Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This book was super cute. It's a slow romance between Anna and Weston. Anna is new to the band scene and is eager to prove her mettle. She's got a solo in their competition song, but is going to need serious help to be able to keep it. Thank goodness for weirdo Weston who is the mellophone player extraordinaire. When Anna asks him for help, he can't help but to agree. As they continue practicing together and getting to know one another, they start to fall for one other.

It was so sweet and I genuinely loved both of our characters. They were flawed and real and written very true to how a teenager would think and act.

My main issues with this book are these:
1. Anna's parents decide they don't want her spending time with Weston because... they don't know him? And his parents are divorced. Bro..... just invite him over for dinner or something. Then you'll "know" him. And it's not his fault that his parents got divorced!
2. The big spoilery thing at the end. It's mentioned in the book summary, so it's not *really* spoilery, but I won't say exactly what happens. This happened so close to the end that I feel like it wasn't handled as well as it could have been. If it's gonna be listed in the summary.... surely it shouldn't happen in the last 15% of the book, right?

This title has two narrators-- one for Anna and one for Weston. Both were great, but Anna's narrator was just *chef's kiss*

I would definitely recommend this as a slow romance with discussions of grief.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Y'all.. This book was WILD. It reads like an episode of SVU or CSI. It's full of drama, missed leads, and wrongful convictions. I was completely along for the ride and absolutely invested in what was going to happen the whole time.

Ross Faria came home from game night one night and found his wife brutally murdered. He immediately called the police, distraught. Unfortunately it wasn't long before he was eyed as the major suspect. However, there was another suspect who didn't get any investigation despite her changing stories and complete lack of credibility-- Pam Hupp.

This is one of those cases where the police chose a suspect and then fit everything to that narrative. Despite having another suspect WAY more suspicious than Ross Faria. Hearing the whole story was just absolutely bananas and I definitely enjoyed my time listening to it.

My one complaint here is that I think it was a bit too long. It probably could have been shortened by at least an hour or so without losing the heart of the story or the smaller details that flesh out Ross' innocence and Pam's (obvious!!) guilt. I'm now SUPER looking forward to the upcoming limited series about this case, The Thing about Pam.

The narrator was good. Nothing special, nothing egregious.

2.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This book is about a young boy named Lucien and his experiences at House of Earth-- an alternative school with some.... questionable teaching methods. He and his mother are incredibly involved at House of Earth, but things change for the whole community when the 9/11 attacks occur. The leader of the community, O. C. Leroux, is a man Lucien is taught to look up to and follow at all costs. The question Lucien ends up asking himself is what cost is too high?

The slow burn of what is actually going on in the House of Earth was really interesting. I was intrigued by this weird community and what was going on behind the scenes. That being said, this was a literary fiction title written from the perspective of a child. That is SUCH a risky creative move that can really pay off (a la Room by Emma Donoghue), or it could come across as weird and pretentious. Unfortunately, this title fell prey to the latter.

The other big downer for me with this title was the last chapter of "Ever After." We cut to about 20 years after the previous chapter and it felt super abrupt, unexpected (in a bad way), and unnecessary.

This title would have been significantly better for me (3.5-4/5 stars) if it had been about 50 pages shorter and hadn't used the over-tired trope of an epilogue set 20 years in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Royal Valentine is a super cute novella about Molly and Albert. Molly is a registrar at a museum and loves nothing more than books and quietly introverting. Albert is a British grad student who is kind and polite but doesn't love parties. On the biggest fundraising night of the year at Molly's museum, she sneaks off to her office to change clothes and leave early for a date with pizza and a good book. Unbeknownst to her, Albert is hiding in her office for the party to end. Thus ensues an adorable romp between our two unlikely characters. There's only one problem-- the one thing Molly can't abide is lying.... and Albert has a BIG secret.

Overall this was super cute and just plain fun. I wish there had been a little more backstory for each character to make them more believable and their motivations more understandable. This IS a novella, so I get that there's not really a ton of time for that, but I think just a smidge more info for each character would have made this a 4.5/5 for me.

The narrator was great-- even with her British accents. I would definitely pick up more books read by this narrator.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

The monster in the lake is a super cute lower middle grade story about three friends with connections to magic. Kit is a wizard and Alita and Josh are her two best friends. The three are having a lovely day in the park when they realize that they can hear all of the animals talking which is *definitely* not normal. When they start to do some digging with Kit's magical advisor friend, Faith, the trio discovers that there's something in the lake that doesn't belong. This discovery leads them on a journey to Scotland with some mermaids, a magical book, giant rats, and chocolate tea.

While this wasn't exactly my cup of tea (pun intended), it was definitely really cute and I know lots of kids who would absolutely LOVE this book and other titles like it. It was fun, educational, and uplifting. I liked that so much of the story was about friendship, working together, and learning new things. It has tons of great messages, but is still super fun. I would highly recommend this for any 4th-8th graders (ish) in your life who love magical tales and are probably too young for Harry Potter.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Genuinely, I don't have much to say about this title. It was super predictable-- I predicted all of the major twists except for the one on the very last page. I think the author really thinks they did something here, but it was nothing new or special. Besides the fact that it kept mentioning the COVID pandemic being "in the past" when it most definitely isn't, it was so incredibly disrespectful regarding mental illness. The way our main characters' mental health was portrayed was so out of pocket, I found myself getting angry listening to the book and hoping that it was almost over so I could just move on to something else.

I would not recommend this title because of how mental illness was portrayed. If you want to read a book that handles mental illness much better, I would recommend Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver.