Book Review: Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters

“You can keep all the flowers and the heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. When a man comes over to unblock your toilet, that’s romance.”

Rachel Winters, Would Like to Meet

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I have recently had a rocky relationship with romance novels. This has been a hard time for me, because I love romance! But the last few that I have read have ranged from bad to alright, and I’ve been waiting for one that I could enjoy all the way through. Though I did hit a brief rough patch about 75% of the way through, I recovered quickly and I really liked this one!

Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters is a romantic comedy. Evie Summers works as an assistant at a film agency-she used to have dreams of being a screenwriter, but gave them up when an agent told her that she didn’t have what it takes, and now her goal is to become an agent. Her boss promises her a promotion if she can get superstar screenwriter Ezra Chester to write the romantic comedy screenplay he owes them. When Ezra refuses, claiming that he doesn’t find rom-coms compelling, Evie presents him with a deal: she’ll reenact movie meet-cutes to prove to him that they can lead to real love.

There were a lot of things to like about this! Most of the characters were great, including Evie who I saw several people say that they couldn’t stand. She’s a very flawed character-she makes a lot of mistakes, though sometimes they were out of her hands, and was occasionally frustrating, but I really liked her. She is just trying her best! I really enjoyed her friends as well, and their dynamics were fun. Evie’s relationship with Anette, Ben’s daughter, was also really adorable.

The plot was pretty simple and straightforward, but it was fun. There were a lot of really funny moments which I really appreciated because the last few rom-coms that I have read were not actually funny! The plot was predictable but I kind of enjoy that in romances, because the point isn’t to be shocked but to enjoy the romantic moments born out of the plot points. So even though there was only one moment that shocked me I really enjoyed the way things played out.

There were two love interests, which I wasn’t a fan of at first because it was pretty clear to me early on which of the men was going to be the “endgame”, and Evie’s dynamic with the other character was much more interesting to me. But by the end of the book I was on board and rooting for him. The romance was much softer in this book than many others I have read-as the quote at the top of this review suggests, the romance is in the little things, and in being there. I ended up really loving the romance for this reason.

Would Like to Meet is a really adorable rom-com that has restored my faith in my ability to enjoy romantic novels! And also made me wish that meet-cutes really did work, because if they did I would have met the love of my life in college probably. If only!

Book Review: The Institute by Stephen King

‘Is it weird?’ he asked. ‘Being you, I mean?’

Luke considered this. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Usually, it’s just life.’

Stephen King, The Institute

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

This is the first Stephen King novel I have ever read; the decision to request it from the library was originally a heat of the moment choice spurred on by my intense month long spiral after IT Chapter Two (2019). I wanted to read a Stephen King book but truly did not think I could survive reading IT in my state and so I opted for his newest release. I was like 76^th on the waiting list, and thus have waited four months for this moment, which is a long time for expectations to build. Fortunately, my expectations were met! I enjoyed The Institute a lot-as much as you can enjoy a book where children are kidnapped and tortured.

The Institute starts off with Tim Jamieson making a cross country trip to start a new life in New York, and then switches POVs to Luke Ellis, a 12 year old child prodigy in Minnesota. Their paths cross eventually, after Luke has been kidnapped by The Institute for showing signs of superpowers. There, Luke and other children are experimented on and tortured by doctors and caretakers for a secret purpose. Despite the desperate situation, Luke and the other children form a strong bond that keeps them sane, a bond which eventually leads to a plan for escape.

The cast of characters in this novel is large, and we get POV sections for many of them. All of the main players in the plot were well written and developed, and the POV juggling was handled really well. I was never confused about whose POV we were reading, or when a switch was made. The characters were my favorite part of the novel, especially the kids. I am really fond of found families so the bonds that were created between the children made me really emotional, which made the story all the more affecting. The antagonists, while very evil, were not one dimensional but had their own personalities.

There were a lot of things in The Institute that were hard to stomach-fortunately, some of them ended up being fade to black, but even the suggestion was horrible. It got off to a slow start, but I still could not put it down. I always wanted to see what would happen next, and was desperate to know how everything would work out in the end. I am definitely more of a character reader than a plot reader, but the plot was intriguing and kept me guessing. I liked the straightforward writing style, and weirdly, Stephen King writes exactly like I thought he would. Also, in addition to being rather horrible, it was pretty funny!

Having just watched IT Chapter Two (again) hours before writing this review, I know that Stephen King notoriously struggles with endings. But I liked the end of this one, it fit the story and I even appreciated the sort of epilogue at the very end.

I had a good time with my first Stephen King novel, and now I plan to read a lot more! Maybe even get around to IT some day.

Most importantly to me, I can finally get the shirt from Monster Squad (1987) without feeling like a fraud!

Top 5 Tuesday

Thanks to Shanah at Bionic Book Worm for hosting Top 5 Tuesday! This week’s topic is “Top 5 Books I need to read in 2020”. I am sticking to books I already own for this one, since I recently counted how many unread books I have and the number is truly Too Many, and I need to get reading them!

1. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

High Fantasy, dragons, lesbians, what more could I need! This was one of my most anticipated books last year and I was able to get over halfway through before my slightest whims led me astray and directly to an abundance of hold requests at the library. I put it down to get through them and then haven’t picked it back up, but I want to finish it because I was really enjoying it. It’s been like 3 months already since I last read it though, so I will probably have to start over.

2. Moon Rising (Luna #3) by Ian McDonald

This one was on my last Top 5 Tuesday post: Top 5 Books I Didn’t Get to in 2019. I am notoriously bad at reading e-books, but I have a kindle now and things are looking up in that department. I also had to start this one over again since it had been so long since I put it down.

3. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

I bought this from Thrift Books directly after reading Six of Crows in 2018, because I wanted a heist book for adults. It’s been a year and a half since then and I see it on my shelf constantly but am mildly afraid to pick it up because of the size (even though it is less pages then Priory). But this year I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna read about these thieves and I’m gonna like it (probably)!

4. Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by Blair Braverman

Last year, I started following Blair Braverman on Twitter. She’s a Dogsledder who completed the Iditarod for the first time last year, and tweeted the entire experience. She frequently posts threads about all of her dogs, and she has become my absolute favorite Twitter follow. This is her memoir detailing her journey to becoming a Dogsledder, and I was planning to read it this month but haven’t found the time to do so. But I absolutely will get to it soon!

5. The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The first book in this series, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, hit me super hard when I read it back in 2018. The series is about Baru Cormorant, a lesbian accountant who seeks to gain political power in order to avenge the death of her parents at the hands of imperialists. I love a good gay revenge story, and Baru’s story is incredibly moving to me, and I think I have been putting off the sequel because I’m a little afraid of how it’s going to hurt me this time! But the third book is coming out in June, so now is a good time to catch up, and maybe reread the first one if I can handle it.

I am determined to get to these books this year! Please wish me luck as I am a mood reader without even a modicum of self control. Maybe 2020 is the year I will develop willpower!

2020 Goals

Happy New Year everyone!

Normally I don’t make resolutions, because I have a tendency to make them vague and then I don’t stick to them, which just makes me feel bad about myself. But for some reason, using the word “goals” in place of “resolution” makes me feel better about the concept-it seems less aggressive. So I came up with a list of reading and bookish goals for the year, to challenge myself a little more in terms of reading and also to help me clear out some of the books I have hanging around my room.

1. Read 70 books

Last year I set my Goodreads Book Challenge at 45 books, and due to marathon reading the Poe Dameron trades in the last week of December, I ended up at 55. Normally, I would keep the number the same or only raise it by 5 or so, but I have a lot of shorter books and graphic novels I want to read but have been putting off. I know that 70 books will be difficult, so this will encourage me to finally pick some of them up in order to reach my goal. Which brings me to my next goal…

2. Read more comics

I have a huge backlog of comics on the Comixology app. I tend to forget about it because they’re on an app and not physically in front of me, forcing me to confront the fact that I have not read them yet every time I glance at them. I have a ton of trades to catch up on due to two years of really good Black Friday sales, as well as a lot of individual comics, which I won’t count as individual books but will group an arc or two together like they are grouped in a trade and count that as one book. My specific goal is to read at least two trades a month. That’s doable and since I only currently subscribe to two runs, will help me catch up!

3. 2 out, 1 in

Maybe this is blasphemous for a reader to say but, I own too many books. And I love having them! But the reality is that I just do not have enough space for all of them, and in an effort to curb my extraneous book buying, I am employing a new system. If I want to buy a book, I need to donate 2 that I already own to the library. This means that I either need to decide and commit to reading 2 books, or come to terms with the fact that I have books I will probably never read, before I can buy another one. I will probably be a little lenient with myself but I will be keeping track-if I get two one month, I’ll be sure to donate 4 books before buying another one. Hopefully this helps me manage all the books I already own!

4. Book Riot Read Harder Challenge

I’ve recently been reading Book Riot a lot, and I came across their annual Read Harder Challenge. It’s a set of tasks to help you read books that are out of your comfort zone, or as Book Riot puts it, “to break you out of your bubble and expand your worldview through books.” I’m excited to do this! I’ve already started working on my list of books for each task, and I can already see that a lot of them are books I wouldn’t have picked up if I weren’t doing this, even though they interest me.

That’s it for my goals for now. A few of them are going to be challenging, but they’ll also be fun or beneficial to me (and my tiny room). I will report back in a few months with my progress. Hopefully by the end of the year I have caught up on comics and have been using the library even more than I already do. Wish me luck, and good luck with your goals!

Books I DNF’d in 2019

2019 is the year that I accepted what I have always secretly known-there are too many books to read for me to keep reading a book I am not enjoying. Previously, I have always pushed through a book I am struggling with and never wanted to quit reading. But like I said, there’s too many books to read to be doing that! So this year I embraced the DNF. Here are the 7 books I couldn’t finish this year.

1. Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan

I was so excited for this book, but reading it was so difficult for me. I found the protagonist Nadya to be really boring, and most of the banter awkward and stilted. Half of the novel was written from the point of view of a character that was much more interesting and entertaining than Nadia, which made it even harder to get through Nadia’s chapters. I decided to skip Nadia’s chapters around chapter 15, and not that long after I quit entirely as I would be missing half the book. And I was actually really sad about this! I was looking forward to this one for a long time.

2. Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter and 3. Save the Date by Morgan Matson

I’m putting these together because I cannot really remember why I DNF’d either of them. I just was not really feeling it when I read them, and there wasn’t anything in it that made me want to keep reading. I’m not going to lie though-I probably would have pushed through both of them if they were gay. But they weren’t! And they were from the library so I don’t feel that bad about it. I do really love the cover for Not If I Save You First though.

4. Vow of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson

This one is fully on me. I didn’t care that much for the first book-I liked it just enough that the cliffhanger ending piqued my interest and I requested the second one from my library as soon as I was able. And I love Kazi, one of the main characters, so much. Unfortunately I don’t really care for the other main character and love interest, which made the alternating points of view hard for me (again!). But mostly, this one just never caught my interest, and 30% of the way through I realized I didn’t care about the plot or the characters. Also there were some language things that just annoyed me-naming a fictional place “Eislandia” and using terms like “rewind” that don’t make sense in the historical fantasy setting.

5. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

This one hurt a lot actually! I loved the concept, and even splurged for the Fairyloot box for the special edition of it because I was convinced I was going to love it. And I do still really love the concept, but I just could not get through it. There is a content warning at the beginning of the book, but I still was not prepared for how awful reading this would be for me. Less than 5% into the book, there is a very graphic death of an animal, and shortly after that a graphic sexual assault attempt. And from there on, there was a constant, inescapable threat of assault that I just couldn’t deal with. I’m not sure how far in I made it, but I don’t think that the mood gets much better, so I wasn’t willing to stick it out.

6. Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia

I was kind of sad about this, because it seemed so fun! A book about a girl who can see ghosts and has to save her town while some ghost hunters are visiting really interested me. Unfortunately, I just could not get into it at all. I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing or the characters, and the plot wasn’t very engaging.

7. Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray

Oh boy, I was really sad about this one. I love friendship! And that’s what this book was all about! But I just could not deal with the way it was written, and I think it’s because it was written with very British humor that was just…not funny to me. And it skipped around a lot and the scenes didn’t really fit together, and it was kind of annoying to read. But I loved their friendship! Maybe if I was not on a tight library due date deadline I would have finished it.

So there it is, all the books I could not finish this year. Should I give any of these another chance?

Top 5 Tuesday

Happy Tuesday everyone! Top 5 Tuesday is hosted by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm. This is my first time participating! This week’s theme is Top 5 Books I Didn’t Get to In 2019.

1. I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

This only came out in October, so I haven’t had much time to get to it, but I was really looking forward to it! Unfortunately the release coincided with a lot of other things I had to read so I wasn’t able to prioritize it. This YA novel features LGBTQ characters and communication aliens-what else could I ask for in a novel?

2. The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade #2) by Seth Dickinson

It took me a very long time to read The Traitor Baru Cormorant, but when I did finish it became one of my favorite reads of last year. This sequel came out earlier this year and I immediately bought it, but have yet to find myself in the right mood for a novel as dense with economics as this series tends to be. It’s also an eBook, which I notoriously have a hard time with. But it’s top of my list for next year!

3. Moon Rising (Luna #3) by Ian McDonald

Another sequel, and another eBook, that I didn’t get to this year. The Luna series is one of my favorites-it’s about a future where various Earth nations have colonized the moon, and five families control the resources that make life possible on the moon. It’s a complicated family and political drama with a giant cast of characters. I did get about 30% of the way through but I never got around to finishing it, mostly because I struggle with ebooks!

4. The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Carey Pietsch

I pre-ordered this! A rare thing for me. And yet even though I have spent all year catching up on the Adventure Zone podcast, I never got around to reading this. At least I am almost up to date with the episodes!

5. A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) by V.E. Schwab

I read the first one this year on the recommendation of a friend, and I immediately loved it. Lila is one of my favorite characters in any book. I really wanted to read the rest of the series this year but I never got around to it. I think I might make it a priority next year, especially with the development of the Netflix series!

Writing this I’ve realized that almost all of these are series, and only two are complete. Hopefully I can get to these sometime soon!

December 2019 TBR

Hi everyone! I’m still working out things to do for this blog, but I thought a monthly TBR to see what I plan on reading might be fun. I got a little overzealous with my library’s request system back in October, and ended up with about 9 books nearly at the same time. I’ve read half of them (one of which I recently reviewed!) and still have 4 to go, but have run out of renewals so I’m determined to get them read before returning them. So here goes!

Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia

Technically I already started this in November but that just makes it first on my list for December! Ghosts who commit crimes and a semi-reluctant ghost hunting crew are right up my alley.

Sorry For Your Loss by Jessie Ann Foley

I can’t remember how I came across this book, but it is about dealing with grief as a teenager, and sometimes I just like to be sad!

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray

Another one about grief, this time about 3 friends who run away with the ashes of their best friend who recently passed, possibly due to suicide.

The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics

More ghosts! The last of my Halloween library requests which I obviously did not get to by Halloween, due to too many horror movies (31, to be exact).

Tarnished Are The Stars by Rosiee Thor

I recently signed up for the LGBTQReads Patreon tier where you tell them what kind of book you are looking for and they send you a recommended book. I asked for “science fiction, in space, with a f/f romance between main characters” because I am a very demanding person, and they responded immediately with this! So I’m excited.

Poe Dameron Vol. 5: The Spark and The Fire by Charles Soule

December, as we all know, is Star Wars month. I read the first 4 volumes immediately when they came out, and then somehow just completely forgot about this one. So I’ll be catching up before The Rise of Skywalker!

Collie Jolly by Leigh Landry

Another book I came across because of LGBTQReads, this time via their twitter account. It’s an f/f holiday romance with dogs! How could I resist?

Any other month and I would say this is not a hard list but due to the fact that almost all of these are library books, and they are due by Dec 12th, it is very much a hard list this month! Hopefully I can do it all! What are you reading this month?