I needed a new non-fiction memoir to break up my diet of science fiction, contemporary, and fantasy (paranormal) and what better way to add in some flavour that a book written by a comedian. I’m going into this blind, so I don’t know what to expect… do you pick up the odd book out of your favoured reading genres? Give some recommendations, I love finding a new read.
A modern-day thriller with gothic undertones…
Genre: Y/A, Thriller, Mystery,
No. of pages: 370
They’ve offered you a luxury apartment, rent free. THE CATCH: you may not live long enough to enjoy it…
No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents.
These are the only rules for Jules Larson’s new job as apartment sitter for an elusive resident of the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile private buildings and home to the rich and famous.
Recently heartbroken and practically homeless, Jules readily accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.
Out of place among the extremely wealthy, Jules finds herself pulled toward other apartment sitter Ingrid. But Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her. Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story – but the next day, her new friend has vanished.
And then Jules discovers that Ingrid is not the first temporary resident to go missing…
Welcome to the Bartholomew…You may never leave.
I’ve really enjoyed Riley Sager’s work in the past and ‘Lock Every Door’ promises to be another chilling tale of a twisty murder mystery for an outwitting final girl. This book did not disappoint.
Our protagonist, Jules as an apartment sitter with a checkered past and sets up this novel nicely – though with the rules and regulations around this job immediately had flashing lights and sirens going off in my head. They were literally screaming ‘Run Girl!’ So the believability was on shaky ground from the get-go. What sort of haunted house ish was this set up? I don’t know if it was tongue-in-cheek, playing on the horror trope intentionally, or just lazy plotting.
The mystery part and tense ambience was written really well. I was making my list of suspects even before there was a murder to think of – and believe me there are plenty of suspects. I will say I had hunched out the mystery of sorts but then second-guessed myself because I thought it was too obvious; though the details of said mystery were way off, so it kept me interested and the pay-off was well worth the journey to get there.
The world building is executed with aplomb. Marrying the New York City and gothic tone of the Bartholomew were just perfection – sprinkle in a little bit of isolation and powerlessness for Jules and it paints the perfect landscape for this thriller. There is a heavy element of trying to impose the supernatural in ‘Lock Every Door’ that I feel wasn’t dealt with properly – it could have been so much more than it was.
I think some of the ridiculousness of the plot, combined with a missed opportunity is what held me back from being fully immersed in the story, but Sager’s writing style really shines.
I’m on the fence about recommending this one – it’s an entertaining read for sure, but there was something about this that just didn’t sell the story for me… so I’ll say a soft recommendation. Maybe for the reader who wants a taste of the mystery/thriller demographic but who doesn’t read a lot in that genre.
Overall feeling: Spooky-oooky
© Casey Carlisle 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
This quote resonated with me – when difficult things happen in life there is not much you can do but deal with it, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other…. until you find the sunshine again.
Beautifully understated and gorgeously representing minorities.
Genre: Y/A, Contemporary, Romance
No. of pages: 329
When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they’re thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder compounded by their parents’ rejection, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school.
But Ben’s attempts to survive the last half of senior year unnoticed are thwarted when Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As Ben and Nathan’s friendship grows, their feelings for each other begin to change, and what started as a disastrous turn of events looks like it might just be a chance to start a happier new life.
A beautiful queer romance that brings representation from a close-to-invisible group on the rainbow spectrum, told in an understated but cherished tone that touched my heart.
Loved the representation of a non-binary protagonist and the unique challenges they face. With a quiet-toned storyline and how it matches the tone of the narrative told from protagonist Ben’s perspective. The story did feel slow in pace and took a while to get places. I feel like I wanted more complexity, but in saying that, I don’t think it would have worked with ‘I Wish You All the Best.’
This had a bit of a feeling of educating the reader and not making things too difficult for Ben – even though what they go through is pretty rough… a more realistic approach would’ve been messier and lost the tone ‘I Wish You All the Best’ has. It’s cute, quiet, but resounding.
Because of this quiet tone – be it from Ben being an introvert, having to protect themselves from hurt and rejection, as well as dealing with mental illness; it made it difficult to relate to them. There was always a distance between Ben and other characters. And a distance with the reader. I think this element was why I wasn’t sold on the romance between Ben and Nathan. I enjoy romances which aren’t afraid to get messy and get down to the bones of character development. This in comparison felt as though it was whispered through a tin can telephone.
There was a bit of repetition that I felt an editor should have addressed which pulled me from the narrative a handful of times. While this is a beautiful story, I did not get that emotional connection I was hoping for.
Overall feeling: Not too shabby
© Casey Carlisle 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I loved this book so much!! A gorgeous cover and lightning fast pacing bring this diverse sci-fi to expert level!
Roast your pizza and your tweets all in one tasty read.
Genre: Y/A, Contemporary, Romance
No. of pages: 368
Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.
Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.
All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.
As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.
An adorable tale of modern technology and the love of pizza! The title is a pun on ‘meet cute’ and is exactly that. This was cute.
The characters are all likeable and well rounded. There is a sense of angst, anxiety, and pressure to be perfect and know your direction in life. ‘Tweet Cute’ is told in alternating perspectives each chapter from our protagonists and love interests Pepper and Jack. Pepper is a high achiever in school and runs her mother’s pizza chain’s social media account with a heavy dash of sardonic wit. Think how Wendy’s roasts its competitors on twitter. I had a bit of an issue in how Pepper’s mother laid a lot of pressure on her daughters head in basically heading the marketing department for a major fast food franchise… it felt unrealistic and irresponsible. But it was a great set up for an environment ready to launch so many tropes in contemporary romance.
Jack is a hard-working student and employee in the family pizzeria, shouldering a lot that is essential for their family’s well-being. Again, a lot of inappropriate pressure placed on the head of a teen who should be focusing on school and their future, not managing his parent’s affairs. He struck me as that always positive type, goody-two-shoes, underdog.
Though it took a while to go anywhere. The first half of the novels pacing is on the slower side, but after that the book gets a lot better. The plot is very predictable, but there were a few surprises that popped up which delighted me. The storyline unravelled very cleverly in the last quarter of the novel.
Overall feeling: The title says it all.
© Casey Carlisle 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I watched this movie years and years ago and I was keen to see how the novel fared now that enough time has passed for the read to feel brand new… talk about a claustrophobic mind-bender!
An action adventure of epic proportions (and epic failure).
Genre: Action, Adventure
No. of pages: 362
Major Dirk Pitt picked up the frantic distress call as he cruised his lumbering amphibious plane over the islands of the Aegean. Brady Air Force base was under fire, its entire force of jets destroyed on the ground . . . by just one First World War bi-plane!
A psychotic ex-Nazi, a bloodthirsty Greek strongman and a beautiful double agent set Pitt on the trail of the warped mastermind behind a devastating sabotage plot. And on that trail, danger and death are never far behind . . .
I am a huge fan of the Dirk Pitt series, and started reading them in the early ‘90’s and was hooked straight away. Lately I’ve started to read more of the back catalog of this series, as I came into this about mid-way. It’s also allowed me to uncover a bit of history in what started off the Dirk Pitt legacy. ‘Mayday!’ (written first, but a second release in this franchise) did not live up to my childhood images, carrying an undertone of arrogance, white male privilege, and microagressions.
Dirk Pitt is a sexist pig. The characters are very two dimensional and it is apparent that the characters in this novel only exist to service Pitt’s self importance. This is the worst book from the series that I have read. If I had started reading this collection from this debut, I would have tossed the first few books into the fire and dismissed Cussler as a writer completely.
Dirk Pitt slaps a woman across the face because she is grieving for her dearly departed father and doesn’t want to deal with her emotions, reduces her to her looks and sexualises her. Like if she can’t look pretty for him, what use is she. The tone of ‘Mayday!’ is terribly sexist and left me with the worst taste in my mouth. And that about sums up the novels attitude towards women, and the number of women present in the plot.
Pitt is coming off as a bit of a pompous asshole. The physical descriptions in this novel don’t entirely match those I’ve read in the many subsequent novels. I think this franchise went through a major re-vamp at some point (thank goodness.)
I found this offensive on so many levels.
The language structure of American cast – the syntax reads like London English… if indeed Cussler was trying to write a Bond type novel as cited, he must of had that in his head, then but failed to craft dialogue for his characters properly. It read with insincerity and clumsiness.
Plus we have spies and agents blurting out their operations, exposing their agents and identities all over the place. So not plausible. This book is ridiculous. The blurting of facts and identities from government officials about clandestine operations and agents in the last few chapters is mind-boggling. It was so unrealistic and harkens back to the days of simple plots and stereotypes… lest be said there was actually a moustache twirling character in this story. It was so bad I was actually having a ball poking holes in the plot and the terribly written characters. Lucky I didn’t turn it into a drinking game – I would have ended up with liver disease.
The only redeeming quality to this was the imagination to come up with the plot, the mixing in of maritime culture and a dash of marine biology.
The pacing was medium… it could have been a tad faster in the middle considering this is an action adventure spy thriller.
A big, huge, massive, NO for recommending this one. I’d be happy to chuck it out the window while driving along the Great Australian Bite and watch it sail into the ocean for a great white to swallow it whole and poop it out in the depths of some dark oceanic trench.
Overall feeling: Kill it with fire!
© Casey Carlisle 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Finally finished this quartet early last year after constantly getting distracted by shiny new books. I’ve got the latest release ‘The Darkest Legacy’ following Zu on my TBR shelf ready to conquer soon… a dystopian world where kids have X-men type powers and labelled outcasts and threats. Such a great concept; pity the film adaptation didn’t get past the first book.
Mood inducing art in this delightfully innocent queer tale
Genre: Y/A, Contemporary, Romance, Graphic Novel, GLBTQIA+
No. of pages: 368
Now that high school is over, Ari is dying to move to the big city with his ultra-hip band—if he can just persuade his dad to let him quit his job at their struggling family bakery. Though he loved working there as a kid, Ari cannot fathom a life wasting away over rising dough and hot ovens. But while interviewing candidates for his replacement, Ari meets Hector, an easygoing guy who loves baking as much as Ari wants to escape it. As they become closer over batches of bread, love is ready to bloom . . . that is, if Ari doesn’t ruin everything.
A lovely story. Atmospheric, but very simple and didn’t give much attention to the periphery characters. The aquamarine colouring marries with protagonist Ari’s depression and the seaside location, and the artwork is beautiful.
Ari’s feelings aren’t thoroughly explored – why he’s so unhappy. I would have liked some more examination into his isolation and sadness, maybe uncover the contributing factors to give the reader a full character arc.
The relationship with Hector jumpstarts with a kiss, there felt like there was little build up or angst. They were friends, and suddenly seeming boyfriends… nothing is addressed before the story ends. I feel cheated as a reader that there was no build-up and pay-off for their relationship. I craved more emotion and higher stakes.
The story, because it is simple in plot and structure is very predictable, but don’t let that discourage you from a beautifully innocent tale. I felt like I needed to see a lot more to happen. More intense feeling explored. As cute as ‘Bloom‘ is, it felt a little flat. With ‘Bloom II‘ schedules for release in 2023 we might see some more complexity, and the secondary characters fleshed out more… I’m looking forward to this sequel.
Overall feeling: she cute
© Casey Carlisle 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Casey Carlisle 