Welcome to the second iteration of my Recent Reads segment for our first month of 2020. As a reminder, this is a way for me to aggregate the books I’ve read for the month.
So my goal for the year is to read 52 books. Hopefully with that I’ll get about 5 books completed a month. At the end of the year, I'll rank everything that I've read and provide a top 10 list of the year, but we've got a long way to go for that.
I'll go through the books I've read based on the Star Rating that I've given them. All links are affiliate links that will help me to run this blog but I will only offer affiliate links for books that I've rated 3+ stars, as those are the only books that I would recommend to my readers.
When I am talking through my star ratings, this is what I'm using as a scale. A quick reminder, just because I don't love something, doesn't mean that it is a bad book. If it is your fav, that is totally okay!
5 Stars: I absolutely loved it
4 Stars: I really liked it
3 Stars: I liked it
2 Stars: It was okay
1 Star: I disliked it, or I did not finish
5 Stars
- Red, White and Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston. I loved this book. I heard a lot of people who really enjoyed it, and I had truly never read any M/M Romances before so I didn't know what to expect. But I absolutely loved the story. Alex is the son of the first female president of the United States, and Henry is the second son of England's Royal Family. Henry has been gay for as long has he's been aware, but Alex is still struggling to figure out his sexuality. Alex has also always hated Henry, because the first time that they met, Henry was a straight up jerk to him, so when they see each other at Henry's brother's wedding, chaos ensues. In order to save face, the President and the Royal Family send the two of them together to fake a friendship and their relationship forms from there. I won't give too much away, but I would definitely recommend this, whether you're a fan of YA, Romance, or just a good, enjoyable read. Purchase the book at this LINK.
4 Stars
- Hurry Home - Roz Nay. The first chapter of this book was tough and I thought I wasn’t going to like it. But as soon as I started to get through it I sped through it because it was so good. It starts with Alex, who is a CPS officer and her boyfriend Chase. And then Suddenly Alex’s sister who she hasn’t seen in 10 years shows up to say she’s pregnant with no explanation. As the story goes on, you see how Alex handles her long lost sister and why they haven’t spoken to each other. As well as a case that she has been handling beginning in the first chapter. It's an interesting story that explores how far people will go to protect someone, or something.
- Elevator Pitch - Linwood Barclay. I enjoyed this book but I couldn't give it 5 stars because generally when I read books I want to enjoy them in the vacuum of the story that I read. And Elevator Pitch hit entirely too close to home for me. The story begins on a Monday, when four people board an elevator in a Manhattan office tower. Each presses a button for their floor, but the elevator proceeds, non-stop, to the top. Once there, it stops for a few seconds, and then plummets. And while it's initially thought of as a fluke, for the rest of the week there are other elevator accidents...so clearly it is. So for someone who lives in NYC, where this is something that could conceivably happen I didn't love that aspect of it. I don't want to be on an elevator in the middle of the city worried about something I read. But overall, I really enjoyed the book. It was a mystery that you didn't figure out until the end and kept you engaged.
3 Stars
- Someone We Know - Shari Lapena. While this wasn’t my favorite thriller I have ever read, I did enjoy this. It comes from the author of The Couple Next Door and surrounds the couples who live in an Upstate NY neighborhood when one of them is found dead, and more than one of the males on the street have had affairs with the dead woman.
- The Furies - Katie Lowe. I originally received this book as an ARC from NetGalley and didn’t finish it in time. So when it as released, I got it from my Library. While it wasn’t a bad book, it wasn’t the book I was ever really reaching for when I had to choose one of the ones on my currently reading shelf to continue reading. The other thing I didn't love about this book was the fact that I didn't feel as if it lived up to the description that I was looking for.
- The Widow - Fiona Barton. I tried to pick up this book multiple times and I never got to it and I have to say now I understand why. This book is told from multiple points of view regarding a woman whose husband died, and how it was ultimately related to the disappearance of a little girl named Bella.
Love from NYC!
Celia
