Tag: 4-Star

Book Review:: Before We Were Us | Denise Hunter

Life is good. After struggling through so much of life, you’ve finally found the place you belong, and the one who is meant to stand by your side. Then, in the blink of an eye, all the memories of discovering these things are wiped from your mind. Before We Were Us is the story of Lauren Wentworth, who fell from a ladder and lost an entire, formative, summer.

Before We Were Us Denise Hunter Book Cover. New Hampshire Latefront in fall foliage.

As a new college graduate, Lauren took a job as the manager of a tourist lodge in New Hampshire as a condition to winner her dream job in Boston: being a bona fide party planner at one of the most prestigious firms in New England. It’s her chance to prove her capabilities to her future employer and she won’t let anything get in the way of the future she’s dreamed of for so long. Except one day she wakes up in the hospital and finds that four months have passed since her last memory, and suddenly the owner’s son she couldn’t stand is saying that somehow they’ve been in a loving relationship all summer long. The two realities are impossible to reconcile in her head, and she’s unsure if she wants to regain her lost memories.

Jonah, her almost fiancée, is devastated. Just on the cusp of their happily ever after, the woman he loves is suddenly all but repulsed by him. He steps back, gives her the space she desperately needs, and waits for her. All he can hope for is that she’ll remember their time together, but when nothing changes even weeks after her injury, he isn’t sure what their future might hold.

What a concept! I think a premise like this naturally tugs at our human heartstrings. Memory is fallible, and so deeply, deeply personal. You can’t convey to another person exactly how something felt, or how it affected you. Even journals probably couldn’t evoke the same feelings if you don’t have the memory to accompany it. You can try. Lord knows, we all try. That’s what literature is. Poetry, and music too…all art in its various shapes forms strives to capture and convey human emotion.

This is a very strong story with many moments of sweetness and heartbreak and necessary, if reluctant, soul searching. There are strong examples of family with themes of overcoming hardships and long-held grievances. Jonah was exemplary in his role as supportive, loving partner. Finding out that Thomas Nelson is a Christian publisher is not surprising. Though I wouldn’t say this book is blatantly religious, but it does serve as a good example of what I imagine a healthy religious practitioner should look like. It’s not a story about characters making conflict-ridden choices, but rather navigating difficult circumstances with all the nuance it entails.

Any reader, especially of romance, might enjoy this story. I know I did. I was lucky enough to be chosen as an advanced listener by netgalley and the publisher. The narrator, Kim Churchill, did a wonderful job.

Details

Title:: Before We Were Us
Author:: Denise Hunter
Genre:: Contemporary Romance
Publisher:: Thomas Nelson
Length:: 304 pages
Audio Length:: 9h 9m
Audiobook Narrator:: Kim Churchill
Audiobook Publisher:: Thomas Nelson
Published:: September 10th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars
Spice Rating:: 1 (smooches only)

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[Hardcover] [Paperback] [eBook] [Audible]

If you liked this book, check out…

It’s All Relative | Rachel Magee
Hello Stranger | Katherine Center
Funny Story | Emily Henry

Book Review:: Counting Miracles | Nicholas Sparks

Do you believe everything happens for a reason? Jasper did, once. Now, after an insurmountable tragedy he’s convinced God has abandoned him. He hasn’t lost his faith entirely though, because when a white deer shows up in the forest surrounding his property, he takes it for the symbol it is: a harbinger of change.

Counting Miracles Nicholas Sparks Book Cover | Old man and his dog walking away into the North Carolina autumnal forest

A veteran named Tanner is on the search for his father-a man he’s never known, nor known anything about until his grandmother’s deathbed confession, when she left a note with his name & the town he lived in. He’s a drifter, never staying in one place too long or committing to anything but his job. On his first day in Asheboro North Carolina his brand-new sports car is backed into by a teenaged driver and changes the trajectory of his trip. He’ll be in town far longer than anticipated, and the young girl’s mother is one of the more interesting women Tanner’s ever met. Kaitlyn is her name, and her young son is friendly with Jasper, the old man living nearby who teaches him to whittle.

This tale weaves these characters together in interesting and emotional ways. The narrative bounces between Tanner, Kaitlyn, and Jasper’s voices. There is mystery, tragedy, hope, parenting struggles, romance, and a whole lot of facing reality thrown in too. There are real family relationships, and a religious throughline that is, if not convincing, at least something to make you ponder.

For most of the book the prose felt quite calming to read. It has a nice steady rhythm that kind of lulls you as you read into this serene sort of interest. I haven’t read many characters like Tanner. He’s a middle-aged bachelor who is just cruising through life to whatever the next opportunity may be. He doesn’t seem to have a destination in mind, just enjoys the ride along the way. And Jasper, sweet Jasper. His only companion is his beloved dog and Mitch, Kaitlyn’s son. He lives in a cabin built by his father’s hands living out his days in as much peace as he can manage. Until that dang deer shows up.

For Kaitlyn, who is divorced, the romantic fling that begins to develop with Tanner is a risk. He’s just visiting, and she has a lot to lose. I really enjoyed reading this romance from her perspective.

I’ve never read a Nicholas Sparks book before, though I’ve seen a few movies based on his writing (The Notebook, obviously). While I wasn’t blown away by its brilliance, the experience of reading it was really nice, and I’ll certainly read more of his backlist! Do you have any recommendations on which I should read (there are so many!).

This is an arc review & my honest opinions.

Details

Title:: Counting Miracles
Author:: Nicholas Sparks
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Random House
Length:: 368 pages
Audio Length:: 10h 45m
Audiobook Narrator:: Holter Graham & Nicholas Sparks
Audiobook Publisher:: Random House Audio
Published:: September 24th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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Author Website
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If you liked this book, check out…

The Last Love Note | Emma Gray
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife | Anna Johnston

Book Review:: Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour | Nora Nguyen

(You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing the way to type the correct characters for the Vietnamese names/words in this review – I wish I did, it’s so beautiful!)

Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour Nora Nguyen Book Cover

Evie’s Auntie Hao leaves her San Franscisco row house to Evie in her will, with the condition that she goes on the flagship matchmaking tour of the new, exclusive, Love Yeu company. It’s three weeks in her father’s home country of Vietnam, a place Evie never got to visit with Auntie Hao, as they had once dreamed of. With her career as a poet in a stagnant lull, and a recent betrayal in her romantic relationship, she has nothing to lose. Adam is Love Yeu’s CMO, having left a lucrative job in business to help get his sister’s matchmaking tour business off on the right foot. After a disaster of a previous relationship, love is the last thing he’s looking for, but his sister convinces him to join the tour anyway, so he can get firsthand experience of the company’s offerings.

Adam’s family is wealthy and very traditional. Patriarchy is very rampant in the family culture, and everyone is expected to play their role. In contrast, Evie lives largely on a whim. Above all, she is free. It attracts Adam immediately, and holds his attention, even when he tries to talk himself out of it.

Vietnam sounds incredible. The wild(er)ness, the history, the people, the food; Nguyen’s writing makes the tour experiences pop off the page. In a book about a matchmaking tour there is obviously quite a large cast of characters required. I found myself skimming over some of the dense character scenes, because I knew most of them weren’t playing a crucial role. I didn’t care much about the extraneous characters. The ones who did stick out though, were beautifully complex and compelling, especially our two leads.

One character I didn’t jive with was Ruby, Adam’s sister. At the beginning she seemed okay, she was the one who got Adam to agree to go on the matchmaking tour, however, she quickly changed her tune when he started actually getting something out of it. She was the great Reversing Ruby, with a heavy side of Negative Nancy thrown in. And I didn’t care much for her overall, even given the third act revelations about her.

The themes were well integrated and supported by backstory, however, I felt like it could have probably been shorter. Some things felt revisited a few too many times, or a little too blatantly. Overall though, the story was done very well.

This book is a great escape. Beautiful scenery, lots of heart, growth, and passion. Definitely worth your time!

This is an arc review & my honest opinions.

Details

Title:: Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour
Author:: Nora Nguyen
Genre:: Romance
Publisher:: Avon
Length:: 304 pages
Audio Length:: 10h 45m
Audiobook Narrator:: Ewan Chung & Viet Thanh Nguyen
Audiobook Publisher:: Harper Audio
Published:: September 24th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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If you liked this book, check out…

Summertime Punchline | Betty Corrello
PS I Hate You | Lauren Connolly
Sunshine & Spice | Aurora Palit

Book Review:: Wished | Sarah Ready

Do you believe in love at first sight? Anna does. She felt it the moment she laid eyes on her stupidly rich client, Max Barone. She is one of the cleaners for the jewelry magnate’s mega-mansion and might as well be invisible for as much as he notices her. But she notices him, and for three years she pines after him from afar.

Wished by Sarah Ready Book Cover

One day while cleaning, she finds a necklace with a note – it makes wishes come true. So she closes her eyes and whispers her most secret wish – that the two of them would be married. Realizing how silly that is, she takes it back, but before she can put the necklace back, he catches her with it, and fires her. Not exactly the way she was hoping to be noticed by him. But when she wakes up the next morning…she finds her dream came true.

Though there is plenty of humor and silly rom-com antics sprinkled throughout, this book is much deeper than the high-concept plot might appear. I found myself contemplating much bigger philosophical questions as I listened to the advanced listening copy I was provided access to by netgalley & the publisher (the narration was great, by the way). Questions of free will, honesty, self-sacrifice, what love is (or what it can be), and how we hold ourselves back because of mistakes we’ve seen modeled for us as we grow.

Max is lonely in that big ol’ mansion, and adamant that he will not repeat the mistakes of his father. Anna sees him in the way he keeps his house: the books he reads, the food he eats, the glimpses she gets of him when he works from home. Her life in a small Geneva apartment she shares with her mother and young sister is difficult, and dreaming of Max helps her cope. But will she feel the same when she gets to know him face to face?

This story is another instance of the age-old lesson: be careful what you wish for. Do valuable things have value if you don’t have to work hard to get them? And when she realizes the consequences of her mistakes, can Anna undo the phenomenon she set into motion?

I can tell how much thought and craft went into this novel, and I’m intrigued to read more from this series by Sarah Ready. If you’re a fan of magical realism, you’re really going to enjoy this novel!

Details

Title:: Wished (Ghosted #4)
Author:: Sarah Ready
Genre:: Romance
Publisher:: Swift & Lewis Publishing LLC
Length:: 313 pages
Audio Length:: 9h 36m
Audiobook Narrator:: Amanda Ronconi & Will Watt
Audiobook Publisher:: Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members’ Audiobooks
Published:: October 1st, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4.5-Stars
Spice Rating:: 3.5

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If you liked this book, check out…

Haunted Ever After | Jen DeLuca
Hello Stranger | Katherine Center

Book Review:: It’s All Relative | Rachel Magee

In It’s All Relative, Rachel Magee has crafted a tangled saga of blending families delivered with the levity of a fun romantic comedy.

It's All Relative Rachel Magee Book Cover

Helena’s mother is getting married, which means an extended stay at the Maddox family beach house with her soon-to-be family. She is happy about the wedding, she wants all the best for her mom, but Helena doesn’t fit in with the groom’s family, who she’s secretly dubbed ‘the perfects’ – and to top it off, she has a huge crush on her future sister-in-law’s fiancé, Gage. In a panic, she drags her closest friend Landon to the week-long getaway, but since she never used the family’s real names, they never realized the sister-in-law is actually Landon’s one-that-got-away in college. Amelia is her name, and she has packed the itinerary within an inch of its life with thoughtful activities and plenty of time for contingencies if anything goes wrong. She would do anything for her family. A week all together on an island should go smoothly, right?

The book starts off with a bang – so much conflict in so little time! It was very compelling to wonder how in the world this double romance was going to get pulled off, but she did it! I felt like everything was resolved satisfactorily by the end, with plenty of hijinks along the way.

There are a lot of underlying conflicts worked through in this book. Helena is struggling with the feeling of not belonging within her new expanded family, feeling like she’s ‘too much’. She is also grieving, on some level, the life she and her mother shared solo all those years before. Amelia is caught between duty and passion. She works for the family business and is marrying the ‘right’ guy, both of which are fine. Just, fine. Nothing in her life lights her up anymore. Being confronted with her past in Landon is a reminder of the girl she used to be, before she shouldered so much responsibility.

If you’re a no spice girly, rejoice! There is nothing untoward in these pages. Personally I like to follow the relationships a little bit longer so you do get into those moments of intense intimacy, but this was handled the way it was meant to. I think it would be maybe a little icky if anything went too fast, considering how things were set up at the beginning.

This is apparently a retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I have not read. I’m going to need to – I think it’d be so interesting to find out more about the inspiration material.

If you’re looking for a charming book to fall into to recharge or cleanse your palette between heavier books, this one is a great choice!

Details

Title:: It’s All Relative
Author:: Rachel Magee
Genre:: Contemporary Romance
Publisher:: Thomas Nelson
Length:: 336 pages
Audio Length:: 10h 1m
Audiobook Narrator:: Tanya Eby
Audiobook Publisher:: Thomas Nelson
Published:: August 6th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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Author Website
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If you liked this book, check out…

The Cheat Sheet/The Rule Book | Sarah Adams
The Perfect Putt | Annah Conwell

Book Review:: Wild Love | Elsie Silver

How often do you find a small-town romance AND the billionaire trope in one story? Look no further, fam – you’ve found it in Wild Love by Elsie Silver.

Wild Love Elsie Silver Book Cover

Ford Grant is ready to put down some roots, and he wants to do it in the only place that’s ever felt like home, the small town of Rose Hill, where he used to spend summers as a kid. He’s been very successful in business, but was burned by some collogues and is ready to set out on his own. Rosie just lost her job due to sexual harassment from her dirtbag boss, and she decides to go home to Rose Hill after her dirtbag boyfriend didn’t stand up for her. Ford is her brother’s best friend, and when she learns he is starting a new company in the area, she negotiates an office manager position to help them both out. One day, Ford gets a knock at the door and discovers a sperm donation in his distant past resulted in a teenaged daughter who needs his help. It isn’t what he expected, but with these two new ladies in his life, Ford realizes this might just be what he’d been missing all along.

This romance is fun, snarky, sweet, and sexy – probably the four most important adjectives for a romantic comedy! The stakes are low, but the journey is everything.

Rosie is the type of spunky FMC we love. She is fun and spontaneous and has a depth of feeling that pulls us in deep. She wants to do the right thing, but also follows her gut feelings, which have proven trustworthy so far.

Rosie and Ford have fantastic chemistry. The banter is top tier, and the professional e-mail signoffs between the two are laugh out loud funny. Rosie digs into her old journals of their summers together and leaves the entries for Ford to find, and I’m learning that whatever trope that is to be one of my favorites!

The relationships that the daughter, Cora, catalyzed were so special. She and Rosie have a special connection, but seeing Ford flounder and stand up for her in every possible sense was so charming. You learn all you need to know about a man’s character when he’s faced with a situation like that, and that’s how we know Ford’s a good one.

I’m not the greatest fan of the billionaire trope. I think this story would have been just fine if Ford was simply well off rather than richer-than-god. However, if it can be done well, it was in this book. The money adds a degree of power that is simply undeniable, and Ford wields it well.

The small town of Rose Hill absolutely charmed me. The quaint settings, the personalities, the obligatory small-town quirk (bowling league). It’s all gold, and I can’t wait to read more in Wild Eyes, coming out in September. If you’re looking for your next steamy romance fix, Wild Love is a safe bet.

Details

Title:: Wild Love (Rose Hill #1)
Author:: Elsie Silver
Genre:: Contemporary Romance
Publisher:: Bloom Books
Length:: 402 pages
Audio Length:: 11h 26m
Audiobook Narrator:: Zachary Webber & Vanessa Edwin
Audiobook Publisher:: Elsie Silver Literary Inc.
Published:: April 9th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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Author Website
Amazon Affiliate Links
[Paperback] [eBook] [Audible]

If you liked this book, check out…

Play Along | Liz Tomforde
The Rom-Commers | Katherine Center
Summertime Punchline | Betty Corrello

Book Review:: Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake | Mazey Eddings

Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake is a frazzled chaos of a sweet contemporary romance. Lizzie has ADHD and has been made to feel like she’s something that needs to be fixed, mostly by her own upper-class family, her entire life. When she finds herself accidentally pregnant, she’s forced to take herself and her wellness more seriously for the first time, and discovers she has a sturdier support system than she ever realized.

Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake, Mazey Eddings, Book Review, Book Cover

Our girl Lizzie is a f*ckgirl (the female version of f*ckboy, right?). She has a lot of casual sex, but never commits. She finds people don’t take her well. She’s too much. Forgetful, disorganized, messy- not an easy person to love. This is deeply ingrained in her psyche since childhood. It’s just who she is. Then she meets Rake, an emotionally-unavailable Aussie hunkster on a business trip who finds her quirks endearing. They shack up for a weekend and sparks fly. When Lizzie causes more chaos at work from being (morning) sick, it’s the last straw and she loses her job. She realizes the sickness is because she’s pregnant, and something alights within her, and she wants to do better, for both her and this new baby. Then she calls detail-oriented Rake to drop the baby-bomb on him, and she’s surprised when he drops everything to fly back to Philly to get their new situation figured out. Nothing about this new life is what Lizzie ever expected, but it just might be the best thing that ever happened to her.

The romance is a little unconventional. A two-night stand turns into these characters building their entire lives around one another. It’s almost a slow burn after the blazing bon fire of that first weekend together. They get to know each other on a deeper level in these circumstances than if they’d simply been ‘dating’, and there was something so wholesome about that. I really loved that Rake wasn’t letting the people in Lizzie’s life make her feel less than because of things she cannot control. He’s a great guy. Maybe even too great!

I feel conflicted about this book. The character arcs of both lead characters were well thought through, but some things in the plot seemed a little too forced in order to get there. My reflexive rating just after finishing it was 3-stars. However, the more I think about it, I think it might deserve another. There were enough flaws for me to knock it down to 3, but it was very unique in really leaning into something I don’t see often portrayed in contemporary romance. I think the representation here is important, and the conflict and self-discovery that results from it is meaningful.

While it is a fun and often light-hearted contemporary romance, it also made me think and feel things I wasn’t expecting. It’s nice sometimes to read books with unconventional lead characters, and this is a great example of that.

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Mazey Eddings Author Website

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Other Books You Might Enjoy if You Liked Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake

The Cheat Sheet & The Rule Book | Sarah Adams
Business Casual | BK Borison

Book Review:: Sunshine and Spice | Aurora Palit

The grass is always greener on the other side, but when you take the time to look around, you just might realize the blessings that surround you right where you are.

Sunshine and Spice, Aurora Palit, Book Cover, Book Review

Naomi recently struck out on her own as a brand consultant and is struggling to make ends meet. She is out of money and needs to win a redesign contract for a local Indian-Canadian bazaar or she might have to reevaluate everything. She has Indian heritage, but has never been engrossed in the Bengali culture, and it makes her self-conscious in a place that is so culturally vibrant. Meanwhile, Dev, the middle son of the bazaar owner, is dodging prospective wives sent by the matchmaker his mother hired. He has no interest in marriage, based on the experience he’s observed from the men in his own family. Soon, it becomes clear that he and Naomi could help each other. She could pretend to be a match for him, chasing away any others, and he could help her with decisions that would make the redesign feel authentic.

Dev feels suffocated by the Bengali culture his family celebrates. Large dinners and festivals that Naomi finds fascinating are standard fare for Dev, and he is critical of the way his father and brother have treated the women in their family. If that is his only option for marriage, he would rather never marry. But try telling that to his mother. He feels rebellious toward the pressure and control he’s feeling from his family – he just wants to be left alone.

Naomi’s mother left her culture behind once Naomi was born. She felt her family trying to control her and her decisions and cut herself and her daughter off from them by moving to a small rural town and marrying a white man. Naomi didn’t go to school with people who looked like her, and she didn’t eat Indian food at home growing up. As an adult she finds herself craving some of that culture, and soaks up every bit of it she gets to experience with Dev.

I enjoyed this story quite a lot. It was well plotted, giving the book constant forward momentum, and the characters were interesting. I don’t know much about Indian culture, and it was really interesting to read about it in the context of this book. Dev’s weekly big family dinners seem amazing. Like Naomi, I’d love to experience that sometime!

It is the personal dilemmas that drive the book, but the romance was nice too. Even though it is called Sunshine and Spice, I wasn’t really expecting it to be spicy. I guess the matchmaker/arranged marriage element made me think maybe it would be more modest, but there is definitely some spice later in the book.

This is a story about finding your roots and embracing your blessings. It’s about finding out who you want to be, even if it’s almost exactly the opposite of what you always thought it was. It’s about following your heart and deep connection. It’s about hard work and paving your own way. It is a rich tapestry of themes, layered with flavor and spice, just like almost any meal in traditional Indian cooking.

Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for providing an arc copy in exchange for an honest review. I’m so glad I got to read this one!

Details

Title:: Sunshine and Spice
Author:: Aurora Palit
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Berkley
Length:: 2336 pages
Audio Length:: 9h
Audiobook Narrator:: Soneela Nankani & Imran Sheikh
Audiobook Publisher:: Penguin Audio
Published:: September 10th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars
Spice Rating:: 4 (not erotica, but open door and explicit language)

Linky Links!!

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Aurora Palit Author Website
Amazon Affiliate Links
[Paperback] [eBook] [Audible]

If you liked this, check out…

The Kiss Quotient | Helen Hoang
Haunted Ever After | Jen DeLuca

Book Review:: Haunted Ever After | Jen DeLuca

Summer is the season for beach read romances. Fall is the season for darker stories of mystery and delicious twists. Haunted Ever After fills the gap between the two like it was conceived to bridge it. A ghost story romance set in a small-town in Florida is the perfect read for the end of summer as the days grow shorter, and the supernatural veil begins to thin.

Haunted Ever After Jen DeLuca Book Cover

Cassie Rutherford is looking for something to call her own. In a crazy real estate market, she ends up buying a flipped home in the tiny coastal town of Boneyard Key which boasts of being the most haunted town in Florida. Tourist towns all have a bogus kitsch to bring in money, but when strange things start happening around her historical home, and the locals claim authenticity, she realizes she may have been a little hasty in her move away from Orlando. But the sunsets from her backyard beach can’t be beat, and Nick Royer, the hunk who runs the cafe, might just be exactly what she’s been looking for.

Boneyard Key is the quirky, lovable setting we love in a small-town romance. The punny shop names, the locals-only hidden gems, the colorful cast of characters, and, of course, the gossip no one can ever escape.

Nick is a BK native with an abandonment complex that leaves him resentful toward outsiders and defensive about the town he grew up in. When Cassie has to use his shop to plug in her laptop so she doesn’t miss an important work meeting, he mistakes her for a workaholic tourist in a yummy, conflict-ridden meet cute I ate up like candy. Our lead characters both know who they are and are okay on their own, which makes their slow-fall romance all the more delicious.

The main conflict of the story is the mysterious haunting of the house Cassie bought. Abandoned for decades, she is the first person to reside in the house since the original owners in the early twentieth century. With the help of local historians, Buster the handyman, a bona-fide medium, and our hunky hero, they inch ever closer to the root of the issue.

I really appreciated that despite the twisty mystery, the tone remained in romantic comedy territory. This is a fun, light-hearted read that won’t scare you away with any dark twists. It has themes of female empowerment, strong community, and giving yourself permission to grow, change, and move on. This isn’t a psychological thriller, I had the twist figured out about a hundred pages before Cassie did, but it’s an interesting conflict that entangles and complicates the rising action of the romance.

I’m so glad I was fortunate enough to be chosen as an ARC reader for this book. I had a smile on my face through the whole thing. It was a joy to read, and I recommend it for any fan of romantic comedies!

Also, I now have an undeniable craving for a buffalo tender sub sandwich from Publix and a sunset walk on the beach. Unfortunately, I live in Colorado, so neither is in my immediate future – ha!

Details

Title:: Haunted Ever After (Boneyard Key #1)
Author:: Jen DeLuca
Genre:: Contemporary Romance
Publisher:: Berkley
Length:: 352 pages
Audio Length:: 10h 51m
Audiobook Narrator:: Jeannie Sheneman
Audiobook Publisher:: Penguin Audio
Published:: August 13th, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars
Spice Level:: 1

Linky Links!!

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Author Website
Amazon Affiliate Links
[Paperback] [eBook] [Audible]

If you liked this book, check out…

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Thank You for Listening | Julia Whelan

Book Review:: We’ll Prescribe You A Cat | Syou Ishida

Cats are the heroes of the internet. They bring smiles to even the grouchiest faces. But what happens when you go to someone for psychiatric help, and they send you home with one as treatment?!

We'll Prescribe You A Cat Syou Ishida Book Cover

Shuta is a timid corporate drone in Kyoto with low mental health. Nothing has seemed to work for him, and when he hears of a unique clinic through the grapevine, he decides to give it one last chance. He is miserable at his job, and after a desperate plea to be seen right away, the doctor prescribes him a cat to look after. Shuta is stunned, and takes the carrier filled with a cat named Bee and a large bag of supplies home with him in a stupor of shock, wondering how in the world he ended up here.

This is the first of four parables in this book about the mysterious Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Those in need of healing find themselves drawn in by the clinic by word of mouth and leave with a new feline companion. In each case, the cat draws attention to a true cause of turbulence in their life (whether they realized what it was beforehand or not), harking to a whole-istic type of medicine. Heal the soul, the rest will follow.

As the book progresses, an element of magical realism begins to seep through until it culminates in a resolution in the last chapter. I was happy to learn more about the elusive clinic-it is the string that runs through what would otherwise simply be a book of short stories.

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat has been translated by E. Madison Shimoda from the original Japanese. Something about the style makes everything feel a little bit exaggerated. The situations, the internal monologue of the characters, and even the dialogue. It feels like a cultural difference compared to more western-style novels, and it was refreshing to read, in a way. While there were plenty of details, it felt more descriptive than immersive for me.

This book is a charming reminder that humans need connection. Opening the door to new experiences will usually lead to new opportunities that would have otherwise passed you by. Sometimes the simple act of caring for another living creature is enough to bring us out of our own issues enough to make a meaningful difference. If nothing else, the cats in this book will make you smile.

Thank you to NetGalley & Berkley for sending me an ARC copy of this novel for free in exchange for an honest review.

Details

Title:: We’ll Prescribe You A Cat
Author:: Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda
Genre:: Literary Fiction
Publisher:: Berkley
Length:: 304 pages
Audio Length:: 7h 8m
Audiobook Narrator:: Naruto Komatsu & Natsumi Kuroda
Audiobook Publisher:: Penguin Audio
Published:: September 3rd, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

Linky Links!!

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[Hardcover] [eBook] [Audible]

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My (Not So) Perfect Life | Sophie Kinsella
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