life_full_ofbooks's reviews
2518 reviews

I was so excited to read this book but my hopes were dashed when I realized this is the author’s memoir, not a story based on her father’s fascinating life. 
Bonny Reichert is a magazine journalist, a chef, a wife, a mother, the youngest sister, and the dad of a Holocaust survivor. It’s the last descriptor that has defined her for all of her life. Because of her father’s experiences living in the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz during the later years of the war, he had a different outlook on life and food than most people and it showed in how he raised his children. 
Ms. Reichert’s memoir takes us through her life through different foods and meals she’s eaten and cooked. In that sense, it reminded me very much of Stanley Tucci’s memoirs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as Mr. Tucci’s. 
This would have been much better had Ms. Reichert taken her father’s story and written that, especially because that’s what her original intention had been. I honestly couldn’t care less about the meals she cooked, the years she was in school, or the cookbooks she collected. While I greatly appreciated the parts that talked about her deep fear, her attempting to see what life in the ghetto was like for her father, and her very strong writer’s block I was here for Saul Reichert’s story and I got just a small snippet of it (and that small snippet was far more interesting than everything else I read before and after).

This was a NetGalley that I wanted to read and was denied and I finally remembered to get it from the library. This is one of the best romances I’ve read in a while because it’s so unique in how it’s presented. 

When Lucy Bernstein realizes her job as an assistant florist at Lotus, a boutique florist shop in London, is paying enough to make the increase in rent on her flat, her best friend encourages her to move into the warehouse flat she shares with 6 other people. Lucy is wary of living with so many other people, until she meets Henry Baker, one of the flatmates. She then finds out Henry travels for work 28 days out of each month and on the one weekend he has at home is Warehouse Weekend, where the 8 flatmates rotate picking things for all to do for the weekend to catch up with Henry and spend time together. Much to Lucy’s surprise it is perfectly possible to fall in love with someone you only get to see 12 weekends a year. 

I absolutely adored how this story played out. Each chapter takes place over a Warehouse Weekend and through Lucy’s internal monologue we see how her life unfolds over the year. It sounds like it wouldn’t be a very a comprehensive book, but it really is. It was the perfect escape from my life in Florida and while I listened to this in two days, I felt like I spent a year in London. This is Alexandra Paige’s debut novel and I’m super excited for her next one. With a debut this innovative I think it’s safe to say she is well on her way to having a fantastic writing career. 

This is part of the Meant to Be series which much like the Improbable Meet Cute series is a collection of different authors who write their own book that goes with the theme of the series, though the books don’t go with each other. Meant to Be is a series of modern retellings of the Disney Princess stories and Jasmine Guillory has retold Beauty and the Beast. 

Isabelle Marlowe is an editorial assistant at A Tale As Old Time Publishing but her dream is to be promoted to a Junior Editor. When she overhears her editor, Marta, talking about the long awaited memoir by Hollywood bad boy Beau Towers, Isabelle immediately jumps at the chance to show Marta she has what it takes and offers to go to Beau’s house to encourage him to start writing. Beau is a monster of a man both in physique and personality and Isabelle can’t believe she’s gotten herself into this situation. As days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, Isabelle starts seeing the man inside the monstrous exterior and what starts as animosity in both parties turns to love. 

This book really is quite cute and it’s a fantastic modernized retelling of Belle and the Beast’s story. The love story between Isabelle and Beau is beautiful and flows so nicely, but certain side characters felt  really forced. I think the book would have done better to just leave this with Isabelle and Beau and the few Beauty and the Beast Easter eggs and not try to include certain characters that were in the original Disney movie.