Tokyo Dreaming by Emiko Jean (★★★★☆)
Tokyo Dreaming is the second book in the Tokyo Ever After series. I read the first book in less than 24 hours and could not get enough of the adorable love story. This book didn’t have that same level of magic, but it was still a great read. In this book, Izumi (who discovered her father was the Crown Prince of Japan in the previous book) is settling into imperial life and dealing with the rigors that come with being a princess. She’s trying to live up to the elegance of her twin cousins (the press loves her cousins, not so much Izumi), touring universities in Japan, and figuring out her next steps when those steps are highly scrutinized. One of the things I really loved about this book was learning more about present-day imperial customs and Japanese culture. It was really interesting! All in all, a very cute YA book that won’t change anyone’s life but it will be an enjoyable, palate-cleansing read should you need that.
The Wife Before Me by Laura Elliott (★★★★☆)
Oof, this book was rough. It’s the kind of book I cannot really recommend, even though I gave it 4 stars, because there is so much violence against women. About 100 pages in, I wanted to abandon it but I decided to keep going because a) I didn’t have any other reading material on Sunday when I was at my mom’s and b) it has a high Goodreads rating for a thriller, so I want to keep going and see what all the buzz was about. The novel is about Elena who has just lost her mom when a suave and handsome man sweeps into her life. Nicholas is also going through his own grieving process—his wife has been missing and presumed dead for two years—so they connect over their grief. Early on in their relationship, Elena realizes all is not well with Nicholas, but she ignores red flag after red flag because she’s so in love with him. This story comes with all of the trigger warnings: domestic violence, grief, cancer, death, and violence against women. If you can get past all of that, I think the story was super engaging and page-turn-y. The ending is a bit wild (so wild, I had to read it a few times to make sure I didn’t miss anything!), but satisfying, too.
The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson (★★★★☆)
The fourth book in the Truly Devious series takes us away from the elite Vermont boarding school where amateur detective Stevie Bell and her friends spend most of their time and drops us into a summer camp where a quadruple homicide occurred over 40 years ago. The homicide has never been solved, and the camp’s owner wants Stevie to help him solve the case and make a podcast about it. I just absolutely loved this mystery. It was fast-paced and engaging, and I loved the setting of a summer camp. I also really liked the way this book explored the nature of true crime podcasts and how exploitative they can sometimes be on communities and families. I wish the author had explored that idea a bit more, but I did like the way she pitted Stevie against the camp owner, and showed the differences in their approaches to solving this crime. Stevie wanted the families to have some closure while the owner was simply looking to make the next Serial (or so it seemed). All in all, a very fun mystery and I’m excited that there’s a fifth book in this series coming out next month. Woohoo!
What are you reading?
I am reading the third book in a trilogy. I loved the first book, was meh on the second, and have taken three days to read fifteen pages on the third, so I don’t know how that’s going to work out. LOL. Sounds like you had some great reads, though!
Ugh, don’t you hate when you get stuck behind a book like that? I hope it got better… or you moved on to something else!
I love the Stevie Bell books and can’t waiiiiit for the next one to come out!
They are so great! Such fun mysteries to solve.
I’m reading 3 books right now which is so not like me. One if called “100 Saturdays” and it’s about a man who interviews a 90+ yo Jewish woman who survived the holocaust. There are 100 “chapters” but the chapters are very short so I read 5/day so I can get it back to the library before it’s due. Then I’m reading “Tranquility by Tuesday” but again only reading snippets. And then my 3rd book is “Catastrophic Happiness” which is another non-fiction book about the young kid years. I can read 3 books since they are all non-fiction and kind of in essay format! I also abandoned 2 books last week – Our Wives Under the Sea and Once a Poet. I gave the first 20% and the 2nd only 5% but just knew they weren’t right for me.
Reading multiple books at one time is my jam, so I think this is great! And those seem three very different books to read, so that probably helps as you dip in and out of the different books.
I did not realize there was a fourth book in that series! I need to add it to my TBR. I wonder if I will remember the characters at all.
I just started 28 Summers.
Haha – I’m glad I’ve read a bunch of the Truly Devious series books all in a row. And even then, sometimes I forget about some of the characters! But they are all so dear to me by now.
With the NaBloPoMo I haven’t read much more than blogs to be honest. Now I am full into the seasonal Holiday reads. Yeah.