So, I was expecting to love this book. I heard a couple of people praising this book on booktube and it has such an incredibly high rating. I was excited about the sexy, hate-to-love (one of my fave tropes when done right) book. Unfortunately, this one disappointed me.


***some spoilers ahead***

What I liked:

1. The premise.
This story takes place in a publishing house. The two leads, Josh and Lucy, work together as assistants to the co-CEOs. Since they met they've spent a large majority of that time antagonizing each other. But the line between love and hate begins to get blurry. When I heard about this book I had serious Pride and Prejudice vibes, and considering P&P is one of my most favorite books of all time, I was optimistic about this one.


What I disliked:

1. The writing style. I know that writing style is a very subjective thing to critique because everyone's tastes differ, so here are a few things that I didn't like about the writing:
It was very simplistic, and the transitions were very clumsy.

I also felt like the dialogue was weird, for lack of a better word. And not like a quirky 'weird', but more awkward and cheesy 'weird'. People don't actually talk the way they were talking with each other. It was strange. At some point maybe I'll give some examples...but there are so darn many...at one point one of them tells the other that they want to juice the other person's head like a lemon...this is during a supposedly sexy part of the book...ummm...that's weird. I think the author was trying to suggest that they wanted to know what the other person was thinking, but what an awkward and cringe-inducing way to go about it!

Also, there is some language and terms in here I didn't like seeing in a book written in 2017. At one point Josh calls himself 'socially retarded'. Why couldn't he have said something less offensive like 'socially awkward' or even just 'shy'?
There's also a lot of fat-shaming in this book. Just so you all know, in the world of The Hating Game:
Skinny or Built = Good
Fat = BAD.
Lucy also wishes that Josh had a birth defect in one of her little inner-monologue tirades. A cleft palate, to be precise. You know...so he would be more ugly...so many problems with this that I don't even know where to start.

2. Lucy's penchant for choosing to misconstrue a situation just so she can play the victim. This happened several times throughout the book. It got really annoying when Josh would say or do something that was obviously benign and she would just take it the wrong way. Then when he would try to apologize or explain it was like it would go in one ear and out the other.

Her character, in general, was pretty miserable. The book is written in first person through her eyes. This is a mistake. She is so incredibly unlikable, petulant, and immature. I could not connect with her. The way she overreacts in nearly every situation grew tiresome almost immediately.

3. The lack of any (well-developed) side characters. A couple of co-workers show up here and there, and a couple family members from both the leads, but none of them were well-developed. Lucy mentions an ex-friend named Valerie several times throughout the novel that never shows up. Seriously, we hear about this girl and how she broke off their friendship over and over but there's never any payoff. And apparently that was Lucy's ONLY friend...and Josh has no friends either...so this book is literally about just their relationship...and that's not realistic.

4. Any external plots are very thin.
Look, I get that this is supposed to be just a fun, light, fluffy chick-lit type book, but if the author is going to introduce this workplace element, I wish that it was more fully-developed. This takes place in a publishing house, but it could've just as easily taken place in a toy store, or an IT department, or ANYTHING. There is a couple of mentions of a project having to do with e-books...and it is only half-explained and never brought to fruition. Also, there is a whole thing about Lucy and Josh having to compete for a promotion...but we never find out who gets the job. It's left totally hanging...because again, that's not what this book is about. It's all about the relationship...

5. Tropes, tropes, and more tropes.
Now, tropes exist for a reason. Everyone has certain elements they like reading about. I believe even the most tired of tropes can be if the execution is great.

One of my favorite tropes is hate-to-love. This book is NOT a hate-to-love story. It's an 'antognonize-until-lust' story. It is the adult equivalent of a boy yanking a girl's pigtails and taking her ball on the playground. Actually, those kids may be more mature than Lucy...

Other tropes included are:
Misunderstood-alpha-male;
Super-hot-but-really-shy;
Man-is-controlling-but-actually-empowering-woman;
They-really-loved-each-other-the-whole-time;
Taboo-workplace-romance...

None of these are well-written. She tries to turn a couple of these on their heads, like Josh being the character who is physical perfection but actually self-conscious...but it's terrible. I don't see it as realistic either. If he truly had a problem with woman objectifying him because of his perfect body (seriously, rolling my eyes so hard right now.) then maybe he needs to stop picking such shallow, vapid women. But the funny thing is...this is the basis of Lucy's attraction. She doesn't shut up about how hard and perfect his body is and how she hates that she's attracted to him because she can't stand him but did she mention how hot and sexy and perfect he is?!?!


Understanding that this book is a debut, I wouldn't be adverse to reading Sally Thorne's next book. I just wish this book had lived up to the hype.

I chose this as one of my June Book of the Month picks. I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it was just okay for me.

Possible Trigger Warnings:

rape, emotional and physical abuse, murder

The book is separated into three parts, each being from the POV of a different member of the titular 'family'. The first part is the father's (Adam's) version of events. I found his narrative voice to be a little clunky at first. There are a lot of sentence fragments and short, choppy sentences in this part. At first, I thought that perhaps the fact that this is a translated work might have something to do with my inability to connect to the writing style, but when it switches to the daughter's and finally the mother's POVs, I realized that the way the author wrote the father's POV was a specific choice, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that, because it did take me awhile to get into his part of the story.
That being said, by the time we were thrust into Stella's (the daughter's) POV, I was immersed in Adam's story. I didn't like him at all. He was a hypocrite and a liar, but I was compelled and wanted to know how everything was going to unfold. Then, the story switches into Stella's POV, and I felt like I was starting all over again. It was honestly a little jarring. They do have distinct voices, but the shift in writing style did throw me a bit. Stella is also not someone I can say I 'liked', but I found myself caring about what happened to her. Also, this is where you start to experience the extent of the unreliability of these narrators. I was already suspicious of Adam because every time he was relating something that could possibly make him look bad her would minimize it and try to shift the focus/blame on someone else. But then in Stella's POV, there are two scenes specifically where her version of what happened is in direct opposition to Adam's version. Then in Ulrika's (the mother's) POV there is another scene where her version is the exact opposite of Adam's.
Ulrika is probably the least developed of the three POVs, hers taking place almost entirely during Stella's trial. This is the section where everything unfolds and we learn what actually happened the night of the murder. She was, along with her husband and daughter, a miserable character, but she was also uninteresting to me, so I found myself growing weary with this book as it was wrapping up in the last 75 or so pages, which is the exact opposite of what a 'thriller' should do, at least in my mind.
I wasn't as taken with the ending as many other people seem to be. I see it described as a thriller, but I would contend that it is more of a character-study of a dysfunctional family with a mystery element. I found the sections with discrepancies among the three narrators far more interesting than the actual murder mystery plot. I was promised a 'last page shocker' that never came. It all unfolded a little too neatly, with no real shocking twists or turns. There are reveals, but they aren't all that surprising.

BTW, Adam is the worst. He is the worst kind of religious person -- one who likes to bring up scripture when it suits his purposes, but when he is sinful himself he justifies it by saying that 'his' god is forgiving, so his lies are no biggie. It's really gross.

Another BTW, Adam and Ulrika are shitty parents. Sorry, not sorry. They are the quintessential 'Not My Kid' parents. If you don't know what I mean by that, I'll explain. Every time something happens with their daughter, their first reaction is to deny or minimize, i.e. 'not my kid'. Even after admitting that she pretty much rules the roost at home with her temper tantrums any time she doesn't get her own way, any time someone else brings up a concern about Stella, they make excuses or flat-out deny.

All that said, these characters being unreliable narrators and overall just crappy humans isn't the reason this isn't rated higher. I just wasn't on the edge of my seat like I wanted to be. I still think this book is really interesting looking at it as a psychological domestic drama, but I think the marketing is a little off on this one.

One more thing! There are a couple of moments in this book where Stella refers to herself in ways that just didn't sit right with me. One specific moment was where she referred to herself as 'a little Aspie' because she is intrigued by real-life serial killers. I'm not sure what Asperger's has to do with liking true-crime stories. It felt like when someone calls themselves OCD because they like their homes to be tidy. There is another reference to autism that I can't recall off the top of my head, but it also felt unnecessary.

This is the second Riley Sager book I've read and the second to get four stars from me. That being said, I do think it's better than The Last Time I Lied. I loved the setting of a creepy building. Whether it's a house, hotel, apartment, castle...set a book in a creepy living space, and I'm going to be interested in that book.
The author has a great ability to create atmosphere through his settings. I love that the Bartholomew has this history that is explored throughout the book. I actually would've liked to see a little more of that, like maybe some scenes from that time. Maybe snippets from a journal or something. We do get newspaper stories, but I would've liked something from the perspective of a character from decades earlier.
I thought the ultimate twist/explanation of what is happening was really intriguing. I think I can safely say I'd never read a thriller with that twist (TBF, I am relatively new to thrillers as a go-to genre) and it was surprising. That being said, I didn't find much else surprising as far as who was ultimately behind all of the disappearances. I felt like it was relatively obvious, so none of the smaller reveals throughout the book shocked me. I had the same feeling with The Last Time I Lied. But as with that book, I found that being able to piece together what was going to happen (minus the Big Twist) didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book. I think it's because the author is still able to evoke an unsettling tension that kept me hooked.
One more issue I did have was that the main character made some decisions that went against all common sense. It ended up feeling like she was making these decisions specifically to propel the plot along, rather than because it's what a normal human being would do. But honestly? I don't really care. I'm wasn't going into this book expecting anything more than what I got. A fun, creepy, suspenseful book that I flew through.

3.75 stars

Well, I finally did it. I’ve had this book on my TBR since October and even started it twice, both times setting it aside because I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I thought about un-hauling it a couple of times, but something kept it on my shelves. When I finally picked it up, I allowed myself to just take it in little bits, which is not normally how I read, usually preferring to read a book in one or two sittings. But I’m glad I took my time with this one.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this book. I liked the way the author played with POV and tense, and the structure of jumping around in time was confusing at first, but the way the author stitched all of these separate timelines together to create a narrative was very well done. There were moment we would learn things in one timeline about the characters in another and I loved those moments.

In some ways, this has a very slice-of-life feeling to it. We’re seeing all of these characters at very specific points in their lives, and only for a very short time, with only Birdie and Birchwood (the home) as the continual thread through it all.

The ending is a little vague in that we don’t get solid resolution for really any of the characters. If that’s sort of thing bothers you, this may not be the book for you. I usually prefer to have more resolution, but it makes sense in this book.

This book will not be for every reader. I can see many people feeling bored and potentially confused by all the characters and timeline. I had those moments myself, but every time we would jump from one character/timeline to another, I realized how invested I was with that person’s story. I just wanted it to keep going.

I read this for the first time almost 30 years ago in school. Reading it again this year made me nervous, because this was one of my favorite books from childhood. I’m glad to say that it held up. There are a few things that don’t have the impact on me now that they did then, but I will definitely share this with my son within the next year or so.

So I listened to this on audiobook, and that was a mistake. Not because the voice actor was bad, because she wasn’t. She was fine. Also not because the production quality was poor. It wasn’t. It was, again, fine. But I’ve learned that I just don’t like to listen to an audiobook that is full of graphic sex scenes. I don’t have a problem reading a physical or e-copy with sex scenes, but it feels awkward to have it narrated to me. Maybe I’m the only one who feels that way...oh well.

In any case, I can’t see that I would’ve rated it much higher even if I’d read a print copy of this book. At the end of the day, it was all flash and very little substance. I didn’t feel like these characters had some deep emotional connection. The author tried to throw in a couple of vulnerable moments for them, but mostly it was just them having sexual encounters. Now don’t get me wrong, I love sexy times...but that was pretty much all there was here. And it’s a bummer, because there were glimmers here and there of a good story. I liked the idea of the girls club, but it was never developed enough for me. And Georgie’s sister and friends didn’t have much depth either. It feels like the author is setting up for this to be a series of books about these other ladies, but for this book they were underdeveloped. I kept forgetting which woman was which.

Also, the dialogue was so cringeworthy. They would talk incessantly during sex, during which he kept calling her ‘baby girl’, and it felt icky to me. I don’t have other specific examples because audiobook, but yeah, I found myself rolling my eyes A LOT at this book.

There’s also a meaningless transformation subplot where Georgie starts dressing in clothes from somewhere other than a thrift store and Travis acts like she’s a pornstar or something. His reactions to her are silly.

Then the ending is completely ridiculous and cheesy. The idea that he would magically turn into this guy who wants marriage and kids and all of that just doesn’t ring true considering the awful childhood he supposedly had that he NEVER worked through. It felt very ‘true love cures all’, and I don’t like that.

There are so many other things I could talk about, but I just don’t care enough to go further into it.

This was so much fun. First of all, I LOVE the premise of a girl working in a library where the books have a mind of their own. Elisabeth is a really interesting main character. I like that she starts out very naive and sheltered and over the course of the book she comes into her own and is able to use her knowledge of the library and the books to get the bad guy.

Nathaniel is a great love interest and I adored their flirtatious banter, especially as Elisabeth starts to realize that she can trust him. I like their dynamic with each other. At first I was afraid it was just going to be some ‘damsel in distress’ type situation with her fainting every other page and him coming to her rescue, because those scenes did exist. But then there were also scenes where Nathaniel needed saving and Elisabeth was the one who was there for him. They were both strong in their own ways that complemented the other.

Also, Silas is a great character. I would say ‘side character’ but I think he’s as important to the book as either of the other protagonists.

I do think the book is rushed a little at the end, and I would’ve liked a little more of the world described aside from the libraries. The author writes beautifully and can absolutely set a scene, but the world was a little small, if that makes sense.

I want to go back and read An Enchanment of Ravens, even though I know it received very mixed reviews from readers. It just seems like I will enjoy it.

Woah. I have to say, I wasn’t super shocked by anything that happened for the first 99.9% of this book. There were intriguing twists and reveals, but they were all things that had at least run through my mind as possibilities. I was still enjoying the book quite a bit. I like the writing style and I needed to know what was going to happen.

Close to the end, I thought I knew how it was going to unfold. It seemed like everything had been explained and it all made sense. Then the last chapter happened, and I had chills run through my body. Was not expecting it at all.

I’m knocking a star off mostly because some of the dialogue feels a little fake/stilted. Some of the characters speak in a way that doesn’t feel like a real live person would actually say it. Also, there were so many characters and I didn’t really feel like all of them served a purpose beyond being a red herring.

I really want to read more by this author soon.

3.5 Stars

This was one of my most anticipated books for 2019. I absolutely ADORE The Kiss Quotient, and the premise for this sounded like something I would just eat up.

I liked this book. At some moments, I loved this book. But I have to admit that, for me, it’s missing a bit of the magic I felt when reading the predecessor.

There is a secret that we know about early on that Esme is keeping from Khai that she keeps until the next-to-last chapter in the book, and it really rubbed me the wrong way.

I would’ve liked more of their actual relationship. The build up to them becoming intimate was good, and I appreciated that everything that happens between them is entirely consensual, but once they had sex everything became rushed.

This book is short, clocking in at only 296 pages. I could’ve done with another 50 pages or so to provide a little more development for the relationship.

There were things mentioned or alluded to in the book that didn’t get paid off. The ending felt very ‘Hallmark Movie’ to me, where everything works out perfectly at the last possible moment. I just wanted more.

The sex scenes were well-written. Anyone who doesn’t like steamy scenes in books should probably steer clear of this one.

I do love the characters and their dynamic with one another. I feel like I’m really dragging this when the reality is that I really liked it and would recommend and even re-read before the next book in the series. But there were just a few things that kept me from enjoying it as much as TKQ.

One last thing I wanted to say was that I really appreciate this author. She, like Khai and Stella from TKQ, is on the autism spectrum and her mother was a war refugee after the Viet Nam war, so this story is obviously very close to her heart. Her notes at the end are really touching.

This was okay. I get what the author was trying to do with the backwards timeline, but it ended up feeling gimmicky to me. I wonder if I went back and read the book backwards (from day 1 to day 14) if it would make sense. At the same time, I appreciate that the author was trying something different with the structure. After all, thrillers about missing girls aren't exactly unique.

I found myself a little bored in the middle of this book, and wonder if some of the middle couldn't have been trimmed down a bit. There are several passages that end up feeling very repetitive. Then the end felt rushed as everything was explained to the reader.

Although I didn't guess exactly what was going on, I can't say that I was shocked by any of the reveals that we get in the book. It all felt a little bit cookie cutter for me. I also thought the ending was tied up too neatly. I wanted it to be a little messy. Honestly, this felt like a movie I would see on Lifetime.

I can see why people like this, but I also fully understand the reviews that are critical. It's got a lot of issues. I don't know if I would've finished this book if I wasn't listening to the audiobook while I was doing housework.

I have a couple more books by this author, so I'm going to give her a couple more shots, but so far I haven't been overly impressed with her writing, specifically her endings.