A genuinely sweet and fun to read Hollywood memoir. If you are a Parks and Recreation fan, this is a really nice trip down memory lane. Everyone wants to hear that the actors and show runners of their favorite show were a big family in real life and they all loved each other. That is pretty close to the case here. Jim OHeir has nothing but love for his co-stars and the story that brought him through Parks and Rec to winning an Emmy to now hosting a podcast about it. He fangirls about Henry Winkler and Mary Tyler Moore, he reminisces about the improvised lines and talked about filming and being made a series regular. There are many candid photos shared throughout and lots of first person narratives from Mike Schur and Greg Daniels. I loved hearing the inside scoop on how the show was cast and the business of producing it.
I was lucky enough to get a signed first edition because I pre-ordered from Barnes and Noble. A nice addition to my bookshelf and this would be a great Christmas present for the Parks and Rec fan in your life.
I would have liked this book so much better had the blurb not been incorrect. This is a painfully constructed novel. One of those books someone writes and edits and re-edits and shares with an elite writers workshop. Sentences that someone has memorized.
This is a soft spoken grief novel. An unrequited love, sapphic, journey of loss through ordinary life. This book is surprising but not heartwarming. No mystery or even romance, but a deep character development over the course of years of a friendship. It’s an odd title and an odd choice of cover art.
A 70 year old Manhattan therapist and her near self-indulgent quest to make sense of her friendships and love over the course of her life.
I had to look at the front cover a few times while reading this to remind myself that it is a novel and not a memoir. It really, really reads like a memoir. So much so that I wonder if it is coded as such in order to protect her family.
This is a book about infidelity vs polyamory, can external partners be used as a way for a couple to grow closer, boundaries, guilt, and falling in love.
Book to be published 2/25/25
Written in first person, the narrator’s husband suggests a slightly open marriage to include kissing. She connects with another man, David, and has what many would call an “emotional affair.” It is messy and hard to read at times, and the main characters come across as pretty selfish and unreasonable. It brings up questions of divorce and what makes a good marriage.
I don’t know much about polyamory, and it is very easy for my to be very judgmental about it. But I think that reading fiction makes us more empathetic, it forces us to see a situation from someone else’s eyes. While this book is well written and interesting at times, it’s hard to root for anyone. It’s none of my business if people want to have a different marriage than I do, that doesn’t threaten me. But the ending, to me, seemed like a persuasive essay in which the reader is trying to be talked into the dissolution of someone’s marriage.
This book breaks the 4th wall, somewhat. Why do we feel the need to create a good guy/bad guy narrative in other people’s marriages? This felt like pulling back the curtain and hearing someone’s 288 page explanation of their marriage. I understand the desire to do this, especially since so many people in our lives feel the need to editorialize.
I was reading with my hand over my eyes and peeking through my fingers.
Maybe go live your life and don’t explain it all to everyone. Maybe be okay with being the villain in someone else’s story.
Book to be published 3/11/25 and written by Matt Dinniman
My husband wears the same shirt every day, basically until it gets holes in it and then falls off his body. He really, really hates to buy clothes and so he just gets a shirt or two and goes with it. I mention this because he now has two Princess Donut t-shirts. So, that is saying something. He has been listening on audible for months, but when I saw him purchase the merch, I knew it was special. My bookstagram family has been showcasing the first title also, so I bought the available hardbacks and just now was lucky enough to get a digital version of the 4th book in the series with the added bonus chapter at the end. This is my review, and this has been my favorite book of the series thus far. This review will not spoil the content of any of the books, so feel free to read if you haven’t read the series, which is a fantasy series about an intergalactic reality show starring a guy from Seattle and a persian show cat who can talk. So, you know, it’s pretty weird.
Carl, Donut, Mongo and Katia have advanced to the fifth level, where crawlers have to seize a castle or something, they are inside bubbles and have to overtake a throne room, maybe? There are zombies and maybe ghosts in this one, and we get to meet some of the other top 10. Carl also comes into his own as a hero, albeit a reluctant hero. If you have made it this far in the series, you are likely reading for the development and the – let’s face it- absolutely DELIGHTFUL dialogue that comes from Princess Donut. I think one could skim the book and read exclusively Donut’s dialogue and be just about thrilled.
Since Mike listened to the audio, when we talk about parts we enjoy, he gives them the accents that the narrator does, which is very very funny, as I never would have given a Persian cat from Seattle a british accent, but I do love it.
According to my kindle, I read this in about 10 hours, perhaps I am reading at a different pace than I did the hardbacks or maybe I am just getting used to the world and rules of the game. When my husband sees me reading he always asks me what is happening at the moment, and I always say something like- “I don’t know, Carl and Donut are fighting and trying to survive and getting boxes.” When I read the first one, I took great care to read slowly to try and understand the game, the points, who exactly was the antagonist in each scene, etc. I have stopped doing that, and just taking the content at face value. It is too hard to determine which details are important and which aren’t. I am enjoying it more this way, although I truly have only 20% of the plot down.
Personally I have a hard time understanding most fantasy books so I tend to stay away from the genre unless it is called “cozy fantasy”- Harry Potter is my favorite and I love TJ Klune’s Cerulean Chronicles, but I can’t even come close to understanding LotR or most really detailed fantasy. Even YA fantasy like Sabaa Tahir- I couldn’t be more lost. I remember going to see Ready Player One and finally understanding what the world actually looked like.
Do I understand what is happening? No, not entirely. But am I enjoying reading this? Absolutely.
Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for the ARC. This made over cover with the bonus material to be published March 11, 2025. Naturally I will buy all of this version as I am a completist and having an incomplete set on my shelf would give me hives.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️If you loved Remarkably Bright Creatures with an octopus narrator, you will love Pony Confidential with a Pony narrator.
Teacher and mom Penny is shocked to be arrested and extradited to Ithaca from California for a murder she supposedly committed 25 years ago when she was only 12 years old. The only one who can clear her name is her elderly Pony, who hasn’t seen her since then. Her marriage is strained as her daughter has high anxiety and needs to go away to boarding school. She would do anything to help her daughter but can’t believe the situation she has found herself in. Sharing a jail cell with Dawn, who murdered her husband in order to protect her children, Penny has plenty of time to reflect on her life and how she has come into this terrible dilemma. She is stuck in prison until the time she goes to trial, with a child lawyer named Lisa and character witnesses who keep ending up dead.
This is a multi POV story- not only do we get to hear Penny’s inner dialogue, but Pony’s as well. Pony crosses the country multiple times and shares his journey with companions as a goat, a rat and a dog. The dialogue they share is pure and heartwarming. This book creates a sense of joy, wonder, and relationship. What does it mean to love unconditionally?
I would shelve this as a “cozy mystery” and also quite heartwarming. It is my favorite mystery of 2024 and in my top ten books out of 600 books I have read this year. A debut novel from a fresh new voice in fiction, Pony Confidential made me laugh and cry. It was exactly what I needed to help me through a very dark time in my life.
Book recommendations of new releases; mostly in literary fiction, mystery/thriller, women’s fiction, heartwarming, historical fiction and contemporary romance
