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*possible spoilers ahead*

finished The Unhoneymooners in just under two days! i was super skeptical going into this because i have tried reading two Christina Lauren books and DNF’d both of them :( but i actually enjoyed this one! i found the characters to be more likable than the other two i had tried reading.

i ended up giving this three stars - and i’m trying to hold steady with that! i have a bad habit of giving books however many stars as soon as i’m done and then a few days go by and i drop the rating one or two stars. i am hoping that’s not what happens here, but who knows. my reasons for three stars and not higher : 1) i did not want the stuff about Dane to be true; i know Ami wasn’t that prominent of a character, but i still wanted her to have a happy ending; i knew there was going to have to be conflict between Ethan and Olive, but i just hoped it would be something else; 2) which leads me to say - Ethan and Dane are still brothers so wouldn’t Olive still have to be kind of involved in his life? when Ami and Dane got married, Olive was like ‘well, i’ll still have to see Ethan so...’ but then when Ami and Dane split and Ethan and Olive got together, there was nothing about Dane; just a weird dynamic; 3) this might just be me but i NEED for enemies to lovers to be a deeper level. Ethan and Olive just annoyed each other. i need fiery, passionate hatred! or for it to go on longer...which maybe means i need to read series books, but ugh. i can’t be bothered with that at the moment.

anyway, that’s it! not a terrible read. it was cute at times, made me smile, and was super fast-paced and easy to read. it definitely made me reconsider my feelings toward Christina Lauren (just a little...)

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[the-loverslibrary]

trying to get into the feeling of fall (while it is still unbelievably hot outside). to be honest, i’ve been in a bit of a reading slump for the past few weeks. i’ve chalked it up to it just being way too hot outside to feel comfortable doing anything besides laying in bed and watching tv. but more recently, i’ve pushed myself to start reading again, and i just finished This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Topper a few days ago. let me start by saying that i have had this book on my to-be-read list since 2014, i think. but i just now got around to reading it and....ugh, not what i wanted, at all! the story was set up like it would be interesting. i am a sucker for a family drama, and the idea of all the siblings sitting shiva after not having been together for a while - ugh, this could get good. but it never went where i wanted it to go. there wasn’t that much character development. i started to hate Judd, the main character, by the end of it. also, the physical descriptions of many of the characters, especially the women, UGH. i wanted to throw up. the entire focus of every woman in the book was on their physical attributes, and just....gross. i hated it.

i ended up giving this 2 stars because there were parts that i found funny, it was a fairly easy, fast-paced book, AND jason bateman was on the cover. i enjoyed that part the most. 

follow me on instagram! @/theloverslibrary

[the-loverslibrary]

i read Mexican Gothic recently, as well! this was another book i had seen EVERYWHERE and i think it won the 2020 Goodreads Choice for horror! i’m a super fan of anything horror so i was so excited to finally read this! and, this was another that turned out to be a sort of let down for me! :( i don’t think i’m too familiar with the gothic genre. and if i recall any gothic book i’ve read before this, i think i felt the same way: it wasn’t scary. creepy? oh, yes. spooky? yep. but scary? no, not in the way that i want it to be! old houses with creaks and cobwebs set the mood, but i need more! not even the golden ghost woman could scare me.  but again i’ll say, this isn’t a bad book! it’s actual decent. the descriptions are well done, and it was very easy to get through. i did enjoy the backstory behind the Doyles. but once everything started getting revealed, i did get a little confused as to the whole plot. but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. so, yes, i give this three out of five because the story is good. the writing is decent. the characters are...well. i loved francis. everyone else kind of just annoyed me, but that’s not the author’s fault! just the way it is.

[the-loverslibrary]

time for a book that i felt totally lived up to the hype! Daisy Jones & The Six was such a fun, easy read for me. this was the first book i’ve read by Taylor Jenkins Reid and i’m now scrambling to read absolutely everything else she’s ever written. i thought the journalistic format for this book was SO good. i was afraid that it might be a little bit hard to follow along with, but not at all. i still got a good sense of the characters through just the little blurbs. i’m also going to say that i think i loved this book so much because it reminded me SO much of Fleetwood Mac. so much so that i closed the book after the last page and googled to see if she had taken inspiration from Fleetwood Mac and she had! this made the book so much more meaningful for me. i gave this one an easy 4 out of 5 stars. and i think i’ll probably end up checking out the television series when it comes out too! 

Follow my bookstagram! @/theloverslibrary

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i’ve been reading so much lately that i can’t find the time to post in between books! so i will start with this one that i finished about a week ago. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was one of my most anticipated reads. i’m not kidding when i say i would stare at this book at Barnes and Noble or walk around with it in my hand, ready to purchase, but inevitably put it back. i could not wait to get my hands on this book! but i ended up feeling kind of...let down. disappointed. this book wasn’t what i wanted it to be, which i’m not even sure what i wanted it to be, but i didn’t get to the end and think “that was one of the best books i’ve read this year.” instead i felt more like, ‘okay. well. it’s over.’  Ocean Vuong writes beautifully. there were so many different parts and pieces in this book that i wrote down to remember later. many parts that made me wish i could write as wonderfully. but the overall story, well, maybe it just wasn’t meant for me. or maybe i flew through this book too fast to really enjoy each page. i’m not sure. it is a very intense, heavy, emotional book that deals with so many different topics, but like i said, maybe it’s not a book meant for me. i do want to read some of Vuong’s poetry, though, and see how i like it. overall, three out of five stars.

follow my bookstagram: @/theloverslibrary

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part of my reading-the-classics-2021. Slaughterhouse-Five was a lot better than i thought it would be. Kurt Vonnegut proved to be a really interesting writer, and i do want to read more of his work now that i’ve finished this.  this story was written in chunks, and bounces back and forth between different time periods. during one instance Billy Pilgrim, the main character, is a prisoner of war, and then he time travels to many years in the future where he is a specimen on the planet Tralfamadore. even with all this bouncing around through different parts of Billy’s life, it’s not hard to understand what is going on.  i do want to read more Vonnegut in the future, and i think this was a great place to start to get an understanding of what kind of writer he is. i gave this one four stars.

[the-loverslibrary]

i honestly don’t even know what to say about All the Light We Cannot See. it was SO, SO good. set during World War II, you follow along with two children: Werner and Marie Laure, as they make their way through their changing lives. the chapters alternate perspectives between the two, moving from the time they are very young (maybe 8 or 9) until they are teenagers. through each perspective, you see how the war affects their life and the lives of the people around them.  what i loved most was the descriptions, the information that Doerr provided about everything; from transistor radios, jewels, birds - every sentence felt like it provided so much depth. and the characters! every single character was so important to the story, and seeing how each character was affected by the war and how they changed over the years brought so much to the story. the ending of the story did break my heart, but i feel like that comes with the territory when you read about world war ii. overall, this book instantly became a new favorite. i had borrowed it from the library and went out to buy my own copy the next day, it was that good. even while holding at the bookstore, an employee remarked how good this book was. an instant five stars.

[the-loverslibrary]

i recently read The Switch by Beth O’Leary. this was so freakin cute! before i started, i was hesitant about reading from the perspective of a 79 year old woman - i don’t think there’s a book i’ve read that had a character of that age. but oh my gosh, i loved it. each character in this book brought something to the story, and i thought they were pretty well developed. i read The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary a couple months ago, and one of my problems with that book was that the relationship, once it was introduced, moved a little too fast for my taste. but this had a perfect amount of pacing for the main relationships!  this book was cute, funny at times, made me smile. it took me about 2 days to finish, so not very hard to get through. i’d give this book a 4 out of 5, and i so look forward to reading The Roadtrip by Beth O’Leary next. hopefully it’s just as good!

[the-loverslibrary]

made a bookstagram! It’s “theloverslibrary” - i’m still going to be using this tumblr to go a little bit more in-depth talking about the books i’ve read. i’d be so happy if anyone followed me!

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my second popular-book-July read. i had read and seen this one floating around SO much on goodreads, tiktok, everywhere. there was a waitlist at my local library of about 15 people. Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston turned out to be really good, so i am glad that i picked it up!  the story is very cute, can get kind of smutty at times, and is paced really well. the only struggle i had was trying to figure out how much time had passed between different events, but it wasn’t something that made the story unreadable. may have been something only i experienced! overall, definitely worth the hype, in my opinion. i ended up giving it 4 out of 5 stars because i did think it was really cute and a feel-good story. another story with LGBT+ representation as well! 

[the-loverslibrary]

decided that july would be the month that i try and read all the books that are popular on tiktok and goodreads. so i started with They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. i was really looking forward to this one because i am a sucker for a sad book (or anything that promises to make me cry, really). 

however, this book wasn’t really what i was searching for. maybe i’m too far removed from the intended audience age. maybe i haven’t read enough books that have an ‘insta-love’ relationship. i’m not 100% sure why this book didn’t become a favorite. was it sad? yes, of course. did i cry? not really - i teared up at a few parts.  is it a good story? sure, in some ways. i liked some of the details of the book, such as the Last Friend app and the travel place. i enjoyed how you sometimes got to see snippets of the lives of the people around Mateo and Rufus. but i also found some parts to be kind of dragging. and i guess i also went into this book thinking that...they would just die at the end. nothing kills them, they sort of just deflate at midnight. imagine my surprise when i find out that something actually has to kill them. so now i spend the entire book going: “okay, what’s it going to be?” and kind of...speed reading because i just had to find out. and i’m not sure which way i would have preferred. maybe the former. all in all, this book got a three stars out of five from me. it is kind of a sweet relationship (even though i am not a fan of how quickly the relationship seemed to be moving). it’s sad in its own way. and it’s fairly easy to get through. i finished it in just under a day. also, some LGBT+ representation!

[the-loverslibrary]

finished up a collection of short stories gathered by Haruki Murakami today, on my 28th birthday. for the past two weeks, i’ve read one story a day, and ended with this one - Birthday Girl by Haruki Murakami. each story was written by a different author, and they all had something to do with birthdays. this was a fun collection, some favorites of mine were: Forever Overhead by David Foster Wallace, The Bath by Raymond Carver, Close to the Water’s Edge by Claire Keegan, and Ride by Lewis Robinson. of course, i enjoyed Murakami’s story, but i had read it before previously in another short story collection. overall, i’d give this collection 3 stars!

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i read One of Us is Next by Karen M McManus in less than 24 hours! this is a follow-up to the book One of Us is Lying. this is a YA mystery, which before going into One of Us is Lying, i wasn’t sure i would like, but i think McManus does a superb job at writing mysteries for teens. just a warning, there may be quite a few triggers in One of Us is Next, so before you begin reading, you may want to check them out.

as for the story itself, we pick up about a year and a half after One of Us is Lying, with a sort of new cast of characters. the original characters from One of Us is Lying still show up quite a bit, but they are now moved on and graduated, and instead we are following one of the four’s little sister, Maeve and her group of friends. i think McManus did a really good job of fleshing out these characters and giving them background. usually when i read a book that jumps POVs, i have a hard time keeping up, but One of Us is Next made it very simple to understand what was going on.

the mystery itself was pretty good, in my opinion. i really had no idea who was behind the mystery (until it became glaringly obvious, even though the characters hadn’t figured it out yet), but then! the last few pages has another twist that i didn’t see coming, which was great, considering how i’m never surprised by a twist. (side note: i don’t think the twist at the end was necessary, unless there’s going to be another book after this one that continues with the story. otherwise, it’s kind of just thrown in there, very randomly.) overall, i think this is a fun, little read that doesn’t take much time to read. i enjoyed the first book just the same, so if there is a third one, i’ll probably end up reading that!

[the-loverslibrary]

Ask Again, Yes is a book that i can’t remember why i picked up. i don’t know if its because i kept seeing it in the bookstore, or on goodreads, or maybe i picked it up because i liked the title (i do think it’s an interesting title). reading the summary of the book, i felt unsure if it would be one that i would get into, so i held my breath throughout much of the first part of the book, ready to be let down.

instead, i did not end up getting let down by this book. Ask Again, Yes spans decades, and we follow the lives of two families that go through one, horrible night together, and then follow how this night has affected them, even years and years after the fact. 

the reason i enjoyed this book so much was because this is what i’m looking for when i’m looking for a family drama; we see how the events of a horrible night affects many different family members, not just the two main characters that we follow from childhood. but then we also see how, even before the horrible night, how different events from the past can affect members of our family down the line. 

there’s a lot of loss, love, grief, happiness, acceptance, and sadness in the pages of this book. i read, in one review, that this would make a perfect book club book, and i think they’re right. this book was not hard to get into, nor was it hard to read, but there are quite a few triggers in this book, so you may want to look into those before you begin reading. overall, i gave this book a four out of five stars.

[the-loverslibrary]

i finally finished my second reading of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. the first time i read this book, about 6 years ago, i felt like i was left hanging by the story. back then, i believe i had only read one or two murakami novels before, and neither of them were anything like this one. so, i felt captured, enamored, but confused, because i couldn’t make sense of what murakami was trying to get across in this novel. but i knew i liked it just the same.

in the past six years since then, i’ve read many, many more murakami novels. i’ve learned how to read them and take what i need from them, and then learned how to come back to them again and take a little more after the next reading. he is my favorite author, and i could talk about him all day long.

so, during my second reading of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, i felt that same draw toward murakami that i always feel, and that i know i felt the first time i read this book. this book is a puzzle, one that takes a while to put together. i don’t think there’s one character in this book that doesn’t leave a lasting impression. there are so many different scenes in this book that, even after six years, i still thought about them and talked about them regularly, and getting to read them again was such a thrill because they’re still so good. 

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is full of magical realism, and going into it, you have to accept that fact. there are some things that will never be answered, but there are many others that will, if you look closely. many say if you’ve never read murakami, this is where you should start, but i’m not sure about that. (i think Kafka On the Shore would be better suited for a first timer) if you have read murakami, but not this book, i’d pick it up immediately and get ready for a ride. this is a five star book, in my opinion.

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a small collection of books that i’ve read and finished over the past two weeks! A Farewell to Arms was...okay. not bad, but a lot of war and just a book that i wanted to read as i had it on my “classics tbr” list for this year. would i read it again? probably not, but i do think i’ll read another hemingway sometime in the future. i ended up giving it two stars. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was wonderful, and instantly became one of my favorite shakespeare plays that i’ve read! it had such a dreamy, airy feel to it and was very easy to get through. i loved it and am so excited that there is a production of it going on later this summer in my town. five out of five!  lastly, i finished Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. this was a five out of five for me, as well, easily. the writing was beautiful, perfectly descriptive without going overboard into ‘boring’ territory, and the story gripped me so much. i found myself brought to tears quite a few times over the love and grief that this family faced. i’m a lover of shakespeare, so this was just...right up my alley, and i’d recommend it to anyone who likes shakespeare, too. or if you just like really good books!

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**Possible Spoilers**

tw: suicide 

I finished The Midnight Library by Matt Haig! I was super, super excited to read this, and unfortunately, I feel a little let down. I had read and heard so much about this book being one of the best from last year, and to me, it just didn’t feel like it lived up to its potential. I wasn’t too impressed with the writing; the storyline was fine, but nothing to go crazy over; and the ending was okay, I just wished for something more. In fact, while I was reading, I thought about how this book could be better. Which isn’t the best thing to think about while reading. 

All in all, I’d give this a two and a half out of five stars, perhaps rounding up instead of down. It’s not a terrible story, and it’s not terribly hard to get through. But there are a lot of mentions of suicide, which I didn’t realize before starting, and the entirety does leave something to be desired.