It’s the end of the month! Time for another book review 🙂 I read 6 books this month and really enjoyed two of them … read on to find out which two they were!

The first book I read this month was The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen! This duo is another popular author that I’ve heard a lot about it and just how  I was curious last month about trying books by Colleen Hoover, this month I wanted to see what all the hype was about with Hendricks & Pekkanen. This book is described as a thriller with a little bit of Gone Girl and a little bit of Girl On The Train. That’s not me spoiling anything for you – it’s literally described like that on the book’s cover. That said, both of those books are books I’ve read and LOVED so I did have high hopes for this book. I would give it a solid 2.5/5 stars, though. In my opinion, it fell short of the originality of Gone Girl and the suspenseful twists/turns of Girl On The Train (although not for lack of effort!). First of all, what I’m guessing was supposed to be one of the bigger “twists” of this book was totally obvious to me … like way too obvious. So I spent the first 75% of the book waiting for it to be revealed and kind of like … dragging. But maybe if you read it, you won’t get the twist right away, I don’t know. Second of all, there were other twists to this storyline but I just felt a tad bit of “been there, read that”. It felt very much like The Last Mrs. Parrish so I personally didn’t feel like the story was that fresh. But it wasn’t a bad read! I’ve definitely read worst books before! So if you haven’t read Gone Girl or Girl On The Train or The Last Mrs Parrish .. go ahead and give this a try.

Did any of you read Sophie Kinsella’s The Shopaholic series when you were younger? Those books came out when I was in college and instantly endeared me to Sophie Kinsella and her style of writing. I remember voraciously consuming all of her titles and thus started my love affair of chick-lit that still remains strong to this day. I did really like the premise of this book and overall it was an easy, fun read. It’s basically about the protagonist, a girl named Fixie, who looooooves fixing problems for other people but is basically a doormat because of it and her own personal life is in shambles. It was cute but I also found her character to be kind of annoying sometimes because… like, who is like that in real life!? You know? But I guess a lot of Sophie Kinsella’s characters are exaggerated in that sense. And I do have to say, reading this book made me kind of long for another good chick-lit book by my favorite author, Kristan Higgins, which leads me to my next read of the month ….So you guys know by now that I’m usually such a sucker for any book by Kristan Higgins (except for Good Luck With That which I read last month). This title is one of her earlier books, though, and while it was enjoyable I do feel like it lacked some of the “magic” that lures me into her writing. I’d give it 3/5 stars, maybe? It’s basically a story about a divorce attorney named Harper who unexpectedly finds herself on a road trip with her ex-husband, Nick, and of course, neither of them are really over the other (although they pretend to be) and the book sort of navigates them falling “back” in love. I don’t know, I just wasn’t that sucked into the characters or their stories so while it was a fun read, I don’t know that I’d recommend it.

THAAAAAAT said, the next book I read this month was also another older book by Kristan Higgins and I LOVED IT! **I also have to put a side note here that I usually borrow these books from the library and I noticed when I was searching through the online library catalog that Kristan Higgins is technically a “Harlequin Romance” author… WHICH IS SO FREAKIN EMBARASSING!!!!!!! LOL!! I just always assumed that everything I read is sort of under the general “fiction” umbrella — titles by Liane Moriarty, Elin Hilderbrand, Sophie Kinsella, etc. Just general “chick lit” you know? I mean, obviously there’s a love a story in all of Higgins’ books which I enjoy but I didn’t realize I was reading ROMANCE NOVELS HAHAHAHHAHAH. Just to be clear, there’s nothing racy in her books. I’m not sitting over here reading 50 Shades of Grey or anything.** Okay, now that that’s out of the way … I thought this book was so sweet. I think I’ve mentioned this before but one of the reasons why I love reading books by Higgins is because her plots always remind me of Korean dramas. There’s a “main girl” and “main boy” and they always end up together in the end, blah blah blah, there’s a predictable formula to it but I’m not mad about that, you know? It’s a better way for me to unwind at the end of the day than to go down the rabbit hole of random YouTube videos, IMO. Until There was You is about a girl named Posey who was always in love with the older, cooler “bad boy” in her high school, Liam, who never gave her the time of day… but fast forward 15 years and they’re both adults living back in their hometown. Again, super predictable and nothing original but that didn’t take away from the enjoyment of reading this book for me 🙂 4/5 stars.Okay, I don’t always just read romance novels *LOL barf. The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth is a thriller that I can’t highly recommend enough. Whereas The Wife Between Us really fell flat for me, The Family Next Door definitely made up for it. This book had all the key components to a great mystery/thriller … it’s about motherhood, family secrets, and really – how well do you know the people you live next to? 🙂 I feel like I can’t explain the plot any further without spoiling it so you’ll just have to trust me on this one … this book was another 4/5 stars. I think I first saw this book on Instagram and was a little dubious but I’m glad I gave it a chance. There’s another popular book by the same author called The Mother In Law that I think I’ll try reading next month.And the last book I read this month was Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen. I don’t remember how I stumbled across this title.. I have a feeling that I saw it recommended by one of my friends on Goodreads but I honestly don’t remember. I was drawn to it for obvious reasons – first of all, the protagonist is named SOPHIA (duh) and second of all, it’s based in Silicon Valley which is where I grew up. I think I should have researched the book a bit more (a simple Google search would have sufficed) before reading it because I would have realized that the book is really a slightly fictionalized autobiography of Anna Yen herself. She used to work for the likes of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk … except in this book, those people are named Scott Kraft and Andre Stark. And Pixar Studios is called Treehouse, Disney is called Samba, etc, etc. The best part of this book is that it seems like she’s throwing in real life anecdotes about these companies and people (apparently the character of Edna Mode from The Incredibles movie is based on her!) but the writing itself is, in my opinion … poor. LOL, I know, I know – it’s not that I think I can do better; I understand that writing a book is probably super hard but … I don’t know, it just felt a little choppy as I was reading it. If it weren’t for the fact that it was based on a true story/real people, I think I would have had a harder time finishing it. That said, it was really fun reading about what kind of mentors Steve Jobs and John Lasseter were. I give it 2.5/5 stars.

And that wraps up this month’s reading! Summer is just around the corner and I can’t wait to dig into some really fun books next month – if you have any recommendations, leave them in the comments below!