Beach Read

Beach Read

By Emily Henry
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Release date: 19 May 2020
Listening length: 10 hours and 13 minutes
My review: 4 out of 5 stars

The Instant New York Times Best Seller from the Number One New York Times Best-Selling Author of People We Meet on Vacation

“Original, sparkling bright, and layered with feeling.” (Sally Thorne, author of The Hating Game)

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes best-selling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

This was a mostly lighthearted rom-com book. This starts out as the story of a woman, dealing with the grief of losing her father and finding out he had a side she didn't know. Now the words that used to come to her so freely, aren't coming. Can she still write if she can't even believe in happily ever after? The way that this book weaves the whole story together is just beautiful. Makes me really cling to the happy right now moments. <3 Definitely will be looking for more books by this author.

Not That Kind of Ever After

Not that Kind of Ever After

By Luci Adams

Narrated by Josie Charles

Audiobook release date: March 14, 2023

Listening length: 10 hours, 37 minutes 

My review: 4 out of 5 stars

Read for my March 2023 Reading challenge, bonus prompt 2: reverse harem or female protagonist with options (this gal has MANY options in this book... just read my review) 

Fairytale meets feminism in Luci Adams's Not That Kind of Ever After, a frothy adventure of one woman’s journey to claim happily ever after in times of serial dating, swiping right, and the quest to find your soulmate.

Bella Marble’s life isn’t what she imagined. Instead of an author, she’s receptionist at a small press. Instead of happily married, she’s single, and her lovey-dovey parents are divorcing. And to top it off, her best friend of twenty-nine years, Ellie Mathews, is moving out and marrying the heinously boring Mark. (He’s not worthy of her. No one could be). Bella feels rudderless, only slightly soothed by time spent with Ellie’s (not hot) brother, (he’s not hot) Marty (okay, he’s hot. But he’s also the aggravating brother she never had—right)?

When Marty recommends Bella stop looking for “the one” and just have fun, Bella finds a new, empowered side of herself. But when she posts a fairy-tale retelling of a disastrous one night stand on a storytelling app, all of a sudden, Bella has become @B.Enchanted. And she’s gone viral.

Now, Bella’s in a fight with Ellie, her new roommates are so, deeply, weird, and the pressure is mounting to find new fairy tales to write about—but she’s got to live them first.

“As sidesplittingly hilarious as it is empowering and emotional, Not That Kind of Ever After is a sparkling debut.”—Helena Hunting, bestselling author

Although I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for a review, all opionions remain my own.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook!

First of all, this book is set in Britian, so you have a narrator with an accent which I loved. Then you have all those fun English words that are just a bit differently used in America, so be aware of that. In this story, Bella is looking for her prince charming, but all she seems to be finding in the streets of London are the frogs. So, she uses the frogs as inspiration for her writing. Lets just say that gets her noticed by a few people when she publishes her chapters online. 

Oh boy did this book have me laughing out loud. Between very hairy men and one who was painted blue, Bella really does find her way into the strangest situations. In the midst of the funny, her parents, whose love story she always looked at as an example, tell her they are divorcing, it basically turns her life on its head... the book really gets started. You will have to listen to this one to see the antics that Bella gets herself into. The ending was simple and beautiful though. Friendship is the best love of all.

The Right Wrong Match

The Right Wrong Match 

by Sarah Jane Woodley 

Narrated by Justis Bolding and David Bendena 

Listening length: 7 hours, 50 minutes 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I didn’t ask to have a hopeless (and unrequited) crush on my best friend’s grumpy older brother. For years, I’ve had feelings for Luke Brooks, but it’s time to move on—I’m on a mission to find my perfect match and secure my very own happily-ever-after.

But then one tiny mishap with a dating app lands me a new job: planning singles events for the whole town. It seems simple enough…until the town council forces Luke to play cupid with me. As I discover the soft side beneath Luke’s grumpy exterior, getting over my crush becomes a whole lot more complicated—especially once it starts looking like my feelings might not be so unrequited after all…

The Right Wrong Match is a sweet romcom with plenty of swoony kisses and chemistry, a hilarious cast of quirky small-town characters, and a heartwarming HEA that’s sure to give you all the feels.

Thank you NetGalley for the copy of this audiobook! Although I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my review, all opinions remain my own. 

What is your favorite romance trope? This book has a list involved where the main character is trying to put herself into each of them (ie friends to enemies, blind dates, ect). In fact, the beginning of the book starts in her in a blind date, to her best friends wedding. But that's okay, because her best friend was the one doing the setting up. 

There were times I laughed out loud at these characters. People in this small town are people we all know (the gym rat too busy taking selfies and posting on his insta to realize he's forming a line for his equipment, the self involved "social media influencer" who just wants something bigger, the town gossips who make sure everyone knows what is going on all over town. I just loved the small town feel in this book. Hopefully there are more by this author because it was just a fun book to listen to.