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!

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?

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 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.

Most Anticipated Releases of 2019 – Part 1

Hey guys!

It’s already 2019 and it’s time to check out some new releases!! Who’s excited?? These are the books I am interested in getting as of now, hopefully we have some in common! I will be only mentioning books from January through June in this post, and will later do another post more accurate, with releases from July trough December.

So here’s my list of anticipated books for 2019:

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

 

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Andrews McMeel
First published November 4th, 2014
Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction
Pages: 204
Format: Paperback
Buy: Book Depository | Amazon

Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.
The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

 

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Series: The Folk of the Air #1
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published January 2nd, 2018
Genres: Fantasy, YA, Fairies
Pages: 384
Format: Hardback
Buy: Book Depository | Amazon

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu

 

Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu
Series: DC Icons #2
Publisher: Penguin
First published January 2nd, 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Superheroes, YA
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Buy: Book Depository | Amazon

The highly anticipated coming-of-age story for the world’s greatest super hero: BATMAN by the # 1 New York Timesbestselling author Marie Lu.

Returning home from his lavish eighteenth birthday party, Bruce Wayne stops a criminal’s getaway – disobeying the police and crashing his car during the chase.

Sentenced to community service in Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, he encounters some of the the city’s most dangerous and mentally disturbed criminals. Among these, Bruce meets the intriguing Madeleine who has ties to the Nightwalker gang that is terrorizing Gotham City.

She’s a mystery Bruce has to unravel but can he trust her? The Nightwalkers target the rich, and Bruce’s name is next on their list.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Series: N/A

Publisher: Penguin Press

Published September 12th, 2017

Genres: Contemporary, Adult Fiction

Pages: 338

Format: ARC

Buy: Book Depository | 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.*

The brilliant new novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller, Everything I Never Told You.

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons’ friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family – and Mia’s.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.