Book reviews
I share shorter reflections across social platforms. This archive is the lasting home for each complete review.
Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After pairs vivid, nostalgic prose with a lakeside setting made for escape. But while I admired the novel’s atmosphere and craft, Sam and Percy’s prolonged push-pull relationship, frequent timeline shifts, and underwhelming resolution left me more frustrated than moved.
Read full review
Alice Feeney pulled me straight into Beautiful Ugly with immersive prose, morally complicated characters, and an eerie island setting. But as the mysteries unraveled, the twists pushed my suspension of disbelief too far. What began as a potential five-star read left me conflicted.
Read full review
Alice Feeney’s fluid prose and strong interiority pulled me into My Husband’s Wife, and Birdy’s dark humor gave me plenty to enjoy along the way. But a plot dependent on convenient coincidences and a string of twists left me torn between admiration for the writing and frustration with the resolution. A mixed 3-star read.
Read full review
A young thief joins a crew plotting to steal an empire in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn. Its distinct characters and moral questions kept me engaged, even as I wished I’d felt a little closer to the characters.
Read full review
Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True is a slow-burn psychological thriller about perception, manipulation, and the stories we construct from incomplete information. More than its twists, what stayed with me was the way the novel challenged my confidence in what I thought I understood and made me question how easily certainty can take hold.
Read full review
In Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng explores family, identity, relationships, and the fragile illusion of control in carefully planned Shaker Heights. Through masterful omniscient narration and beautifully empathetic prose, Ng reveals the unpredictable fires our choices ignite in our lives and the lives of others.
Read full review
In my first full review, I consider why Evelyn Hugo feels so vivid: a woman shaped by ambition, love, sacrifice, self-awareness, and the hard-won truth of her own life.
Read full review