dlrosebyh's Reviews (773)

 Hannah Martin is 29 years old and has no clue what she wants to accomplish with her life. Since graduating from college, she has lived in six different locations and worked in many worthless professions. Hannah returns to her birthplace of Los Angeles after fleeing yet another location and takes up residence in her closest friend Gabby's guestroom. Hannah goes out to a club with Gabby shortly after returning to town and runs into her high school love, Ethan. 

 

Gabby asks Hannah whether she's ready to leave just after midnight. Ethan then offers to give her a ride later if she wishes to remain. Hannah pauses. What happens if she abandons Gabby? What happens if she abandons Ethan? 

 

Hannah experiences the consequences of each action in parallel tales. These parallel realities quickly transform into dramatically different storylines with far-reaching ramifications for Hannah and others around her. As the two parallel worlds play out, Maybe In Another Life explores issues about fate and genuine love: Is anything predestined? How much of our lives are decided by chance? And, perhaps most compellingly, is it possible to have a soul mate? Hannah is convinced there is. And she believes she has found him in both worlds. 

 

This book was fantastic! I think I would have appreciated it more if I hadn't been drowning in academics. Hannah had my heart in both realms, and it's no wonder that love triumphs. She deserved it the most of everyone. 

 The novel begins in 2001, on the evening of Melody's sixteenth birthday celebration at her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. She makes her entry to the music of Prince, watched affectionately by her relatives and friends, wearing a stunning custom-made gown. However, the event is not without significance. Sixteen years ago, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony—a celebration that never happened. 

 

Woodson considers not only Melody's parents and grandparents' ambitions and successes, but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it delves into sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-changing realities of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly examines the ways in which young people are frequently forced to make life-altering decisions—even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. 

 

The trouble about short novels is that you never know whether you'll like them or not. Most of the time, it leaves you with unanswered questions, leaving you unsatisfied—which is exactly what happened in this novel. It had a lot of potential. It's a powerful read with beautiful prose, yet something was lacking, and I'm not sure what it was. 

Nora Stephens' life revolves on literature, and she is not the typical heroine. Not the courageous one, the laid-back ideal girl, or the darling. In truth, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she secures lucrative agreements as a ruthless literary agent, and for her adored little sister Libby. 

 

Which is why, when Libby asks her for a sisters' vacation away, she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August, with ideas of a small town metamorphosis for Nora, who she's persuaded has to become the heroine in her own narrative. Instead of picnics in the countryside or encounters with a lovely country doctor or a bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps running across Charlie Lastra, a bookish moody editor from the city. 

 

It would be a meet-cute if they hadn't met so many times before and it had never been cute. If Nora recognizes that she isn't an ideal heroine, Charlie recognizes that he isn't anyone's hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences that no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover may just unravel the carefully crafted stories they've written about themselves. 

 

In a nutshell, I absolutely adored this book. A book about books automatically piques my curiosity, so I had no trouble getting into this one. Emily Henry stated in the acknowledgements that she was heavily inspired by Hallmark movies, which I can absolutely understand. The novel has a strong Hallmark feel about it. I adored Nora and Charlie as characters. I felt a strong resemblance to both of them. 

 

I watched a video months ago that said this book is for the oldest siblings, and I can understand why. Nora's difficulties as the oldest sister were identical to mine as the oldest sister. Her love and devotion to Libby was immensely relatable. 

 

This, in my opinion, is the best Emily Henry novel. I've never seen people so divided over a particular book as they were over this one. Personally, I thought it was fantastic. It had everything I had been looking for in a novel in a long time. It's not for everyone because the characters may be too unlikable or workaholic for others, but I related to Nora to such an extent that I simply adored her. 

Candace Chen is a routine-obsessed millennial drone who works alone in a Manhattan office building. She has experienced enough uncertainty after her Chinese immigrants parents recently passed away. She's content to just keep doing what she's doing: going to work, fixing the Gemstone Bible for teens, and watching movies in a basement in Greenpoint with her partner.

So when a scourge of biblical proportions sweeps New York, Candace hardly pays it any attention. Shen Fever then spreads. Families run away. Businesses stop operating. The subways come to a grinding halt. Her employers hire her as a member of a shrinking skeleton team with a significant end-date reward. As the fictitious blogger NY Ghost, she soon finds herself completely alone and unfevered as she captures the creepy, deserted metropolis.

But Candace won't be able to survive by herself indefinitely. Here come the survivors, led by the ferocious IT specialist Bob. They are headed to a location known as the Facility, where Bob assures them that they will have everything they need to rebuild society. But Candace has a secret that she is certain Bob would use against her. Does she need to flee from her rescuers?

Although it's not the worst book ever, it's also not the best. I thought the representation was fantastic. But aside from that, the book felt uninteresting. First of all, this book is advertised as being for young adults. While it's true that a young adult book can address issues like rape, sexual assault, and abuse, this one did so while using extremely disturbing and descriptive language.

Second, I detested the majority of the characters. Most of them weren't even all that unlikeable. Reading the dialogue between the characters makes me think a lot of 2013 Wattpad, and not in a good way. The characters enjoy helping one another out. It's possible to kill someone and then explain that you have to because you're depressed. I get why the author decided to incorporate a ride-or-die friendship, but if they keep giving one other the benefit of the controversy rather than calling each other out on their nasty behaviors, it isn't a true friendship.

Thirdly, I believe the writing of the characters was really problematic. Jordan and his friends have a "inside joke" where they hand out passes to one another. One can get away with anything, for instance, because they are cisgender and white, whereas the other can because they are gay and it would be homophobic not to. The jokes about skin tones and equating max's skin tone with food persisted among Max's friends. It's repulsive.

Additionally, the conflict was not adequately addressed, which raised the suspicion that these two wouldn't be together for very long. What makes a successful rom-com? A happy conclusion! Even though the conclusion was undoubtedly joyous, it raised some issues. Without giving anything away, the conclusion was really disappointing. The storylines involving Jordan's mother, Max's PTSD, and Max's baseball team are all left open-ended. Only the romance between Jordan and Max remained as the "completely solved" problem in this situation; everything else was left out.

Eleanor has never been informed that life ought to be better than fine. She has trouble using acceptable social skills and frequently expresses her thoughts in detailed. Nothing is lacking from her well planned existence of avoiding social connections, which includes frozen pizza, vodka, and phone calls with her mother on the weekends.

But when Eleanor meets Raymond, the clumsy and incredibly unsanitary IT guy from her company, everything changes. The three become the kinds of friends that rescue one another from the life of isolation they had each been living when Sarah and Raymond work together to save Sammy, a senior citizen who has fallen on the pavement. And in the end, Eleanor will benefit from Raymond's enormous heart by learning how to mend her own severely harmed one.

I was genuinely intrigued in Eleanor right away. But I wasn't certain if it was because she was a bad or fantastic character. I did, however, grow to appreciate her as a character as I read the book and saw what she was going through. I adore the fact that her lack of social skills, or what some may refer to as awkwardness, was what kept her pain hidden from the actual world—from her family to her childhood friends to her entire life, eventually.

Eleanor's voyage was described in a slow-moving, dryly humorous style. I don't necessarily love this kind of tone right away. I gave the book 4.5 stars because I had to immerse myself in it and give it my whole attention in order to completely understand what I was reading.

Xochitl is condemned to travel the desert by herself while telling the tales of her unhappy hamlet to its parched winds. Her solitary company is provided by the wonderful stars overhead and mysterious lines of poetry that appear magically scattered across sand dunes. Her only wish is to connect with someone who shares her values.

One night, Emilia, the icy and stunning daughter of the town's merciless conqueror, comes into the world, fulfilling Xo's wish. However, when the two embark on a fantastical voyage over the desert, they discover that their hearts might be compatible. If only they can make it through the nighttime terrors that seem like nightmares.

I see why everyone loved this book, but my timing was off. Not because the plot wasn't intriguing, but rather because I've been having a terrible reading slump, I found myself skimming through a lot of it. I think it's a nice book overall—it has a flawed hero, a wholesome conclusion, lyrical writing, and a clever plot twist—but my slump really sapped the fun out of it for me.