Sooooo I went a bit crazy one day with my Goodreads to-read-list and my library hold system. I ended up with over 20 books on hold, most of them with weeks long lines. Of course several of them came in at the same time. I’ve got the ones pictured as well as one on my kindle. Now it’s a rush to see if I can read them all in time! 😂😂😭
By: Emily Henry
Blurb:
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
Review:
Two writers decide to switch genres, one goes for romance the other literary fiction. The story is not really about that. It’s about January working through the death of her father and what she learned about him afterward. There’s a bit of romance thrown in as well. It’s more women’s literature than chick-lit, does that make sense?
January was depressed and had every reason to be, the book is filled with lots of memories of her dad, and her wondering if what she learned about him changed it all. The male lead, Gus, told her several times that she was sunshine and a princess because she always saw the good in people and things, but that is not the January that was in the book. It wasn’t easy to see that in her at all. She wrote romance novels with happy endings, and that was supposed to demonstrate that she was a happily ever after person.
Gus was a brooder. He had a shit life growing up, and didn’t believe he deserved someone as “carefree” as January. He was constantly getting in his own way by not communicating. January had to pry things out of him all the time.
Beach Read was very emotional, lots of tears, especially at the end. When January wasn’t processing all the stuff to do with her dad, she and Gus were interviewing cult survivors and visiting the burned down remains of the cult’s compound. The romance tried to lighten things up, but because of all the negative that was in their pasts, especially Gus’, it didn’t help that much. Beach Read very carefully rode the line between light and depressing.
3/5
Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)
By: Jasmine Guillory
Blurb:
Dating is the last thing on Olivia Monroe’s mind when she moves to LA to start her own law firm. But when she meets a gorgeous man at a hotel bar and they spend the entire night flirting, she discovers too late that he is none other than hotshot junior senator Max Powell. Olivia has zero interest in dating a politician, but when a cake arrives at her office with the cutest message, she can’t resist–it is chocolate cake, after all.
Olivia is surprised to find that Max is sweet, funny, and noble–not just some privileged white politician she assumed him to be. Because of Max’s high-profile job, they start seeing each other secretly, which leads to clandestine dates and silly disguises. But when they finally go public, the intense media scrutiny means people are now digging up her rocky past and criticizing her job, even her suitability as a trophy girlfriend. Olivia knows what she has with Max is something special, but is it strong enough to survive the heat of the spotlight?
Review:
Olivia is Alexa’s sister. She’s a high powered New York lawyer that’s decided to move back to California and start a law firm with her best friend. She’s tired of men talking down to her, taking advantage of her hard work, and generally being dicks.
Max is a pretty boy senator that is looking to start a relationship because he’s lonely. He’s impulsive, and as a rich, white man has lived an incredibly privileged life. Still, he loves cake and pie, so he’s not all bad.
I don’t know if it’s because I just read the first book in the series, and it was about Olivia’s sister or if this is just the formula Guillory uses, but I noticed a lot of similarities. Max loved to see Olivia’s smile and laugh almost as much as Drew. Both women were hesitant to leap into things, though, Olivia much more so. It was also a long-distance relationship where most of their time together was on the weekend. Lots of deserts and food, which I loved, but dammit someone give me a cake!
Olivia and Drew were a cute couple, and once again, the conflict at the end was very believable. I couldn’t see how it would be overcome honestly, but I liked what they came up with, it was sweet.
I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series, now that I’ve read the fifth, but I’m also a little apprehensive. Is it going to be as similar? I’ll find out, I guess.
3.5/5
The Wedding Date (The Wedding Date #1)
By: Jasmine Guillory
Blurb:
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist.
On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend…
After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other…
They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century–or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want…
Review:
Alexa doesn’t like to describe herself as a prude, and after reading this story, I wouldn’t either. A better term is risk-averse. She tends to overthink things. This seems to work pretty well for her at work, but not so much in romance. She also has body image issues that I related to hard.
Drew is a commitment-phobe. He had a relationship that got serious before he was ready and now ends every relationship after just a couple of months. He’s a pretty boy doctor that doesn’t have an issue finding bedmates that are fine with that setup. Then he needs to find a date for the wedding of the woman he felt was his fallback when he was ready to settle down.
It would have been sooooo easy to hate Drew. He’s a lot of things that I don’t like rolled up into one character, but the way he treated Alexa overcame all of that. I liked reading from his point of view because I got to see that he only thought about the positives of Alexa’s body. All of the fear she had over it never even occurred to him. I also enjoyed that because she viewed this as a fling, she didn’t let those fears overcome her, and by the time she felt like it was more they didn’t matter.
The conflict worked out perfectly, and I had no issue believing it. I also enjoyed how things worked out with Alexa’s sister (which is great because I ended up getting the 5th book in the series from the library before all the others). The side characters seemed interesting enough, but they were not the main focus and only had small parts to play. The one I’m interested in the most is Carlos, so I hope he has his own book.
Finding love with the person you’ve been trapped in an elevator with is a pretty enjoyable trope and not overly done. The Wedding Date was a great start to a series and set my expectations high.
4/5
Publisher: Crows Crows Crows
Platform: PS4
Blurb:
“The player is introduced in a small basement office by two accountants (William Pugh and Dominik Johann) through a phone call as a candidate for a new “virtual reality accounting” experiment, which supposedly increases efficiency in accounting…”
Review:
I had no idea what this was when I started. My husband told me that he wanted to watch me play because, at one point, I had wanted to be an accountant. I’m reasonably certain that this was not an accurate depiction of accounting, but who’s to say.
I played using PSVR, something I’ve used a few times but don’t use too often. The controls were pretty good, though I did have issues grabbing stuff sometimes. It autocorrected where my hands were pretty well, but it did have to do it often because it kept losing track. Not sure if that’s a me problem or a game problem.
I was able to beat it in one session, so it was pretty short; in my experience, most VR games are. Unfortunately, I found an Easter egg on my first try, and because I took the red pill, I skipped some parts of the game. No idea how much, though. Since the game is already mildly confusing, jumping back into the main game and having no idea what was going on wasn’t that different.
The puzzles were easy, and I thought the game was pretty funny. If you can play it and don’t have an issue with dark humor, I’d recommend it.
3.5/5
Dynamite Review 