Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (1.4.23)

The No-Show by Beth O’Leary (★★☆☆☆)

E-Book • Libby • Contemporary Romance • 2022

Gosh, Beth O’Leary is such a hit-or-miss author for me. I loved two of her novels (The Flatshare and The Switch), DNF-ed The Road Trip, and really didn’t like this one. When I finished the book, the only thought I had was, “What was the ever-loving point of this novel?” After a few days to sit with it, I am starting to understand the point but I am still very frustrated by this book. The book begins by introducing three women: Siobhan, a life coach, Miranda, a tree surgeon (?!), and Jane, a volunteer at a charity shop. One by one, the women learn they have been stood up on Valentine’s Day by the same man (Joseph): Siobhan in the morning during a scheduled breakfast date, Miranda in the afternoon during a scheduled lunch date, and Jane in the evening during a scheduled party where she planned to introduce him to everyone. Right off the bat, there is sympathy for these women and disdain for this man who is seeing three women at once. Throughout the novel, we learn more about these women and more about the relationship they have with Joseph, and there are some interesting twists and turns the book takes that I wasn’t expecting, but overall, I just wasn’t a huge fan of the book and the way things turned out. YMMV!

The Verifiers by Jane Pek (★★★☆☆)

Print • Owned (Book of the Month) • Thiller • 2022

The Verifiers was a solid thriller, but not one I am rushing out to recommend. It follows the story of Claudia Lin who has just started a job with Veracity, a dating detective agency. Clients come to them when they want to find out why the person they were dating suddenly ghosted or if they suspect the person they’re dating might be married and want proof. Things like that. When one of their clients turns up dead, Claudia can’t help investigating what happened to get to the bottom of the mystery. Like I said, it was a fine thriller and I think some of the twists and turns the book took were truly interesting. (I also really loved learning more about the inner workings of online dating culture, although some of the stuff in the book is making me question if I should be using dating apps at all!) The ending was a bit anti-climactic. All in all, a good but not great book.

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram (★★★☆☆)

Audiobook • Libby • YA • 2018

Everyone I know who has read this book has absolutely raved about it, so I went into the story with very high expectations. I expected to fall in love with Darius, I expected to love this novel from beginning to end. And… it was just okay. Not bad, not spectacular. Just… fine. The story is about Darius, a half-Jewish, half-Muslim teenage boy who doesn’t fit in at school or at home. He has clinical depression that he takes medication for, and I think the mental health representation in this book was A+. When his family announces they are going to be spending the summer in Iran, Darius is looking forward to the trip and it’s there that he meets Sohrab, the boy who will become his best friend this summer. The novel is a personal journey for Darius: learning more about his homeland, growing closer to his grandparents whom he has never met (only through video calls), and exploring Iran with Sohrab. It’s a sweet story and it was interesting to see Iran from the perspective of a young teenage boy. I think things tied up a bit too neatly at the end for my tastes, though. (Can we let parent/child relationships be complicated without needing to make them BFFs at the end of the book?) All in all, a good book but not a standout.

Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun (★★★☆☆)

Print • Owned (Book of the Month) • Contemporary Romance • 2022

My last book of 2022! I wanted to dip into a cute, Christmassy romance as I finished up my reading year and this book fit the bill. It’s about a woman, Ellie, who becomes fake-engaged to a man named Andrew. He’s the landlord for the coffee shop where she works and when he discovers she’s in dire straits (she’s days from being evicted), he proposed a plan to fake an engagement/marriage so that he can get his inheritance. (His grandfather stipulated that he must be married to get his inheritance.) It sounds like a good deal to Ellie, who is in desperate need of money and it comes with the bonus of not being alone on Christmas; instead, she’ll spend it with Andrew’s family. Only problem? Andrew’s sister is Jack, the same woman Ellie had a one-day fling with last Christmas… and the girl Ellie hasn’t been able to stop thinking about. This was a sweet romance, although the author’s debut novel (The Charm Offensive) is heads and tails above this book. I found Ellie to be a bit irritating at times and hard to root for. And, omg, if I had to listen to Ellie explain demisexuality to me one more goddamn time, I was going to scream. There were times when I think the author sacrificed plot and character development to make sure she was writing the most woke book possible. Not my favorite romance, but a fine one to end the year with.

What was YOUR last book of 2022?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (12.26.22)

The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin (★★☆☆☆)

E-Book • Owned (Amazon) • Contemporary Fiction • 2018

This book had the potential to be so good. It’s about two doctors, Emma and Zadie, who met in med school and became fast friends. One is now a trauma surgeon while the other is a pediatric cardiologist. They both live in Charlotte, NC, and lead happy, fulfilled lives. They’re both married with children, and one of the things I really loved about this book is the way it explored motherhood and marriage that didn’t also involve infidelity. It’s hard to find a book that lets married people just… be married and deal with their problems like adults. The crux of this novel is the arrival of a blast from their past who may upend their careful, perfect worlds. I loved all the different medical scenes in the novel, like a literary Grey’s Anatomy! (Kimmery Martin is a former ER doctor, so she knows what she’s talking about.) It was really fun to read about the different surgeries and patient interactions and felt like I was on the set of Seattle Grace.

However, I cannot give this book a high rating because it was rife with casual racism, classism, and fatphobia. Every single POC was a stereotype (down to the “well-hung” Black man). A group of queer men was referred to as “LGBT-ers.” (Not a terrible insult, but it does show that this author doesn’t have any queer folk in her life.) And the fatphobia was absolutely rampant. There was the woman described as “enormous.” A surgeon screaming about being in a “fat forest” when encountering fat in a patient’s body. And the real kicker was this passage: “Hurriedly, I tried to decide if a weight-challenged person near the back counted as one or two people.” First, you can just call us fat. You don’t need to couch it in terms like “weight challenged.” And secondly, fuck you very much. This is a horrendous and hurtful word choice. I will not be reading anything else from this author, and I hope she learns how to be respectful of all people and all bodies in her novels.

Made in Manhattan by Lauren Layne (★★★★☆)

E-Book • Libby • Contemporary Romance • 2022

I read this sweet romance novel in just over a day; it was hard to put down! Violet has been Edith’s righthand woman for years now, and when Edith gives Violet the job of turning her grandson into the NYC elite he needs to be in order to run her company when she retires, she’s ready for it. Only Cain, Edith’s grandson, is gruff and obstinate… but also incredibly sexy? We all know where this is going! I loved watching Violet and Cain fall in love. Their banter with each other was so witty and fun. This was just one of those sweet, uncomplicated romances that are fun to read, especially on a chilly December evening right before Christmas.

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson (★★★★★)

Audiobook • Libby • Historical Fiction • 2016

I really loved this novel! I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if I had read a physical copy; audiobook is typically the best way for me to consume longer, character-driven novels. And this one, clocking in at 16 hours on audiobook, is definitely a hefty story. The story starts near the end of summer in 1914 and takes place in a coastal town in Sussex, a county located on the southeastern side of England. The characters include Beatrice, a new Latin teacher who has arrived in town mourning the loss of her beloved father; Agatha, the woman who takes Beatrice under her wing; Hugh, Agatha’s nephew who is studying to be a doctor; and Daniel, Hugh’s cousin who just wants to write his poems and travel the world. Unfortunately, soon after Beatrice arrives in town, it becomes clear that the rumblings of war they’ve been hearing about for months are true, and it may be time for Hugh and Daniel to do their duty. This novel just put me in a really happy space for the majority of the book. I loved being dropped into the lives of these characters and getting a glimpse into what life was like in the mid-1910s before a world war upended everyone’s lives. I thought all of the characters were so well-developed, even the side characters. And I was also impacted by the wartime scenes. Simonson did an excellent job placing you right in the action so you could better understand how much we ask of our soldiers. This is a novel that will stay with me for a while, I think.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (12.19.22)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Print • Owned (Book of the Month) • Fiction • 2022

Oh, I had such high expectations for this book! I expected to love it because many of my most trusted sources loved this book. But it was just not for me. This novel is about Sadie and Sam, who meet as children and then fall out of touch, only to find each other many years later on a crowded subway platform. It’s through this chance encounter that they set on a course that will change their lives: to make a video game together which may be just as appealing as 비트코인 카지노. This video game catapults them to stardom and fame, and we follow the reverberations of this decision to collaborate through the rest of the novel. There were times when I thought this book was brilliant. The way Zevin played with literary tropes and used the nuances of video games to tell a story was genius. But mostly, I was bored by the novel. I don’t care about video games and there was just so much to slog through when it came to that. Yes, the book is about way more than video games, and I appreciated the exploration of characters and their relationships, but man, there was still a lot of video game talk and I was so bored by it. It also seemed like a lot of the issues that arose between the characters centered around miscommunication and not fully expressing what they needed, and it was so frustrating to witness scene after scene of these characters just not communicating. Tell people what you want! It’s just hard for me to really engage with characters who are being obtuse like that. All in all, not the book I was hoping it would be, but I’m glad this book is resonating with other people!

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Audiobook• Libby • Nonfiction • 2017

Every time I think I’ve dug to the bottom of the well that is the United States’ racist history, something else comes along to remind me that there is so much more I have to learn and so much that has been buried. In this book, Richard Rothstein outlines all of the ways that our government intervened to make sure housing was segregated. Ever wonder why it seems like there’s the “good” part of a city where all the white people live and the “ghetto” where the Black people live? It’s not because Black people can’t afford to live in the other part of the city. It’s not because that’s where they want to live. It’s because they have been systematically disenfranchised by our government. It is because our government enacted laws and ordinances to keep Black people segregated. I took a ton of notes as I listened to this audiobook. I was truly astonished by some of these facts (and not surprising; at the end of the book, Rothstein discusses how this part of our history was hidden in school textbooks):

  • If a white person had an address located in a majority-Black neighborhood, life insurance companies would refuse to sell them policies, forcing them to move to majority-white neighborhoods.
  • Some county laws would prohibit builders from building houses if they weren’t specifically stated to be for whites only. There were many builders who wanted to build integrated housing but they routinely found themselves unable to get the permits they needed and new laws would be enacted that prohibited them from building integrated housing.
  • Let’s talk about our interstate highway system for a minute! Did you know that these highways demolished homes in Black neighborhoods? Black people would find themselves without a home, and the government enacted no laws or programs to help people whose homes were destroyed so that highways could be built where they used to stand. And, of course, these highways largely benefitted white people, giving them an easier way to get to and from work.
  • When Black people moved into majority-white neighborhoods, they were harassed repeatedly by mobs and even police officers. They would graffiti their property, throw rocks through their windows, break into their homes, and much worse. This was happening as recently as the 1980s.
  • The GI bill was supposed to help men coming home from the war find jobs and find homes. Unfortunately, most Black men coming home didn’t benefit from the GI bill as anyone with a dishonorable discharge was excluded. Black people were given dishonorable discharges at twice the rate of white men.
  • From 1973-1980, Black people’s incomes decreased by 1% while home prices increased by 43%. Over the next decade, wages again fell by 1% while home prices again increased by 8%. And since Black people are routinely passed over for skilled, higher-paying jobs, their earning potential has been greatly limited when compared to white people.

I grew up poor. I grew up being evicted from apartment homes, mostly due to my father’s addiction issues and inability to contribute to the family’s finances. But one thing I never had to worry about: Being excluded from certain areas of town because of our skin color. We were able to find new apartments easily because we were white. That was our privilege.

Three Nights with a Scoundrel by Tessa Dare

E-Book • Libby • Historical Romance • 2010

This book was a satisfying conclusion to Dare’s Stud Club trilogy. Julian has been a bit of a villain in previous novels, but I loved the way Dare brought his character full circle in this novel. The heroine of this novel, Lily, is the sister of a former Stud Club member who was murdered at the beginning of the series, a murder that was intended for Julian. For Julian, even though he has feelings for Lily, it’s more important to keep her protected. But Lily, who also fell in love with Julian a long time ago, just wants him to come home to her. It’s a beautiful love story and was just one of those easy, fun romances that doesn’t require too much brainpower but makes me feel good while I’m reading it.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

November Reading Wrap-Up

Books Read

1) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy (★★★★★ – audiobook, Libby) – A super impactful memoir about a Disney star who sustained years of abuse at the hands of her mother.

2) The Smart One by Jennifer Close (★★☆☆☆ – print, owned, Thriftbooks) – A rather lackluster story about a family and the secrets they keep.

3) The Bodyguard by Katherine Center (★★★☆☆ – e-book, Libby) – A contemporary romance about a female bodyguard who is hired to protect a Hollywood movie star.

4) The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater (★★★★★ – audiobook, Libby) – A true story about two people on the margins of society and how their paths intersect to tragic results.

5) Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Target) – A cute follow-up to Tokyo Dreaming that taught me a lot about Japanese culture.

6) The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – The fourth book in a YA mystery series that was set at a summer camp and gave some really creepy vibes!

7) The Wife Before Me by Laura Elliot (★★★★☆ – print, library) – An enraging thriller that had a satisfying (if a little convoluted) ending.

8) Victoria by Daisy Goodwin (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Thriftbooks) – A historical fiction novel that retold the story of the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign, albeit with some creative liberties.

9) What If It’s Us? by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera (★★★★☆ – e-book, Libby) – A fun queer YA love story with NYC as the backdrop.

10) Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake (★★★★☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – A queer romance involving a female carpenter and a female interior designer.

11) Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (★★★☆☆ – print, owned, Book of the Month) – A buzzy book that fell short of my expectations. At times, it was brilliant but mostly, I was bored by it.

Book Challenges

1) Book Club: Our book for November was The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. I had already read this book (and wasn’t a fan). Our book club meeting for November is actually today (November was a crazy month for all of us and we couldn’t get our schedules to sync up!), and I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on the book. I know I’m an outlier in my displeasure with this book.

2) Unread Shelf Project: November’s prompt was “a title that starts with the first letter of your name,” so I chose The Smart One by Jennifer Close. I’ve had this book on my shelf for years, so it was nice to finally read it, even if I didn’t end up loving the book.

3) Goodreads Challenge: I only had two more books to read for this challenge and both of them ended up being DNFs! I started listening to Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward on audio, but after two hours of listening, I was just so bored by the plot that I abandoned it. I also tried Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, which gets rave reviews from people. It was giving me a lot of anxiety and that’s just not what I need from my reading life!

Book Stats

  • # of books read: 11
  • # of pages read: 4,028 pages
  • Genre breakdown: YA (4), Fiction (3), Romance (2), Nonfiction (1), and Mystery/Thriller (1)
  • Format breakdown: print (5), e-book (3), and audiobook (3)
  • Fastest read: Tokyo Ever After, Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail, and Tomorrow x3 all took 5 days
  • Slowest read: The Smart One (11 days)
  • Star average: 3.8
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 37%
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 12 books behind schedule.

Superlatives of November

  • Favorite book of the month: The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
  • Favorite romance of the month: Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake
  • Most disappointing read of the month: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  • The book with the cringiest title: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy
  • My least-favorite reading experience of the month: The Smart One by Jennifer Close

What’s the best book you read in November?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (12.5.22)

What If It’s Us? by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera (★★★★☆)

In this queer romance, Arthur is a teenager who is only in NYC for the summer. He’s filled with hope, ambition, and a love for the way the Universe seems to make things happen. Ben has lived in NYC his whole life. He’s going through a breakup, in summer school, and basically at his wit’s end with life. When Arthur and Ben have a meet-cute in a post office but then Ben disappears before Arthur can get his number, is this the Universe’s way of saying they aren’t meant to be? It’s a really cute YA love story, almost sappy sweet at times, but I was here for all of it. Arthur was such a delightful character to root for, especially the way he reacts to being in NYC and being with Ben. Ben is his grumpy counterpart but who starts to relent in the face of Arthur’s unfailing positivity. It’s not a perfect romance, but it was a satisfying one filled with quirky characters and a really great ending.

Victoria by Daisy Goodwin (★★★★☆)

Victoria is a fictional retelling of Queen Victoria’s first few years of her reign. She inherited the throne at the age of 18 and had to grow up quickly, as she suddenly became the ruler of an entire nation overnight. She has a rocky relationship with her mother and probably a very inappropriate relationship with her prime minister (although lines were never crossed). Victoria could be a difficult character at times. She could be flighty and selfish and ridiculous, but I had to remind myself that she was 18 and had been an incredibly sheltered child. Most of us are flighty, selfish, and ridiculous at 18; we’re just not also responsible for ruling a country. All in all, this book was really engaging and I loved getting this slice of life into what it’s like to be royal. The ending felt a little abrupt and I would have liked a little more exploration into Victoria and the man she ends up eventually marrying. But it was still a propulsive read that gave me delightful The Crown, season 1, vibes.

Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake (★★★★☆)

In this f/f romance, Astrid Parker is an interior designer who has had a run of bad luck. She’s dealing with the aftermath of a broken engagement and her interior design business has been flailing for a while now. So when she earns the job to redesign the Everwood Inn, a historic landmark hotel in her town, which will also be featured on an HGTV-esque show, Innside America, she knows this could be the big break her business needs. What she’s not thrilled about is working with Jordan Everwood, the granddaughter of the inn’s founder and lead carpenter on the job. Jordan and Astrid had a horrifying meeting (the opposite of a meet-cute, really) outside a coffee shop where Jordan accidentally spilled coffee all over Astrid’s pristine white dress. Still, they have to learn how to work together for the project. There was so much to love about this romance. I just love the way this author writes female characters, and especially the way she writes women falling in love with women. So many other authors writing queer romances make it feel so lackluster, but Blake makes these romances feel big and exciting and perfect. I didn’t love this novel as much as her first one (Delilah Green Doesn’t Care)—there were just too many times I had to suspend my belief—but this story still had a whole lot of heart and such a sweet love story at its core. Ashley Herring Blake is a new autobuy author for me!

What are you reading?