cozy_little_booknook's reviews
270 reviews

Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the ARC of this book.

I've seen a few Katherine Ryan comedy specials and I've found her to be extremely likeable and entertaining. She's honest and raw and speaks to women like myself who are forging their own paths in life. This short autobiography is very true to her voice and will be familiar and comforting to those who like her comedy specials.

With that being said, I fail to see the reason why this book/story had to be written. There were moments that strayed away from the main question of the book, and it felt as though she had to hit a certain word count for the publishers. For a short book/story, it occasionally felt like a slog to get through. 

I also question Katherine's why for sharing this story in this way. While I do think it's important that her story be told because women should see other examples of how to have and be a family, I also feel like this book was written to convince her audience that her now husband is "one of the good ones." 

I can understand and empathize with the difficulties of going public with a romantic relationship when a lot of your success came from being so open about being single can be difficult; your audience is protective of you through their parasocial relationship and they're wary of anyone "new" coming into the picture. But I also feel like if someone were secure in their relationship, they wouldn't feel the need to write about how good their new partner is? Or they would give us more about him as a person in the book/story and share a bit more of their side?

I don't want to speculate too much beyond this point because, frankly, it's none of my business. I just ultimately hope that Katherine and her family are happy and healthy and that she continues to advocate for women in entertainment, comedy, and the world as a whole. Her voice is definitely important and while I didn't love this book/story, I do feel like there is an audience for it and it's worthy of being shared and read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the ARC of The Fury.

I credit Alex Michaelides' first thriller The Silent Patient for getting me back into reading, however I have been massively disappointed by two subsequent thrillers he has written, first The Maidens and now The Fury.

A postive aspect of this book is Michaelides' ability to world build. The settings of both London and the private Greek island were vivid and definitely placed me in the world of the novel.

The biggest aspect of this book and a pattern Michaelides has in all of his thrillers is the female character(s) are truly obsessed with the men in their lives when the men are actively causing harm to these women and the people around them. That may be a point of these books, but I feel it would be more interesting and compelling as the reader to understand the women's why for loving them more than just

"they provide me attention and affection" and/or "they have daddy issues."

What are the men's good moments, if there are any? If there aren't, let's get to the root of the woman's why a bit more. I struggled to understand any of the female character's motivations for their actions and reactions when it came to the love interest of his novel, which made me fail to understand a large portion of the plot.

The pacing of this novel left a lot to be desired. It's a short novel, and I found myself speed reading to find the point. The story would progress and then you'd find out in the next chapter that none of the events that happened in the previous chapter actually happened. It just left me, the reader, feeling like "okay then why did you put me through this?" I like a book with an unreliable narrator, but I think this could have been executed in different and more effective ways. See Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees with the usage of an additional character being the "editor" of the main character's compilation of diary entries and providing footnotes with additional context or differing "facts." Something similar could have been done by

having Mariana, Elliot's therapist and main character of Michaelides' previous novel The Maidens, provide additional context or be a conduit for Elliot's story. This would also make Mariana's addition in the book and the linking of all the novel's worlds more intentional and less cheeky.

It was also, sadly, a bit predictable.

There's a reason the book was written in Elliot's perspective, so obviously he would be the one to kill Lana. Also, there was too much left in the book when she "died" initially so I saw the red herring death coming

. Because of the predictability, I was made less interested in the novel as a whole.

While I love The Silent Patient, I think that Alex Michaelides may not be for me as a whole. If this is your first Michaelides book, you may find The Fury more enjoyable than I did. However, I personally would not recommend this book to any thriller lover.

Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for the Digital ARC of You Know What You Did. 

I love a thriller. I especially love a thriller that’s dealing with larger issues beyond the crime(s) themselves. The way Nguyen writes about the immigrant experience, PTSD, mental illness, mother/daughter relationships, and generational trauma is important and timely. At times, the messaging can be heavy handed if the reader considers themselves slightly versed in the topic(s) above, but overall the writing was a welcome addition to the thriller as a whole. 

Where the novel lost me was in the pacing and time jumps. A lot of the chapters in the middle section of the book generally ended on the same note or even the same sentence. Some chapters felt like lateral moves as opposed to steps in the plot. It was also difficult to keep track of where in the overall story a certain chapter was taking place. Both of these aspects messed with the pacing and took me out of the story. 

Overall, I would generally recommend this book to someone who enjoys thrillers and family dramas, but I would warn them of the pacing issues in advance. 

wasn’t in the mood. will come back to it.