bandherbooks's Reviews (3.65k)

D'Vaughn and Kris's immediate connection and fall into love was like a scrumptious slice of wedding cake. I loved reading about them, and how tender they were with each other too, plus their families!

What didn't work for me was the premise of the reality show, which wasn't quite believable or developed enough.

it wasn't you, it was definitely me and my surgery. i will def pick this up at a later time!

absolutely enchanted with Chin's prose, and I was gliding along famously with this slow-burn romance (with pay off! ! !) but the character choices at the end made me so frustrated! I will definitely read more from this author, as the small-town setting that doesn't turn away from the small minded racism and economic woe problems that can come with them.

Do also want to note there is a lot of grief in this book, both main characters have at least one deceased parent (one from cancer) and it also took me a minute to settle into all of that. I wish I had finished before fathers' day. these plot points are all alluded to in the back matter and i just ran out of time to read for my book club.


Spoilery details about ending:

Spoiler

i wish that we had a better take down of the racist white girl who ended up sleeping with the hero and bragging about it to the heroine (after bullying the heroine in the past). I especially wish the hero had not sort of apologized away the white woman's horrible behavior as part of her own "complex grief emotions." that should have been on the part of the woman herself. I dunno, complicated all around.

Also, for the heroine to pack in her entire career to move back home, i guess i expected it, but it still felt not quite the right choice as well as her rapid pivot to defending her small hometown after so much anger and ire at it (and her high school boyfriend who destroyed her heart).

All in all, this is a ME thing, and i otherwise really enjoyed reading.

thank you to the publisher for the ARC

i'm pretty proud of the tags on this banger

whew, the ending made me big mad.

a story told from the mother's POV about reckoning with loving your child yet having the knowledge they committed murder and now are free from prison and have to live with that for the rest of their life. and their victim's parent lives down the street.

The focus on love // obsession and the justice system, atoning, and drugs.

this is not really a book i'd normally pick up but i read it for the wisconsin literary awards. i truly wish the ending was not...that.

spoilers:

Spoiler

i was just really irritated that in the end, the son was not the killer, just there and high as hell and the MOTHER of the victim had murdered her on accident and then went on to paint him as evil. also the addition of the victim being bisexual and the son and the other girl being in a tragic love triangle was just so meh to me

~sometimes you risk it all for a someone with a translucent

all spoilers, look away




i had to knock this down a whole star (or maybe even two) because the ending RE syphilis made me so upset.

emotionally, i was absolutely enchanted by lusty widow newly out of her weeds Daisy and lycan fighting against his wolf and his destiny Ian's romance so the fact i had to worry about STDs and non-consent just bah humbug.

I also don't really understand how the gim and their replaced heart work? so I was *stressed* even knowing that Daisy no longer would die from syphilis but has "100 years" ???? Ian is still immortal so okay i guess.

that said the thoughts on being ashamed of having lustful inclinations and Daisy's horrid dead first husband and how Ian makes Daisy feel beautiful and cherished was so lovely. And Daisy accepting Ian's wolf.

Also damn that was good carriage head and whew I was so made when her sisters' interrupted them after that first thrust hahah.

All in all a lot to chew on and i'll still be reading more in this series.

set of essays connected by the author's musings on 'home' and sense of place, communicated by flowery descriptions of the various places she's lived, focusing on the natural elements and animals that inhabit them.

mostly memoir, with discussions of grief (her mother passed of cancer while she was quite young) and the author's stay in a mental health institution in the 1980s.

Beautiful prose, not normally a book i'd pick up but one i know a bunch of readers would enjoy, especially my outdoorsy, woods//wisconsin living and loving family.

Combining history and botany to discuss 15 flowers (orchids), author Hannickel pens a delightfully niche book about how orchids have touched so many important people and events in history. I especially liked the chapters about Chinese Empress Cixi (1835-1908) and her legacy of gardens and flowers, and Edmond Albius (1829-1880) who discovered how to hand fertilize vanilla orchids while enslaved as a 12year old Black boy in Madagascar. The ramifications of Albius's discovery are both distressing and sad, and i'll never look at a vanilla bean the same way again.

*read for 2023 WLA Literary Awards (published in 2022)

fine look at the history of county fairs in wisconsin. nothing truly remarkable, and read more like an encyclopedia of the fairs than a deeper analysis. very nostalgic, appears geared towards white wisconsinites.