Beyond the Book Blurb

I read over a hundred books a year. That means I finish a lot of books that don’t deserve to be finished, I DNF things that probably deserved more of me, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, I’ve had to get very honest with myself about what I actually think. Star…

He was her whole world. He wanted to be in the world. That is the entire book in two sentences. Everything else is just Block filling in the details of how those two things existed at the same time, in the same house, for four and a half years. Stefan Merrill Block was nine…

I picked up Love Overboard by Kandi Steiner because the pitch was basically Below Deck with a romance spine. Chief Stew Ember Reed is running the show on a Mediterranean superyacht while filming a reality series called Close Quarters. Two years after a gut-punch of a breakup, Finn Pearson shows up as the new…

March was an audio book month. I finished 17 books, 6,241 pages, and 95 listening hours, with 10 of those on audio. My top reads were Yesteryear, This Story Might Save Your Life, and First-Time Caller, all three earning a Lent Out or Recommended rating. Here’s everything I read.

I need to start with the audiobook because that is where this conversation begins. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I know the difference between a good narrator and a production that actually does something with the format. This one is produced like a podcast. Not narrated like a podcast. Produced like one.…

Pub day is April 7th. You have five days to preorder this. A trad wife mommy blogger wakes up in the 1800s. That’s the whole pitch. Caro Claire Burke does not need more than that to hook you. Yesteryear runs on a dual timeline: Natalie’s curated influencer life in the present and the life…

I went into this expecting to feel for the soldiers. I came out feeling for the women. That shift happened early and it never reversed. The Wives is Simone Gorrindo’s memoir about following her husband to Fort Benning, Georgia after he enlisted in the Army. She was older than most of the wives around…

Here’s the thing about Project Hail Mary: I already knew what was going to happen, and it still wouldn’t let me go. This was a re-read for me, this time on audio. The premise is exactly as wild as it sounds. You wake up alone in space with no memory. The fate of Earth…

I went into First-Time Caller expecting a cute romance with a fun premise. What I got was that, plus a whole city that felt like a character in its own right. The setup delivers exactly what it promises: a romance hotline, a jaded host who clearly has opinions about love that he hasn’t examined…

In February, I read 13 books across romance, thriller, mystery, memoir, and fantasy. February being the month of love meant my reading naturally skewed toward romance, but I also snuck in a memoir about a marriage falling apart, which felt appropriate in its own way. I did manage to get two nonfiction reads in…