Tag Archives: best friends

Book Review: The Beach Trap by Ali Brady

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Title: The Beach Trap
Author: Ali Brady
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: June 14, 2022
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction / romance
Source: Library
Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Two best friends torn apart by a life-altering secret. They have one summer to set the record straight.

When twelve-year-olds Kat Steiner and Blake O’Neill meet at Camp Chickawah, they have an instant connection. But everything falls apart when they learn they’re not just best friends—they’re also half-sisters. Confused and betrayed, their friendship instantly crumbles.

Fifteen years later when their father dies suddenly, Kat and Blake discover he’s left them a joint inheritance: the family beach house in Destin, Florida. The two sisters are instantly at odds. Blake, who has recently been demoted from regular nanny to dog nanny, wants to sell the house, while social media influencer Kat is desperate to keep the place where she had so many happy childhood memories.

Kat and Blake reluctantly join forces to renovate the dilapidated house with the understanding that Kat will try to buy Blake out at the end of the summer. The women clash as Blake’s renovation plans conflict with Kat’s creative vision, and each sister finds herself drawn into a summer romance. As the weeks pass, the two women realize the most difficult project they face this summer will be coming to grips with their shared past, and learning how to become sisters.

I’m a sucker for books with a connection to summer camps… and from the opening chapter, when twelve-year-old besties spend a glorious summer at camp together, only to have their friendship end disastrously, I knew The Beach Trap would be a book for me.

When Blake and Kat meet at Camp Chickawah**, they become best friends right away — but when Kat’s father comes to pick her up early due to a death in the family, the girls make a shattering discovery: Kat’s dad is Blake’s dad too. Blake’s mom had been “the other woman”, and while Blake has happy childhood memories of time with her dad, that all ended when her mother died in a tragic accident, and her father never came for her. Rather than bringing the girls closer, the discovery of their half-sister status permanently drives them apart, and Kat refuses to respond to any of the letters Blake sends her in the months following camp.

**If the name Camp Chickawah seems familiar, then perhaps you’ve read the authors’ most recent book, Until Next Summer, in which the camp and its staff members take center stage. (It’s a lot of fun!)

Fifteen years later, their father has died, and his will reveals a startling bequest: He’s left the family’s Florida beach house to both his daughters, to share 50/50.

Blake is a stressed-out nanny for a wealthy family, working long hours to pay for her grandfather’s assisted living facility. Kat is a social media influencer (ugh), making enough to support herself, but not quite at a point where she can count on financial security. Blake assumes they’ll sell the beach house, or Kat can buy her out — but either way, the proceeds will help ensure that she can continue to care for her grandfather. Kat sees the beach house as a reminder of rare happy childhood memories, and wants to keep it — and also, it might make a great home reno project to enhance her feeds and help her nab a coveted corporate sponsorship.

When Blake and Kat meet at the beach house, they’re dismayed to find the place in shambles. The only way to turn it around and make it at all viable for sale is to repair, renovate, and redecorate. Kat has the funds; Blake has the time (since the family she nannies for is spending the summer in France) and the skills, thanks to the years she spent learning at her grandfather’s side. While there’s palpable tension and animosity between the two women, they know neither can move forward without the other’s cooperation, and they work out a deal. They’ll alternate weeks at the house, Blake will handle most of the actual work, and Kat will have final say on all decor decisions.

After achieving a tense détente of sorts, they move forward. As the summer progresses, and they start having to communicate and spend together, tentative connections are rebuilt. They once loved each other — who will they be to one another now?

I really enjoyed seeing Kat and Blake work their way back toward friendship, and more. Both grew up lonely; both grew up hungry for the love and attention of a distant father, who cause each one intense emotional pain in the aftermath of the big revelation years earlier. While having very different backgrounds and upbringings, Kat and Blake connect on a deeper level. It’s lovely seeing them work through the hurt and misunderstandings, and start to realize how much time they both spent blaming one another for things outside of their control.

Each woman also finds romance over the course of the summer, but one thing I really appreciate in this book (and in the other Ali Brady book I’ve read, Until Next Summer) is that romance is secondary to friendship. The romantic relationships and storylines are great, but it’s the friendship and sisterhood between Kat and Blake that drive this book and give it its emotional impact and joy.

Where The Beach Trap falls a little short for me has mainly to do with Kat’s character. Bluntly put, she’s hard to like. First off, having a social media influencer as a main character is an instant turn-off for me. (Side note — I feel like contemporary romances have a higher proportion of influencers as characters than is representative of the demographic in real life…) Kat’s whole shtick for most of the book is summed up by her tagline, “life is a fashion show”. She eventually learns to appreciate the messiness of life and what it means to connect, and revises her philosophy — but it’s a fairly quick turnaround, not entirely believable. I’m glad she ended up in a better place, but her attitude for much of the book is very hard to take.

Overall, however, I liked The Beach Trap a lot. The story moves quickly, the setting is terrific, and I loved the dynamic of these sisters finding a way to salvage the defining pain of their separate lives and find a way forward together.

I’ve now read two books by this author duo, and look forward to more! There’s one more book I haven’t read that’s currently available (The Comeback Summer), and an upcoming new book to be released in 2025 (Battle of the Bookstores). I plan to read them both!

About the authors: Ali Brady is the pen name of writing BFFs Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey. The Beach Trap is their first book together. Alison lives in Chicago and works as a VP creative director at an advertising agency. She’s the author of You and Me and Us and Little Pieces of Me. Bradeigh lives with her family in Utah, where she works as a physician. She’s the author of the psychological thriller, Imposter.

Book Review: Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

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Title: Slow Dance
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: July 30, 2024
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction / romance
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley + purchased hardcover
Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.

Slow Dance is a sweet, unusual story of best friends who’ve always loved each other, but who’ve taken years and years to realize it.

“What do you want?” he whispered.

She shook her head. “A time machine.”

“I can’t give you the past,” Cary said. He squeezed her hands. “But we could have a future.”

Shiloh and Cary were inseparable in high school, along with their other best friend Mikey. But Shiloh and Cary’s connection was different. They shared every interest (except Cary’s ROTC commitment, which Shiloh hated), spent every free moment together, and even lived in the same run-down North Omaha neighborhood with less than ideal home lives. Nothing should have been able to tear them apart — but as we learn, they’ve spent most of their adult lives not talking to each other, and eventually, we discover why.

When they meet again at Mikey’s wedding, their lives have changed. Cary is a naval officer, with a career that’s taken him around the world. Shiloh lives in the same house she grew up in, with her two kids and her mother (but not her ex-husband). Their initial meeting is tense for both of them… but when Shiloh finally agrees to a dance with Cary, all the old connections between them bubble back to the surface.

Shiloh felt like she was combing his face and body for changes, like her eyes were hands. Or maybe she wasn’t looking for changes — maybe she was trying to find all the ways that he was the same. All the ways she recognized him. The ways he was still Cary.

Slow Dance is a tale of miscommunication and love and second chances, as well as the blunt reality of becoming an adult and having to deal with the messiness of life. Cary and Shiloh seem to have spent their entire relationship making assumptions and not being honest with themselves or each other about their feelings or wants or expectations. As adults, they finally recognize the barriers they’ve allowed to get in their way — but is it too late to try again?

It’s always a pleasure to read a Rainbow Rowell book. Slow Dance is no exception: The writing is sweet, funny, and page-turningly delightful. Cary and Shiloh are good people with hang-ups and issues and complicated lives. We spend the whole book rooting for them, and it can be frustrating to see the missed opportunities from the past, even while we clearly see all the various ways in which things went wrong.

Shiloh had wanted Cary before she’d even known how to recognize want. Before she had words for it. Before she had some sense of these things and their dimensions.

I had a bit of an issue with Shiloh as a character. I’m not sure that I fully understood her — she’s clever and opinionated, socially adept in some ways yet clearly an introvert when it comes to parties and groups of people. She has a hard time with closeness and intimacy, and seems to never fully have allowed herself to experience adult relationships or romance. I couldn’t quite pin down the explanation for some of her behaviors, both in high school and as an adult. Cary is much steadier — not to say that he’s not interesting, but his conflicts and dilemmas seem clearer and more straightforward.

Slow Dance may be a book that’s better the second time around. I tore through it in one huge reading binge, and at the midpoint, realized I might have been better off slowing down (I mean, the title should have made me realize that this is a journey to be savored, not gulped in one sitting). By the halfway mark, I felt that I finally got what these characters’ arcs were really about, and was able to connect the dots between their pasts and present.

I think I’ll be back for a reread. Now that I know where the story ends up going, I think I’ll better able to appreciate how it starts.

Slow Dance is a lovely, quirky book, and I highly recommend it.

Book Review: Until Next Summer by Ali Brady

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Title: Until Next Summer
Author: Ali Brady
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: July 9, 2024
Length: 447 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction / romance
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Two former best friends each find love at an adults-only summer camp in this romantic and nostalgic novel that proves “once a camp person, always a camp person.”

Growing up, Jessie and Hillary lived for summer, when they’d be reunited at Camp Chickawah. The best friends vowed to become counselors together someday, but they drifted apart after Hillary broke her promise and only Jessie stuck to their plan, working her way up to become the camp director. 

When Jessie learns that the camp will be sold, she decides to plan one last hurrah, inviting past campers—including Hillary—to a nostalgic “adult summer camp” before closing for good. Jessie and Hillary rebuild their friendship as they relive the best time of their lives—only now there are adult beverages, skinny dipping, and romantic entanglements. Straitlaced Hillary agrees to a “no strings attached” summer fling with the camp chef, while outgoing Jessie is drawn to a moody, reclusive writer who’s rented a cabin to work on his novel.

The friends soon realize this doesn’t have to be the last summer. They’ll team up and work together, just like the old days. But if they can’t save their beloved camp, will they be able to take the happiness of this summer away with them?

There are two kinds of people in the world: Camp people… and everyone else.

Guess which kind I am? Hint: I still know how to weave lanyards, make sand candles, and play capture the flag, and think singing around a bonfire while eating toasted marshmallows is just about heaven on earth.

So… if you enjoy stories about childhood friends reuniting, taking on a mission, finding love, and engaging in all sorts of silliness, Until Next Summer might be a great read for you — and if you think sleeping in bunkbeds in old wooden cabins, going to free swim in a lake, and doing three-legged races are key components of perfect summers, then reading Until Next Summer is a must!

In this sweet novel, Jessie and Hillary are former BFFCs (Best Friends From Camp — and yes, I just made that up). Year after year, from eight-years-old onward, they spent two glorious month together each summer at their beloved Camp Chickawah, and planned to keep coming back as counselors too. But after Hillary abruptly backed out of their counselor summer to pursue an internship instead, the friendship was over. Ten years later, the hurt feelings remain.

Jessie has never left Camp Chickawah behind. In fact, she loved camp so much that she stayed, joining the year-round staff and eventually working her way up to Camp Director following the camp owners’ retirement. Jessie gets a terrible shock when the children of the former owners inform her that next summer will be the end: After their parents’ death, they have no interest in continuing to run the camp, and instead have decided to sell off the property to developers.

Jessie is devastated, and comes up with a plan for one final summer: In an attempt to show the owners’ heirs how much the camp means to its community and hopefully persuade them to keep it going, Jessie invites camp alumni of all ages to come enjoy a summer dedicated to adult camp. And — perhaps surprisingly — the response is huge: Every session of the summer fills up, and the adult campers cannot wait to come.

Joining the staff for the final summer is Jessie’s old friend Hillary. On the verge of accepting yet another high-octane corporate job, and possibly marrying her attorney boyfriend (who comes complete with her dad’s stamp of approval), Hillary decides instead that a return to her true happy spot might be just what she needs… and maybe she and Jessie can even make amends, after all these year.

Until Next Summer is a joyful celebration of friendship and, especially, of the unique, special, lifelong friendships that are the essence of the summer camp experience. Reading about adults returning to relive their happiest moments and recreate the camp vibe is a total hoot — nostalgic and silly and totally entertaining.

… [B]ut that’s how time works at camp: a day feels like a week, a week feels like a month.

Seeing camp through Jessie and Hillary’s eyes, it’s easy to remember how a summer at camp becomes the center of everything: Summer seems like it expands to fill your entire life, and the rest of the year is just filler until you can get back to the real thing.

I loved how perfectly the authors capture Jessie and Hillary’s connection. Sure, the end of their friendship seems way too harsh and sudden (if they’d had a single conversation, things might have gone differently) — but once they do reconnect, we readers really feel how deep the camp bond goes.

“People always talk about soulmates as being romantic,” I say, leaning my head against her shoulder. “But is it weird that you’re the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to that?”

“Not weird at all,” she says, and rests her head on mine.

Speaking of romance… I was less captivated by the romantic elements of the novel. Jessie and Hillary both get love stories, and they’re fine. I was less convinced by Jessie’s romance — her love interest transformed from grumpy to sunshine in the blink of an eye, and I didn’t truly feel their chemistry. Hillary’s love story was a bit more fun, and the I got a huge kick out of the pair sneaking off into the woods for make-out sessions. Now that’s summer camp!

The fundraising and save-the-camp campaign are perhaps too good to be true — I don’t think events would have gone so well in a real-life situation. Still, in the context of the novel, it’s a fun bit of wish fulfillment, and we’re really never left in any doubt that the good guys will come out on top.

Overall, Until Next Summer is an upbeat, sweet, engaging read. I loved the focus on friendship and the lasting impact of summer camp; the romances made less of an impression, but still provide some great moments.

Even if you’re not actually a camp person, Until Next Summer may make you feel like you could have been. This book is a terrific choice for summer reading… preferably on a beach blanket on the shores of a gorgeous lake.

About the authors: Ali Brady is the pen name of writing BFFs Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey. This is their third book together, and I’m looking forward to exploring their other two!

Book Review: One-Star Romance by Laura Hankin

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Title: One-Star Romance
Author: Laura Hankin
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: June 18, 2024
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A struggling writer is forced to walk down the aisle at her best friend’s wedding with the man who gave her book a very public one-star rating in this fresh romantic comedy from Laura Hankin.

Natalie and Rob couldn’t have less in common. Nat’s a messy artist, and Rob’s a rigid academic. The only thing they share is their devotion to their respective best friends—who just got engaged. Still, unexpected chemistry has Natalie cautiously optimistic about being maid of honor to Rob’s best man.

Until, minutes before the ceremony, Nat learns that Rob wrote a one-star review of her new novel, which has them both reeling: Nat from imposter syndrome, and Rob over the reason he needed to write it.

When the reception ends, these two opposites hope they’ll never meet again. But, as they slip from their twenties into their thirties, they’re forced together whenever their fast-track best friends celebrate another milestone. Through housewarmings and christenings, life-changing triumphs and failures, Natalie and Rob grapple with their own choices—and how your harshest critic can become your perfectly imperfect match.

After all, even the truest love stories sometimes need a bit of rewriting.

With a title like One-Star Romance, the review practically writes itself. Here goes:

One-Star Romance is strictly a three-star reading experience.

While One-Star Romance has some fun, engaging elements, there are far too many points in this book that left me shaking my head, and it doesn’t help that the only reason we know that the main characters have chemistry is that we’re told that they do.

Okay, let’s dive in. Natalie and Gabby have been best friends since their freshman year of college. Even after college, they share a teeny little apartment and love each other more than anything… except Gabby’s boyfriend Angus is around a LOT and annoys the heck out of Natalie. And when Angus and Gabby get engaged, Natalie has to face the harsh fact that she’ll never be Gabby’s #1 again.

Fast-forward a year and a half to Gabby and Angus’s wedding. Natalie is maid of honor, and is doing an amazing job at it, even though she still feels that Angus isn’t good enough for her best friend and that this entire marriage is happening too quickly. On the bright side, Natalie’s first novel has just been published, and she’s feeling pretty good about the positive reviews on Goodreads — until her great rating score suddenly dips thanks to a one-star review. Natalie is absolutely spun out over this, and ultimately figures out that the one-star review was posted by Angus’s best friend/best man Rob, a Ph.D. candidate who comes off as a bit uptight and judgmental (although, as expected, he’s hot). Any potential sizzle between Natalie and Rob is immediately dowsed by the blow-up that ensues.

As the book progresses, we follow milestones in Gabby and Angus’s lives — from wedding to new job celebration to christening to housewarming — each event requiring now-sworn-enemies Natalie and Rob to once again be in close proximity for the sake of their friends. And at each event, they learn more about each other and start to break down walls, only for new offenses to crop up again.

On the one hand, One-Star Romance is fine — the structure of the book is built around the different milestone events, and the chapters for each move quickly and keep the momentum high. The book has a slightly higher page count than we typically see in a contemporary romance, but it’s fast-paced enough that it doesn’t bog down at all. As a whole, the story is entertaining and engaging.

Yet on the other hand… there is just so much in this book that felt false to me, as well as places where Natalie is insufferable, and the lead characters simply lack any sort of tangible spark.

Natalie blames her first novel’s lack of success on that one-star review, and honestly, one one-star review is not going to tank an otherwise great book! The fact that she constantly checks the Goodreads page for updates and obsesses over who this particular user might have been who gave her the one-star review… well, as is discussed again and again and again in the book blogosphere and beyond, this is very bad author behavior! Don’t read the reviews! And if you must, don’t focus on the individual reviewers! We’ve all heard too many stories about authors destroying their own reputations by coming after people who’ve written negative reviews. It’s impossible to feel any sympathy for Natalie here, and that’s even more true after we learn why Rob did what he did. Sorry, Natalie — Rob has a point, besides which, he’s entitled to leave whatever review he wants.

Natalie really doesn’t improve in terms of likability as the book progresses. She’s unrealistic and selfish when it comes to Gabby, always resenting that Gabby has a husband and later a child to get in the way of their friendship. It’s really off-putting.

It felt like eons since Natalie and Gabby had been able to have an uninterrupted conversation, since they’d truly been able to pay attention to each other.

That, in case you’re wondering, is Natalie whining to herself about Gabby being distracted — while Gabby is trying to get her newborn baby to latch on and breastfeed. How dare Gabby not pay more attention to Natalie!

The author doesn’t seem to have a positive view of stable relationships, either. At one point in the book, Rob is in a committed, loving relationship that’s working for him and his partner, and yet here’s how it’s described:

It was all too easy when he and Zuri were together to sink into quiet contentment, sitting side by side as they did their research or a crossword. Arms linked, the two of them had fast-forwarded straight into a comfortable middle age, despite only being thirty.

All of this doesn’t even scratch the surface of how many ridiculous set pieces there are — most egregious of which is Gabby and Angus’s wedding. (Note: I’m about to spoil a scene from the book, so look away if you don’t want to know!) For… reasons… Angus decides to zipline to the altar, and (of course) the zipline gets jammed and he falls off (because of course he’s not wearing a harness) into an algae-filled pond. The groomsmen rush in to retrieve him, so he and they are all soaked and algae covered as Gabby starts down the aisle. Natalie expects Gabby to freak out and maybe make a run for it (which Natalie would totally approve of) — but instead, Gabby sees her dripping, slimy groom… and jumps in the lake herself. Just… no. What bride on earth would do this? It isn’t cute, it isn’t funny, and it just doesn’t work.

Later in the book, One-Star Romance seems about to turn into the movie Beaches (if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean). Fortunately, there’s still a happy ending, but this section of the plot feels manipulative, not touching.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, there’s just no chemistry between Natalie and Rob, except that this is an enemies-to-lovers story, so of course they have to secretly be in love with one another despite seeming like they hate each other. I didn’t buy it. Other than some physical attraction, there’s nothing between them, and they never become more believable as a couple. In real life, maybe they would have flirted a bit at the wedding before their big fight, and never would have given each other another thought — and when forced together by Gabby and Angus’s events, would have kept miles of distance between them. The core concept of the novel may sound cute, but it just doesn’t work.

Okay, it clearly sounds like I didn’t like this book very much. I didn’t hate it… but I didn’t love it. I got a decent amount of entertainment while reading One-Star Romance, and I was never bored. It’s not a bad way to pass the time, but three-stars is as high as I’ll go… and even that feels a tad generous.

Book Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

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Title: Happy Place
Author: Emily Henry
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: April 25, 2023
Print length: 385 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Emily Henry’s books have become must-reads for me, and this deceptively bright-looking book is a total win.

From the eye-wateringly hot pink cover to the title itself, we readers might safely assume that this is a carefree, joyous, lighter-than-air book. Think again! While lovely and full of funny and sweet moments, there is also a great deal of sorrow, heartache, and heartbreak in this novel.

Harriet, Cleo, and Sabrina are the core of a tight-knit friend group, going back to their early college days, when the three very different young women became the best of friends. Over the years, their group expanded to include Parth (now engaged to Sabrina), Wyn (the love of Harriet’s life), and Kimmy (Cleo’s beloved). Even after their college glory years ended, the six stayed together through thick and thin, and no matter the geographical distances between them, they met up each summer at Sabrina’s summer house in Maine for a sun-splashed week of joy, laughter, and crazy adventures.

But now, everything is changing. Sabrina’s father is selling the house, and this will be their final chance for one last week there together. Harriet is shocked upon arrival to find Wyn there — the two broke up five months earlier but haven’t told anyone, and Harriet had understood that he’d stay away. She’s determined to tell the truth, until Sabrina and Parth announce that they’ll be getting married that week, just them and their best friends. How can Harriet and Wyn announce the end of their own seemingly perfect romance and put a downer on Sabrina and Parth’s wedding? They decide to fake it — they’ll pretend to still be together for the sake of the group’s happiness, then go their separate ways again once the week ends.

What could go wrong?

For starters, Harriet and Wyn clearly still love one another. Harriet is hurt and furious — Wyn dumped her over the phone without an explanation — but beneath that, she still loves him deeply. As they spend time together, it becomes clear that their relationship and break-up are much more complicated that we initially understand. There are layers of hurt, of misplaced expectations, and trauma and misguided self-doubt stemming back to their childhoods that get in the way, over and over again.

Beyond the romance, one of the best aspects of this book is the friend group and its changing dynamics. What happens when best friends grow up and grow apart? Can their closeness survive when their separate lives pull them in such different directions?

I loved how thoughtful this book is in its approach to relationships and friendships. It captures the reality of growing up yet wanting to hold on to the best parts of the past, and the challenge of finding new ways to relate as life pulls people in different directions.

The relationship between Harriet and Wyn is lovely and overwhelmingly sad at times. These are two people who love each other deeply, yet face the very real possibility that they just don’t fit together any more. I also felt Harriet’s career and future were handled quite sensitively, in ways that I wouldn’t have expected.

I may be making this sound very serious, but there are also moments of utter silliness and great joy, and the banter between the friends, as well as between Harriet and Wyn, is just so funny and amusing. There’s so much humor here, as well as the deeper emotional impact, making Happy Place a consistently enjoyable and touching experience.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the always outstanding Julia Whelan — and not surprisingly, she absolutely nails the characters’ voices and sets the right emotional tone for each scene.

What more can I say? Happy Place is a must-read.

Audiobook Review: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

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Title: People We Meet on Vacation
Author: Emily Henry
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: May 11, 2021
Print length: 364 pages
Audio length: 10 hours 46 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased (Kindle); Library (audio)
Rating:

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations. 

Poppy and Alex are a delightful pairing in all the right ways. They’re diametrically opposed when it comes to lifestyle and goals. Poppy dreams of travel and freedom; Alex dreams of home and family and being settled. He’s uptight, she’s loose and open. And yet, they bond so tightly that everyone and everything else in their lives are extraneous. So long as they have each other, even if they only see each other during their annual summer trips, then their lives are good.

But something went wrong two summers ago, and they haven’t talked since. And for Poppy, nothing makes sense any more. She has her dream job, working for a high-end travel magazine and basically getting paid to go anywhere in the world and enjoy the hell out of it… but her life has been pretty joyless ever since Alex was removed from the equation.

People We Meet on Vacation is framed around “this summer”, but interspersed chapters take us back to “10 summers ago”, “5 summers ago”, etc. Through these chapters that show past history, we get to experience the depth of Alex and Poppy’s connection, why they mean so much to one another, and get hints of why they are the way they are, as we learn more about their families, their upbringings, and their formative years.

I loved the chemistry and the adorable banter between the two. They’re funny in so many unexpected ways. Any scene that they’re both in absolutely shines.

At the same time, there’s plenty of harder times in the mix as well. Why did their friendship fall apart? Why do they seem to have such a hard time identifying what they want? Why do none of their romantic partners ever work out for them?

The travel segments add crazy fun, as most of their plans end up derailed or taken in unexpected directions, and their random adventures and encounters keep the entertainment value of this novel high.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the masterful Julia Whelan, and it was a delight. I can see why people become fans of certain audiobook narrators. I’ve now listened to more than a few audiobooks narrated by Julia Whelan, and she’s truly gifted. Here, her voices for Poppy and Alex are perfectly tuned to their personalities, and her delivery of their funnier exchanges made me laugh out loud.

I have to admit that it was touch and go for me for the first few chapters. The introduction of Poppy’s best friend, a social media influencer, made me want to duck out, and their discussion of “millennial ennui” was practically the nail in the coffin… but since I really enjoyed my last book by this author (Beach Read), I decided to stick with it. And I’m glad I did!

People We Meet on Vacation is surprisingly insightful for a book with such an upbeat cover and title. It allows its characters to dig into their wants and needs (while also showcasing their outstanding chemistry and dynamics), including introspective moments that give greater depth to the story without ever weighing it down.

This ended up being an excellent audio experience — highly recommended!

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Book Review: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

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Title: In Five Years
Author: Rebecca Serle
Publisher: Atria
Publication date: March 10, 2020
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Brimming with joy and heartbreak, In Five Years is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.

Wow.

Excuse me, I need to go dry my eyes for a minute before I can put any thoughts down about this book. There. I’m ready.

In Five Years crept up on me and hit me in my heart. It’s not the book I thought it was going to be, and that’s perfectly okay, because I ended up blown away by how deeply it made me feel.

At the same time, I don’t want to spoil anything for any potential readers, so I’m going to have to keep my comments on the vague side.

You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.

This is not a time-travel story. There is no magical entry into parallel worlds. Yes, Dannie has a weird experience that puts her five years into the future for a brief hour — but call it vision or premonition or whatever you want, I promise that that’s not the point of the story.

The main character of In Five Years is Dannie, a super smart, super successful lawyer who measures out her life in plans and lists and spreadsheets. Her boyfriend David is just like her (even keeping a spreadsheet of restaurants they’ve visited and what they ate), and their future is nicely mapped out. They’ll achieve success in their incredibly competitive fields. They’ll buy a great apartment in a great neighborhood in New York. And after Dannie’s interview with the law firm of her dreams, they get engaged in the perfect setting… so they seem very much on track for their neatly planned out lives.

Until Dannie dozes off and has her strange, five-years-into-the-future experience, where she interacts with a man — not David — in such an intimate and emotional way that, when she wakes, she begins to question everything.

Four and a half years later, Dannie and David are still engaged, but never quite get around to planning a wedding. She’s working at her dream job and absolutely loving it. And then things get weird when her best-friend-for-life Bella introduces her to the new man in her life… and he’s the man from Dannie’s dream/vision/premonition.

But if you think that this is a love triangle sort of book, let me just tell you — it’s not.

The further along I read, the more I understood that the heart of this book is the love between friends. Dannie and Bella are perfect complements to one another — Bella free-spirited and artistic and spontaneous, all things that Dannie is not. But they love each other unstintingly and understand each other deeply, and as the story unfolds from here, their love absolutely shines in a way that’s beautiful and left me in tears.

There. I’m not saying anything further about the plot. I’ll just say that it surprised me and moved me; it wasn’t what I expected, and it completely pulled me in and wouldn’t let me go until I turned the last page.

On a lighter note, two things struck me as funny. One, a seeming inconsistency that made me giggle:

David was snoring next to me, and the upstairs was still, but then it was barely six.

And on the next page:

David is a silent sleeper. No snoring, no movement.

Hmm. I don’t think those can both be true. (But honestly, this is truly a minor quibble, and I only mention it because it made me laugh and broke up the intensity of the story for me, which was a good thing.)

I also loved a couple of little throw-away lines that made me feel like Dannie and I are inhabiting the same world:

Murray Hill isn’t the most glamorous neighborhood in New York, and it gets a bad rap (every Jewish fraternity and sorority kid in the Tri-State area moves here after graduation. The average street style is a Penn sweatshirt)…

Hee. My alma mater rarely gets a shout-out in the books I read. And one more thing that felt like me:

I change into shorts and a T-shirt and a sun hat — my Russian Jew skin has never met a sun it particularly got on with…

Story of my life, Dannie.

But back to being serious…

I loved Rebecca Serle’s previous novel, The Dinner List, and in some ways, I can see some general similarities. Both feature an out-of-the-ordinary twist in the set-up, and in both, it’s the emotional heart of the story that really matters, not the how and why of the strange twist.

In Five Years is a gorgeous, surprising, and emotionally powerful read. Highly recommended.

[And a brief note: When I look at the reviews on Goodreads, I see so much detail about the plot. I recommend reading this book without a lot of foreknowledge, so stay away from Goodreads if that matters to you!]

Book Review: When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk

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Title: When You Were Everything
Author: Ashley Woodfolk
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication date: March 10, 2020
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

You can’t rewrite the past, but you can always choose to start again.

It’s been twenty-seven days since Cleo and Layla’s friendship imploded.

Nearly a month since Cleo realized they’ll never be besties again.

Now, Cleo wants to erase every memory, good or bad, that tethers her to her ex–best friend. But pretending Layla doesn’t exist isn’t as easy as Cleo hoped, especially after she’s assigned to be Layla’s tutor. Despite budding new friendships with other classmates—and a raging crush on a gorgeous boy named Dom—Cleo’s turbulent past with Layla comes back to haunt them both.

Alternating between time lines of Then and Now, When You Were Everything blends past and present into an emotional story about the beauty of self-forgiveness, the promise of new beginnings, and the courage it takes to remain open to love. 

It’s refreshing to read a contemporary YA novel where romance takes a backseat. In When You Were Everything, the focus is on friendship — or more specifically, on the end of friendship.

Few things are more traumatic for teen girls that losing a best friend. In When You Were Everything, we witness the pain and sorrow and rage that occurs when besties forever, Cleo and Layla, fall apart.

It happens the way these things do. Friends since age twelve, the girls start moving in different directions at the start of their sophomore year of high school. Layla wants more than anything to join the school chorus, and while the “Chorus Girls” adopt her right away, they have no interest in including Cleo in their elite circle.

Cleo’s feeling are hurt over and over again as Layla spends more time with her new friends than with Cleo, and small slights turn into bigger and bigger betrayals, until there’s a final and irreparable break.

Cleo is also dealing with her parents’ separation, and her new friendless status is made even worse by a stream of bullying and harassment she endures from the Chorus Girls while Layla stands by and does nothing.

Cleo is smart and driven, but she also makes some poor choices, lashing out in hurtful ways when her own feelings are hurt. And while I felt that Layla was more to blame for the friendship break-up, Cleo isn’t blameless either.

When You Were Everything is hard to read at times, specifically because it’s so relatable. My own high school years are way in the past, but Cleo’s feelings as she’s isolated and tormented ring very true, in a sadly timeless sort of way.

I enjoyed seeing how Cleo opens herself up to new friendships and learns to see what’s in front of her instead of living inside her own head so much. There’s a sweet romance too, but it’s less important than what Cleo learns about herself and about friendship.

The cast of characters is nicely diverse, and I liked the way the story includes the importance of family and the impact of parents’ and grandparents’ support, love, and involvement. Despite the sadness of the end of a friendship, the book ends on a hopeful note.

Definitely a recommended read!

Book Review: My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

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Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Millie and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She’s the Man, Christina Lauren’s latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you’ll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.

Okay, I’m now 2 for 2 when it comes to reading Christina Lauren! My Favorite Half-Night Stand is yet another fun, engaging feel-good story about sexy smart people falling awkwardly in love… and I loved the heck out of this story.

Millie is 29, intelligent, adorable, the center of a friend circle consisting of four guys plus her, and she has a great life — except she hasn’t been with anyone romantically or sexually in way too long, and isn’t feeling particularly up to starting down that road again. After childhood losses and some strained family relationships as an adult, Millie prefers to keep her depths bottled up, showing her friends her bubbly outer persona but not letting anyone get under her skin or see too deeply into her soul.

Reid is her best friend, and they spend one very steamy night together — but Reid is looking for a relationship, and Millie can’t quite figure out how to be vulnerable enough to let him get closer to her. When the group decides to join a dating site, it goes pretty much how you might expect. Millie creates a second persona as an attempt to jazz up her profile in a safe way, but when this new profile “Catherine” gets matched with Reid, Millie lets it play out for far too long.

She and Reid have excellent chemistry and definitely heat up the page when they’re together. It’s interesting to see the tables flipped here, where it’s the woman who has a fear of intimacy and the man who’s frustrated by his partner’s insistence on keeping things light.

Told in alternating chapters, we see the events develop from both Millie’s and Reid’s perspectives, and get to see snippets of the online dating messages and group texts as well, which are funny and silly, and help illustrate the group dynamic. Both Millie and Reid are intelligent, sensitive people. I just wished they’d been more upfront with each other sooner. By pretending their nights together were just about the sex, they ended up tangled up in a situation where they both got hurt and risked losing something great. (Of course, as with many of these types of books, if they’d been clearer at the start, we’d have gotten to the HEA within about 50 pages, and then there’d be no story!)

My quibbles with this book are minor. First, everyone is gorgeous and successful in their fields. Not much to complain about, right? But it can be a bit hard to relate to people who are so perfect and flawless. My more serious complaint is that we don’t see enough of Millie at work. She a university professor with a book in the works, and her subject matter — female serial killers — is fascinating. I would have liked to see Millie actually teaching a class or being more active professionally in the book. Yes, we hear about what she does and what her field of research is, but I would have liked to have seen her in that role, so we’d get a clearer picture of her as a strong, brilliant woman, to offset the emphasis on her romantic triumphs and failures.

After reading Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating (and loving it), I was sold on Christina Lauren and needed more. Now that I’ve read her (their) newest release, I need to go back and read their previous books too. My Favorite Half-Night Stand is a smart and sexy romance that’s a quick read, perfect for a night in — best read with cozy pajamas, a fluffy quilt, and a mug of hot cocoa.

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The details:

Title: My Favorite Half-Night Stand
Author: Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: December 4, 2018
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Gallery Books and NetGalley

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Book Review: Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren

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Hazel Camille Bradford knows she’s a lot to take—and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and thrill for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter means she’ll say exactly the wrong thing in a delicate moment. Their loss. She’s a good soul in search of honest fun.

Josh Im has known Hazel since college, where her zany playfulness proved completely incompatible with his mellow restraint. From the first night they met—when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes—to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air.

Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them…right?

Ah, what fun! In my head, I don’t think of myself as someone who enjoys contemporary romance reading… but my recent track record seems to prove me wrong, over and over and over again.

Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating is a totally delicious and enjoyable story about two people who are determined to stay firmly in the friend zone… but we all know that intentions can be very different than what happens in real life.

In alternating chapters narrated by Hazel and Josh, we see these two come together in their late 20s, reunited by Josh’s sister, who just happens to be Hazel’s best friend. Hazel declares to Josh that she’s going to be his best friend too, and things certainly seem to head in that direction.

Let’s talk about Hazel for a moment. She is very out there, and at first, I was a little put off. Would I be able to handle a friend like that — someone who blurts, has no filters, and lives purely in the moment, going with what feels good and not worrying about tidiness or public opinion? She really would be hard to take — and yet, as the book progressed, I came to love her more and more. First of all, Hazel is all heart. She’s an elementary school teacher, for goddess’s sake! She loves 8-year-olds, with all their chaos and creativity and mess. When Josh first sees her in her classroom, he’s reminded of Ms Frizzle, and that’s really so on the nose. She’s a whirlwind of energy and good will, and it’s just impossible not to be charmed.

Josh is a little harder to pin down. He’s the older child of Korean immigrant parents whom he loves, he’s a successful physical therapist, and he’s a serial monogamist. He believes in committed relationships, and likes his world neat and sensible.

Josh and Hazel are clear that they’d be disastrous romantic partners, but they turn into excellent friends. Hazel pushes Josh’s boundaries and makes him laugh; Josh appreciate’s the Hazel-ness of Hazel without ever telling her to tone it down. Their series of blind dates, in which they each set up the other and then go on a double-date, are predictably epic failures, but it takes an awfully long time for Josh and Hazel to acknowledge that they’d rather be with one another than with anyone else.

My typical complaint with contemporary romances is about the communication factor. Surely, in real life, people would be just a little bit clearer about their feelings and intentions, right? There’s a lot of time wasted during which Josh thinks Hazel is interested in an ex-boyfriend and Hazel thinks Josh thinks that she should pursue things with the ex. They’re both wrong, of course, having completely misread each other and not spoken clearly enough to set each other straight. Of course, if everyone said everything they were thinking directly and without delay, there’d be no drama and no big payoff, so there you go.

This book surprised me in all the right ways. Sure, we know exactly where Josh and Hazel are headed, but it’s so much fun to see how they get there. I gobbled up this book in one day, and was left hungry for more. Apparently, I’ve been missing out by never having read this author (actually, two authors writing together) before, but I plan to rectify the situation as soon as I can!

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The details:

Title: Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating
Author: Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: September 4, 2018
Length: 309 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Library

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