Book Related Topics – TwoNightStands

3 for 1 Book Reviews

1 Dec 2025 twonightstands

It’s been a minute, so figured I’d do a three-fer before the year runs out. The reviews features a beloved author, a memoir and a Booker Prize winner.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid: If you have been a long time reader of the blog then you know how much I love me some TJR, in fact I ranked all her books here. I was excited to read this one but it pains me to say that it didn’t hit the way the other books did. One of the things I like about TJR as an author is how versatile she is and how she doesn’t have a formulaic writing style. This one centered around Joan who is an astronaut. Based in the 80’s it showed how she had to fight to be recognized in her field but it was also a book about Joan’s sexuality at a time when she couldn’t necessarily be loud and proud. In hindsight, seeing how much praise this book has received, I am wondering if I’m the problem. Now don’t get me wrong, the book was not bad at all but I do think it was all over the place. There were so many storylines and timelines and didn’t seem well put together as is typical of TJR. It took me a minute to get all the characters right and remember their respective timelines. It also felt like I was being forced or told what to feel and I’d rather it be organic.

Flesh by Davis Szalay: FOMO got the best of me, and I had to see what all the fuss was about and even after reading it, I still don’t get it. Listen y’all, I am trying to get used to this new wave of abstract writing. The book follows Istvan from when he was a teenager in Hungary where he experiences something traumatic and then we follow him to London as he gets older and lives a completely different life, almost as if the incident never happened. As he gets older and has all these different experiences, I keep thinking they would have some connection to each other but the more there didn’t seem to be one, the more confused I got about what the point was. I do think it is a very character driven book (which aren’t usually my favorite) so that could be the explanation for that but if the character didn’t seem to be processing all the things that were happening to him and doesn’t seem to care, it’s very hard for us the readers to be invested and care as well. The ending felt like walking into a glass door because I didn’t realize that was the end. It was very abrupt. Someone needs to explain to me why this was the winner of the prize.

Accidentally on Purpose by Kristen Kish: Kristen from Top Chef fame wrote a memoir and she is such a lovely person (and a hottie) and that was probably most people’s motivations for reading this book and unfortunately it was just okay. I know everyone wants to write a memoir but if you are not willing to be VERY open or share salacious details then it’s okay to just leave it in your journal. Kristen does the thing where you share but you aren’t really sharing anything. Even when she gets to certain points, she doesn’t name names. You do get the sentiment of the title where it feels like everything just fell into place for her in her career, even though she has the talent, there was still a great deal of luck on her side, and I appreciate her owning that because sometimes successful people feel like admitting luck diminishes their hard work. I also liked how she admitted not having a desire to find her bio parents (she is adopted) and not really looking into her Korean roots until later in life. Kristen does share her deep love for her wife, and you can see it come through. There is a point in the book where she is talking about her and we hear sniffles and honestly, it felt put on (don’t hate me!). I don’t think there should be one formula for a chef’s memoir, but I will say that there wasn’t that deeeeeep passion for food that you usually hear from other chefs, and it just seemed like something that’s part of her life. It felt like there was more of a passion for hosting (and that’s okay). I listened to this on audio. Overall, I don’t think it was terrible, but I don’t think it was very good either.

So there you have it. Have you read any of this? What did you think? Do you want to check out any of this after reading these reviews? Let me know!

Taynement

Book Review: Funny Story by Emily Henry

3 Jun 2024 twonightstands

“The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren’t imaginative enough to dream up.”

Daphne is engaged to Peter and a couple of weeks before their wedding, he comes back from his bachelor’s party and tells her that he is in love with his best friend, Petra. Peter and Petra jet off for a holiday and gives Daphne one week to leave the house Peter bought for their future life together, a house that she has put her all into decorating. Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian, she decides to become roommates with the only person who understands her predicament – Miles Nowak, Petra’s ex-boyfriend.

“You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t”

Emily Henry is a must read/buy author for me. I look forward to every book from her and she churns out very dependable rom coms. This used to be Jasmine Guillory for me but she hasn’t published a standalone book in a while, so I pivoted to Henry. I’ve reviewed every book of hers on this blog so just search her name and decide where you’d like to start. My favorite book of hers is Book Lovers but Funny Story comes pretty close. The characters are people you want to root for. Daphne and Miles were perfectly flawed in the way you’d want your romantic characters to be.

“I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”

Miles might be the best book boyfriend Henry has ever created. If he was secretly a millionaire then we would have been off to the races but alas, he doubles as both a server and a buyer for a Michigan winery. I don’t even know if this job is possible but I digress. Daphne is a librarian. I think I’m just a sucker for female characters created by Henry who work in the book industry in any capacity. Miles tries to convince Daphne to stay in Michigan even though the reason she moved to Michigan has ended, so he takes her on a series of “dates” over a couple of Sundays to show her how beautiful Michigan is. I was utterly convinced by Miles about the beauty of Michigan that I thought about going there for my birthday in September.

“It’s easy to be loved by the ones who’ve never seen you fuck up. The ones you’ve never had to apologize to, and who still think all your ‘quirks’ are charming.”

Emily Henry is a really good writer and if you like good books in general, then you should please give her a go. Now, if you love really good rom coms you should absolutely pick up her books. I read this book in a couple of hours after I picked it up at Barnes and Noble the weekend it came out. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? Did you enjoy it?

Leggy

Book Related Topics

Our 2024 Reading Goals

17 Jan 202417 Jan 2024 twonightstands

Leggy:

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas holiday season. If you had asked me right after Christmas, I would have told you that I had a fabulous Christmas, but I got ridiculously sick on the 27th and it completely ruined my holiday. I feel a lot better now but that was rough!

Last year for the first time ever, I did not meet my reading goals for the year. I read 58 books out of my goal of 70! For context, in 2022, I read over 100 books so 2023 was not a great reading year for me at all. I just could not get my head in the game. I switched jobs and suddenly found myself traveling a lot for work and trying to acclimate to a new industry that I’d never worked in before so it was tough to keep all the balls in my life juggling, so I just dropped them and let them fall where they may.

Anyway, this year, I’ve set my Goodreads challenge to 70 books as always and we’ll see where the year takes us! Definitely going to be more consistent with the blog, especially consistent with our Instagram, so follow us on there (nightstands2)! Can’t wait to share all the books we’re reading this year with y’all.

Taynement:

I had a good reading year last year and I think the key was reading mostly books that I enjoyed and anything that was not sparking joy, I did not hesitate to DNF. Naturally, when I enjoy books I tend to read faster which allows me to fit in more books. I also downloaded Libby on my phone which is always with me so now whenever I get a free moment I can read vs. when I used to read on my iPad which I couldn’t take everywhere with me.

So since that worked for me, I am going to keep doing that this year. I always set my goals at 30 books because Goodreads asks me for a number but I am not under any pressure to meet it. I hope to have a healthy amount of black/African authors and also fit in my quota of 1 fantasy/scifi book (maybe I should read the fourth wing).

All in all, we hope everyone has a good reading year in whatever way that looks like for you. Have an amazing year everyone!

Leggy & Taynement

Book Review: The Whispers by Ashley Audrain

4 Sep 2023 twonightstands

The Loverlys’ young son is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window and his mother Whitney waits by his bedside without a word to anyone. Back in their neighborhood, their neighbors and friends are shocked and reeling from their different roles in this. As the author takes us back to the weeks before the accident and the intricate ways the different families are connected, a domestic drama plays out right in front of us.

I loved Audrain’s debut novel – The Push. I gave it 5 stars. It was so well written and I was so intrigued. Her second book does not live up to her debut novel. I know the publishers are selling this as a domestic thriller but I refused to call it that in my blurb above, this is a domestic drama at best. There is no thriller. From the 20% mark you already know exactly what is happening and what secrets the author is stretching out to reveal at the 90% mark and it is not worth your reading 300 pages to get to.

Audrain is a fantastic writer. I’ll give her that. Every sentence is well crafted but my problem with this book is that this is not a story worth telling. This book is told from different points of views of the women living in the neighborhood. There are too many points of views and one in particular is so unnecessary and the editor should have cut it – Mara. Mara is an elderly portuguese woman who is the last of her kind in a neighborhood that has been utterly gentrified by the rich. She sits on her porch and observes her neighbors. I think she added nothing to the story. Her backstory did nothing to move the plot forward. You could skip all her chapters except one and you’d still not have missed a thing.

This book explores the quiet sacrifices of motherhood. We see Blair, a mother who has given up everything to be a stay at home mother to her one child. In contrast to Whitney who puts her career over the needs of her children. Then finally, Rebecca, a woman who has had 5 miscarriages and is desperate to become a mother. While Audrain has a lot of astute observations about motherhood, it ultimately amounts to nothing. There is no lesson to be learnt here. Nobody wins.

Audrain writes these long paragraphs about miscarriages that I had to skim through. The way she explicitly writes about the foetus leaving your body and describes each one of the 5 miscarriages in gruesome details made me feel like this is extremely unnecessary. But I also understand that maybe I’m not the target audience and people who have actually had miscarriages might relate to the very detailed passages about feeling the clumps drop down in the toilet as the contractions grip you?

As we get to know Rebecca, Whitney, Blair and Mara, the author explores the decisions every woman makes and the judgement and guilt that follows. She shows the lives we choose, the ones we’re thrust into and the different ways we punish ourselves for those decisions.

Ultimately, while I went around proclaiming the amazingness of The Push, I’m afraid I won’t be doing that for this one. Audrain is a fantastic writer but I wish she had sat with this one a little while longer. I gave this 2 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Ranking Taylor Jenkin Reid’s Books

19 Jun 2023 twonightstands

You have to be under a rock if you have not heard of Taylor Jenkins Reid. She has had a recent explosion of popularity and a lot of her books are making their way to screen (even though I am finding out that for some reason, they don’t seem to translate well to screen).

It’s always been a goal of mine to read all her books and I finally got around to reading them all. I thought it’d be fun to rank the books from my least favorite to absolute favorite. I think it’s easy to see the difference in my tops and bottoms. I am not a romance person and her earlier works seem to lean towards that vs. the later books where she created worlds that seem so realistic.

Anyways, here we go!

9. Forever, Interrupted – Took me a while to read this one but even though I made sure to read this when I was ready. It didn’t quite do it for me. Didn’t care for the protagonist and I got bored and trust me, I understand grief! You can see my review here.

8. One True Loves – At first it sounded far fetched but then it seemed like Emma’s choice was clear as day so everything felt like going through the motions.

7. Maybe in Another Life -This was a sliding doors type situation. We go back and forth and see what Hannah’s life could have been depending on choices she made. It got a little muddled but I enjoyed it but I don’t think TJR stuck the landing with this one aka the ending wasn’t my fave.

6. After I Do – I liked this because it just felt real. Wasn’t sure what the ending was going to be but I was pleased with it.

5. Evidence of the Affair – A short story only available in the Kindle Unlimited series, I enjoyed this one. It’s straight up in letter format but what a compelling story. You can find my review here

4. Malibu Rising – Talk about world building spanning across generations. My kind of book. The ending wasn’t the best but I enjoyed the book. My review is here.

3. Carrie Soto is Back – You couldn’t convince me Carrie Soto wasn’t real. Great book that just uses tennis as the anchor but it is so much more than that. Review can be found here.

2. Daisy Jones & The Six – The only way to consume this book is via audio. It’s a shame the screen adaptation didn’t do it justice but what a book. Review here.

1. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – What a masterpiece of a book. I always imagine it as a grand opera. I’d be curious to see if this doesn’t top everyone’s list of TJR books.

What do you think? What are your rankings?

Taynement

Book Related Topics

Our 2023 Reading goals

9 Jan 2023 twonightstands

Leggy:

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an amazing and relaxing holiday because I did. I went home to Nigeria to see my family and friends and have a detty December, which was fantastic. Anyway, back home to the hustle and bustle of work and real life. How was your reading life in 2022? Mine was amazing. I hit the 100 mark for the first time as an adult reader. I set a goal of 70 books like always on Goodreads and read 107 books the entire year. I read so much during the summer and barely read after October so I’m super proud of that number.

This year will be exactly the same number of books on my Goodreads challenge – 70. I usually spend January reading all the books I missed from last year and catching up on some backlist titles that I ignored for more recent reads. I’m also super excited to read Spare by Harry.

Taynement:

Happy New Year everyone. Hope everyone had a memorable holiday with loved ones. I had family around so it was nice but very busy. I got gifted physical books for Christmas which if you have been following us, you know that I have not read a physical book in years. But I decided to give it a go and started reading them and I even got a book mark and everything. All that to say that, that is one of my reading goals to start my journey back into reading physical books (preferably hard covers!)

I have been in a weird reading slump in the last few years. The pandemic did a number on me as my anxiety was at an all time high and my reading began to drop as I could not concentrate or keep my interest on anything. Last year, I had a goal of 35 books and only ready 26. Mostly because nothing was really holding my interest and I had quite a number of DNF titles.

So to combat this issue this year, I am going to try and find titles that really sound interesting. As a side bar, Leggy is part of my issue because she reads all the good books and once she does, it’s usually a DNR for me lol. But as a goal, that shouldn’t matter, I am currently reading Sea of Tranquility because it was Leggy and Obama’s list of favorite books because a good book is a good book. I hope to enjoy most of the titles I read this year and I wish the same for everyone.

We hope everyone has the best reading year ever and we hope this year brings us good things with this blog. We really appreciate y’all andare so grateful for everyone who keeps tuning in to read our content. Can’t wait to see what this year brings!

Our Best and Worst Books of 2022

20 Dec 2022 twonightstands

Leggy’s Best:

“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

Emily St. John Mandel has become such a must read author for me. I have enjoyed every book of hers I’ve ever read. I absolutely adored this book and gave it 5 stars. You can read my full review of this book here. This year has been a fantastic reading year for me in all genres so I thought it would be hard for me to pick a favorite but this was such a clear answer for me.

Other favorites:

Book Lovers by Emily Henry (favorite romance book this year for sure! Full review on the blog here.)
Dreadgod by Will Wight (The 11th book in the Cradle series by Will Wight. Please read these series if you haven’t yet. These books are so much fun. The 12th and final book comes out next year. favorite fantasy book of the year for sure!)
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (This was my favorite weird book I read this year. Goodreads marks this as horror? Didn’t get that at all but it was so strange and such amazing writing)

Taynement’s Best:

This was one of the first books I read this year and nothing else captured my attention like it. This memoir of sorts has Faith Jones recounting her time in a cult and how she got out of it. I could not believe a lot of the things I read and the fact that it was someone’s real life was really jarring. As mentioned in my full review, loads of trigger warning for this one. Any book that had me go down a rabbit hole of wikipedia and documentaries just to get more information after I was done, was bound to be top of my list.

A lot of the books I enjoyed were niche favorites (books about reality show bts) but some other favorites were:

Verity by Colleen Hoover (This book was an acid trip but I probably read this the fastest. Full review here)
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (I guess I had my number of non fiction reads. Perfect blend of smart and interesting. Full review here)
The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth (This was a random read that I ended up liking a lot. Full review here)
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (TJR rarely misses with me and this was not an exception)

Taynement’s Worst:

This was a recent review of mine so it should be no surprise that it is my worst. Up until writing this, I didn’t realize how much non-fiction I read this year. Well, my worst book is also in this genre. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a memoir now whether they deserve it or not. This memoir had so many missing gaps, way too much toxic positivity and just overall missed the mark. Extra negative points for the terrible voice cadence that was used in the audio book. I just really hated this book y’all! (Full review here)

Leggy’s Worst:

Instagram loves this book. I have a mini rant about this book on our Instagram page (@nightstands2, follow us!). I picked up this book because of the hype and because I saw a trailer of the movie adaptation on Youtube and decided to just read the book instead, what a bad idea. There was nothing romantic about this book. The heroine is the exact type of character I hate in a romance – think Zooey Deschanel from New Girl, obviously hot girl who is “awkward” and has no idea she’s hot. I rolled my eyes so much reading this book it almost fell out of the sockets.

We hope you have enjoyed talking books with us this year. We’d love to know what your best and worsts were so let us know in the comments. Have an amazing Christmas and we’ll see you in the New Year. Happy reading everybody!

Leggy & Taynement

Book Review: The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays

8 Aug 2022 twonightstands

“Being staunch anything is pretty much interchangeable with being an asshole.”

It’s the summer of 2015 and Alice Quick needs to start living up to her potential. She’s publicly announced on Facebook that she’s going to be a doctor, so now she actually has to do it. She’s 28 years old, grieving her mother, barely scraping by as a nanny and now kicked out of her apartment. She has to get her shit together and make a plan to study for the MCAT but in this age of social media and online dating, everything is a distraction.

Her millionaire brother is having a religious awakening. Her sister-in-law has just been diagnosed with Crohn’s and is struggling with all that comes with it. Her new roommate is cosplaying still being in her 20s and loves chaos. Bays writes about one summer in New York encompassing so many different cities and characters tied together by threads unseen.

This book is about 500 pages and if I had gone to Goodreads before picking it up, I don’t think I would have read it. It’s currently 3.85 stars on there and a lot of people report being confused and not “getting” it. I would have missed out on a great book if I hadn’t just picked it up and started reading. I did not realise this book was long until I went to rate it on Goodreads and saw the page count. It read so fast and the pace never slowed for one second.

The first thing you should know about this book: it has a weird narration technique. The narration in the book is choppy and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Bays goes from one character to another without explicitly stating whose point of view we are now hearing from and just expects you to figure it out. If you usually do your books on audio, I don’t know how this one would work, so maybe stick to the pages with this one. After a while, I got so used to it that I stopped noticing it. It was fun for me because I never got the chance to get bored with one character’s story. It made the pace of the book feel so fast and non stop. That said, stick with it. The threads holding all the characters together will be revealed at the end. Even the little things that seem to be just anecdotes from the characters all help to connect everybody in the end.

If you liked How I Met Your Mother, you’re going to like this book. If you think the journey of a story is what makes the ending worth it, then this book is for you. Bays takes such a circuitous path in telling you how to get from point A to point B. Unlike How I Met Your Mother though, this ending is actually super worth it. It fills you with so much warmth that you didn’t expect. I find that a lot of literary writers write about the internet, social media and online dating with such a judgmental, get off your phones tone but there is none of that here. Bays chronicles how we live our lives on and off social media without injecting his personal beliefs into the narrative. The facts are the facts. He’s not trying to get you to do anything other than listen to his story and pay attention to these characters he has created.

I finished this book at 11pm at night and I had to absolutely tweet about it. I mentioned on Twitter that this is a book that is not for everybody but it was definitely for me. It’s like Bays combined everything I love in a book and put it into this one. After I read the end, I was filled with such regret about it ending. I don’t usually re-read books but I think I’m going to re-read this one now that I know all the threads of the story and see if there are any easter eggs I missed. I think you should give this one a chance and stick to it even if you don’t quite get it, I say give it 100 pages and if it’s not for you then it’s not for you. But if it is for you, come talk to me on IG or twitter about it. I gave this one 5 stars on Goodreads and I know it’s going to make my top 5 of the year.

Have you heard of this one? Will you consider picking it up? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Book Review: Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan

4 Jul 2022 twonightstands

Nora Hamilton is a romance channel screenwriter. She knows the formula for a corny romance novel – two people have a meet cute, fall in love, 90% into the movie they fight and the man leaves, then 99% into the movie the man comes back and they live happily ever after. She’s been churning these out her entire career and taking care of her children plus free loading husband. When Nora’s marriage falls apart, she turns the story of the breakup into a screenplay that gets picked up by a big Hollywood director complete with a star studded Hollywood cast including former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance who plays her ex-husband. Her tea house is a huge character in the story so the director asks to film in her house.

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 $7000 would give Nora enough cushion till she goes back to writing her generic romance movies for the romance channel (which honestly is so clear that the author is referring to the Hallmark channel), so she says yes. 7 days might be just enough time for them to get to know each, enough time for them to fall in love or enough time for him to never want to leave but love never adheads to a formula.

This is one of my favorite romance books of the year. I absolutely loved it. The characters are older and more mature so their relationship wasn’t bugged down by superfluous things. Nora’s kids were great additions to this book, they were charming and felt like kids. I absolutely believed the progression of Nora and Leo’s relationship. Nora was smart and intelligent and yet still felt human and relatable. Her fears and insecurities made sense to me. Also, the way Nora handled the end of her previous relationship and her attitude towards it was really well written. I understood all her choices. I also loved how all the supporting cast were extremely different and yet were still very likable people.

I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads because I don’t think Nora protected her children enough from her new relationship. I felt like she was very selfish in the way she let Leo get embroidered into her family so quickly without giving a thought to how her kids would feel if they’re left by yet another man. It seemed so out of character for Nora to not think explicitly of how being with Leo while he was basically living with her would affect her kids.

All in all, I really loved this book. If you’ve read Book Lovers then give this one a shot. Apparently the secret to writing Ephron-esque rom coms is to just name your female protagonist Nora? Pick up this one y’all, it was absolutely delightful!

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any book dups for this, let me know! I think I’ve found my romance sweet spot.

Leggy

Book Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry

23 May 2022 twonightstands

“That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.”

Nora Stephens is an amazing book agent. She gets her clients the best deals and is called “The Shark” behind her back for her ruthlessness. The only person who matters to Nora is Libby, her little sister and her family. Nora has been taking care of Libby since their mother died and is determined to make sure that Libby keeps living a stress free life even though Libby is now married with two kids and another one on the way.

This is why Nora agrees to visit Sunshine Falls, North Carolina with her sister in order to destress before the baby comes. Small towns are not her thing but she has promised Libby two weeks of uninterrupted sister bonding time including completing a list of small town romance cliches while they’re there.

“That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.”

Instead of bumping into a smart and funny but totally hot farmer while living in the small town, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, an editor from the city who is in Sunshine Falls to take care of his aging parents and whip their affairs into shape. Charlie and Nora have met many times before but always on days when they both weren’t bringing their best to the world, so this presents a chance for them to start over and get to know each other as people not as an editor and agent.

“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt.”

I have unwittingly become an Emily Henry completist and every book of hers just keeps getting better. I’m actually scared to read her next book because I don’t see how she can keep this momentum forever. Henry reminds me of Nora Ephron so much. Her characters have depth and interact in ways that you can see why they would fall in love. Nora and Charlie are my favorite characters of hers till date. They are smart, older and know exactly what they want in life. They both know they don’t want to have kids and there is no grand announcement about why. It’s stated as a matter of fact and moved on from.

The banter between the two characters is smart and just snappy. It is the banter I have in my head when I picture the perfect relationship back and forth between two smart and well read people. I also like that Henry didn’t lean into the enemies to lovers trope. In my opinion, they were never enemies. They just had a bad work meeting that they both put behind them, so it was so easy to see how they’d meet in another context and get along very well.

“Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives.”

As much as this is a romance book, the best thing about Emily Henry’s books is that it’s never just about the romance. At the core of this book is a sister relationship. Nora and Libby have a very codependent relationship with Nora thinking she can shield her sister from all the hurt in the world. At first, I was very annoyed by this relationship and every time they would come up, I just wanted to go back to the amazing banter between the two main characters. But as the book unraveled and I got the backstory of their relationship and how young they both were when their mother died and the circumstances surrounding their mother’s death, I understood why Nora felt so responsible for an actual adult with a thriving family of her own now. The resolution to the sister relationship was very organic and satisfying.

“Can’t think of a greater symbol of hope than a person who’s willing to drag themselves out of bed and sing at the top of their lungs to a group of strangers trapped on a train. That tenacity should be rewarded.”

You know how at the 85-90% mark of every romance book, the main characters have some unresolved conflict then they break up before finally coming back together to give us the happily ever after we lovers of romance read these books for? This is the first time that I actually thought the conflict reflected real life. The circumstances surrounding their conflict was very mature and I could see why that would come up because they had already talked about it before they began their “relationship” so when it came up, I wasn’t surprised. Just grateful that Henry thinks very highly of her readers to sell us some silly conflict that doesn’t even make sense with the characters she has created.

“The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.”

That quote is exactly how I felt when I completed this book. If you’ve read People We Meet on Vacation and loved it, I promise you that this book is even better. Anyway, I really liked this one. I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy