Release date: June 5th, 2018
Series: Beartown #2
Pages: 448
Genre: Fiction
Series: Beartown #2
Pages: 448
Genre: Fiction
After everything that the citizens of Beartown have gone through, they are struck yet another blow when they hear that their beloved local hockey team will soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in Hed, take in that fact. Amidst the mounting tension between the two rivals, a surprising newcomer is handpicked to be Beartown’s new hockey coach.
Soon a new team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the enmity with Hed grows more and more acute.
As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.
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| Read the review here |
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❝Because sometimes hating one another is so easy that it seems incomprehensible that we ever do anything else.❞
It's not a secret that I fell in love with Backman's writing and he, once again, pleasantly surprised me with this book once again. If I thought it couldn't get better than the first book ... he gladly proved me wrong.
Backman deals with many things that aren't easy to deal with: rape, politics, death, failed marriage, LGBT. This book is packed with emotions and he writes everything so beautifully, it really feels like a punch in the stomach.
It's a difficult read at times, especially because you have to expect the unexpected. Backman builds the anticipation up high, making you expect something bad, but then it turns out to not be that bad at the end. He does this a few times, so when you finally relax and when something bad happens, you think 'oh, it'll turn out good, like every other time'. But it can happen so many times before it actually doesn't turn out good at all - it turns out worse than you expected and hoped for.
I truly don't have any words for how Backman's words and books make me feel. No one compares to him and his writing and I swear I have to pause a little every time I finish reading his book, because I know that no one will come even close to him and every other book will just feel like not good enough.
I couldn't recommend his books more. He's easily and quickly became one of my favourite writers.
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Release date: September 8th, 2020
Series: / standalone
Pages: 367
Genre: Romance
Never in a million years did I think it would be Ian Parker who saved me...
I know I should stay away from Ian Parker.
But when my drug-dealing stepdad kicks me out, I have nowhere to go. Squatting in an abandoned shed on Ian’s grandpa’s farm seems like as good a plan as any.
Ian finds me there, of course, and he insists on me moving into his spare room. I should say no, but the appeal of a roof and a warm bed is too much. Not to mention Ian’s brown eyes and strong arms.
We’re nothing alike, but the spark between us is undeniable. My life is finally looking up.
Until I call the cops on my stepdad and unintentionally get my pregnant mom arrested.
Now I have to sacrifice my dreams to take care of my mom’s baby. She’s the only family I have left. Meanwhile, Ian’s band is taking off; his dreams are coming true.
Ian is my one chance at love. I just hope he doesn’t become the one chance that got away.
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This book, to me, was average at most.
It started off pretty awesome and it looked promising from the beginning, but it turned into a disappointment for me.
I couldn't connect with the characters, the story became boring and it didn't hold my focus anymore, so I couldn't wait until I finished it.
The drama was pointless, overused and pretty cliché, otherwise, this story was pretty much on the safe side and it just didn't pull me in like I wished it would.
I don't have anything else to say because this book is definitely not a memorable one for me and I won't remember it months from now, unfortunately.
Series: / standalone
Pages: 343
Genre: Fiction
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
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❝People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely.❞
Once again, an unpopular opinion about yet another popular book: this book was ok, but that's all.
Overall, this story pulled me in with the promise of something different, educating and interesting, but it wasn't all that. It was different, yes, and it was also educating and, normally, I really enjoy reading books about this, but I did not really enjoy this one because I didn't like the way it was written.
This book didn't follow one storyline, but it jumped between different stories and different people. The first half of the book was focused on the Vignes twin sisters, the second half they disappeared more into the backstory.
It took me some time at first to really get into the story and figure out what exactly it's talking about and I had a hard time staying focused and following the story because it was so jumpy and really uninteresting, with the exception of some parts. This was definitely not one of those books that I wasn't able to put down - on the contrary, I couldn't wait to finish it.
I enjoyed the first half a lot more than the second half because I didn't know anymore in which direction this book wants to take me.
And, boy, how the ending left me unsatisfied. I expected a lot more from it, the meeting of the sisters was dry and not at all what I wanted and what the story was building up to it and promising.
I don't know ... this book had some great aspects, it showed how much someone is willing to sacrifice to be someone else, to belong somewhere and to be like others. It's heartbreaking, but it just wasn't my cup of tea because I expected a lot more, unfortunately.
❝The key to staying lost was to never love anything.❞
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Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and her debut novel The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller. Her second novel The Vanishing Half was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.
Release date: July 31st, 2012
Series: / standalone
Pages: 362
Genre: Historical fiction
Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
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❝Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back.❞
I admit I dove into this book without knowing what it really is about because it was recommended to me by a friend and it actually turned out as a really interesting read.
Although I did not find this story sad enough to cry at the end, it was written in a sad undertone throughout the whole book. Tom and Isabel have a difficult life and despite being good people and trying to do the right thing, they make a wrong decision once they see a baby at the shore.
Isabel, after losing three babies already, is ecstatic and she wants to keep the little girl, but Tom has restrictions. He knows this is forbidden and he knows what's going to wait for him if someone finds out about what they did, but he still obliges just to make his wife happy again.
Their action has consequences for all of them: Tom, Isabel, little Lucy and the mother of the child. They have consequences for their families and friends, too.
It's a difficult book to read sometimes, especially because it deals with many moral aspects. You have to really get in the head of the characters to really understand where they're coming from because everyone has their right and everyone has different motives and wishes.
But who's right in this situation? What is the right thing to do?
Many wrong decisions have been made already. Do they want to make more of them?
This book is, without a doubt, a sad book with a happy ending on its own, but still sad. This is a book about good people making bad decisions and having to pay for them.
It's an interesting book, but I felt it was a little dragging at some parts and it could be shortened to make it more interesting, especially towards the end.
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M.L. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London. The Light Between Oceans is her first novel.
Release date: June 19th, 2014
Series: Rabbit Hayes #1
Pages: 368
Genre: Fiction
Here is a truth that can't be escaped: for Mia "Rabbit" Hayes, life is coming to an end ...
Mia-"Rabbit"-Hayes knows that life is hard for everyone. And she knows that she's one of the lucky ones. She loves her life, ordinary as it is. And she loves the extraordinary people in it: her spirited daughter, Juliet; her colorful, unruly family; the only man in her big heart, Johnny Faye. Rabbit has big ideas, full of music and love and so much life. She has plans for the world. But the world, it turns out, has other plans for Rabbit: a devastating diagnosis.
Rabbit is feisty. And with every ounce of love and strength in her, she promises that she will overcome. She will fight fight fight. She will be with those who love her for as long as she can, and she will live as long as she can with music and love and so much life. And as her friends and family rally round to celebrate Rabbit's last days, they look to her for strength, support, and her unyielding zest for life. Because she is Rabbit Hayes and she will live until she dies.
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❝She wasn't angry or even that frustrated. She wasn't scared or worried. She wasn't bitter or vengeful. She was just sad to leave the people she loved most, especially her daughter. She had fought for so long, but finally she knew that she couldn't go on.❞
This was such a heartfelt story! Although even though I knew what this story is about and how it's going to end when I picked it up, I still cried like a baby at the end.
This was written lightly with a lot of jokes and humour, yet still had this deeply serious and sad undertone. This story gave me so much more than I expected - I really didn't expect Rabbit to tell her sad love story that ended because, Gosh, that was so unexpected and it really added even more sadness to this story.
I don't think I need to talk about what this story is about since the title says it pretty much all: Rabbit Hayes living her last days before cancer takes her.
It's a heavy book, dealing with heavy feelings. It's written from multiple POVs and it's truly hard sometimes to read about how people that are close to Rabbit deal with her dying. It's hard, but these stories don't only happen in the book, unfortunately, and this is why I think it's good to read stories like this here and there.
This is not as much about Rabbit as her, but generally how people close to someone with cancer take it and how they deal with it. It felt like I became friends with all of these people, so the ending was all that harder for me because I, too, felt like losing a friend.
I don't think you can stay cold-hearted while reading this. It just crawls deep under your skin if you like it or not and I think you can never truly be fully prepared for someone's life to end - just like I wasn't truly prepared for the ending of this book.
The only reason I gave this book 4.5 stars is because this book was written for multiple POVs and sometimes it was hard for me to tell who is who because there were so many people.
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Anna McPartlin is an international best selling author, currently published in 15 languages across 18 countries. Pack Up The Moon and The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes were nominated for Irish book awards. Rabbit Hayes also won a silver readers book award in Germany. In the UK it was a Simon Mayo and Richard and Judy book club pick and in the USA it was a Barnes & Nobel Book of the Month.
In the last few years Anna has been honing her TV scriptwriting skills working on medical drama ‘Holby City’ for the BBC (UK), legal drama ‘Striking Out,’ for RTE (IRE) and historical adaptation Jesus His Life for History Channel (USA).
Anna was nominated for an Irish Film & Television Academy award for her one off bi-lingual drama ‘School Run,’ and is currently in development with Hot Drop Films / Treasure Entertainment and funded by Screen Ireland for the film adaptation of ‘Rabbit Hayes.’ She is also in development for a crime series ‘Serious Crimes,’ with Blinder Productions (Virgin Media) in IRE. A historical crime drama with Noho Film & TV (UK) and ‘Richter,’ an RTE/NZ TV co-production crime drama with Blinder Productions.
Anna’s first children’s book the ‘Fearless Five’ came out May 2019. Her next fiction novel ‘Below The Big Blue Sky,’ is on shelves in UK and IRE in April 2020 and she is currently working on her ninth commercial fiction title.
Anna started out briefly as an actress and stand-up comedian but although her heart wasn’t in performance, she revels in storytelling and shining a light in dark places. Anna’s USP is in tackling difficult subjects with understanding, empathy and humour that spills onto every page.
Series: / standalone
Pages: 432
Genre: Romance
The story of the heart can never be unwritten.
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
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I feel like I should've enjoyed this story a lot more than I did, but I didn't, so I kind of feel bad right now. But this is also another reminder for me why I don't like reading second-chance romances.
I had a hard time finishing this book because it was boring and it was stupid. I saw no point in all those throwback chapters when Elliot and Macy were young, there was no point in there being so many of them because most of them added no significant meaning to the story and they were absolutely boring and awkward, so I started to skim past them.
And then the thing with Macy and Elliot meeting for the first time after so many years: Elliot confesses his love to Macy and Macy is engaged at the time, but the moment she sees Elliot, she starts second-guessing everything and (surprise, surprise) starts realising her perfect relationship isn't so perfect after all. I don't know where she was before Elliot came around, but apparently, our Macy isn't the smartest girl out there.
But at 60 %, Macy is still with her fiancé and this is where the story completely lost me. Macy and Elliot come together at around 80 % and it's really nothing memorable. I didn't feel much of the chemistry between them, I didn't even care for them. For all I cared, they didn't even have to come back together - I'd feel absolutely nothing if they didn't, that's how uninvested I was.
There was also this bullshit excuse why they broke up so many years ago - it's truly a typical one, the most cliché ever (with the exception of I thought it was you, baby! which just made me want to throw up).
While I loved some of C. Lauren's story, this was definitely not my thing. The writing was average, nothing special, I didn't even highlight one line in the whole book that would actually touch me.
Just not my cup of tea.
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/besties/soulmates/brain-twins Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. The coauthor duo writes both Young Adult and Adult Fiction, and together has produced sixteen New York Times bestselling novels. Their books have been translated into 30+ languages. (Some of these books have kissing. Some of these books have A LOT of kissing.)
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