Finally, a slow month with a good amount of reading!
I finished six books in November, which made it way more productive than October. I started the month off with a horrible cold, but luckily, several holiday weekends and some flights to and from Texas gave me plenty of time to knock several books off my list.
Also, if you didn’t hear? Z-Library was shut down, thanks to TikTok. That was an unwelcome surprise.
(As a reminder: I always track my reading both on Goodreads and via Instagram stories.)
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“THE INVITATION” BY LUCY FOLEY
3/5 stars:
Hal, a journalist living in 1950s Italy, crashes a party and ends up sleeping with a stranger named Stella. Shortly afterward, Hal is invited to join along on a coastal Italian press tour for a movie premiere, as organized by the party’s host. Hal encounters Stella again, and has to unravel the mystery of her past in order to sell her on a future together.
This one was decent-ish. It really made me want to run away to coastal Italy! With that said, the plot moved really slowly, and was a little hard to keep up with in places, but that might have just been because I found myself skimming a lot of the detail that was unnecessary. I was almost satisfied with the end! I would have loved it without the epilogue, which I think kind of ruined the powerful ending for me.
“THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE” BY RILEY SAGER
2/5 stars:
Casey Fletcher, a former Broadway actress, is struggling with alcoholism following the death of her husband. Casey’s mom sends her to the family’s lakehouse in Vermont to keep her away from the paparazzi and out of the public eye. Being bored and isolated, Casey picks up spying on her rich neighbors across the lake: model Katherine and her tech innovator husband Tom. But, when Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey decides to take matters into her own hands.
SPOILERS: This book almost had me, kind of, sort of, in the first half, but when the plot twist was revealed, it lost me. It went from a murder mystery to a supernatural thriller, and the transition didn’t make sense. The narrator spent the whole first half of the book lying to the reader about her husband’s death (an accidental drowning), and then at the plot twist (which was so stupid and unbelievable, by the way), revealed that she actually killed him. Omitting facts for a twist is one thing (and the correct thing to do), but straight-up lying to readers? Lazy writing. The first half of the book was so slow. There were pages and pages detailing unnecessary things (like 12 completely unnecessary pages detailing EVERY piece of designer clothing in Tom and Katherine’s closet). Also, I am so beyond tired of the unreliable drunk housewife trope, which this centered on. Two stars only because it did actually keep me rolling my eyes enough to finish it.
“THE LAST MRS. PARRISH” BY LIV CONSTANTINE
4/5 stars:
Amber is a broke gold-digging home-wrecking con artist. She’s envious of the rich, glamorous and beautiful Daphne Parrish. Amber sets up a plan to work her way into Daphne’s inner circle and then slowly steal her entire life, including her home, her money, her social status and her rich husband Jackson.
TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault, abuse, rape. I totally saw the twist coming, but it was still such an enjoying read. Every time I thought Amber couldn’t get any lower, she somehow did. Her character was horrible. Zero redeeming qualities, and I absolutely LOVED this plot. The ending was so, SO satisfying as well.
“THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS” BY PAM JENOFF
3/5 stars:
Set in England and France during World War II, “The Lost Girls of Paris” tells the story of a ring of female radio operators and spies working to subvert the Nazis. Just a few months after the end of the war, widowed Grace Healey is working to rebuild her life. She stumbles upon an abandoned suitcase at Grand Central Station filled with a dozen photos of young women. She starts working to return the suitcase to its owner while uncovering the stories about the women along the way.
I wanted to love this book. I really did. It’s based on a true story and features strong female leads… but it was just so poorly executed. There are two forced love stories that come out of nowhere and feel out of place. Two of the three female leads just continually make such poor decisions and act in such irrational ways. Marie was, frankly, a bumbling idiot, and several of Grace’s actions are just unwarranted. The plot itself is decent and the premise was phenomenal — the characters just should have been written better.
“WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME” BY GILLIAN MCALLISTER
4/5 stars:
On a crisp October day, Jen Brotherhood spends one minute fretting about Halloween pumpkins and the next watching her beloved 18-year-old son, Todd, murder a man in the street right outside their house. Jen wakes up the next day and finds that it’s suddenly the day before the murder. The next day she wakes up, it’s two days before the murder. Jen continues to jump back in time as she realizes she’s been given the opportunity to both prevent the murder and figure out why it happened.
This book was so close to being five stars for me! It’s such a unique concept and I didn’t see the twist coming at all. I’m a little younger than Jen’s character, so it was fun to jump back in time with her and laugh at the small things, like her iPhone slowly downgrading to a flip phone, and the other tiny details of my childhood that Gillian McAllister caught perfectly. I absolutely devoured this book — it was my first book by McAllister and I can’t wait to read more.
“THE GOLDEN COUPLE” BY GREER HENDRICKS AND SARAH PEKKANEN
4/5 stars:
On the outside, Marissa and Matthew Bishop are the “golden couple.” He’s powerful and high-earning, she runs a trendy boutique and manages motherhood with grace. But, the Bishop’s marriage is a disaster. After Marissa makes an appointment with disgraced therapist Avery following her infidelity., Avery promises to use her unorthodox and extreme methods — which resulted in the loss of her license — to fix their relationship. But, should their relationship even be fixed?
Man, this entire book is a case study on why straight cis white men need therapy. All of them. The twists, while expected, made sense, even if the sub-plot seemed a little shaky and forced. It was interesting to read about Avery’s thought process and her methods, but it’s always a little hard to really get into a book when the characters aren’t likable. Except poor Polly, who I loved. Poor girl is just trying to do her job — which she clearly excels at — and pay her rent, and she’s stuck dealing with all these psychotic adults around her. Nevertheless, this book was enticing enough to carry me through.
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I can’t wait for more time off work in December, and all the reading that’s going to fill those hours. I’ve got more thrillers, historical fiction and romance novels on my list, and I can’t wait for more snow.
