Genre: Bookclub

Comforting and heartfelt, like Miles states to Lenny, Cara Bastone’s Promise Me Sunshine promises the reader that there will always be sunshine after a gloomy day if you keep your head up and know where to look. Featuring a compelling premise via a reverse twist of a buckets list, this novel tells a story about two people broken down by grief and loss, helping each other in the areas they know best. Despite tackling difficult topics like loss of loved ones, terminal illness, depression and the importance of family, the story is delivered full of warmth and gentle comfort, making it highly accessible and mass appealing, albeit at the cost of more ambitious developments and deeper self-reflections. While pleasant and fine, I constantly found myself a bit underwhelmed with Promise Me Sunshine, frequently wishing it would go further with its great ideas. Struggling to get by and jumping between short-term, non-committal babysitting gigs, Lenny is not doing well following the recent death of her best friend and other half Lou. Upon arriving at her next weekend job, she meets single-mother Reece, her daughter Ainsley, and Ainsley’s grumpy uncle Miles. Constantly out of town on the job, Lenny is hired to…

Light-hearted, good-natured, and comfortably predictable, Kristy Greenwood’s The Love of My Afterlife is a perfect example of understanding the assignment and hitting all the bullet points to get the job done, nothing more nothing less. This book is a casual read that’s catered directly to fans of cozy chick lit rom-com novels looking for an easy and pleasant time. Devoid of anything that could be remotely triggering or controversial and full of the genre’s expected hijinks and romance tropes, it’s a competently written book that doesn’t really have any glaring weaknesses. On the flip side, it also takes zero risks and feels complacently good but not great. For me personally, I found The Love Of My Afterlife to be a bit underwhelming although I thought its overall tone and plot were great. I picked this book up purely based on the intriguing premise (before it started trending on booktok I might add) fully knowing it probably wasn’t going to be to my taste, but I was surprised by how pleasant and quick it was to read. Unlike other romance novels with magical realism elements that skirt or cheapen their gimmick, The Love of My Afterlife sticks pretty close to its…

Weddings can bring out the best and worst in people, but in Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, it brings out new discoveries about people that they didn’t realize in themselves before. Accidentally booking the top suite in a seaside hotel that was also completely reserved for Lila and Gary’s wedding, Phoebe leaves her entire withdrawn and broken life behind for a final last check-in at the Cornwall Inn. After witnessing her life pass by in a distant marriage only to completely fall apart soon after, her dark one way trip to Newport is interrupted by an overzealous and perfectionist bride. Despite being billed as a chick lit romance, The Wedding People is very much a contemporary drama novel that focuses on Phoebe’s introspective journey to rediscover herself and regain interest in life. This one started off really rough and I struggled immensely to get through the first third of the book. However as it progressed and when it focused on Phoebe and Lila’s unorthodox friendship, I found it to be a much stronger read. Right off the bat, I will be the first to admit that I’m nowhere near the readers and demographics this novel is clearly written for. A…

There’s honestly a lot of great ideas going on in Peng Shepherd’s All This & More including science fiction time and reality bending, second chance life choices and romance, an underlying mystery revolving around the unreleased tv show season, and the unsettling appearance of Chrysalis. This is all done on top of a “Choose your own adventure” branching storyline book setup. Yet despite how ambitious and creative Peng’s concepts are on paper, it was amazing how uninteresting and tedious this was for me to read. I don’t know what it was exactly, but this book felt heavily catered towards suburban mother book club members in their late 30’s to 40’s based on Marsh’s characterization and the tone. I thought the Choose your own adventure concept and branching choices were decently executed but the pacing, unusual choices in focal points, and Marsh’s character were all not to my taste and squandered the excellent premise. Also to properly review and critique the book in its full entirety, I went back and read through every potential choice including any parallel sections and each short ending. An unrelated nice touch though was the “System Error, you shouldn’t be here” due to cheating and not…

I feel like the synopsis for Kristen Perrin’s How to Solve Your Own Murder does it no favors by comparing itself to Knives Out, Thursday Murder Club, or selling the murder mystery concept in general due to the murder mystery investigation being one of the weakest aspects of the novel for me (more flair and quality is needed to make such a bold claim). As a fan of true crime documentaries and the murder mystery genre, I was excited to read this based on the stellar premise of a character spending their life trying to solve their own murder before it occurs. I was also encouraged to pick this up as it was voted 2nd place for Jimmy Fallon’s upcoming bookclub. Unfortunately the actual execution, attention to details, and pacing left a lot to be desired (1.5 rounded down). From the get-go I was unimpressed with the characterization and dialogue as well as the story’s details. Following an excellently foreboding prologue where Frances receives her grave fortune that kickstarts the titular concept, the book’s pacing and interest lost me. Despite being 366 pages, I felt like I was reading empty pages with little value or importance to either storylines revolving…