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Showing posts from May 21, 2023

book review: The Guest by Emma Cline

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The Guest  by Emma Cline Overview: Alex leads a chaotic life. She takes it one day at a time, navigating each hurdle hour by hour as they all pile up on one another. At twenty-two, she's made her way from New York City to the Hamptons for the summer, schmoozing with older rich men to get by, floating somewhere between being an escort and a sugar baby. How Alex arrived at this point is never revealed, but for a week, we follow her through the Hamptons as she scrapes by as an ephemeral guest in various sad, rich Hamptons houses. Can she untangle the web by Labor Day to set her life back on course? Overall: 3.5  Characters: 3 Alex is both fascinating and utterly flat. On a scene by scene, moment by moment level, Alex is a fascinating character to follow. She's developed her own moral code, and she runs on a series of survival rules that help her slip between the cracks as she takes advantage of others under the radar. She's manipulative but not without having a conscience, and

romance review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry

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Book Lovers  by Emily Henry Overview: Nora is a literary agent so adept, focused, and successful that she's called "the shark" among her circle of literary colleagues. There might be just a touch of misogyny in that too. She's driven by work, looking to excel to find her sense of self and a financial security she never had as a child. A longtime book lover, Nora is also well versed in the tropes of romance and sees herself as the villain the romance novel of her life. She's always the cold, icey girlfriend the hero has at the start of the book that he leaves for the down to earth country girl. Having that image sure makes dating hard. While a trip to a small North Carolina town with her sister sparks a wild chain of events that makes her reconsider the meaning of family, sisterhood, love, and work, it's also a chance for Nora to heal and find herself away from all the noise. Overall: 5 Characters: 5 It's the characters that made this book for me. While I r