madeline's reviews
776 reviews

A lot of this book's problems could have been solved if it had been NA instead of YA - to have 16 year old Hazel practicing medicine was wild.  Even as a 16 year old I would have found that unbelievable.  And the characters seemed more mature than teens, too, and not in the way that 17 seems like adulthood when you're 13.  

But a lot of this book's problems would have persisted all the same: it's not spectacularly written, with a lot of repetition and some language choices that made me question historical accuracy.  Maybe its worst offense, though, is that it's woefully underplotted and then the entire book is jammed into the last 30%.  There's really nothing that happens in the first 70% besides Hazel going to medical school (!!) and Jack being like "I will steal bodies for this pretty girl," and then all of the sudden there's

a black market for organs??? And then an IMMORTALITY SUBPLOT???

.

Honestly just kind of ridiculous overall.

Thank you Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

CW: deceased sibling, graphic descriptions of medical procedures

Imagine the worst day you've ever had, and take comfort in the knowledge that Franny Doyle is having a worse one.  She's been laid off, had her dress ripped straight down the back by a subway door, and then fallen into the very kind (and very handsome) man who offers her his suit jacket, causing his hand to land on her ass.  And then she told him about the time she peed herself.  Good thing she'll never see him again!  Until their encounter goes viral and they end up on a morning talk show, of course.  Hayes and Franny couldn't be more different, but as life pushes them together over and over, they can't help but enjoy each other's company.  When life throws yet another curveball at Franny, will she be brave enough to trust in Hayes, and herself?

This was such a fun read, perfect for fans of Christina Lauren or Kate Clayborn.  Franny is fun and quirky without being "not like other girls," and Hayes is a true cinnamon roll, just so sweet and kind.  I wish we'd gotten to learn more about him and his background. 

There's a lot of B-plots to this book, and the last 15% is spent wrapping many of them up, some more successfully than others.  I'll also say that while I usually have no issues with a third-act breakup,

the one here between Franny and Hayes felt very forced -- I would have liked to see them work through the external pressure of her mom's heart attack together as the final test of their relationship

.

Overall, a really fun and fast read, the perfect thing to toss in your bag for a spring break trip!

Thank you Forever and NetGalley for the ARC.

CW:

Franny never knew her father and finds out he's deceased and she has a half sister.  Non-narrative character is pregnant, a parent has a heart attack and survives. 

After the death of her estranged mother, soon to be divorced Valentina Baker moves to London to take over the bookstore her mother left behind.  In a series of notes left as a scavenger hunt, Valentina gets to know her mother better - and the reader does too, in a dual timeline that lets the reader see exactly why Eloise abandoned young Valentina in the first place.

I was pretty disappointed by this book.  The characters were flat and stereotypical, and the writing fairly juvenile.  It definitely wasn't my taste, but I wouldn't not recommend it to someone looking for women's fiction set in London or about a librarian/bookseller.  

Thank you Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

infidelity, miscarriage, non-narrative character has lost a spouse and unborn child, death of a parent due to cancer, narrative character has cancer

jesus christ why did i wait so long to read this book.  perfection.

CW:

addiction, self-harm, alcohol & drug use, vomiting, injecting prescription drugs as prescribed, gun violence, narrative character was incarcerated (not remembered on-page)

Delilah Green has spent most of her adult life avoiding going back to her hometown of Bright Falls, Oregon -- it's full of bad memories and a stepsister and stepmother who hate her.  But her stepsister, Astrid, is getting married, and she's guilt tripped Delilah into taking the photos.  As soon as Delilah arrives, she's interested in one of Astrid's best friends, Claire Sutherland.  Claire's a single mom and business owner who hates a surprise, but Delilah seems like the best kind of one.  When tension - about the wedding, about Delilah's relationship with her family, about Delilah's relationship with Claire - hits a breaking point, will Delilah move on?  Or will she find that maybe, she does care?

My issues with this book were totally personal preference.  This is a fantastic romance debut, wonderfully written and well-paced, full of interesting characters.

The thing is, I really don't mesh well with characters like Delilah, and to a lesser extent Claire, characters who are really determined to assume the worst about people as a defense mechanism and who wield their individuality and independence like swords instead of shields.  It's self-sabotage to the max, how Delilah is absolutely shutting her eyes to efforts that Astrid has made through the years, telling herself her stepfamily despises her and then doing the best she can to live up to what she assumes are their low expectations of her. 

And Claire does the same thing, too - her daughter's father has been a flake in the past, but it's clear that he's trying hard now.  I'm not a parent, and I certainly have no experience in comforting a child who's been let down by a parent, but Claire is essentially sabotaging her daughter's relationship with her father.  It was really tough for me to have both characters constantly picking the worst case scenario available and acting as though that was the only possible option.  

I do really truly 100% recommend this book - I think it will be deservedly beloved by many people, and I'm really eager for Astrid's book.  I just... kind of hope Josh gets one too?  And I hope that future characters can treat themselves, their friends, and their romantic interests with a little more gentleness.

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

parental death (off-page, remembered), parental abandonment (off-page, remembered)

i'm a little concerned ali hazelwood can only write one plot.

("maddie," you say.  "it's more reylo fanfic, of course it's kind of similar to her other books."  and i hear you!  i do.  you raise an excellent point.  but i am concerned.)

mara is a sunshiney scientist whose waist can easily spanned by liam's hands, since he is a Redwood Of A Man.  he's a grumpy lawyer (lawyer!  not a scientist, so we get a little something new) who immediately fell head over heels in love with mara and is doing his best not to show it.

it's a good trope -- it's a great trope, even.  i just wonder if we'll ever get a plot that isn't enemies to lovers but secretly in love the whole time but the heroine has no idea and she's so tiny and cute and he's so big and broody.  and if we do, will i trust ali to do it right?  will i trust her to write even a normally-sized woman, let alone a plus-sized one?  will i trust her to write a heroine who maybe struggles with mental illness on the page and isn't quirky cute all the time?  will i trust her to write a hero who knows how to communicate?  i don't know.

but this is good.  it's cute, if you liked TLH you will inhale this.  *i* inhaled it, and i was just so-so on it and TLH.  LOTB remains my favorite.

i... did not enjoy this book.  friends to lovers is generally not my jam.  but this book seemed constructed on misogynistic "not like other girls" vibes and harry potter references.  y'all, this book was published in 2020.  the fact that the anonymous author of the harry potter series is a TERF is literally referenced in the book.  what if we... just didn't?  what if we stopped referencing someone who causes trans people pain every day?  and even if she wasn't a TERF, what if we found literally any other fucking reference to make to show us that the author is a millennial??????

On the eve of her 30th birthday, dating columnist Cleo Wilder is sent to a remote Irish island to "marry herself" for an article.  Her plans to reconnect with herself and maybe finish one of the many half-written novels on her laptop are interrupted by Mack Sullivan, a distant cousin of her rented cottage's owner.  He's retreated to the island of his ancestors in the midst of a tumultuous divorce to try and give his wife and sons space to process and heal.  Forced to spend at least a week together, the two initially clash at every turn.  But each night, in the safety of their dark and cozy cottage, they share three facts about themselves.  They're slowly falling in love with the island, and with each other, but will they be able to move on when the holiday is over?

This is my first Josie Silver -- her other two books lean a little too sad for me -- and I can absolutely see why so many people love her work.  She's a wonderful writer, and this book balances the feels and the laughs really well.  Cleo and Mack are two interesting and (fairly) mature leads, and the island is populated with a lot of really lovely characters.

ONOTI had me bad decisions book clubbing hard, keeping me up until 12:45 on a weeknight, but I just couldn't put it down.  I wasn't sure if this would turn out to be a romance novel or just women's fiction with a strong romantic subplot, and I was dying to see how it all came together.  In the end, it is a romance novel, but I found the HEA a little unsatisfying.  For me, it was more of an HFN that could have been fleshed out in a paragraph or two more to really make it convincing.  I'm subtracting a star because the end left me wanting just a bit more, but it was a really, really delightful read.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

deceased parent (off-page, remembered), parental infidelity (off-page, remembered), divorce, non-narrative side character is pregnant, another non-narrative side character dies

 

CW: sexual activity, non-monogamy, incest, bestiality

This book is grounded in a series of columns the author wrote for New York Magazine exploring human behavior, particularly people in unconventional, uncommon, or taboo sexual or romantic relationships.  Tsoulis-Reay expands on those columns, sometimes revisiting the people featured or detailing more about her experiences writing them.  It's meant to showcase the ways in which people connect and find community, and while she certainly proves people can find an in-group for almost anything, I'm not sure that she really succeeds at endearing some of these characters to us anymore. 

There are five (quite long) chapters -- consensual non-monogamy, age-gap relationships, asexuality/aromanticism, genetic sexual attraction, and bestiality.   Clearly some of these relationships are more taboo than others, and Tsoulis-Reay does her best to present the content without a lot of judgment.  But it still feels like we're less hearing their stories and more hearing her experience of the people she interviewed.  She's a clear intermediary between the reader and the subjects, and I just don't think it really works.

A huge strong point for the book is the work Tsoulis-Reay did in investigating the origins of the online communities where these groups of people started to connect with each other.  As someone who spent a lot of time on Tumblr in the 2000s and early 2010s, I remember watching people gain the vocabulary they needed to identify themselves there, and I understand the power of an online group of friends who make you feel like whatever you're feeling is normal.  The parts where she's talking about the early Internet (and even activists who came before it) were the most interesting to me.

This book wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, and it's not one I'd recommend to everyone.  But for those interested in the history of community-building online, this could be a really good fit.

Thank you St. Martins and NetGalley for the ARC!

What a super delightful sleeper hit!

Sadie Green is eagerly anticipating a promotion she's spent years working for, sacrificing holidays, weekends, and her dating life -- and then it goes to her boss's new son-in-law.  And when she (maybe a bit forcefully) expresses her displeasure, she's not just out a promotion, she's out a job.  At a happy hour with friends, Sadie realizes two things: she wants to date, and she's going to need to move out of her apartment and get a roommate.  In the haze of several margaritas, she thinks she's set up a coffee date for the next day, but what she's actually done is set up a meeting with a potential landlord, the shy, gorgeous, emotionally unavailable Jack Thomas.  The two strangers-turned-roomies are total opposites, but each one encourages the other to chase dreams they'd thought long abandoned, but will they be brave enough to make a leap into love together?

After seeing a few other people say this book had been a surprise hit for them, I don't know why I was surprised that I enjoyed it so much.  Jack is definitely the breakout character here:  he's a warm and gooey cinnamon roll, a man who just wants to love and support Sadie.  He starts out pretty closed off (physically and emotionally), but recognizes that if he wants to be in a relationship with her, he's going to have to make himself vulnerable.  We love a man who has been in therapy for years and can communicate and apologize well.

Sadie feels like three shots of espresso in a fun way.  Her arc to me was a little less convincing -- she talks a lot about spending time and money on therapy and hasn't been in a while, but the way she talks to herself without ever challenging the negative feelings didn't seem like the coping strategy of someone who'd spent years in therapy.  Still, she's fun and kind and fairly self-aware.

If I were five years younger I don't know if I'd have loved this as much - it has big millennial energy - but it's a fun, smart, slow-burn read.  I'll be watching Ballard to see what comes next!

Thank you Penguin & NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

sexism, parents deceased in an accident, narcissistic parent, emotional and verbal abuse from a narcissistic parent (off-page, remembered), copious alcohol consumption, sex on the page