3.5 stars

Gracie Reed is in a predicament: she needs a job and she needs money to put her mother into a nursing home with good care. When Chinese cinema's golden couple Wei Fangli and Sam Yao approach Gracie to be Fangli's stand-in due to their uncanny resemblance, Gracie eventually realizes that it's her best shot out of her tough spot.

This was a really cute celebrity romance and friendship story that also gave an accurate portayal of depression and anxiety, workplace sexual harrassment, and Alzheimer's. The balance of sweet moments to hard storypoints was perfect. While it was a predictable story and a little on the long side, I enjoyed seeing how everything unfolded and thought it was a really enjoyable read.

Thank you so much to Sourcebooks Casablanca for the ARC!

Together We Ride is a sweet book about learning to ride a bike and then going on a bike ride as a family. The text is rhyming, short, and simple, which makes it impactful for young readers, and the gorgeous illustrations will captivate readers of all ages. I love the focus on the father/daughter relationship depicted in the book, although I have been reading this with my son in hopes that he’d get over his nervousness to get on a bike - and he did! We’ll be revisiting this again next year when he’s ready to take off the training wheels. This book would make a great addition to preschool libraries and a great Father’s Day gift!

Thanks to Books Forward and Chronicle Books for the gifted copy of this book.

When Imani Lewis goes to stay with her grandmother in a small town for the summer, she's relieved for the break from her workaholic schedule in publishing. She's not so relieved that she runs into Zander Matthews, a man she had a one-night stand with at her best friend's wedding.

I didn't read How Sweet It Is before diving into All Fired Up, and this worked really well as a standalone novel. Imani and Zander have great banter and balance in their relationship, and I loved that they had adult conversations and dealt with mental health, opposing outlooks, and the big life events of their close relatives. The setting was fun in a small town (close to where I live!) in NY with a hot air balloon festival. We also got to meet a hilarious, foul-mouthed parrot and Gigi, Imani's grandmother, who both provided some great comedic relief. I loved the dual perspective narrated by Emma Love and Max Lloyd-Zander and think audio is the way to go for this book!

Thanks to Forever for the ARC and to Hachette Audio for the ALC!

“He mentions dinner one time and suddenly I surrender all my good sense to some primal need to—nope. Not going there. My ovaries are not in control. Not. In. Control. I am a strong and powerful woman that does not need a man to whisk me away and ride me into the sunset. Especially not this man."

Cameron and Darcy are rival tour guides in historic downtown Charleston. They can’t stand each other, but see each other all the time because their tours run along the same route. They’re up for the same magazine feature that could do wonders for either of their careers, so there’s no way they’ll be able to get along… or will they?

Jenny Proctor has such a way of writing the sweetest, most hysterical closed-door romance novels. Love in Bloom is the fourth novel in her Some Kind of Love series, but it can definitely be read as a standalone. I was cackling at the pranks that Cameron and Darcy were playing on each other, and I didn’t know that historic tour guides were the MCs that I needed in my romance read. They even get stuck in an 18th-century dungeon. I also LOVED the way Jenny wrote the typical getting-towards-the-end-of-the-book romance novel conflict. It was just smoothly a part of their relationship instead of something that didn’t fit in well or something that came out of left field, which has been happening in quite a few books I’ve read lately. This was such a fun book to read!

Read if you:

Darling Girl is a dark Peter Pan retelling, changing Peter into a sinister man instead of a young and free boy. This novel is full of suspense and magical realism as Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy Darling, receives a call that her comatose daughter is missing. Holly knows that Peter is behind the disappearance and suspects that he’s after Eden for her blood. With a rare generic condition, her blood has magical healing qualities that Peter likely wants for himself. Darling Girl set the stage with a fun scientific backdrop and had me wanting to read more. The end was action-packed and had a couple of twists that made the story even more interesting. I’m left with a few questions about Wendy’s positive outlook of Peter when he was so horrible, wanted a bit more on the Christopher/Hook connection, and the extent of Jack’s healing in the end. I also would’ve preferred if the romance was left a little more open-ended in the end because it didn’t feel necessary to the story. Overall, a very interesting retelling that I’d recommend reading!

Thanks to Dutton Books for the gifted ARC!

Both heartbreaking and haunting, The Hidden Child is a narrative on the Eugenics movement of the early 1900s. Eleanor, while strongly believing in Eugenics, has an epileptic daughter that she desperately wants but feels useless to help. Louise Fein does a great job of portraying a mother's emotions going through a very difficult medical situation with a child, while also showing the social narrative of the day where the husband was the final decision-maker and good outer appearances were of the utmost importance. The balance of having Edward (and previously Eleanor) work in Eugenics while also having a daughter directly impacted by the regulations that movement would bring made for a historical fiction novel that I couldn't put down.

Thank you to William Morrow for the gifted ARC.

An interesting history of transplant surgery from the 16th centry to today, Spare Parts is broken up by both type of transplant and time period. I loved the inclusion of pictures thorughout the book to go along with the history, and learned so much information! The inclusion of the "Transplant Future" chapter was also a really great touch to make this book comprehensive. The audiobook was read by the author, which I always find to be a really nice touch for books. Perfect for fans of the Sawbones podcast or the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the gifted book and to Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

Dear America is the memoir of Jose Antonio Vargas’s experience living as an undocumented immigrant in the United States. I listened to this audiobook, which I loved because it’s narrated by the author himself. He’s lived in the United States undocumented for 25 years and sheds light on the fact that most aspects of the system aren’t black and white.

One reason I love reading books like this is because it makes me think over “What makes America, America?” Baseball? Apple pie? Religious freedom? Freedom of speech? It’s easy to answer the question one way as a white citizen, but there are so many other aspects of America that can only be known by listening to the stories of others.