Recent Reads: February 2020

Hi Guys -

Welcome back to recent reads. I know I've been a little distant over the past couple of weeks on here because I was studying for the LSATs but figured I'd get back in one of my favorite things! As I mentioned, I was taking the LSATs on 2/22, so I didn't do as much reading this month. If you guys are interested in hearing my feelings on the LSATs let me know.

Just as a reminder, here is the star scale that I go by.

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

5 Stars

• Lock Every Door - Riley Sager. This books was recommended to me by @booksandlala on YouTube. I am always looking for a thriller and this one really hit the spot. I actually finished it in 2 days it was so good. The one thing I have to say I liked about this thriller was that it actually surprised me. A lot of thrillers don't necessarily keep you guessing until the end  (you can usually figure it out somewhere along the way) and this one absolutely did not. So Jules is dead broke (welcome to NYC, where we're all semi broke) and she sees an ad for a house sitter in an Upper West Side Apartment. But when she gets there she finds out that there are a ton of rules, No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. But Jules meets Ingrid, one of the other house sitters. And then the next day Ingrid is missing. It's a gripping story that kept me intrigued until the very last page

4 Stars

• The Broken Girls - Simone St. James. This one was weird, it was a thriller, but was also paranormal, but also told in more than one timeframe. Fiona's sister was found murdered on the ground of Idelwild Hall. And now they want to rebuild it. You also hear from a group of 4 students who are currently students at Idelwild in the early 1950s. I really enjoyed this book, but it wasn't quite a 5 star for me. 

3 Stars 

• The Other Mrs. Miller - Phoebe Miller is a recluse. She isn't happy with herself, or her life and spends her days looking at the car that consistently sits on her block. But that all changes when a new family moves in across the street. And she becomes more focused on the new family, and not the car that sits on her block. I liked this book, but it wasn't the page turner that the other two were for me. I liked it, but I don't expect that I'd recommend it to anyone. 

I didn't have any 2 star books or 1 star books. I did have one book that I decided not to finish, and that is called the Andalucian Friend. It was a book that based on the description (The Sopranos meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) I thought I was going to love. I tried both the physical book and the audio and I just couldn't do it.

Looking forward to hopefully getting a chance to read a bit more in March (I have like 5 I've started).

Love from NYC!
Celia

Recent Reads : January 2020

Hey Guys!

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. 

2 Stars

• 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. 

1 Star 

Love from NYC!
Celia

Recent Reads: December 2019

Hey guys! Happy New Year to all of you.

After doing my first two book review blog posts I realized that there was probably a better way to aggregate all of the books that I read over a specific month. I read a ton and have currently read 50 books this year so if I chose to review every single book on this blog, I think that’s the only content you guys would get. So here is my first post of the books I recently read during the month of December.

I generally read over 4 mediums, so it means I am reading a bunch of books at any given time. If you guys are interested I can talk about which I use, and my preferences towards them.

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

• There was nothing this month that I absolutely loved. Maybe next month. 

4 Stars

• Complete Me - Geneva Lee. This is the last book in the Royal's Saga by Geneva Lee. It brings you back to Alexander and Clara as well as Belle and Smith. It turns out that Alexander has a family secret and he has to figure out how to handle it both personally, as well as with his wife all before Christmas. It felt very apropos to read this in December as it did have a Christmas Feel to it. I enjoyed all of the other books in this series, and while it took me a while to get to this one, I felt like it was something I felt more of an obligation to read than a real desire. but I'm ultimately glad I did. I really enjoyed it and rushed through the book if only to see what happened at the end. The only thing I didn't love was how the book ended and that would be the reason why I didn't give it 5 stars. While it tied up all of the loose ends, I felt like it ended in a way that would potentially lead to more novels in the series, but the series is also supposed to be over. Purchase this here on Amazon. 

3 Stars

• Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng. Review Here
• Twisted Twenty Six - Janet Evanovich. Review Here
• The Lucky One - Lori Rader Day. This was an advanced release that I got from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. It follows Alice who was kidnapped as a child and works on a website called the Doe pages which helps to find missing persons, and Merrilly, who is trying to figure out where her mom’s mysterious ex-boyfriend has gone. Their relationships are interconnected and this story shows how, while exploring each one’s individual lives. I liked the way that they tied everything up at the end, but I didn't love the story. I felt as if it had parts for me that were a bit confusing for me to want to enjoy it. And I think it didn’t help that we were jumping back and forth between Merrilly and Alice. 

Christmas reading (and basketball)

2 Stars

• Wild Game - Adrienne Brodeur. I have to say I expected to enjoy this book more than I did. Based on the description I felt like it was something that was going to be fast paced and exciting. And knowing what the concept of what was happening in the story I felt like that should have been the case (the author was an accomplice in helping her mother cover up a long affair). But in a way it felt like more of a story that someone you know was telling you. I was kind of disconnected from the get go and felt myself struggling to connect with the characters.  Even more so since the story is told in a vein that causes you to have very strong opinions on the author’s mother and could even potentially cause you to feel frustration with the author and her behavior throughout the story. Thankfully it was a quick read and I was able to get through it quickly because I feel like if it was longer, it could have quickly turned into something that I ultimately trudged through or DNF’ed. I'm not a memoir person to begin with, so this memoir did not really drive me to read more. 

1 Star - Thankfully I didn’t have any of these! 

Happy New Year and Love from NYC!
Celia