To Read or Not To Read

There are so many words to describe this novel: beautiful, devastating, heart-wrenching, and haunting. Alice Winn's debut In Memoriam  is a brand new look on WWI, and I know for a fact that the characters won't easily leave my mind. A definite must-read, this will absolutely be a book I highly recommend for years to come. Alice Winn grew up in Paris and was educated in the U.K. She has a degree in English literature from Oxford University. She lives in Brooklyn. You can find her online at AliceWinn.com or on Instagram @alicewinnauthor.  It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting. Gaunt, half-German, is busy fighting his own private battle—an all-consum...

In this well-crafted and captivating thriller, Eleanor Catton takes the best elements of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Austen's writing style and makes her own unique story of surveillance, environmentalism, and activism. Uniquely structured and incredibly well-written, Birnam Wood is one that, once you get into it, you won't want to put down.  Eleanor Catton is the author of the international bestseller The Luminaries , winner of the Man Booker Prize and a Governor General's Literary Award. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal , won the Betty Trask Award, was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize. She is also the screenwriter of Emma , a 2020 feature film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she now lives in Cambridge, England.  A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable f...

Alex Landragin's inquisitively imaginative debut novel Crossings is definitely worth the read. Twisty in more ways than one, genre-bending, and thought-provoking all around, Crossings is a magnetic read, and one that I won't stop thinking about for a long time to come.  Alex Landragin is a French Armenian Australian writer. Currently based in Melbourne, Australia, he has also resided in Paris, Marseille, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Charlottesville. He has previously worked as a librarian, an indigenous community worker, and an author of Lonely Planet travel guides in Australia, Europe, and Africa. Alex holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Melbourne and occasionally performs early jazz piano under the moniker Tenderloin Stomp. Crossings is his debut novel.  Soon after a Parisian bookbinder is tasked with binding a manuscript called Crossings for a reputed bibliophile, he learns his client has been murdered. He believes the crime is connected to the manuscri...

Reading this book felt like curling up with a bowl of popcorn to watch my favorite rom-coms. Which is to say, I absolutely adored From Hollywood with Love . Meslow champions and critiques our favorite rom-coms and the behemoth of Hollywood that creates them, as a way to overall celebrate the genre of film that we most love to enjoy.  Scott Meslow is a senior editor at The Week magazine and a writer and critic for publications including GQ, New York magazine, and The Atlantic . From Hollywood with Love is his first book.  No Hollywood genre has been more misunderstood—or more unfairly under-appreciated—than the romantic comedy. Funny, charming, and reliably crowd-pleasing, rom-coms were the essential backbone of the Hollywood landscape, launching the careers of many of Hollywood's most talented actors and filmmakers, such as Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey, and providing many of the yet limited creative opportunities women had in Hollywood. But despite—or perhaps because ...

Insanely fun and full of twists, Christina Lauren's Something Wilder is definitely something wilder—especially if you're familiar with some of their previous contemporary romances. A sweet second chance romance, Something Wilder is a thrilling outdoor adventure about family, missed connections, and true friendship.  Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times , USA Today , and #1 internationally bestselling authors of twenty-eight books, including the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, The Unhoneymooners , Twice in a Blue Moon , Love and Other Words , In a Holidaze , and The Soulmate Equation . Find them at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work here .  Growing up the daughter of notorious—and notoriously absent —treasure hunter Duke Wilder left Lily without much patience for the profession . . . or much money in the bank....

I waited forever to find the beautiful new cover of My Favorite Half-Night Stand  before reading it, and it was well worth the wait! A friends to lovers narrative that features some very fun in-text designs and a dive into the online dating scene, Millie's and Reid's story is so fun and agonizing as they find their way to one another.  Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the  New York Times ,  USA Today , and #1 internationally bestselling authors of twenty-eight books, including the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series,  The Unhoneymooners ,  Love and Other Words ,  Dating You/Hating You, In a Holidaze , and  The Soulmate Equation . Find them at  ChristinaLaurenBooks.com  or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work  here .  Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she's terrible ...

This has been one of my most anticipated reads for 2023 for forever, and so it is with much excitement that I say With Love, from Cold World  110% lived up to my hopes and the hype! It became an instant favorite before I even finished reading. Alicia Thompson writes with such compassion, creating a story full of characters that feel like friends and set in a place I just need to visit. (If anyone creates any Cold World merch, send it my way!) If you love Rachel Lynn Solomon's and Ali Hazelwood's romances, you need to read Alicia Thompson!  Alicia Thompson is a writer, reader, and Paramore superfan (albeit not a Ticketmaster Verified Fan!). She does not know how to ice skate at all but loves to watch other people ice skate, which could be a metaphor for her entire life. She currently lives in Florida with her husband and two children and a mischievous cat named Luna. You can find her online on Twitter and Instagram @AliciaBooks. You can find more of my reviews of her work ...

Elizabeth Lim's Six Crimson Cranes contains everything that I love in a good YA fantasy novel—a story about resilience, siblinghood, and discovering that people are more than our impressions of them, Lim's masterful storytelling makes for a fast-paced story of adventure with a hint of romance, all while feeling whimsical and heart-pounding.  Elizabeth Lim grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was raised on a hearty diet of fairy tales, myths, and songs. Before becoming an author, Elizabeth was a professional film and video game composer, and she still tends to come up with her best book ideas when writing near a piano. An alumna of Harvard College and the Juilliard School, she now lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Blood of Stars duology, as well as a contributor to the New York Times bestselling A Twisted Tale series. You can find her online at elizabethlim.com . Shiori'anma, the only princess...

On this page, find all of my reviews of the three books in the Constellation series, by Claudia Gray. Each review begins with a brief overview of the book's content (with a publisher-supplied blurb), before diving into my review.  Claudia Gray is the  New York Times  bestselling author of many science fiction and paranormal fantasy books for young adults, including the Firebird series, the Evernight series, the Spellcaster series, and  Fateful . She's also had a chance to work in a galaxy far, far away as the author of the Star Wars novels  Lost Stars  and  Bloodline . Born a fangirl, she loves obsessing over geeky movies and TV shows, as well as reading and occasionally writing fanfiction; however, she periodically leaves the house to go kayaking, do a little hiking, or travel the world. She will take your Jane Austen trivia challenge any day, anytime. Currently she lives in New Orleans. You can find her online at  ClaudiaGray.com .  *These ...

I was excited to start The Pallbearers Club because it seemed full of potential, and I was curious to see where the horror would lie. Unfortunately, I was neither horrified nor satisfied by what happened between the pages, despite their inventive structure.  Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book Awards and is the author of Survivor Song , Growing Things and Other Stories , The Cabin at the End of the World , Disappearance at Devil's Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep  and No Sleep Till Wonderland . He lives outside Boston with his family.  What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend? Art Barbara was so not  cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend...

There's a reason we've all been seeing this one everywhere. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is imaginative and brilliant. One of the very few books that made me tear up while reading, Zevin's novel is the right blend of complicated and emotional. This is a once-in-a-lifetime type of read.  Gabrielle Zevin is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry , which won the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Award and the Japan Booksellers' Award, among other honors, and Young Jane Young , which won the Southern Book Prize. Her novels have been translated into thirty-nine languages. She has also written books for young readers, including the award-winning Elsewhere . She lives in Los Angeles. You can find her online at gabriellezevin.com .  On a bitter cold day in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the h...

In the Introduction of my copy, Grady Hendrix describes The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires as the exploration to the answer of this question: what would it look like to pit my mom against Dracula? The answer: a super fun, gritty, gory exploration of motherhood, Southern hospitality, and the lengths our moms truly go through to protect the ones they love.  Grady Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör , about a haunted IKEA, and My Best Friend's Exorcism , which is like Beaches meets The Exorcist , only it's set in the Eighties. He's also the author of We Sold Our Souls, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Final Girl Support Group , and How to Sell a Haunted House . You can find him online at gradyhendrix.com .  Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on her endless to-...