the sunday lit: August 2024

"she updated her goodreads page religiously, not to leave reviews but just to ensure that she had some kind of record of every book she’d ever read."

Asa is the heart and soul of 'Cold World' theme park. He is everyone's favorite, except for Lauren's, the bookkeeper to the business. She finds him aloof and unserious, a polar opposite to her list-keeping, taking-everything-seriously self.

'Cold World' is a struggling winter attraction in Florida, an cold place in a hot state. But an icy area with a snow globe and an ice rink also has hot drinks and a cozy atmosphere that melts your heart. It’s just like Lauren and Asa. Lauren is aloof, introverted, and seen as an ice queen. Asa is relaxed, bright, and gets along with everyone. But nothing is like it seems. There’s so much under the surface.

When their boss asks them to work on a project to save Cold World, Lauren realizes she got it all wrong. Everything about Asa is warm, from his jokes to his ever-present smiles to the tattoos she can’t stop wondering about. Maybe it’s time to get out of her shell and let Asa show her what it's like to let it go.

Lauren has a crush on another man at the beginning of the book, but the author didn’t fail in the typical cliché of making her oblivious to her feelings towards Asa in order to use that as the third act problem. But she was never oblivious about how she felt when Asa was close, how good he smelled, how much she wanted to follow his tattoos as they disappeared behind the t-shirt.

This romance was sweet and adorable and at times hard-hitting. Both main characters have internalized trauma from their past holding them back from aspects of their life. I fell in love with Lauren, who kept her distance because she believed people would leave her eventually, and I adored the easy-going sweet Asa, who had been thrown out of the house at eighteen like he was a piece of garbage. But despite their differences, their chemistry and connection was amazing.

In the end, this was okay. I much prefer her previous book “Love in the Time of Serial Killers” and this one wasn’t as fast paced. It dragged on sometimes, and I struggled to connect to the protagonists for a while there. I’m not an expert, but there also seems to be an issue with Asa’s bisexuality being only sort of a “quirk” on paper, not properly explored. And the relationship with his estranged, horrible, parents may not have been handled in the best way by the author.

Nonetheless, I did like this, and am looking forward for more titles by Alicia Thompson.

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"in every universe, it's you for me. even if it's not me for you."

I am obsessed with Emily Henry's writing and her characters. Like, she truly has me in the palm of her hand and I will eat up whatever she's serving. This is the fourth of her novels I've gone through this summer and damn, what a journey it was. I wish I could read all of them for the first time again.

Happy Place is, despite its cheery title and cover art, not very happy. It tells the story of Harriet and Wyn, two exes who ended their eight-year long relationship five months ago, but have not told anyone. They share a friend group and, with a mix of denial and fear of tearing the group apart, they kept this painful thing to themselves, pretending that everything was alright, that they were just doing long-distance. It's an adult story of friendships evolving, of miscommunication in all sorts of relationships, about how operating with fear of a thing can drive you to end up with the feared result anyway.

Harriet, or Harry, is a doctor, a future neurosurgeon who is working in hospitals in San Francisco. She's very smart, very impressive and very, very unhappy. The job she's been working towards what feels like her entire life is draining and making her miserable. She knows she made a mistake following this path but is gripped by fear of giving up - of being a disappointment, of letting anyone down. The false cheery facade she puts on to make things easier is what is breaking up all of her relationships and she needs to come to terms with herself - who she is, what she wants and how to get it.

Wyn is not the smartest of the friend group. This is a big insecurity of his, instilled as we later find out by people praising his brainiac sisters but not expecting much of him at all. Despite having a great childhood and lobing supportive parents, he still feels inferior and goes off to college simply because everyone else was doing it and he wanted to be one of those impressive people. This sore point is something that has a role in the dissolution of his and Harriet's relationship as he had always felt unworthy of her.

Harriet and Wyn have been spending a week every summer in their friend's Sabrina's father's house in Maine for a decade. The whole group, Sabrina and Parth, Cleo and Kimmy, Harriet and Wyn, have been getting together and making the most amazing memories. This summer, though, Harriet is faced with the fact that she finally has to tell her friends about the breakup, has to risk everyone's anger and the dissolution of the group. But when, despite their agreement, she sees Wyn in the house - and Sabrina and Parth announce that they'd be getting married that week, as well as that Sab's father is selling the house soon, it becomes clear that they cannot tell the truth and taint this last week.

And so they keep up the ruse, are affectionate in front of the group and pretend like everything is fie. But nothing is fine. And so, we keep a dual timeline: the real life, the events of this one summer when everything these people have been keeping bottled up comes to a head, and happy place, the memories Harriet comes back to - memories not just of their summer but of Wyn, he true happy place, her home. Noting goes according to plan, and we watch as this group of adults finally grapple with the fact that they're grown ups now, that their lives are going in different directions, they cannot share all their secrets and it's time for their relationships to change.

I loved reading about all they dynamic. Each character was different enough and had their own little story, but it made absolute sense why they would be friends. The conflicts were believable and understandable - there are things you cannot share with everyone, some secrets are too painful, some are too delicate, but the way the conflicts are resolved just made me tear up. Actually, a lot of this book made me tear up, I was a mess. I especially loved Wyn, whose tenderness towards Harriet broke my heart, his feelings of unworthiness and inferiority, but the love her had for her no matter if it was reciprocated... I wanted to hug him so many times. Watching their relationship break down in the flashbacks was so painful because it was avoidable, and yet it was all the sweeter when they finally aired out all the things held back. I was rooting for him and Harriet so badly, I loved their ending.

What else to say then - go read this. Read all the EmHen books. She's brilliant and will be a favorite as longs as she keeps publishing masterpieces like this. I can't wait for her to break my heart again and then put it all together even better that it was before.

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"sometimes the best way to show love or be kind to someone is to meet them where they are."

Justin and Emma both have the curse: their exes all find their soulmates after dating them, while they remain alone. They met via Reddit, of all places, on his thread where he asked AITA for naming his ugly dog after a friend who met his soulmate after she dated him. Emma contacted him because she had a similar situation happen to her, and they hatch a plan too date each other to cancel out the curse.

Well, that is the lighthearted premise. The story, however, delves much deeper and is much heavier than the surface would suggest.

Emma is a travel nurse who moves from town to town every three months with her friend Maddy. She doesn't linger anywhere is supposed to go to Hawaii next. The idea to break the curse appeals to her and so she changes their plans and come to work in Minnesota instead, to meet Justin. Slowly, we learn that she is a foster kid with a complicated relationship with her mother - which leads to a complicated relationship with everyone else. She was abandoned as a child when Amber would simply disappear, yet she always hoped her mom would come back and had so much faith in her. She is the reason she never lingers anywhere long enough to put roots or get attached, her whole life fits into two suitcases she keeps under her bad for easy getaway.

Justin is a software engineer whose life is about to get very complicated. Set aside his relationship issues, he is soon to become the sole guardian of his three younger siblings because his mother is going to jail for embezzlement. This comes on the heels of his father dying as well, which strengthens his anger and the resentment he feels toward his mother for basically ruining his life. When he meets Emma, though, he is immediately smitten and knows this 'just for the summer' curse-breaking arrangement they hatched would not be enough for him. But as he gets to know her, despite longing and hoping, he realizes that she cannot love him and would never be willing to stay for him.

Everything is thrown into chaos when Amber, Emma's estranger mom, shows up and seduces their landlord Neil, the head of the surgical department Emma and Maddy are working in. She is charming and lovely, but you can immediately see that Emma has rose colored glasses on as her mother doesn't really see her. Despite Maddy's warnings to be careful and not get her hopes up, Emma is crushed when her mother starts slipping into one of her episodes again. This all makes her flight response flare up because she's getting closer to Justin and his siblings - living with them, actually, being part of the family, which terrifies her. Everything comes to a head when, on her birthday, she finally looks at her DNA results and finds out she has family, despite Amber's insistence that they had nobody. Emma spirals when she meets her half-brother and faces the life she could have lived, if only her mother hadn't lied, if she hadn't hidden her away like a secret. This leads to a spiral and she realizes she must leave Justin for his own good, as well as get some help to work on her issues.

The main relationship is really touching. I absolutely love Justin. He is tender and soft-hearted, a good provider for his family and so, so patient and tender with Emma. He gives her space, and shows affection in ways that are acceptable to her. Even when she leaves him, he accepts it and wallows without burdening her with his heartbreak. I wanted the best for him, truly, my favorite character in the book. I also appreciate how Emma worked on herself in order to be a good fit for this family that felt like hers, in order to not be like her mom and create more trauma for them. They really earned their happy ending.

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"when two people were equally determined to protect each other, it didn't matter how often they spoke; some things often went undiscussed."

This is a story of a small town that is finding its way and the quirky cast of characters who inhabit it, with just a dash of romance. Redford, Georgia never changes, but suddenly finds itself in an uproar when Jasper, the beloved but eccentric and wealthy benefactor, passes away.

As a surprise, it is revealed at Jasper's funeral that he has devised an elaborate scavenger-type game for the town and that the winners will get to split the 10 million dollar prize. He has also made up the teams in advance - everyone is paired up and it soon very obvious that he had a ulterior motive because all the couples have some friction between them. Each team consists of a pair that have clashed in the past but must now set their differences aside in order to claim the prize.

Jasper's grandson, Carter, arrives to town to his funeral and is soon pulled into the game, along with everyone else. He never expected to spend the summer in the town he heard so much about, but this had to change. What was also surprising to him was the reception he got from the townspeople - they were all very suspicions of him and don't really treat him well.

Our other protagonist is Jess, a local book editor, who is kept homebound by the town's charm and the fact that is remains the same, with no changes at all. She is content with her job and taking care of her single father after her mother left them. She is paired up with Nikki, her high school friend turned nemesis - after she "stole" her then boyfriend. There's also a romance involving Nikki and Jess' dad.

The game portion of the novel dragged on and on and the characters were pretty immature about the whole thing. There were petty pranks and hijinks, and I was especially annoyed by Jess' childlike behavior that took me out of the story when it was exhibited. Another con was the number of characters and plots to keep track of, and the story was told through multiple points of view - this meant I just couldn't get into any of the character's stories nor really care about them. The book struggled to cover too much ground and reading it felt like constantly being pulled in different directions.

I don't think I'll be reading anything else by this author, since neither the vibe nor the writing were to my taste, though I was obviously intrigued by the synopsis. It was simply badly executed and I never got to care about the story much.

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"it bothers me that what we're doing here can be filed away as fake when it's the most real thing i've felt in my life."

Beau Eaton is the closed off brother of the series. He is in the military as part of Canada's most elite task force and cannot speak of it with anyone in his family. Bailey, whom we met before is a bartender at the local bar and a part of the town's most outcast family. I wasn't too excited for their story because we didn't really see much of these characters in previous books, but still wanted to read it.

Beau is back home, discharged from the military, after being MIA and getting badly injured. We learned of this is in Jasper's book, when we were told that Harvey went to see him as he was severely injured. We learned that his feel were burned after he missed the chopper in order to save journalist who'd been a captive for while, and burned his feet to the point of needing skin grafts. This all makes him self-conscious and sullen. His behaviour attracts negative attention from locals, and even his family in threating on ice around him.

Baily belongs to the outcast Jensen family and her brothers are petty criminals we saw the Eatons pull pranks on previously. She works at the local bar, lives in trailer on her family's land, pays the mortgage for the house because her brothers' gave it as a condition to be able to part on their land, and saves up as much as she can to escape. Everyone looks at her with disgust and she cannot wait to leave and escape her family's tarnished reputation that follows her everywhere, despite her being a good person. She is even unable to get another job because of it.

And that is what leads to this relationship. As she sneaks into Beau's pond for a midnight swim, he catcher her. They start talking and he offers her a solution. They should pretend to get engaged - her reputation will improve in proximity t him and he can get his family off his back. Things, of course, escalate and soon real feelings are cropping up. But Baily is a young woman who's been lusting after Beau for a while and her horniness is off the charts. He tries to put up a wall but that doesn't last. They get intimate relatively quickly and he even shavers her pubic hair, so that should tell you something. Baily's also constantly asking slightly to very inappropriate questions about sex at the most random times, so that was something to surprise you.

I don't know. This is my least liked book of the series and it's probably because of the characters. They just weren't that interesting and their story was really lackluster. The random drama tacked in at the end just for the sake of having a conflict was truly baffling. And though I truly don't mind an age gap, sometime ever prefer it, these two were just too different. She was young but sounded younger than her age, very naive, and due to his life experience he felt even older than he was due to how jaded he came across. And it kept being brought up in the most creepy-vibes ways. It didn't feel like opposites attract to me and simply fell flat.

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"what's happening is miss independent met the treat-her-like-a-princess guy, and she's freaking out."

If you've read the previous installments of this series, you've already met out protagonists. Winter, Summer's sister, was introduced as the cold half-sister who had no relationship with Summer and who resented her as a permanent reminder of her father's infidelity. The last time we saw her she was reeling from the revelation of what her husband did to her sister. Theo is Rhett's young and wild protege, a bull rider who made his interest in Winter known from the get go.

With her marriage falling apart, Winter decides to pend more time working at the small Chestnut Springs hospital, much to her husband's chagrin. She hopes this will help bridge the gap and help repair her relationship with Summer, though she is unsure how to truly approach the issue. We learn that the harsh, cold facade was just a front to avoid family drama. She learned early on that being perfect and distant got her Mom to focus on her and not focus so harshly on Summer. She loved her sister and longed for a playmate, a friend - but had to hide it in order to keep the peace.

Theo Silva is on top of the world. His career is blossoming and his is on his way to world domination - to achieving the dream of getting close to his late father's legacy. He is notorious for his playboy persona on the circuit as well, though lately the hookups don't hold much appeal. After a hookup with Winter, he aims to clean his act up and make himself a man deserving of a woman like her. He focuses on his job and doesn't even look at other women. He has a great relationship with his mother, whom he calls regularly to talk about anything and everything. He called her after he first slept with Winter to tell her he had found the woman he will marry. *my heart*

When the two reconnect, Theo finds out that Winter's daughter Vivi is in fact his - a product of the reckless night they spend together. He is instantly enamored with her and so eager to be a father. He is sad to have missed so much time, but still lets Winter decide what she's comfortable with - who and when to tell, how much time he gets to spend with his daughter. He truly is an amazing man and a great father, I was so glad to see Winter have him in her life to lean on, to support her. They deal with everything so well, and he truly stands up for her but doesn't fight her battles. Probably the best male character in the series. A man written by a woman, indeed

It was really touching getting to see Winter peel off her layers and get her redemption as the presumed villain in previous installments. She gets a backbone and severs the toxic relationships with her husband and mother. She is finally appreciated and loved in a way she deserves but never was. She has so many people in her life by the end - a partner, a daughter, a sister, brothers, friends, in laws... It's truly heartwarming to see her world expand witch such warmth.

Winter and Theo are opposites - she's withdrawn, solitary more serious and he is the jokester, the extrovert; yet they match so well, and love each other so deeply it's just so lovely to see. Their bond is filled with understanding and tenderness, yet so much passion as well. Absolutely lovely story, despite the surprise pregnancy trope (I got so sad when Theo mourned the time lost with his daughter.)

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"remember nothing lasts forever. you have to hold on to the good things, knowing you may be on borrowed time with them. and with the bad, recognize that eventually it will pass."

Noelle lost her grandma six months ago, has been laid off and is back living with her parents in a room her mother repurposed to house her Peloton. Feeling lost, she goes though the boxes of ger grandmother's things, craving the connection she lost. When she stumbles upon photos of her very young grandma with a man she doesn't recognize, looking very much in love, Noelle makes a TikTok in order to find him.

It turns out the man is Paul, grandfather of her high school academic rival Theo, who is now a successful businessman and on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Noelle was great in her school, but once she got to college she was just one of the brilliant young people gathered there, her grades slipped and her confidence suffered a hit. So to see her nemesis so successful is a hit to the chest.

At their first meeting, Paul agrees to tell her his whole story with Kathleen, but asks for time in order to tell the story properly. They meet again at his house - where Theo seems to be as well due to a "mix-up" - and she learns that he spent his summers with his grandparents because his parents weren't the warmest people, and he always talked about Noelle. It is on one of these meetings that Noelle gets the idea to go on a honeymoon that Kathleen and Paul had planned before they broke up, and document it on her TikTok.

Theo seems to be frustrated and, looking out for him, Paul suggests they all go on this trip, to get him away from whatever situation he's in. Reluctantly, he agrees. The phone calls keep coming during the trip, and on one occasion, in order to distract him from the gloomy mood, Noelle shares a secret with him - and he shares one back; a tradition she had with her grandma. The trip goes on, and Noelle and Theo get closer and closer, with rescues, kisses and heated moments all around.

Once back home, reality crashes down on them. Noelle has to talk to her parents about the real reason behind her trip, and Theo's secret conversations turn out to be about his company. He and Noelle have to come clean completely and trust each other in order to let their budding relationship blossom.

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About Me

I blog from time to time about things that inspire me. Lately, I have been getting back into the habit of reading, and my posts reflect that. I'm also always trying to take pretty photos, with varying degrees of success.

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