Category: Fiction

Fantasy, Fiction

Book Review: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

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“Because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. Good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.”

Sciona has devoted every moment of her waking life for the past 20 years on magic and it might finally pay off, she is about to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry in Tiran. When she finally breaks that glass ceiling, she realizes that she will never get the respect she has desired all her life from the male highmages.

Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor position instead of a qualified lab assistant position. What no one realizes is that Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier, working for a highmage. He’s finally able to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland and keep Tiranish in power. When Sciona and Thomil discover an ancient secret that the order has spent years protecting, Sciona is faced with the most difficult choice of her life.

“Truth over delusion. Growth over comfort. God over all.“

This book is a standalone book which is rare in fantasy, and it is a dark academia fantasy novel filled with mystery, tragedy and questions of morality. I think in our capitalist world today this book is not that farfetched. How much are you willing to give up the comforts that you’re used to just because you’ve realized that it’s at the expense of other people who you don’t know?

The clothes we wear, the phones we used, the stability we have in our different western countries all come with a cost and how much are we willing to turn a blind eye. Even though this book makes you wonder what you would do if you were Sciona and the people of Tiran, it is also not preachy at all. You only start linking these themes to real life once you’re done. You think more deeply about the book and that’s when the threads start connecting in your head.

“It matters because you’re a child. The future ultimately isn’t mine or Sciona’s. It’s yours.”

I wondered what I would have done if I was in Sciona’s shoes and I realized that all the technology and magic we harness is at the expense of the rest of the world and frankly, I would have done the opposite of what she did. I understand her actions to be noble and the right thing to do but I know that I wouldn’t have been a good enough person to do it.

Also, everything Thomil predicted would be her people’s reaction proved to be accurate. People do not want to be bothered by you exposing that their comforts come at the expense of other people. People might claim to want to be do the right thing but when push comes to shove the majority of human beings will choose their group being on top over doing the right thing that benefits other groups.

“You’re the worst kind of murderer, I think… The kind who won’t even acknowledge her crime. You’ve never worshipped a god of truth… You worship a delusion.”

This stand alone adult fantasy forces you to think but ultimately, with the way Sciona’s noble intentions turned out, it also forces you to face the reality of the world. People are good, yes, but people are also incredibly selfish. I recommend this book. I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

african author, Fiction, literary fiction, Nigerian Author

Book Review: The List by Yomi Adegoke

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Ola is a well known journalist who writes for an online magazine. She is engaged to Michael, who is a former podcast pro and about to start a new career. The two are what the kids call “Couple Goals”. She is also an outspoken feminist and makes her voice loud and clear on social media. She is the first to believe women and call out badly behaved men. Ola is knee deep in wedding planning and everything is going well until 2 weeks before the wedding, their whole lives are turned upside down.

A list has been shared on Twitter. It’s an anonymous list that consists of men accused of varying degrees of sexual assault or inappropriate behavior. Michael is on the list. Suddenly Ola finds herself having to put money where her mouth is. Does she cancel the wedding this close or is this a set up from a disgruntled woman from Michael’s past?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of how realistic it was. It’s very easy to spout “believe women” when it is hypothetical but what would you do when it hits home directly. I like how Adegoke depicted Ola’s turmoil between doing what she would have done and grappling with not being able to reconcile the accusation with the Michael she knows.

Adegoke was able to weave past back stories and really flesh out Ola and Michael’s lives separately so we get a good picture of the characters we are following. I liked how Adegoke kept the friends as supporting characters that moved the story along but never overtook or felt like an unnecessary storyline.

On the flip, sometimes the book leaned heavy into being social media buzzy. What do I mean by that, you ask? Well, it had a heavy social media emphasis and at some point it seemed like she was speaking social media language to appeal to that audience. I didn’t mind it so much because I think that was part of what Adegoke was trying to convey, the pressures that come with that world.

I am not sure how this would be received by sexual assault survivors because in some way, it provided an out. The fact that the list was anonymous and unverifiable and anyone could add to it made it seem like it couldn’t be taken seriously. The twist at the end was interesting, to say the least.

Overall, I did like the book but I feel like it would be a divisive one where you either really like it or you don’t. If you have read it, I would love to know what you thought about it. Let us know in the comments!

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: Evil Eye by Etaf Rum

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“To surrender to the vulnerability of love and allow ourselves to be loved by others—isn’t that the most courageous act of all?”

Raised in a super conservative Palestinian family in New York, Yara thought she had escaped the fate of most of the women in her community by marrying a charming entrepreneur, Fadi who let her finish university and find work outside the home. Even though she is still a traditional wife who is in charge of her two daughters, takes care of the house and has dinner ready when her husband gets home, she still finds her life infinitely more rewarding than her mother’s life was. After she responds to a colleague’s racist provocation, Yara is put on probation at work and must attend mandatory counselling to keep her position.

As more things in her life come tumbling down, she finds herself increasingly uneasy with her mother’s warnings of a family curse and old superstitions. To save herself from her increasingly chaotic behaviors, Yara must face the reality of her childhood and the reality of her current life and marriage to prevent her daughters from the same fate in the future.

Yara continues to explore the nuances between culture, motherhood, marriage, benevolence sexism and female autonomy. If you have ever wondered what benevolence sexism means, look no further than Fadi. Fadi is a representation of men who think they are so magnanimous to allow women have a little bit of freedom as long as it doesn’t disrupt the labor that they believe they are owed from women.

Fadi thinks he has been a better husband and father than Yara’s father, which is objectively true, but the freedom he allows Yara is just enough freedom to think she’s escaped her mother’s life and broken the cycle and that gratefulness that he’s not as bad as the other men, keeps her on a tight leash. When Yara dares to try to test the limits of her leash, she discovers that Fadi is not the man she had built him up to be.

I loved Etaf Rum’s debut book – A Woman is No Man. It was my favorite book of 2019 and I couldn’t wait to read what Rum came out with next. I have to say that this book did not live up to her debut work. The name of the book and the description made it seem like we were going to go into superstitious territory. Rum kept telling us stories that never built up to be anything or mean anything. The future Yara’s grandmother saw for her daughter before she left for America, was never explored, the fact that Yara’s mother kept saying she was cursed, was never explored. Rum kept mentioning storylines and effectively dropping them. When the truth about Yara’s mother and their constant communication came to light, I did not think it did anything for the plot or moved me in anyway. I was like okay, another story where she’s not going to explore the reason why.

When Yara finally made a decision at the end about her marriage, everything just seemed to be wrapped up in a bow. No mention of any blow back from her family and her overall community. Honestly, nothing happens in this book. Etaf Rum is a fantastic writer and it kept me reading this book but ultimately, it didn’t do what I expected it to do when I rushed to get it immediately after publication. I’m going to definitely pick up her next book but this was a 3 star read for me.

Have you read Etaf Rum’s new book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, romance

Book Review: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

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“Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.”

Violet Sorrengail has studied all her life to enter the Scribe quadrant. Her father had always taught her that the scribes hold all the power – the power to erase history, reframe history, and rewrite history. When he dies, Violet’s mother – the commanding general in Navarre- orders her to join the hundreds of students who are striving to become one of the elite dragon riders. Violet is weak and has no fighting experience and now has to join the hundreds of kids who have trained for this all their lives. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, people are willing to kill to be successful especially when they perceive weakness. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter especially Xaden Riorson whose father her mother executed for treason.

“Fascinating. You look all frail and breakable, but you’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?”

I started this book when it first came out, read the first 50 pages and dropped it. I picked it up again sometime in August because Tayne told me her coworker asked her about it. So, I decided to finish it so I could properly talk about how terrible it was, but I ended up really liking it. My problem with the first 50 pages of this book is my problem with most female characters in fantasy – the description of their bodies. Yarros spent every second reminding us how weak and slender but oh so beautiful Violet is. The number of times Yarros describes Violet’s porcelain skin is actually quite insane. Then the exaggeration of the villains in this book is utterly laughable. Right from the parapet to enter the riders’ quadrant someone who literally just met Violet and has no history with her, or her family was already chasing her down to kill her because she looks weak.

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.”

When I continued with this book, what won me over was how weak Violet actually was and the numerous ways she had to work to overcome her weakness. I like that at the end of the book she didn’t still transform into some physically strong rider who could beat anybody in a fight. I enjoyed the cunning ways she had to survive the violence of the cadets in the riders’ sect. I started rooting for her once I realized she wasn’t going to be a Mary Sue. If you spend 50 pages telling me your protagonist is weak, you better not suddenly have her beating everybody in a physical fight. Another misconception I had going into this one that I want to correct for everybody is that this is NOT a YA fantasy book. The cadets are young but are all in their twenties. The youngest class in the cadet is 20. Also, there is sex aplenty and it is not implied, it is explicitly stated that everyone is sleeping with everyone and there’s no shame surrounding it, unless of course you’re sleeping with a superior. This is an open door book.

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”

I’m glad there is actually a bigger story here than the love story between Violet and Xander. There is much more at stake, and I honestly guessed what the big conspiracy was within the first 100 pages of the book when certain things that seemed like passing conversation was mentioned. I’ve read way too many fantasy books to ever gasp at the ending of this one. I enjoyed Xander as a character. I thought all his decisions were right and correct even if the protagonist did not see it that way. I understand the path that led Violet and Xander to each other even thought their families had violent histories with each other. At the end of the day though, their relationship is the least interesting thing about this book. When certain secrets were finally coming to light, I just wanted Violet to get over the feeling of being betrayed so Xander could get on with telling us what the whole picture actually was. Yarros also makes you care about the supporting characters so deeply that you care about what happens to them and when anything happens to them you are so invested that you’re bawling at 5am in the morning. Okay, that was just me.

“Coming in last is better than coming in dead.”

All in all, I recommend this book. It’s 600 pages but a very quick read once you get out of those first 50 pages. I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads and I’m looking forward to the next book.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: Talking at Night by Claire Daverley

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“I’d say you just love the idea of her, then, she says. You’re pinning everything on something you’ve never even had. Something that’s not real.”

Will and Rosie meet one day as teenagers at a bonfire. Will is very intrigued with Rosie and a tense “will they, won’t they?” relationship develops between them. As they get closer and get to know each other over secret walks, runs, phone calls and text messages, they seem destined to end up together, at least for a while. One day though, at Will’s birthday party, which Rosie and her twin brother sneaked out to attend, tragedy strikes, and their future together suddenly seems impossible.

“She thinks she loves Simon, and she knows he loves her, but sometimes she wants him to look at her like he could eat her; wants him to touch her in a way that means she feels wanted, instead of just cared for. But he sips wine and talks and smiles with all his teeth and passes carrots across the table.”

If you’re a fan of Sally Rooney, this is the perfect book for you. Honestly, this sometimes felt like Normal People fanfiction to me and I say fanfiction because it is not as good as Normal People. I’m sure Daverley knows she’s going to get this comparison a lot. Also, when did it become the cool girl thing to write dialogue without any punctuation? This is also something Rooney is very fond of doing.

Anyway, this book is sad girl literature. It is a Taylor Swift song in book form. Shy, smart girl who is under her parents’ thumb being pursued by the resident school bad boy who is also secretly smart, and secretly soft (but of course, only soft for our heroine) and talks about how cool it is not to want to go to university.

I really wanted to like this book because I’m a sucker for a love story that is built entirely on sexual tension but there was nothing here. I didn’t like any of the characters. I didn’t root for them to be together, I just kept waiting for it all to be over. Also, the author just decided to throw every trauma at them to make them more interesting but all the traumas in the world won’t make one dimensional characters feel any more real. Trigger warnings abound in this book – child abandonment, death, OCD, food issues, weight issues, coming out as gay, cancer, alcoholism and the list goes on.

This is a debut novel so I do believe that Claire Daverley has the potential to be a fantastic author but I hope she knows she doesn’t have to convince us that she can write and she needs to figure out how to tell a good story without drowning us in flowery language. Everyone knows I’m a sucker for a good quote from a book but I also need to connect to the characters in order to be able to connect to the beautiful language. This was my problem with Rooney’s last book too, give me characters that I can recognize. I don’t have to relate to characters in the books I read but you have to convince me that these characters exist somewhere in the world for me to connect with the story.

All in all, because this was a debut novel and I grade all debut novels on a curve, I ended up giving this 3 stars on Goodreads. I sincerely cannot wait to see what Daverley writes next.

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review: The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz

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Kelly packed up her life and moved from Chicago to Philadelphia because her fiance lost his job and found one in Philadelphia. Now there is a pandemic and he has just told Kelly they need to pump the brakes on wedding planning. Kelly doesn’t know a lot of people but has recently rekindled a friendship with her high school friend, Sabrina who is a popular author with a seemingly great life. Her and her husband, Nathan invite her to come stay with them. They have a spare room in their massive house and they could use the company.

Kelly hops on an Amtrak for a fresh start and along the way, she finds herself falling for the couple. They become a throuple until Kelly finds out their last girlfriend is missing and she is not getting good enough answers from her partners. So begins the thriller, as Kelly tries to figure out what is happening while living this new life that she is hiding from her friends and family.

I have never read a book by Bartz but I hear she and her sister are popular in this genre. It’s hard to find a good thriller these days and I didn’t think this was exceptional, it was just mid. I found Kelly to be a little juvenile. I am not sure if that is the right word. She seemed very easily manipulated and probably because she never seemed to have a stance on what she wanted. I mean Nathan and Sabrina had so many red flags and she dug her head in the sand so deep it was unbelievable.

Also, for a book that seemed so adult, I am not sure why the love scenes seemed to be sanitized. I don’t know if this is how it always is in Bartz’s books but why have a character who writes erotic books and have the scenes in the book be vague? The last quarter of the book that could be seen as the culmination of the thriller felt like a rush and in some parts, it came off disjointed. At some point, I just decided to go with it even though I had questions. I might have laughed out loud when the “whodunnit?” was revealed.

I will say that the writing style wasn’t bad at all, and it helped hold my interest in the story. More of the problem lay in the plot and how there were a lot of “raise eyebrow” moments. I think my standards are high when it comes to thrillers, and I haven’t read a good one since Gone Girl (I’m taking recs if you have one!). Not sure I would recommend this one but if you have read it, let me know what you think!

Taynement

Book Related Topics, Fiction, literary fiction, thriller, women's fiction

Book Review: The Whispers by Ashley Audrain

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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

african author, african stories, Fiction, literary fiction, Nigerian Author

Book Review: The Three Of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams

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“He sees what I see, but from the other side. A woman in between two selves, undecided as to which she can remain loyal”

The premise of the book is pretty simple. There is a wife who has a husband and a best friend. The best friend’s name is Temi (that’s the only name we get). Temi and wife’s husband hate each other and wife is in the middle seemingly not trying to take sides. The book is basically the telling of one night where the three of them hang out in Wife’s house, drink too much and let their bubbling resentments spill over.

“Doubt and truth are so close that it’s sometimes impossible to tell them apart”

I can’t tell you that I knew what direction the author was trying to take besides trying something different. The book had no quotation marks, paragraphs and like I said no character names – save for Temi. If I wanted to reach, I could say that the intention was to say that Temi is the only one with a strong identity but I am not going that far.

I have written before about whether it is possible to like a book with unlikeable characters. I say this because of the way I could not stand these three people. Temi because why are you so intrusive in someone else’s marriage even if they are your best friend? Showing up at all hours to their house and never leaving and judging her friend’s choices like choosing to get married. Wife because why the hell is your friend that involved in your life and mocking your husband and you join in laughing at him? and Husband for putting up with the shit and having low key misogyny.

The book reads like a novella and a thriller except I wouldn’t say I found it thrilling. It was like a thread just unraveling without any building excitement and instead building annoyance. Temi and Wife became friends because Temi “saved” Wife from the rules put on her by her Nigerian parents. But the irony is, Temi seemed to pick up where Wife’s parents stopped and wants to dictate Wife’s life and Wife lets her.

I couldn’t tell if Temi loved Wife romantically or if she loved Husband romantically. And I couldn’t tell if Wife even loved Husband (well technically we got the idea she wasn’t in love with him). My conclusion is that Agbaje-Williams wanted this book open to interpretation and each character represented something in society. The depiction of Nigerian culture was accurate though.

Overall, I think the book suffered from being a novel that came off as a short story. But the thing is, I can’t definitively say it didn’t work because I am sure there is an audience for it. I can admit being biased because the characters were so unlikable to me. I really hated the ending, and I couldn’t even believe that was the end. Since it’s a short book it’s one I’d say it wouldn’t hurt to read for yourself and come to your own conclusion.

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction, race, romance, Uncategorized

Book Review: Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess

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Jess and Josh were sparring partners in a legal history class in college, and she only remembers him being ultra conservative and telling her how Affirmative Action is racist. Landing a job at Goldman Sachs after college, Jess is very displeased to realize that Josh is on her team but as the only person she knows in an ultra-competitive work environment she leans on him for support. As their tentatively formed friendship moves into something more romantic, in a world that is suddenly hyper political in the wake of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Jess struggles with the identity she has created for herself and what she’s willing to compartmentalize for a certain type of love.

I think the publishers of this book did Rabess such a disservice by categorizing this as romance. Yes, the vehicle for the author’s thoughts is very well served by using romance but this book is not primarily about romance. When the blurb for this book came out, it was 1 star bombed on Goodreads because of someone on TikTok reading the description without having even read the book. And then you go on Goodreads and see so many one-star reviews that proudly proclaim that they didn’t read the book, but they just know that it is racist! I felt really bad for the author and that’s why I put this on my list even though I too, was turned off by the blurb. But I consider it a cardinal sin to review a book that you didn’t read or didn’t finish. If I even read 95% of a book and then DNF it, I never rate it on a public space.

I think people expect works of fiction to further their viewpoints instead of it furthering the viewpoints of whatever character the author has created. I think evaluating any book should be – does this behavior sound accurate to the character the author is trying to sell us? Would this character do this? Is this in line with the foundation the author has set for us? In the case of Jess, Rabess is incredibly spot on. I know the exact type of black girl Jess is. The cool black girl who tries really hard to never rock any boat and seeks white validation. I don’t even understand the argument that this book is racist when both the main character and the author are black. Something dealing with race making you uncomfortable does not mean it is automatically racist. You’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. That is the exact feeling that Rabess is trying to create.

Jess grew up in Nebraska in a predominately white town that boasted only her and her dad as the only people of color. She went to school with only one other black person. She grew up with girls who would tell her that boys only wanted “blondes, brunettes, red hairs, in that order”. Her dad tried really hard to shield her from the effects of her childhood but honestly, you cannot self-esteem your way out of how the world treats you.

This background leads to Jess going to college and trying really hard to be as far away from blackness as possible. She doesn’t join the Black Student Union, she never makes any black friends, she dates white men exclusively. Even white men who are only fetishizing her and who she knows don’t actually want her as a human being. Jess says things like “I just don’t get Beyoncé” while her white friends give her a pat on the back about how she’s such a different black person because she doesn’t like Beyoncé and how it’s because she’s just too smart. This is the character Rabess has created, and you have to judge the premise of this book on who Jess actually is, not who you are or what you think is “right”.

So yes, Jess is the exact person who would fall for a Trumper. And frankly, Rabess does such a fantastic job of pacing out their relationship that you’re absolutely torn. You wonder if you too would fall for Josh if you knew him. Josh has so many redeeming qualities, he stands up for Jess so much that even you would wonder if you’d be able to resist him. The last lines of this book I absolutely love because this book was written years after the Trump era in which we’ve seen the effects of electing Trump as President. As women’s rights and affirmative action are now gone and Josh is trying to convince Jess that “Everything’s fine”, we all know that everything is not fine.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this one without reading the blurb and read it with an open mind. This is Rabess’ debut novel and she deserved better than how the mob treated her first offer to the literary world. I look forward to whatever she writes next. I gave this book, 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

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‘Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.’

Harriet and Wyn have been together and engaged forever. They are the couple their friend group looks up to as the perfect couple. Unfortunately, they’ve broken up without telling anyone – their families, their friends, nobody. Every year, their group of friends travel to Maine for one week in the summer to reconnect with the people who understand them the most. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth that they are still a couple just to make their last week ever at the Maine cottage perfect, since it’s been put up for sale. This is a rom com so obviously, shenanigans ensue.

I’m a big Emily Henry fan. I’ve read a lot of her books and have progressively loved them. I have to say that this one was a miss for me. I usually love the characters in Emily Henry books especially Book Lovers but the people in this book did nothing for me. I kept waiting to feel the deep love between these friends that has kept them together for so long, but I never did. Everybody was hiding something ridiculous from the group, things that did not matter at all. Who hides a breakup from their best friends for 6 months? Their friendship group just never clicked for me at all. If the entire premise of this book is that this group of supposed best friends never talk to each other about anything ever then what are we doing here? They are not best friends.

I especially enjoyed the romance between the two main characters. How they got together and then seeing the cracks in their relationship was something that was very well written and very thoughtful. I enjoyed the tension of two people who clearly still love each other. pretend to still be together. The snarky banter between them was delightful and something I’ve really liked in all of Emily Henry books. This book also delves into so many different topics like parental alienation, grief, depression, medication, death and the way friendships change as we get older.

My problem with this couple is in how the book ended. The ending is like a Hallmark Christmas movie where a top New York City lawyer moves to the tiny village to be with a man and sell corks. I loved Book Lovers because Henry didn’t sacrifice her character’s career just because she fell in love. The ending of this book was very rushed and very unrealistic. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but the ending is so silly that it made me annoyed especially since even though Harriet found her job hard, she enjoyed doing it. Yes, it wasn’t her passion but who needs passion when you’re 100s of thousands of dollars in debt already and you’re good at it! I will never understand this American obsession with finding your passion, that’s why you get to have hobbies because sometimes a job is a job!

I really like Emily Henry and will read her next offering but if you are new to her, please don’t start here. Read literally anything else of hers. We have two of her books reviewed here and here. My personal favorite is Book Lovers. I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy