published: 2017
pages: 391
read: 1/22-26/2019
rating: good read. loved it! too many jacks to count!
book: 9 in 2019
SYNOPSIS
In their hometown of Five Fingers, Michigan, the O'Donnells and the Angerts have mythic legacies. But for all the tall tales they weave, both founding families are tight-lipped about what caused the century-old rift between them, except to say it began with a cherry tree.
Eighteen-year-old Jack “June” O’Donnell doesn't need a better reason than that. She's an O'Donnell to her core, just like her late father was, and O'Donnells stay away from Angerts. Period.
But when Saul Angert, the son of June's father's mortal enemy, returns to town after three mysterious years away, June can't seem to avoid him. Soon the unthinkable happens: She finds she doesn't exactly hate the gruff, sarcastic boy she was born to loathe.
Saul’s arrival sparks a chain reaction, and as the magic, ghosts, and coywolves of Five Fingers conspire to reveal the truth about the dark moment that started the feud, June must question everything she knows about her family and the father she adored. And she must decide whether it's finally time for her—and all of the O'Donnells before her—to let go.
MY THOUGHTS
SHORT VERSION:
good read. i really liked it but its not until now that i sort of have my Jacks in order.
(Jack is a family name and if i remember correctly, there are 4. once they start going into the past it was a bit of a doozy).
(Jack is a family name and if i remember correctly, there are 4. once they start going into the past it was a bit of a doozy).
LONG VERSION:
i checked this out last year when i was in the middle of the rut. and it just sat there and sat there and i kept renewing it until i finally gave up and returned it.
in anticipation of her new book coming out sometime this year, i figured i should read this one.
now I'm kind of glad that i waited to read it. i don't think i would have enjoyed it as much the first time i tried to.
i really like Henry's writing. her imagination is amazing and i can confidently say that i will continue to read as she writes.
anyway, i really did like this book.
and can i be honest...it wasn't until bookstagram that i really noticed the kinds of reads there are....like for example, i know there's mystery and chick lit and things like that but other than that...i never really thought about the category books fell in if they weren't in the common ones. so i guess it wasn't until i read a comment calling this book magic realism...that i really started to think that that's what it was.
i don't know.
its weird. i know.
but....i think going into this book knowing that that's what its called or what some would call it kinda helped me out.
i guess that's why i understood this book a bit more than her first.
or not even understood but was able to read it with more attention and understanding.
.....
either way, i really liked this one.
i really liked her first book.
i cant wait to read her next book (already placed it on hold at my library).
i love how it's about a person discovering not only themselves but their family history.
how its about fixing whats been programmed to be broken simply because of a past that she's only a part of because of family but has nothing to really do with her.
i love her friendship with (im a horrible person and want to say this is her name but its been so long ang augh! so sorry!!!!!) Hannah. it's so refreshing to read a story about a friendship so deep like theirs and i absolutely love their love story.
i LOVED that friendship.
i loved how she wasn't afraid to stand up for what she knew she had to do.
i just loved this story so much!
basically, if you love getting lost in stories that are a bit more magical, then i recommend you read this. and her first. and possibly her next!
as always, spoilers below.
thanks!
#lesreads on IG
published: 2018
pages: varies. takes about 3 hrs to read all 4.
read: 1/24-25/2019
rating: 1. ugh // 2. W O A H !!!! // 3. <3 // 4. UGH
book: 5-8 in 2019 (but tbh, i feel like this is cheating)
MY THOUGHTS
gotta love amazon prime
(not really. but here we are)
apparently, even if you share your account, you get the benefits of being the actual member so every now and then you get free reads. i happen to get this little set of 4 that also included free audio versions. THAT was the only reason i downloaded them.
apparently it's to promote (or in part of, with...or something with...) THIS BOOK. which is even funnier because i saw said book in one of those little take one leave one libraries and i took it with the interest of eventually reading it.
plot twist: I'm not going to read it and I'm actually taking it back to where i got it from when I'm in the area.
anyway, here's a little bit more about these 4 stories.
1/24/19
1. THE THIRD MAN
Mari Sheriar
a woman who didn't want a baby cause she already had one and realized they're too much work until she goes to a friends play and realizes she wants one.
she can't get pregnant for 3 years
does fertility treatments and unfortunately ends up having a miscarriage.
after speaking to her son, NOT HER HUSBAND, they decide to adopt.
they get chosen, the mother has 3 potential fathers, one signs the baby away, the other is a drifter and the third is a white supremacist who on the last day of his decision whether to keep or sign the baby away decides he will fight for him.
in the end, turns out the father is the drifter that was nowhere to be found.
my only thing with this book is: how are you going to decided to finally choose adoption with your son and not your own husband. she legit came up with a plan with her son to convince her husband.
i feel like that's something they should have navigated with her husband. it's a huge life changing decision and as a couple they should have explored that together not something he should have been talked into by his wife and son.
other than that, i guess it was convenient for Frank to not be the father. makes the story go faster.
although, some other things about him were mentioned that were not taking care of and were kind of disturbing. (Ex: the age difference.)
3. BLACK SHEEP
Rory Scholl
98% about his grandmother and I LOVED IT!!!
i still have 2 more stories to go but this one is my favorite.
it's mostly about how he and his grandma were both the black sheep in the family and the bond they built.
i loved this story and i loved Evelyn.
and i think his parents are a huge bag of dicks for not telling him UNTIL 8 MONTHS LATER that she had passed away. (although, yes, he could have called and kept in touch like that.)
and i think his mom is an ever bigger bag of dicks for judging her own mother and the way she chose to live her life.
LONG LIVE EVELYN!!!!!!
1/25/19
2. IDENTITY THIEF
Rachel Rosenthal
hoooly crap.
this one was sooo good.
basically, homegirl's identity gets stolen a crazy amount of times. like what!?
and then its about re-self discovery.
and because i can, spoilers!:
she met this dude in hs who wanted to date her but she wasn't into him. she left and he told her he'd win her. she comes back, he cleaned up and she was down.
they moved away, dated for 2 years she thought that because she was only 19 she should see more of the world so they did but they still hung out. they get back together, someone steals her wallet, she reports it and for the next amount of years her money keeps getting stolen.
she doesn't tell anyone. not her parents or her friends and she becomes isolated.
but the entire time he is there for her and picks up all the "slack" for lack of a better word.
he works and pays the bills and does everything for them.
she breaks down for the last time after losing her last cashier check only to find out that her mans had cashed it at the bank to put a down payment for their apt. she confronts him, he tells her about his condition and promises never to lie.
story, story, story...he proposes to her and even though she doesn't feel right, she goes along with an engagement.....blah, blah, blah, she finally gets a good-ish job and so she pays for the rent this one month. time passes, she gets a call from the landlord and low and behold, they owe him $13,000!!!!
long ass story short, he was stealing all her money, he never had his good as job, who knows where he went when he went away for work and....this was actually his second time doing it.
you kinda know what's going on but its anticlimactic and then BOOM! you get it all at once.
this one was really good!
4. TWO HENRY'S
Kevin Allison
this was the last one i heard in the series and probably my least favorite. erm, well the least one i connected with.
it's about him being a little kid realizing he's gay, falling in love with his best friend, losing that friendship once he tells him the truth to i guess becoming friends again.
its not that i don't care for that topic (s) i just didn't care for this story. it didn't keep me interested.
it was only about an hours and some minutes of a listen and with 34 minutes left, i was ready to DNF it.
but i mean, what else was i really doing at work.
i just stuck it out.
anyway, this is a really cool feature on amazon reads.
...and im currently working on a another set of 6 so we'll see how those go.
thanks for reading!
published: 2017
pages: i don't remember
read: 1/22-24/19 (i listened to it)
rating: the "result" was not worth what it took to get there. even as an audio book, i wanted to DNF it.
book: 4 in 2019
When young lawyer Lily marries Ed, she’s determined to make a fresh start and leave the secrets of the past behind. But then she takes on her first murder case and meets Joe, a convicted murderer to whom Lily is strangely drawn—and for whom she will soon be willing to risk almost anything.
But Lily is not the only one with secrets. Her next-door neighbor Carla may be only nine, but she has already learned that secrets are powerful things. That they can get her whatever she wants.
When Lily finds Carla on her doorstep twelve years later, a chain of events is set in motion that can end only one way.
MY THOUGHTS
SHORT VERSION:
UGH THIS BOOKfuck this book.
LONG VERSION
i don't know.
i
don't
know.
a lot of nothing happens.
it's just a long ass, slow ass book that could have been good had it had more UMPH, more movement, less bullshit and more anything but slowness!
then 12 years later....(the second half of the book not my lateness in writing this post lol.)
and stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll nothing happens.
and then "it" happens. (and honestly, the it is that Ed is dead but you know that at the very beginning of the book.)
and then lily
doesn't
shut
the
fuck
up
!!!!!!!!!
and that's it.
slow, slow, eh, slow, slow, slow, slow, 12 years later, slow, slow, ooh!, slow, slow, slow, oh shit!, slow, slow, slow, slow, lily doesn't shut up. slow, slow. the end.
that's the damn book!
i got through this as an audio book so i can't even say how long the book is physically but i do know that had i read it, i would have DNF'd it before i even got to the 2nd half. honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm over Pandora at the moment, i probably would have DNF'd the audio book as well. but i told myself that i wasn't really losing anything because its a free audio book and what else am i going to listen to?
it is too damn long to get what the story gives you.
too damn long to connect everything.
too damn long to see what it is in the all-ness of it and even if it was "good" it wasn't worth the journey to me.
i read an earlier review that said they didn't care for lily because she tries to come off as the victim when she's clearly an "unknowingly" manipulator ...and i agree. she got off on her morals and what she thought was right vs what everyone in the world KNOWS is right.
she bent things to work for her. for her sake and sanity.
poor lily.
puh-lease.
she manipulated things to work for her as best as she could when and once she had the knowledge of things being that way.. she never had any remorse.
and as much as i hate carla, i think she's the one that got the shit end of the stick.
her mother fuuuuuuucked her up.
and just in general she was fucked from day one.
she learned things on her own in the wrong way because her mother was never there! and not only that but who was she to turn to? she learned to play the game at a very young age, she just, learned it wrong.
(that or Karma really fucked her up. and Karma is hella real when it wants to be. yes i know this is a fictional character!)
and if you read it and you well, make it to this scene with Ed & Carla....EEEEEWWWWWW right!? EEEEEWWWW. what a creepy plot twist.
and rupert or russell or whatever the fuck....really dude!?
ugh.
(honestly, i wrote this a bit after i finished the book but its been so long now that i dont even remember who rupert or russell is. let me see if i can find out online. lol)
.
.
.
idk who the f that is.
but maybe i meant Joe? idk. either way, Joe. seriously dude. ya could've been big had you not been, ya know, a killer.
(also, fuck you lily for having evidence to free a man and then deciding "nah, ill give this one a go mahself" and then landing homeboy in jail over something HE DIDN'T DO!!!!!!!!!! knowing damn well, you really weren't shit as a lawyer.
anyway, yea. had this book been more straightforward, i might have loved it more. but its just TOO much that took TOO long that just didn't work for me in the end.
the only person that wins in this story is Lily. and honestly, she should have gone down herself.
spoilers below.
thanks for reading!
Karen and Tom Krupp are happy—they’ve got a lovely home in upstate New York, they’re practically newlyweds, and they have no kids to interrupt their comfortable life together. But one day, Tom returns home to find Karen has vanished—her car’s gone and it seems she left in a rush. She even left her purse—complete with phone and ID—behind.
There's a knock on the door—the police are there to take Tom to the hospital where his wife has been admitted. She had a car accident, and lost control as she sped through the worst part of town.
The accident has left Karen with a concussion and a few scrapes. Still, she’s mostly okay—except that she can’t remember what she was doing or where she was when she crashed. The cops think her memory loss is highly convenient, and they suspect she was up to no good.
Karen returns home with Tom, determined to heal and move on with her life. Then she realizes something’s been moved. Something’s not quite right. Someone’s been in her house. And the police won't stop asking questions.
Because in this house, everyone’s a stranger. Everyone has something they’d rather keep hidden. Something they might even kill to keep quiet.
it's all very suspenseful.
I'm surprised by how short this is so I'll just end it here. but like always, jump on over for spoilers!
thanks for reading! (:
There's a knock on the door—the police are there to take Tom to the hospital where his wife has been admitted. She had a car accident, and lost control as she sped through the worst part of town.
The accident has left Karen with a concussion and a few scrapes. Still, she’s mostly okay—except that she can’t remember what she was doing or where she was when she crashed. The cops think her memory loss is highly convenient, and they suspect she was up to no good.
Karen returns home with Tom, determined to heal and move on with her life. Then she realizes something’s been moved. Something’s not quite right. Someone’s been in her house. And the police won't stop asking questions.
Because in this house, everyone’s a stranger. Everyone has something they’d rather keep hidden. Something they might even kill to keep quiet.
MY THOUGHTS
SHORT VERSION:
YES! i could not get enough!
I'm a Shari Lapena fan for liiiife!
I'm a Shari Lapena fan for liiiife!
LONG VERSION
yas! library audio books coming thru!!!!
i loved Shari's first book. i couldn't get enough!
i should have been better about following up on her because not only did she have this book out, she also has a 3rd one out that's currently sitting on my dresser right now waiting to be read and another one on the way in August.
I LOVE HER!!!!
and i love that even when you get to the very end, after its all been uncovered, there's still one little thing that she adds on. actually, make that 2.
like this story: you find out the truth and then at the very end (i think its an epilogue..not sure since I've read several books since....) there's two extra little twists that made me love this book even more.
i think this is the perfect amount of suspense for me. i don't handle supreme suspense or scary anything very well so this was a perfect read.
i read it back in January and i still feel love for it so for me, its a definite read. this is another book to my must buy list as soon as i get a chance. I'm surprised by how short this is so I'll just end it here. but like always, jump on over for spoilers!
thanks for reading! (:
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