wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

When Barry finally resolves to tell his wife Carmel that after 50 years of marriage, he's ready for a divorce so he can truly be himself - a gay man who has been in a secret relationship with his best friend since they were teenagers - he has a lot of things to think about. Can he truly be brave enough to risk everything and be out and proud?

This was a sweet book with a lot of funny moments in it, as well as some fantastic moments fo reflection. Barry is definitely a a character and a half, and he's someone if you'd met on the street and had a 5 minute chat, you'd still remember him years later. Definitely one of a kind. There were moments in this book when I loved him and cheered him on as he finally stood up and declared his love for Morris, and there were other times he made me cringe as he revealed his old-fashioned, misogynistic views. There were times his view points were actually quite funny but also so problematic at the same time.

I also really loved Carmel's POV in this as it's such an important one to have. While Barry has lived a life of fear because of his sexuality, he had great moments of love and a one true romance and one of a kind love. Carmel led a life of disappointment and loneliness and I do understand some of the things she feels, as she definitely was not treated right at all. I do think Carmel and Barry had a fairly horrid family altogether between Donna and Daniel (could not even imagine letting people into my grandad's house and them smashing my granny's things. The actual horror of it!), and while Maxine was okay, she was still a 40-year-old woman getting hand outs from her OAP dad.

The atmosphere and humour in this sold it to me for sure though it wasn't quite the engrossing, completely heart-warming read that I thought it would be.

I received an audiobook copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Alex and Poppy met in college, they didn't really hit it off. But a semester later, a road trip kicks off a years long friendship that always comes together in an epic summer vacation every year. But two years ago, something happened and now they don't talk. But Poppy has managed to get Alex on one more holiday - this time to Palm Springs - and maybe with some fun and sun, things will be okay again.

Told in flashback vacations as well as the present day debacle to Palm Springs, this story was quite enjoyable and I didn't mind the audiobook version of it at all. Poppy is the typical 'not your average type of girl' girl while Alex is very much the standard 'dreamboat but doesn't know it'. There's a lot in this book that will really resonate and attract readers from friends to lovers, a lot of in jokes and comical moments, wanderlust, an emotional speech worthy of a rom com and a lot of sexual tension. A lot.

I have to say that there were times I found myself bored of Poppy and Alex and/or irritated by them and their togetherness. They are so much of a duo that even when you're reading about them you feel like a third wheel and that you should leave the room. And this is probably where I had some of my problems with the book - the whole story is about Poppy and Alex and we all know what is going to happen. It is inevitable - to the point where i honestly could not figure out why it had never happened before. It just felt a bit stupid that these guys weren't already a bonafide couple.

There was nothing necessarily off about this book for me. The story was fine, the writing was good, the characters were all right apart from me knowing that if I knew Poppy in real life she'd annoy the heck out of me. It was an alright book just not the emotional tearjerker it seems to have been for everyone else. Maybe it didn't help that for some reason I thought something really tragic was going to happen in this book, and it didn't. So every moment I was waiting for something terrible and it didn't happen.

I do recommend this if you're looking for a nice rom-com type book to read - definitely a good one for the beach or pool. And 100% the type of book to read if you need something to help with wanderlust in Covid times.

The second book in the Fortune's Fool series, we follow Simon as he attempts to take on the German eventing world as a working student but is left disappointed by his experience, and his much to be desired mentor. Moving to a new yard, and back home to the US, Simon begins to even Milton but learns that his new boss is tough in more ways than one and his ideas on how to treat problem horses are a lot different to Simon's.

This was a fun horse book, and a real palate cleanser after my last read which was a bit shocking and violent. So to be in a world that is purely driven by the love of horses and the need to win in eventing was fun, fun, fun. I do love Simon's endless determination and his competitive drive and I love that in this series, the reader is thrown into the horse world, nothing held back. You don't read these books if you are a complete novice when it comes to horses, you have to have some idea how things work or you'd be completely lost.

Simon as a character can be a strange one - on one hand, I love his grit and determination, and I love that you see the softer side of him come out with how he treats horses (always carrying treats or sharing his goodies with them) and some of his relationships like with Ben and Max. But he's also incredibly arrogant to the point he can sometimes be insufferable to read - like he really is good at everything without even trying too hard, and he will remind the reader of it constantly - and he is often demeaning when it comes to how he views people who can't commit 100% of their time to horses which is just wrong, and i hated reading that. There's also a point in this book that shocked me a little bit and it's Simon's statement that he didn't believe in bisexuality - the complete bi-erasure is just a huge no no and it was a bit more disappointing as I read this during Pride month and for a Queer Lit Readathon!

There are some parts of this book that go by really fast, and sometimes I wish the story was a bit tighter and didn't span so long so fast. I'm pretty sure this spanned about three years. Sometimes Simon would start somewhere new and the next chapter, it would be nine months later. A lot of things sometimes seem to happen off page as well or there is not a lot of time spent on them such as Max and Simon suddenly completely shacking up when they moved to Freddie's.

There are a few things in this book that I often see in self-published works which personally, I don't enjoy and that's name dropping books and music that exist in the real world. For me, it tends to date the story and honestly I really don't care that Simon loves Brandon Flowers and The Clash so much. I also don't need descriptions of every piece of clothing he wears and if it's somehow connected to the band. You can just say 'band tee'. The same with if he was reading The Scorpio Races (which I admit was fun because it's fantasy horse focused) or Divergent.

While I enjoy Simon's relationships aren't the main focus in the book, they are often let to build up off page as well and it can be jarring to return to them and it to go so deep suddenly - such as Ben and Simon suddenly saying the L-word. I also think that Simon often doesn't deserve the people he is with aka Max. I wish some of the scenes in here to do with lovemaking didn't feel so seedy at times. While they aren't descriptive, there's something secretive and almost shameful of Simon and Ben going to have sex in a part. I'm also hyper-vigilant that this is a gay couple being written by a woman but would like to stress that I don't feel there's any fetishisation going on here as the romances tend to be such a side story, they really are not the focus of the book at all.

I enjoy this world and Simon's journey as an eventing rider. I'm still waiting for the deep horse-rider relationship that we didn't have with Fortune, and again didn't seem to have with Milton. Looking forward to reading the next book!

it's going to take me a while to get over that ending.
What the actual f***

Skin Privilege is the last Grant County book and this time we follow police chief Jeffrey Tolliver and his wife Sara Linton as they travel to a neighboring town to help out police detective Lena who has been found at the scene of a crime. A woman has been brutally murdered, and the town itself is overrun with meth dealers. But with Lena on the run, and Jeffrey and Sara in the dark, can they figure out how to save her and themselves before it's too late?

For the last book in this series, the main investigation in this book was a little bit off in comparison to the other books. The kill and the reasons behind the brutality didn't feel as tight or as polished as some of the other crime investigations in the previous book, and I definitely feel like the author just wanted us to once again come back around to Lena and her life, and this seemed to be the best way to do it.

It probably didn't help enjoyment levels that Lena is the worst character in this book, and my least favourite in the book. Every time you think she's improving, she backtracks about 10 steps and this time she brought Jeffrey and Sara with her. She's right in this book when she says everything she touches turns to crap because god, it really does. She genuinely is the worst thing to happen to Jeffrey and Sara, even if it's unintentional.

And the ending. Omg that ending. I knew it was coming - there was so much foreshadowing throughout the book and a sense of dread, I knew it had to come. But in the last two pages. Right when they got the best news and they were at such a wonderful, pivotal point in their lives and they were so goddamn happy. I just don't see the point, I really don't. Yes, the series is dark and goes to places where you do wonder if an author should really go there but that doesn't mean the characters aren't allowed a scrap of happiness. It's honestly one of the worst, emotionally manipulative endings in a book I've read in a long time.

1926, Shanghai: The blood feud between rival gangs The Scarlets and the White Flowers continues as a mysterious illness ravages the streets killing with abandon. Heirs Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov have a sketchy past with each other but need to work together to try and solve the mystery before it's too late and more people die.

This was a book I really thought I would love, and there were certainly elements of the book that I really enjoyed but overall, I found it very hard to fall into the story, it felt very slow and drawn out and I just couldn't seem to really get the story to capture me the way I wanted it too.

The setting of Shanghai is fantastic, and there's so much political upheaval to consider in the story - not only are we learning about the rival gangs and all the warfare that comes with the blood feud but there is also the rising threat of the Communist Party, as well as the lurking Nationalists. And then on top of that, there's also a really interesting exploration of colonisation in this book that I think was done really well. The white man of England, France and even Russia has infiltrated the streets of Shanghai and has even cut away a portion of the city from its real inhabitant. The real monster in the story is the white man and the white man ideal of what is right and what is wrong, not the literal monster stalking the streets.

I liked learning about the Scarlets and the White Flowers though I agree with other reviewers that it feels like we got to know a lot more about the Scarlets. I can only presume there will be a bigger focus on the White Flowers in the second book. Juliette and Roma were....okay for me. I felt at times they were outshone by the side characters; Kathleen, Benedickt and Marshall. I actually felt more engaged reading about these characters than our main enemies to lovers. Call me bloodthirsty as well but I always have a roll my eyes moment when there's a character who won't kill in these kind of novels (Roma) when sometimes deposing of someone will literally save your life. I liked that Juliette was much more 'gangster' in that she knew sometimes you had to kill to get things done properly.

I just found it very hard to invest myself fully in this story- I found myself wandering off mid-chapter, I found that I was really motivated to really care about the main characters and overall my enjoyment level while reading it was low. I definitely appreciate lot of the themes in this book and I think they were done well, I just didn't have a good reading time.

 

I received this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Hannah takes a trip to Ireland to help her grieve her boyfriend Ben, and figure out a way to get the pieces of her messed up life back together. When she arrives at The Guesthouse, she gets to know the other people in the B&B, and weird things begin to happen. Before too long, the guests are trapped in the house while a storm rages outside, and a serial killer stalks them inside.

This book was just....fine. There were certainly elements of the book that left me intrigued and really creeped out, and I liked when it seemed like it was going to be a haunted house storyline and I was disappointed this was not the case. I think this book would have been so much better if it had been a haunted house.

The characters in this felt a bit clunky, and just weird - I didn't really believe them as people. Hannah was just too much of a mess, Chloe was too naive and young and Rosa was too shrill. When you have a storyline that's following a group of people in one house, you need there to be a good dynamic between them all - whether it's hate or love - but I just didn't feel like this happened with The Guesthouse and I was honestly just confused as to why these people were willingly spending so much time together on their holidays (and how none of them had any real plans while on their holidays as well).

I did not like how child abuse and sexual abuse ended up being a plot twist in this book. It was just done in a way I feel could be a bit triggering for people as it really came out of nowhere, and I felt so surprised by it. The end of the book was very over the top and even in thrillers terms, it felt unbelievable and like none of the story could have really happened.