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Release date: June 11, 2019

Publisher: Forever Romance

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Blurb:

Kristen Petersen doesn’t do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don’t get her. She’s also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children.

Planning her best friend’s wedding is bittersweet for Kristen–especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He’s funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family someday. Kristen knows he’d be better off with someone else, but as their attraction grows, it’s harder and harder to keep him at arm’s length.

The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass. 

Review:

MUST READ BOOK ALERT! You guys, I’m so excited about this one, it’s way up at the top of my favorite books of the year list and I want everybody to read it! Don’t be fooled by the cutesy cover and assume that it’s just another silly and fun rom com because it is SO much more than that. Yes, it has all the charm and laughs of a traditional rom com but it also has depth and tackles some serious subject matter as well. This isn’t just a fluffy book y’all and it’s way different than everything else currently available right now.

When I pick up a romance I know that if I don’t immediately connect to at least one of the main characters then the book probably won’t work for me. Well, I connected to Kristin almost instantly, she is just a cool chick and her sarcasm and wit made me wish she was my BFF instead of Sloane’s. She’s also just a badass, tough woman who I found myself both admiring and relating to. Then there’s Josh, who sigh may be my new favorite book boyfriend because not only is he hot and charming, he’s also sensitive, values his family and he he’s an amazing sense of humor. SWOON 😍 Put these two together and you have magic, their chemistry is off the charts and when the story took an unexpected emotional turn you get to see that deep down they’re also both kind and just honest to goodness human beings. I couldn’t ask for more in terms of characterization, seriously perfect.

One last thing, this is a debut and I can’t tell you the last time that I was this blown away by a debut author. Abby Jimenez writes like a seasoned pro, I don’t know how she will ever top this gem but I have a feeling we will find out when we get a new book from her next year! Until then, I’ll be over here planning my reread of this one and pushing this book on anyone who will listen.

The Friend Zone in three words: Witty, Relatable and Emotional

Overall rating: 5/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: June 4, 2019

Publisher: Harper

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Blurb:

The worst birthday ever might just be the gift of a lifetime…

It’s Sophie Bloom’s forty-second birthday, and she’s ready for a night of celebration with Gabe, her longtime, devoted husband, and her two besties and their spouses. Dinner is served with a side of delicious gossip, including which North Grove residents were caught with their pants down on Ashley Madison after the secret on-line dating site for married and committed couples was hacked. Thirty-two million cheaters worldwide have been exposed…including Sophie’s “perfect” husband. To add insult to injury, she learns Gabe is the top cheater in their town. 

Humiliated and directionless, Sophie jumps into the unknown and flees to France to meet up with her teenage daughter who is studying abroad and nursing her own heartbreak. After a brief visit to Paris, Sophie heads out to the artist enclave of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. There, for the first time in a long time, Sophie acknowledges her own desires—not her husband’s, not her daughter’s—and rediscovers her essence with painful honesty and humor, reawakening both her sensuality and ambitions as a sculptor. 

As she sheds her past and travels the obstacle-filled off beaten path, Sophie Bloom is determined to blossom. Allowing her true self to emerge in the postcard beauty of Provence, Sophie must decide what is broken forever…and what it means to be truly unbreakable.

Review:

I don’t know about you but when the Ashley Madison scandal broke I was equally horrified but also morbidly curious. How could so many millions of people be using such a tacky and torrid site?! It still blows my mind actually, and this book opens with Sophie having a birthday dinner with her closet friends and finding out her husband is on the site. Not only that, he’s their cities most active user 😱 I cannot even imagine the humiliation and pain this would cause but as far as an opening hook?! SOLD!

Listen, I’ve read plenty of books about a woman scorned trying to find herself again but I’ve never read one that felt quite so fresh and empowering as this one. Sophie takes quite a journey after her marriage crumbles and none of what happened was predictable at all. I absolutely love that, it’s hard to surprise me lately but I definitely was here. It was also racier than I expected, Sophie wants to stand on her own two feet after being half of a couple for years and she does this not only in a personal way, but also sexually. She’s the type of character that I think any woman can relate to and I was rooting for her hardcore. It was really inspiring to see her try new things and take chances and I was oddly proud of her by the end.

Highly recommended by me, this was not only a fun and fast read, it was also full of wisdom and felt super modern and hip!

The Unbreakables in three words: Sexy, Empowering and Fresh.

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: June 4, 2019

Publisher: Berkley

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Blurb:

Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known each other since university. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and none of them ever found the lives they wanted – the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible.
 
Evvie starved herself to become a supermodel but derailed her career by sleeping with a married man. 
 
Maggie married Ben, the boy she fell in love with at university, never imagining the heartbreak his drinking would cause. 
 
Topher became a successful actor but the shame of a childhood secret shut him off from real intimacy.
 
By their thirtieth reunion, these old friends have lost touch with each other and with the people they dreamed of becoming. Together again, they have a second chance at happiness… until a dark secret is revealed that changes everything.
 
The Friends We Keep is about how despite disappointments we’ve had or mistakes we’ve made, it’s never too late to find a place to call home. 

Review:

JG is an auto buy author for me, when one of her books is released I always know I’m in for a treat and this was no exception. This is yet another book from her that is ideal for summer reading, it’s light and easy but also full of depth and dimension, which is the perfect combination for me in terms of a great beach read.

This begins in the eighties when Evvie, Topher and Maggie all meet for the first time and follows them over the next few decades as they navigate everything from marriage and the birth of children to loss and devastating heartbreak. All three of them are complex and fascinating individually and the dynamics between them are also complicated, each separate relationship is intriguing as well. When they reunite after mostly losing touch thirty years after they met, their lives have all taken several different and unexpected turns and they all wonder if they can manage to get back to the way they used to be.

I always enjoy following a group of characters for a number of years and experiencing all that life brings to them over the years and this story also had some downright juicy secrets and surprising turns which was just an added bonus. This was a heartfelt story about friendship and how secrets and regret can really change the course of our lives and also about how true family can come in the form of those that are not related by blood. Highly recommended by me to add to your summer reading list, especially if you enjoy books about friends!

The Friends We Keep in three words: Heartfelt, Juicy and Effortless.

Overall rating: 5/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Narrator: Carrie Hope Fletcher, Kwaku Fortune

Blurb:

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: June 1, 2019

Publisher: Lake Union

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Blurb:

What happened to Amanda Holmes?

Twenty years ago, she washed up on shore in a rowboat with a gash to the head after an overnight at Camp Macaw. No one was ever charged with a crime.

Now, the MacAllister children are all grown up. After their parents die suddenly, they return to Camp to read the will and decide what to do with the prime real estate it’s sitting on. Ryan, the oldest, wants to sell. Margo, the family’s center, hasn’t made up her mind. Mary has her own horse farm to run, and believes in leaving well-enough alone. Kate and Liddie—the twins—have opposing views. And Sean Booth, the family groundskeeper, just hopes he still has a home when all is said and done. 

But then the will is read and they learn that it’s much more complicated than a simple vote. Until they unravel the mystery of what happened to Amanda, they can’t move forward. Any one of them could have done it, and all of them are hiding key pieces of the puzzle. Will they work together to solve the mystery, or will their suspicions and secrets finally tear the family apart? 

Review:

I’ve been of fan of the author for the past few years and I’m beginning to realize that she is one of those rare writers who gets better with each new book. There’s an assuredness to her writing style, that combined with her ability to come up with fresh and unique storylines always hooks me.

This is told via multiple perspectives, all the members of the MacAllister family and over the course of one weekend as they reunite at their families camp to hear what their parents will states. You also get several flashback chapters from Amanda from twenty years ago that slowly reveal what happened to her. Past and present timelines usually work well for me and CMK is especially skilled at slowly leading the reader down one path only to throw you off course several times before the end.

This family is pretty damn dysfunctional and I can’t say that I truly liked any of them but damn were they interesting! They all had tons of secrets and none were very close to each other making it very hard to guess where loyalties lied. Since the whole book is set at Camp it had a really cool locked room vibe, really atmospheric, not necessarily super creepy, but definitely a strong sense of place that added to the tension of the plot. The end was super solid with lots of surprises and I was super satisfied!

I’ll Never Tell in three words: Clever, Atmospheric and Complex

Overall rating: 4/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: Park Row

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Blurb:

Who can you trust if you don’t know who you are? She arrives at the train station only to realize her bag had been stolen–her passport, credit cards, laptop, house key now all gone. And even more disturbing, when she goes to report the incident, she can’t recall her own name. All she has on her is a train ticket home.Suffering from stress-induced amnesia, the woman without a name is a source of mystery when she appears at the sleepy Wiltshire village where she thought she lived. She quickly becomes a source of conspiracy and fear among the townspeople. Why does one think he recognizes her from years earlier? And why do the local police take such a strong interest in her arrival?From the critically acclaimed author of Find Me comes a shocking new tale of dark pasts and deception, leaving us breathlessly analyzing the role memory plays in defining who we are–and who others think we might be. 

Review:

I’ve been in a weird reading mood lately y’all, I’m either absolutely raving about a book and pushing everyone to read it or I hate it and am pissy. Just wanted to put that out there before I get started on my thoughts about this one because unfortunately this one fell on the the I didn’t like it all side of things 🤷‍♀️

I’m not going to sit here and completely bash this one but I do wanna quickly share why it didn’t work for me. I wasn’t invested in the characters and I think it’s partly because there were way too many of them and none were fully fleshed out. They were very one dimensional to me and I just didn’t really care what happened to them in the end. I also felt like it was longer than it needed to be and I really had to push myself to finish, and I’m talking once I got to like eighty percent. That’s never a good sign for me, usually when I’m reading a thriller the ending is where I’m hooked and don’t want to put it down and I didn’t feel like that here at all. The plot itself was fine, at least most of it but I did find certain aspects to be far fetched and just highly unbelievable. Overall I just didn’t care for this one, the characters, the writing, the story, I was very apathetic about the whole thing and I can’t say I recommend it.

Overall rating: 2/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Goodreads|Amazon

Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: Scribner

Genre: Literary Fiction

Blurb:

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, and the power of forgiveness.

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city. What goes on behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.

Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart. In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.

But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past. Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace. 

Review:

There has been so much positive buzz surrounding this book and I was SO excited when it was finally time for me to start reading it but, unpopular opinion alert, I didn’t love it as much as I was hoping to. There definitely is quite a lot to love about this one but unfortunately for me there was also enough that didn’t work for me that I can’t truly say I’m a fan.

For the first half of the book I was pretty well invested, the writing is fantastic, no doubt the author is talented, and the storyline itself while not necessarily gripping, had me interested for sure. I really liked that we followed two families over several decades and the character development was very strong, I think it was maybe a little too strong for me actually. Often I struggle with literary fiction, it’s sometimes too heavy and dense for me and while that wasn’t my exact issue here, I’m beginning to think that maybe LF in general just isn’t for me. I didn’t find the writing style to be too verbose or over the top like I sometimes feel, however I did find myself start to lose interest at the halfway point and I think at least part of the reason why is because it started to feel like things were dragging, almost at a standstill for me. I really and truly had to push myself to finish and maybe I should’ve just set it aside because it was a struggle form halfway to the end. But after spending quite a bit of time getting to the middle point I stubbornly refused to set it aside, I figured I could power through and honestly that wasn’t a smart decision.

I’m clearly in the minority on this one, just browse Goodreads or Instagram and you’ll see plenty of rave reviews so if you’re interested in this one please take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I’ve been struggling in general lately with quite a few books, clearly I’m moody and super picky right now so keep that in mind while deciding whether or not to read this one.

Overall rating: Between a 2.5-3 for me I can’t actually decide but I always round up so let’s just call it a 3 and move on 😂

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.