The Library

I was in a bit of a reading slump this month (the TV was just so good), but this book brought me back. I absolutely loved it. I want a sequel! Four years ago, Parker Navarro received a giant advance for his debut novel, only to have feared/legendary book critic Selina Chan destroy it. The review really stalls his career, and four years later he publishes his second book, with a paltry advance. When Chan’s review of book two sparks a public feud, they are both thrust into the spotlight—learning things about each other they hadn’t expected. I don’t want to give spoilers, but it’s not your typical romance. It also tackles some heavier issues: racism, the decline of the publishing industry, and the importance of supporting local bookstores. I could go on and on about this book and these characters, but I truly loved it so much. It surprised me!

Read this if you loved: I’ve never read anything like this, but if you liked Book Lovers, you will like this a lot.

I am a massive fan of Danny Meyer and his restaurants, and as a “restaurant kid,” I gobble up everything about the industry. I devoured his first book, Setting the Table; I did the same with his protégé Will Giudara’s Unreasonable Hospitality, so this was an automatic preorder, and of course I loved it. I love Meyer’s storytelling, his vulnerability about past mistakes, and of course, his relentless pursuit of great hospitality. I’d recommend it to anyone running their own business, especially someone trying to scale and grow. The book covers his transition from restaurateur to CEO, which I found inspiring! I found his leadership advice equally inspiring, and I loved hearing all of the stories. It was particularly interesting to learn about how they built and scaled Shake Shack into over 700 businesses! I chose to listen to this one, and I’m glad I did. Danny felt like an ultra-successful uncle, passing down years of wisdom and teaching me valuable business lessons along the way. If you haven’t read his first book, start there.

Read this if you loved: Setting the Table, Unreasonable Hospitality.

I was so excited when my friend Jamie sent me an early copy of this — I absolutely loved Listen for the Lie. This one might be even better; I found it to be unputdownable — and hilarious at times! Charlotte is George’s third wife. He’s twice her age, a perennial cheater, but Charlotte knows what she’s signed up for. When he goes missing, she’s not worried at first, assuming he’s off with another woman. But then she realizes that something more serious might have happened, and (given her shady past), she might be the main suspect. Suddenly, she has no choice but to race to figure out what’s happened to George, with help from his second wife. As she digs in, she realizes that George was investigating the murder of his first wife, Diana . . And that whoever killed Diana might be after George as well. This was a very fun read and kept me on my toes (and laughing) the whole time. I really enjoyed Charlotte as a character; she reminded me a lot of Georgia in Ginny & Georgia on Netflix. Highly recommend.

Read this if you loved: Listen for the Lie, The Social Climber . . . I also got Ginny & Georgia (The Netflix TV show!) vibes.

R.F. Kuang is an autobuy author for me; I wanted to love this but only liked it. The writing is fabulous; the way that she gets into the head of a young girl traveling abroad is incredible… I just didn’t find the subject matter all that interesting. Lily is a Chinese-American freshman spending the summer in Taipei at an intensive academic program focused on improving her Chinese. But everything goes wrong: boy drama, a grueling workload, her grandfather’s passing, and a falling out with her roommate. It was totally transportive and felt like reading a college student’s diary; I just didn’t find it all that interesting. (Truthfully, I don’t tend to like books with young, messy protagonists — that just is what it is!). I really related to the parts about trying to learn your family history, and wanting to fit in/belong . . . and I loved how beautifully Kuang wrote about what it’s like to be so far away from home and the feeling of going somewhere you think you’ll belong only to feel like a total outsider. It’s a great book, and I feel bad saying that I only liked it, but I think I was probably just not the target audience.

The longer title: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything! I will read anything and everything about social media (especially how it affects the brain), and I really enjoyed this. It examines how our behaviors shape social media, but even more so, how social media can shape the content — and how we live our lives, sometimes for content itself. I found it fascinating and found myself nodding along many times. I like how she takes an anthropological look at how we tell stories, how we’ve told them in the past… and what the future could bring. It’s really well researched, and a fun, fast listen. If you use social media for work or for life (so, basically everyone!), I think you’ll take a lot away. I also like that it isn’t necessarily anti-social media — besides the cautionary bits and worries about the future, it talks about the good stuff too.

I loved this book, but I want to stress that it is very dark. And weird. And satirical. So it may not be for you, but wow—I couldn’t put it down. even years ago, Mallory Mitchell was on the verge of greatness with her writing career. But thanks to writer’s block (and a narcissistic husband to be honest), she is flailing. When a chance encounter leads her to Leo, a struggling addict who sleeps under bridges and prostitutes himself for drug money, she’s found her muse. But how far will she go to tell Leo’s story? Mallory puts both herself and her family in danger, lies to her husband (who takes her phone and puts her on lockdown) . . . a wild ride ensues. Meanwhile, we also get to know Leo, who is maybe not telling the whole truth himself. This is satirical and dark, funny at times, hard to read at others — regardless, I could not put it down.

Read this if you loved: Yellowface. But also, maybe a little bit of Stalker, too..

When Anne Walker is found dead in her home, with her daughter missing, Chelsea Calhoun (a detective — married, pregnant, and thriving in her career) must figure out what happened. As she investigates what happened to Anne Walker (and where her daughter Naomi is), she uncovers one dark secret after another. Her search also raises questions about her own origins: Chelsea was adopted, but she knows very little about her past. As Chelsea digs into Anne’s past, she learns that she was born Rika Takahashi. Rika began her life on a remote Japanese farm and lived in Tokyo for a while, where she worked as a hostess girl for a men’s lounge. From Tokyo, she wound up in Idaho, and then ultimately, Seattle. Rika, now Anne, was a master at reinventing herself in order to stay safe. But someone, somewhere, wanted Rika dead, and that’s what they got. Now Chelsea must figure out who that is to save Naomi before it is too late. Secret after secret emerges, and I didn’t guess the twist or the ending. I loved this because I went in looking for a fun detective-story thriller and got so much more than that—the parts about Japan were riveting, and it’s a meditation on culture and belonging. I really loved this!

Read this if you loved: I don’t have anything to compare this to, but that’s a good thing! I will say, I didn’t realize this was technically a sequel (it reads like a standalone), so I ordered the author’s first book, The Return of Ellie Black.

J.T. Ellison is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and I absolutely loved this. Brooklyn Locke and her family are about to go on vacation for the holidays when her husband Trey goes missing at the airport during their connecting flight. She accepts help from a stranger, Eden — who knew Trey in college — and insists that he murdered her younger sister (his first wife). Just when things can’t get any worse, Brooklyn is injured, fighting for her life in the hospital. It’s one twist after another, and things don’t seem like they can get any worse. Meanwhile, Eden has worked her way into Brooklyn’s life, and Brooklyn and her twin sister Margot can’t decide if Eden has their best or worst interests at heart. Are her kindnesses sincere, or is something darker happening? As Brooklyn fights for her life, we meet the detective investigating Trey’s disappearance and learn about other dangerous forces at play. This was absolutely unputdownable. It’s on the longer side, but I still gobbled it up within a couple of days. 

Read this if you loved: The Last Flight, by Julie Clark (high praise, that was one of my favorite thrillers)

Emma Cline is an auto-buy author for me — I went into this not knowing much. Wow. It is one of the best books I’ve read, but it also broke my heart. There is definitely a trigger if you’ve lost a loved one to dementia, which could make this very hard to read. I cannot get over how well Cline managed to get inside the head of an elderly man as he slowly forgets the world around him, but she did it so beautifully. We get the feeling that David is maybe not the greatest person, but we feel sympathetic toward him anyway as he crosses the Atlantic for dinner with his adult daughter, a meeting with an estranged old friend, and his final destination: an assisted suicide clinic in Zurich. It touches on so many things: mortality, what it feels like to know you are going to die and the world will be just fine without you, what happens when our accomplishments and titles fall away, and it’s just down to us and our relationships . . . I could go on. For me, it was a hard balance: wanting to compulsively read (would he actually go through with it? would his relationships mend?) while also feeling a bit heartbroken and a little haunted.

Read this if you loved: I’ve never read anything else like this, but if you liked The Girls and The Guest, you will like this.

This is a suspenseful one! It goes a little bit off the rails but I tore through it at breakneck speed. Bree is a ghostwriter for famous people. She’s got ironclad NDA’s and prefers to be completely anonymous. It’s easier that way. After a traumatic incident as a teen and then losing her sister and mother as an adult, she is raising her nephew with her sister — content with a smaller, quieter life. But when her childhood bestie Miranda — now Randi — begs her to help her with her next book, she agrees to do it, despite her gut instincts telling her to run. It will be a chance for the two women to rekindle their friendship and get to know each other as adults. Of course, all is not what it seems. Randi’s manager is super aggressive and a little scary. Randi makes constant viral missteps. Old secrets surface. Bree begins to feel like she made a gigantic mistake, while also fearing for her nephew’s safety.

Read this if you loved: Julie Chan is Dead, Under the Influence

If you know me, this book probably seems a bit off-brand. It absolutely is! I read it for a very specific reason: when I lived in Boston, every guy read the Barstool Sports newspaper. It was this small newspaper, and they’d be at parties handing out shots. I totally forgot about them until nearly 20 years after that, when the Call Her Daddy drama happened. I was baffled at first, like, “This is the same company as that sports newspaper!?” I got curious and wanted to hear how Barstool went from this little newspaper to this giant media company. That part was really interesting, and I’m glad I read it. I think he can be crass; I don’t agree with his support for Trump, but I do think he is honest and upfront. It was interesting to hear his side of the various scandals he’s been in, and I liked hearing how he built Barstool into a media empire.

Read this if you loved: I’m not really sure (I read it because I love books about the media world!) but you can’t take him too seriously or you might get mad.

Oh my goodness. This book is a complete and utter masterpiece. Please drop everything and read it! I still cannot believe that Chloe Benjamin a) invented this and b) does not have a background in science! It is definitely one of the best books I have read all year. Laurel Salter is lost, reeling, and hiding after her divorce. On a whim, she moves to Antarctica to wash dishes at McMurdo Station. No one there knows that she was a renowned young scientist before upending her life. One day, a strange light appears on the ice: The Arc. A group of physicists arrives to study it… among them, her ex-husband Eli. Eli and Laurel talk and hypothesize, and Laurel has a wild idea. When Eli agrees to test Laurel’s wild theory, Laurel begins to wonder if there is a way that Eli and she can ever turn back the clock and begin a new story together. It starts out a bit slow and becomes a complete page turner; I spent the better part of the long weekend tucked away reading as I had to know what happened. I really loved this!

I am a huge fan of Jennifer Hillier. Her thrillers are dark, complex, and sometimes feel more like mysteries than thrillers, but then she adds some crazy suspense or a big twist, so I classify them as thrillers. Whatever you want to call them, I love her books. She always manages to surprise me, which isn’t easy to do! A fun surprise here is that this one felt like a continuation of Wonderland. It’s set in the same town and has a few of the same characters. This one centers around a twenty-five-year-old crime. A handsome drifter (Sam) came through town, meeting three teenage girls: Barb, Nicolette, and Lorelei. When Lorelei was brutally murdered, Sam confessed to it (as well as four other murders). But now, years later, Sam is the focus of a documentary and is saying that he only killed four girls (not Lorelei). Just as this is happening, a new body washes ashore. Barb, now an investigative reporter, finds herself at the center of it all — attempting to solve the new murder case, and Nicolette is a reality television star. Both women (now estranged) have long-held secrets they want to protect.

Read this if you loved: Wonderland! The Easter eggs are really fun.

Liv Constantine is like Sarah Pekkanen and Lisa Jewell for me: instant pre-order! This didn’t top The Last Mrs. Parrish, but it was still very satisfying. The ending had a fun twist I didn’t see coming; I read it in under 24 hours. Savannah is an aspiring writer with a past. She’s had a crush on legendary horror writer Bennett Bryson for years. When she manages to meet him — and get engaged just a month later, it feels like all her dreams are coming true. She moves into his mansion in Bedford, New York and that’s when cracks in their relationship start to appear as Bennett becomse controlling and removed. He’s critical of her work. He is really weird about letting her come into his office. His ex wife’s art is everywhere . . . and she’s beginning to think he may have murdered his ex. When Savannah is warned that Bennett might not be who he seems, Savannah must take action — or be next. But who can she trust? As she digs into his past, we get to know his ex-wife too. Everyone is hiding secrets! I really enjoyed this one.

Read this if you loved: The Ghostwriter, Just One Look, any of Liv Constantine’s other books!

This was my latest listen, and I it flew by for me. Applegate makes for a wonderful walking companion. I came for the tea (I’d heard it was juicy and very honest — it is!) but stayed for her dark sense of humor. I knew she was funny, of course, but I didn’t expect her sense of humor to be so dark. It’s definitely a side of her I hadn’t seen before, and I loved that. I loved all the parts about filming (Married With Children! The Sweetest Thing! Anchorman! Dead to Me) and, of course, the dating stories, but what struck me about this memoir vs. other celebrity memoirs is how real and human it felt. She seems really normal and grounded, just human. It was interesting to learn more about Applegate’s life, her struggle with body image (big content warning there if its a trigger), her strength through battling breast cancer and then M.S. I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it, especially on audio!

Read this if you loved: Mean Baby, Famesick

Dame Eleanor Kingman is about to throw the party of a lifetime. Her seventieth birthday, to be held at her new cliffside manor. This is her fourth home, and it’s absolutely stunning. Meanwhile, a television crew has descended on the party, where they will interview guests and create a documentary about her life and career. Kingman is a wildly successful children’s author, but her past contains secrets. And someone knows these secrets and is out to get her. For months, she’s been receiving menacing emails, threatening to expose the lie she’s kept safe for fifty years. Eleanor must figure out who is doing this, before it’s too late. Could it be one of her three daughters, all with a vested interest in her business? Her ex-agent, or ex-husband? Maybe her new agent, or the talented (but underpaid) illustrator she had hired for her most recent book. It could be anyone, and Eleanor must figure it out (while staying composed at her party) before it is too late.

Read this if you loved: A Very Bad Thing (a favorite!)

Carola Lovering is one of my no-miss, instant pre-order authors (you might remember her as the author of Tell Me Lies). I was so excited when she asked if she could send me an ARC. Obvious yes, obvious drop everything to read it in under 24 hours. I will warn you that this one has trigger warnings for stillbirth, postpartum depression, and psychosis. June Lyons has an idyllic life in Aspen, Colorado. She’s married to a best-selling author whose career continues to rise and rise… Together, they live in a beautiful home with their daughter Ivy. Her best friend in the world (her sister Penny) lives just across town. She’s had to put her own personal ambitions on a shelf, but life is good. And then everything changes in an instant, and her family’s world is shattered when she’s injured while skiing and loses her baby just weeks before he was due. When June wakes up, besides healing from a devastating loss, she must reconcile what has happened. Why was she skiing so close to her due date? Where was her husband? What if losing the baby was not a total accident? I raced to figure out what happened and really loved the ending.

Read this if you loved: The Push, by Ashley Audrain.

This is not my usual book! I picked it up at Ladybird because I liked the cover and the title. But it’s much more literary (and slow!) than I usually read. I read it while up at the lake house, which was the perfect time to read it… It’s the perfect book to read when you want to slow down a little bit. The writing is gorgeous, and it really captures the little nuances that come with being fifteen: the jealousies between friends, the neediness, etc. Mina’s two best friends, Eleanor and Margaret, are her entire world. It is high summer in Ohio, and they spend their days languishing by the pool, plotting to go out, getting dressed up, and taking pictures of each other. But when two of the girls share a kiss, the group dynamic begins to change. Suddenly three starts to feel like a crowd and Mina no longer understands her place in the group. This is such a great depiction of being young: the tension, the volatile feelings that can happen between best friends… first love, first lust, all of it!

Read this if you loved: I couldn’t think of anything quite like this, but parts of it reminded me of the Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

I picked this up at a bookstore in Skaneateles, unable to resist the cover or the premise, but I have not seen much about it otherwise. I’m so glad I did, as I couldn’t put it down. It is deeply toxic. I will warn you that there is a trigger for sexual abuse. It is the nineties in New York, and Doughty has arrived, fresh out of BC. He is, simply put, a total monster. He’s managed to climb his way from sleeping in a bed at the YMCA to living with a book editor in her forties, in her posh Soho loft. Meanwhile, he’s actively pursuing a relationship with a bartender. He’s entitled and delusional, and tells both women that he is pursuing a career in real estate. Meanwhile, he spends his days watching VHS comedy specials (he has a real thing for George Carlin), or in the park, smoking crack. He abuses both women physically and emotionally… It’s horrible, and some scenes are really hard to read!. Still, I could not put it down. This book is compulsively readable. If you like dark and toxic, you’ll like this a lot.

Read this if you liked: Tell Me Lies (and you thought Stephen DeMarco was the worst person in the world — Daughty makes him look like a puppy), You. It also, in a very abstract way, reminded me a bit of The Guest.

If you love books about the influencer world, I think you’ll really enjoy this. Stella is an up-and-coming fashion designer and influencer, on the cusp of hitting a million followers. Her life is perfect, except for one thing: her boyfriend Alex seems to hate her. When she is offered $10,000 to try out a new dating app (without posting anything), she takes a chance. There, she meets “Pineapple,” who has her reconsidering everything about her career and her life. Can she and Alex fix things, or should she take a chance on this new, anonymous stranger? My favorite thing about this is the way that Siskin wrote Stella’s character. She’s not a total monster (so many books about influencers can do that), but she also makes bad decisions and falls prey to the trap of living to create content vs. the other way around. I did guess the twist, but I think I would have been disappointed if I was wrong.

Read this if you loved: Such a Bad Influence, People Like Her, books about influencers!

I loved this book so much. I listened to it, which I would highly recommend, as it feels like a multi-hour catch-up with your new best friend. It’s 2021, and international travel has just opened back up. MacNicol, forty-six and unmarried without children, decides (after 16 months of living alone in a tiny Manhattan apartment) to move to Paris for a few months, in pursuit of one thing: enjoying herself. Friendship, food, and sex. It’s indulgent and wonderful. It’s also feminist, maybe even a little bit political, and I loved seeing another unmarried, childfree woman living life exactly on her own terms. Women need more stories like this to understand: You’ll be great on your own. Happy, even! The friendship stories are big-hearted and warm, the casual sex is juicy and salacious, you won’t be able to stop reading.

Read this if you loved: I can’t say I’ve read anything quite like this (that’s a good thing), but I would say it could be a good chaser to All Fours. And I’d compare the writing to Nora Ephron.

Caroline Lash, daughter of a famous writer and editor for a publishing company, has sold exactly one story when she decides to quit her job and pursue writing full time. She packs up her life in New York and arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, where she has received a prestigious writing fellowship. Almost immediately, she meets — and falls in love with Van Whittaker, a sweet and smart long-haired environmentalist-type. Van grew up in Greenhead and still runs with his childhood besties (and ex-girlfriend, Bailey). Caroline finds herself thrust into this new group: older than her, many with children. There is snobby Augusta, frazzled feminist Fran, and their siblings and spouses. But when Van learns that Bailey, who he’s been on and off with for years, is pregnant with his baby, the group dynamic is thrown off. Before she knows it, Caroline has been thrust out of the circle. What she does next will shock everyone in the town and expose long-held secrets. I really loved this. It was a bit slow at times but Jackson can make even the smallest details feel important, and wow — the characters were amazing! Highly enjoyable, especially as a summer read.

Read this if you loved: Jackson’s other book, Pineapple Street. She writes the best characters. I would also say Ann Patchett. A bold statement, but this read a bit like Patchett. The way she describes the most mundane details. The intricate family relationships.

When I spotted this at the bookstore, I bought it without knowing a thing, as I tend to really enjoy Shari Lapena’s books. This one is about Jill and Ted, a wealthy couple in Brooklyn who have made a few bad investment decisions. They’ve grown accustomed to their extravagant lifestyle and have fallen victim to the mindset “the more you have, the more you want.” Realizing that they are on the verge of losing their beloved brownstone, they make a plan to murder Ted’s brother Greg (as one does, right?) This will, they believe, solve all their problems. They’ll just throw him off of his sailboat, and claim it was an accident. And Greg is kind of an asshole, anyway. With the two of them as the only witnesses to Greg’s death, their story will be ironclad. Or will it? Can they really trust each other? What about their longtime housekeeper? What about Greg’s ex-wife? Or the Coast Guard official who can’t seem to stop sniffing around? I’d describe this more as suspenseful than twisty (twisty is my preference) but I still really enjoyed this. Really Liked It!

Read this if you loved: Shari Lapena’s other books; this was her tenth! I didn’t love this quite as much as The Couple Next Door, but still really enjoyed it.

I am not usually a huge romance reader, but so many of my girlfriends had raved about this one. And I love a fake dating romance… also, the coastal New England backdrop felt particularly appealing, as it is summer and I miss Cape Cod. Dolly is a hard-working, no-bullshit single mom, home for the summer to help out her father and disabled brother after a fire at their house. When a chance incident puts handsome (and helpless) billionaire Stewart in her path, the two enter into an unlikely fake dating relationship. Dolly will prove to Stewart’s family that he can be in a relationship, and in exchange, he gives her the money to fix the roof of her family’s house. What could have been cheesy and unbelievable actually turns into a very plausible, heartfelt book. I loved the characters, especially Dolly, and Stewart’s effervescent sister Busy. I couldn’t put it down and wanted more when it was over. Highly recommend; it is the perfect summer read!

Read this if you loved: Happy Place, by Emily Henry