Laine Forrester is in France for her best friend’s fairytale wedding—and to forget about her own failed marriage. But her friend’s devastating diagnosis takes Laine’s mind off her own problems, and she agrees to return to Ireland with her friend and new family. There, she finds an empty castle filled with treasures and a family who won’t even speak to each other, but everything she needs may just be in Ireland.
This story is actually three different stories in three separate timelines, and I loved all three of them! The troubles in Ireland are a sad subject, but the author does a good job capturing the emotions in the situations—as well as the hope. This is well-written and full of vibrant characters and settings I’d love to see!
Kristy Cambron is an award-winning author. Castle on the Rise is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Thomas Nelson via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)
Rosie Cook wakes up in a hospital, having been hit by a bus, but no one knows she’s awake. Everyone thinks she’s in a coma, on the verge of death. Rosie can’t remember anything: who she is, what her life is like, or how she got hit by a bus. She just knows she wants to live.
Then Rosie starts remembering things: a fight with her sister, a walk on a beach, the day her brother was born. But why these memories? And what do they mean? Rosie has trouble facing what the memories reveal about who she was before she woke up, but if she doesn’t make sense of them and figure out who she really is and what she wants, she may never get the chance to try.
The Inbetween Days is touted as emotional and comic, but I wouldn’t really say it’s a comic novel. There are some funny moments, and every page is full of emotion, but it’s not a humorous book. Rosie wasn’t a very happy person—or a nice one—and her memories are not usually happy ones. However, the story follows Rosie’s change from a person she can’t stand, to one filled with hope and promise, and this is truly an excellent read, although Rosie’s sister, Daisy was the one I really related to.
Eva Woods is a writer and lecturer. The Inbetween Days is her newest novel.
(Galley provided by Graydon House/Harlequin in exchange for an honest review.)
Sophie loves living in a small town. She has her four best friends, marching band, and the Yum Yum Shoppe and its fourteen flavors of ice cream. She also has a few regrets, but she tries not to let them get her down. This year, she just wants the band to be able to march in the Rose Bowl parade, and she’s ready to go all-out to make sure that happens. Even if that includes a social media campaign to the country star who is from their small town.
When August moves in down the street, he’s determined to keep everyone at arm’s length, especially Sophie, but soon he’s hanging out with her friends and joining the social media campaign. Her friends aren’t sure he deserves a permanent spot in the group, but August makes a home for himself there—if he’s willing to claim it.
I enjoyed this light, funny read, but it does have some deeper themes as well. Sophie is good at pushing the bad stuff to the back of her mind, but sometimes you just have to face things. August prefers to expect the worst—and not to bother hoping for the best. The friendships in this story are so realistic: good, bad, at times ugly. I’d love to hang out with these people.
Emma Mills lives in Indianapolis. Famous in a Small Town is her newest novel.
(Galley provided by Henry Holt & Company in exchange for an honest review.)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl can go from pauper to princess or princess to pauper in the mere seconds it takes for her to accept a proposal.”
This is the belief that Alys Binat, second of five daughters and a literature teacher, faces in her students, girls who will likely marry instead of finishing school. That’s just how things are in Pakistan in the early 2000s, but Alys hopes to influence some of her students, nonetheless. Then her family is invited to the society wedding of the year, and her mother sees it as the perfect opportunity to showcase her five daughters.
The eldest, sweet Jena, catches the eye of “Bungles” Bingla, a wealthy entrepreneur, and Mrs. Binat is convinced a proposal is imminent. Alys and her best friend, Sherry, who is determined to marry so she can escape her home life, watch in amusement—and horror—as Aly’s mom and other three sisters—uber-religious Mari, flighty Lady, and artistic Qitty—make a less than stellar impression on Bungles’ sisters and very rich Valentine Darsee, his best friend. Alys hears Darsee’s scathing remarks about her and writes him off as a jerk.
But fate—and Jena and Bungles’ romance—keep throwing Alys and Darsee back into proximity, and Alys discovers the haughty man might not be quite as horrible as she thought. When Lady’s antics destroy the Binat family’s chances of ever holding their heads up in public, no one can save them. Except, maybe, Mr. Darsee.
Fact: I love Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen had a phenomenal insight into people and portrayed them very well. Fact: I know basically nothing about Pakistani culture.
Unmarriageable is a close re-telling of Pride and Prejudice, but it’s still its own story. The characters’ names made me laugh—Bungles—but there’s enough of the original in them to make them feel like old friends. I found Mr. Binat much more ineffectual than Mr. Bennet, but everyone else I enjoyed. Even Lady, annoyingly oblivious as she was. Alys was much more of a feminist than Elizabeth Bennet, but I love how her mind worked, and how quick she was to grasp her own mistakes. I highly recommend this!
Soniah Kamal was born in Pakistan, but grew up in England and Saudi Arabia and now lives in the U.S. She is an award-winning author and a creative-writing teacher. Unmarriageable is her newest novel.
(Galley provided by Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.)
Susannah’s first marriage was to an older man—her therapist—who spent a lot of time “helping” her work through her issues. Now, she’s married to handsome and charming Max, an artist and speaker whose new job at a university took them out of New York City to a small Vermont town where she hopes her 15-year-old son will thrive.
One morning, Susannah finds a note on the door. “I know who you are.” The note triggers her anxiety, and she worries her family is in danger, but Max thinks the note is just a prank. All the same, he starts looking at his coworkers and their neighbors with new eyes—do they know his secret? When a couple visit for dinner, Susannah finds Max’s behavior suspicious, and, a few days later, the man dies tragically while on a run with Max. Then, a second note appears. “Did you get away with it?”
Susannah knows Max is hiding dark secrets, but she has secrets of her own she wants to keep hidden. Who is leaving the notes? And just which secret is he or she talking about?
I was intrigued by the premise of the book, and the writing was solid, but I couldn’t stand the characters. Susannah had a history of mental health issues as well as abuse, and I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t like her at all. She let life happen to her—except near the end of the book—instead of making choices and moving forward. Max was just creepy to me. I really wish I’d liked the characters more. I finished the book, which speaks to the quality of the plot and the writing, but the characters just didn’t work for me.
Thomas Christopher Greene was born and raised in Massachusetts. The Perfect Liar is his newest novel.
(Galley provided by St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Seventeen-year-old Janneke was the last child in a family of daughters, so she was raised as a son and heir. Instead of being trained as a wife and mother like her sisters, she learned to track, hunt, and fight.
A hundred years ago, goblins attacked and destroyed her village and her entire family, leaving her bound to the cruel goblin prince Lydian, who tortured her for years, before she became bound to his nephew, Soren.
Janneke is slowly losing her humanity amidst the violence of the goblin court, but when the king dies and the ancient hunt for the white stag to choose the next king begins, she must choose between her lingering memories of being human and her loyalty to Soren, who has only helped her grow stronger.
White Stag was dark, atmospheric, and broody—in a good way. The Permafrost setting is stark and made me shiver. Janneke grows a lot, especially as she learns truths she never knew. However, I didn’t get a good feel for the goblin culture, apart from violence and cruelty, and I really wanted to know more. There must be a reason for the violence, so more information would have given the culture more nuances. And I found all the characters besides Soren and Janneke to be mostly one-dimensional.
Kara Barbieri lives in Wisconsin. White Stag is her debut novel.
(Galley provided by St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
The elite Darkwood Academy is for high-achievers from wealthy families. It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy. But this year, it’s going to get a whole lot more competitive when six new students join the junior class. They’re more than overachievers, they’re clones. And their originals already attend Darkwood.
Emma doesn’t care about the clones. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer, and all she can think about is getting through each day without him. Until she meets Levi and realizes forgetting Oliver will be harder than she thought: Levi is Oliver’s clone, and seeing his face every day makes life unbearable.
But something is going on with the clones. They’re hiding something, and Emma discovers they have unheard of abilities to go along with their secret agenda. When her friend is almost murdered, Emma realizes something darker is happening, and she must trust someone if she is to find out the truth. But can she really trust Levi?
This is set in a future-America, but not that future, so it was easy to make sense of the world (sadly). I enjoyed reading Emma’s point-of-view and cannot imagine having lost my best friend and then being faced with his clone every day. There is a lot going on here, and I feel like the author glossed over some things that will hopefully be explored in the rest of the series. I noticed there wasn’t a lot involving the instructors, which seemed a bit odd, considering the setting is basically a boarding school, but it wasn’t something that made the story feel fake. The Similars is definitely a book I recommend.
Rebecca Hanover is an Emmy-winning writer and graduate of Stanford. The Similars is her debut novel.
(Galley provided by Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review.)
Charlotte loves her job as a school librarian and intends to spend her vacation morally supporting her beauty-pageant-contestant twin sister, reading, and reveling in a Harry Potter theme park. Until her sister, Ginny, has an allergic reaction the night before the pageant and manages to convince Charlotte to take her place for a few days.
Charlotte is not prepared for layers of makeup, towering heels, or false eyelashes. She feels much more comfortable trading bookish references with the handsome and charming stranger she meets in the hotel stairwell—and who turns out to be one of the judges. And her fellow contestants aren’t the vapid and silly women she imagined, instead their support and camaraderie soon have her wanting to truly do her best in the pageant. But Ginny still intends to win that crown herself, leaving Charlotte on the sideline again.
I could relate to Charlotte so much: book nerd with a store of literary quotes and a love of Harry Potter…and a dislike of glitz and glamour. The relationship between her and Ginny is difficult, with layers of history, and the two of them struggle to find their way out of the mess of the pageant. This was a charming and fun read that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Teri Wilson is an author and creator of Hallmark movies. The Accidental Beauty Queen is her newest novel.
(Galley provided by Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review.)
English professor Joy and her husband Richard are grieving in the wake of a miscarriage and take a trip to Granada, Spain. While there, Joy meets a handsome stranger who awakens feelings she thought were long dead. When they return home, she’s still grieving and Richard, hurting himself, becomes involved with a free-spirited teacher.
When Joy finds out about the affair, their marriage ends. Joy moves to Virginia and tries to deal with her bitterness. Inspired by the story of Sultan Suleyman and his Russian concubine, Roxelana, Joy decides to take a trip to Turkey and Richard joins her. While there, Richard tells her a startling truth, and their relationship changes forever.
I’m not sure what to say about this novel. I felt sorry for Joy and Richard both, but I also found them unlikable at times. They hurt each other selfishly over-and-over again, and never really seem to learn from their mistakes. The exotic locales were vivid and well-drawn, adding excitement to an otherwise slow-paced narrative.
Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Iran, Kuwait, Beirut, and Jerusalem. A Marriage in Four Seasons is her new novel.
(Galley provided by She Writes Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Owen Foster is in the middle of a prank war with his best friend Jack when his mom shows up at his fancy New Orleans boarding school. Owen knows it can’t be good news, and it’s not—his dad has disappeared with millions of dollars from the family business that supports most of their small town.
Owen and his mom are the most hated people in town. Most people think they knew what his dad was up to, or at least where he is now, and the threats soon turn to violence. To escape all the anger, Owen finds himself working for Gus on a practically-abandoned pecan farm outside of town.
Owen doesn’t want to believe his father stole the money, but all the evidence points towards him. Soon Owen realizes that someone must have helped his dad, and he’s determined to unravel the mystery and keep his mother safe.
The Lying Woods is told in alternate viewpoints between Owen now, and his father in the past, the year he first came to work for Gus. I’m not generally a fan of male POV characters in YA, but I loved this one. Owen is complex: everything he thinks he knows gets upended in this book, and he has to figure out the new world he inhabits now. He’s hurting from his dad’s betrayal, worried about his mom, and missing his friends, but he learns to see things from other people’s point-of-view as he struggles to right the wrongs he encounters. Definitely read this! I realized after reading this that I’d also read Elston’s The Rules for Disappearing, and it was a great read as well, so she just moved to my must-read list.
Ashley Elston lives and writes in Louisiana. The Lying Woods is her newest novel.
(Galley provided by Disney-Hyperion in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 