monicaslibrary's bookshelf: all

monicaslibrary's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 02:20:12 -0700 60 monicaslibrary's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Ripe 195024550
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, the black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO's demands cross an illegal line and her personal life spirals towards a bleak precipice, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are worth the pain, or succumb to the black hole.]]> 252 Sarah Rose Etter 0857308513 monicaslibrary 3 3.80 2023 Ripe

author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves:
review:
Shallow at best but I’m a sucker for pretty prose
]]> Summer in the City 216405550 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Alex Aster comes her adult debut novel Summer in the City—a swoony, fast-paced rom-com set in New York City in which a screenwriter and a sexy tech CEO go from lovers to enemies and back to lovers again��

Twenty-seven-year-old screenwriter Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. The only problem? She’s had writer’s block for months, and her screenplay is due at the end of the summer.

In a desperate attempt at inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford (floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, and a new coffee shop to haunt included). It’s the perfect place to write her screenplay…until she realizes her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor�� Parker Warren, her stairwell hookup from two years ago. It’s been a lovers-to-enemies situation ever since.

When seeing him again turns into a full night of hate-fueled writing, Elle realizes her enemy/twisted muse might just be the key to finishing her screenplay... if she can stand being around her polar opposite. She writes anonymously, and he’s on the cover of every business magazine. He frequents fancy red carpeted events, and she doesn’t like leaving her emotional support five block radius.

One summer. One wall apart. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. Both need a break from their unrelenting schedules, and a chance to rediscover the skyscraper glimmering, pizza crusted, sunlit charms of the city.

Summers always end, and so will this agreement. It’s all pretend. Promise.

Until it isn’t.]]> 304 Alex Aster 0063411660 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.82 2025 Summer in the City

author: Alex Aster
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Chase (Briar U, #1) 213917323
Everyone says opposites attract. And they must be right, because there's no logical reason why I'm so drawn to Colin Fitzgerald. I don't usually go for tattoo-covered, video-gaming, hockey-playing nerd-jocks who think I'm flighty and superficial. His narrow view of me is the first strike against him. It doesn't help that he's buddy-buddy with my brother.

And that his best friend has a crush on me.

And that I just moved in with them.

Oh, did I not mention we're roommates?

I suppose it doesn't matter. Fitzy has made it clear he's not interested in me, even though the sparks between us are liable to burn our house down. I'm not the kind of girl who chases after a man, though, and I'm not about to start. I've got my hands full dealing with a new school, a sleazy professor, and an uncertain future. So if my sexy brooding roomie wises up and realizes what he's missing?

He knows where to find me.]]> 368 Elle Kennedy 1775293971 monicaslibrary 0 3.83 2018 The Chase (Briar U, #1)

author: Elle Kennedy
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Out of the Woods 209220944
But Sarah has begun to wonder... Who is she without her other half?

When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable.

That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly steps in to save the day.

The rift that follows unearths a decade of grievances between them and doubts begin to grow. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen? Are they supposed to be?

In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is near breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches.

What follows is a life-affirming comedy of errors as two nature-averse people fight their way out of the woods in order to find their way back to their roots.]]> 336 Hannah Bonam-Young 0593871863 monicaslibrary 4 3.98 2025

author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
Never knew I needed to read a marriage in crisis trope in my life and this was so well done
]]> People Watching 222684223 In this sexy and emotional romance from the acclaimed author of Out of the Woods and Out on a Limb, a small-town woman’s journey to spread her wings intertwines with the arrival of an adventurous newcomer who brings out the best in her.

Prudence Welch has found solace in her introverted life in Baysville, a charming tourist town in Northern Ontario. Despite once dreaming of a life beyond its borders, she now finds contentment in her working at her father’s gas station, writing poetry, and caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's shortly after Prue’s nineteenth birthday. But as her mother’s condition worsens and her father’s concerns about her future intensify, Prue feels her world slipping further out of control.

Enter Milo Kablukov, an enigmatic wanderer whose beat-up van covered with ill-advised bumper stickers rolls into town just when Prue needs a change. It’s all too easy to let go with him, and Prue ��’t help but strike up an unlikely friendship with Milo, which leads to a wild and sexy agreement between them.

Milo, a man of many adventures and countless stories, is not one to settle down. However, his brother’s urgent need for help has brought him to Baysville, and now the intriguing Prue has given him more reason to stay. Especially once they start spending more time together, their chemistry intensifying, and casual-sex lessons start at Prue’s request.

But as their temporary arrangement blossoms into something deeper, Prue and Milo discover that getting out of their comfort zones is one thing . . . taking that leap together is something else entirely.]]> Hannah Bonam-Young 0593871898 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.26 2025 People Watching

author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Concerning My Daughter 166384913
But when Green turns up with her girlfriend, Lane, in tow, her mother is unprepared and unwilling to welcome Lane into her home. In fact, she can barely bring herself to be civil. Having centred her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. Her daughter’s involvement in a case of unfair dismissal involving gay colleagues from the university where she works is similarly strange to her.

And yet when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who has no family, who travelled the world as a successful diplomat, who chose not to have children, Green’s mother cannot accept it. Why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all?

In Concerning My Daughter, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, Kim Hye-jin lays bare our most universal fears on ageing, death, and isolation, to offer finally a paean to love in all its forms.]]> 176 Hye-Jin Kim 152905768X monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.72 2017 Concerning My Daughter

author: Hye-Jin Kim
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love Redesigned (Lakefront Billionaires, #1)]]> 199070596 Julian
If I ever caught on fire, Dahlia Muñoz would fan the flames with a smile.
So, when she returns to Lake Wisteria, I fully intend to avoid the interior designer.
At least until my meddling mother exploits my savior complex.
The faster I help Dahlia find her creative spark, the sooner she will leave town.
But while I was busy getting rid of Dahlia, I overlooked one potential issue.
What happens if I want her to stay?

Dahlia
People say the devil has many faces, but I know only one.
Julian Lopez—my childhood rival and family frenemy.
I vow to steer clear of him while recovering from my broken engagement, but then the billionaire makes an irresistible offer.
Renovate a historic house together and triple our profits.
Our temporary truce becomes compromised as we face years�� worth of denied attraction and mixed emotions.
Giving into our desire is inevitable…but falling in love?
That isn’t part of the plan.

Love Redesigned is a steamy, small town romance about two family friends-turned-childhood rivals. It is the first book in the standalone Lakefront Billionaires series and has a happy ending.]]> 530 Lauren Asher monicaslibrary 3 4.00 2023 Love Redesigned (Lakefront Billionaires, #1)

Love Redesigned (Lakefront Billionaires, #1)

author: Lauren Asher
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Powerless (Chestnut Springs, #3)]]> 108519097 But hockey heartthrob Jasper Gervais isn’t looking at me like a friend anymore. And he isn’t touching me like one either.
To his fans, he’s the handsome, talented athlete on TV. But to me he’s still the lost boy with sad eyes and a heart of gold.
The man I’ve loved in secret for years.
So when my life falls apart on my wedding day, it only makes sense that he’s the one to swoop in and save me. And when his world comes crashing down around him, I’m there to return the favor.
But the more time we spend alone, the more Jasper doesn’t feel like a friend at all. He feels like everything I’ve ever wanted and thought I could never have.
Our feelings aren’t straight forward though. They twist and turn around the pain of his past and the reality of my present.
Jasper Gervais acts like he wants me.
But after years of turning me away, he’s going to need to prove it.]]> 496 Elsie Silver 034943770X monicaslibrary 0 Meh 3.94 2023 Powerless (Chestnut Springs, #3)

author: Elsie Silver
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
Meh
]]> <![CDATA[Between the Pines (Black Springs Ranch)]]> 223899035
Her latest escape was supposed to be a quiet reset at her family’s cabin in Tennessee—not a reckless detour at a smoky backwoods bar, and definitely not a collision with Lincoln Carter. Rugged and magnetic, he’s temptation in a cowboy hat, and his slow smile makes forgetting her rules far too easy.

Their connection is instant, electric, and impossible to ignore. What starts with teasing glances and lingering touches spiral into a series of nights that feel like more—too much more. By the end of the week, Josie does what she does best: she bolts, leaving behind only her name and the memory of a man she ��’t shake.

A year later, Josie’s done running. With a steady job, a new boyfriend, and her life finally on track, she’s ready to prove she’s not the same girl she used to be. Except her father’s prestigious summer horse training program just brought a ghost from her past straight to her front door.

Lincoln isn’t the forgiving type, and now that he’s on the ranch, he’s determined to show Josie exactly what she left behind—and what they could have had if she’d stayed.

As old wounds reopen and sparks reignite, Josie must decide: keep running from her past or take a chance on the cowboy who just might be worth staying for.]]> 308 Amber Palmer 1965540929 monicaslibrary 0 3.60 2025 Between the Pines (Black Springs Ranch)

author: Amber Palmer
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Slap Shot (D.C. Stars) 227966620
Madeline Galloway needs a job. Recently let go from her executive chef position in Las Vegas, she’s desperate as can be when she reaches out to an old acquaintance about a possible job opportunity��. in DC.

After hitting it off with her prospective employer, the blond hockey star who seems to have a heart of gold, she and her daughter, Lucy, make the move east.

The rules were simple: no personal relationships. No falling for the romantic guy who always made her smile, even if they were living together and spending all their free time with each other.

But after a kiss on New Year’s Eve, everything changes. The lines blur. Being Hudson’s friend—and only his friend—is the last thing on her mind.

And when Hudson learns American Sign Language for her daughter? It might be a slap shot to the heart.

Slap Shot is a spicy slow burn friends to lovers, private chef x hockey player romance with forced proximity and a man who if he wanted to, he would.]]> 528 Chelsea Curto 1958983152 monicaslibrary 0 2025 4.21 2025 Slap Shot (D.C. Stars)

author: Chelsea Curto
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:
No straight men in their 30s (and athletes mind u) are starting a book club with their teammates reading romance novels and referencing sabrina carpenter Juno pose like pls stop (not to say I hate this book tho there are definitely worse out there)
]]> Misfit (Prep, #1) 62989142 416 Elle Kennedy 1728279410 monicaslibrary 0 2025 3.72 2022

author: Elle Kennedy
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Ready or Not 154548937 A surprise pregnancy leads to even more life-changing revelations in this heartfelt, slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance of found family and unexpected love.

Eve Hatch lives for surprises! Just kidding. She expects every tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today. She loves her cozy apartment in Brooklyn that’s close to her childhood best friend Willa, and far from her midwestern, traditional family who has never really understood her. While her job is only dream-adjacent, it’s comfortable and steady. She always knows what to expect from her life . . . until she finds herself expecting after an uncharacteristic one-night stand.

The unplanned pregnancy cracks open all the relationships in her life. Eve’s loyal friendship with Willa is feeling tense, right when she needs her the most. And it’s actually Willa’s steadfast older brother, Shep, who steps up to help Eve. He has always been friendly, but now he’s checking in, ordering her surprise lunches, listening to all her complaints, and is . . . suddenly kinda hot? Then, as if she needs one more complication, there’s the baby’s father, who is (technically) supportive but (majorly) conflicted.

Up until this point, Eve’s been content to coast through life. Now, though—maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the way Shep’s shoulders look in a T-shirt—Eve starts to wonder if she has been secretly desiring more from every aspect of her life.

Over the course of nine months, as Eve struggles to figure out the next right step in her expanding reality, she begins to realize that family and love, in all forms, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.]]> 373 Cara Bastone monicaslibrary 5 2025 4.07 2024 Ready or Not

author: Cara Bastone
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:
Heart is so full after reading this book ugh
]]> <![CDATA[Heartless (Chestnut Springs, #2)]]> 124933948 Working as a nanny for the world’s grumpiest single dad should have been simple. Except I ��’t keep my eyes off him. And he ��’t keep his hands off of me.

Cade Eaton is thirteen years older than I am and barely looks my way. Until I get him into the hot tub one night for a game of truth or dare. Then all bets are off—and so are our clothes.

He’s gruff, a little rough around the edges. But broad-shouldered ranchers with calloused hands and filthy mouths are this city girl’s kryptonite. So who am I to resist?

But it’s in our quiet moments together that he softens. It’s when he takes care of me that I realize his hardened exterior is just a façade. It’s when I watch him go all sweet with his little boy that I really fall for him.

Someone convinced him once that his best wasn’t good enough. But I’ve never felt more cherished than I do in his arms.

My contract may say this arrangement is only for two months.

But my heart says this is forever.
]]> 462 Elsie Silver monicaslibrary 2 2025 4.17 2022 Heartless (Chestnut Springs, #2)

author: Elsie Silver
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flawless (Chestnut Springs, #1)]]> 108514520 The rules were simple . . . Keep my hands off his daughter and stay out of trouble. But now I'm stuck with her. There's only one bed. And, well, rules are made to be broken.

I'm the golden boy of professional bull riding. Or at least I was until it all blew up in my face. Now, my agent says I have to clean up my image, so I'm stuck with his ball-busting daughter for the rest of the season as my "full-time supervision."

But I don't need a goddamn babysitter, especially one with skin-tight jeans, a sexy smirk, and a mouth she can't stop running . . . A mouth I can't stop thinking about.

She says this means nothing.

I say this means everything.

She says there are boundaries we shouldn't cross. That my reputation can't take any more hits-and neither can her damaged heart.

I say I'm going to steal it anyway.]]> 416 Elsie Silver 0349437661 monicaslibrary 3 2025 3.93 2022 Flawless (Chestnut Springs, #1)

author: Elsie Silver
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Only in Your Dreams (Oakwood Bay, #1)]]> 217262692
If he can prove he loved her then, and he loves her still, this time might be different.

Ten years after one of the most heartbreaking nights of her life, Melody Woods is back in her small hometown of Oakwood Bay, broke, jaded, and unceremoniously dumped by her big-city boyfriend. To top it all off, her twin brother, Parker, is pushing her to take his spot on a camping trip with the one guy she’s spent a decade avoiding.

For college football coach Zac Porter, his best friend’s twin sister, Melody, has always been off-limits. And after fumbling his chance ten years ago, a devastated Zac was sure he’d lost Melody for good. So, when Melody shows up at the campsite instead of Parker, Zac realizes that now is the time to prove to her that they were always meant to be, no matter how long it takes to make up for his teenage self’s mistake.

Reeling from the truth of her last relationship, Melody plans to stay in town just long enough to get back on her feet. Then, she’s gone again. Meanwhile, Zac is facing an uphill battle to coach his team to its first winning game in years, to show Melody how she deserves to be loved, and to keep Parker from ever finding out. Maybe then, being with her will be more than just a dream.]]> 432 Ellie K. Wilde 1668093162 monicaslibrary 2 2025 3.91 2025 Only in Your Dreams (Oakwood Bay, #1)

author: Ellie K. Wilde
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> If It Makes You Happy 229004405
I, on the other hand, don’t–at all–have anything figured out.

Trust me, I didn’t think taking over my mom’s dream bed and breakfast in Copper Run Vermont was going to be easy. It should be a good place to heal after my divorce. But apparently my scones belong in the garbage with my small talk skills. As pointed out by none other than Cliff.

Cliff is inescapable. He knows exactly what people need–always. His charm, the way he wears flannel, and even his pastries, make not wanting to be friends with Cliff and his daughters pretty hard.

Friends? I can make friends. That’s safe.

Except I’m leaving in three months to pass the inn off to my little sister and get the promotion in Seattle I’ve been working towards.

So ask me why I’m thinking about kissing my hot neighbor.]]> 512 Julie Olivia monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.33 2024 If It Makes You Happy

author: Julie Olivia
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Right Place 209414324 448 Sophia Money-Coutts 0008467129 monicaslibrary 3 2025 3.51

author: Sophia Money-Coutts
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: 2025
review:
Aside from the typos and some grammatical errors this had the potential! I genuinely enjoyed it and is more lit fic-y than romance
]]> The Alchemist 865 197 Paulo Coelho 0061122416 monicaslibrary 0 currently-reading 3.85 1988

author: Paulo Coelho
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Passion Project 203237161
If your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, Bennet Taylor is failing miserably . . . with a big emphasis on the miserable. Where’s that zest she keeps hearing about? She’s a temp worker in New York City with no direction, no future, and no social life. And at the painful center of this listlessness is grief over the death of her first love.

When Bennet runs into Henry Adams just hours after standing him up for a first date, she makes an alcohol-fueled confession: She’s not ready to date. In fact, it’s been years since she felt passion for something. Not even pottery, or organized sports—not anything. Rather than leaving her to ruminate, Henry jumps at the opportunity for adventure: Bennet needs to find a passion for life, and Henry will help her find it. Every Saturday, they’ll try something new in New York City. As friends, of course.

As their “passion project�� continues, the pair tackle everything from carpentry to tattooing to rappelling off skyscrapers, and Bennet feels her guarded exterior ebbing away. But as secrets surface, Bennet has to decide what she wants, and if she’s truly ready to move on. With emotional resonance and sparkling banter, Passion Project is a fun, flirty, thoughtful story of finding a spark—and igniting happiness.]]> 368 London Sperry 0143138561 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.97 2025

author: London Sperry
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.24 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom]]> 6596 The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.]]> 152 Miguel Ruiz 1878424505 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.20 1997 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

author: Miguel Ruiz
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Caught Up (Windy City, #3) 199335111
I’m a single dad and starting pitcher for Chicago’s MLB team.
I’m stretched too thin, but I don’t want help raising my son.

Each of his previous nannies only lasted a few weeks before I let them go.
Now, my coach is putting his foot down by hiring the one person I ��’t fire—his daughter.

Miller Montgomery is the last woman I should fall for. Too wild, too young, and too unattached.

Chicago is just a quick stop for her. I thought I’d be counting down the days until she left, but summer feels too short when I start thinking about forever.

Miller

As a high-end pastry chef who recently won the most prestigious award in my industry, I’m desperate to prove I deserve it. But with a new title comes new pressure, and I ��’t create a fresh and inspiring dessert to save my life.

With only two months to get back on track, I should be focusing in the kitchen, but instead, I let my dad talk me into using my time off to nanny for his star player’s kid.

Kai Rhodes forgot how to have fun, and I’m eager to jog his memory. But when he and his son start to feel like home, I have to remind us both that my time in Chicago ends with the summer.

Besides, I’ve always been a runner, and the last thing I want is to get caught.]]> 408 Liz Tomforde 139972858X monicaslibrary 3 2025 3.5 4.37 2023 Caught Up (Windy City, #3)

author: Liz Tomforde
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: 2025
review:
3.5
]]> The Lamb 205792568
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 329 Lucy Rose 139961973X monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.03 2025 The Lamb

author: Lucy Rose
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Be a Good Girl: A Miscellany]]> 216785327 The ambitious and experimental debut by Jamie Hood, author of Trauma Plot, interrogating the “good girl�� archetype and the price one pays to embody it

In the thick of winter 2020, when so many books were buried beneath the catastrophe of the COVID-19 news cycle, one unlikely debut seemed to cut through the noise. Jamie Hood’s How to Be a Good Girl was an inventive and hybrid work of self-making, mingling diary entries, poetry, literary criticism, and love letters to interrogate the archetype of the “good girl,�� and the ideas of femininity, passivity, desire, and trauma that come with it. Journeying from the ice age to our modern-day climate crisis, it devoured texts as expansive as Levinas and Plath to the Ronettes and after-school specials, all the while what pound of flesh must a woman pay to be seen as “good.��

How to Be a Good Girl was a critical darling when it was first published by Grieveland. The Rumpus praised its “bold vulnerability,�� and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020. Now, Vintage is proud to reissue this provocative and genre-bending debut and find new readers for an exciting, new literary voice.]]> 176 Jamie Hood monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.21 2020 How to Be a Good Girl: A Miscellany

author: Jamie Hood
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> L.A. Women 221251764 An electrifying novel about the complicated friendship between two ambitious and talented female writers in 1960s Los Angeles and the ultimate artistic one writes a book based on the other's life�� from the author of Reese's Book Club Pick Before We Were Innocent.

After a steady descent from literary stardom, Lane Warren is back. She’s secured a new book deal based off the life of her sometimes friend and more often rival, notorious free spirit and muse, Gala Margolis. Lane’s only problem is that Gala has been missing for months…nobody can find her.

Ten years earlier, Gala was a charming socialite and Lane was a Hollywood outsider amidst the glittering 1960’s LA party scene. Though never best friends, Lane found Gala sharp and compelling. Gala liked that Lane took her seriously. They were both writers. They were drawn to each other.

That is until Gala’s star began to rise, and Lane grew more envious. Then Lane decided to do something that she wouldn’t ever be able to take back…changing the trajectory of both their lives.]]> 416 Ella Berman 0593639154 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.81 2025 L.A. Women

author: Ella Berman
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cash (Lucky River Ranch, #1) 216734941 Butting heads leads to knocking boots in this wildly sexy enemies-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine, small town cowboy romance by Jessica Peterson.

My dad and I have been estranged for years. But as his only living relative, it’s no surprise I inherit his massive cattle ranch when he dies. Something that is a surprise? The stipulation in his will, which requires me to live on the ranch and actively manage it for a year before I can access my inheritance money.

I haven’t stepped foot in Hartsville, Texas, population one thousand, since my parents split when I was six. Now a city girl through and through, I never imagined having to move back to cowboy country. But I need the money to invest in my company, and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

There’s just one giant roadblock to my plan: the ranch’s foreman, grumpy cowboy Cash Rivers. I don’t care how good he looks in his Wranglers and chaps. He’s rude, he’s growly, and he wants me gone. I’d fire him in a heartbeat, but I need this cowboy to teach me the ropes of running a ranch.

We’re enemies from the get-go. But turns out, Cash is really good at this ranch thing. He’s got strong hands, an intelligent mind, and let’s just say everything really is bigger in Texas. Working alongside him leads to conversations beneath the stars. Throw in some cheek-to-cheek dancing at the local dive bar, and it all feels so right that I start to fall in love with life on the ranch. And maybe with him, too.

But my stay in Hartsville is only temporary. And you know what they say about cowboys: they may break horses, but they also break hearts. If only Cash hadn’t already lassoed mine��

CASH is the first standalone book in the brand new steamy, interconnected Lucky River Ranch Series.]]> 423 Jessica Peterson monicaslibrary 4 2025 4.00 2024 Cash (Lucky River Ranch, #1)

author: Jessica Peterson
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Husbands 210391342 An exuberant debut, The Husbands delights in how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she ��’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?]]> 362 Holly Gramazio 1784745367 monicaslibrary 2 2025 3.65 2024 The Husbands

author: Holly Gramazio
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Red and the Black 14662 The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical portrayal of French society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui, and Julien - the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions - is one of the most intriguing characters in European literature.

Roger Gard's fine translation remains faithful to the natural, conversational tone of the original, while his introduction elucidates the complexities of Julien's character. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading and an appendix on Stendhal's use of epigraphs.]]> 577 Stendhal 0140447644 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.91 1830 The Red and the Black

author: Stendhal
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1830
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hunchback 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostitute��). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]> 112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.51 2023 Hunchback

author: Saou Ichikawa
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Left of Forever 217388096 An emotional, spicy, second-chance romance from USA Today bestselling author Tarah DeWitt.

This time, they'll get it right.

Wren and Ellis Byrd fell in love as kids, had their son Sam when they were only teenagers, and built a life together in the coastal town of Spunes, Oregon. They were made for one another…until they fell apart.

Now divorced and in their 30s, Wren runs the bakery in town, while Ellis works as a firefighter. They live separate lives, though they are hardly off each other’s minds.

When Sam gets accepted into college and the pair help him move in together, Ellis convinces Wren to take an extended road trip back to Spunes with him to see if they can give their relationship one last chance. Amid the gorgeous scenery of the California coastline, dreamy destinations, and a great deal of long-yearned-for proximity, Wren starts to think it just might be possible. But the two still have to contend with their tumultuous past in order to move forward. And when spoken words fail, sometimes the written word must bridge the gap.
Will they make the most of what’s left of forever? Or will they let each other go for good?

Brimming with big feelings and packed with steam, Left of Forever is bestseller Tarah DeWitt at the top of her game.]]> 336 Tarah DeWitt 1250329442 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.59 2025

author: Tarah DeWitt
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Well, Actually 217387831 384 Mazey Eddings 1250397340 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.95 2025

author: Mazey Eddings
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hard Rain Falling 6553843 308 Don Carpenter 1590173244 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.13 1966

author: Don Carpenter
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Foster 61206869 An international bestseller and one of The Times' "Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century," Claire Keegan's piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household--where everything is so well tended to--and this summer must soon come to an end.

Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan's great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802160158 monicaslibrary 5 2025, favourites Short but impactful 4.39 2010 Foster

author: Claire Keegan
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2025, favourites
review:
Short but impactful
]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 monicaslibrary 5 2025, favourites 3.85 2005

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2025, favourites
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.13 2021

author: Claire Keegan
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Here With Me (Sugarland Creek #1)]]> 229123211 A forbidden age gap stand-alone from small-town romance author Brooke Montgomery about a daring horse trainer and her off-limits ex-boyfriend’s dad��

When we met at the rodeo, I only knew his first name.

Sparks ignited between us, and we spent an unforgettable night together.
It's not until the morning after when I recognize his last name do I realize who he is.

So I do what any rational woman would and make the walk of shame while he sleeps. It's not like I'll ever see him again or have to explain why I left.

But I'm proven wrong when he shows up at my family's ranch as the new farrier.

We can't be more than friends—for many reasons.
He's twice my age, workplace relationships are off-limits, and he moved back to rebuild a relationship with his son—the one I used to date.

Getting involved would ruin everything.

As we struggle between right and wrong, our connection deepens even though his traumatic past makes him doubt he deserves a second chance.

But it doesn't matter when everything's against us, including a rival who's out to get me and my ex who's determined to win me back.

After a riding trick goes wrong on his watch, he insists on taking care of me. Even though the odds are stacked against us, we keep the truth to ourselves.

But secrets don't stay hidden for long in a Southern small town.

Here With Me is book 1 in the Sugarland Creek series. Contains 20+ year age gap, ex-boyfriend's dad, workplace romance, opposites attract, and secret relationship vibes. Each book in this Southern, small town series is a stand-alone and ends in a happily ever after. Please read the content warning before the prologue.]]> 404 Brooke Montgomery 1961287307 monicaslibrary 2 2025 3.38 2023 Here With Me (Sugarland Creek #1)

author: Brooke Montgomery
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods

author: Liz Moore
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 monicaslibrary 0 currently-reading 4.41 1952

author: John Steinbeck
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Hour of the Star 56142164 Clarice Lispector’s best-selling masterpiece—“her finest book�� (The Nation)—now in a special hardcover edition to celebrate the centenary of her birth, with an illuminating new afterword by her son

The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector’s consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life’s unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn’t seem to know how unhappy she should be. As Macabéa heads toward her absurd death, Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator—edge of despair to edge of despair—and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader’s preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.]]> 128 Clarice Lispector 0811230996 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.05 1977 The Hour of the Star

author: Clarice Lispector
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume I]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.89 2020 On the Calculation of Volume I

author: Solvej Balle
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wall 59468837
Allegorical yet deeply personal and absorbing, The Wall is at once a critique of modern civilization, a nuanced and loving portrait of a relationship between a woman and her animals, a thrilling survival story, a Cold War-era dystopian adventure, and a truly singular feminist classic.]]> 239 Marlen Haushofer 0811231941 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.12 1963 The Wall

author: Marlen Haushofer
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Off to the Races (Gold Rush Ranch, #1)]]> 221572581
Vaughn Harding is my new boss. Getting close to him would be career suicide for a female racehorse trainer, and plain old gossip fuel in this small town. I get a kick out of our verbal sparring, but I swore off his type years ago.

And I’ve got plans.

I’m the new trainer at Gold Rush Ranch and I’ve just been handed a problem horse that I promised to make a winner. I want to put down roots, and I’m not about to let a man distract me. No matter how electric it feels when we lock eyes, or how my body ignites when we touch.

Vaughn’s a vivid reminder of every guy I grew up around. Handsome, rich, entitled--a total media darling. But there’s a sadness in him that I ��’t seem to turn my back on. A sensitive side hidden beneath brooding good looks.

The last thing I need is a broken man to put back together, and the last thing he needs is more scandal.

Teasing him for kicks is one thing, but handing over my heart?

I should have known better.]]> 388 Elsie Silver monicaslibrary 2 3.80 2021 Off to the Races (Gold Rush Ranch, #1)

author: Elsie Silver
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chasing the Wild (Crimson Ridge, #1)]]> 212002545
What happens when you’re snowed in on a mountain ranch, with the one man you definitely should not be fantasizing about?
I’ve always done what was expected of me. Layla Birch, the good girl.
Forced to grow up too fast. To take care of everything myself. I had a plan.
Only, I didn’t count on him. Colton Wilder. The cowboy nearly twice my age.
He’s my dream man. One who takes care of me, gives me a job, and makes my pulse thud harder every time he comes near.
My ex-boyfriend’s father.
The nights are long and cold on top of this mountain. As the snow grows thicker and the tension builds between us, we’re both inching closer to a line we shouldn’t cross.
Each day, it grows harder to resist the man who looks at me with longing in his eyes.
It’s tempting to forget about being the good girl for once.
No one would find out. Would they?

Chasing The Wild is an interconnected stand-alone, book 1 in the all-new Crimson Ridge series, and can be read separately. Intended for ages 18 and over.]]> 444 Elliott Rose monicaslibrary 1 2025 3.98 Chasing the Wild (Crimson Ridge, #1)

author: Elliott Rose
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Discomfort of Evening 49374086 I thought about being too small for so much, but that no one told you when you were big enough ... and I asked God if he please couldn't take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit. 'Amen.'

Jas lives with her devout farming family in the rural Netherlands. One winter's day, her older brother joins an ice skating trip; resentful at being left alone, she makes a perverse plea to God; he never returns. As grief overwhelms the farm, Jas succumbs to a vortex of increasingly disturbing fantasies, watching her family disintegrate into a darkness that threatens to derail them all.

A bestselling sensation in the Netherlands by a prize-winning young poet, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's debut novel lays everything bare. It is a world of language unlike any other, which Michele Hutchison's striking translation captures in all its wild, violent beauty. Studded with unforgettable images - visceral, raw, surreal - The Discomfort of the Evening is a radical reading experience that will leave you changed forever.]]> 282 Lucas Rijneveld 0571349366 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.37 2018 The Discomfort of Evening

author: Lucas Rijneveld
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why ��’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.64 2023 The Unworthy

author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wild Iris 76546 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms

Bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality and with clarity and sureness of craft, Louise Glück's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.]]> 65 Louise Glück 0880013346 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.22 1992 The Wild Iris

author: Louise Glück
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Milkman 41086837 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780571338757.

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.

Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.]]> 352 Anna Burns monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.59 2018 Milkman

author: Anna Burns
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dangers of Smoking in Bed 57100060
Tarinoissa uhrataan pahoille pyhimyksille, kiihotutaan sydänten sykkeestä, palvotaan rokkareita (kirjaimellisesti!), puhutaan sotilasjuntan murhaamille spiritismilaudan avulla. Buenos Airesin katujen svengi yhdistyy pohjoisargentiinalaiseen mustaan magiaan ja maan väkivaltaiseen poliittiseen historiaan, poppiin, hulluuteen ja verentahrimaan glitteriin.]]> 187 Mariana Enríquez 178378671X monicaslibrary 0 2025 3.69 2009 The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

author: Mariana Enríquez
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Know My Name 50196744
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.]]> 384 Chanel Miller 0735223718 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.69 2019 Know My Name

author: Chanel Miller
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jaded 176442986 A young lawyer wakes up the morning after a work gala with no memory of how she got home the previous night and must figure out what, exactly, happened—and how much she's willing to put up with to make her way to the top of the corporate ladder.

Jade isn’t even my real name. Jade began as my Starbucks name, because all children of immigrants have a Starbucks name.

Jade has become everything she ever wanted to be.

Successful lawyer.
Dutiful daughter.
Beloved girlfriend.
Loyal friend.

Until Jade wakes up the morning after a work event, naked and alone, with no idea how she got home. Caught between her parents who ��’t understand, her boyfriend who feels betrayed, and her job that expects silence, the world Jade has constructed starts to crumble.

Jade thought she was everything she ever wanted to be. But now she feels like nothing at all.

For fans of Queenie and I May Destroy You, Jaded is a blistering—and sometimes darkly funny—account of consent, power, race, sexism, and identity in a broken society.]]> 384 Ela Lee 1668010992 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.12 2024 Jaded

author: Ela Lee
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I'm F*cking Amazing 181346404
Her desire used to work perfectly. Over the years she kept meticulous track of it - tallying her orgasms, maintaining a Top Humps list, and keeping a score system to rate how her conquests excite her mentally versus physically - all with the purpose of finding a great, fantastic love match.

Now, after moving into her thirties and settling down with Serious Boyfriend Number Three (aka THE-ONE), she's run into a problem.

Sex hurts. She ��’t get wet. Her fanny, which has never led her astray before, suddenly seems like it might be broken.

Surely there must be some way to make sex work for her again?

From doctors to drugs to completely unorthodox methods she embarks on a journey of desperation and self-discovery.

She’ll try anything to fix it but maybe desire and long-term love just don’t work together��

Sexually frank, wildly funny, psychologically raw, I’m F*cking Amazing marks the fiction debut of a red-hot talent, perfect for fans of Fleabag.]]> 352 Anoushka Warden 0385549822 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.30 2024 I'm F*cking Amazing

author: Anoushka Warden
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us]]> 33947154
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.]]> 291 Hanif Abdurraqib monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.57 2017 They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How to Murder Your Life 32778089
With a complete lack of self-pity and an honesty that is almost painful, Cat describes the crazed euphoria, terrifying comedowns and the horrendous guilt she feels lying to those who try to help her. Writing in a voice that is utterly magnetic �� prompting comparisons to Brett Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski �� she captures something essential both about her generation and our times. Profoundly divisive and controversial, How to Murder Your Life is a unforgettable, charged account of a young female addict, so close to throwing her entire life away.]]> 374 Cat Marnell monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.19 2017

author: Cat Marnell
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Down the Drain 220259754 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The hotly anticipated book from “one of the all-time pop-culture greats�� (New York magazine) that chronicles her shocking life and unyielding determination to not only survive but achieve her dreams. Julia Fox is famous for many her captivating acting, such as her breakout role in the film Uncut Gems; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows, exaggerated eyeshadow, and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media, where she entertains and educates her millions of followers. But all these share the trait for which she is most unabashedly and unapologetically being herself. This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain. With writing that is both eloquent and accessible, Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural her parents�� volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist��; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all here, in raw, remarkable, and riveting detail. More than a year before the book’s publication, Fox’s description of it as “a masterpiece�� in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. Down the Drain is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.]]> 336 Julia Fox 0008637946 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.31 2023

author: Julia Fox
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)]]> 60092579 Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance from the author of the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet.

Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.

When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

Then Noah starts to see a different side of Rae Rose—she's Amelia: kindhearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye. He can't help but get close to her. Soon she'll have to return to her glamorous life on tour, but until then, Noah will show Amelia all the charming small-town experiences she's been missing, and she'll help him open his heart to more.

Amelia can't resist falling for the cozy town and her grumpy tour guide, but even Audrey had to leave Rome eventually.]]> 320 Sarah Adams 0593500784 monicaslibrary 1 2025 3.88 2022 When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)

author: Sarah Adams
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Bear 55922101 Margaret Atwood

Lou is a shy and diligent librarian at the local Heritage Institute. She works monotonous and dusty hours long into the night but she has found nothing �� and no one �� to go home to. She has resigned herself to passionless sex on her desk with the Director of the Institute.

When she is summoned to a remote island to inventory the estate of Colonel Cary, she takes it as an opportunity to get out of the city, hoping for an industrious summer of cataloguing.

Colonel Cary left many possessions behind, but she didn’t expect the bear. She soon begins to anticipate the bear’s needs for food and company. But as summer blossoms across the island and Lou shakes off the city, she realises the bear might satisfy some needs of her own.]]> 167 Marian Engel 1911547941 monicaslibrary 0 2025 3.41 1976 Bear

author: Marian Engel
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Soft Core 221560862
Baby is a dancer at a strip club and at the age of 27, she’s feeling lost. It seems that only Dino, her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend can keep her afloat. So, when Dino disappears without so much as a kiss goodbye, she plunges headfirst into San Francisco’s shady erotic underground to find him.

Baby searches through dive bars and old haunts, at the club and at the sex dungeon where she has a part-time dominatrix gig. She encounters clients like Simon, a recluse paying her for increasingly bizarre “favours�� and a philosophizing suicide fetishist named ‘Nobody��, as well as coworkers like Emeline, the balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear.

It’s not long before she starts to find cryptic notes hidden in her belongings and realises her search is attracting the wrong kind of attention. With her grip on reality loosening and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to put together the pieces and find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first?

Manically smart, brutally funny and deeply sexy, Soft Core is a book about desire, fantasy, and true love �� like no other.]]> 352 Brittany Newell 0008670382 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.39 2025

author: Brittany Newell
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kill for Love 193438779
Kill for Love is a searing satirical thriller about Tiffany, a privileged Los Angeles sorority sister who is struggling to keep her sadistic impulses—and haunting nightmares of fire and destruction—at bay. After a frat party hookup devolves into a bloody, fatal affair, Tiffany realizes something within her has awoken: the insatiable desire to kill attractive young men.

As Tiffany’s bloodlust deepens and the bodies pile up, she must contend with mounting legal scrutiny, social media-fueled competing murders, and her growing relationship with Weston, who she thinks could be the perfect boyfriend. A female-driven, modern-day American Psycho, Kill for Love exposes modern toxic plasticity with dark comedy and propulsive plot.]]> 279 Laura Picklesimer 1951213866 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.64 2023

author: Laura Picklesimer
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.94 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop

author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)

author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Survive the Night 55628983
Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term. On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news - the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.

Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.

As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.

Meaning that she could very well end up as his next victim.]]> 336 Riley Sager 0593183169 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.51 2021 Survive the Night

author: Riley Sager
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sky Daddy 216247489 Subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming, Sky Daddy hijacks the classic love story, exploring desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she ��’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry�� one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.]]> 368 Kate Folk 059323149X monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.01 2025 Sky Daddy

author: Kate Folk
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Witchcraft for Wayward Girls 207611566 There’s power in a book��

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master�� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

author: Grady Hendrix
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Promise Me Sunshine 214269328 Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not

Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of... a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again�� list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.]]> 416 Cara Bastone 0593595734 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.23 2025 Promise Me Sunshine

author: Cara Bastone
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Holding the Reins (Silver Pines Ranch, #1)]]> 214490423 In this steamy cowboy romance, a woman returns to her family's ranch after a broken engagement and finds herself falling for her brother's best friend—the first novel in the Silver Pines Ranch series.

Take a deep breath and let go of the reins.

Cecilia “CeCe�� Ashby is finally escaping the toxic relationship that has consumed her entire adult life. She's returning to her hometown of Laurel Creek, Kentucky, and to her family’s equestrian ranch, unsure of what the future holds.

Nash Carter, the newly retired superstar of the Dallas Stars, is Laurel Creek's hometown hero, local business owner, and notorious bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fourth sibling in the Ashby clan. It’s been years since his days of tormenting CeCe with her older brothers Wade and Cole. So, when CeCe needs a job, he feels drawn to help her.

Nash ��’t seem to take his eyes off of his best friend's sister, and it seems she’s been staring right back, not without animosity left over from his childish teasing back in the day. Despite their initial reluctance, the fire between them ignites and it isn't long before they jump into the flames.]]> 400 Paisley Hope 0593977114 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.89 2024 Holding the Reins (Silver Pines Ranch, #1)

Holding the Reins (Silver Pines Ranch, #1)

author: Paisley Hope
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bunny (Bunny, #1) 53285047 We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library]]> 305 Mona Awad 0525559752 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 3.43 2019 Bunny (Bunny, #1)

author: Mona Awad
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin��-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass�� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,�� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ��’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 monicaslibrary 4 2025 4.29 2023 Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)

author: Abby Jimenez
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Rouge 157184735 From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother’s fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.]]> 383 Mona Awad monicaslibrary 3 3.54 2023 Rouge

author: Mona Awad
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 monicaslibrary 1 3.70 2022

author: Coco Mellors
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Bride (Bride, #1) 181344829 A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was��.

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.]]> 410 Ali Hazelwood monicaslibrary 2 3.98 2024 Bride (Bride, #1)

author: Ali Hazelwood
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Icebreaker (UCMH, #1) 61767292
Nothing will stand in her way, not even the captain of the hockey team, Nate Hawkins.

Nate’s focus as team captain is on keeping his team on the ice. Which is tricky when a facilities mishap means they are forced to share a rink with the figure skating team—including Anastasia, who clearly ��’t stand him.

But when Anastasia’s skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot.

Sparks fly, but Anastasia isn’t worried . . . because she could never like a hockey player, right?]]> 447 Hannah Grace monicaslibrary 2 3.75 2022 Icebreaker (UCMH, #1)

author: Hannah Grace
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> White Nights 26164164 A young, lonely man strolls the streets of St. Petersburg contemplating his solitude when he happens upon a young woman in tears. While escorting her home, the two strike up a conversation and soon become friends, meeting up at night to share their stories. When the young woman, Nastenka, explains that she was crying because she had been waiting for her fiancé who promised he would be back to marry her, the young man, despite his growing feelings toward her, promises to help her locate her beloved.

“White Nights�� is considered to be one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s best short stories and has been adapted numerous times for film in various languages.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

]]> 62 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1443448176 monicaslibrary 0 4.06 1848 White Nights

author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1848
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/04
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 monicaslibrary 0 3.90 1915 The Metamorphosis

author: Franz Kafka
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Piranesi 57507862 Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.

In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?

Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.]]> 245 Susanna Clarke 1526622432 monicaslibrary 0 4.23 2020

author: Susanna Clarke
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 monicaslibrary 0 3.94 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking

author: Joan Didion
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/02
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Play It as It Lays 39277832 214 Joan Didion 0007414986 monicaslibrary 0 3.91 1970

author: Joan Didion
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/09
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Just Kids 9437270 Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.]]> 288 Patti Smith 0747568766 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 4.30 2010 Just Kids

author: Patti Smith
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> The End of Loneliness 40265079 From internationally bestselling author Benedict Wells, a sweeping novel of love and loss, and of the lives we never get to live.

Jules Moreau’s childhood is shattered after the sudden death of his parents. Enrolled in boarding school where he and his siblings, Marty and Liz, are forced to live apart, the once vivacious and fearless Jules retreats inward, preferring to live within his memories--until he meets Alva, a kindred soul caught in her own grief. Fifteen years pass and the siblings remain strangers to one another, bound by tragedy and struggling to recover the family they once were. Jules, still adrift, is anchored only by his desires to be a writer and to reunite with Alva, who turned her back on their friendship on the precipice of it becoming more, but just as it seems they can make amends for time wasted, invisible forces--whether fate or chance--intervene.

A kaleidoscopic family saga told through the fractured lives of the three Moreau siblings alongside a faltering, recovering love story, The End of Loneliness is a stunning meditation on the power of our memories, of what can be lost and what can never be let go. With inimitable compassion and luminous, affecting prose, Benedict Wells contends with what it means to find a way through life, while never giving up hope you will find someone to go with you.]]> 272 Benedict Wells 0143134000 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.17 2016 The End of Loneliness

author: Benedict Wells
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Twice Shy 54663762 Can you find real love when you've always got your head in the clouds?

Maybell Parish has always been a dreamer and a hopeless romantic. But living in her own world has long been preferable to dealing with the disappointments of real life. So when Maybell inherits a charming house in the Smokies from her Great-Aunt Violet, she seizes the opportunity to make a fresh start.

Yet when she arrives, it seems her troubles have only just begun. Not only is the house falling apart around her, but she isn't the only she has to share everything with Wesley Koehler, the groundskeeper who's as grouchy as he is gorgeous--and it turns out he has a very different vision for the property's future.

Convincing the taciturn Wesley to stop avoiding her and compromise is a task more formidable than the other dying wishes Great-Aunt Violet left behind. But when Maybell uncovers something unexpectedly sweet beneath Wesley's scowls, and as the two slowly begin to let their guard down, they might learn that sometimes the smallest steps outside one's comfort zone can lead to the greatest rewards.

]]> 319 Sarah Hogle 059308554X monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.77 2021 Twice Shy

author: Sarah Hogle
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Crushing 63292408 No Hard Feelings.
Getting over someone is not that difficult. All you have to do is focus on every negative thing about them for the rest of your life until you forget to stop actively hoping for their slow and painful death, then get a haircut ...

Serial monogamist Marnie is running late to her own identity crisis. After a decade of twisting herself into different versions of the ideal girlfriend, she's swearing off relationships for good. Forever. Done. No more, no thank you.

Pretty inconvenient time to meet Isaac: certified dreamboat and the only man who has ever truly got her. It's cool, though, they're just friends, he's got someone else, and she has more important things to worry about. Like who she is, what she wants, and what the hell she ever saw in the love(s) of her life in the first place.

Flanked by overwhelmed new mum Nicola, terminally single Claud, and eternal pessimist Kit, Marnie reckons with the question: who are we when we're on our own?

Praise for No Hard Feelings:

'Funny, biting, vulnerable and unflinching, Novak's novel is like an ocean dip: a bit salty, very refreshing' Lauren Sams

'A gratifying, warm and funny debut' Books+Publishing

'No Hard Feelings is clever, funny and surprisingly sweet, and Penny captured my heart' Toni Jordan

'Wry and witty' Saturday Age

'Genevieve Novak's writing leaps off the page. Witty, observant and enormously compassionate for the travails of figuring out exactly who you are.' Meredith Jaffe]]> 368 Genevieve Novak 1460714768 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.85 2023 Crushing

author: Genevieve Novak
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Paul 59627481 A sharp, timely debut about a young woman's toxic relationship with an older man and her battle to free herself from the suffocating expectation to be "good"

When personal scandal forces her to leave Paris, Frances, a young British graduate student, travels to southern France one summer to volunteer on a farm. Almost as soon as she arrives, she is pulled into a relationship with the farm's enigmatic owner, Paul, a well-traveled older artist. Alone in a foreign country, drawn into his orbit, and eventually tangled up in his sheets, Frances starts to lose herself in Paul's easy, experienced charm. Yet over the course of three intense weeks, as she discovers more about Paul and the people surrounding him, she realizes that she's caught in an emotional battle of wills that threatens to stifle her voice and crush her autonomy. Coming to terms with what's happening to her and wresting control from an older man with dark secrets of his own are at the heart of this compelling, unsettling novel.

By turns the story of how a modern woman finds the inner strength to regain her sense of self and a fascinating exploration of the power dynamics between men and women, Paul is a deeply human novel that holds a mirror up to many of the issues that people confront today.]]> 304 Daisy Lafarge 0593538846 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.49 2021 Paul

author: Daisy Lafarge
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Girl's Story 51052058 A Girl’s Story, her latest book, Annie Ernaux revisits the summer of 1958, spent working as a holiday camp instructor in Normandy, and recounts the first night she spent with a man. When he moves on, she realizes she has submitted her will to his and finds that she is a slave without a master. Now, sixty years later, she finds she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman whom she wanted to forget completely. In writing A Girl’s Story, which brings to life her indelible memories of that summer, Ernaux discovers that here was the vital, violent and dolorous origin of her writing life, built out of shame, violence and betrayal.]]> 152 Annie Ernaux 1913097153 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.93 2016 A Girl's Story

author: Annie Ernaux
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daddy Issues 228048314 Sometimes love shows up where you least expectit—right next door.
A jaded twenty-something is stuck living at home, herlife on pause, when a single dad becomes her newneighbor, and unexpectedly sets her life—and herheart—into motion in this modern love story from thebestselling author of You, Again.

Praise for Kate
"This debut romance ticks all the boxes of a must-read, with plenty of bite giving it edge." Kirkus (*starred review*)

"A masterclass in banter." – Rosie Danan, bestselling author of The Roommate

"Fresh, witty, and utterly romantic.�� – Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis

"You ��’t help but enjoy every second of the ride.�� NPR, “Books We Love in 2023��

At 26, Sam Pulaski expected to be thriving in her academic career, living on her own in some exciting city. Expectations, meet reality. She has massive student loans from studying art history, a dead-end service industry job, a situationship that’s equal parts intoxicating and toxic. And she’s been crashing in her mom’s condo—at least it’s not a basement?—for the last five years. If she can finally get accepted into a PhD program and get out of Ohio, the adult life that’s been on hold for half her twenties will finally begin.

Her mom’s new neighbor, Nick, is the ultimate grownup. His adult life began the moment his nine-year-old daughter, Kira, was born. Her happiness is Nick’s only priority, especially in the wake of divorce. There’s nothing he won’t do for Kira–including giving up his globetrotting career for something more stable…like managing a chain restaurant.

Sam has zero interest in an ultra-dependable guy pushing forty; frankly, she’s a little afraid of kids. But with just one thin wall separating the two condos, Nick proves difficult to avoid. His quiet confidence forces Sam to grapple with the other men in her her emotionally derelict friend-with-benefits and her actually-derelict father. As her unexpected connection with Nick heats up (and steams up his minivan windows), Sam finds herself falling fast for a man whose life is steady and settled–while hers is anything but.]]> Kate Goldbeck 0593730828 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 5.00 Daddy Issues

author: Kate Goldbeck
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Summer Romance 198563734
There aren’t enough labeled glass containers to contain the mess that is Ali Morris’s life. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. She’s a professional organizer whose pantry is a disgrace.

No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her in the same way he claimed his favorite of her three children: by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees. The last thing Ali needs is to make her life messier, but there’s no harm in a little Summer Romance. Is there?]]> 321 Annabel Monaghan 0593714083 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.01 2024

author: Annabel Monaghan
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women ��’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach monicaslibrary 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People

author: Alison Espach
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Seven Year Slip 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston monicaslibrary 3 2025 4.17 2023 The Seven Year Slip

author: Ashley Poston
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Excellent Women 178565 Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,�� the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 014310487X monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.92 1952 Excellent Women

author: Barbara Pym
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Done and Dusted (Rebel Blue Ranch, #1)]]> 195530544
For the first time in her life, Clementine “Emmy�� Ryder has no idea what she’s doing. She’s accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.

Luke Brooks is Meadowlark’s most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He’s also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy’s older brother’s best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. It’s been years since he’s seen her, but when she walks into his bar and back into his life, he ��’t take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgment, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.

Emmy’s got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friend’s younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?]]> 346 Lyla Sage 0593732421 monicaslibrary 4 2025 3.91 2023 Done and Dusted (Rebel Blue Ranch, #1)

author: Lyla Sage
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)]]> 55659629
Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper ��’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.

Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.

Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl�� who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong. ]]> 397 Tessa Bailey 0063045656 monicaslibrary 3 3.91 2021 It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)

It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)

author: Tessa Bailey
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Conversations with Friends 35285193 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780571333134.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex ménage-à-quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.]]> 323 Sally Rooney monicaslibrary 5 favourites, 2025 3.86 2017 Conversations with Friends

author: Sally Rooney
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: favourites, 2025
review:
I ��’t believe I read this at 23 while being at the lowest point of my life right now..maybe I needed to feel something again and this book just did it
]]> Talking at Night 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie ��’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just ��’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.91 2023 Talking at Night

author: Claire Daverley
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Exciting Times 50175419 An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer

Ava moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.

When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands.

Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her. Ava has been carefully pretending that Julian is nothing more than an absentee roommate, so when Julian announces that he’s returning to Hong Kong, she faces a fork in the road. Should she return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?

Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice.]]> 243 Naoise Dolan 0062968742 monicaslibrary 0 to-read 3.20 2020 Exciting Times

author: Naoise Dolan
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Malibu Rising 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he ��’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 4.02 2021 Malibu Rising

author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/12
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 monicaslibrary 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/16
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Either/Or 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 monicaslibrary 4 favourites 4.00 2022 Either/Or

author: Elif Batuman
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> My Body 59808053
Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.

My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.]]> 237 Emily Ratajkowski 1250848938 monicaslibrary 4 favourites 4.08 2021 My Body

author: Emily Ratajkowski
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 4.21 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray

author: Oscar Wilde
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> Wuthering Heights 32929156 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Emily Brontë's only novel, a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence, the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights is the definitive edition of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.]]> 359 Emily Brontë 0141439556 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 4.04 1847 Wuthering Heights

author: Emily Brontë
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> Everything I Know About Love 46041465
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else�� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones�� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.]]> 368 Dolly Alderton 0062968785 monicaslibrary 5 favourites 3.98 2018

author: Dolly Alderton
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> The Bell Jar 395040 The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.]]> 244 Sylvia Plath monicaslibrary 5 favourites 4.07 1963 The Bell Jar

author: Sylvia Plath
name: monicaslibrary
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/11
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: favourites
review:

]]>