I don't get it. So many readers loved this, but Daisy Darker has got to be one of the most boring thrillers I've ever read.

Why is this so boring, you ask? I'll tell you why. (Note: this is a bit of a rant, so if you loved it, please don't read this.)

The story is told via two timelines. One is in the present, where the family is gathered on the island, cut off from the rest of the world. The other is in the past, where Daisy tells the story of her life growing up. The present timeline is at least tolerable because things are happening (albeit slowly and feebly), but it's such a small part of the whole book. Instead, the majority is taken up by flashbacks of the past, and let me tell you, that was excruciating.

You know how there is always that one person at parties who corners you and tells meandering and pointless stories of mundane things that happened to them? That's the entire past timeline. We get to read about Daisy going to the beach, getting into tiffs with her sisters while filming home videos of each other, being "broken" constantly, and various other what-does-this-have-anything-to-do-with-the-story moments.

Some authors can take the most pedestrian of events and turn them into a riveting narrative. But that didn't happen here. Instead, we have the most mundane of events being presented as it it were the most exciting of nuggets. Daisy is jealous of her sisters.... oooh. There is a boy they all want... oooh. Their parents are mostly absent... oooh. I like family dysfunction as much as the next reader, but I'm not into family melodrama/nondrama.

Since Daisy is born with a heart condition, she repeatedly refers to herself as "broken." This is stated over and over throughout the story, in the most pitiful and woe-is-me way. Since I read the physical copy, I can't do a search for how many times the word "broken" is used, but it wouldn't surprise me if the answer is hundreds of times. At least that's the way it feels.

The writing style doesn't help either. It's got Feeney's trademark fortune cookie sayings, sprinkled throughout every page, as if she's dispensing wisdom that can only be gleamed if you pay enough attention.

The dead often seem to know more about living than those still alive.

The trouble with little white lies is that they sometimes grow up to become big dark ones.

Sometimes when people try too hard to be more than they are, they end up being less than they were.

Ok, I'll give you that they sound good. But what do they mean? I sure don't know.

And when we get to the big twist, I'm left disappointed. Part of it feels like a cop-out and the rest neither made sense nor surprised me. It's clear this was meant to take inspiration from And Then There Were None, and the author worked hard to shoehorn that association in. But it just ended up feeling forced.

Every time I cracked open this book, my mind wandered. I thought of chores I had to do and groceries I had to buy. When I'd rather think about menial tasks than focus on a story, I know it has missed its mark.

No doubt the premise here was exciting and that's why I got suckered in. But the execution was so painfully dull that I'm just glad I made it through. 

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

By now, I'm sure you guys already know these tidbits about me—I'm a hopeless, sappy, mushy romantic and I'm a girl in STEM. So of course I adored Love on the Brain.

Bee has a PhD in neuroscience, but she's struggling to find recognition and funding for her projects. So when she gets the call from NASA to work on one of their helmet prototypes, it sounds like a dream come true. The only catch: she has to work alongside Levi, her archnemesis from grad school. But as she spends more time with him, she starts to realize that maybe they don't really hate each other after all and it's actually something else altogether.

If I had to pick the one thing I enjoyed the most about this book, it isn't the romance. Shocking, I know. Rather, it's the writing. There's something about Ali Hazelwood's style, with its blend of snark and humor, that just completely has me in its thralls. Often I would find myself grinning from cheek to cheek, chuckling to myself while Bee held some amusing and sarcastic conversation or inner dialogue. I think it's because she says all the things I want to say, if only I were quick and clever enough to come up with it.

And there were so many puns! Science puns, cat puns, Marie Curie puns. I love me a good pun (or a bad one, I'm not that discerning), so I was in pun-heaven.

I have to mention the science in here. I don't know anything about neuroscience, but reading this book made me wish I did. I wanted so badly for the technology in here to be real, so that I could marvel at how cool it is and totally nerd out learning more about it. Add in the NASA/astronaut angle, and your resident space-science fangirl here was swooning.

In terms of the romance itself, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't my favorite thing about this book. I found the transition from we're-frenemies to we're-getting-it-on to be a bit sudden. It seemed like they were solidly in the former category, and then all of a sudden, they were in the latter category. I guess I wanted more of a slow progression and steamy anticipation than what I got.

Still, the coupling of Bee and Levi was a fun one. Of course due to their previous interactions, Bee would assume that Levi hates her. And of course she'd be slow to figure it out, resulting in rather funny misunderstandings between them. However, I can totally see the pitchforks coming out for this couple—how it's completely unrealistic, how there's no way it would take her this long to come to her senses. I mean, sure, it's unrealistic, but that feels like the entire romance genre to me. It always necessitates a certain suspension of disbelief to enjoy, which totally worked for me here. Your mileage may vary.

As an aside, I was checking out some articles about the author (I was super curious about her scientific research), and found out Ali Hazelwood is a pen name. Apparently, in her real life, none of her colleagues or students have mentioned her books to her, so she thinks no one has made the connection yet. Ha, imagine that!

At this point, I can safely add Ali Hazelwood to my list of must-read authors. I've loved both of her full-length novels (I'm a little iffier on her novellas, but I'm generally not a fan of novellas). I find her writing style to be supremely entertaining and her focus on science and women in STEM to be refreshing. It's always a joy to dig into one of her stories, and I can't wait for more.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

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

Conceptually, Sign Here has potential. But the execution makes it feel like several disjointed stories instead of one cohesive whole.

In one storyline, we follow Peyote, a dealmaker from Hell whose job is to sign as many souls into Hell as possible. He is forced to work with Cal, another dealmaker, but they are keeping secrets from each other. In another storyline, we follow the Harrison family as they go to their summer house for their annual vacation. But secrets abound there too.

I had a lot of trouble getting into this. At first glance, the Peyote and Cal storyline seems the more interesting one. But it wasn't. It felt like it was trying too hard, with a fluffed out story that wasn't really relevant and lots of dark humor that came across as more forced than anything else. The more details we're given about Hell, the less believable it became and the less into the story I got.

We also spend a lot of time on Cal's backstory, which left me more confused than anything else. (Is The General her father, or just a father figure? Where did the brothers or "brothers" come from? What were they actually doing?) I pretty much didn't understand anything related to Cal, and every time we switched to her story, I felt the urge to skim.

The Harrison storyline was more interesting. It's a combination of family dysfunction and coming of age, with a dose of mystery thrown in. But it also had some of the same issues as the other storyline, coming across as trying too hard to be deep and poignant, which ultimately made what could've been an intriguing tale into an overwritten one.

The thing is, these two storylines don't really go together. They're pretty much two completely separate stories, with only like one page of overlap between them. So their interweaving, back and forth, with a few pages spent on one and then a few pages spent on the other, doesn't really pull the whole thing together.

I feel like this was a bit of a missed opportunity. There's a lot of potential here, but at 400 pages, it was about 100 pages too long. With some choice editing, this could've easily been a gripping tale. But as it stands, it feels too convoluted, confusing, and indulgent to be anything other than middling.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

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

It sends a tiny thrill through me . . . staring up at a mountain I have yet to scale, each match a step toward the top. It has been so long since I have felt the perfect ache of climbing.

I'm always drawn towards stories about overcoming adversity at great odds and achieving the impossible through sheer determination and hard work. So is it any surprise that this story totally grabbed ahold of me and refused to let go?

Carrie Soto, the greatest player in tennis history, knows the joy and sacrifice of victory. Trained by her father since she was a toddler, she holds the record for the most Grand Slams to her name. But that achievement has come at great personal cost. When a new crop of upstarters threatens her legacy, she is left with no choice. Now she is coming out of retirement to defend her record, working with her father one last time to show herself and the world what she is capable of.

What an absolutely captivating story this was. From the very first page, I was mesmerized both by the well-drawn characters as well as the compelling narrative. Yes, this is fiction, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Instead, it feels like a piece of real tennis history brought to life, and we the readers are there to witness it in all of its glory and heartache.

One aspect of this story that surprised me is that the character of Carrie Soto isn't altogether likable. She's brash, confident to the point of arrogance, and often rude to all who stands in her way. She isn't always in it for the love of the game; rather, she wants to win at all cost, even if the price is her own happiness. But it really speaks to Reid's strong storytelling abilities that such a character doesn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the book. In fact, Carrie's flaws make her portrayal and her eventual personal growth that much more compelling.

There is a lot of tennis in this book. And I absolutely lapped it up. Even as someone who doesn't play the game (though I do occasionally watch a match on tv), I found all the tennis jargon in here easy to follow. In fact, reading it reminds me of how riveting this game can be, and I was impressed with Reid's ability to capture not just the grueling physical aspects but also its mental facets as well.

But this book isn't just about competing and winning. In true Taylor Jenkins Reid fashion, it's bursting with heart and soul. It shines a stark spotlight on what it means to be human, to want to strive to be the best you can be, and to achieve whatever you set your heart to. It reminds us that hard work matters, and that age ain't nothing but a number. But it also shows that it's okay to fail, that letting go is sometimes the right thing to do, and that greatness isn't always measured by what everyone else says.

Carrie's father compares her to Achilles, and that feels particularly apt. Achilles craved glory and greatness, and he worked hard towards it his whole life. He finally achieves all that he dreams of during the Trojan War, but it comes at a steep price. And so Carrie does too. She is a warrior of the highest caliber, training every moment of her life, for that one moment of glory so that she will go down in history.

What a story! It's exciting and uplifting and inspirational, but it never loses sight of its heart. In fact, that is a hallmark of Taylor Jenkins Reid's recent books. And it shows that she is still a master of her craft, taking us on literary journeys so intimate and exhilarating, we can't help but feel they're real.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Let me say right off the bat, there is no doubt the premise of this book is crazy good. Liv wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea how she got there. Covering her hands and arms are cryptic messages in her own handwriting, reminding her to "stay awake" and "trust no one." She goes to her apartment, only to find strangers living there. And on top of all that, someone sinister is stalking her and the police want her for a murder.

Ahh! Are you getting vibes of Memento? Yeah, me too.

So when the setup is that amazing and it seems to build into something potentially mind-blowing, the question becomes, does it actually deliver? And the answer is yes and no.

On the plus side, I found this to be a quick and easy read. I felt compelled to see where it was going, which definitely kept me turning the pages. The most enjoyable parts were the police investigation, with detective Halliday being the real highlight of the whole thing.

But the majority of this story follows Liv, and that's where it fell short for me. Liv is your standard heroine of psychological thrillers, pill-popping (in this case, caffeine), paranoid, and just plain dumb in all of her thoughts and actions. Every time she meets someone who could actually help her, she runs away. My eyes definitely got a workout from all that rolling.

If you ever lose your memory, don't do what Liv did. Don't wander around aimlessly with no sleep, acting hysterical and writing cryptic messages to yourself. Instead, leave actually useful information for yourself, or better yet, go to the nearest hospital and get checked out.

Still, I did think the story came together nicely in the end. As for that all-important mystery/twist, it was fine. My jaw didn't drop or anything, but it was enjoyable enough.

This isn't Memento, that's for sure. But Stay Awake ended up being a decently entertaining way to while away a few hours.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

There will be no cavalry to save her this time. She has got herself into this mess, and she will have to get herself out of it.

I've forgotten how much I enjoy this series. Cracking open that first page felt like saying hello to an old friend, albeit one that is quirky, funny, and definitely murderous.

In this installment, our four pensioners are at it again, trying to solve a decade-old murder that never quite made sense. For one, where is the body? And since the victim was chasing down a money-laundering scheme right before her death, what happened to all of that money? It certainly takes a special group of friends to see things that the police missed on the first go-around.

Sometimes with cozy mysteries, they can feel a bit dull and lacking in excitement with everything happening slowly and clues unearthed at a snail's pace. But not here. I can honestly say that it was packed with action from the first page to the last. Every chapter was a new revelation and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

I feel like this series just keeps getting better and better. The mystery was a little weak in the first book, but it has improved so much over book 2 and this one. And through it all, it has retained its wonderful characters and that tongue-in-cheek British humor I love so much, with its quirkiness and gentle poking fun at the absurdity of life and growing old.

What a delightful series! It's one of my favorites, and I can't wait for more.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

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