The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

From Goodreads:

A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over--and see everything anew.

I can tell already that this will be a favorite from the year. This book was absurdly charming. There are sad bits but they didn't make me feel overly sad because the book is so optimistic and lovely and full of wonderful people with beautiful relationships.

It's also full of fun lines and dialog. One of my favorite bits from early on that gave me a chuckle- 

A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper.

The exchange between A.J. Fikry and Amelia the publishing sales rep in the Moby Dick themed restaurant. Basically anything Maya says. The cop who starts a book club for cops. There is so much here to love. I grinned through most of the book and was sad when it was over.

At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen

From Goodreads:

After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind. 

To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war. 

Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants. 

The novel tells of Maddie’s social awakening: to the harsh realities of life, to the beauties of nature, to a connection with forces larger than herself, to female friendship, and finally, to love.


This was the first book in a LONG time that I stayed up late to finish. It wasn't amazing or particularly complex but it was thoroughly enjoyable. It's more of a fluffy beach read than it initially appears.

I read this immediately after China Dolls, in which I had to fight SO HARD to like the characters. Maddie, however, is very likeable and becomes even more so as the book goes on. One of the criticisms I've seen of this book is that the main characters are all just spoiled rich kids doing what they want but...that's kind of the point. They're absurd and eventually Maddie realizes she doesn't want to be that person anymore. 

My one big criticism is that the love story left me going, "Wait, what?" They had the odd interaction then she saw him with his shirt off and suddenly they were both goners. That could have used a bit more development. 

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh

From Goodreads:

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

As a longtime fan of Allie's blog I was REALLY excited to discover that this book was available for immediate download as I sat in the terminal before boarding our flight to Virginia. I had sort of mixed feelings about it though, which made me sad. The very best stuff from the book can already be found on her blog (my favs are her bits about moving with dogs and going to a birthday party after having dental work done). The newer stuff was a little darker, which I'm sure reflects her recent bout with depression. I didn't LOVE it quite like I hoped I would, but it was still a perfectly pleasant way to pass the time on a very long day of flying.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? By Mindy Kaling

From Goodreads:

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?” 

If you're going to read a comedian's book and they have an audio version in which they narrate their own book- do that version. Listening to Mindy Kaling prattle on about her life for 4ish hours was the most pleasant possible way to get through my Saturday cleaning. She has that hilarious neo-valley girl way of speaking that sounds like she's just having a casual conversation with you over lunch. I feel like we're BFFs now.

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout (Lux #1)

From GoodReads:

Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring.... until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something...unexpected happens.

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon's touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I'm getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.

If I don't kill him first, that is.

My sister has mentioned this one to me several times but we both ended up confused because I thought she was talking about the LUXE series and had never heard of the LUX series. They are quite different, as it turns out.

As far as YA novels go this one fits right in. Superhuman super-hot boy in love with a normal oh-gee-what-does-he-see-in-me girl. Despite the fact that I've read some version of this book approximately 18 million times already that didn't stop me from devouring it in one day. This is a sad commentary on the triteness of my brain, I'm sure.

The story is fine, the alien element is new, the protagonist mercifully has a brain of her own despite the fact that she is in CONSTANT need of saving.

Here's my big beef: the author wrote in a fantastic extraterrestrial female friend for the protagonist but then made her weak and borderline useless while her brother is almost godlike in his strength and abilities. I would have LOVED this book to be about two girl friends working together to overcome their individual weaknesses and prejudices to fight evil. The romance could have been a delicious little footnote (because I do need SOME romance). Instead we have yet another YA novel teaching girls that they are nothing (possibly even RAPED AND DEAD) without a guy to love and protect them. My inner feminist is shaking her head in sad disappointment. This book would not pass the Bechdel test even though the author laid a kind of groundwork that should have gotten it there. 

Feminist annoyance aside, I will probably finish out the series. Because of my trite, sappy, unfeministy brain. Curse you, Brain.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

From Goodreads:

Deciding that true romantic heroes are a thing of the past, Eloise Kelly, an intelligent American who always manages to wear her Jimmy Choo suede boots on the day it rains, leaves Harvard's Widener Library bound for England to finish her dissertation on the dashing pair of spies the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. What she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: a secret history that begins with a letter dated 1803. Eloise has found the secret history of the Pink Carnation the most elusive spy of all time, the spy who single-handedly saved England from Napoleon's invasion.
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a wildly imaginative and highly adventurous debut, opens with the story of a modern-day heroine but soon becomes a book within a book. Eloise Kelly settles in to read the secret history hoping to unmask the Pink Carnation's identity, but before she can make this discovery, she uncovers a passionate romance within the pages of the secret history that almost threw off the course of world events. How did the Pink Carnation save England? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?

 I think it's kind of funny that all the descriptions of this book focus on Eloise when she's hardly in the book at all. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation focuses the vast majority of its 450 pages on Amy Balcourt and Richard Selwick, fictional historical characters contemporary and associated with the (also fictional) Scarlet Pimpernel in the early 1800s.

I haven't had a whole lot of luck with historical fiction in the last year. Most of what I've picked up has been mediocre to downright painful. I attributed this to my own personal preferences since Janssen loved A Curse Dark as Gold and Ten Cents a Dance while I thought they were...not good.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. Perhaps it's because this is thoroughly a quick-read love story in historical fiction's clothing. It's not trying to teach you anything about Napoleonic France or tell the story of how Bonaparte tried to invade England through fictional characters (although, a little more historical stuff would have been fun), it just revels in its lovey-dovey-ness while occasionally throwing in a name you know from history class. It's much more chick-lit-y than historical fiction-y.

My one complaint (and it's a biggie) is that it occasionally veers into..ahem...romance territory. If you know what I mean. Love scenes in any genre make me twitchy but in books they're especially bad and this book is no exception.

Romance scenes aside, it's a great beach read. Or middle-of-the-night-nursing read. Whichever.

The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller

When Janssen came to visit last weekend she brought me an extra ARC she had of The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller (coming out in August). I haven't read anything in like a month so I was excited to have some nice fluffy YA reading to plow through and hopefully get me back into the swing of things.

(I get a bit spoilerish at the end so I marked that paragraph with **. If you don't want me to spoil any of the book for you just skip that part)


From Goodreads:

What if love refused to die?

Haven Moore can’t control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan, and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother’s house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.

In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves¸ before all is lost and the cycle begins again. 

 ARCs are kind of funny to read because there are always typos and it always kills me and then I remember that they will likely be fixed by the time the book is actually released. So I always end up having issues with ARCs that are kind of irrelevant. So yes, there were typos. A lot of them, actually. But most if not all will be gone by August and I need to get over it.

 The story itself was just what I was looking for. A fairly easy and light read with a nice little love story that didn't feel completely recycled from ten thousand love stories before it. I thought the reincarnation stuff was kind of fun and I loved that I was still rather unsure about who to trust until close to the end (although some of it was obvious and I was like WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO HIM?? and then I'd smack myself in the forehead).

**One thing I really didn't care for was the element of evil. I loved that Snope City was one of those crazy religious bible belt places and of course there needed to be an element of opposition, but the bad guy didn't need to actually be Satan himself. It felt a bit off kilter with the rest of the book when any number of bad guys or even the grandmother would have served just fine. Also, I didn't love the ending but I think that particular resolution was necessary just because it's a YA book. Had it been an adult book or, you know, real life, it probably wouldn't have turned out quite so neat and happy.

The Lost Summer by Kathryn Williams

From Goodreads:

For the past nine years, Helena Waite has been returning to summer camp at Southpoint. Every year the camp and its familiar routines, landmarks, and people have welcomed her back like a long-lost family member. But this year she is returning not as a camper, but as a counselor, while her best friend, Katie Bell remains behind. All too quickly, Helena discovers that the innocent world of campfires, singalongs, and field days have been pushed aside for late night pranks on the boys' camp, skinny dipping in the lake, and stolen kisses in the hayloft. As she struggles to define herself in this new world, Helena begins to lose sight of what made camp special and the friendships that have sustained her for so many years. And when Ransome, her longtime crush, becomes a romantic reality, life gets even more confusing.

I have no idea where this book came from. I mean, it came from the publisher, but I'm not sure if they just sent it to me out of the kindness of their hearts or if I requested it and don't remember or...who knows. All I know is: I love free books.

For a fairly fluffy book this one still had me chewing over it several hours later.

The story itself was fine, but it was the details. Kathryn Williams has been a teenager girl among other teenage girls. All the drama and insecurities and...STUFF...it's all here. And I can't decide whether I loved walking down memory lane or resented being forced to relive it. I loved the camp memories but squirmed my way through the girl drama. I closed the book thinking, "Wow, I experienced ALL of that crap" and judging from the comments on Goodreads, I'm not alone. Change a few of the details (ahem, hay loft) and I could have written this book about my summers at church girls' camps. Or, really, all my time in junior high and high school.

And I really loved the ending. That's always a good thing.

Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella

From Goodreads:

With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:

Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.

Secrets from her boyfriend:
I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.
I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

From her colleagues:
When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.

Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:
My G-string is hurting me.
I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.

Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.

But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from
the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.

My lovely friend Catherine loaned me the book on cd when I complained that I had no idea what to read next. She's a good friend like that.

I LOVED the narrator. She had this lovely British accent that was a total pleasure to listen to. Except when she did the guy's voice. Then she reminded me of a zombie. But otherwise I loved her and the way she said Lizzy like Lissy which I found strangely appealing.

The book started off really strong. I laughed my behind off through discs one and two. Like snorting while cleaning my kitchen sort of laughing. It was hilarious and very Bridget Jones and Aaron kept looking at me funny because I would be like, *snort* "orange juice!"

I felt like it lost momentum and humour (British spelling in honor of the English setting) in the second half though. It was still a perfectly fine fluffy chick-lit type novel but after such a hysterical first half I was kind of disappointed when it didn't finish quite as strong.

Overall though, a perfectly lovely beach read which is totally worth reading if only for the scene in the plane with the confessing. Hilarious.