thoughts on books

Category: contemporary fiction

  • The dating game by ally zetterberg

    Dexter, but make it Monaco—with a neurodiverse, board-game mastermind who’s done playing nice. ♟️💋

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

    The Dating Game by Ally Zetterberg is a dark dating rom-dramedy that delivers equal parts chaos, catharsis, and clever revenge.

    Meet Tilda: 30, wildly successful board game designer, independently wealthy, and just a little… unconventional. After losing her mother far too soon, she decides to approach life the only way she knows how—like a game. First: friendship. Then: love. Finally: the “endgame” of a perfect, happy life. Simple, right?

    Except Tilda isn’t your typical heroine. Think Eleanor Oliphant vibes with a sharper edge—and a whole lot more feminine rage. There are plenty of mediocre men in this story, and let’s just say… they tend to get exactly what’s coming to them. 👀

    Set against the glamorous backdrop of Monaco, this book is packed with action, dark humor, and morally grey choices that somehow still have you rooting hard for Tilda. Yes, it’s a bit predictable at times—but honestly? That didn’t take away from how satisfying it was to watch everything unfold.

    It’s an easy, fast-paced read—a total popcorn thriller with bite.

    Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC.

  • Handle with care by Marybeth mayhew whalen

    🎧📚 AUDIOBOOK REVIEW 📚🎧

    ALC Review — Thank you to NetGalley & Thomas Nelson Audio for the early listen!

    💥 Handle With Care by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen (publishing 4/13/26)

    This one surprised me—in the best way. It’s marketed with a bit of thriller energy, and while there is a tense, hostage situation at the center, this is really a deeply character-driven women’s fiction story about what happens when life pushes you to your breaking point.

    The setup is simple but powerful: three women walk into a post office, another is working the counter—and suddenly everything changes when Nadine’s estranged husband, desperate and fueled by scotch, storms in and takes them hostage after she refuses to reconcile.

    But what makes this story shine is why each woman is there. Each one is mailing something that represents a turning point in her life, and as the situation unfolds, we get layers of their stories, their choices, and what—and who—they’re willing to fight for.

    ✨ My standout character: Morrow. She felt so real and relatable, the kind of character you recognize pieces of yourself in.
    ✨ I also loved Hope, the hostage negotiator—steady, thoughtful, and compelling in a quieter way.

    🎧 And the narration?? Jane Oppenheimer absolutely nailed it. You might think a multi-POV story like this would need a full cast, but she brings such distinct tone and emotion to each character that it’s effortless to follow. Her performance is subtle, immersive, and really lets the emotional weight of the story land.

    This book explores:
    💔 Limits and breaking points
    🛡️ Who we choose to protect
    🔄 Life at a crossroads

    It’s tense, emotional, and quietly powerful—an audiobook that keeps you hooked while also making you feel. I flew through it.

    ⭐️ 4.25 stars — highly recommend

    Every woman will see herself somewhere in these pages.

    AudiobookReview #HandleWithCare #MarybethMayhewWhalen #NetGalley #ThomasNelsonAudio #WomensFiction #Bookstagram #ALCReview #AudiobookLover #EmotionalRead

  • extracurricular by rachel lynn solomon

    I absolutely loved Ramona and Nick’s story in Extracurricular by Rachel Lynn Solomon. Ramona is a feminine, flirty pop star who I kept picturing as Olivia Rodrigo. She was cast as a child in a Disney Channel–style show called Greta Lives and went on to have an incredibly successful pop career. But after years of nonstop work and extreme exhaustion, she decides to step away from the music industry and enroll at UCLA as a first-year student to try to live a normal life.

    That’s where she meets Nick Navarro—her psychology professor. Nick is 36, divorced, and living with his sister and her daughter. He’s a caring, thoughtful professor who truly loves teaching and isn’t looking for love at all.

    This book features an age-gap romance (Nick is 36 and Ramona is 26) and a professor/student dynamic. Normally that trope can feel uncomfortable because of the power imbalance, and it’s something I usually find pretty icky. But in this case, it worked for me. Ramona is independently wealthy and extremely famous, while Nick is very much not, which shifts the typical power dynamic and makes the relationship feel much more balanced and believable.

    One of my favorite things about this book is that there’s no third-act breakup—which felt refreshing and let the story focus on the characters actually building something together. The banter between Ramona and Nick is incredible and made their chemistry feel so real.

    The ending especially sealed the deal for me. There are two scenes near the end that had me making the full-on “this is so cute” face, 😍and they were so sweet that I bumped my rating up from 4 stars to 4.5.

    I loved this book so much that I already preordered a finished copy—especially after seeing that it has sprayed edges and decorated inner and outer covers. This is definitely one I can see myself returning to again and again. I really believed in their love, and the chemistry between them was fantastic.

    Content warnings (mild spoilers): off-page sexual assault prior to the timeline, panic attacks, and discussion of the stress, loneliness, and pressures of being a child star.

    Thank you to Berkley for the ARC.
    Extracurricular will be published July 14, 2026

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5 stars)

  • love is an algorithm by laura brooke robson

    What a unique story and a fresh new voice in fiction. Danny is a tech start up bro, he is the coding half of the duo that started Pattern, a dating app that measures compatibility. Eve is a musician who comes from a Manhattan elite family, her brother co-founded the company with Danny. He is marrying a beautiful “influencer” and says things like “crushing it.” Danny is approaching the app and the compatibility score with a lot of thoughtfulness, and it is being used in very human, messy ways.

    This is a really unique writing style that I will admit, it took me awhile to get used to. With razor sharp references, this seems to skip prose and descriptions in favor of rapid jumps to snippets of conversations. The narrative skips around in character and time frame rather abruptly, but once I got used to the style, I realized that I knew the characters in their complexity and relationships much more so than I would have expected in just a few hundred pages. This is one that grew on me over the course of me reading it. By the ending, you realize the commentary it is making on relationships, how they work, and how they are influenced by the modern age.

    The best thing about this book is the rather complex conversation that it is having around AI, Algorithms, how we are relying upon our devices and some AI that has been programmed by some very very human and imperfect people.

    I was lucky to approach this as an immersive read as I received both the ARC from Harlequin Trade as well as the ALC from Harlequin Audio. The audiobook performance was excellent, but audio-only could be a challenge to some readers due to the writing style. I personally did very much need the “eyeball” reading to keep track of where I was in the book.

    Book to be published March 31, 2026. Thank you to NetGalley, Harlequin, and the author.

  • big girl blitz by danielle allen

    This is the spicy sports romance with a plus-sized beautiful black FMC that you have been waiting for! Jazmyn is a teacher and has come back to town as her beloved Aunt Addison (who has been more like a mom to Jazmyn) is at the end of her life. Addison has had a stroke and Jazmyn wants to be here to support her and her care team, and stops into a sports bar to watch the Baltimore NFL football game where she meets Lamar Anderson. He is tall, dark, handsome, athletic, and seems to love football as much as Jazmyn does. Soon she finds out that he doesn’t just LOVE football, it is his career also. Aunt Addison wants Jazmyn to start living her best life, it has been 2 years since her divorce and she hasn’t dated at all.

    First of all, this may be a bit too spicy for my own personal taste, but I know that is perfect for others! This is a romance that has a lot of substance, the grief that Jazmyn has for her aunt and how she fits into her family, she has really strong friendships (girlfriends chiming in with their loud opinion are the BEST) and stepping into her power after finding her next chapter. I was rooting for Jazz and Lamar ALL the way! I thought they had a great friendship and the relationship was more than just their physical chemistry, he was so respectful and thoughtful of her. She was so supportive of his career and wanted the best for him. I think what I loved best about Lamar was how he made her feel KNOWN. Isn’t that what we all want?

    Audiobook review- this is a top notch audio performance, I loved the narrator and the passion and sparkling personality she put into all the characters. It is well paced for audio and is well worth the listen. I just had to pre-order the paperback for my shelves as a trophy!

    Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the ALC. Book to be published April 14, 2026.

  • thighs wide shut by hayley fleming

    Quarter-life Crisis book about Emma who has left teaching and moved back to Boston. The child of teachers, she has been devastated and upset by being in education and is working part time at her best friend Jo’s coffee shop. She rented a basement apartment and is surprised to learn that her college best friend Harrison is leaving in the same building. We know that things ended poorly with them, and he seems to have a codependent relationship with his mother and he hasn’t been totally honest about who Emma was to him to his current girlfriend.

    The romance and relationship in this novel is really strong, I wanted to know Harrison even better. Jo as a minor character is very well developed instead of just someone for Emma to confide in, she is a solid comic relief and helps the narrative along. While this is a second chance romance, at its core this is a story about Emma coming to terms with the condition she has called vaginismus. I had no knowledge of this prior to reading and I found this pretty enlightening. If you have this condition or knows someone who does, this novel does the heavy lifting of taking us into internal dialogue and the journey to work with this condition. Emma goes through the stages of grief, being in denial for a long time. In the current timeline she is accepting of her condition but still needs to go through the process to treat it. I can imagine this is something that is somewhat embarrassing and it is none of someone’s business until it is.

    Very promising debut, I appreciated the author’s note at the end and I even got to read the beginning of her next novel. I think she is a great writer and I look forward to her next title.

    Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Delights for the ARC. Book to be published in July of 2026.

  • Destination funeral by Paige harbison

    Another fun time loop magical realism with some light romance elements from Paige Harbison. Four friends go to an island for a funeral and a long weekend, only to learn they have inherited her home. And that long weekend becomes longer than they expect when they keep living Saturday over and over again.

    This was a nice escape from reality and although the time loop felt pretty derivative, there were a few lines that had me laughing out loud. The characters, for me, were mostly one dimensional and I was really hoping for more in the character arc that would have made them develop more. Both individually and as a unit. I was a big fan of her debut novel and perhaps had too high of expectations for this one. I do think it’s worth reading for the writing style and for the setting.

    Also- please be aware she refers to alcohol and drinking excessively in her novels. Not alcoholism or addiction issues, but there are more references to alcohol than in most novels.

    Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the ARC. Book to be published July 20, 2026

  • sunk in love by heather mcbreen

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    Well, what do you know, it’s a two star buildup and a five star ending. Yeah, I said it. The ending was five star. And to think I almost DNFed.

    A marriage-in-crisis, grief, miscommunication, forced proximity fake dating cruise ship.

    Roslyn is a romance writer, her family is all doctors. Her soon to be ex-husband Liam is an oncologist, and naturally they really adore him. Her grandparents are going to renew their vows on a cruise ship going to Hawaii. She has been lying to them for months about the fact that they are about to get divorced, so she gets him to come with her so that they can pretend to be happily married and not disappoint her grandparents. They still have a ton of chemistry and soon they forget the “rules“ and “boundaries“

    I spent a good portion of this book being angry at both Liam and Roslyn. I felt like the reasons why they weren’t together. were still very valid and that they weren’t giving each other the benefit of the doubt. It seemed really immature and a bad idea for them to give up on their marriage without therapy or counseling. The setting was lovely, I really enjoyed the cruise ship setting, that her brother and sister had good relationships, and the narrative showed Roselyn growing through grief. Although I spent a long time being angry at the characters, the ending more than made up for it. It’s an incredibly romantic and wonderful journey.

    Thanks to NetGalley and Berkeley for the ARC. Book to be published January 27, 2026.

  • Love by the book by Jessica george

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    A book club style selection about 4 friends that explores platonic love and friendship vs romantic love. It’s a lot of vibes and character development. The characters are relatable and fun to read about. When it comes to plot, it feels a bit more chaotic and doesn’t have a “beginning, middle, end.” I may be the outlier on this one because there are a lot of rave reviews. I found it a bit harder to follow on audio as the narrative switches between first person for one character and another character is 3rd person. I found myself a bit confused as to which character was which early on.

    I was a big fan of Maame, and this has a lot of heart, but it is definitely a different kind of novel. Looking forward to whatever Jessica George writes next!

    Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the ALC. book to be published April 6, 2026

  • this story might save your life by tiffany crum

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    This is a special book. Plenty of books try to be mystery/thriller plus romance but one of the two always shines. This is an equally five star thriller alongside a five star romance. And did I mention it’s a debut? I’m blown away. I requested this after seeing several rave reviews and it did not disappoint.

    Benny and Joy are podcasters and best friends with incredible chemistry. They’ve never been romantically entangled but it’s because of insecurities. They obviously love each other. The mystery is that Joy and her husband Xander have gone missing and the world is looking for them.

    Audiobook is amazing- both performances are stellar. There is a bonus podcast episode and duet narration. I already ordered a trophy copy, I really loved this book. Definitely a Q1 favorite.

    Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the arc. Book to be published March 9, 2026.