Surviving Skarr

     

Title: Surviving Skarr

Series: Ice Planet Clones #2

Author: Ruby Dixon

Publisher: October 31, 2023

Pages: 300

Genre: Sci-Fi Romance

Overnight, my life has changed to one of sheer survival.

I wake up on a strange alien world covered in ice. I have no memories of myself, not even my name.

And I've resonated to the biggest braggart on the planet. Skarr is a chest-beating alpha male gladiator with lizard genetics and an intense case of self-love. He tells everyone within hearing distance how amazing he is. Bleh.

I want nothing to do with him, but according to the khui, we're soulmates. This means we're bound to have babies and live our lives out together...forever...

Not if I have anything to say about it.

To survive, I'm going to have to figure out who I am, what I am...and what to do about the man who won't shut up about how incredible and perfect I am.

It has to be an act... doesn't it?

As you can guess from the series title, these newbies to Not Hoth are clones. The issue is, a lot of them are illegal clones that don't have the knowledge of being a clone. So they have some access to their "original" memories, but they get to deal with the existential crisis of discovering that those aren't actually things that they have done. They haven't done anything. But some of the clones, specifically the gladiators, do know they're clones. I love it here.

Skarr is a lizard splice, and as you can imagine this does not work well on a frozen planet. He is also an egomaniac, so he's not the most popular guy. And yet, he is the first gladiator to resonate. 

Vivi really struggles with her clone-ness. A crisis of identity if you will. BUT. She was cloned from a woman with a survivalist father and a lot of really useful skills. She is also extremely shy and socially anxious. Which is the exact opposite of Skarr. He is not shy and he wants everyone to know he's the best. My favorite part of this was the way that they care for one another. They pick up the slack for each other and it's perfect. I can't wait to get to know Rem'eb!

Ratings

Stars: 3/5

Spice: 4/5

The Seven Year Slip

       

Title: The Seven Year Slip

Author: Ashley Poston

Publisher: Berkley, June 27, 2023

Pages: 348

Genre: Contemporary Romance

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.

I don't know what it is about 2024. I have been proposed to this year, and yet somehow grief is sneaking into all of my books this year. And they're all very very beautiful. But here is me manifesting that the grief remain entirely fictional. 

But Clementine is going through it. Grief is weird and it hits her in a big way, and she just sort of stops. She stops so much that she even slips backward in time, exactly 7 years if you hadn't guessed. And it's only then does she seem to start moving forward again. I love a dual timeline book, and this book was definitely that. Maybe even more than that when you get down to it. Maybe it's a Celtic knot of a timeline.

I love the magical realism in Ashley Poston's books. At least the 3 that I've now read. Check your trigger warnings for this book. I highly recommend it, but it deals with some heavy topics. 

Ratings

Stars: 5/5

Spice: 1/5

Apples Never Fall

            

Title: Apples Never Fall

Author: Liane Moriarty

Published: Henry Holt & Co., September 14, 2021

Pages: 474

Genre: Domestic Thriller

The Delaney family love one another dearly - it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other....

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father?

This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it their chemistry is palpable. But after 50 years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children - Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke - were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups and there is the wonderful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent, two are not so sure - but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their biggest match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.

Sometimes I truly love the surprises that I get when I don't read the blurbs for books. Like how I had no clue this was about a family of tennis players. I love tennis. 

I'm not sure why I was totally shocked about the fact that this didn't have a super tragic ending. It's like I'd forgotten the other Liane Moriarty twists. They contain tragedy, but are not super tragic. This was actually kind of beautiful. The story of a family and all of their love and mistakes.

The author is a master of a red herring and so good at leading you down some pretty dark paths. She makes her characters face their very worst selves, and then somehow she's there to remind you that the world will always regress to the mean. It's very very good. 

Ratings

Stars: 4/5

Past Present Future

           

Title: Past Present Future

Series: Rowan & Neil #2

Author: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Published: Simon & Schuster, June 4, 2024

Pages: 384

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

They fell for each other in just twenty-four hours. Now Rowan and Neil embark on a long-distance relationship during their first year of college in this romantic, dual POV sequel to Today Tonight Tomorrow.

When longtime rivals Rowan Roth and Neil McNair confessed their feelings on the last day of senior year, they knew they’d only have a couple months together before they left for college. Now summer is over, and they’re determined to make their relationship work as they begin school in different places.

In Boston, Rowan is eager to be among other aspiring novelists, learning from a creative writing professor she adores. She’s just not sure why she suddenly can’t seem to find her voice.

In New York, Neil embraces the chaos of the city, clicking with a new friend group more easily than he anticipated. But when his past refuses to leave him alone, he doesn’t know how to handle his rapidly changing mental health—or how to talk about it with the girl he loves.

Over a year of late-night phone calls, weekend visits, and East Coast adventures, Rowan and Neil fall for each other again and again as they grapple with the uncertainty of their new lives. They’ve spent so many years at odds with each other—now that they’re finally on the same team, what does the future hold for them?

Phew. I didn't see any trigger warnings at the beginning of this book, but I'll put some here. Trigger warning for depression and complicated parental relationships. 

Rowan Roth is back to being an uptight perfectionist. I really do like Rowan, but she also feels like a self-insert of my own consciousness into a book. It's kind of startling really to read your insecurities so perfectly described in a work of fiction. I am not so narcissistic to believe that no one else experiences perfectionism related anxiety, but this character does still make me uncomfortable. 

It's also a little hard not to resent her on Neil's behalf. Which is crazy because I think that Neil would be really offended by that. This could be some of that anxiety peaking through though. But Neil McNair really goes through it in this book. He's dealing with his long distance relationship and moving across the country and being depressed and figuring out how to cut your father out of your life. I mean. He really got the short end of the stick in this book. 

I do love that it all came back to scavenger hunts. Whenever they began to feel unmoored in their relationship they planned a cute little mini-Howl to recapture those feelings of the night they fell in love. And that was some solid A-Plus romance, my friends. 

Ratings

Stars: 4/5

Spice: 1/5

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

       

Title: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Series: Before the Coffee Gets Cold #1

Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Publisher: Hanover Square Press, November 17, 2020

Pages: 272

Genre: Magical Realism

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

I love how much this book makes me think. Is the cafe magic? Is it the coffee? Is it the family, or the women specifically? I love it. This is a beautiful modern fairy tale. 

I really enjoyed how the implementation of the rules set the frame of each of their stories. And how it fit so nicely into the importance of tradition and ritual of a coffee service. You see this cafe, and all of its workers and regulars in little snips. You see them on their good days and their bad days. It's really human at its heart, flawed and beautiful and hopeful. 

Ratings

Stars: 5/5

Imagine Me & You

           

Title: Imagine Me and You

Author: Lynn Camden

Publisher: June 2, 2023

Pages: 234

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Simone Larson is juggling it all: running her animal shelter, balancing the needs of a non-profit against the demands of her overbearing relatives. She’s not exactly the manic pixie fat girl she’d always dreamed she’d be.

Her childhood best friend, James Randall, is almost her complete opposite on every level. Lanky where she is round, serious where she’s carefree, meticulous, snarky… and, well, an accountant. But being with him feels like home.

James shouldn’t be this cranky about a weekend at a brand-new resort surrounded by lake and pine trees. He agreed to this fake dating scheme, after all. And the engagement ring certainly wasn’t her idea. That kiss on the dock? Just for show. But now she’s felt his hands on her body, and the perfect press of his lips on hers, she wants so much more. She’s imagining it all. She just has to risk losing her best friend.

I simultaneously want to visit this resort and shut them down with equal urgency. The setting is so beautifully described that I can't imagine never seeing it. But Simone's family sucks and I hope someone more ethical takes over ASAP. (I know it's not a real place, I just really want to visit a Canadian lake town, OK?!)

I loved these two. For best friends, their communication skills are atrocious, but we got there in the end. And when they were communicating, their chemistry and care was top notch. I loved how protective James was of Simone, and how Simone could get James to relax every once in awhile. But my biggest issue was that the way that they both hid from the other right after things got hot and heavy. They would tip just the other side of friendly and be fully in it, but then the tension would break and one or the other would run away. It was pretty frustrating.

Aside from that, this one hit on some heavy topics. I love a fake engagement, and the reason for this engagement was an absolute DOOZY. Are you kidding me? What a ride! I love that James made Simone face the ugly side of her gratitude to her family. Maybe he didn't have to do that quite so publicly, but he was absolutely right that it needed to be done. Just read it. It's really good, and I didn't even get into exactly how hot they are for each other. Chef's. Kiss.

Ratings

Stars: 4/5

Spice: 2/5

The Luis Ortega Survival Club

             

Title: The Luis Ortega Survival Club

Author: Sonora Reyes

Publisher: Balzer & Bray, May 23, 2023

Pages: 315

Genre: YA LGBT Fiction

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers—despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no. 

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done. 

Pay really close attention to your trigger warnings on this one. The author has done a really good job outlining them at the beginning of the book, but man. This definitely prickled all of my most testy emotions.

This book is somewhat of a nightmare. Beautifully written and compelling and important. But also scary and infuriating. Also full of hope, but then fiction gets to do that. I don't love that it makes me remember all of those news stories (and personal stories) that didn't have quite such a successful ending. 

If you can read something like this, I highly recommend it. If you can't, take care of yourself first. 

Ratings

Stars: 5/5