nothingforpomegranted's reviews
640 reviews

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. 

I love Sarah MacLean’s universe, and I am having fun slowly working through her entire backlist. It has been helpful for my recollection to only read one author at a time in order to really delve into the universe, but I do enjoy listening to Fated Mates with Sarah and Jen’s reflections on the genre overall. 

I am especially looking forward to this darker series, which has more complicated characters who are actually criminals in Covent Gardens, smuggling ice. The three main characters of the series are two brothers and a sister running this smuggling ring. They have a common enemy—their fourth sibling—who stole the title out from under the sister (who is not related to them by blood and actually seems to have her own love story with that third brother). 

Felicity Faircloth had quite the downfall from the previous series, when she stood out with humor in the competition to win the Duke of Haven’s heart. I was disappointed to see that she had become a wallflower, rather than continuing to feature her feistiness and sarcasm. Nonetheless, she totally embraces the darker side of Devil and eagerly enters into a deal with him that will hopefully win her the duke. Of course, the chemistry with Devil overpowers both of them, and despite his intention to use her to screw over his brother, proving that he will never be able to marry and sire an heir, breaking the vow they made to each other as children. 

I really enjoyed the dialogue in this book, and it was fun to see Felicity’s lockpicking, and it was definitely sexy, but I didn’t totally buy the love story and obsession. Things were moving quickly and slowly at the same time, which didn’t totally work for me. 

This was complicated and clever, a bizarre but meaningful reflection on time travel, humanity, breaking rules, pandemics, and connection. Emily St. John Mandel did a fantastic job of creating tension, enabling us to see all the puzzle pieces, even though we weren’t quite sure how we would put them together. I also loved that this book had parallels to The Glass Hotel with Vincent and the Ponzi scheme, as well as Mandel’s own life (perhaps?), as she describes the experience of Olive’s book tour, answering questions about writing about a pandemic during a pandemic. This was immersive and bizarre, well-researched and so beautiful. 

This reminded me of The Coincidence Makers and Recursion. 

This was clearly beautifully written and well-constructed, and I am curious about Alice Munro. There was a recent Book Riot podcast that mentioned her after her recent death, and this episode of the New Yorker: Fiction podcast felt like an important listen in the literary world. I’m glad that they chose this notable author, and I find it fascinating that she won the Nobel without ever writing a novel, committing to the form of the short story.

This particular story was an epistolary story, written by the author ostensibly to her former fiancé but more honestly as a journal to herself in the days, weeks, and months after her broken engagement, pregnancy, childbirth and adoption, since she has returned to her father’s home and medical practice. She discovers that her father performs underground abortions, with the assistance of their family maid, who seems to be blackmailing both the father and the narrator, perhaps stealing their money. 

This story had so many shifts and changes, without a clear climax or plot twist. It’s very interior, which I tend to like, but I don’t think I was able to fully appreciate the beauty of this particular plot. I think I want to love this, but instead I just appreciated it. Perhaps it is worthwhile for me to read one of Alice Munro’s books in print. 

I do love the banter between the hosts of this episode about Alice Munro herself, especially because she had so many stories published in The New Yorker, edited by Deborah Treisman herself. 

This was such a beautiful second chance romance. Mal was so well redeemed, and I really loved seeing the Talbot sisters back in action all together. They had such fabulous banter, and I definitely laughed out loud at certain points. There was lots of drama and so many allusions to Greek myths, which I didn’t necessarily love but did appreciate. I can’t believe I have to wait an entire series before I get to read Sesily and Caleb’s story, but I am so excited to continue with Sarah’s backlist and look forward to her first contemporary romance coming out next year. 

This story starts at the end and weaves through several timelines and perspectives to demonstrate the importance of storytelling and the teachers we create for ourselves. The winding thread is a partially recovered manuscript in Ancient Greek, which tells the story of a fantastical, mythical comedic hero who wants to become an owl but finds himself as a donkey, a fish, and a crow before he ultimately reaches the book of all knowledge and the story concludes. With overlapping timelines, we eventually learn that Anna (a young Greek girl in the Constantinople of 1450) discovers the manuscript in a monastery on a mission to sell parchment and earn money for her starving community of embroideresses. The story follows the trail through the centuries, disappearing and reappearing until it reaches Zeno and the group of five children putting on a play in the Lakeport library in February, 2020 when Seymour, a troubled teen with a passion for climate preservation, attempts to detonate a bomb in his childhood refuge in order to destroy the real estate agency next door. We also meet Omeir, an infant with a cleft lip who grows into a talented yokesman and finds himself part of the Ottoman army seeking to destroy the walls of Constantinople, though he deserts the company when his two oxen, his childhood companions, die on the road. We learn more about Zeno, whose father was killed in the Second World War, leaving him an orphan in Lakeport, Idaho, under the care of a woman who makes him anxious. Zeno spends his afternoons in the company of the local librarians, discovering the wonders of ancient Greek stories until he enlists himself and winds up a prisoner of war in Korea, where he meets a British soldier with similar passions and a handsome demeanor. Eventually released, Zeno is desperate to learn if Rex’s escape attempt was successful, thrilled to receive an invitation to visit him in England, and heartbroken to be hosted by Rex and his boyfriend, Hillary. When Rex dies on a document-discovering mission in Egypt, Hillary sends Zeno his research notes, including a summary of this very manuscript, reigniting Zeno’s own enthusiasm for translation and returns him to the library, where he is eventually gratified with the reports of the discovery in Italy of the manuscript his would-be lover found mention of in Egypt. Decades in the future, Konstance lives on Argos, a self-sustaining orb en route to a safe planet, which will take 592 years to reach. Her father, a devoted botanist, tells her the story of this same manuscript from memory until a contagion shows up on the ship, and Konstance’s father comes up with a secret plot to save his daughter, isolating her in the vault with Sybil, the all-knowing intelligence base (who doesn’t know everything after all).

This book is brilliant and filled with echoes and beautiful sentences. When I opened it up, I knew it would take me a while to feel immersed, and I was admittedly uncertain about the Ancient Greek allusions, the battle scenes, and the futuristic science fiction elements (so basically all of it), but within a hundred pages, I was totally engaged, empathizing with every character. What I also appreciate about Doerr is that he trusts his reader’s intelligence, believing that we’ll pick up on the allusions that he mentions, the language play, and the parallels between characters and timelines. 



Don Quixote - a story within a story with mysterious origins
Klara and the Sun - the advantages and drawbacks of artificial intelligence and its impact on social life
Station Eleven - a culture that survived disaster and is working to rebuild
The Incendiaries - cultish, grassroots war efforts
The Book of Esther - medieval war practices, fighting armies
Beartown - begins at the end with such drama, shifts perspectives 

I loved this history! It was written in an clear, structured, well-researched, engaging way, and I completely fell into the obsession that Pilon cites many of the game’s detectives (including herself) adopting. It was surprising and exciting to discover the origins of a game that is so standard, and the long history from 1904 to 1980 had so many fascinating ups and downs and intriguing characters. I was also particularly struck by Pilon’s acknowledgements, which were so good-natured and entertaining. 

I particularly enjoyed the sections that described the friendships and game nights among the early players. The dynamics were sometimes confusing (especially because everyone was named Ruth), but the devotion to the game and the subsequent devotion to publicizing the true origins of the game was entertaining and truly engaging. 

Jayn is a thief and a rogue, known by reputation for being extremely stealthy and dangerous. In this capacity, he is approached by Tamon, a wizard with his own supposed record of crime and danger. Tamon has a request—hoping that Jayn will sneak into the prince’s nursery to deliver a package, assuring him that he can steal something on the mission to enhance his own reputation. 

When they successfully infiltrate the castle, Jayn is surprised to discover that the queen is just a teenager herself, as he spies her writing a letter with tears in her eyes. Jayn completes his mission and then notices the queen’s maid sneaking the letter away. He steals the letter back from the maid and completes his escape. It turns out that this was Tamon’s plan all along. His power is the ability to see historical moments before they happen, and he tries to intervene. The writing is beautiful, and Levar Burton’s storytelling is stunning.

It reminded me a bit of the Arthurian novel I read recently.