Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough. Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it! Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up. For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.
Yes, I know it’s almost the end of October!! But here are the last three books I read in September…
Beach Read by Emily Henry – 4*
This was a traveling book club read, and for some reason I wasn’t particularly expecting to enjoy it. I think I’ve been burned a few times lately about books that look like romcoms but then turn out to be really serious novels, and I’d heard somewhere that this was along those lines. But while I wouldn’t exactly classify it as a romcom, Beach Read ended up being a lot of fun. Frequently, authors like to make the female lead be super annoying and, frankly, bitchy, but that wasn’t the case here. I ended up really liking January and Gus both, and I liked them together.
My biggest annoyance with this story is that I’m just kind of over the tired trope of “girl finds out her perfect dad was actually a cheating jerk and now she has to Get Away From It All”… maybe because I have a perfect dad who isn’t a cheating jerk, and know several others as well. Whatever. Anyway, the point is that when January’s dad died suddenly, she finds out that he had had an affair. He left her a house in his hometown (where he also had the affair) and that’s where she’s staying for the summer. He also left her a letter, which she refuses to read. And THAT is what annoyed me the most. She spends all this time being super mad at her dad when she has literally no idea what actually happened. She complains internally all the time about how she’ll “never get to hear his side of the story” since he’s dead EVEN THOUGH HE FREAKING WROTE HER A LETTER THAT SHE WON’T READ. Guess what, January – you could probably hear your dad’s side of the story if you READ THE LETTER.
So yeah, I enjoyed the romance part and the writer’s block part, but wasn’t a huge fan of the dad plot mostly because of January not reading the letter but spending the whole time complaining about how she wished she could talk with her dad one more time. ::eyeroll:: Next paragraph is a SPOILER for what was going on with her dad:
SPOILER – In the end, despite the fact that January assumed that her dad had been cheating on her mom forever up until his death, that just wasn’t true. He did have an affair when her mom was super sick, but in the end he went back to January’s mom, confessed what had happened, and they moved forward with their marriage and he didn’t cheat again. Yes, that was a horrible thing for him to do, but I also felt like her parents were adults who could decide what to do about their marriage, so January being low-key mad at her mom for forgiving January’s dad really annoyed me. I don’t think her dad was justified in his cheating (at all) but also didn’t feel like what he did meant that he wasn’t at all the man she “thought she knew” yadda yadda. -END SPOILER
So yes, overall I did like this one. There was a lot of snark and entertaining moments between January and Gus and I really liked them together. I could have done with less self-induced dad angst, but it was still a fun read.
Virtual Unicorn Experience by Dana Simpson – 4*
I read all of these books earlier this year, so I was excited to snag this one from the library when it came out. It’s nothing particularly different from the earlier books, but they are still just fun, happy comics that I always enjoy.
The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine – 4*
Levine is a hit-or-miss author with me, and while I had vague memories of reading this book several years ago, I couldn’t really remember what it was about or even if I liked it. Recently I ended up with a copy of the prequel (ish), The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre, so that inspired me to check this one out of the library.
While not a ground-breaking book, it was an overall enjoyable story. Addie and Meryl are the princesses from the title, and their kingdom is small but happy, other than a disease called The Grey Death, for which there is no cure. Years ago, a prophecy was made about when and how the cure would be found, but it has yet to be fulfilled. Of the two princesses, Meryl is the brave and outgoing one, eager for adventures and excitement. Addie is shy and quiet and prefers indoor activities. But when Meryl sickens with The Grey Death, Addie has to set out on a quest to find the cure.
Large parts of this book were pretty predictable (or maybe my subconscious remembered how it was going to turn out??) but it was still a solid MG read. Sadly, the prequel wasn’t as good – I didn’t even end up finishing it! (More on that when I talk about September’s DNFs in my next post.) But I did enjoy reading this one.
The Aroma of Books 