Genre: Travel

With beautiful rose-tinted postcard snapshots of various European locals, an endless array of food porn-worthy food and beverages, and two attractive horny bisexual ex’s (technically leaning more towards pansexual but I digress) stuck on a dream vacation itinerary, Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing has a stellar recipe on paper. And if I were to compare this novel to pastry on display, it certainly looks exquisite and intricately decorated in presentation (please bear with me and let me run with this bit). Unfortunately, once you cut the cake and start tasting it, it quickly becomes evident that there was too much literal (Theo) salt in the batter and maybe the cake was a bit burnt in places. My experience with reading The Pairing was similar to this poor hypothetical and metaphorical pastry in that the elements were good but a few crucial elements made this book difficult to enjoy. My biggest gripe was despite McQuiston pushing really hard to sell this as a past ex’s enemies to second chance loves trope, the enemies arc leaves a lot to be desired and the relationship dynamic between Theo and Kit has a dry and acidic aftertaste. I feel like this story would’ve worked considerably…

Full disclosure, I shockingly had neither read nor watched (apart from a few short clips) Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, so went in completely blind to Lies and Weddings. TLDR, I found Lies and Weddings to be solidly written, well-researched, tightly plotted, and at times, genius in its satire and social commentary. Following (from what I’ve been told) similar themes and commentary as his previous works, Lies and Weddings was a great book that wasn’t quite for me. I was stuck between a 3 or 4, objectively it’s good but my enjoyment was much lower. However, my reservations and disinterest with the novel’s content are all subjective reading preferences and despite not personally enjoying the read, I have to commend it on its story’s strengths and accomplishments. It took me a long time to grow interested in the main plot and I think most of that could potentially be attributed to the book’s synopsis and description. While the printed description does an excellent job at highlighting the zany and drama-filled moments, I found it to be a surprisingly inaccurate summary of Lies and Weddings. Yes, there are lots of lies and several weddings and yes, Rufus Gresham is put into…

I’m stuck trying to figure out if I’m getting fatigue from reading three Emily Henry novels in just over a month or if it’s the novel’s character drama that wasn’t for me, but this one didn’t grab my interest and continued to stumble the further it progressed. Focusing a core trio of gal pals consisting of Harriet, Cleo and Sabrina with their plus one’s added over the years, Happy Place takes the fake dating trope and meshes it with a second chance at love at a small town, summer vacation retreat. I suspect it has to do with the plot and concept of the novel, but I found myself inherently less invested in this tight-nit friend group compared to Emily Henry’s other novels that I read which are Book Lovers and Beach Read. Maybe it’s the lack of literary book elements that I loved or the girl-group friends for life theme that doesn’t appeal to me, but I felt like I was quite far from the target demographics of this book. Fake dating is a common and tired trope but Henry is well aware of this and fully commits to putting Harriet and her ex-fiancé Wyn through the ringer which…