BACK COVER:

It’s been three years since the devastating accident…three years since Mia walked out of Adam’s life forever.

Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is a rising star at Julliard and Adam is a bona fide rock star, complete with tabloid headlines and a celebrity girlfriend.

Then chance brings them together again, for one night.

As they explore the city that has become Mia’s home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future—and to each other.

REVIEW:

This time written from Adam’s perspective and once again an intermingling of the past and present, Forman articulates the rollercoaster ride of heartache and love. She proves her talent of weaving in Adam’s memories so seamlessly. She does an excellent job of breaking the reader’s heart through Adam’s story. It’s an achingly beautiful portrayal of unforeseen rejection, of everything is always clearer in hindsight, of coming to grips with the biggest mistakes felt for a lifetime. It’s also a story of hope and love rekindled, when all bridges have burned and there is a greater risk of reopening wounds but an even greater reward if everything wished for comes true. Forman begs the question, what would you do if the one you never got over, the one who broke your heart and left you in a black hole, came back in your life? Would you risk having to say goodbye again if it meant twenty-four hours of being with your love? And if so, would you be able to survive having to walk away again?

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars brilliantly explores the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

BACK COVER:

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

REVIEW:

Don’t let the script and Young Adult genre placement fool you; The Fault in Our Stars is anything but an easy read and is great for all ages. It will break your heart in every way: as a parent, a lover, a teenager, a survivor, and a victim. Green will have you falling prey—not by the fact that yes, this story is cry-your-eyes-out tragic, but by your craving to gulp it down in one afternoon. It is delicious in every manner we wish a book to be. It is heartbreaking beyond repair, and it is of our own doing that Green breaks our hearts because we hope for a happy ending despite knowing it can’t exist. The surrealism, the hope, the courage, and the devastation that surrounds the characters leaves us feeling everything they feel. We cry, we hope, we dream, we imagine. We fall in love. This is the story of overcoming. This is the story of being alive when dying. This is the story of teenage love—a love only few encounter and fewer survive—amidst impossible odds and devastation. Read it and weep your eyes out.

A tour de force… Every bit as affecting as it is gripping.” —The New York Times

BACK COVER:

On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

REVIEW:

It takes patience to read this book but I promise you McEwan delivers a miraculous love story birthed in tragedy. It is impossible to forgive Briony, despite her endeavor to rewrite the future she stole from the young lovers. McEwan’s brilliant writing captures the immature mind of a thirteen-year-old desperate for attention and acceptance while showcasing humanity’s often inability to admit wrongdoing and accept consequences for doing such, as children and as adults. McEwan builds up Briony’s tendencies toward falsehood, misinterpretation, and creative imagination for quite a few chapters before this main event showcases her faults. Though beautifully written—McEwan has a talent for stringing along words and then sentences to present something picturesque and poignant to the writer—the first quarter of the book takes some endurance but I promise you, if you can get through these beginning slow chapters, what follows is worth a rainy afternoon spent lounging and reading.

Ice-pick sharp…spectacularly sneaky…impressively cagey.” –Janet Maslin, New York Times

BACK COVER:

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. As the police begin to investigate, the town golden boy parades a series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

REVIEW:

Mercilessly menacing, hilariously terrifying, and deviously wicked. Flynn cleverly manipulates the reader’s thoughts, predictions, and uncertainties. She holds her audience captivated, enthralled, in the palm of her hand. She surpasses mesmerizing and plunges into hypnotizing. It begs to be read twice simply to put the reader’s mind at ease, to navigate the clues she so wittingly hid the first read through. Flynn once again creates characters we can’t entirely trust, leaving us incapable to love or hate them until everything we are to know of them is displayed—at the end of the novel. We don’t want to admit the brilliance and stupidity of the characters, but find them fascinating in their easy ability to be manipulated—as Flynn does to us. She proves that everything is never as it seems and plants the thrilling possibility of not really knowing your spouse.

BACK COVER:

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

REVIEW:

I want more Flynn. Rating between Dark Places and Gone Girl, both of which I absolutely loved, Sharp Objects is a disturbingly addictive thriller. Once again, we are introduced to a main character who we can’t entirely love for her psychological disturbances nor entirely hate for her childish vulnerability, though often the two intertwine so well that what we find annoying and revolting about her is also exactly why we sympathize for her. It has become Flynn’s trademark and area of expertise—they’re flawed and complicated, they’re human.

A page-turner until the end, it sadly concludes and wraps up in less than ten pages, one chapter and an epilogue. One minute, we are living a captivating mystery and then we are suddenly transported to a finale that failed to be grand—blink and you miss it. It’s the novel’s only downfall but it’s a big one—how ironic.

BACK COVER:

Their passion was real, but how many more secrets can Bianca accept?

When Bianca London was kidnapped and taken to a deserted island, the only positive was meeting Jakob, the mysterious and handsome man with whom she was stranded on the island. When Bianca finds out that Jakob isn’t exactly who he says he is, she fears for her life—until he does something unbelievable to gain her trust and possibly her love.

Bianca makes it back home, but soon cryptic letters start arriving, hinting of more secrets to be spilled. When Jakob comes back into her life, Bianca doesn’t know whether to trust her instincts or her heart. Jakob is still hiding things from her, and when they come out, everything she thought she knew is put to the test. Turns out getting off the island was only the beginning of the story.

REVIEW:

I give Cooper credit for attempting to pursue such a difficult and unrealistic plot, but that’s the major issue with this story: what the first book, Illusion, had planted as a possibility, Disillusioned had destroyed through its failure to deliver anything conceivable. Bianca, convinced Jacob is dangerous, still gives herself to the man. The entire story is dialogue, giving no framework or mind to time. Hell, I’ll say it: the steamy scenes are even lacking the steam aspect that romance novels need to thrive on. Furthermore, Cooper fails to build upon the characters after the first book. Somehow, through this second installment of the trilogy, they have become entirely boring and unmoving while the author is completely incapable of making a decision as to where to take the story and the characters. The dialogue is repetitive and readers are sent dancing in circles. If I had wanted to square dance, I’d have taken a class. Disappointment was the ringing theme, unfortunately, but I must be stupid because I’ll still read the third book out of pure, uncontrollable curiosity once it’s released. Sorry, Cat.

BACK COVER:

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life–steady boyfriend, close family–who has barely been farther afield than her tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life–big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel–and he is not interested in exploring a new one.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy–but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, Lou sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common–a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

REVIEW:

Simply put, this book will stay with you forever. It’s the kind that begs to be shared with the stranger at the local coffee shop you frequent. It reaches into your soul and begs of you, “What the hell are you doing with your life?” It begs you to live for those who are unable to do so.

I never wanted to put it down. I fell in love with Lou and Will, felt their frustrations, keeled over in their pain, and hoped for a forever. Moyes did everything a reader wants and she kept with the reality of the situation. Despite knowing that tragedy was inevitable, I was a masochist gulping down the pages like one breathes air. I wanted to read it in one night, lock myself in my room with a box of tissues.

It’s devastating but my god is it absolutely captivating. It’s entirely heartbreaking, I won’t lie, but a broken heart is still a beating one, so go ahead. Read it. Read it right now and fall in love.

BACK COVER:

“I’ve been following her for the past few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she works. I don’t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.”

One night, Mia Dennett enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn’t show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. At first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia’s life.

When Colin decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota instead of delivering her to his employers, Mia’s mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them. But no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family’s world to shatter.

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, The Good Girl is a propulsive debut that reveals how even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems.

REVIEW:

I want to reread this novel like it’s the first time every time. The Good Girl grasps you, seeps into your pores, and keeps you reeling after the last line is read. Kubica does a brilliant job of giving us hope only to crush it. She builds it up, despite the knowledge that it could never end well. Still, we hope against all intelligent thought, holding tight to that two percent possibility. She allows us to be a fly on the wall as we watch the pages materialize into a scene in our minds. She gives us all the characters we need to believe in a reality of the situation but carefully rewrites our expected perception of them.

A grief-stricken mother we should sympathize with but who instead only reeks of inadequacy, more annoying with every breach into her memory and witness to her actions. A despicable father we want to forgive and understand but brings out our worst thoughts, wishing him an express ticket to hell. A detective who should be the one to annoy us with his lacking personality and quickness to judge others but captivates us; an outsider who moves the story along swiftly, he is more observant than a therapist, more motherly than the mother. A good girl we should love and worry over, questioning her calmness and reservation, her forgiving nature but instead we find ourselves justifying her actions only to hate her in the end, filling us with disappointment and wonderment over her selfishness; if she had only been willing to tell the truth. Lastly, a selfish criminal who should be the sole source of our hatred but whom we instead come to love, root for, and worse, understand.

I love an author who gives the reader the chance to figure out the plot twist, the big “holy fucking shit! Are you fucking kidding me?! Noooo!” moment. Kubica plants the possibility, feeds us with the proper information, only for us to believe it simply cannot be. We don’t want to believe it and therefore we don’t. In fact, we forget the theory—complete toss it out the door—only for it to be dropped in our lap like an atomic bomb: devastating and consuming our mind for hours after we finished the book.

Twenty-four hours later and I’m still trying to recover.