Category: Uncategorized

Last Summer on State Street is a coming-of-age story, a story of childhood ending through time, displacement, and loss of innocence. Set in Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing projects in the summer of 1999 as 12-year-old Fe Fe and her 3 friends navigate growing violence and the impending demolition of their home.

Last Summer on State Street is an impressive and impactful debut from author Toya Wolfe. Wolfe grew up in the Robert Taylor housing projects and obviously knows the world intimately. I think the overall takeaway of the story is meant to be something along the lines of how some can rise above their experience, true and inspiring, but reading left me feeling heartbroken for how pervasive the systemic impact of things like poverty and racism despite individual resistance.

This little book packs a punch for being just over 200 pages (and a debut novel at that!) These characters and their stories are sure to stay with me. Definitely one to sneak in before summer ends!

The Bitch is back!

Carrie Soto, “the Battle Axe”, infamous, merciless, an unbeatable champion. Just shy of 30 she’s the greatest tennis player of all time, achieving everything she’s ever worked for, lived for. Soon her career is cut short due to injuries and ego. Now, five years and one surgery later, she can’t stand to watch her records taken from her by up-and-comer Nikki Chan so at age 37 she’s donning her tennis whites and heading to the court, ready to compete again and defend her legacy – Carrie Soto is back!

Some reviewers have found Carrie hard to like and, well, that’s the point! Carrie doesn’t exist to be liked, she’s here to win. She excels at her sport and knows it and wants to be judged on her skill, how she plays, not who she is. Self-assured, no nonsense women are rarely adored by the world at large. And that kind of single minded determination can be isolating – it’s lonely at the top. Carrie has worked hard for her achievements, but she’s also sacrificed a lot to get where she is, her comeback is about more than just tennis.

Carrie Soto is certainly in the running for my favorite TJR character. I love unapologetic women. In a world which has very distinct ideas and expectations for how women should look, think, and act I love a woman who goes her own way.

I was somewhat skeptical when I knew the story was going to be tennis focused – I’m not much for the sportsball – but I appreciate a story which can make me care about topics I have no interest in and before the end of Carrie’s journey I was googling plenty about 80s/90s tennis, including a deep dive into the history of clay tennis courts.

The sport aspect actually created an exciting element and I loved the relationship between Carrie and her dad/trainer Javier (though I am curious of the choice to write Latinx characters), Bowe is a total hunk, and I, of course, loved seeing the way Carrie’s story intersects with others in the TJR world and I’m dying to know whether anyone from Carrie will be the next TJR star!

Thanks to Netgalley and Ballantine for the advanced review opportunity.

Nora is a literary agent, a Big Apple ice queen who is repeatedly dumped by boyfriends who go off to some small town only to discover their Hallmark-esque HEA. Nora’s little sister, with whom she has a bit of a codependent relationship because: trauma, insists on a girls getaway to the cutest little small town straight from the pages of Nora’s bestselling author’s hit novel in hopes of creating a happily ever after for her sister.

Though Nora is a good sport the only small town hunk she keeps bumping into is Charlie, her editor nemesis from back in the city. He’s in town to help at his family’s struggling bookstore while his dad recovers from a stroke. Nora and Charlie just might find their version of Hallmark romance despite themselves.

You guys, this book is called Book Lovers. It’s written by Emily Henry. There’s no way this wasn’t going to be a hit with me.

I loved the bookishness. I loved slightly nerdy, antihero Charlie. I loved tightly wound Nora; Type As are worthy of love too, ok? I loved the small town setting and the ironic Hallmark vibes. I’m always here for the signature Emily Henry banter, which I understand is too much for some people, but it’s just the right amount of too much for me.

I disliked the overuse of the name “sissy”, I’ll admit. It is grating and I happily could have done without it completely, but pobody’s nerfect as they say.

I’m already greedily anticipating EH’s next book slated to release in spring 🤗 <~ this is me with arms outstretched towards Happy Place.

Did I know what I needed in my life right now was a sapphic Sasquatch horror comedy?

No.

But I absolutely did!

A group travels to the Pacific Northwest to film the finale of a Bachelor-esque (un)reality show and the contestants, there for all the right reasons , find love in all the wrong places, or at least one of them does, after their party encounters the island’s inhabitants – both human and otherwise.

I never tire of reality dating or social media satire and Patricia has this in spades. Patricia Wants to Cuddle is a quick, campy read. At just over 250 pages it could bear further development, but I did find this both a unique and fun read, absurd and entertaining in the best of ways!

I come to Riley Sager as a horror enthusiast who just wants to be entertained by his twisty take on classic horror tropes.

This time, Sager takes his pen to the well trod Rear Window.

Actress Casey Fletcher, recently widowed after her husband drowns in the lake outside their home, is exiled to her family’s remote lakehouse manor following a tabloid scandal. Casey spends her time drinking the days away and spying on her new neighbors in the house across the lake (*snap snap*). After Casey saves the wife, Katherine, from drowning they strike up a friendship. Casey’s continued voyeurism has her increasingly worried Katherine’s marriage is abusive, she eventually thinks husband Tom killed Katherine after she goes missing and is determined to prove it.

The plot of The House Across the Lake is bound to be somewhat divisive, the ending gets kind of wild and the whole neighbor witnessing a murder, unreliable/drunk narrator thing has been done ad nauseam, but that’s exactly why I appreciate a fresh look at it. Just when you think you know exactly how everything ends Sager pulls the rug out from under you.

Not my favorite Riley Sager (at this point I think it’s bound to remain Final Girls – but I’m open so keep’ em coming!) but a fun little page turner on par with Sager’s other offerings.

Sam is the boy next door to Percy’s family’s summer cabin in rural Canada. They’re summer friends and eventually more over the course of their teen years until something big rips them apart. Decades later Percy returns to town for Sam’s mothers funeral, it’s the first time they’re seeing one another since things fell apart.

Every Summer After feels like summer. It will have you nostalgic for slow summer days, living in bathing suits and flip flops, you can practically smell the sunscreen and feel the mosquito bites. Percy and Sam’s story is told with a dual timeline, the frequent switches between then and now, plus a narrative covering “six summers and one weekend” in little more than 300 pages really keeps the story moving.

I wasn’t exactly blown away by this one (I mean, this is probably THE book of summer ’22, or at least a serious contender for the top and it’s so rare that a much hyped book fully lives up to expectation for me) but I did find  Every Summer After quite a treat for summer/beach reading – definitely peak toes in the sand reading! It has a lot of overlap with Christina Lauren’s Love and Other Words and I found that story to be more impactful.

I love time travel stories.

I love Emma Straub.

This Time Tomorrow was a highly anticipated read for me.

On the morning of her 40th birthday Alice wakes up in her childhood bedroom, the year is 1996 and she’s sixteen-years-old. Alice is thrust back to a world of SAT prep classes, high school angst, and teen boys she has idealized over the decades through a haze of nostalgia.

She’s also back in a time where her beloved father isn’t nearing the end of his life, but healthy, young, and very much alive. Alice wonders if she does things differently this time around whether she might be living a very different life than she does now. It’s delightfully reminiscent of Peggy Sue Got Married, in fact that movie is mentioned along with some other time travel favorites.

Time travel stories trod a fine line between value added and distracting. Sometimes the narrative relies on the time travel aspect far too much and the story becomes bogged down or repetitive. I don’t think that happens here. In This Time Tomorrow Straub utilizes time travel to explore the concept of time and mortality, the way relationships and perspectives thereof shift and evolve, and the FOMO of paths not taken.

At its heart the story is really about a father-daughter relationship. So many stories focus on mothers and daughters, I really appreciate this slightly different angle. Emma Straub has said she drew inspiration from her own father’s (author Peter Straub) illness.

A fun, touching, delightfully affirming story with all the interpersonal insight one expects of Straub, plus a healthy dose of 90s nostalgia to boot.

A young girl caught up by poverty and policing.

Nightcrawling is the story of seventeen-year-old Kiara desperately trying to keep the crumbling roof of their Oakland apartment over the heads of herself, her older brother, and the young abandoned neighbor boy, whose efforts lead her to become embroiled in a police scandal.

Nightcrawling is a story of struggling to survive against impossible odds and impossible choices – content note: it is not a happy story. The writing is gorgeous, author Leila Mottley is a poet laureate and it shows. What makes this book even more impressive is Mottley began writing it as a seventeen-year-old herself.

Nightcrawling is a remarkable debut that just made the Booker Prize longlist; Mottley is the youngest author to ever make the list at age 20!

I think it’s well established by now when I’m struggling with real world events reading about those same topics is some sort of weird coping mechanism for me.

Enter this 650+ page tome on abortion in America!

With painstaking detail author Joshua Prager covers 50 years of American history relating to abortion in The Family Roe fleshing out not only important players, such as Jane Roe herself, AKA Norma McCorvey, in the landmark Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion for all U.S. citizens regardless of geographical location, but also providing social and cultural context on the topic (pre-Dobbs which upended everything including the legitimacy of the Supreme Court! The Family Roe published in September 2021.)

I knew a good bit about the topic of abortion in America going into this book and The Family Roe further enriched my understanding.

One of the most interesting parts of this book for me is the discussion of the Roe adjacent case, 1992’s Planned Parenthood vs. Casey and specifically how conservative justices wanted to use it as an opportunity to overturn Roe, but ultimately felt it unconstitutional to do so, that it would erode the authority of SCOTUS and damage trust in our nation’s democratic institutions.  And yet… SCOTUS came to the exact opposite conclusion with Dobbs. Ain’t that some shit?

A+ for effort on this one. The Family Roe is a 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Nonfiction and it shows. The balance of comprehensive reporting plus engaging narratives woven throughout is truly impressive.

You’ll definitely want this one on your radar for Spooky Season reading!

Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she lands a summer job as a live-in nanny to an affluent family with a precocious five-year-old. Said child spends afternoons in their room drawing and before long those pictures go from the typical kindergarten offerings to something more detailed and sinister.

Hidden Pictures is what I’d consider to be a horror thriller. Mallory piecing together the significance of the pictures keeps the pages turning quickly. I liked the inclusion of actual illustrations, they really up the creep factor, and the balance of classic horror elements blending with more of a modern thriller twist.