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Girls with Bright Futures

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Girls with Bright Futures by Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman is a fictional behind-the-scenes look at college early application season at a prestigious Seattle prep school. Madness ensues as the kids are trying to apply to their top picks for schools and their parents are unable to withhold meddling in this momentous decision. When Stanford announces it will only be accepting one student from the academy because student athletes have filled all the other slots, it gets cutthroat as three girls and their mothers do whatever they can to assure they are given the coveted Stanford slot. One of the girls lands in the hospital after a horrific hit-and-run and her mother is left to pick up the pieces and figure out if college fever was responsible for what happened to her daughter while grappling with her own history that she would prefer to keep private.

I was quite impressed with Girls with Bright Futures! Based on the synopsis I expected a solid level of thrills and mystery, but I was pleasantly surprised by the development of the characters, the multiple viewpoints, and how real the characters felt. I don’t share their lifestyle by any means, but I know people like this, and I’ve heard horror stories about the ivy league application process that were confirmed here. I’m so glad that wasn’t something I ever had to experience first-hand!

I truly felt for the girls and wanted to throttle every single one of the parents. I understand no one is perfect, but how could anyone in this situation not see how gross their behavior is! They were able to call out each other but felt totally justified in their own poor decisions that affected not only themselves but their children and spouses. I can’t even imagine what psychological damage these parents wrought on their children. It’s hard enough to be a senior in high school trying to decide what to do next with your life without your parents trying to push you into their own unfulfilled dreams.

Tracy and Wendy wound this storyline so tightly, it was like watching a sweater unravel with each slight tug. Everything was connected to cleanly; each character’s choices unraveled someone else’s lies. The twists kept coming all the way through to the epilogue. After you thought everything had been revealed, Tracy and Wendy still weren’t finished. I found myself sitting in the car after I reached my destination or throwing in my headphones every chance I got to fly through this book.

I listened to this as an audiobook and was thrilled with their choice of narrator in Mia Barron! She was brilliant and I hope to read more book narrated by her. She has a clear, even tone, reads at a great pace that didn’t feel like it was dragging, and had fantastic voices for each other the characters that were easy to distinguish.

Thank you to Netgalley, RB Media, Recorded Books, Tracy Dobmeier, Wendy Katzman, and Mia Barron for the pleasure of listening to the audiobook of Girls with Bright Futures in exchange for an honest review.

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Float Plan

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CW: Suicide

After her fiancé’s death, Anna feels lost until she makes the impulsive decision to take off on their sailboat on a trip they had planned to take together. As she island-hops through the Bahamas and further south through the Caribbean, she begins to piece herself back together realizing that she is stronger than she knew.

On GoodReads, Trish Doller says, when writing Float Plan, she took the advice to write the book she wanted to read. And I couldn’t agree with that sentiment more! Her passion for the context and the characters shines throughout the entire book. Anna is well-developed, complex, and felt like someone I would want to be friends with. Anna meets Keane when she most needs him, but their encounter felt serendipitous rather than forced. He’s a perfect gentleman but not contrived and exactly who she needs in her life when she is feeling most alone. They form a fast bond after spending days together in close quarters and Keane urges Anna to live for herself without forgetting her positive memories of her fiancé. I found myself rooting for them to develop a romantic bond, but even more so for Anna to heal and find joy in her life again.

Trish’s writing style was exquisite. She pulled me into the book from the first chapter and I couldn’t put it down. It was comfortable, but not lazy. This is one of those books that feels like a comforting hug that you miss dearly when it’s finished. Float Plan had great pacing: short chapters that flow together smoothly and led to long binges before I realized how long I had been absorbed in the story.

Though I don’t know for certain, I expect Trish is a sailor herself or did very thorough research. I learned a lot of sailing terms, boat etiquette, and Caribbean geography while reading. I found myself reaching for my phone to look up sailing terms that felt perfectly natural in the context of the book but were unfamiliar to me. The descriptions of the locations Anna visited were exquisite! I felt I was island-hopping along with her and witnessing the beautiful locales though I have never seen them myself. It was fun tracking Anna’s progress on a map while seeing the world through her eyes. I also found myself hoping to be able to take a sailing trip such as this someday! Thank you, Trish, for giving us a book that made me feel as though I were exploring at a time when we were stuck at home while also providing ideas for future travel.

Float plan was at times heartbreaking, hopeful, joyous, introspective, and adventurous. What a gem! I would love to see more like this from Trish Doller; she is an amazing talent. Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martins Griffin, and Trish Doller for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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The Confession

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Jessie Burton’s The Confession is a split timeline between Elise in the 1980s and her daughter, Rose, thirty-odd years later. Elise falls madly in love with a writer and follows her to the US, then vanishes. In her thirties, Rose desperately wants to know what happened to her mother but is unable to learn anything from her father, so she sets out to solve the mystery of Elise’s disappearance herself. I read this as a buddy read with a couple friends on bookstagram. It was a bit of a hassle to get as it’s not yet sold in the US, but it was totally worth it.

This was my first experience with Burton’s writing and I deeply hope her other books are as lyrical! Her writing was so beautiful and drew me in completely. I found the entire book very engaging and couldn’t put it down. Elise was mysterious and I found myself consistently wondering what was going through her head. Rose was curious, sad, and relatable. I particularly enjoyed the chapters from her point of view. I did not care for Connie for about the first half of the book, but throughout the second half she greatly grew on me. The characters were real and didn’t feel contrived. I felt like each of the primary characters was someone I could know in real life. Also, the parallels between Elise and Rose, though unknown to the characters themselves, were interesting to watch unfold.

Burton tackles some serious topics that I haven’t seen frequently in other books and was grateful to see represented here. While I felt at times the situations were dealt with a bit flippantly, I was still glad to be put inside a character’s head who was having to make difficult decisions that can often be taboo. Burton didn’t shy away from these topics and brought the characters and readers through in a very human manner that I appreciated. 

I don’t want to say too much more because I won’t be able to do so without giving spoilers. I loved this read, the characters, the lyrical language, the relationships. I felt a bit shorted by the ending but felt like it followed with the rest of the storyline. If you’re sensitive to triggering content, this may not be the read for you as several triggers are at the very least mentioned, but if you can power through some difficult content, this can be a rewarding read.

This was read as a paperback purchased through Book Depository.

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Sookie Stackhouse

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A friend convinced me to revisit the Sookie Stackhouse series recently. I was going to read them all, but after discovering the audiobooks and really enjoying Johanna Parker’s portrayal of Sookie, I decided to listen to them. I’ve been a fan of Charlaine Harris for years, discovering her Sookie Stackhouse series when True Blood was being filmed then going back and reading her other series. I don’t think it’s any secret that the endings of most of her series are weak, but the stories themselves are still enjoyable. This series is no exception.

When True Blood was airing in 2008, I wanted to read the books before watching the show. I read the first one, then immediately went out and bought the box set of the first 7 books. I was hooked but didn’t read beyond the seventh book. Looking back, maybe that was the right call, minus the inconclusive ending. Around the ninth book the series begins to taper off and just drags along until the anticlimactic ending in book thirteen. You can tell when Harris suddenly lost interest in the series.

This is a stereotypical paranormal romance series: unremarkable girl is the paramour for multiple supernatural folks (vampires, a variety of were-creatures, fairies), gets herself in boatloads of trouble and needs the dashing supernaturals to rescue her. They’re fun, have minor romance scenes that don’t get terribly descriptive until about halfway through the series, lots of action, and a variety of supernatural characters. They’re cohesive within the series which I prefer over having each book able to be read individually. Perfect for the beach or if you don’t want something too involved.

I was coming off reading the Anita Blake series when I found Sookie Stackhouse; Sookie being quite tame by comparison. At the time, I thought they were quite similar; I was over the graphic descriptions in the later Anita books and wanted another bad ass human woman dealing with supernaturals. Looking back on these two series, that wasn’t the case. There’s really nothing bad ass about Sookie. She’s gentle, mild-mannered, polite, virginal, everything Anita is not, and I think in any other setting she wouldn’t stick out in the least. I often see these series listed together, but they are so different.

I found the men to be quite intriguing. Eric has quite a history that I would have loved to delve further into. Bill clings to his humanity more ardently than most vampires in literature. Sam is sweet despite his wild nature, and predictable to everyone except Sookie.

Also worth noting is the way Harris throws in nods to her other series. The characters are minor in the Sookie Stackhouse books, but it was fun seeing Lily Bard from the Shakespeare series again and revisiting Barry Bellboy who also makes an appearance in her Midnight, Texas and namedrops Sookie.

If you can get past the milquetoast protagonist and enjoy the supernatural element and action, this can be a really enjoyable series. And, hey, at least the vampires don’t sparkle.

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Legendborn

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I’m going to preface this review by stating that I don’t think Legendborn was a bad read and I do understand why it’s quite popular; however, a combination of things contributed to me feeling a little shorted by what this book could have been.

In Legendborn, Bree attends an early college program hoping to escape her feelings of loss at home after her mother’s death. Her first night on campus, she witnesses something she shouldn’t and is thrown headfirst into a campus organization straight out of Arthurian legend. She soon learns the organization may have had a hand in her mother’s death and infiltrates the group, hoping to find out what really happened. As she’s initiated, a mystical war is brewing in which she’ll have to pick a side – will she fight for the Legendborn or take them down to discover the truth?

Firstly, I love all the inclusion! Here we have a wonderfully fantastical storyline led by a black female protagonist who is joined by LGBTQ+ characters. Tracy Deonn didn’t gloss over black history and I truly appreciated the way she put us in Bree’s head as she encountered racially charged situations. Though we’ve seen other black protagonists, I have yet to read one that even comes close to touching on how this affects their day-to-day life. I would love to see this become more of a trend in literature; it can be uncomfortable, but it also helps us grow, particularly readers like me who haven’t experienced those situations first-hand. As for the LGBTQ+ characters, they had important relationships with Bree and were central to the story, so we saw they quite a bit, but nothing felt forced. They were real people who weren’t solely included for the sake of having a token LGBTQ+ character. Their genders and sexualities are part of the character development, but they aren’t questioned or explained in full, they just exist as they are which was really beautiful to see.

Speaking of character development, the characters central to the story were well-fleshed out. It was easy to understand their motivations and personalities and I loved seeing all their backstories unfold. Development is good; it’s just unfortunate they were all a bit annoying. I think the only people I didn’t find annoying were Greer and William. Bree was immature, which I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on seeing as she’s only 16, but she felt like a strange mixture of adult sexuality but childlike immaturity. Alice was selfish and, despite her intelligence, it took her ages to realize it’s ok for people to change but she still seemed to only be ok with it if they changed to suit her expectations. Sel was the stereotypical moody, bad boy with the complicated familial history. And Nick, oh Nick, willing to completely alter his life after knowing Bree for all of an hour, always having to be the knight when I would have loved to see her save herself. Greer on the other hand was mature, had a sense of humor, was honest about their situation and experiences while finding ways to combat prejudice against them.

I think a strong portion of my disappointment with Legendborn was all the hype surrounding it online. It’s very highly rated on GoodReads and I couldn’t go a day without seeing multiple posts raving about it on bookstagram. I don’t know that it’s one I would have normally gravitated towards if it weren’t for all the hype, but at no point did I feel like it lived up to it. The action sequences were solid, but they were split by long, drawn out sections of info dumping.

I love Arthurian lore, so seeing a retelling led by a BIPOC protagonist was so exciting! I’m hoping some of the hiccups were solely because Legendborn was a debut novel and will be sorted out in future books in the series because I think this storyline has amazing potential!

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Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org. I may earn a commission from purchases made through any above links.