heamarhar's reviews
102 reviews

Easy read, fun banter, annoying men. I liked the subplot a lot!

Somehow this was simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.

I tend to get annoyed when main characters are really hung up on high school relationships (COUGH - In a Dark, Dark Wood - COUGH), but I found this to be super relatable as someone who had a ~serious high school relationship~ with a longtime best friend who I thought I'd be with forever (YIKES). It was nostalgic in that way, and I think the authors portrayed those kinds of deep, new, and exciting "first love" feelings perfectly.

Bonus points because the authors were able to showcase 2 breakups that didn't make me 100% detest the protagonists for pursuing each other when in separate relationships. Nice work! Spoiler below tho:
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Are we just gonna gloss over what happened to Elliot? If he was telling the truth about the whole situation. Is that not incredibly creepy of Emma????? I'm so lost.

Full disclosure: I picked this up because everyone called it "the bingo sex pact book" and I'm a degenerate, but it was actually wholesome and touched on addiction and other mental health struggles pretty well. Also what a great display of healthy friendships. So cute. Good, witty, and mostly realistic banter. The nickname thing felt a little forced, but I'll let it slide for a book that actually made me laugh out loud multiple times.

Overall I think this was 90% a good book. However... The ending came so suddenly and fell so flat that I am appalled at all of the rave reviews. Sure, not every book has to have a crazy wild ending, but I think readers deserved a lot more after trudging through so many pages of fluff and imagined scenarios. This felt like a mess of ideas. There were some things I enjoyed about the nuance of cancel culture and how people act differently when you or someone you care about is under the magnifying glass, but most of the time I felt like the author was stating the obvious and pretending it was all brand new. I found Bodie to be a boring, self-centered, manipulative, try-hard, verging on being your average white feminist. Her backstory wasn't fleshed out enough for me to care about her as deeply as the author wanted me to. We get tidbits about her past, but she felt like more like a rough draft than a real main character. I expected a lot more from this book than I was given. :(

I hope first-time Lisa Jewell readers don't pick this book up first.

This book has too many characters, terrible parents, children who think they're adults, and a very unsatisfying ending. I didn't find the "mystery" of it all very compelling... I had guessed a large chunk of it pretty early on. I think there was too much left unresolved - with the dad and his mental health struggles as well. And free-spirited Adele knowing so much yet saying so little didn't sit right with me. I was so frustrated by the end of things I wanted to pull my hair out.


Sorry to my friends - I picked this one for book club. Consider my bad choice to be purposeful: our March theme was "betrayal" after all!

3.5 stars

This was fun and twisty! Truly could not put it down. I loved the secrets and lies and betrayals and revelations. It was exciting and suspenseful and I'd recommend it to anyone in a reading slump.

My only issue is one character leaving very key details out of her family narrative until halfway through the story.

Also, this book did give me weird pro-life vibes every once in a while, but I don't think that was what the author intended so I am letting it slide. The nuances of writing about infertility, I suppose. There was a gay couple so I can't imagine that the author is too stuffy... Idk.

Great per usual. Eric LaRocca scratches the weird corners of my brain.

I am a fool for being skeptical about this book.

I love this book the same way I loved Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance and I love it the same way I loved Signal Fires. We get to grow up with these characters, see what shapes them, love with them, grieve with them, play games with them, hope for them. This book gives you so much more than just words on a page - it's a fully immersive experience. Maybe my favorite read this year?

I'd round it up to 3.5. It didn't blow my mind or anything but I loved how quickly it started and was thrilled that it just kept throwing new information out until the very end. Good stuff.

Do you like twisty thrillers from the perspectives of multiple unreliable narrators? Yes? Say no more. Go read this.

I LOVED THIS BOOK. The vacation rental is a perfect eerie setting to begin with, and all the while we get a sprinkling of unsettling, claustrophobic peeks into what's going on back home between scenes with the wives. The stream-of-consciousness writing style was easy to read and relate to - it made the characters feel real. (Sometimes they seemed stuck in their personality boxes a bit too much, but I'm just picky like that.) There are multiple characters, but they are easy to keep track of after they are introduced because they have very defining characteristics and quirks.

Calling it now: this is going to be the start of my Gilly Macmillan rabbit hole.