Thanks to partners NetGalley and Avon Books for the digital ARC of Mhairi McFarlane’s Between Us. The book will be published next Tuesday, August 8! Mhairi McFarlane has long been on my list of authors to read—I’ve seen so many rave reviews from readers I trust that I just knew I would love her work . . . and I was right! Between Us is a lovely, compelling romance centered on Roisin Walters, a young woman who joins her boyfriend Joe and their long-time friends for a celebration at a luxurious weekend getaway. They’re going to celebrate the launch of Joe’s new show, their friend Dev’s engagement to Anita, and their friend Gina’s birthday, along with Meredith and Matt, the final two members of the group who first bonded when they worked together right out of college. The weekend does not go as planned. The tension that has been simmering in Roisin and Joe’s relationship surfaces, prompted by the revelation that Joe has used some of Roisin’s family’s secrets on his show. Joe and Matt, who have never been the tightest friends, are sparring, and Matt fumbles through some horrific missteps with Gina, who has had a crush on him forever. It seems their friend group may not survive the weekend. The novel focuses on the aftermath of the disastrous getaway, on Roisin’s attempts to avoid tension by returning to her hometown to help her mom with her family’s pub, as well as her desire to get to the bottom of Joe’s behavior . . . and on Matt’s valiant efforts to maintain a friendship with Roisin. McFarlane brilliantly builds both a sense of what made this group so central to each character and also the ways that the years have changed the dynamics between the friends. Roisin is a strong central character whose complex relationships—with Joe, with her friends, and with her family—have shaped her into a compelling and compassionate woman who nevertheless expects to be treated with care and respect and honesty. I love the way that Roisin and Matt’s friendship grows through the novel, the way that they work through the conflicts of the initial weekend and the challenges that occur as they contend with all that was uncovered. There’s a nuance throughout the novel that in no way took away from the romance. Between Us will definitely not be my last McFarlane novel!
0 Comments
Thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Amanda Quain’s Ghosted, which will be published Tuesday, July 25! Amanda Quain’s Ghosted, a YA retelling of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, far exceeded my expectations. Quain uses her source material creatively but isn’t beholden to it, instead finding an emotional core that (I must admit) I found missing from Austen’s novel. Hattie Tilney attends Northanger Abbey, a ritzy private boarding school her family can afford because her mother, Dr. Tilney, is the headmaster. Despite the fact that her school is notorious for being haunted, Hattie is entirely anti-paranormal, convinced that those who hope to find a ghost are deluding themselves. Then, along comes Kit Morland, a handsome, quirky new student who is decidedly pro-paranormal. Normally, Hattie would avoid Kit completely, but her mother has assigned Hattie to be his ambassador, so she resigns herself to a few tours, some friendly chats, and that’s it. As the layers peel back on Hattie’s story, it becomes clear that this is really a novel about grief and healing. Immediately before her family moved to Northanger Abbey, her beloved father died of a cancer that killed him quickly. Hattie decided that her new school offered a chance at a fresh start, so she rejected the study of history, of hauntings, of ghosts that had so captivated her and her father. She makes new friends, does what she needs to do to be successful and moderately popular, and blends into the background. Until Kit. Kit immediately gets under Hattie’s defenses, and when they’re assigned to work together for their journalism class on a semester-long project focused on the ghosts of Northanger Abbey, Hattie realizes that everything she had suppressed is coming to the surface. Quain crafts brilliant, complex characters. Hattie, whose first-person narration drives the novel, is vivid and empathetic and sad. It’s clear that, while she looks out for her younger brother, Liam, and tolerates her older sister, Freddie, she’s not really connected with her family, particularly her mother, who she most often calls Dr. Tilney. As Hattie works through her college applications (she’s a senior), it becomes clear that she’s also not connected to the college path she’s committed to. Even her friends see only her surface. It’s only Kit who begins to see who Hattie really is and could be. I absolutely loved this novel, which so beautifully delves into both Hattie’s healing but also into the inevitably difficult transitions that all teenagers at this age must undertake and, of course, into the relationship that grows between Hattie and Kit. Watching her again feel her feelings is an incredible journey. Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Katherine Center’s Hello Stranger. The book will be published next Tuesday, July 11! Every time I pick up a new book by Katherine Center, I’ve come to expect joy. In 2020, when we interviewed her for the Unabridged Podcast upon the release of What You Wish For (shameless shoutout—you can listen here: https://www.unabridgedpod.com/post/134-whatyouwishfor-katherinecenter), Center talked explicitly about working toward joy, both in her life and her writing. She said, “[O]ne of the things that I really wanted to write about in this book in particular, like the kind of the place where I started with the story, was I wanted to write about joy. . . . [W]hen you find the right story for you, whatever that story is that you need at that particular moment in your life, it's so satisfying that it feels like joy.” With Center’s new book Hello Stranger, that feeling of joy was in full effect for me. At times, I was giddy as I read about Sadie Montgomery’s fierce attempts to wrestle back control over her life, her relationships, and her career—to find joy in the face of adversity. Sadie is a portrait artist on the cusp of finding the success she’s dreamed of ever since the tragic death of her mother—also a portrait artist—when she was a child. Her relationship with her father has never been what she wanted, and her relationships with her stepmother and stepsister are downright confrontational. But she has a good friend, Sue, and a sweet, aging dog she loves and a place to live and work (thanks to some gracious rule breaking from Sue’s parents, her unofficial landlords). And then she falls one day, merely walking across the street, and everything changes. Sadie finds out that she needs immediate brain surgery, and while the surgery is successful, it results in prosopagnosia. Face blindness. She can’t recognize anyone’s face, even her own, and she certainly can’t paint portraits, which means that the art competition on which she was counting is going to be a real challenge. The situation unfurls from there, of course, complicated by a potential romance with her dog’s veterinarian and a burgeoning friendship with the superficially-jerky-but-maybe-not neighbor who turns out to be pretty helpful when she needs it. In retrospect, there were a few elements of the plot that stretched my credulity just a bit, but they didn’t impact my reading experience at all. The story here is gorgeous and sometimes heart wrenching but ultimately joyful. Center considers the impact of Sadie’s face blindness on her life and her career and her relationships with great sensitivity, making excellent use of the need for Sadie to see things differently both literally and figuratively. I loved Hello Stranger. Thanks to partners NetGalley and One More Chapter for the digital ARC of Linda Corbett’s What Would Jane Austen Do?. The book is out June 16! Linda Corbett’s What Would Jane Austen Do? makes great use of its Austen source material, spinning out this romance between an “agony aunt” (an advice columnist) who writes a “Dear Jane” column and a suspense novelist who’s a total Darcy when they first meet. Maddy Shaw meets Cameron Massey on the day she’s fired—via email—from her column, when they’re scheduled to do a radio interview together. This is not a meet cute. Massey immediately gets under her skin with his scorn for Austen and, really, romances in general. Maddy plans never to see him again, and then an unexpected inheritance from a disgraced and distant family member she never met requires her to live in a small English village for a year before she can sell. So, jobless, she moves from London to the country to wait out her twelve-month sentence. But she doesn’t the move as much as she’d anticipated, coming to recognize the charms of life in a small village, even as she’s pulled into running the literary festival that her relative began. And then Cameron shows up . . . This is a sweet, closed-door romance that centers on friendship as much as love, on making one’s own judgments about those around us, and on the virtues of carving out one’s own path. I devoured it! Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Kristyn J. Miller's Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts. In Kristyn J. Miller’s Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts, main character Margo Anderson’s life centers on her podcast with her best friend Jo. Their focus? Well, it’s encompassed by that title: they began with a vow to live out the principle of a woman’s right to hook up without falling in love (or even like!) with anyone. And then Jo fell in love. Now, Go (Margo) is left adrift. Jo is her best friend, her partner, her roommate . . . and Margo isn’t so sure that she still wants to live the rules the way she has been, but she’s also not sure what she wants instead. Jo’s wedding to her high school crush brings tons of feelings to the surface for Margo, as does the presence of Best Man Declan: the groom’s best friend from high school AND Margo’s high school nemesis. But as Margo gets to know Declan, really for the first time, she also starts to understand herself a little more. This was a fun, sweet romance. While it took me a little while to get invested, watching Margo work through her relationships, working through a deep consideration of the expectations she’s set for herself and just where they come from, is incredibly satisfying. I loved the relationship between Margo and Declan, who is such a great character, and I also enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at Go and Jo’s podcast. Thanks to partners NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the digital ARC of Piper J. Drake’s Wings Once Cursed and Bound. The book will be published on Tuesday, April 11! Somehow, in the two months since I requested Piper J. Drake’s Wings Once Cursed and Bound from NetGalley, I completely forgot what it was about . . . and I actually recommend that you go in the same way. It was so much fun to discover this one, starting with a blank slate. With that said . . . here’s a brief synopsis: Wings Once Cursed and Bound is a blend of romance and fantasy, focused on the paranormal, including vampires and werewolves and fae and also kinnaree (Thai bird princesses) who walk among us. Peeraphan Rahttana knows she is at least part kinnaree but hasn’t let the fact change her life. She’s a dancer hoping to find success as she pursues her passion. Then, one day, her frenemy gives her a pair of red shoes, and Peeraphan (also called Punch) is drawn into a legend outside of her experience. Her powers give her some ability to resist the curse of the shoes, but she’s still noticed by Bennet Andrews, a vampire who’s sworn to recover them before they do any more harm. As Bennet works to take the shoes, he’s also drawn into helping Punch. The vibes here are akin, at first, to Twilight (which I enjoy, so that’s not a bad thing!). They do quickly become more adult, but the romance between the immortal Bennet and the partly-human Punch develops as Bennet tries to resist and Punch becomes more determined to remove the walls between them. This is the first book in a planned series called Mythwoven, so there’s a good bit of world building here, the introduction of a large cast of characters who I can only hope will be at the center of the future books. I enjoyed the way Peeraphan’s exploration of her kinnaree identity was anchored in her consideration of her Thai culture, and there’s a nice surprise as she reconnects with an unexpected family member (that happens early!). Thanks to partners NetGalley and Bookouture for the digital ARC of Catherine Walsh’s The Matchmaker. The book will be published on Tuesday, April 18! Catherine Walsh’s Holiday Romance was my favorite holiday romance of 2022, so I was excited to dive into another of her novels. The Matchmaker is set in a small Irish village called Ennisbawn where Katie Collins has grown up, raised by her grandmother after her parents died in a car accident when she was five. Ennisbawn isn’t a fancy place, but its place in the hearts of its inhabitants is large. Katie works in a pub run by Adam, who acted as a sort of father figure for her. Outside the pub, there’s a wishing well where her parents met. Katie still lives with her granny and spends her days with her two best friends whose lives also center around the pub. Change is coming, though. A wealthy real estate developer has bought up large swaths of land in Ennisbawn and is building a luxurious hotel. Led by a team manager named Josh and his contractor, Callum Dempsey, the builders have disrupted Katie’s every day, starting each morning when she’s awakened by the sound of construction vehicles. Katie is filled with resentment . . . and with interest. Callum is incredibly handsome, and he doesn’t seem to be quite as committed to the destruction of Ennisbawn as his boss. Still, all things considered, Katie doesn’t love the plan, but she’s resigned to it . . . until she discovers that—through a series of legal machinations—they’ll be knocking down her beloved pub to make way for even more hotel-centered building. So, Katie sets out to do the only thing she can think to do: revive the traditional match-making festival, emphasizing the tradition and culture that will be wiped out by the hotelier’s plans, bringing positive media attention to the village and negative media attention to the company’s project. The only problem? The festival has dwindled—like the town—over the years, so it’s more of a recreation than a revival. But Katie is (or may be?) up to the challenge. Just like Holiday Romance, The Matchmaker shines because of its characters and because of the authentic way that Walsh builds their relationship. The premise of each of these novels may be just outside the bounds of reality, but the relationships develop without the normal false barriers and miscommunications that plague some romance novels. Katie is a refreshingly self-aware protagonist, and Callum is just great: sincere and down-to-earth in his developing feelings for Katie and for the town. I also absolutely loved the secondary characters—Katie’s friends and family—who bring such a richness to the novel. Catherine Walsh is an author whose backlist I must dive into soon! Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway. The book will be published on Tuesday, March 14! Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway, her third novel, centers on the story of Madeline Hathaway. Maddy’s life is just a bit unusual: since she was born, she’s traveled with her parents on the Renaissance Faire circuit. She’s never attended in-person school. Instead, her mother homeschooled her for a while, and then she shifted over to online school. As the book opens, Maddy and her father are approaching the one-year mark since her mother’s death from cancer. Maddy has plans for how she’ll honor her loss: they’re returning to her mother’s favorite faire where Maddy plans to document what has changed and what has stayed just as her mother loved it. This is part of her ongoing project to “notice” things by documenting them in her journal, to keep track of everything that happens so that she’ll remember it in case she loses someone else. And she’s going to keep the circle of those who matter to her very, very small. Life doesn’t work out quite the way she planned. The faire has changed. A lot. It was taken over by new owners who have completed a dramatic overhaul, creating a polished—but perhaps less charming—version of what Maddy’s family loved. The plan to not care about people? That comes up against an obstacle, too: the teenaged bard of the faire, Arthur, who also happens to be the new owners’ son and who declares upon first sight that Maddy shall be called “Gwen” and, soon after, that she should be the faire’s princess. Soon Maddy is pulled into Arthur’s plans: she joins his fathers as the princess, despite her concerns that people will criticize her since she doesn’t fit the normal, svelte image of royalty. She also joins Arthur in a series of adventures that he declares will help her “find her Gwen.” I really, really loved this book, which brought me back to the joy I felt after reading Schumacher’s first book, Amelia Unabridged. Maddy’s grief—and the ways that she tries to hold back the onslaught of that grief—is beautifully and empathetically portrayed. Maddy and Arthur are both basically kind and decent human beings who have insecurities and who make mistakes with each other, often as a result of those insecurities. While they’re really the focus of the novel, the secondary characters—their dads, Maddy’s best friend who left the faire circuit, and a few friends from Arthur’s high school—round out the story well. But it’s Maddy and Arthur’s growing friendship and the chances each takes in trusting someone else that warmed my heart. Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Emma Lord’s Begin Again. The book is out today! Emma Lord has become one of my go-to YA authors. Her books are sweet but not saccharine, they’re romances but not *just* romances, and they focus on characters whose struggles are authentic and require some real growth. I should say that I still—somehow—haven’t read Tweet Cute, but I’ve adored each of her other books, including this newest one, Begin Again. Andie Rose has clawed her way into a mid-year transfer to Blue Ridge State, her dream school, the college where her parents met . . . and her boyfriend Connor’s school. In a moment of misplaced romance, she decides to make her transfer a surprise. And then she discovers, in a sort of Gift of the Magi twist, that her boyfriend has also made a surprise transfer to Andie’s much-less-prestigious college. Cue chaos and angst. Despite the less-than-fortuitous start, Andie decides that her boyfriend can just transfer back after this current semester, and she resolves to make the best of the situation, as she often does. She and her new roommate, Shay, hit it off, and though she faces some academic challenges, she’s ready to dive into the traditions that her parents and, particularly, her deceased mom told her about. I’m going to pause here to say that I absolutely loved this book. Lord captures Andie’s college experience so well, the promise and peril of seeking a promised fresh start when you know that you’re still just the same person you’ve always been. Andie is an amazing character who is strong and inspiring and always willing to help her friends, yet she’s simultaneously fragile and all too willing to avoid conflict, even if it means sacrificing something that means a lot to her. The development of Andie’s formative relationships is clearly a huge part of Andie’s identity. Lord shows us the grandmas who dropped everything to raise her after her mom’s death, the father who became distant in his grief, Connor who has been her friend since childhood and whose family became a second sort of family for her, and of course the mother she lost who has become such an inspiration—and someone to live up to—for her. Yet Lord balances the ways that her new relationships help to shape who she’s becoming. Those include Shay but also Milo, the RA who quickly becomes a source of support, and Valentina, who starts as her much-needed math tutor but quickly becomes another friend. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this book. There’s so much here that it’s tough to cover it all in a review, but it doesn’t ever feel like there’s too much going on. Instead, Andie’s story feels like the real story of a college freshman who is both building a new life for herself and still working to figure out the life she has. I read this one in as close to one sitting as I could because I just had to know what would happen next. I can’t recommend Emma Lord’s Begin Again enough. Thanks to partner NetGalley and St. Martin'S Press for the digital ARC of Sophie Sullivan’s A Guide to Being Just Friends. The book will be published on Tuesday, January 17! Sophie Sullivan’s A Guide to Being Just Friends is book three in her Jansen Brothers series (following Ten Rules for Faking It and How to Love Your Neighbor). This one may just be my favorite of the three. Book three centers on Wes Jansen, the oldest brother who set himself the goal, when he was very young, of protecting his younger brothers from the trauma of his parents’ vicious fights and eventual divorce. This has left him proud of the lives that they lead but convinced that loving someone will lead only to misery. Hailey Sharp has moved to a small town and opened a new salad restaurant, By the Cup, in hopes of starting fresh after a toxic relationship and ugly breakup. Though her business is struggling, she’s determined to make her new life work. Hailey and Wes’s meet cute is not so cute. Hailey, seeking to drown her sorrows about her new business in chocolate, has picked up a to go order at the neighboring bakery when Wes approaches her, convinced that she’s his date. When she protests—she’s Hailey, not Hayden—his reaction is less than kind. But Wes is determined to admit and apologize for his mistakes (unlike his dad!), so when circumstances bring him together with Hailey again, their friendship begins. While Wes’s determination to be friends-and-nothing-more meets with approval from Hailey, still fragile from her last relationship, it did eventually strain my credulity. Still, with a bit of suspension of disbelief, I was immersed in this romance and enjoyed the slow build of their relationship. I’m also a fan of romance series, allowing the reader to see the couples from previous books living out their happily ever afters, so this one was a joy. I’m sad that Sophie Sullivan’s first series is over, but I look forward to what comes next! |
AuthorI'm Jen Moyers, co-host of the Unabridged Podcast and an English teacher. Archives
July 2021
Categories
All
|
Proudly powered by Weebly