Category: April Reads

TSM Book Club Book #18: Well Played by Jen DeLuca

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Started: April 26th
Finished: May 1st
TSM Rating: 3/5

So this was the second book in the Well Met series. I wanted to like it, but I didn’t love our heroine, Stacey. She is the stereotype of a ‘basic white girl,’ and I’m not here for it. Much of the book felt like it was trying hard to give her more depth while playing up her love of pumpkin spice lattes and her obsession with social media.

While her email exchange with Daniel is so sweet and creates a better slow burn than Well Met did, but it all falls apart because of the compounding lies. By the big grand gesture moment, I was checked out. Daniel isn’t a great leading man. He’s a liar, insecure and has no backbone. There are two instance where he is given the opportunity to stand up and fight for her and he doesn’t take them. He shuts down. Is that really what we want to see from the person we love and who is supposed to love us?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for girls executing the grand gesture instead of being on the receiving end of it, but in this case, it wasn’t deserved or earned.

Read this one because we get a healthy dose of Emily and Simon mixed it, but Stacey and Daniel are not the couple for me.🙅🏽‍♀️

TSM Book Club Book #17: When In Rome by Sarah Adams

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Started: April 20th
Finished: April 25th
TSM Rating: 4/5

This was so cute. From Amelia and Noah’s meet-cute to their many attempts to keep their hands off each other to Amelia’s ongoing struggle to make the perfect pancake, I enjoyed When In Rome so much.

Sometimes romance novels can be a bit cringey with how the main characters behave. The sunshine character always comes off like an airhead who needs to be rescued. While Amelia did need rescuing initially, it was out of her control. When it comes to her relationship with Noah, she makes mature, adult decisions at every turn, making her one of the most relatable heroines that I’ve come across in a long while.

For his part as the grump, Noah fits the trope. Though, I would say he is more cautious and guarded than grumpy. He’s been burned by love before. He chose poorly in the past and is overcompensating by taking himself out of the game, even though he really, really wants to play.

I loved the dynamic between Noah and his sisters — Annie, Madison, and Emily. He is basically a lamb to the slaughter any time the four of them are together. They rule the Walker family, but you get the vibe that he would do anything for them. Practice Makes Perfect, the next book in the series, comes out next week, and I can’t wait to read Annie’s story and spend more time with the Walker clan.

TSM Book Club Book #16: The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

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Started: April 14th
Finished: April 19th
TSM Rating: 3/5

The Unhoneymooners follows Ethan and Olive as they travel to Maui on his brother and her twin sister’s honeymoon after the entire wedding party is infected with an awful case of food poisoning from seafood Olive and Ethan opted out of.

This was fun and frustrating all at once. Olive and Ethan are such a fun couple. Their banter is fun and sexy. It makes you wonder why they aren’t together in the first place, then you realize that through manipulation they’ve been kept apart.

While their banter is fun, their relationship frustrated the hell out of me. When push comes to shove, he doesn’t support her. He basically calls her a liar, while also making her complicit in his brother’s lies to her sister.

I’m all for flawed characters, but Ethan is so obtuse that he’s unwilling to trust Olive’s instincts about his brother and what she knows to be true about her sister. He isn’t even open to the possibility. Instead he calls her a liar and accuses her of being jealous.

*****SPOILER ALERT****

Then all of a sudden he fixes it with a public apology in front of her family that she doesn’t really had a choice but to accept. I felt uncomfortable reading her put on the spot like that. I’m not a fan of the public grand gesture.🤷🏽‍♀️

Overall, I liked the book. It wasn’t Love and Other Words, but it was a fun read. Christina Lauren wrote an audio original as a follow-up called The Honeymoon Crashers on August 1st, which I’ll listen to just because I want Ami — who was also a bit of an ass to Olive, although that is typical sibling behavior — to have her happy ending after her awful, short-lived marriage with Dane.😖

TSM Book Club Book #15: What You Wish For by Katherine Center

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Started: April 5th
Finished: April 14th
TSM Rating: 5/5

A couple years back while perusing the fiction section of my favorite used book store, I came across three Katherine Center novels. I’d never heard of her, but the book covers were beautiful and the the blurbs on the back were interesting so I picked them up. They sat in my TBR pile until last September when I devoured all three of them in about a week and a half.

What You Wish For falls into the same category. The beautiful cover matches the beautiful story. Center has this way of building these characters with major tragic trauma and leading them down this path to joy. She understands that coming out on the other side is a constant journey and a choice. She conveys life in all its three dimensional complexities.

What You… tells Sam and Duncan’s story of finding their way back to joy and love after very different traumatic experiences. They both respond by trying to exercise as much control over themselves and the world around them as they could. Even Sam, who had learned to look for and live in joy as much as she can, still holds herself from the one thing she truly wants — Duncan.

For his part, Duncan lived through one of the most traumatic experiences in the America. He locks away all the joy and fun that is so innate to his being that he becomes a completely different person.

Their journey to joy is filled with bumps, but Center guides them through with the help of a few friends and meddling family members. If you didn’t know, What You Wish For is connected to Happiness for Beginners. Duncan is the younger brother of Helen for Happiness.

Read them both, then read all of Katherine Center’s other books because no writer leaves me feeling a little more hopeful at the end of her books than her.