It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover – Review

It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
Series: It Ends With Us #2
First published October 18, 2022
Genres: Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 323
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

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

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

Switching between the perspectives of Lily and Atlas, It Starts with Us picks up right where the epilogue for the “gripping, pulse-pounding” (Sarah Pekkanen, author of Perfect Neighbors) bestselling phenomenon It Ends with Us left off. Revealing more about Atlas’s past and following Lily as she embraces a second chance at true love while navigating a jealous ex-husband, it proves that “no one delivers an emotional read like Colleen Hoover” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author).

This book is a second chance romance. It’s about Atlas and Lily. They were best friends and lovers when they were younger and although life happened, a reunion of 5 min was all they needed to make the feelings come again.

But life happened in all the years they haven’t been together. Lily came out of an abusive relationship and has a 1-year old daughter. She is also a working mother with her own business.

Atlas opened two new restaurants and has almost no time for anything, especially when life threw him back to his past that will forever change his future.

But although they love each other, the fact that Lily’s ex doesn’t of course want him – being a former part of her life – will make her future and present difficult.

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The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar – ARC Review

The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar

Series: N/A

Publisher: Dreamscape Media

Expected publication June 6, 2023

Genres: LGBTQIAP+,  Romance,  Teens & YA

Pages: 336

Format: ARC – Audiobook

Buy: Amazon

* Received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you very much! This doesn’t affect the review in any way. My opinions are, as always, my own.*

A pun-filled YA contemporary romance, The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar finds a teenage girl competing in a televised baking competition, with contestants including her ex-girlfriend and a potential new crush – perfect for fans of The Great British Bake Off and She Drives Me Crazy !

“Welcome to the first ever Junior Irish Baking Show!”

Shireen Malik is still reeling from the breakup with her ex-girlfriend, Chris, when she receives news that she’s been accepted as a contestant on a new televised baking competition show. This is Shireen’s dream come true! Because winning will not only mean prize money, but it will also bring some much-needed attention to You Drive Me Glazy, her parents’ beloved donut shop.

Things get complicated, though, because Chris is also a contestant on the show. Then there’s the very outgoing Niamh, a fellow contestant who is becoming fast friends with Shireen. Things are heating up between them, and not just in the kitchen.

As the competition intensifies , Shireen will have to ignore all these factors and more― including potential sabotage―if she wants a sweet victory!

This book is about Shireen, a Bangladeshi-Irish young girl competing in a Junior Irish Bake-off show!

It’s in general a coming of age story that includes “Mentions of racism and fatphobia, depictions of anxiety (specifically anxiety and panic attacks and spiraling thoughts), and online harassment” according to the author’s website.

Shireen is still hurting from a recent breakup with Chris and this show is the only thing that can put her in a good mood, until she knows she has to be paired with her ex!

Even with her heart broken Shireen is excited to get more attention to her parents’ donut shop and hopefully help her dreams come true!

Books I’m Thinking of Buying!

Hi guys!

I was browsing my bookstore and taking inventory of every book that had a good synopsis so this is the list I made! Hope you like it and if you’ve read any of them please comment and say your opinion!

Also, all links lead to Goodreads!

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
• The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
• Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
• Mika In Real Life by Emiko Jean
• Love Stories by Trent Dalton
• Yerba Buena by Nina Lacour
• The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
• Love & Saffron by Kim Fay
• The Summer Switch- Off by Beth Reekles
• Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee
• The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• Yours Mine Ours by Sinéad Moriarty
• Careering by Daisy Buchanan
• Things I Wanted To Say But Didn’t by Monica Murphy
• 99% Mine by Sally Thorn
• Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl by Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum
• Out of Character by Jenna Miller
• Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick
• If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come by Jen St. Jude
• This is Gonna End in Tears by Liza Klausmann
• Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jin

These is form the manga Store I visited, a lot of Junji Ito I have yet to read and some other finds!

• Blue Flag by Kaito
• Blood Lad by Yuuki Kodama
• Ramen Wolf & Curry Tiger by Emboss
• Polar Bear Café by Aloha Higa
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime by Fuse
• Yon & Mu by Junji Ito
• Tokyo Revengers by Ken Wake
• Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito
• Dissolving Classroom by Junji Ito
• Remina by Junji Ito
• Venus in the Blind Spot by Junji Ito
• Shiver by Junji Ito
• Deserter by Junji Ito
• Frankenstein by Junji Ito
• No.6 by Atsuko Asano
• Rose Versalles by Riyoko Ikeda
• Overlord by Kugane Maruyama
• Don’t Toy with Me Miss Nagatoro by Nanashi
• Forbidden Scrollery by Zun
• Burn the Witch by Tite Kubo

And these are some of the ones I checked online and am interested in buying!

• Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire
• Immortality: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Tress Grew Because I Bled There by Eric Larocca
• Ever Since by Alena Bruzas
• Secretly Yours a by Tessa Bailey
• Unfortunately Yours by Tessa Bailey
• Love Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
• Part of Your World by Abby Jimineez
• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
• If it Bleeds b y Stephen King
• Florida by Lauren Groff
• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
• All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell
• Fresh Ink edited by Lamar Giles
• The Measure by Nikki Erlick
• Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura
• Trust by Hernan Diaz
• So Happy for You by Celia Laskey
• Mother Mother by Annie Macmanus
• People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
• Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

That’s it guys! Hope you enjoy adding some of these to your TBR and don’t forget to comment below if you’ve read any and what’s your opinion!

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh – Review

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Series: N/A
First published July 10, 2018
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Pages: 289
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.

This is in my opinion, about a girl battling depression. With her parents dead and an inheritance that goes a long way, she starts abusing pills for sleep, or rather hibernate like she said. She wants to sleep for a year and wakeup rejuvenated, anew.

But pills don’t solve everything and she stars spacing out and loosing herself to them, including sleep walking and forgetting about everything she did while sleeping.

She has a friend who is toxic, a on-and-off boyfriend that is abusive and a psychiatrist that enables her to take pills.

This can’t end well or can it?

Sorcery of Thorns + sequel by Margaret Rogerson – Review

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
Series: Sorcery of Thorns #1
First published June 4, 2019
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Pages: 456
Format: Hardback
Buy: Amazon

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

This is Elisabeth Scrivener’s story. She is an orphan raised in the Great library of Summershall where she learned how to tend to magic books and how to protect the world from them.

Her apprenticeship as a warden has barely begun when she wakes up one night to find her library’s Director killed and a Malefic free to cause chaos on her city.

Elisabeth fights the monster, but before she can begin to comprehend the magnitude of what happened, she is branded as a murderer and a traitor and the charge of her punishment is given to the Magisterium.

When the Great libraries start falling under attack she believes someone, a sorcerer, is behind it. Not having anyone to believe her, she seeks the help of Nathaniel Thorn. A sorcerer whose family is rumoured to have dealt with necromancy. Together they join forces to unfold what is happening to their city.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid – Review

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Series: N/A
First published July 1, 2014
Genres: Romance, Fiction
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, comes a breath taking novel about modern marriage, the depth of family ties, and the year that one remarkable heroine spends exploring both. When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes. Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for? This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game-and searching for a new road to happily ever after. Don’t miss the new novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto is Back, out now

Lauren and Ryan have been together for eleven years.

At first they’re madly in love. But just because a relationship starts off that way doesn’t mean it will automatically stay that way forever, especially when you let it go monotonous. It takes work. But they have been doing it all wrong, fitting and putting themselves first in all occasions instead of understanding each other.

When you get to this point, it’s really hard to go backwards.

That’s when Lauren and Ryan decide to take a year off from each other with no contact whatsoever, with the freedom to see other people.

Will they get back together or will time have made them realise they are better with someone else?

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz – Review

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
Series: The Anatomy Duology
First published January 18, 2022
Genres: Historical Fiction, Gothic
Pages: 338
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

Edinburgh, 1817. Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry. 

Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die. 

When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, the university will allow her to enroll. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books – she’ll need bodies to study, corpses to dissect. 

Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living, then. 

But Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets. Hazel and Jack work together to uncover the secrets buried not just in unmarked graves, but in the very heart of Edinburgh society.

A gothic tale full of mystery and romance about a willful female surgeon, a resurrection man who sells bodies for a living, and the buried secrets they must uncover together.

Hazel Sinnett is a 17 year old from a wealthy family living in Scotland in the early 1800’s.

She always wanted to became a physician/surgeon. But at the time such thing is unheard of. She is supposed to marry her cousin, the viscount’s son, and live the life of the Lady as she is supposed to.

She sneaks into a surgical presentation and decides that the only way is to impersonate her dead brother and pass her physician exams so she can finally be who she wants to be. There is a plague going around called the Roman Fever, and she hopes to find a cure for it.

Along the way, she meets Jack Currer, who is a “resurrection man”, aka someone who robs graves to sell the recently dead bodies to those practicing surgical techniques.

But grave robbery is difficult and one can do only so much with a dead body. That’s when people start missing, or appearing with wounds they don’t remember anything of. Someone is kidnapping the poor, knocking them unconscious, and practicing on them against their will, sometimes even leading to death.

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson – Review



The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson
Series: N/A
First published May 3, 2022
Genres: Mystery, YA
Pages: 405
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke’s grandmother is offering to anyone who can share information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn’t so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.

In order to get the reward and prove Steve’s innocence, they need to figure out who killed Brooke Donovan. And luckily Alice has exactly what they need–the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there’s anyone that can teach the girls how to solve a mystery it’s the master herself. But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they’re about to walk into.

Alice belongs to Mains: a popular group of the school. Untill she’s dumped by her boyfriend who starts dating her best friend Brooke. After that, she disappears and comes back five days later as if nothing has happened.

Iris; belongs to Zones, a least popular group at school. Raised by her mother who is a bartender, barely making ends meet. She starts tutoring Alice to earn enough money to disappear because some THING is threatening her family.

When Alice’s ex friend Brooker is missing, the two girls team up to solve the mystery. Alice thinks the police isn’t doing enough and Iris needs the reward money, so it’s a win win.

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett – Review



The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Series: N/A
First published October 8, 2019
Genres: Dystopia
Pages: 407
Format: Paperback
Buy: Amazon

THE RESISTANCE STARTS HERE.

No one speaks of the grace year.
It’s forbidden.
We’re told we have the power to lure grown men from their beds, make boys lose their minds, and drive the wives mad with jealousy. That’s why we’re banished for our sixteenth year, to release our magic into the wild before we’re allowed to return to civilisation.
But I don’t feel powerful.
I don’t feel magical.

Tierney James lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at sixteen to the northern forest to brave the wilderness – and each other – for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry – if they’re lucky.

It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them – if they survive it…

A critically acclaimed page-turning feminist dystopia about a young woman trapped in an oppressive society, fighting to take control of her own life.

This book feels to me, like a mix of Handmaid’s tale and Lord of the Flies.

In this town, girls that complete 16 years old are banished to the wilds and they call it their “Grace Year”.

They have to do that in order to purge themselves of their dangerous “magic”. This magic is said to have the ability to seduce men, lure them to sin.

Once out in the wild, the girls need to survive the elements, evade the poachers who are looking to harvest their body parts, and try to not kill each other when they start going crazy.

Ms Perfectly Fine by Kate Callaghan – ARC Review

Ms Perfectly Fine by Kate Callaghan

Series: N/A

Publisher: CallaghanWriter

Pub Date 08 Jun 2023

Genres: Romance, Contemporary

Pages: 352

Format: ARC

Buy: Amazon

* Received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you very much! This doesn’t affect the review in any way. My opinions are, as always, my own.*

Autumn wants the house, but Elijah wants her.

Autumn Adler, a famous concert pianist, is making her solo comeback to the stage after a tragic accident, and she can’t afford any distractions. Of all the things that could go wrong, she never expected her landlord to rent out the ground floor of her home to Elijah Wells – a game designer in the midst of building his own company. Autumn loves her townhouse, and she refuses to give it up. However, Elijah is equally stubborn. As the days pass, Autumn’s efforts to make him leave only further his desire to win her over. It seems as though neither can win this battle of wills.

Yet as Autumn’s showcase approaches, a seemingly innocent gift turns into something far more alarming. Can the two call a truce and figure out what’s going on?

One house, two strangers, and a dark secret. What could go wrong?

Out of nowhere Autumn and Elijah are forced to live together in the same home Autumn previously lived for years.

This is probably the biggest nightmare for Autumn. But even more infuriating is that Elijah is a handsome man that battles her batter and doesn’t put up with her shit. If anything he is amused.

But even worse is the gifts she has been receiving. She has no idea from who it is, but it’s getting increasingly alarming and it will take two to solve it out.