Genre: Contemporary Fiction

This might be the earliest I’ve ever read a newly published book as I ninja-ed it the day my library got a digital copy and I was very excited based on the synopsis and listed genres. For me, the Book of Doors was a solid comfort read (note, NOT the actual Comfy read genre) that felt nostalgic in the first half, invoking the wide-eyed magical feel of many YA fantasy books I read growing up yet clearly intended for adult readers. This book is also fully targeted towards book lovers with countless descriptions and settings based on book collections, stores, or libraries (to be expected for a story involving magical books). What I did not expect was the surprisingly ambitious and well-executed time-traveling/manipulating second half that manages to recover and tie-up the narrative successfully after a disjointed mid-section. Despite the obviously heavy fantasy elements provided by the magical books (I assume it’s not mentioned in the synopsis as not to show it’s trump card early), the Book of Doors should first and foremost be considered a soft time-travel drama. A young women in her 20’s living day to day in New York, Cassie is at the pivotal stage in her…

I picked this up off of another Amazon Kindle algorithm suggestion which was a surprisingly specific choice that had me amused. It managed to find a novel that combined my recent reads involving a silly romcom, mysterious dead bodies, British-set narratives, and an M/M LGBTQ+ focal couple. It’s honestly quite an impressive of feat (even though the dead bodies discoveries are more of a plot device to get Ray out of his house, this is decidedly not a murder mystery or investigative story). Reviewing and critiquing Isabel Murray’s Not That Complicated is akin to reviewing and critiquing a risqué reality tv dating show. They’re meant to be simple entertaining affairs full of salacious situations and R-rated spice, not shooting to be the most ambitious or critical experiences. It knows exactly what the assignment was and delivers a flamboyantly over the top, outrageous romcom story managing to get Ray and his youthful love-interest Adam together in multiple steamy scenes. While there’s obviously a lot of bedroom action to be had (not my cup of tea but quite hot, I think?), I found Not That Complicated to consistently be funnier than it needed to be. “You can’t buy me any more than…

This was short novella was fine and a quick sub-25 minute read. Part of the Amazon’s The Improbable Meet-Cute Series featuring short stores themed around Valentines Day written by popular romance authors, I found With Any Luck to be cute yet inconsequential. 50 pages requires a concise and tidy story which With Any Luck manages by covering only two days worth of plot during Audrey Love’s best male friend’s wedding. At the wedding she unfortunately is greeted by the fiance’s best man who she had a fling with on a previous trip. The novella is essentially an enemies to lovers setup but the short length does the trope no favors. The only way to reverse the animosity is via misunderstandings which I’ve mentioned many times as being one of my pet peeves. This is exemplified by Audrey believing she ruined the wedding when her best friend goes missing the morning of the wedding following a drunken night out she can’t remember. However, the fact that enemies to lovers romantic interest was there during the drunken night and knows exactly what happened to Audrey feels like a cheap gotcha plot twist. The entire conflict could’ve been avoided had he just told…

Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time is a perfectly fine book that was also unfortunately the Wrong book for me for a few reasons. A friend suggested this as a blind recommendation based on reviews and the synopsis involving reverse “time travel” where Jen Brotherhood gradually progresses backwards in time hoping to stop her song from murdering a seemingly random man named Joseph Jones. I was expecting a time traveling murder investigation that touched on familial drama but what I actually got was nearly all familial drama. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, however the delivery was not to my taste as I like both my mystery and drama genres to be more intense and complex than what I read. A middle-aged mother who’s overly concerned about how family is viewed is far from a character experience I empathize with, but moments when Jen reflects on how her past actions affected her family are thoughts that anyone can relate to. What Wrong Place Wrong Time does well is using the gradual reverse time-travel plot element as way for Jen to rediscover overlooked moments in her life while also providing a grounds hogs day setup where none of…

With only a few days left before the end of the year, I can confidently say I found my top book of 2023. I don’t even know where to start with this one, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a love letter novel to every gamer out there who once had a dream about creating their own game but that’s only half of the novel’s contents. The other half is a perfectly pitched, nuanced story of two 10 yr old kids (eventually three friends) who meet playing Super Mario and the way their friendship, work partnership, and lives intertwine up to their late 30’s. Admittedly I generally have a hard time reading novels that span a wide range of a character’s life mainly due to the difficulty of writing and portraying the maturity and emotions. However, Gabrielle Zevin has made me a believer by the sheer consistency and quality throughout this 400 page story. Starting with the two main leads Sam Masur and Sadie Green, both are incredibly well-developed characters who both compliment and clash with each other a variety of different areas. Character backstories are well-developed and incredibly varied heavily addressing the identify crisis that often comes with being…