2.5 Star

Audiobook Review: Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

October 21, 2020 Leave a Comment

7 hours 50 min. | Penguin Audio | Mystery| Release Date: 7/30/2019

An idyllic upstate New York neighborhood is shaken when a flirtatious young wife is found brutally murdered in the trunk of her car. Her shady husband is the number one subject but in this neighborhood, everyone has a secret worth killing for

And by secret I mean cheating. Like, there is a lot of mentions of cheating in this book.

This my first foray into domestic mystery/thriller after Big Little Lies--which was one of my favorite reading experiences–and this one just didn’t work for me. I didn’t get the racing to the end feeling I wanted and it may have had something to do with the fact that I figured out the killer at 60%.

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Protect The Prince by Jennifer Estep (Crown of Shards #2)

March 14, 2020 Leave a Comment

12 hrs. 40 min. | Adult Fantasy | Harper Voyage | Release Date: 07/2/2019

*Kill the Queen Spoilers*

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Audiobook Review: #famous by Jilly Gagnon

April 25, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: February 14^th 2017

Audiobook Hours: 7 hrs 53 minutes

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)

Did I pick up this book because the cover reminded me of Fangirl ? Maybe. Yes, yes I did.

When high school junior Rachel Ettinger secretly snaps a photo of Kyle Bonham and tweets, ahem, I mean flits it it to her best friend she thinks nothing of it.

Until the pic goes viral.

While Kyle becomes an overnight internet sensation Rachel becomes a target for harassment and cyberbullying.

So, in case you aren’t familiar, this book was inspired by the phenomenon that is Alex from Target.

#famous had a strong start, we see a lot of the rampant sexism online and I really thought Gagnon was going to flesh out Rachel’s story through this lens, but the online abuse gets dropped pretty early to focus on a tedious plot where Kyle recruits Rachel to repeatedly appear with him on an Ellen type talk show.

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Heartless by Marissa Meyer

December 22, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 11/08/16

Audiobook Length : 14 Hours 34 Minutes

Genre: Fairytale

Publisher:Macmillan Audio / Feiwel & Friends

Katherine Pinkerton knows better than dream of owning her own bakery baker, she knows her destiny lies in becoming the queen of a wacky, quirky, surreal little Kingdom of Hearts. On the night she is to be betrothed she sets eyes on the handsome court joker, who has more than cards up his sleeves.

Unlike the Lunar Chronicles where the fairytale aspects are subtext and set in a modern world, Heartless is an overt-played-straight prequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Meyer digs into the Kingdom of Hearts and all its little oddities. It’s a place where animals talk, playing cards are courtier and if one bring something back from a dream. . . well then so be it.

What we don’t really get to dig into in this novel is the plot. Plot points in the novel are hung like painting with no nails, there are a lot of them, you want to see them. . . but they have a tendency to fall off. One of the many plot in this book is about a forbidden romance that never really started for me. There is also a beta romance, a monster, intrigue, war and magic. . . but we never get fully invested in any of it.

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Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke

August 12, 2016 Leave a Comment

Um… So….This Book….Yeah, I think it’s time to borrow this meme from my Grasshopper Jungle review:

I got this audiobook from my library because I got it confused with some other book and thought it was about Victorian-era spies. But, since the audio was only 5 hours I figured I could knock it out in a week.

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The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

December 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

Since I’ve started blogging and paying attention to the adult lit world I have heard a lot about Margaret Atwood. She’s mostly known for her feminist writing and disturbing dystopic features. And while this book feature some of this, it’ just so ….bizarre. I really had to do some research to see what others were saying to make sure I understood it. The book editor of the Washington Post called it a “silly mess”… and it kind of was this for me. I have no idea how to really review this, since I don’t have much to compare it to, but here goes.

In an economic collapse in the Northeast, married couple Stan and Charmaine have lost everything. They live in their car, fearful of looters and the next day to come. When they have the opportunity to be apart of an economic experiment that requires them to move into the town of Consilience , an idyllic 50’s style town where everyone is given housing and work.. The only catch is they have to alternate a month being prisoners inside Positron prison and a month being a citizen in Consilience, leaving their home for their Alternates.

As you may suspect all is not what it seems and Stan and Charmiane get involved in a bizarre plot that include sex robots, a house of Elvis impersonators and adultery. So much adultery. The thriller-esque plot they get involved in just didn’t make sense. I’m not sure if this novel is satire or something. I feel like if I didn’t know who wrote this I’d be like, this is kind of misogynstic but because it’s Atwood it’s maybe satire. It just seemed like all these strong capable women had this plan and then they leave it to a bumbling man as their linchpin.

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