The Night She Disappeared starts off as a slow burn with a chilling atmosphere and multiple points of view, which soon all converge into a gripping and unputdownable story.

Young parents Tallulah and Zach are thrilled to have the chance to enjoy a rare night out on the town. But when the couple still hasn't returned by the next morning, Tallulah's mother Kim is rightfully worried. But with no clues, the cases goes cold, and a year goes by. When Sophie, a mystery writer, moves in nearby, and clues start to surface, it seems like Kim will finally get the answers she's been searching for.

This story starts slowly, partly because of the three points of view which take place across different timelines. I generally don't prefer more than two in one story, so it speaks to Jewell's ability as an author to keep me engaged. She keeps the chapters short and they always end on a tantalizing point, so I feel compelled to read just a little bit more.

One of the hallmarks of Lisa Jewell is her characters. They always seem solid and fully-fleshed out, which automatically makes the story feel more real. There's plenty of time taken to get to know and understand them. As a result, I end up caring for them and becoming emotionally invested in the story.

Then, once everything starts to come together and we get hit with twist after twist, I just can't look away. I read a lot of books in this genre, so it's pretty hard to surprise me. And the way the twists are laid out, you do see them coming from a few chapters before. But there was one twist in there that got me good, and it was a delightful surprise.

Reading Lisa Jewell always feels like a treat. She takes a fairly well-trodden genre and adds a depth of character and storytelling that takes it to another level. Throw in her fun twists and turns, and I'm riveted every time.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

My heartfelt thanks for the copy that was provided for my honest and unbiased review.

Seven Days in June takes a second chance love story and manages to capture within its pages an entire spectrum of Black spirit, joy, humor, and redemption.

Fifteen years ago in high school, Eva and Shane had a euphoric week together that left them forever changed. Since then, they've each gone on to become best-selling authors, working out their heartbreak through their respective novels. When a chance encounter gives them another seven days together, they know they must give this second chance their all to see where it could lead.

I've been really getting into romances lately with diverse representation, and this book is a perfect example of that. It doesn't shy away from the fact that both of its main characters are flawed individuals. Shane is a recovering addict who has spent time in jail, but he's clean now and is mentoring underprivileged kids. Eva is a single mother to a precocious daughter, but she suffers from debilitating migraines and her pain affects every part of her life.

There's the all-important sizzle whenever these two share a page, and it makes for a riveting read. To see these two souls finally come together and experience love and acceptance, something they both desperately crave but had in short supply all their lives, feels poignant and heartwarming.

The cast of supporting Black characters adds so much spark and levity to the whole thing. One part of the book that felt particularly prescient is when a panel of authors are discussing how Black literature is often relegated to only talking about suffering and trauma, and denied the whole range of everyday human experiences that white literature is afforded. It feels like Tia Williams is making commentary on her own book, and I think she succeeds admirably in bring out the entire range of experiences for her Black characters.

This was a thoroughly compelling modern-day romance. Its message that everyone deserves redemption and love, even those with flaws and baggage, is a worthy one. And the author's homage to Black lives lived to their fullest is beautiful to witness.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

My heartfelt thanks for the copy that was provided for my honest and unbiased review.

Let me start by first apologizing to everyone who loves this classic. I don't doubt Dune was something special when it first came out in the 1960s. But reading it for the first time today, it feels horribly outdated to me and at times almost incomprehensible.

I was warned going into this story that the beginning is extremely hard to understand, but that is an understatement. I could barely follow its scene after scene of dialogue referencing people and places and events, all with no explanation or context. It literally feels like I was just dropped into the middle of a book, and everything had already been explained elsewhere.

But it gets better, right? Well, only somewhat. A narrative does take shape, but the writing style remains confusing and obscure. It manages to be both long-winded and not clear enough, if you can believe that. Certain obvious points are harped on again and again, but other crucial ones are merely glossed over. Then, when you inevitably miss those important points, they create this cascading effect that keeps you mired in confusion.

The writing is also pretentious, with regular or nonsensical things consistently being presented in a profound way. There are plenty of extraneous paragraphs that sound good until you try to discern their meaning, at which point you'd be stumped. This sort of writing really confused me because I couldn't figure out which paragraphs mattered and needed to be dissected carefully to suss out their hidden meaning, and which ones are just adornment.

As for the story itself, it was a complete mismatch with my interests. I like science fiction with lots of real science. Instead, this is a space opera (a.k.a. a soap opera that takes place in space) with no actual science. It's all political intrigue, melodrama, doublespeak, and who has power over who, which I have zero interest in. I also couldn't care less about how fawningly amazing Paul is and how he is destined to be the chosen one.

This was such a frustrating reading experience because it could've been an amazing story. And there were moments in the beginning when I thought it was going in those creative directions. I was riveted during that infamous test in the first scene, only to realize that it was completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. Or to see where the book could take the scientific aspects of a desert planet and a population with so little water, which it didn't other than a bit of lip service.

But the book stubbornly chose to disregard these more interesting avenues, and instead took the most straightforward, boring route of making this into a story about power struggle. Well, we could've saved ourselves the bother and just stayed on Earth for that.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Good news, everyone! It turns out I'm not broken and can indeed still enjoy domestic thrillers. I was just waiting for an actually decent one to cross my path, and one finally did, thank goodness!

Cat has what every woman in town wants: money, beauty, and social standing. She also has a successful and handsome husband who is devoted to her. Or at least that's what she thought, until a new neighbor moves in next door and starts working for William. Neena wants everything Cat has, and she'll do whatever it takes to get it all.

Talk about riveting! It took me all of ten pages before I was completely hooked. I couldn't put this book down. There was something so compelling about the story here, with these two women pretending to be friendly while scheming and backstabbing to get William's attention. You know what they say: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

The level of insanity in here built up slowly, ratcheting up until I was good and ensnared in its fun. While what the two women did was rather wack, the reason this story worked for me is that the emotions behind their actions rang true. Torre deftly captures all the nuanced aspects of infidelity and temptation in a relationship, including the urge to stray for the person doing the cheating as well as the feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness for the spouse left in the wake of the destruction.

I did have one small quibble. The epilogue came across as a little odd to me. After everything was wrapped up and I thought the story had ended, it then continued some more. But the version of the people we got in the epilogue didn't really match emotionally with the people we'd come to know throughout the entire rest of the book. So that threw me off a bit. But I'm willing to overlook it for what was otherwise a thoroughly entertaining book.

This is everything I was hoping for when I cracked open the pages: a riotously good time with nasty characters doing questionable things, yet I was still sympathetic to them and happily cheered them on. After such a rare win for me with a domestic thriller, now I'm all excited to read more of the genre... or maybe not.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

You know that feeling, when you've become fully immersed in a story and you no longer realize you're just reading words on a page? Well, that feeling never came for me in Velvet Was the Night.

Maite is a self-centered girl, working as a secretary while waiting for a wealthy, attractive man to sweep her off her feet. El Elvis is a thug in the Hawks, whose sole purpose is to undermine activist students using whatever means necessary. When Maite's neighbor goes missing, their individual steps to find her slowly take them on an intersecting path toward each other and danger.

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the other two books I'd read by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the writing in this one is as sharp as ever, somehow the story itself fell flat to me. I didn't connect with it at all. And I've been trying to figure out what happened ever since.

I think one issue is that I didn't really like the characters. Maite is off-putting to the extreme. She's the most awful combination of vain and vapid. She's extremely judgey of everyone on a superficial level while having nothing to offer, not even kindness. Meanwhile, Elvis seems only to care about rock and roll music in between beating up students for a paycheck. I just couldn't find even a sliver of connection to these two.

The other big issue is the book covers topics I'm fairly ambivalent about. I don't really enjoy reading about mobsters being cool or beating each other up. Nor do I enjoy reading about self-indulgent people preening and pitying themselves for their lack wealthy and good-looking boyfriends. Nor did I understand any of the references to Mexican government dysfunction during the 1970s. And with its numerous musical references, I didn't know one single song that was mentioned.

Without emotionally connecting with the story, this felt like a slog that wouldn't end. I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading this because I can imagine it being enjoyable for the right audience, but unfortunately, it wasn't me. I remain a fan of the author, but I'll avoid any more of her noir pulp fiction.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

This was an add-on for my Book of the Month box. If you're curious about BOTM or want to find out how to get your first book for $5, click here.

Ah, scientists in love! Be still, my heart!

Olive is a third year Ph.D. candidate, filling her pipettes and titrating like a boss, when she somehow manages to land herself in a fake relationship with the ever glowering Dr. Adam Carlsen. She really can't believe her bad luck. Unfortunately, she has spun her lies, so she has no choice but to see them through. But the more time they spend together, the more Olive starts to realize he might just be the one she's been looking for all along.

This was just a hoot and a half! A lot of romcoms manage to get the romantic part exactly right, but The Love Hypothesis hits the comedy bit out of the park too. Olive's dialogues are witty and snarky, and she pretty much cracked me up from beginning to end. I couldn't stop giggling and snorting, even while reading in public, which definitely got me some weird looks from strangers.

I absolutely loved that Ali Hazelwood chose a woman in STEM as her main character and highlighted the difficulties they encounter as part of this story. As a woman in STEM myself, it warms my heart to see someone like me take center stage in a romance. A lot of what Olive went through, including how intimidating it is to be in a field surrounded by men and how unsure she is of her worth and her ability, I understand intimately.

The romance between Olive and Adam developed slowly, with plenty of tension and sizzle. The premise to set up the trope of fake dating was a little silly, but once you get past that, the rest is nothing short of sweet and satisfying. Adam is reticent in the beginning, but he soon thaws and warms up to Olive's relentless cheer and good-natured teasing. His support of her in their shared field is particularly touching and it made me root even harder for this couple.

With romances, there's always the question of whether it contains explicit, open-door scenes. And whichever way the book chooses to go, it inevitably alienates half of the readership who wants it the other way. That's why I was particularly fond of the way it was handled in this book. All those scenes are in one contiguous chunk (spread across two chapters), so it's easy to skip if that's not your thing and you can still enjoy the rest of the story without having to worry about missing anything crucial.

This story totally checks all the boxes for me. It's sweet, smart, and uproariously funny, and it touched my heart and my mind. No doubt about it, anything Ali Hazelwood writes from now on will be devoured by me posthaste.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

This was a pick for my Book of the Month box. Get your first book for $5 here.

Wow, I'm kind of speechless at how utterly dull this story was. Given the premise, it's really quite unbelievable.

Bill Hoffman is the pilot of Flight 416, en route to JFK with 149 souls on board. What he doesn't know is that his wife and children have been kidnapped and are being held hostage. When his plane is midair, he is confronted with a choice: crash the plane or his family will die.

That sounds interesting enough, and the first few chapters were. But the more I read, the worse it got. The crux of the problem is that there's nothing compelling or new or even entertaining in here. If a book could be made up of clichés, one after another, this is it. Of course the passengers are upset, the flight attendants heroic, the bad people Middle-Eastern, and the authorities good meaning but bumbling.

Every dialogue is so cringey in how predictable and trite it was. Every scene felt like a repeat of ones I'd seen before from bad action movies. It's hard to keep my focus when I already know how it will all play out. I caught myself skimming multiple times because my brain just filled in all the blanks without having read any of it.

I never made any emotional connections with the characters. They are just stereotypes, and can be replaced by any other character of the same type. There's a simplicity and predictability to everything in here that wore me out and completely bored me to tears.

Honestly, there's no need to read this book. Just close your eyes and imagine some scenes from an airplane hijacking. Whatever you just imagined is more exciting than what you would find in this book, and you just saved yourself many hours. You're welcome.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Some days I can't quite work out how I got here; I opted for the guy, I opted for the kids, I just didn't realize that meant waving goodbye to everything else.

On the surface, Mizuki has it all: a handsome husband, two beautiful children, and a lovely home in bustling and frenetic Tokyo. So why does she feel so lonely and sad? Then she meets Kiyoshi and he makes her feel alive again. But she knows what she is doing can't go on, and she will have to make a choice soon. But how can she decide between impossible choices?

My heart aches for Mizuki. What she wants—what we all want—is to be seen and understood. But her traditional role as a housewife and her husband's rejection of her as anything other than a servant to him and a caretaker of their children makes that impossible. The building up of her loneliness, made all the more acute because she is surrounded by her family, feels hopeless and gut-wrenching.

As a woman, I was instantly sympathetic to Mizuki and her plight. I imagine most readers will relate to her, especially if they have ever been the nurturer in the relationship. When she sought to find that basic human connection with Kiyoshi, I couldn't help but cheer for her. To see her rediscover her spark after so long, unfurl into the fully-faceted person she used to be, and realize she's so much more than just a wife and a mother, is immensely satisfying.

This book's writing style drew me in from the first page. It's straightforward, funny, and witty, and I couldn't put it down. For a relatively short book, I was amazed that Emily Itami managed to wring so much out of it. Not only was the main story riveting, but it also contained many interesting observations about life, love, parenting, and relationships sprinkled throughout. I constantly caught myself nodding along and chuckling to the insightfulness of it all.

The only part of the story that fell a bit short for me was the ending. Obviously, when a story is about infidelity, there are only so many ways it can go. But as I grew close to Mizuki, I wanted so much more for her. I don't know what ending would've satisfied me, but the one that was given just didn't quite meet my lofty hopes.

Still, what a visceral and poignant story this was, deftly capturing the essence of our human need for connection and meaning. This is Itami's debut effort, and I cannot wait to read more from her.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

My heartfelt thanks for the copy that was provided for my honest and unbiased review.

A celebration of scientific ingenuity and man's unfailing spirit to survive, The Martian left me astounded and exhilarated. It made me laugh, think, and hope, and along the way, it captured my imagination and my heart.

Due to a freak accident, astronaut Mark Watney is in a bit of a jam. His crewmates have blasted off from Mars and left him behind, thinking he is dead. Now he has no way to contact anyone and his supplies are fast dwindling. To survive, he must reach into the depths of his scientific knowledge and creativity and good humor, and put all that to good use if he is to make it off the planet alive.

I'm like the very last person to read this book, and I honestly have no idea why I waited so long. Maybe I thought since I've seen the movie already (like a dozen times!), that I wouldn't be surprised by the book. Or maybe I was afraid it wouldn't live up to my sky-high expectations. But I'm so glad I finally stopped procrastinating and read it. Because this story could not be more made for me if it tried.

Right from the first page, it was utterly riveting and unputdownable. It felt so real that it seemed like I was actually reading the mission logs of an astronaut. I kept forgetting that we hadn't really sent a man to Mars yet and that this is just a story.

The science in here is a large part of what made it feel so authentic and fascinating. It's based on real science, not the handwavy stuff that a lot of sci-fi books resort to. But you don't have to understand every single thing in order to follow and enjoy the story. In fact, there were a few times I just move on when I wasn't 100% clear on a technical detail, and it didn't take anything away. It helped that I had watched the movie before reading the book, so it was much easier to visualize what was going on.

Usually when you think of disaster stories and fights for survival, it ends up being a dark and brooding read. But that's not this book at all. I loved its optimism and humor and charm. It was lighthearted and fun even though it was tackling some serious problems. It not only showcased what one person's perseverance can accomplish, but also what the world can do if it came together. It made me feel happy and inspired to immerse myself in this imaginary and cooperative world, if only for a few hours.

This story isn't perfect. You can tell it's Weir's first book, and so it does have a few quirks. At times, the humor is a bit too potty-mouthed and the technical and scientific information can be a bit too enthusiastically detailed. But I found the overall story so amazing that these small flaws are easily overlooked.

This is my favorite type of book. I love reading about space exploration and science, courage and hard work, and overcoming great odds to achieve the impossible, all with a sense of humor. Its message of resilience and optimism through the hardest of times pays homage to the best in humanity.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

This was an add-on for my Book of the Month box. If you're curious about BOTM or want to find out how to get your first book for $5, click here.