Reviewing the Unreviewed: January 2021

I read a lot of books that I don’t end up reviewing for whatever reason. Some because I wasn’t impressed. Some because I didn’t have the time. Some I just wasn’t feeling it on whatever particular day I finished. Reviewing the Unreviewed is my monthly post where I share my few thoughts on all the books I didn’t formally review.

Arrogant Devil by R.S. Grey. Read December 31-January 1. 4 Stars.

This was a fun little book. It was humorous and I liked the characters. I didn’t love that the romance between Jack and Meredith started while she was still technically married, though, even if she had left her abusive husband and was definitely planning on divorcing. I did like that they went slow, though, and Jack was really sweet. I never really felt like the title fit the book.

The Swap by Robyn Harding. Read January 1. 4 Stars.

Well, this was an entertaining and twisted read. It’s a story of obsession and manipulation and pretty awful people, but it was incredibly addicting. Even though almost every twist could be seen from a mile away, I didn’t want to put it down.

All the Rage (DI Adam Fawley #4) by Cara Hunter. Read January 3-6. 4 Stars.

Another great installment of the series. Loved the development of all the beloved characters, as well as the new mystery. There were lots of threads to bring together and Hunter did a great job with it.

The Duke and I (Bridgertons #1) by Julia Quinn. Read January 12-16. 4 Stars.

I really enjoyed Bridgerton on Netflix, so I thought I should try the book and I really enjoyed this, too. I realized the show made quite a bit of changes, which probably would’ve annoyed me if I read the book first, but since I watched the show first, I find I’m ok with it.

I loved the banter between Simon and Daphne. The book was much funnier than I expected it to be and I had a fun time reading it. I plan to continue with the series.

A Temporary Marriage (Fake Love #1) by Summer Dowell. Read January 17-18. 3 Stars.

I love a good Fake Relationship / Marriage of Convenience story and this was pretty cute. It did drag a little in the middle and I considered DNF-ing, but I’m glad I stuck with it. I’ll probably try more from this author.

The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons #2) by Julia Quinn. Read January 21-23. 4 Stars. 

I really enjoyed this! I think even more than the first book. I didn’t like that Anthony was a little too mean in some parts, but I did like him overall, which I didn’t expect since he was not my favorite in the first book (or the tv show). I also really liked Kate and her family. There was so much fun banter, too.

An Offer from a Gentleman (Bridgerton #3) by Julia Quinn. Read January 23-25. 3.5 Stars

I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as the previous two books, but I still enjoyed it. The fun banter that I’ve come to expect from these books was present and I loved it. I liked Sophie and Benedict together. I wanted a little more character development from Benedict, though.

*****Re-Read*****

The Stand-In Boyfriend (Grove Valley High #1) by Emma Doherty.

I started the sequel to this book and after a couple chapters it just made me really want to read this one again. So I did. I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Livy still managed to annoy me a good deal of the time, but Chase was just as sweet as I remembered.

*****DNF*****

The Relationship Pact (Kings of Football #3) by Adriana Locke. DNF @ 16%. I wanted to like this, but I jut couldn’t get into it.

The Backup Girlfriend (Grove Valley High #2) by Emma Doherty. DNF @ 17%. I wanted to like this, but I didn’t. At all. I’m not forcing myself to read any more of it.

Varsity Rulebreaker (Varsity #3) by Ginger Scott. DNF @ 49%. I hated Cannon half the time. I hated Hollis all of the time. I have lots of other thoughts on why this didn’t work for me, but they all come back to the characters and their behavior, so I’m just going to leave it at this.

The Class Reunion by N.L. Hinkens. DNF @ 17%. Just couldn’t get into this. I never really connected with the main character and the writing left a little to be desired.

Marrying Mr. Darcy (Love Manor #2) by Kate O’Keeffe. DNF @ 20%. I enjoyed the first book in this series well enough and was looking forward to this one, but it just never captured my interest. Maybe if I could have read them back-to-back I would still feel invested in the characters, but I don’t now, so I’m going to call it.

You Have a Match by Emma Lord. DNF @ 16%. I hate stories where the biggest source of drama is miscommunications. I also really didn’t care for the main character. I can’t make myself read anymore of this.

The Happy Camper by Melody Carlson. DNF @ 50%. I really wanted to like this, but I never got invested. The main character was pretty unlikable and I found it hard to root for her.

*****Books with Future Reviews Scheduled*****

The Love Proof by Madeleine Henry – 4 Stars

Review: The Arrangement by Robyn Harding

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Natalie, a young art student in New York City, is struggling to pay her bills when a friend makes a suggestion: Why not go online and find a sugar daddy—a wealthy, older man who will pay her for dates, and even give her a monthly allowance? Lots of girls do it, Nat learns. All that’s required is to look pretty and hang on his every word. Sexual favours are optional.

Though more than thirty years her senior, Gabe, a handsome corporate finance attorney, seems like the perfect candidate, and within a month, they are madly in love. At least, Nat is…Gabe already has a family, whom he has no intention of leaving.

So when he abruptly ends things, Nat can’t let go. She begins drinking heavily and stalking him: watching him at work, spying on his wife, even befriending his daughter, who is not much younger than she is. But Gabe’s not about to let his sugar baby destroy his perfect life. What was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement devolves into a nightmare of deception, obsession, and, when a body is found near Gabe’s posh Upper East Side apartment, murder.

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.

The Arrangement will be available July 30, 3019. 

I found The Arrangement really addicting. I ignored so many real life things so I wouldn’t have to put this book down and I have no regrets.

What I liked

-The author mentions in her acknowledgments that to research the topic, she signed up on an actual sugar daddy/sugar baby website and met with a couple of girls to find out more about them and this world they live in. I think this authenticity came through in the book. Harding does a good job of relaying how these young women justify what they do – or why they shouldn’t have to -, as well as how damaging and dangerous it can be. Before I go on and start to sound judgey, let me say that while I don’t agree with what they’re doing, I don’t think they’re the ones that should be blamed in these circumstances. They are not the ones with families and wives they are cheating on.

-Another thing that Harding did well was get into the psyche of the type of man that acts as a “sugar daddy.” Gabe justifies his actions in a multitude of ways, but all of them are dickish. His wife had cancer and isn’t up to meeting his needs anymore. She used to be attractive, but now has grown older and doesn’t want to get plastic surgery. His daughter doesn’t appreciate him anymore. Blah, blah, blah. He is narcissistic and selfish and, I’ll just say it, gross.

-The writing was pretty addictive. It was pretty well paced and the tension just kept increasing as Nat and Gabe’s relationship became more and more unstable and volatile.

What Didn’t Work for Me

-You know how sometimes people have certain words that just make them cringe when they hear it? That’s how I felt every time a sugar daddy was just referred to as “a daddy.” I also don’t love the term “sugar baby.” Those terms are used a lot throughout the story and I cringed every time. However, I did find some other terms interesting – such as a “splenda daddy”, who is someone who pretends to have the funds to be a sugar daddy. Not so fun fact, that term describes my father (see earlier paragraph about narcissistic, selfish, and gross men…).

-I felt really let down by the ending. There’s a bit of a twist and it was exactly what I predicted it would be. Maybe people that don’t read a lot of this genre will find it really surprising, but it felt cliched and done to me.

Overall

Overall, I enjoyed The Arrangement. The writing was addictive and Harding did a good job of creating a tense atmosphere. Even though I was a little disappointed with how it ended, I’m going to give it 4 stars because I thought everything else was well done.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 4 Stars

WWW Wednesday: July 17, 2019

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

Nothing at the moment. I just finished a book late last night and will start a new one during my lunch break today.

What did you recently finish reading?

 

Maybe This Time by Kasie West and The Arrangement by Robyn Harding.

What do you think you’ll read next?

 

I just got The First Mistake by Sandie Jones from the library. I was also thinking about re-reading Let’s Get Textual by Teagan Hunter (don’t judge it by it’s cover!!) while I still have Kindle Unlimited.

What are you reading?

Review: The Party by Robyn Harding

Synopsis from Good Reads:

In this stunning and provocative domestic drama about a sweet sixteen birthday party that goes horribly awry, a wealthy family in San Francisco finds themselves entangled in a legal battle, their darkest secrets revealed, and their friends turned to enemies.

One invitation. A lifetime of regrets.

Sweet sixteen. It’s an exciting coming of age, a milestone, and a rite of passage. Jeff and Kim Sanders plan on throwing a party for their daughter, Hannah—a sweet girl with good grades and nice friends. Rather than an extravagant, indulgent affair, they invite four girls over for pizza, cake, movies, and a sleepover. What could possibly go wrong?

But things do go wrong, horrifically so. After a tragic accident occurs, Jeff and Kim’s picture perfect life in a wealthy San Francisco suburb suddenly begins to unravel. A lawsuit is filed that irrevocably changes their relationship, reveals dark secrets in the Sanders’ marriage, and exposes the truth about their perfect daughter, Hannah.

Harkening to Herman Koch’s The Dinner, Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, The Party takes us behind the façade of the perfect family, exposing the lies, betrayals, and moral lapses that neighbors don’t see—and the secrets that children and parents keep from themselves and each other.

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.

The Party will be available June 6, 2017.

This is a hard book for me to review. On the one hand, I kind of hated pretty much everything about it. But on the other hand, I couldn’t stop reading it.

The characters are awful people. All of them. All the time. I thought maybe Jeff and Kim had just been through some bad times and they would get better as the story went on. They did not. Their daughter, Hannah, and her friends were all awful. Lisa, the mother of the girl to get hurt at Hannah’s party, is awful. All of Jeff and Kim’s friends are just as horrible – the one exception being Lisa’s boyfriend, Allan, who tried to be the voice of reason in her vendetta against the Sanders. It seemed like every time a character was faced with a decision they chose the wrong one. At first I was getting so upset over their actions, screaming at them in my head to stop being idiots. But around halfway through the story, I became a little more resigned to their behavior and just began waiting for the next stupid thing. There is no one to root for in this book, so for awhile I was just rooting for all of them to have their comeuppance. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the ending to be satisfactory at all.

Even though I hated all the characters, I just kept reading. At first I wanted to see the characters redeem themselves, but even after I realized that wasn’t going to happen I still wanted to see what happened. The story is told through the POVs of Kim, Jeff, Lisa, and Hannah and I thought they were all done effectively. Even though I hated them, it has to say something about the writing that I still wanted to keep reading about them.

Overall, The Party has good writing and an interesting premise, but I absolutely hated all the characters. For awhile I did enjoy hating them, but I found it really unsatisfying that they didn’t get the level of comeuppance I was hoping for, nor did they really seem to learn anything from the experience. I’m bumping my rating up a little bit, though, because the author still made me keep reading, despite my feelings about the characters.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 3 Stars 

Reviewing the Unreviewed: May 2017

I read a lot of books that I don’t end up reviewing for whatever reason. Some because I wasn’t impressed. Some because I didn’t have the time. Some I just wasn’t feeling it on whatever particular day I finished. Reviewing the Unreviewed is my monthly post where I share my few thoughts on all the books I didn’t formally review.

Always My Girl (The Shaughnessy Brothers #3) by Samantha Chase. Read May 6-7. 3 Stars.

There were some cute moments in this book, but I spent a good deal of time being frustrated at either Anna or Quinn. It was a pretty well done Friends-to-Lovers story, though. I might check out some of the other books in the series.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. Read May 5-10. 2 Stars.

I applaud the ambitiousness of the many, many narrators in this book, but unfortunately it really didn’t work for me. Some of the POVs were 1st person POV and some were 3rd person. The perspective changed so quickly that I never really felt a connection to any of the characters. However, the quick chapters were also the only thing that really kept me reading. I felt like the story dragged on for much too long. Information was given about each character one little piece at a time and by the time things were actually explained I had already guessed it so it felt really anti-climactic. There was absolutely zero shocks or surprises in the whole thing. This isn’t one I would recommend.

The Party by Robyn Harding. Read May 11-13. 3 Stars.

Even though I hated all the characters in this, I still wanted to find out what happened, so this is getting 3 stars instead of 2. Full review to come closer to release date.

Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist #1) by Renee Ahdieh. Read May 21-25. 2 Stars.

Well, this was disappointing! Good concept, but really lacking in execution. I thought a great deal of the book was really boring. There’s a ton of inner monologues where the characters just go back and forth and back and forth on any and everything they’re thinking about. I’ve read all these reviews about how Mariko is this bad-ass warrior, but, like, am I reading the same book?? I thought she was immature and kind of self-centered. She went on and on about having honor, but didn’t really do anything very honorable. There’s a part where she talks about how she outsmarted some people several times over and it made me laugh. The romance was ok, but not as good as I was hoping it would be after loving Shazi and Khalid from The Wrath and the Dawn series. Overall, I was just really disappointed in this. But, obviously, I am the black sheep of hype, so I’m sure may others will love it.

****************RE-READ****************

My Lady Jane. I loved this book just as much as I did the first time around. I still really recommend it if you haven’t read it yet!

****************BACK ON THE TBR****************

 

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. I admit I requested this from the library based on the cover and hype alone. I didn’t even really know what it was about. I read the prologue and knew that I was definitely not in the mood to try it, so I decided to put it off for some other time. I actually just found out yesterday I won a giveaway of this book, so it’s definitely one I will be reading in the future.  The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon. I got this from the library, but it’s going to expire before I get to it. Plus, I really think I need to read the first two books again before I try to continue with the series.

Blogger Stats Book Tag

I saw this tag awhile back over at Cover to Cover (go check her out!) and thought it looked fun. Feel free to tag yourself if you’d like.

The last three books you read?

   

The Party by Robyn Harding, Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, Always My Girl by Samantha Chase

Spoilers or spoiler free?

I usually try to write my reviews spoiler free, but sometimes I can’t help myself and need to talk about something specific and spoilery. I always put up a spoiler warning, though. When it comes to reading other people’s reviews I’m fine with spoilers as long as there’s a warning. There are some books I go looking for spoilers for and others that I don’t want to know anything about.

How long have you been book blogging?

Almost 4 years. Crazy!

A book you read in one sitting?

This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills

Your favorite genre?

This year has been mostly mysteries and suspense. I’m finally getting back into contemporaries, though, too.

Preferred book size? (novella, tome, etc)

I read most books on my Nook and the page count is always way off from what Good Reads says. But in Nook world, I would say I like around 250-350 pages.

Amount of books on your TBR?

473.

A book you have DNF’d?

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I hated the main character and just couldn’t get into the story at all.

Recent awards or milestones?

Nothing I can really think of.

Best interaction with an author you enjoy?

Meeting Leigh Bardugo was pretty cool.

Average number of books you read per month?

Around 10 or so

Top three publishers?

I don’t really have favorite publishers. I just read what looks interesting.

Social media sites your blog uses?

Twitter.

Average amount of time you spend on networking?

Um, about zero. I know, I suck.

Most comfortable blogging position?

I do all my blogging while sitting on my couch.

Music or quiet when writing reviews?

Tv on in background, but if I’m having trouble writing one I need quiet.

Can you sum up your blogging style in 5 words?

When I Feel Like It.

A blog you looked up to starting out?

There isn’t really one in particular. I didn’t really look at blogs before I started mine. But probably all the ones I followed in the beginning helped shape mine.

The best book you have reviewed so far?

 

So far this year the best ones have been Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton and Making Faces by Amy Harmon.

Best piece of blogging advice?

Don’t force content. I know everyone says you should post every day, but if you’re not feeling it or just throwing something together so you have a post, it shows. Some people can come up with great stuff and post every day and that’s great for them. But I started having much more fun with my blog when I stopped trying to keep up.