The Lost for Words Bookshop
Author: Stephanie Butland
To Be Published: (Tomorrow) June 19, 2018
368 pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: June 10-17, 2018
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never, ever show you.
Into her hiding place—the bookstore where she works – come a poet, a lover, and three suspicious deliveries.
Someone has found out about her mysterious past. Will Loveday survive her own heartbreaking secrets?
The Lost for Words Bookshop is a compelling, irresistible, and heart-rending novel, perfect for fans of The Storied Life of AJ Fikry and The Little Paris Bookshop.
Jessica’s Review:
If you are a book lover in any way and/or an introvert this will be the book for you! The Lost for Words Bookshop is a character driven story and Loveday is our protagonist. She would rather spend time with books than people, so her job at the bookstore is perfect: In fact she has worked there for 10 years. She loves books so much she has tattooed first lines of various books on her body. She is a likeable nonconformist with a dark past that we slowly discover as the novel progresses. I also really liked Archie, the owner. Nathan is also likeable as well, he is a magician and knows all the tricks!
Don’t let the cover fool you, this book is not a lighthearted read. It has dark undertones dealing with Loveday’s past and you will experience a range of emotions while reading.
The mysteries of Loveday’s past and certain deliveries kept you wondering where the story was going to go. I really wanted to find out the answers! Loveday is our narrator and we see the story between the past and present, but it is clear and not confusing.
This was a highly enjoyable read and I recommend it, especially for the bibliophiles out there!
Thank you St. Martin’s Press for my copy: It was a pleasure to read and review.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US (Pre-order)
Amazon UK (already published in the UK)
Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris
Author: B.A. Paris
To Be Published: June 19, 2018
304 pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: May 20-30, 2018
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
A young British couple are driving through France on holiday when they stop for gas. He runs in to pay, she stays in the car. When he returns her car door has been left open, but she’s not inside. No one ever sees her again.
Ten years later he’s engaged to be married; he’s happy, and his past is only a tiny part his life now. Until he comes home from work and finds his new wife-to-be is sitting on their sofa. She’s turning something over in her fingers, holding it up to the light. Something that would have no worth to anyone else, something only he and she would know about because his wife is the sister of his missing first love.
As more and more questions are raised, their marriage becomes strained. Has his first love somehow come back to him after all this time? Or is the person who took her playing games with his mind?
Jessica’s Review:
Bring Me Back is B.A. Paris’ third novel and after reading all three I can say this: I am a fan of hers! I look forward to her fourth novel that is due to come out next year. In Bring Me Back the chapters are short, we have multiple narrators, and an intriguing storyline: It’s everything I want in a thriller!
Unlike her previous two novels, her main narrator Finn is a man. This was a surprise as Paris’ other two novel’s narrators are women. Despite all his secrets I liked Finn and wanted to know what was going to happen next. Bring Me Back is a novel you do not want to put down.
With the thrillers I read, I like to NOT figure out what the twist is going to be. I love the feeling when the twist occurs and your mind is blown with an OMG moment. I did figure out the twist in Bring Me Back very early on: It was very obvious to me. I could see the clues over the course of the entire novel. Despite figuring out this twist, I was eager to see how it would play out. I ‘sat back and enjoyed the ride’ as I went on while reading.
The epilogue truly had my attention. There is a true sadness with the ending. I really enjoyed Bring Me Back. If you enjoy a good thriller and have not read any by B.A. Paris, you need to go out and get her novels now!
Bring me Back is highly recommended!
Special thanks to St Martin’s Press for my arc copy. It was a pleasure to read and review! Please keep bringing us more of Paris’ novels!
Pre-Order Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK (available now!)
American Girls
Author: Alison Umminger
Published: June 7, 2016
293 pages
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
She was looking for a place to land.
Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl slouching toward adulthood, and she’s had it with her life at home. So Anna “borrows” her stepmom’s credit card and runs away to Los Angeles, where her half-sister takes her in. But LA isn’t quite the glamorous escape Anna had imagined.
As Anna spends her days on TV and movie sets, she engrosses herself in a project researching the murderous Manson girls—and although the violence in her own life isn’t the kind that leaves physical scars, she begins to notice the parallels between herself and the lost girls of LA, and of America, past and present.
In Anna’s singular voice, we glimpse not only a picture of life on the B-list in LA, but also a clear-eyed reflection on being young, vulnerable, lost, and female in America—in short, on the B-list of life. Alison Umminger writes about girls, sex, violence, and which people society deems worthy of caring about, which ones it doesn’t, in a way not often seen in YA fiction.
Kim’s Review:
Normally I find the protagonists of coming of age stories to be shallow, immature, and downright obnoxious! Not so in American Girls. Anna captured the “regularness” that many of these characters, especially girls, lack. Her life is turned upside down and her reaction to it all, yes, is dramatic, but understandable. I liked her, I understood why she did the things that she did, and I sympathized with her. Especially when she was talking about not trying to cause trouble or to hurt people but it ends up happening anyway. This book accomplished what so many other failed at, a regular person dealing with regular things all while being likable and relatable. Throwing in the Manson girls and working through some philosophical questions raised by the murders and their aftermaths, which is the main reason I read it, and you get a true to life, heartfelt story about growing up in a topsy-turvy world.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
