nothingforpomegranted's reviews
637 reviews

I really love the beginning of this and was totally immersed in the New York world of the 1930s, by then it really started to flag after about a third. I liked Katie. I thought Tinker was fascinating and Anne Grandon was engaging and exciting. Eve, though, why is shallow and manipulative and not a good friend. After the accident, I was disturbed to see the dissolution of Katie‘s relationship with Tinker. It also became very internal. Katie stopped talking to Tinker and Eve as the two of them went off on their Italian adventure that nobody seemed to want, and I couldn’t keep track of all the other people Katie was hanging out with or their relationships with Tinker and Eve. the truth is this is mostly disappointing because I was particularly excited to read this before I finish the final story in Table for Two,  but it’s just didn’t do it for me and now I’m not especially interested in reading the continuation of Eve’s life in Hollywood. Amor Towles’ writing is beautiful, and the setting is one that I absolutely love, but I just didn’t love this. Still excited to see the next thing that he produces.

This book was fun, easy listening with lots of melodrama and also some interesting insights about narration and perspective. In sophomore year in college, Margo finds herself in an affair with her married English professor, and after just a few weeks, she winds up pregnant. Fired from her job and blackmailed by Mark’s mother onto dropping out of school after the birth, Margo is desperate for funds to pay rent and, for the first time in her life, she asks her retired pro wrestler father for financial support. Jinx takes a few weeks to respond, and when he shows up at her front door, it turns out that he’s been in a rehab program and is looking for a roommate and accountability buddy himself. Jinx moves in, cleaning and babysitting and getting to know Margo as an adult. Inspired by a throwaway comment in a conversation, Margo discovers OnlyFans. She starts posting and reserving other successful users, eventually forming a friendship and a social media plan with two other popular users in which she acts out a robot from space engaging in weird Amelia Bedelia antics and sexual scenes. 

Honestly, this story is weird. The collaboration between Margo and her father on her sex work career felt bizarre and often uncomfortable. The rest was fun and funny, but I just couldn’t love it. 

When the hockey rink at UC Maple Hills is melted as part of a prank, the team is required to share the second rink with the figure skating team. Competitive skater Anastasia is livid, and she takes out all of her anger on Nate Hawkins, the team captain. Quickly (probably too quickly), the teams end up spending lots of time together and, with Nate’s immediate attraction to Anastasia, the fiery tensions become steamy interactions with lots of dirty talk. Nate is obsessed with Stas in a good way, and he forgives all of her idiosyncrasies, including over-planning her life, being afraid of commitment, and avoiding him when she’s stressed. When they come back together each time, it is HOT, and there were a couple of scenes that I would happily return to (Uber, shower, the first steamy scene against the door). I loved that most of the tension actually ended up coming from outside characters, primarily from Aaron being a cruel, manipulative partner. I would have actually liked for that storyline to have started earlier and to be more fleshed out because I never understood his motivations or intentions. I also didn’t love the epilogue. Things wrapped up a bit too neatly and didn’t quite align with the rest of the book. There doesn’t need to be a babylogue in every romance! This HEA would have been totally sufficient with the two characters cheering each other on at the Olympics or celebrating Stas’s win afterwards 😏.

This book was eerie and beautiful, with heavy themes and a deliberate, complex writing style. Written in epistolary journal entries by the main character, we discover the intricacies of the House, replete with Statues, sea, birds, and inhabited by Piranesi himself, the Other, and the skeletons of presumed former inhabitants. Piranesi’s utter trust in the House is a chilling portrait of faith, especially with the clear impression that something is wrong. Even writing about this book now, I have goosebumps. 

The arrival of the Sixteenth Person creates tremendous tension between Piranesi and the Other and questions of memory. After an encounter with the Prophet in which names are revealed, Piranesi begins to review his Journals and Index, discovering unfamiliar words and concepts and missing pages. With heavy suspicion, Piranesi encounters a message from 16, questioning his identity as Matthew Rose Sorenson and leading to more distress, fear, and tension until the final flood of the novel, in which Piranesi and Raphael (16) are saved, while the Other, Valentine Ketterly, is killed by the waters. Piranesi/Matthew eventually agrees to leave and return to the regular word with Raphael, despite his misgivings, his fear of people, and his enduring love for the House and the sea. 


This was beautiful and chilling, disturbing and bizarre. I am not a huge fantasy reader, but this book sucked me in, and I read the entire thing in two sittings. Admittedly, the first few chapters were slow-moving for me, and I was uninterested in the strange writing style and capitalization. However, with the reviews and with my intention to listen to the podcast episode of The Novel Tea, I preserved and was quickly drawn into the story and, in fact, impressed by the shifting writing styles, all by one author. 

The podcast suggested a fascinating reading of the book and the House as a trauma process and coping mechanisms. My inclination is actually to approach this as fantasy more than allegory, but the idea that Matthew/Piranesi’s returns to the House from the other world with Raphael are representations of therapy is quite moving. 

Marcellus is a Great Pacific Octopus with incredible intelligence and a deadpan sense of humor as he discusses his captivity and his observations, specifically in connection to Tova, the 70-something night cleaner at the aquarium. Tova’s son Eric died in a boating accident just after graduating high school 30 years ago, and her husband Will died from cancer a year ago. Wrought by grief, Tova chooses to keep most of her emotions to herself, despite her weekly hangouts with the KnitWits and her regular chats with Ethan at the grocery store. Instead, Tova connects with the sea creatures at the aquarium, greeting them each evening with a bit of whimsy, and developing a particular connection with Marcellus after she discovers him coiled up in wires after escaping his tank. 

The third main character, Cameron, was raised by his aunt after his mother left him at age nine. This abandonment has carried him through his life, and he has developed a tendency to get fired from every job he has held without taking responsibility for anything. After his girlfriend breaks up with him and he loses his job, Cameron decides to embark on a journey to find his father, whose class ring and photographs Cameron believes to have found in a bundle from his aunt. This brings Cameron to Sowell, and he fills in as a temporary cleaner after Tova sprains her ankle at work, and thus the storylines are connected. 

It was clear from the outset that Cameron would wind up being Tova’s grandson, but watching the two of them discover the connection with Marcellus’s guidance was heartwarming and moving. 

I would like to read more Murakami, but as several reviewers stated, this may not have been the place to start after reading his memoir. The stories were odd, but mostly interesting, and I think I probably should have read them more slowly, as I’ve been doing with Amor Towles’ Table for Two in order to fully appreciate each story for what it offered. In fact, I enjoyed most of the stories, even as I was confused by them, and I also appreciated the blurred perspective of author and narrator. I am certainly curious about the inspiration for each of these stories and the characters in them. For me, the standouts are Carnaval and Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey. 

The writing here was good and I love shit, Sarah McLean, but I definitely read this after reading too much romance which always put me into a slump. I also just wasn’t convinced by Ewan’s transformation. He was so cruel in the previous two books and if I had read this in isolation, maybe I would feel better about it, but the combination of falling in love is 12 year olds, plus his cruelty to his brothers and the other books in the series just gave me the ick. Definitely Ewan and Grace have chemistry, and there were quite a few steamy scenes where I really did believe their connection but I couldn’t get behind the overall storyline so overall it just wasn’t for me.

This was silly but steamy, so it was fun to read. A little too little of the ghostwriting plot, just to get straight into absolute lust and some fantastic sexual tension and dirty talk.

My favorite romance in a while. I loved Whit’s brooding, and Hattie’s determination was exciting to read. They both had believable backstories and missions, and they fully embraced their feelings and attraction. The book started at a brothel (for women) and continued with such steam from there with a super sexy tied to the mast moment for Whit. My one complaint is that I’m having a hard time figuring out what happened with Ewan and Grace and a harder time believing that Ewan will be redeemed in the next book. 

I remember my fourth grade teacher recommending this to me, and I absolutely loved it. I loved all of the plays on words and the details, and though I didn’t remember the plot fully, I had such positive feelings going into this again. As one reviewer mentioned, it was perhaps a little on the nose with the puns for a grownup, but I also really did enjoy the plays on words and the phrases. I’m actively debating whether this will be a good fit for my students, and I wonder if I may get into too many details with them because the wordplay is so fun for me. I would like to give them the opportunity to explore and understand it themselves.