 Vauhini Vara 0593701526 Alma 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
author: Vauhini Vara
name: Alma
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Strawberry Patch Pancake House (Dream Harbor, #4)]]> 213186396 Fall in love with the brand new spring romance set in Dream Harbor, from the bestselling author of The Pumpkin Spice Café.

As a renowned chef, single-dad Archer never planned on moving to a small town, let alone running a pancake restaurant. But Dream Harbor needs a new chef, and Archer needs a community to help raise his daughter, Olive.

Iris has never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months. So when Mayor Kelly suggests Archer is looking for a nanny, and Iris might be available, she shudders at the thought. But in need of money she reluctantly agrees.

As Archer and Iris get used to their new roles, is it possible that they might have more in common than they first thought, or is Olive just determined to play match-maker�

Tropes:

� single dad
� forced proximity
� slow burn
� found family
� one bed]]> 361 Laurie Gilmore 0008713340 Alma 3 Yes chef 3.91 2025 The Strawberry Patch Pancake House (Dream Harbor, #4)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Alma
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves:
review:
Yes chef
]]> Say You'll Remember Me 217182552 disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong�

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

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 368 Abby Jimenez 1538759195 Alma 0 to-read 4.15 2025 Say You'll Remember Me
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Alma
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> It's a Love Story 218153839 USA Today bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, a novel about a former adolescent TV punchline who has left her awkwardness in the rearview mirror thanks to a fake-it-till-you-make-it mantra that has her on the cusp of success, until she tells a lie that sets her on a crash-course with her past, spending a week in Long Island with the last man she thinks might make her believe in love.

Rules for a love story: There are none. It’s all a lie.

Jane Jackson knows that true love is a lie. Laughter is the only truth—you ’t fake a belly laugh. Jane should know, she spent her adolescence as "Poor Janey Jakes," the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punchline on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she’s a Creative Executive at Clearwater Studios and she’s living by a new mantra: Fake it till you make it.

Except, she might have faked it too far. Desperate to get her first project greenlit and riled up by pompous cinematographer and one-time crush Dan Finnegan, she opened her mouth and a big fat fib fell out. She claimed that Jack Quinlan, hottest popstar of the moment, has promised to write an original song for the soundtrack. Jack may have been her first kiss—and greatest source of shame—but she hasn’t spoken to him in twenty years.

Now, Jane must turn to the last man she’d ever want to owe: Dan Finnegan. Because Jack is playing a festival in Dan’s hometown on Long Island, and Dan has an in. A week in close quarters with Dan while facing down her past is Jane's idea of hell, but Dan just might surprise her. While covering up her lie, can they find something true?]]> 368 Annabel Monaghan 0593714105 Alma 0 to-read 4.29 2025 It's a Love Story
author: Annabel Monaghan
name: Alma
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Streetcar Named Desire 12222 Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams� essay “The World I Live In.�

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared�57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams� A Streetcar Named Desireis one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the �40s and �50s.]]> 192 Tennessee Williams 0811216020 Alma 0 3.93 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Alma
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Love in Exile 60683642 ‘We ache for love, but love eludes us. Out of this crisis comes so much of what it means to be human�

Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture.

Love, she argues, is as much a collective question as a personal one. Yet our collective ideals of love have developed in a society which is itself profoundly sick and loveless; in which consumer capitalism sells us ever new, engrossing fantasies of becoming more loved or lovable. In this highly politicized terrain, boundaries are purposefully drawn to keep some in and to keep others out. Those who exist outside them are ignored, denigrated, exiled.

In Love in Exile, Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself.]]> 208 Shon Faye 0241605989 Alma 0 to-read 4.30 Love in Exile
author: Shon Faye
name: Alma
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hotel du Lac 251665
But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.]]> 184 Anita Brookner 0679759328 Alma 0 to-read 3.59 1984 Hotel du Lac
author: Anita Brookner
name: Alma
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The History of Sound 199373354
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.]]> 320 Ben Shattuck 059349038X Alma 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The History of Sound
author: Ben Shattuck
name: Alma
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Deep End 212806981 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...]]> 447 Ali Hazelwood 0593550447 Alma 4 A really cute read about two college athletes and their bond/relationship. It dives into past trauma and gets deep at times; dealing with academic stress, mental health, friendships, past abuse (tw) and more. There’s a lot of spiceee ]]> 4.10 2025 Deep End
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Alma
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️
A really cute read about two college athletes and their bond/relationship. It dives into past trauma and gets deep at times; dealing with academic stress, mental health, friendships, past abuse (tw) and more. There’s a lot of spiceee
]]> The Let Them Theory 216351768
If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words�Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands—and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins�New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset—teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.

Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. Within a few pages, you'll realize how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things—at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals—and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.

Written as an easy-to-understand guide, Robbins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways, relevant research and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who champion The Let Them Theory every step of the way.

Learn how

Stop wasting energy on things you can't control Stop comparing yourself to other peopleBreak free from fear and self-doubtRelease the grip of people's expectationsBuild the best friendships of your lifeCreate the love you deservePursue what truly matters to you with confidenceBuild resilience against everyday stressors and distractionsDefine your own path to success, joy, and fulfillment. . . and so much more.

The Let Them Theory will forever change the way you think about relationships, control, and personal power. Whether you want to advance your career, motivate others to change, take creative risks, find deeper connections, build better habits, start a new chapter, or simply create more happiness in your life and relationships, this book gives you the mindset and tools to unlock your full potential.

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory now and discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words.]]> 311 Mel Robbins 1401971377 Alma 0 to-read 4.17 2024 The Let Them Theory
author: Mel Robbins
name: Alma
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Alma 0 currently-reading 3.86 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Alma
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Paradise Problem 199797582
Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

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

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.]]> 352 Christina Lauren 1668017725 Alma 4
Anna is a broke artist with pink hair (this is prevalent throughout the book), trying to make ends meet. As she’s struggling to pay for her father’s medical bills, her old college roommate that she barely ever spoke to shows up at her door one day, announces they’ve actually been secretly married for a few years, and that he needs her to pretend to be his real wife in front of his extremely rich family during a long stay in Singapore. But don’t worry, he’ll pay her any price to do it.

This fake marriage gets deep and real, very quickly. We follow all the messed up family issues to Anna’s inappropriate jokes to the blurred lines of fake or real, in this perfect vacation/Summer read. ]]> 4.07 2024 The Paradise Problem
author: Christina Lauren
name: Alma
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
This was such a feel good, cute and funny romance. Funny doesn’t cut it, actually. The FMC is laugh-out-loud hilarious! I liked how there were deeper moments and plots throughout the book that added to each character.

Anna is a broke artist with pink hair (this is prevalent throughout the book), trying to make ends meet. As she’s struggling to pay for her father’s medical bills, her old college roommate that she barely ever spoke to shows up at her door one day, announces they’ve actually been secretly married for a few years, and that he needs her to pretend to be his real wife in front of his extremely rich family during a long stay in Singapore. But don’t worry, he’ll pay her any price to do it.

This fake marriage gets deep and real, very quickly. We follow all the messed up family issues to Anna’s inappropriate jokes to the blurred lines of fake or real, in this perfect vacation/Summer read.
]]> The Favorites 211400175 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

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

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

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

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

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she ’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 464 Layne Fargo 0593732057 Alma 5 4.17 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Alma
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
Guys�. GUYS. You need to read this. ⛸️❄️❤️�
]]> Sounds Like Love 219301746 A hitmaking songwriter and a bitter musician share a startling and inexplicable connection that they’ll do anything to shake, in the next sparkling, magical book from Ashley Poston.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because that song stuck in their heads? Maybe it’s there for a reason.]]> 384 Ashley Poston 0593641000 Alma 0 to-read 4.27 2025 Sounds Like Love
author: Ashley Poston
name: Alma
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Coin 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 Alma 0 to-read 3.50 2024 The Coin
author: Yasmin Zaher
name: Alma
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Use of Photography 204642443
Includes 14 black and white still-life photographs by the authors.

Love and death cohabit in The Use of Photography, with alternating chapters by the two authors. First published in France in 2005, the book recounts a passionate love affair between Ernaux and the journalist and author Marc Marie, after the two met in January 2003. Ernaux had been receiving intensive chemo for breast cancer during the prior three months, and had lost all her hair from the treatments. At the end of January she had surgery, followed by radiation therapy.

The affair took place in different locations and Ernaux describes how, shortly after it began, she found herself entranced each morning by the sight of clothes strewn about, chairs out of place and the remains of their last meal of the evening still on the table—and how painful it felt to put things back in order afterward. She went and got her camera, and began to take photographs of the scenes of disarray. When she told Marc Marie what she had done, he said he had felt the same desire.

The Use of Photography is one of the quintessential Ernaux books, told primarily through words in Ernaux’s inimitable style, which is adopted here by both authors, and with their photographs adding another lens through which to capture the story.]]> 144 Annie Ernaux 164421413X Alma 0 currently-reading 4.08 2005 The Use of Photography
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Alma
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Our Evenings 209891406 From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.

Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.

Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.

This is “one of our most gifted writers� (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.]]> 496 Alan Hollinghurst 0593243064 Alma 0 to-read 3.92 2024 Our Evenings
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Alma
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Locked Ward 217388258 Was it...
Bitter, all-consuming jealousy?
Pathological sibling rivalry?
Pure insanity?

Whatever the cause—and everyone has a theory—it's the Crime of the Decade when glamorous Georgia Cartwright, who was adopted as a newborn, is accused of killing the biological daughter of her wealthy, Southern family.

Georgia is locked in a psychiatric institution where the most violent offenders are held while she awaits trial. The only words she whispers when her estranged twin sister Amanda visits are, “I didn’t do it. You’ve got to get me out of here.�

Amanda doesn't trust Georgia, but she can't abandon her in a place so eerie and menacing that it seems to exist in another dimension. Is Georgia the victim of a powerful family that's so depraved murder is the least of their crimes? Or is Amanda being led down a path of madness into the web of a master manipulator?

Nothing is as it seems in Sarah Pekkanen’s The Locked Ward, a shocking psychological thriller about the complex bonds of sisterhood—and what happens when they are stretched to the breaking point.

Some doors in the Locked Ward should never be opened.]]> 320 Sarah Pekkanen 1250349516 Alma 0 to-read 3.89 2025 The Locked Ward
author: Sarah Pekkanen
name: Alma
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Comfort & Joy 188201
In the small town of Rain Valley, six-year-old Bobby O’Shea is facing his first Christmas without a mother. Unable to handle the loss, Bobby has closed himself off from the world, talking only to his invisible best friend. His father Daniel is beside himself, desperate to help his son cope. Yet when the little boy meets Joy, these two unlikely souls form a deep and powerful bond. In helping Bobby and Daniel heal, Joy finds herself again.

But not everything is as it seems in quiet Rain Valley, and in an instant, Joy’s world is ripped apart, and her heart is broken. On a magical Christmas Eve, a night of impossible dreams and unexpected chances, Joy must find the courage to believe in a love--and a family--that ’t possibly exist, and go in search of what she wants . . . and the new life only she can find.]]> 272 Kristin Hannah 0345483790 Alma 0 currently-reading 3.38 2005 Comfort & Joy
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Alma
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year]]> 199531989 Knives Out gets a rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers Christmas romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter

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

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-Time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

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

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

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

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

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

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 293 Ally Carter 0063276682 Alma 4 3.92 2024 The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
author: Ally Carter
name: Alma
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:
Such a cute holiday rom-com/mystery! Very reminiscent of
]]> Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2) 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Alma 1
The reason this review is posted a year later is cause I got 65% of the way through the book, FORCEFULLY & PAINFULLY, then couldn’t do it anymore and looked up spoilers for the ending.

The first book was so good and she literally ruined it with this book. No plot twist makes this book any better.]]> 4.33 2023 Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Alma
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:
“It is so bad, I want to give you a zero, but that's not possible, so I give you a one.�

The reason this review is posted a year later is cause I got 65% of the way through the book, FORCEFULLY & PAINFULLY, then couldn’t do it anymore and looked up spoilers for the ending.

The first book was so good and she literally ruined it with this book. No plot twist makes this book any better.
]]> <![CDATA[The Christmas Tree Farm (Dream Harbor, #3)]]> 206318178 From the author of the viral TikTok sensation, The Pumpkin Spice Café, comes the only spicy grumpy x sunshine Christmas romcom you need this year!

Kira North hates Christmas. Which is unfortunate since she just bought a Christmas tree farm in a town that’s too cute for its own good.

Bennett Ellis is on vacation in Dream Harbor taking a break from his life in California. And most importantly, taking a break from his latest run of disastrous dates.

After a run in with Kira in her fields, Ben has no intention of offering to help the grumpy owner set up her tree farm, despite the fact she’s clearly got no idea what she’s doing.

Kira knows she should stop being so stubborn, but her farm is not all cute and cozy like people always show on social media, it’s borderline dangerous with no heating, and she’d rather no one saw it.

But somehow fate finds Ben at Kira’s farm once more, and as Kira watches him swing an ax at the first tree, she finds herself appreciating his strength and questionning why she refused help in the first place..

The Christmas Tree Farm is a spicy romantic mystery for fans of Gilmore Girls with a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:

� grumpy x sunshine
� small town
� forced proximity
� one bed]]> 369 Laurie Gilmore 0008610738 Alma 5 3.66 2024 The Christmas Tree Farm (Dream Harbor, #3)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Alma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:
Guys, this is a genuine 5-star from me
]]> <![CDATA[The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)]]> 196241667 From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller and viral TikTok phenomenon, The Pumpkin Spice Café, comes a brand new spicy romance set in Dream Harbor!

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

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

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

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

Tropes:
� opposites attract
� small town
� forced proximity
� he falls first]]> 384 Laurie Gilmore Alma 3 3.66 2024 The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Alma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
A quick, easy, cute, and spicy small town romance
]]> One Golden Summer 217245639
I never anticipated Charlie Florek.

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

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

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

Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.]]> 400 Carley Fortune 0593638913 Alma 0 to-read 4.52 2025 One Golden Summer
author: Carley Fortune
name: Alma
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Something About Living 205275668 81 Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 1629222739 Alma 0 to-read 4.48 2024 Something About Living
author: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
name: Alma
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

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

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

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

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Alma 5
As a bank robbery goes wrong, we follow the lives of a few anxious people being held hostage. This story explores so much and is laugh-out-loud funny, while also being tearjerking and just an enjoyable time all around.

Backman is extremely talented at his craft and this only makes me want to read more of his books! ]]> 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Alma
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:
This book is written differently than anything I’ve ever read. Backman has a way with words and metaphors that helps bring the story alive.

As a bank robbery goes wrong, we follow the lives of a few anxious people being held hostage. This story explores so much and is laugh-out-loud funny, while also being tearjerking and just an enjoyable time all around.

Backman is extremely talented at his craft and this only makes me want to read more of his books!
]]> <![CDATA[The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)]]> 139391940 A spicy small-town romance and TikTok phenomenon, perfect for fans of Hannah Grace and Stephanie Archer.

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

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

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

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

Tropes:

� grumpy x sunshine
� small town
� found family
� spicy]]> 373 Laurie Gilmore 0008610665 Alma 4 3.36 2023 The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: Alma
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
This was such a cute romance that gave all the fall vibes! The characters are so loveable and I’m excited to continue the series. A fluffy and feel-good read!
]]> We Used to Live Here 199898250
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve ’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family ’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 320 Marcus Kliewer Alma 4 This was such a good psychological thriller. I was so hooked the entire time. It made me feel scared at times and gave me an eerie feeling. Sometimes I felt like I was the one going crazy from how dizzying and unbelievable the twists and turns in this book were!

The only reason it’s not a five star is because it can get a little confusing at times, but other than that, it was really great!]]> 3.77 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Alma
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️
This was such a good psychological thriller. I was so hooked the entire time. It made me feel scared at times and gave me an eerie feeling. Sometimes I felt like I was the one going crazy from how dizzying and unbelievable the twists and turns in this book were!

The only reason it’s not a five star is because it can get a little confusing at times, but other than that, it was really great!
]]> The Boyfriend 208503280 She's looking for the perfect man. He's looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she ’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim...

A dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden proves that crimes of passion are often the bloodiest…]]> 368 Freida McFadden 1728296226 Alma 4 3.95 2024 The Boyfriend
author: Freida McFadden
name: Alma
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves:
review:
In true Freida fashion, this book will have you hooked and guessing all throughout. I honestly did not guess the ending and enjoyed reading this one a lot!
]]> All Rhodes Lead Here 57605091 572 Mariana Zapata Alma 0 to-read 4.24 2021 All Rhodes Lead Here
author: Mariana Zapata
name: Alma
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Alma 0 to-read 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Alma
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Last Summer in the City 54785501 Last Summer in the City is a witty and despairing classic of Italian literature. Biting, tragic, and endlessly quotable, this translated edition features an introductory appreciation from longtime fan New York Times bestselling author André Aciman.

In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between run-down hotels and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends, without whom he would probably starve. At thirty, he’s still drifting: between jobs that mean nothing to him, between human relationships both ephemeral and frayed. Everyone he knows wants to graduate, get married, get rich—but not him. He has no ambitions whatsoever. Rather than toil and spin, isn’t it better to submit to the alienation of the Eternal City, Rome, sometimes a cruel and indifferent mistress, sometimes sweet and sublime? There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her.

First discovered by Natalia Ginzburg, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature, a great novel of a stature similar to that of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye. Gianfranco Calligarich’s enduring masterpiece has drawn comparisons to such writers as Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Jonathan Franzen and is here made available in English for the first time.]]> 192 Gianfranco Calligarich 0374600155 Alma 0 to-read 3.69 1970 Last Summer in the City
author: Gianfranco Calligarich
name: Alma
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Alma 3 In the end, this book was about a bunch of rich family drama with an interwoven mystery. The book dragged on quite a bit, and the ending was not what I was expecting after all of the anticipation for it.
The reason the rating isn’t lower is because a part of me still wanted to know how the book would end as I was reading, and I found some of the character’s stories to be interesting and intriguing.
I think that if the ending had been something more shocking, my rating might be a little higher. ]]> 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Alma
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves:
review:
This book was confusing at the start from how many characters and different perspectives we get, but you get used to it as you keep reading.
In the end, this book was about a bunch of rich family drama with an interwoven mystery. The book dragged on quite a bit, and the ending was not what I was expecting after all of the anticipation for it.
The reason the rating isn’t lower is because a part of me still wanted to know how the book would end as I was reading, and I found some of the character’s stories to be interesting and intriguing.
I think that if the ending had been something more shocking, my rating might be a little higher.
]]> Tell Me Lies 32735369 Tell Me Lies is about that one person who still haunts you—the other one. The wrong one. The one you couldn’t let go of. The one you’ll never forget.

Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college, and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother, whom she’s never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer—new friends, wild parties, stimulating classes. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco. Charming. Attractive. Complicated. Devastating.

Confident and cocksure, Stephen sees something in Lucy that no one else has, and she’s quickly seduced by this vision of herself, and the sense of possibility that his attention brings her. Meanwhile, Stephen is determined to forget an incident buried in his past that, if exposed, could ruin him, and his single-minded drive for success extends to winning, and keeping, Lucy’s heart.

Alternating between Lucy’s and Stephen’s voices, Tell Me Lies follows their connection through college and post-college life in New York City. Deep down, Lucy knows she has to acknowledge the truth about Stephen. But before she can free herself from this addicting entanglement, she must confront and heal her relationship with her mother—or risk losing herself in a delusion about what it truly means to love.

With the psychological insight and biting wit of Luckiest Girl Alive, and the yearning ambitions and desires of Sweetbitter, this keenly intelligent and staggeringly resonant novel chronicles the exhilaration and dilemmas of young adulthood, and the difficulty of letting go, even when you know you should.]]> 352 Carola Lovering Alma 3 3.46 2018 Tell Me Lies
author: Carola Lovering
name: Alma
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Golden Couple 57693416 The next electrifying novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo behind The Wife Between Us.

Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all—until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn’t stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.]]> 329 Greer Hendricks 125027320X Alma 4 3.94 2022 The Golden Couple
author: Greer Hendricks
name: Alma
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Out of the Woods 209220944
But Sarah has begun to wonder... Who is she without her other half?

When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable.

That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly steps in to save the day.

The rift that follows unearths a decade of grievances between them and doubts begin to grow. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen? Are they supposed to be?

In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is near breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches.

What follows is a life-affirming comedy of errors as two nature-averse people fight their way out of the woods in order to find their way back to their roots.]]> 336 Hannah Bonam-Young 0593871863 Alma 0 to-read 3.98 2025 Out of the Woods
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: Alma
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she ’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Alma 5 One of the best thrillers I’ve read. I read it in one day because it had me captivated from the very start. The audiobook is incredible! ]]> 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Alma
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️
One of the best thrillers I’ve read. I read it in one day because it had me captivated from the very start. The audiobook is incredible!
]]> A Little Life 25852828 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]> 816 Hanya Yanagihara 0804172706 Alma 0 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Alma
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2022/08/18
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
This is the most heartbreaking and depressing piece of literature I think I will ever come by. It contains some of the worst things I have ever heard of in my life occurring to the characters. This book had be sobbing to the point where I couldn’t breathe multiple times. The writing is beautiful, but the words are soul-wrenching. I ’t even give this book a rating. I would never recommend it to anyone. I would never wish this amount of misery on anyone. This story hurts so badly to the point where I wish I never read it. I don’t know what to think. It took me over a year to push myself through this book, and I am left absolutely shattered.
]]> Madonna in a Fur Coat 27793819 The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time.



'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.'

A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.



'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian]]> 168 Sabahattin Ali 014198127X Alma 0 to-read 4.19 1943 Madonna in a Fur Coat
author: Sabahattin Ali
name: Alma
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)]]> 62015945 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin�-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ’t refuse.]]> 417 Abby Jimenez 1538704412 Alma 4 4.38 2023 Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Alma
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves:
review:
Abby Jimenez does it again! I am obsessed with her writing. This book had great anxiety representation. I loved the story and binged it in a day. The only thing that really knocked the rating down for me was the repeating theme of miscommunication throughout the book which annoyed me a bit, but in the context of the couple’s relationship, it was understandable.
]]> <![CDATA[Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

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

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Alma 5
So, yes, this is a romance about an ER doctor and a small town carpenter, but it goes so much deeper than that. The romance was so raw and real. I’m sure many people can relate to the ups and downs of it all.

There is also a dysfunctional family aspect which is portrayed very well. I’m sure it would hit many readers very hard if they have experienced anything similar.

Overall, Jimenez has an amazing writing style and it is evident how much time and effort she puts into researching and understanding the tough topics she incorporates in her romance novels. This is a new favorite, as I related to a lot of it personally, but also because it is just so so so good!!!]]> 4.26 2022 Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Alma
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
review:
I went into this book thinking it’d be a cute rom-com. DON’T BE FOOLED! It will hit you like a ton of bricks with the heavy topics it covers. Praise to Abby Jimenez for explaining those topics, such as domestic abuse and psychological trauma, so well.

So, yes, this is a romance about an ER doctor and a small town carpenter, but it goes so much deeper than that. The romance was so raw and real. I’m sure many people can relate to the ups and downs of it all.

There is also a dysfunctional family aspect which is portrayed very well. I’m sure it would hit many readers very hard if they have experienced anything similar.

Overall, Jimenez has an amazing writing style and it is evident how much time and effort she puts into researching and understanding the tough topics she incorporates in her romance novels. This is a new favorite, as I related to a lot of it personally, but also because it is just so so so good!!!
]]> Out on a Limb 124950295 397 Hannah Bonam-Young 1778027784 Alma 0 to-read 4.25 2023 Out on a Limb
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: Alma
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Couple (Nantucket, #3)]]> 34840184
But it's going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect. Featuring beloved characters from The Castaways, Beautiful Day, and A Summer Affair, The Perfect Couple proves once again that Elin Hilderbrand is the queen of the summer beach read.]]> 480 Elin Hilderbrand 0316375241 Alma 5 3.93 2018 The Perfect Couple (Nantucket, #3)
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Alma
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/09
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
review:
This was SO GOOD. A murder mystery set on the small island of Nantucket and filled with rich family drama. I listened to the audiobook, which was amazing, and anytime I wasn’t listening I kept thinking about it and couldn’t wait to continue. The story has you intrigued from the very first page, and takes you on so many twists and turns that you are left trying to solve this whodunit until the very last sentence! This was honestly amazing and I am already sad that I have finished it. Read/listen to it!
]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie ’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Alma 4 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Alma
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves:
review:
A pretty good mystery, just not that thrilling.
]]> Project Hail Mary 56049167 A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this incredible new science-based thriller from the #1 'New York Times' bestselling author of 'The Martian'.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crew-mates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.

Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, 'PROJECT HAIL MARY is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival 'The Martian' - while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.




©2021 Andy Weir (P)2021 Audible Studios]]> 17 Andy Weir Alma 4
The audiobook is also amazing! The narrator does such a great job with changing his voice and doing accents for each character. Probably the best audiobook I will ever listen to. ]]> 4.54 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Alma
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
An enthralling, imaginative and innovative read. A book about an important space mission that also brings in a theme of friendship and sacrifice. I am looking forward to seeing how they adapt it into a movie.

The audiobook is also amazing! The narrator does such a great job with changing his voice and doing accents for each character. Probably the best audiobook I will ever listen to.
]]> Summer Romance 198563734
There aren’t enough labeled glass containers to contain the mess that is Ali Morris’s life. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. She’s a professional organizer whose pantry is a disgrace.

No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her in the same way he claimed his favorite of her three children: by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees. The last thing Ali needs is to make her life messier, but there’s no harm in a little Summer Romance. Is there?]]> 321 Annabel Monaghan 0593714083 Alma 4 4.01 2024 Summer Romance
author: Annabel Monaghan
name: Alma
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️ cute summer read and I love Ethan
]]> Ugly Love 17788401
Never ask about the past.
Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they ’t handle it at all.

Hearts get infiltrated.
Promises get broken.
Rules get shattered.
Love gets ugly.]]> 330 Colleen Hoover Alma 0 4.01 2014 Ugly Love
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Alma
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Alma 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Alma
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Serious Concerns 936208 96 Wendy Cope 0571167055 Alma 0 to-read 3.87 1992 Serious Concerns
author: Wendy Cope
name: Alma
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Evenings and Weekends 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever�

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Alma 0 to-read 3.77 2024 Evenings and Weekends
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Alma
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Powerful (The Powerless Trilogy, #1.5)]]> 203840597
Adena and Paedyn have always been inseparable. Fate brought them together when they were young, but friendship ensured they would always protect each other and the home they built in the slums of Loot. But now Paedyn—an Ordinary—has been selected for the Purging Trials, which means almost certain death.

Now alone in Loot, Adena must fend for herself. After attempting to steal, she's rescued by a mysterious man from the market. Mak's shadowy past and secretive power set him apart from the other low-level Elites of Loot. And as the pair team up to see their loved ones before the Trials, the quest tests their loyalty, their love, and their lives.]]> 272 Lauren Roberts Alma 4 The ending 4.13 2024 Powerful (The Powerless Trilogy, #1.5)
author: Lauren Roberts
name: Alma
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves:
review:
The ending
]]> Same Time Next Summer 62562931 Do take long walks on the sand.
Do put an umbrella in every cocktail.
Do NOT run into your first love.

Sam’s life is on track. She has the perfect doctor fiancé, Jack (his strict routines are a good thing, really), a great job in Manhattan (unless they fire her), and is about to tour a wedding venue near her family’s Long Island beach house. Everything should go to plan, yet the minute she arrives, Sam senses something is off. Wyatt is here. Her Wyatt. But there’s no reason for a thirty-year-old engaged woman to feel panicked around the guy who broke her heart when she was seventeen. Right?

Yet being back at this beach, hearing notes from Wyatt’s guitar float across the night air from next door as if no time has passed—Sam’s memories come flooding back: the feel of Wyatt’s skin on hers, their nights in the treehouse, and the truth behind their split. Sam remembers who she used to be, and as Wyatt reenters her life their connection is as undeniable as it always was. She will have to make a choice.]]> 320 Annabel Monaghan 059354496X Alma 4 4.5 ⭐️ 3.71 2023 Same Time Next Summer
author: Annabel Monaghan
name: Alma
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
4.5 ⭐️
]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Alma 0 to-read 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Alma
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)]]> 60092579 Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance from the author of the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet.

Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.

When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

Then Noah starts to see a different side of Rae Rose—she's Amelia: kindhearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye. He can't help but get close to her. Soon she'll have to return to her glamorous life on tour, but until then, Noah will show Amelia all the charming small-town experiences she's been missing, and she'll help him open his heart to more.

Amelia can't resist falling for the cozy town and her grumpy tour guide, but even Audrey had to leave Rome eventually.]]> 320 Sarah Adams 0593500784 Alma 3 3.88 2022 When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)
author: Sarah Adams
name: Alma
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Nora Goes Off Script 58988426 Nora's life is about to get a rewrite...

Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it's her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage's collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it's picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance, is cast as her ne'er-do-well husband Nora's life will never be the same.

The morning after shooting wraps and the crew leaves, Nora finds Leo on her porch with a half-empty bottle of tequila and a proposition. He'll pay a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week. The extra seven grand would give Nora breathing room, but it's the need in his eyes that makes her say yes. Seven days: it's the blink of an eye or an eternity depending on how you look at it. Enough time to fall in love. Enough time to break your heart.

Filled with warmth, wit, and wisdom, Nora Goes Off Script is the best kind of love story--the real kind where love is complicated by work, kids, and the emotional baggage that comes with life. For Nora and Leo, this kind of love is bigger than the big screen.]]> 272 Annabel Monaghan 0593420039 Alma 4 4.02 2022 Nora Goes Off Script
author: Annabel Monaghan
name: Alma
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:
Obsessed with Monaghan’s storytelling and writing style.
]]> <![CDATA[Unbroken: An Olympian's Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive]]> 21965110 The #1 New York Times bestseller, which is also a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie, has now been adapted by the author for young adults. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this riveting biography includes more than 100 black-and-white photos, as well as exclusive content, "In Conversation," with Laura Hillenbrand and Louie Zamperini.

On a May afternoon in 1943, an American military plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary sagas of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. As a boy, he had been a clever delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and stealing. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a supreme talent that carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when war came, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a sinking raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would respond to desperation with ingenuity, suffering with hope and humor, brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would hang on the fraying wire of his will.

In this captivatingyoung adult edition of her award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller, Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of a man’s breathtaking odyssey and the courage, cunning, and fortitude he found to endure and overcome. Lavishly illustrated with more than one hundred photographs and featuring an exclusive interview with Zamperini, Unbrokenwill introduce a new generation to one of history’s most thrilling survival epics.]]> 320 Laura Hillenbrand 0385742517 Alma 5 4.51 2010 Unbroken: An Olympian's Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Alma
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Firefly Lane (Firefly Lane, #1)]]> 1472878 New York Times bestselling author of On Mystic Lake comes a powerful novelof love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . .

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world� moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.

Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend. . . .

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it’s the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It’s about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you’ll never forget . . . one you’ll want to pass on to your best friend.]]> 479 Kristin Hannah 0312364083 Alma 0 to-read 4.16 2008 Firefly Lane (Firefly Lane, #1)
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Alma
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Just Last Night 54870201
But then, in an instant, their lives are changed forever.

In the aftermath, Eve’s world is upended. As stunning secrets are revealed, she begins to wonder if she really knew her friends as well as she thought. And when someone from the past comes back into her life, Eve’s future veers in a surprising new direction...

They say every love story starts with a single moment. What if it was just last night?]]> 393 Mhairi McFarlane 0063036851 Alma 0 to-read 3.96 2021 Just Last Night
author: Mhairi McFarlane
name: Alma
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Alma 0 to-read 4.47 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Alma
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daughters of Passion 41713580 Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

Her story was this: she had been an orphan, her mother probably a whore. Brought up by nuns, she had lost her faith, found another, fought for it and been imprisoned. This was inexact but serviceable.

On the twelfth day of her hunger strike, Maggy is unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. That's true of what brought her here too: was she IRA, or did she just take risks for the sake of a friend?

Julia O'Faolain paints a portrait of young Irish girls and their unseverable connection, showing solidarity in places politics cannot reach.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]> 49 Julia O'Faolain 0571351948 Alma 0 to-read 3.41 1982 Daughters of Passion
author: Julia O'Faolain
name: Alma
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me About It: Memoir of a Psychotherapist]]> 40109207 174 Pinny Brakeley Bugaeff Alma 0 3.85 Tell Me About It: Memoir of a Psychotherapist
author: Pinny Brakeley Bugaeff
name: Alma
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Meet Me at the Lake 61797464
At thirty-two, Fern's life doesn't look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern's back home, running her mother's Muskoka lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend's the manager, and Fern doesn't know where to begin.

She needs a plan—a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern's not sure she wants to know what it is.

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?]]> 336 Carley Fortune 0735243786 Alma 2 3.66 2023 Meet Me at the Lake
author: Carley Fortune
name: Alma
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
I didn’t really feel anything between the main characters and this book put me in a slump. Had to skim the last 100 pages.
]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Alma 0 to-read 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Alma
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business]]> 74034 184 Neil Postman 014303653X Alma 0 4.15 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
author: Neil Postman
name: Alma
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2024/05/06
shelves:
review:
All I will say is that the concepts discussed in this book are still prevalent 40 years after it was written, and that says a lot.
]]> Love Interest 65213935 A sparkling adversaries-to-lovers romcom set at a magazine publisher in Manhattan. When Casey and Alex are forced into proximity, they soon realize falling for each other is just as much of a risk and as it is a reward.

Casey Maitland has always preferred the reliability of numbers, despite growing up the daughter of two artistic souls. Now a twenty-four-year-old finance expert working in Manhattan, Casey wonders if the project manager opening at her company � magazine powerhouse LC Publications � is a sign from the universe to pursue a career with a little more sparkle. That is, until she’s passed over for the job in favor of the board chairman’s son.

Alex Harrison is handsome, Harvard-educated, and enigmatic. Everybody loves him � except for Casey. But when the two are thrown on the same project, they both have something to prove. For Casey, it’s getting tapped for a transfer to the London office and fulfilling her dreams of travelling. For Alex, it’s successfully launching a brand that will impress his distant father.

As work meetings turn into after hours, Casey and Alex are drawn to each other again and again, but neither can avoid the messy secrets and corporate intrigue threatening to tear them apart. What they discover about their workplace might change everything � including the dreams each of them is chasing.]]> 339 Clare Gilmore 1250880548 Alma 0 to-read 3.70 2023 Love Interest
author: Clare Gilmore
name: Alma
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fiancé Dilemma (Green Oak, #2)]]> 203572092
Matthew Flanagan is in the mud, literally. Not only has he been fired from his job, but also the tires of his car are stuck in the muck after taking a wrong turn as he enters Green Oak, North Carolina. So, he grabs a duffel with his essentials and goes in search of a place to crash until he gets his life back on track. But instead, he finds his best friend’s sister, Josie, greeting him as her fiancé.

What starts as a big messy misunderstanding quickly turns into an arrangement with Matthew playing a new role as doting fiancé. A fifth engagement—and a stunt, at that—makes Josie’s stomach turn, but every dilemma requires a choice between equally undesirable alternatives, and Matthew doesn’t seem to mind becoming one more number in a colorful list of grooms-that-never-were. Despite the ring on her finger, Josie knows this is only temporary, even if the rest of the small town believes that the fifth time’s the charm.]]> 432 Elena Armas 1668011344 Alma 0 to-read 3.63 2024 The Fiancé Dilemma (Green Oak, #2)
author: Elena Armas
name: Alma
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson]]> 6900
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Alma 5 4.19 1997 Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
author: Mitch Albom
name: Alma
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2024/04/26
shelves:
review:
A modern classic, in that every single person should read this at some point in their lives.
]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Alma 5
Emily Henry’s writing in Happy Place blew me away and that carried into this book too. I love all the characters and I love how she knows how to write about complex relationships and issues. She writes in a way that makes me feel like it’s real life and it’s the best.

Live, love, Miles <3]]> 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Alma
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:
Another 5 star Emily Henry book� who’s surprised? Not me!

Emily Henry’s writing in Happy Place blew me away and that carried into this book too. I love all the characters and I love how she knows how to write about complex relationships and issues. She writes in a way that makes me feel like it’s real life and it’s the best.

Live, love, Miles <3
]]> Bad Men 195660460
Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she's hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she's finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of die-hard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims­­.

When a decapitated body shows up on Jon's doorstep the morning after his wife leaves him, he becomes the chief suspect for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. Saffy’s crush becomes an obsession as she orchestrates a meet-cute and volunteers to help Jon clear his name, using every trick up her sleeve to find the real killer and get her man—no matter the cost.

Darkly comic and addictively readable, Bad Men is a wild romp of a feminist thriller that asks if even a serial killer can have a happily ever after.]]> 320 Julie Mae Cohen 1419772333 Alma 0 to-read 3.52 2023 Bad Men
author: Julie Mae Cohen
name: Alma
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Because it is.

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

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

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

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593640977 Alma 0 to-read 3.62 2024 A Novel Love Story
author: Ashley Poston
name: Alma
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Seven Year Slip 199834495
So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.]]> 336 Ashley Poston 059333650X Alma 5
Posten’s writing is so lyrical and beautiful that my eyes filled with tears from reading how she wrote about simple moments. Truly a beautiful story. ]]> 4.24 2023 The Seven Year Slip
author: Ashley Poston
name: Alma
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves:
review:
4.75 ⭐️

Posten’s writing is so lyrical and beautiful that my eyes filled with tears from reading how she wrote about simple moments. Truly a beautiful story.
]]> <![CDATA[Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)]]> 195820807
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?]]> 432 Abby Jimenez 1538704439 Alma 5
I flew through this book. Justin is THE acts of service man and I ate it up. Top tier book bf.

I liked the mental health aspects of this book and think it was mostly done well (the only thing really ticking my rating down a bit was it feeling like trauma dumping at times). Also didn’t like some aspects of the last parts of the book because of this, but I understand it.

There are lots of great quotes throughout the book that I was eager to underline.

THE EPILOGUE WAS ADORABLE!!!

Warning: mommy issues ]]> 4.35 2024 Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Alma
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves:
review:
4.5-4.75/5 ⭐️

I flew through this book. Justin is THE acts of service man and I ate it up. Top tier book bf.

I liked the mental health aspects of this book and think it was mostly done well (the only thing really ticking my rating down a bit was it feeling like trauma dumping at times). Also didn’t like some aspects of the last parts of the book because of this, but I understand it.

There are lots of great quotes throughout the book that I was eager to underline.

THE EPILOGUE WAS ADORABLE!!!

Warning: mommy issues
]]> Boulder 49236083 Finalista del International Booker Prize 2023.

Después de la exitosa Permafrost, Boulder es la segunda novela del tríptico donde Eva Baltasar explora la voz, la vida y el cuerpo de tres mujeres.

La protagonista de Boulder se gana la vida como cocinera en un viejo barco mercante. Es la situación perfecta: soledad, una cabina, el océano, algún puerto en el que conocer mujeres y horas para encarar el vacío, para sentir la fuerza de la provisionalidad. Hasta que un día una de ellas consigue que abandone el mar, acceda a vivir entre cuatro paredes y se implique en la gestación asistida y en la educación de un hijo. ¿Qué ha hecho la maternidad con la mujer que en su día conoció en un bar de la Patagonia? ¿Qué hará ella, animal enjaulado en una casa unifamiliar de Reikiavik?
Todo ha cambiado excepto su apodo, Boulder: esas enormes piedras aisladas en medio del paisaje, expuestas a todo sin que nadie sepa de dónde vienen ni porque están ahí.]]> 128 Eva Baltasar 8439736967 Alma 0 to-read 3.88 2020 Boulder
author: Eva Baltasar
name: Alma
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1) 195645746
The good kind of wild. The bad kind of wild.

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

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

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

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

And the only thing he truly can't do is resist her.]]> 455 Elsie Silver 1464220816 Alma 0 to-read 4.03 2024 Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1)
author: Elsie Silver
name: Alma
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rifqa 57653182 Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanfani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah—an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.]]> 100 Mohammed El-Kurd 1642595861 Alma 0 to-read 4.65 2021 Rifqa
author: Mohammed El-Kurd
name: Alma
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Alma 5
The feelings this book gave me will always resonate, just as the story will. Truly touching and unforgettable.

Might as well add that the TV show adaptation was done wonderfully and encapsulates the story very well and movingly. ]]> 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Alma
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/08
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves:
review:
A profound, exhilarating and unparalleled view of love and its consequences.

The feelings this book gave me will always resonate, just as the story will. Truly touching and unforgettable.

Might as well add that the TV show adaptation was done wonderfully and encapsulates the story very well and movingly.
]]> <![CDATA[Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery]]> 49127514
Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years. They seek Gildiner's help to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried.

As in such recent classics as The Glass Castle and Educated, each patient embodies self-reflection, stoicism, perseverance, and forgiveness as they work unflinchingly to face the truth. Gildiner's account of her journeys with them is moving, insightful, and sometimes very funny. Good Morning Monster offers an almost novelistic, behind-the-scenes look into the therapist's office, illustrating how the process can heal even the most unimaginable wounds.]]> 368 Catherine Gildiner 1250271487 Alma 5 4.44 2020 Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery
author: Catherine Gildiner
name: Alma
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves:
review:
Truly so amazing and different, yet needed. This will go down as one of the best books I’ve ever read. Definitely a must read for anyone looking to better themselves in any aspect and learn from the stories of others.
]]> Mother Country 123852603
A daughter and mother: two women miles, years, and dreams apart. One defies traditions and expectations. The other conforms to them, even in a new land. Their emotional distance grows while the daughter, now a wife and mother herself, comes to better understand the woman she’s become and why, as she ruminates on inherited trauma, the need to forgive, and the lengths she’ll go to free herself from the past.

Etaf Rum’s Mother Country is part of Good Intentions, a riveting collection of stories about the instincts, fears, and fierce love inherent in motherhood from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.]]> 52 Etaf Rum 1662513747 Alma 0 to-read 4.18 Mother Country
author: Etaf Rum
name: Alma
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bad Diaspora Poems 62897727 115 Momtaza Mehri 1787334376 Alma 0 to-read 4.24 Bad Diaspora Poems
author: Momtaza Mehri
name: Alma
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: a Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed]]> 44801538 14 hrs and 21 mins

Now being developed as a television series with Eva Longoria and ABC!

"An irresistibly addictive tour of the human condition." (Kirkus, starred review)

"Rarely have I read a book that challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light, and was at the same time laugh-out-loud funny and utterly absorbing." (Katie Couric)

"This is a daring, delightful, and transformative book." (Arianna Huffington, founder, Huffington Post and founder & CEO, Thrive Global)

"Wise, warm, smart, and funny. You must read this book." (Susan Cain, New York Times best-selling author of Quiet)

From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world - where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of­fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives - a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a 20-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys - she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

]]> 15 Lori Gottlieb Alma 0 4.33 2019 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: a Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
author: Lori Gottlieb
name: Alma
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves:
review:
Really really good. A book for not only therapists, but for everyone.
]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Alma 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Alma
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 60406379
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 7 Jennette McCurdy 1797147943 Alma 0 4.44 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Alma
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves:
review:
Amazing. Highly recommend the audiobook as it is narrated by Jennette McCurdy herself.
]]> White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky Alma 0 to-read 4.16 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Alma
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)]]> 127280062 Torn apart by war. Reunited by love?

Two weeks have passed since Iris returned home bruised and heartbroken from the front, but the war is far from over.

Roman is missing, lost behind enemy lines, with no memory of his past, or Iris. Hoping his memories return, he begins to write again � but this time for the enemy.

When a strange letter arrives through his wardrobe door, he strikes up a correspondence with a penpal who seems at once mysterious� and strangely familiar.

As their connection deepens, the two of them will risk their very hearts and futures to change the tides of the war.]]> 420 Rebecca Ross 1250857457 Alma 3
Still a good book, just not as good as Divine Rivals in my opinion. Some parts felt a little dragged on to me, but I still really enjoyed the story! ]]> 3.99 2023 Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Alma
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/30
date added: 2024/01/30
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️

Still a good book, just not as good as Divine Rivals in my opinion. Some parts felt a little dragged on to me, but I still really enjoyed the story!
]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 60784819
Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.]]> 384 Coco Mellors 1639730702 Alma 0 to-read 3.67 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: Alma
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>