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Fangirl
RECOMMENDED: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell is $2.99! I believe this is a Kindle Daily Deal that’s being price matched elsewhere. Sarah reviewed this book and gave it an A-:
The TL;DR: this book is wonderful. It’s so much empathy and understanding and emotion layered into narrative form I can’t even tell you.
A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan…
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
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Time Served
RECOMMENDED: Time Served by Julianna Keyes is 99c! This is a contemporary romance with an ex-con hero and it was mentioned on a previous podcast with Jane, who recommends Keyes if you like “moody loner dudes:”
You kind of have two unlikeable people. They reconnect after he’s out of prison. She’s a lawyer. She’s trying to angle for a promotion within her law firm, and they’re working on this class action suit regarding medical illnesses caused in a, a factory. So she runs into him again. There’s a lot of attraction there, lot of unresolved issues, and she can’t really bring herself to admit that she wants him, so he says, you don’t have to admit it, you only have to say no, which she never does. I thought it was a very gritty book, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Dean Barclay had nothing to do with my decision to flee my old life, but he is 100 percent of the reason I vowed to never look back.
I’ve never forgotten how it felt to follow Dean—dangerous, daring, determined—away from the crowd and climb into his beat-up old Trans Am. I was sixteen and gloriously alive for the first time. When I felt his hand cover my leg and move upward, it was over. I was his. Forever.
Until I left. Him, my mom, and the trailer park. Without so much as a goodbye.
Now Dean’s back, crashing uninvited into my carefully cultivated, neat little lawyerly life. Eight years behind bars have turned him rougher and bigger—and more sexually demanding than any man I’ve ever met. I can’t deny him anything…and that just might end up costing me everything.
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The Bees
RECOMMENDED: The Bees by Laline Paull is $1.99! I LOVED this book. Margaret Atwood, whom I worship like a saint, tweeted about the book, calling it a mix between a Cinderella story and an Arthurian tale. I knew I had to read it. On GoodReads, I gave it a 4-star rating and a mini review:
This book was unlike anything I’ve read before, and I found it both unique and mesmerizing. However, the last fifty pages seemed to lack the care and craft of the ones before it. The ending was over in a rush and I felt Flora’s story should have continued on with more detail. Regardless, I was impressed with Paull’s storytelling and her ability to make bee life interesting.
Also, it’s legitimately about bees. Like bees that think and talk and exist in their strange bee society. It so weird, but so good. That’s all I can say.
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death.
Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.
But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds.
Thrilling, suspenseful and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees gives us a dazzling young heroine and will change forever the way you look at the world outside your window.
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The Best Man
The Best Man by Kristan Higgins is 99c! Higgins’ books are contemporary romance comedy, and much loved by many readers. This one came out in March 2013 and is the first in her Blue Heron series. There’s a big of cringe comedy in the backstory of the heroine, according to the reviews, but it has a 3.9 average, and many readers loved the funny parts, and the friends-to-lovers storyline.
Sometimes the best man is the one you least expect…
Faith Holland left her hometown after being jilted at the altar. Now a little older and wiser, she’s ready to return to the Blue Heron Winery, her family’s vineyard, to confront the ghosts of her past, and maybe enjoy a glass of red. After all, there’s some great scenery there….
Like Levi Cooper, the local police chief – and best friend of her former fiancé. There’s a lot about Levi that Faith never noticed, and it’s not just those deep green eyes. The only catch is she’s having a hard time forgetting that he helped ruin her wedding all those years ago. If she can find a minute amidst all her family drama to stop and smell the rosé, she just might find a reason to stay at Blue Heron, and finish that walk down the aisle.
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Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey
Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor and Leigh Beisch is $2.99! This is a dessert cookbook with over seventy-five recipes. Each recipe is accompanied with a little anecdote and readers loved the delicious pictures. However, some people find the recipes to be a little long, so they say it’s not something to use if you’re looking for a quick dessert.
Chocolate Caramel-Pecan Souffl Cake . . . Cinnamon-Donut Bread Pudding . . . Double-Crumble Hot Apple Pies . . . Giant Coconut Cream Puffs . . . Here’s a collection of desserts that gives more than 75 sticky, chewy, messy, gooey reasons to stock up on napkins. In addition to each sugary favorite, the author has included simple techniques and tools to help home cooks recreate each decadent treasure again and again. Sprinkled throughout are tips on using phyllo dough, toasting nuts, and making a heavenly ganache, so every over-the-top treat tastes as irresistible as it sounds. For the serious sweet tooth, pour a tall glass of milk and get ready to bite into all that’s Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey!
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I was on the fence about The Bees, but this review tipped me over on the side of buying it. I love bees. My grandfather kept bees, and I used to spend hours just hanging around the hives watching them. I’ve never been stung (except once when I stepped on one accidentally), even by the Africanized bees that colonized my house three times. I hated having to kill them, but they were so destructive I had no choice. Looking forward to reading this novel. Sounds like an episode from The Once and Future King, only Arthur was turned into an ant, but still a hive-mind experience.
“Falling Stars” by Loretta Chase, a novella from the 1994 Avon anthology “A Christmas Present”, is now in Kindle format for $1.99!
Fangirl is great. I really empathized with Cath in a way I haven’t with any of Rowell’s other heroines, particularly the way she struggles with coming out of her own head and has an inability to recognize and appreciate the things and people around her, in addition to the way she tends to overthink things and underestimate herself. I’d call her the most realistic protagonist Rowell has ever written, and even if you weren’t a geeky fanfiction writer growing up, Cath still so perfectly encapsulates what it’s like to be AFRAID of growing up in ways you so desperately need to, without letting go of the things you love, that everyone will resonate with her. Highly recommended. (Though sadly, as much as I waited for Carry On, which is the book inspired by the in-story book series Cath writes fanfiction about, I found it really tedious and clunky.)