Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith

Genre: Mystery 

Publisher: Mulholland Books 

Pages: 455, 455, 589

Rating: ★★★



Synopsis

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

My Thoughts

After being on my "to be read" list for about a year and a half I finally read this series. And it really took me way too long. It took me a long time to read them and a long time to get around to blogging about them. I'm not sure why it took my so long to read them but I think that for me they seemed to drag a bit. Crime and mystery novels are not typically my go-to so when I picked these up I anticipated the non stop thrill of Gone Girl. But this was not that. And to be honest, I could have read the first one and not finished the rest of the series, but I was blinded by my love of J.K. Rowling from thinking anything but the highest for these books and this forced me to push on. 

In The Cuckoo's Calling there was definitely more character introduction and a lesson in how the crime/mystery novel would go. The rest of the books follow the same basic structure of getting a case and piecing it together with your mind being blown at the end of the whole process. The first one was probably my favorite for the same reason that the first in any series is anyone's favorite; the introduction to everything. More detail is paid to the descriptions and it is overall a more fun story with the murder(?)/suicide (?) of the supermodel. 

The second, The Silkworm, could have been skipped in my opinion. An author has written a scathing exposé about all the people around him and now he is missing. It follows a similar pattern as the first book but it was kind of gross and to be honest I just really didn't like it, so I am just going to move on...

Career of Evil is the latest book in the series and I loved this one! Coming off of The Silkworm, I really wasn't interested in this one but it seemed to be similar to Cuckoo's Calling so I liked it much better! This one involves Robin getting a severed leg in the mail and Cormoran digging through his past to find out who sent it. There is much more backstory on Cormoran and a larger focus on Robin and Cormoran as a pair. This book ended on a cliffhanger and now I am definitely hooked! 

I went through a lot of different emotions towards this series and even now, a month later, I am having a hard time deciding whether I really liked it or not. I will absolutely be picking up the next one whenever it comes out, but as for recommending it, I am no sure that I would. If you like crime/mystery novels then definitely go ahead and grab these, but honestly you would be just as good skipping them! 

My Favorite Line

He possessed a finely honed sense for the strange and the wicked. He had seen things all through his childhood that other people preferred to imagine happened only in films.

After You by JoJo Moyes

Genre: Fiction 

Publisher: Penguin 

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★★


Synopsis

How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places neither they nor we ever expected.

My Thoughts

After reading and falling in love with Me Before You last month, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the sequel. Moyes wasn't planning to initially write a sequel but I am so glad that she did. Even though I felt like I got enough closure in the first book, I was excited to return to the characters I loved and meet some new ones. 

After the passing of Will, Louisa is completely lost. She is living in London alone and works at a pub in the airport but she isn't following Will's final piece of advice to "just live well". That is until she falls off her rooftop garden. With this action she begins to reevaluate her life and tries to move forward. 

She meets Sam, her paramedic that saved her after she fell. Sam helps bring Louisa out of her depression and to see how her life could change if she can just move past the death of Will. Along with Sam, Louisa also meets the 16 year old Lily who has her own connections to Will. They all work together to come out of their own grief and become people that Will would be proud of. 

I am so happy with the way the sequel worked out. I was afraid it would leave me disappointed but Moyes did a good job to ensure that this book stands alone but also functions as part of the whole. I enjoyed revisiting these characters and seeing the way Louisa was able to change and leap out from her comfort zone with the help of new people in her life. If you liked Me Before You, definitely continue on to After You. 

My Favorite Line

You Live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises. 

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Anchor Books

Pages: 527

Rating: ★★★


Synopsis

When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor. 
 
On Nick’s arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.

My Thoughts

I do not get the love/cult following for this book and for it's sequel China Rich Girlfriend. I don't know if I am missing something here or if it's just that I wasn't really into it. It was very slow to start, the middle was good but definitely not great, and then the last 100 pages were really good and made me question my feelings toward the other 400 pages. 

The book begins with an introduction to the insane wealth of the main characters. When the Young family is mistreated at a ritzy hotel in London, they just end up buying the hotel and firing the rude manager. The title does not lie -- it really is about some crazy rich asians. 

The book then introduces us to the main characters Nick and Rachel. Kwan shifts point of view between the modest lives of Nick and Rachel in New York and Nick's mother Eleanor in her posh Singapore apartment. As I already said, this beginning was slow to start. It was all about establishing the different lifestyles between Rachel and Nick's Singaporean relatives. Eventually, Nick and Rachel finally come to Singapore where they meet all of Nick's friends and family. Rachel begins to experience the insane wealth and the shallow people that all make up Nick's past. Rachel must decide whether the life Nick has in Singapore is something she can learn to accept. 

Overall, this book was probably too long for the subject matter. I skipped through several chapters told from secondary characters point of views because I didn't care about their story lines. There was constant name dropping in an attempt to really force the topic of wealth. I wasn't very into this book and definitely won't be returning for the sequel. 

My Favorite Line

The investigator thinks that they were most likely working class. In other words, they are PEASANTS. 

Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: Crown Archetype 

Pages: 240

Rating: ★★★★★


Synopsis

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

My Thoughts

I love Mindy Kaling. I love her TV show. I love her books. I love her. If there is one thing you learn about me it is this, I. Love. Mindy. Kaling. She could have written 240 pages on mathematical equations and I probably would have read it and loved it because to me, whatever Mindy says goes. 

Why Not Me starts off with the section For the Ladies which, of course, is hysterical. Kaling covers everything from her Hollywood beauty secrets to the things she would want you to bring to her dinner party. In the essay titled Some Thoughts on Weddings, Kaling describes how her friendships have changed since college by saying that her friends "will never come home to each other again and will never have each other's undivided attention. That version of our friendship is over". With graduation in the Spring, this quote hit a little close to home. But its not all sentimental, when describing her time in a sorority Kaling describes her horror at being fined for not attending an event. Which is hilarious if you know that this is absolutely common.  Per usual, everything is absolutely relevant and completely clever. 

The next section of essays covers Kaling's television series The Mindy Project. In the essay A Day in the Life of Mindy Kaling, Mindy's assistant Sonia documents and timelines an entire day for Mindy Kaling. Truth bombs from this essay include "Prop cake is the sweetest kind of cake because  unlike with regular cake, it has no calories because my character is eating it, not me. Thats how it works". Kaling reflects on when she found out that The Mindy Project wasn't nominated for an Emmy and how she chose to "be gracious so people would continue to think I'm professional and classy". As if you needed another reason to idolize her! 

Love Dating and Boys Who Ru(i)n The World had me constantly underlining statements and simply annotating them with a simple 'yes.' Everything here was exactly straight out of my brain. Being perpetually single has its ups and downs and Kaling 100% gets it. "What I am asking for is not that much. I just want a boyfriend who is sweet and trustworthy. That's it". That is how the essay A Perfectly Reasonable Request begins. Of course Mindy doesn't stop there. You'll have to read the whole essay to see what other requests Kaling has, but its hilarious. 

In the last section of Kaling's book I was faced with the impending tragedy of the book actually ending. All the Opinions You Will Ever Need is really that. In what was probably the most relatable essay in the book, Kaling discusses what it is like to be a body role model but also her struggles with remaining body confident. My favorite essay of the whole book is in this section and titled Unlikely Leading Lady. Kaling admits "I don't wake up in the morning, look my naked body in the mirror and say, 'Good Morning, body. Once again you've nailed it, you gorgeous imperfect thing." This essay really captured Kaling's thoughts of herself and also allowed me to relate to her. Mindy also included a copy of her Harvard Law School Commencement Address which is so funny and so great. (Confession: I love watching commencement addresses and Kaling's is up in my tops!)

Overall, this book was a fabulous description of Mindy and it just made me love her more! Definitely read her first book if you haven't already and then grab this one too! 

My Favorite Line

If you've got it flaunt it. And if you've don't got it? Flaunt it. 'Cause what are we even doing here if we're not flaunting it? 

Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Pages: 371

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

It's 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and glamorous. Money and class are colliding in a city that is about to go over a financial precipice and take much of the country with it. At 26, bright, funny and socially anxious Evelyn Beegan is determined to carve her own path in life and free herself from the influence of her social-climbing mother, who propelled her through prep school and onto the Upper East Side. Evelyn has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she gets a job at a social network aimed at the elite, she's forced to embrace them.

Recruiting new members for the site, Evelyn steps into a promised land of Adirondack camps, Newport cottages and Southampton clubs thick with socialites and Wall Streeters. Despite herself, Evelyn finds the lure of belonging intoxicating, and starts trying to pass as old money herself. When her father, a crusading class-action lawyer, is indicted for bribery, Evelyn must contend with her own family's downfall as she keeps up appearances in her new life, grasping with increasing desperation as the ground underneath her begins to give way.

Bracing, hilarious and often poignant, Stephanie Clifford's debut offers a thoroughly modern take on classic American themes - money, ambition, family, friendship - and on the universal longing to fit in. 

My Thoughts

If you've been following me on my instagram, then you'll know I have been reading Everybody Rise this last week. It is the debut novel from the award-winning New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford. I was initially so excited to read this book when I saw College Prepster read it earlier this summer. Pretty much anything Carly reads I like and when I read the synopsis I knew that this was something I was going to be down for. 

Everybody Rise is set in 2006 just before the stock market crash in 2007. The novel takes a close look at a group of friends in America's upper class as they run around NYC and vacation in The Hamptons -- basically the dream. I mean the first scene takes place at a prep school lacrosse tailgate which was dripping in crystal stemware...like The Grove, but better.  It was like I was stepping into the instagram of KJP or Town & Country and I never wanted to leave. 

The book begins by introducing us to all the characters including Evelyn's social-climbing and ever critical mother, which gives us a quick and obvious glimpse at the pressures Evelyn has had to deal with growing up. Even coming from a well-to-do family in Maryland, Evelyn's family wealth isn't nearly that of the friends in her social circle. For growing up under the criticism of her mother, Evelyn seems to be pretty self-sufficient. She has a job working as a recruiter at the new social media start-up People Like Us. Evelyn must make the most of her prep school connections to bring New York's elite into the site. Evelyn's first target is Camilla Rutherford and by forging this friendship Evelyn finds herself at the tip top of New York society. 

From here, Everybody Rise takes readers through dinner parties at social clubs and boat races in the Adirondacks. Contrast these lavish lifestyle parties with Evelyn's crumbling family life in Maryland where her father faces indictment. As the book continues, you see Evelyn start living two lives and watch as she climbs the social ladder and leaves everything else behind her. She quickly becomes someone you love to someone you hate to someone you love again. 

I'm so excited that the producer of The Devil Wears Prada picked it up and will be turning it into a movie. I am also seriously hoping for a sequel. Clifford leaves the ending fairly open and it would be interesting to see how her friends in finance find themselves after the crash. 

My Favorite Line 

I always think the opening moments of a party are the hardest, before everyone has had enough to drink

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: Penguin Books 

Pages: 369

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A love story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart? 

My Thoughts

I am literally sitting here with the tears drying on my cheeks. I should probably let this ending marinate for a bit before launching into a review but I really just don't care and think I should just get all of the feelings down now.  

I had heard so much positive buzz about Me Before You that I honestly think I wasn't reading it for the longest time out of pure spite. More than that, everytime I read the synopsis I just didn't feel like it was going to be my thing. But once I found out they were making it a movie and heard about the cast (Kahleesi, Neville Longbottom and Finnick Odair...seriously, sign me up!) I was ready to give it a shot. 

This book was tricky and really snuck up on me. It started out pretty slow and I just couldn't see how it could be sooo good. I hated to think of darling love of my life Sam Claflin playing a quadriplegic. Pardon?! He is too beautiful to be immobile. And on top of that, how could Emilia Clarke play someone so meek as Louisa? But as the plot thickened and I stopped thinking of the characters in relation to the actors that would eventually be playing them, I was really able to get into the book. 

I won't lie though, it really took me up until half way through to get attached to this book. As I was reading it, I was thinking there was no way I would even look forward to the sequel or even care about how it all ended. That all changed with the last hundred pages. I flew through them in an hour and only stopped to wipe the tears from my eyes. 

It was that good. Granted, it doesn't take much to get a good cry out of me. Either way, this book really struck a chord, which in part is due to Moyes for creating such realistic characters who leave it all out on the table. With everything they both face, they grow and change and become new people by the end of the novel. The main focus isn't romance but more about life and the importance of making the right decisions. 

Now I am counting down to the sequel and it seems like the end of September can't come soon enough! 

My Favorite Line 

You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 120 

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large. 

My Thoughts

This novella is witty and charming and seriously cute. Once The Queen discovers the joys of reading there is really nothing that can stop her. Everyone tries to intervene and get rid of her new habit but Her Majesty will not have it. It was so fun to see the Queen behaving the way everyone does when they are in the middle of a good book (i.e. ignoring responsibilities, making excuses, etc.). 

Overall, this novella offered some wonderful insight in the magic of reading and exploring new things. There isn't much else to say about this because it really is so short but this was clever and smart and I highly recommend!

My Favorite Line 

Yes that is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination. 

How To Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis

Genre: Nonfiction 

Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Pages: 272

Rating: ★★★



Synopsis

While debating literature’s greatest heroines with her best friend, thirtysomething playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation—her whole life, she's been trying to be Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights when she should have been trying to be Jane Eyre.

With this discovery, she embarks on a retrospective look at the literary ladies—the characters and the writers—whom she has loved since childhood. From early obsessions with the March sisters to her later idolization of Sylvia Plath, Ellis evaluates how her heroines stack up today. And, just as she excavates the stories of her favorite characters, Ellis also shares a frank, often humorous account of her own life growing up in a tight-knit Iraqi Jewish community in London. Here a life-long reader explores how heroines shape all our lives. 

My Thoughts

This book was seriously cute. I have become more and more interested in reading memoirs lately so as soon as I heard about this book I added it to the top of my list. 

This memoir follows Ellis's life and the books she read and how they shaped her life. I really enjoyed reading a good majority of it. I especially liked reading about what she though of the books that I have read and love. Her insights were spot on and it was interesting to see how her opinion about the characters changed after rereading the books. 

To me, the book was even better when I was reading about the books I haven't read. Ellis gives a synopsis with every book so you aren't left completely confused when she starts analyzing them. I now have a list of books that I never read but seriously need to read as a result of this Ellis's memoir.  

There wasn't too much literary criticism, mostly personal reflection. I would definitely recommend this to any book lover, but also completely understand that this definitely isn't for everyone. 

My Favorite Line

Reading might spoil my eyes, as my grandmother warned me it would, but Mr. Darcy showed it wouldn't stop me finding a husband. A gorgeous, intelligent husband, in fact, because real men liked bookish girls. It said so in Pride and Prejudice. 

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Washington Square Press 

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?

In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Liferaises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?

Hannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.

My Thoughts

I had some hesitations about reading this book. 

The first one being that I thought I was going to prefer one version of events over the other and end up skipping through half the book. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really loved both series of events! The story unfolded so well. After a few chapters, the book begins it's split narrative. It only goes one chapter in each of the parallel realities so it really keeps you engaged  in the stories and constantly wanting more. 

Another thing I thought I knew about this book I was that it was going to be a typical, stale chick-lit/rom-com and therefore not have any sort of lasting impression. But again, I was wrong. This was thought-provoking and fresh and I really, really loved every part of this story! Everything about this book was unconventional but that just added to the unique perspective on finding your way through life. 

I was so glad that this book proved me wrong. It was original and captivating and really snuck up on me and I enjoyed every second! 

My Favorite Line

Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I'm starting to think that when we don't own them, we don't own ourselves 

The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

Genre: Fiction 

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★ 




Synopsis

An outrageously stylish, wickedly funny novel of fashion in the digital age, The Knockoff is the story of Imogen Tate, editor in chief of Glossy magazine, who finds her twentysomething former assistant Eve Morton plotting to knock Imogen off her pedestal, take over her job, and reduce the magazine, famous for its lavish 768-page September issue, into an app.

When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired “the gray hairs,” put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings. Imogen, darling of the fashion world, may have Alexander Wang and Diane von Furstenberg on speed dial, but she can’t tell Facebook from Foursquare and once got her iPhone stuck in Japanese for two days. Under Eve’s reign, Glossy is rapidly becoming a digital sweatshop—hackathons rage all night, girls who sleep get fired, and “fun” means mandatory, company-wide coordinated dances to Beyoncé. Wildly out of her depth, Imogen faces a choice—pack up her Smythson notebooks and quit, or channel her inner geek and take on Eve to save both the magazine and her career. A glittering, uproarious, sharply drawn story filled with thinly veiled fashion personalities, The Knockoff is an insider’s look at the ever-changing world of fashion and a fabulous romp for our Internet-addicted age. 

My Thoughts 

So this book started off a little bit slow and took me a while to get into it, but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it! 

The authors take the time in the beginning of the book to really emphasize the lack of technology that Imogen is accustomed to which became a little over the top and a little unbelievable. Imogen is only in her early forty's and I found it very hard to believe that she couldn't even check her email. Regardless, this ensured the tech gap to between Eve and Imogen to be large enough for the story to work. 

What I really was interested in was the dynamic between the Millennial workers and the Generation X's. It was easy to relate to the younger characters in the book and also feel so disgusted at the behavior that my generation is known for. 

Take Devil Wears Prada and add a tech spin to it and you would pretty easily have The Knockoff.

My Favorite Line

Imogen sometimes wondered if people weren't letting social media dictate their entire lives. Did they choose to go to one party over another because it would look better on Instagram? 

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing 

Pages: 454

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

My Thoughts

I have tried to read this book so many times. The minute I heard about it I knew that I had to read it so the day that it went on sale I went to Square Books in my small college town of Oxford, Mississippi only to find out that they did not have it. So I decided to wait until after finals to read it. But for some reason I chose to read the awful Vacationers instead. Then I went on to finish Outlander and when I could finally fit it in, none of the Barnes & Noble's near me had it. So when I was finally able to lay hands on the hard cover of this book I was so excited to dive in. 

This book is best described as Kate Middleton fan-fiction -- hence why I absolutely had to read it. All the characters are easy to compare to the real life members of the Kate and Will story. It was easy to take what I was reading and apply it to their story, but at the same time the characters were also able to stand alone in their own way. Not only was I in love with Nick and Bex, I was genuinely interested in the secondary characters as well. Cocks and Morgan were careful to be sure that they were just as developed and interesting as the main characters.  I fell in love with all them so easily which really made it hard to put down when it was all over. 

The story is told from Bex's perspective and starts the night before the big royal wedding. This teases some big scandal that you eventually get to towards the end of the book. We then rewind back to Bex's first day at Oxford and from that point her story continues chronologically. 

This book is everything that I wanted. A funny love story with well-rounded characters, a little bit of wish-fulfillment but also emotional journeys that feel real. Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan really did a great job at creating a look at what the royal family looks like from the inside -- and it's not as glamorous as we might think.

My Favorite Line

I hung up the phone and tapped it lightly against my chin, then wrapped myself tighter in my giant woolen cardigan and poured another glass of boxed wine — the official drink of emotionally confused women on a budget.

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

Genre: Memior

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 265

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis
From the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO's Girls comes a hilarious, wise, and fiercely candid collection of personal essays that establishes Lena Dunham as one of the most original young talents writing today.

In Not that Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one's way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and, most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told.

Exuberant, moving, and keenly observed, Not that Kind of Girl is a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the struggle that is growing up. "I'm already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you," Dunham writes. "But if I can take what I've learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile."

My Thoughts 
In my perfect world I am best friends with Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling. We grab coffee together and they make me laugh and the three of us are changing the world and the way people look at women. But, I do not live in that world. So I am forced to read their books and watch their shows and basically worship the ground they walk on. 

I started reading this book in the Fall when it first came out and somewhere along the way got busy and forgot to finish it. Well, I rectified that situation today and finally read the last fifty pages. Now I am trying to remember why I ever stopped.

Dunham is open and honest but at the same time sarcastic and hilarious. Her collection of essays give you a peek into her mind and I really felt that I was getting a genuine representation of Lena as a person. She has put so much of herself into this book and I love the way she makes you listen to her. Lena does not shy away from anything and its refreshing to have real role models with confidence and self-awareness who also have something to say. 

Sidenote: this book is so cute. I'm not talking the stories, I am talking about the actual, physical book. There are precious doodles at the paragraph breaks and sketches in the margins. If there's one thing I love more than a good book, it's a pretty book. 

My Favorite Line 
The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left.

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 260

Rating: ★★★★★



Synopsis
There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…

My Thoughts 
If books were free and I had unlimited time, I would have read this book in one sitting. But, this book cost $25 and I had to make it last the week. This caused me to physically force myself to stop reading it. This book was that good. 

I didn't have a whole lot of expectations for this book. It's not that I thought it wouldn't be good but I definitely wasn't expecting it to be great. I was looking for something light-hearted and easy-breasy for my first post-Outlander read. This book was everything I wanted and more. 

Eight Hundred Grapes really goes into how life changes in the most unexpected ways and how it will eventually lead you right back to where you belong. Laura Dave does a really great job at pulling you in to the characters and the setting. It was so easy to fall in love with the plot all because of the wonderful writing. 

Bottom line...grab a bottle of Pinot Noir and settle in for this sweet story. 

My Favorite Line
Synchronization. Everything lines up like a sign of where you are supposed to be. But what do you give up? Because you give something up. As simple - and complicated - as the other line, the other way your life could have been if you had taken a different path. If you had gotten into the right car. If you hadn't gotten out of the wrong one.