Sunday Skim

 

Week of 8/7/2022; 8/14/2022 and  8/21/2022:

Finished:

Currently Reading:

Looking Forward To:

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Julie's Review: Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club

Author: Roselle Lim
Series: None
Publication Date:  August 16, 2022
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 335
Obtained: publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: Nothing but some serious love for this one
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast. In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life. ~amazon.com 

Review: I have loved Ms. Lim's 2 previous books, so I knew I was just going to love this one and I wasn't wrong. Sophie is the kind of character you root for because she has trouble doing it for herself. 

She lacks self-esteem but right off the bat you know why she has none. It is her best friend that encourages her to keep following her dream of being a matchmaker even if her mother doubts her. It is moving into an apartment building that Sophie meets a group of men that call themselves the "Old Ducks" and they quickly become endearing to her. So much so that she offers up her services at a discount. 

Sophie has her plan for introducing herself to society but it really doesn't go as planned but a few positive things come out of it for her. She really does believe that matchmaking is her calling, she just didn't think the older generation would be her clientele but it turns out that they all need each and it works out lovely. 

I loved the nicknames she gave her clients but especially the Old Ducks. They seemed to really fit them even before she got to be close to them. For Sophie her journey was self-discovery while helping others find love. Her relationship with her parents is what is holding her back and she's not sure how to deal with it. With family it does come to a breaking point and eventually she gets to her breaking point. 

I chuckled a lot while reading Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club and I did shed a few tears as well. I think for all of us, even if we have strong family relationships, the lesson is that sometimes family isn't always blood and it can be the people you chose or those that chose you. 

If you haven't read Ms. Lim's books, I highly suggest you get to it. Sophie is a great place to start but don't miss her other two novels either. 

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Julie's Review: Wrong Place Wrong Time

Author: Gillian McAllister
Series: None
Publication Date:  August 2, 2022
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 411
Obtained: Amazon First
Genre:  Psychological Thriller
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: Twists and turns around all the corners
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened? Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody, his future shattered. That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake . . .. . . and it is yesterday. And then you wake again . . .. . . and it is the day before yesterday. Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it . . . ~amazon.com

Review: So yes this was Reese Witherspoon's pick for her August book club but I had it on my radar/shelf before the announcement. I will say upfront that it took me a little bit to find a rhythm with the story but I think that was me more than the book. It is a fast paced and then you add time travel to it, I had to read it slowly to make sure I understood the timeline jumps. 

To what end would you go to for your family, to protect your son? Would you mess up your past and possibly your future to save him from being charged with murder? I'm pretty sure that any mom reading this is shaking her head "yes". That is really the heart of this novel: a mother's love for her son above all else, even her marriage. 

I figured out a bit of the mystery about half-way through the story but there was a big twist at the end that I'm kind of annoyed I didn't figure out. I had to read the ending a couple times to make sure I was absorbing it. I really can't say more without ruining the book, so I won't. 😀

As far as time travel goes, there are books where I find it confusing but Wrong Place, Wrong Time is not one of them and I totally give credit to the author/copyeditor/editor who put the days as the chapter titles. 

This is the perfect book to sit and read in one or two sittings because you really won't want to put it down. 

Julie's Review: Mr. Perfect on Paper

Author: Jean Meltzer
Series: None
Publication Date:  August 9, 2022
Publisher: MIRA
Pages: 416
Obtained: publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4/5
Bottom Line: For me it wasn't about the romantic love for Dara but the love for her Bubbe
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: As the creator and CEO of the popular Jewish dating app J-Mate, matchmaker Dara Rabinowitz knows the formula for lasting love—at least, for everyone else. When it comes to her own love life, she’s been idling indefinitely. Until her beloved bubbe shares Dara’s checklist for “The Perfect Jewish Husband” on national television and charming news anchor Chris Steadfast proposes they turn Dara’s search into must-see TV.  As a non-Jewish single dad, Chris doesn’t check any of Dara’s boxes. But her hunt for Mr. Perfect is the ratings boost his show desperately needs. If only Chris could ignore his own pesky attraction to Dara—a task much easier said than done when Dara starts questioning if “perfect on paper” can compete with how hard she’s falling for Chris…~amazon.com

Review: Just because you are good at something professionally doesn't necessarily means it translates well personally. This is the case for Dara Rabinowitz who runs a successful dating app but hasn't had much luck in the love area herself. To be fair, it's not like she's really tried. I mean she's super busy running a successful company, taking care of her Bubbe Miriam and managing her anxiety. Dara is a type-A personality and that means she's very organized, particular and kind of likes being in control. Also, because of her generalized anxiety disorder, these things are really important for her mental health. It takes a lot for her to even prepare and do media for her company. So when her Bubbe Miriam joins her for a live interview on a local tv show and things go sideways, Dara is not at all prepared for the spiral it will send her life in. 

It's pretty obvious how the romantic love part of this books ends but for me it was more about her love and relationship with Bubbe than whom she would end up with in the end. It was so evident that Dara and Miriam had a pretty special relationship and some of that is because of their connection with being matchmakers. I loved how Miriam slyly pushed Dara out of her comfort zone to pursue happiness and love. 

Ms. Meltzer does a fantastic job of highlighting the difficulty of managing and living with a mental health issue. How it causes stress and anxiety in seemingly normal, every day tasks or situations. Years of therapy and medication have helped Dara manage it but she'll never be rid of it. I think that's an important statement. 

I also really enjoyed learning about the Jewish holidays and how many there truly are other than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that I was familiar with for a variety of reasons. 

If you are looking for a strong female protagonist and a novel about family, traditions and love, then look no further than Mr. Perfect on Paper. 

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Sunday Skim

 

Week of 7/24/2022 and 7/31/2022:

Finished:

Currently Reading:

Looking Forward To:

It's been a busy couple of weeks over here but travel baseball season is finally over. So it means I'm trying to catch up on here and my reading pile. It's hard to believe that school starts in a couple weeks here and both my kids will be in the same school for the first time since elementary. It's only a year as my daughter will be graduating in May!

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Monthly Rewind - July

* Denotes Audiobooks

Home Run (You should run and get this): 

*

Triple (You really don't want to miss it):

*

Double (You could get on the waiting list at the library and be ok):

*

Single (Wait it out): N/A

Strike Outs (Don't bother):  N/A

So I read way more than I thought in July! I guess it helps reading 3 YA novels in 24-48 hours helps. Not as many audiobooks as June but still a good amount for July. I think from now on Simone St. James books will just be on audio because they are really good listens. I highly recommend The Work Wife for a good women supporting women novel plus the insight to how Hollywood really runs their homes. The Lies I Tell is a great mystery/thriller and has a great ending. 

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