Fiction

The Worst Woman in London

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: The Worst Woman in London

Author: Julia Bennet

Year: 2023

Genre: Historical romance, romance

Queer shit: Nope

Vibe Check: Woman in 1800’s seeks divorce after 10 years with her husband, 8 years separated as he ‘sows his seeds’ wherever he wants and she is shamed for being a woman who wants to be free of him

Pile of Opinions: I understand historical context but this gave off big forgive the abuser vibes simply because he didn’t love her enough to be good. He still sucks. The two leads in this are great and fine and I enjoyed their story and it was very steamy and he was good to her but her ex was an absolute piece of shit and did not deserve any of the good things that happened to him in this book. Again, I understand historical context, but the misogyny in this book was infuriating. If you like steamy historical romances you will like this book, I just want to throw hands (and rocks) and her ex husband.

Professional Reader

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The Corner Shop on Foxmore Green

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: The Corner Shop on Foxmore Green

Author: Lilac Mills 

Year: 2023

Genre: Fiction, romance, low stakes, wholesome, eco friendly, small town

Queer shit: I can’t remember so not enough

Vibe Check: Small town, given and found family, single parenting, cute little dating stuff with cute little falling in love, cute little dream of owning a shop

Pile of Opinions: This book was so freaking cute! I loved how wholesome it was. Our MC is a single mother in a small town who has a passion for eco-friendly living. Our love interest is new to town and looking for the small town charm and simpler living. There’s mix ups and misunderstandings and an ex that will make you want to throw hands (and rocks). The community is so sweet and supportive to our MC’s dreams and future. It’s a good mix of given family and found family blending together and I love their life they all build together. Also men could avoid so much misunderstanding if they just fucking asked some follow up questions instead of assuming *eyeroll* but it works out in the end and I am so happy for them and also would like to petition the author for a cute little bonus chapter like a year down the road just to see how our cute little town and sweet couple are doing:)

Professional Reader

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The Keeper of Stories

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: The Keeper of Stories

Author: Sally Page

Year: 2023

Genre: Modern fiction with some romance?

Queer shit: Nope.

Vibe Check: House cleaner in a failing marriage nurtures relationships with clients and finds real friendship among them while collecting other peoples’ stories as a mode of processing her own stories of trauma

Pile of Opinions: Ok so I am gonna start with the last 20% of this book needs content warnings for DV, child abuse, and….murder. I say this because this did not fit the first 80% of the book vibe and felt like a huge change in direction. I understand the author was likely giving depth and background to the main character but the lead up was not enough for this to make sense and then just be fine at the end of the book? The husband is gonna make you want to be a violent person. Our MC owns a cleaning business and cleans peoples houses but also has built these relationships with her clients as a part of a mutual support system. She goes through life collecting other people’s stories while preferring to stay in the background. Now I recognize this is likely her response to early trauma and losing her understanding of self and wanting to be unnoticed while putting up with her husband’s bullshit, it still felt like someone wrote the first 80% and someone else wrote the last 20% and wanted to shock everyone. Looking at this through understanding the main character’s journey and growth I really enjoyed watching her find herself and find her voice while building the life and future she wants. I loved the relationships she built with her many clients and how she was able to be companions with people who felt shame needing the help of a cleaner. This book is for you if you like to be surprised and want characters with depth that is buried deep as well as justice and unlikely friendships.

Professional Reader

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Author: Becky Chambers 

Year: 2021

Genre: Sci-Fi. Low stakes, post-industry

Queer shit: Genderqueer, pronouns

Vibe Check: Genderless tea monk sets out on a quest to hear crickets in the wild and meets a robot who becomes their companion

Pile of Opinions: What a precious little piece of a tree pulp! This book healed parts of my soul I didn’t know a book could heal. A genderless tea monk decides to search for crickets to hear their song and on the way meets a robot that lives in the wild with other robots since all the factories were shut down out of respect for the robots’ rights. This book is so wholesome and raw. The world is so broken and it’s overwhelming and this book made me want to make tea and go in search of cricket songs. This book immediately made it to my list of books I get for people as gifts regardless of what they usually read. Very excited to read A Prayer for the Crown-Shy 🙂

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The Unhoneymooners

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: The Unhoneymooners

Author: Christina Lauren

Year: 2019

Genre: Romance, enemies to lovers

Queer shit: gay brother, nearly insignificant character so he felt kind of token-y

Vibe Check: twin sister and entire wedding party get food poisoning but honeymoon is non-refundable so this twin and the best man are sent on the trip instead, enemies to lovers

Pile of Opinions: Enemies to lovers is a tough one for me because if it’s not done well it feels abusive. This one was leaning into the bullying behavior and came across extremely annoying and immature. The story is about a twin sister who is the maid of honor in her twin’s wedding. The bride is big into giveaways and winning stuff so she ends up winning most of her wedding vendors (including a seafood buffet that gives the entire wedding, except our two leads, food poisoning) and the entire all expenses paid honeymoon. The maid of honor has a seafood allergy and the best man has an aversion to buffets so they are the only two wedding guests who do not get sick. The bride decides her twin sister should pretend to be her to redeem the non-refundable honeymoon and the groom tells his best man to pretend to be her new husband. It took me 150 pages before I felt like the book was readable for me. I enjoyed pages 150-300 because they were unpacking misunderstandings and spending time together on purpose and they had stopped bullying each other even if they didn’t quite admit to liking each other yet. I’ve liked other books by Christina Lauren so I pushed through to finish this one but I don’t think this was their best work. The plot was choppy and the last 100 pages felt like another book’s ending, like there were too many stories going on at once. I appreciate the story being layered and involving a large family so naturally there would be many stories, but by the time we got the happy ending it didn’t really feel that happy. I feel like this book leaned too far into the cliché of the trope and then swung too far the other way trying to add more plot and depth than a common romance and it didn’t feel like it fit. This book was a perfectly fine romance read if you like chaos and drama and don’t mind the enemies to lovers, I think this one was not for me. I didn’t hate it but It’s not going on my reread list personally. Feel free to share in the comments if you read this one and what you thought.

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Lightkeepers

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: Lightkeepers

Author: Kennedy Plumb

Year: 2022

Genre: YA, modern retelling of fairy tale

Queer shit: None that I remember

Vibe Check: Foster kids, modern Rapunzel, cults, finding freedom and finding home

Pile of Opinions: I love a good fairytale retelling! The Lightkeepers is a Rapunzel retelling set in modern times where Rapunzel is part of an extremist cult where she is locked up out of fear of a (fake) virus that impacts children under 18 the most. She meets her travel companion for a night of freedom after starting to question the validity of the virus her ‘mother’ tells her about. CW: this story does involve foster care experiences, kidnapping, and near the end there is a gun pulled but not shot. This book also explores found family, finding yourself, coming of age, and all the children are safe by the end of the book btw. I enjoyed this retelling and how it explored the capacity people (even young people, stop underestimating teenagers) are capable of and resilience the world often demands of them. The journey of our two leads finding home was collectively heart wrenching and heartwarming.

Professional Reader

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The Notekeeper

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: The Notekeeper

Author: Hannah Treave

Year: 2023

Genre: Romance? I actually don’t know. Is grief fiction a genre? It should be

Queer shit: none that registered

Vibe Check: Hospice nurse works through her own grief while giving her patience the best death she can

Pile of Opinions: This book was an absolute HR nightmare haha Our MC is a hospice nurse from Australia who has been working in England for a couple years. She tragically lost her child and fell apart with no idea how to begin processing her grief. She abandons her marriage and goes to England to work at a hospice house. Her mission becomes to help others have the most comfortable and dignified death she can give them. She spends her spare time writing cards and notes to residents and makes time to take down unofficial final words and wishes from her patience. Sometimes people want to apologize to a family member, sometimes they need to say goodbye to someone. She delivers these letters after they pass as part of her own grief processing and to honor their wishes. The hospice house gets bought by a new owner who sends someone to evaluate the hospice house’s practices and management. This, of course, throws off the unconventional way she does things and she will have to convince him of the value of her notes. This story celebrates the beauty of people being in our life for a meaningful and sometimes short amount of time. The stories tug at your heartstrings and address many complexities of grief. The love story in this book sort of threw me and felt almost out of place honestly. Also the timing of this book was super confusing and the entire thing possibly took place over two or three weeks? I assume it was more like 6-12 months but even that is a big gap and I’m super unsure. I enjoyed the stories and books about grief always hit me hard. The MC had to rebuild her life, and her career, while finding ownership of her decisions and building a life she chooses. This book was full of found family, rebuilding after loss, and building your dream life.

Professional Reader

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Must Love Books

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: Must Love Books

Author: Shauna Robinson

Year: 2022

Genre: adult fiction, romance, book lover, career

Queer shit: If there was any, it was not memorable so likely only side characters

Vibe Check: reevaluating life after your dream job disappoints you

Pile of Opinions: This book was not at all what I expected and that wasn’t a bad thing. BIG trigger warning for suicide ideation with this one. I think I was expecting a cutesy book about finding love when you feel like your life is kind of falling apart. It was that and also was not that at all. I bought this book literally based on the title and only glanced at the description before I started reading it. Nora has worked in publishing for 5 years and continues to have others’ work piled on her by the company without compensation or promotion. She is made some vague promises if she can get a certain author to sign his contract. She picks up some side work with a rival publishing company after her job cuts her salary and she can no longer pay her rent. Now, I have big opinions on workplace toxicity and exploitation of workers because it is the majority of what I studied in undergrad. If a company cannot pay their full time worker a livable wage, they should have absolutely no fucking opinion about what other work a person does to make up the salary difference. Idk, pay her a livable wage and then also more for being such a loyal employee and doing the work of people with higher up titles than her? Anyway, Nora struggles with a lot and as is so common with so many people (normalize and remove the stigma y’all) she struggles with why she’s even alive and what’s the point of it all anyway. I can assure you she is safe and tries nothing, but her struggle is so common for so many people. I have a hard time admitting I liked this book simply because I struggle right alongside Nora, so it felt too close to home for me. But I enjoyed watching her grow and learn, remember her self worth, and go after what she wants. I felt the sensitive subjects were handled well by the author and I find myself wanting to text Nora to see how she’s doing because I am so damn proud of her. This book was not what I expected when I read the title, it was better, and I am really glad I impulsively bought it. 

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Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling 

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Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling 

Author: Elise Bryant

Year: 2023

Genre: YA romance

Queer shit: Lesbian couple, maybe more that was small or in passing?

Vibe Check: a shy powerhouse of a singer finds her voice and self in a way she never expected, a D&D loving blogger finds that who he is as person is enough

Pile of Opinions: I love everything Elise Bryant has published thus far and I safely assume I will love everything she ever publishes. This story and these characters are so sweet and sincere and this book shares so many real struggles many adults and young adults alike face as they try to find their way without losing who they are. Reggie is a Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast with an anonymous blog calling out the problematic areas in the D&D game and community. Delilah finds herself with the chance to sing with her friend’s band and it scares the shit out of her and she does it anyway. She finds she loves it. Reggie and Delilah bump into each other a few times by accident and then eventually on purpose as they learn who they are and the power of their voices. I really enjoyed how raw this book felt. This book spanning over a year gave space for organic growth and some real time processing. I found myself so frustrated with Reggie’s choices and realized it’s because I related so hard and felt super called out. Society (and sometimes even our own communities) so often send the message that what we like and who we are is wrong and the path to revealing our truest selves can often come with some little lies for self protection, but at a price. I love coming of age stories and I love seeing character growth. Let me know what you thought of this one in the comments.

Professional Reader

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