Tag: Linda Holmes

Mini-Reviews: July Reads

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

I’ll be honest, parts of this book were really confusing for me. I’m not entirely sure what the Haberson map was all about. And the ending was a tad fuzzy for me as well.

With that being said, Shepherd is a good writer and the flashback scenes were really great. I didn’t LOVE Nell and it’s always hard for me when I can’t really connect to a main character. But I thought the other characters were fine.

I was really anticipating this book, but overall it was just okay for me. 3/5

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It was a little boring at times and I had a hard time relating to Laurie in general. I liked the heisty bits, but that really wasn’t very much of the story. I would have liked more of Laurie’s brothers maybe? More of her immediate family? I don’t know. It just didn’t feel totally well-rounded to me, though I did appreciate Laurie’s journey of self-discovery. 3/5

Love at First by Kate Claybourn

Light and easy with a fun cast of secondary characters. I thought this book had a good amount of depth with our main characters without getting too heavy. I enjoyed both Will and Nora as characters as well. 4/5

Counterfeit by Kristin Chen

This book was written in a unique way and I didn’t always enjoy it. I didn’t like the main characters and couldn’t relate to any of the decisions they made. As a young Chinese American mother myself, I expected to relate to Ava more, but I just didn’t. At all. I feel like the plot itself could have been written in a more suspenseful way. Overall, I just feel pretty disappointed in this one. 2.5/5

The Bodyguard by Katherine Center

TO NO ONE’S SURPRISE, I LOVED THIS BOOK. Anyway, it had just the right amount of romance while also balancing the Stapleton’s family dynamic and Hannah’s past. I liked the other members of the Protection Agency as secondary characters. The ending genuinely took me by surprise and I wondered how the author was going to explain it, but everything made sense in the end. I thought the pacing was great. We got enough time with the main characters without feeling like the story was dragging. Overall, if you’re a fan of celebrity romances, this should definitely go on your list! And if you’re not, this is still a fun book! 5/5

Daughter of Sparta by Claire Andrews

It was just kind of hard for me to buy Daphne as the savior of Olympus. Every single time she fought someone, she was always “barely” getting out of the way of a fist or sword or whatever. Her fighting skills just didn’t seem that impressive and the reader wasn’t let in on her thoughts or strategy most of the time. So in the end, it feels like our heroine just happens to win a bunch of fights. Also, the romance with Apollo is just not it. 3/5

14 Best Book Deals for 12/9/20: What the Wind Knows, The Afterlife of Holly Chase, Evvie Drake Starts Over, and more

Book Deals
As of this posting, all of these deals are active, but I don’t know for how long!
Less than $1

I Hate You, Fuller James by Kelly Anne Blount

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Less than $2

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon

Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles

The Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties by Camille Pagan

The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand

The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Less than $3

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski

All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Recommended from this post:

November 2020 Wrap-Up/TBR Update


This month I officially leaned way into reading romance. It’s the only thing that I’ve been able to get through lately. I’ve enjoyed reading other books, but they seem to take me way longer than usual. So yeah! Lots of romance this month.

monthly tbr

Also read/reading:

Books finished this month: 10, 1 DNF
Books currently reading: 1

Overall TBR:

TBR at the beginning of the year = 296
TBR at the beginning of November = 325
Books added to TBR = 7
Books read/deleted from TBR = 1
Total on TBR now = 331

How did your reading go this month?

Romance Mini-Reviews

Lately I feel like I’ve been having a tough time getting through books. Even books that I’m enjoying, it seems like it takes me weeks instead of days to complete them. The only exception being romances. I’m not sure why, but I can zip through a romance in a couple of days while every other genre is a slog and this month I just decided to lean into that all the way. So without further ado, here are mini-reviews for some of the romances I’ve read this month so far.

mini-reviews

Billy & Me by Giovanna Fletcher

This book was fine. The writing seemed a bit immature at times and I thought Sophie and Billy’s relationship developed REALLY fast. I didn’t love that the conclusion seemed to be that a compromise between their careers wasn’t possible. But on another note, seeing as how Gi is married to Tom Fletcher from the British band McFly, it makes me really wonder how much of Sophie’s experiences here are autobiographical. The press and people on social media can really be terrible—it’s disgusting. 3/5

Order: Hardcover | Paperback | eBook

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore

Coming off of watching Enola Holmes on Netflix, it was interesting to learn a little more about women’s suffrage in England. I liked that the romance didn’t get bogged down by the history and vice versa. I’m not going to pretend like the love story between our main characters was super realistic, but it was still enjoyable. I thought they were both pretty good characters. Let’s get Hattie her own book though, mmmkay? 4/5

Order: Paperback | eBook

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

I thought this book was so sweet and was exactly what I needed right now. I liked Evvie as a character a lot and her relationship with Dean seemed to progress at a good pace. I like that they had adult conversations and there were no angsty misunderstandings. I liked the ending too! I felt like it was realistic but still sweet. Lastly, I just wanted to say that I feel Monica is extremely underrated as a character. Her friendship with Evvie was really great and she just seemed like an awesome woman in general. 4/5

Order: Hardcover | Paperback | eBook

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

This book was surprisingly funny. I thought the narrator’s voice was super cheeky and really added to the story, though I don’t know that I would want to read a million books like that. Nina was equal parts charming and infuriating as a protagonist. She made quite a few decisions that I wouldn’t have, but then some decisions that I really liked as well. Overall, I liked the combination of her having to deal with her father’s death/inheritance/new family and figuring out how she felt about Tom. It gave the story more dimension to kind of have two different storylines going on at the same time. 4/5

Order: Paperback | eBook

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

I really liked this book! It took a little while to really get going, but I think that eventually ended up being really important in understanding who Laurie is as a character. Jamie as a love interest was a little too perfect at times, but I still liked him and the scenes of him and Laurie together just talking were always really fun. While this book is ultimately a romance, I appreciated how it talks about some heavier themes and specifically about being mixed race. As a mixed race person myself, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gotten the, “Where are you from?” question. Born in America same as you random white person, thanks. And like…why do you even care? Does my heritage change anything about our relationship? Anyway…bit of a triggering topic for me I guess, but there you have it. 4/5

Order: Paperback | eBook