Is this a thriller? Is it speculative fiction? Or is it a good old fashioned romance disguised within an interesting premise? Well, The One turned out to be all of those and more.

When it comes to love, the world is a changed place. Now you can take a simple mouth swab and find your genetic soulmate. No more awkward first dates and uncertainty. No more wondering if the person you're with is the one. And for five people, receiving news of their match is only just the beginning. What follows is surely a lifetime of love and happiness, so what can possibly go wrong?

When I went into this, I didn't know anything more than what's in the little blurb above. And because of that, I can safely say this story surprised me at just about every turn. What started out as a fairly standard tale, albeit one with an unusual premise, soon turned into a wild ride.

Often with speculative fiction, I'm a little wary. When a premise is really good, sometimes it feels like the story has nowhere left to go, and what's in my head is so much more exciting than what I actually end up reading. But no such fears here, folks. This book really takes its premise and wrings every last ounce of possibility from within it.

I don't want to give anything away here, so I'll just say this is such an unusual story. Where it goes isn't at all where I thought it would go. And embedded in it all is what feels like a warning of sorts, like hey world, don't get too reliant on technology to the exclusion of good ol' common sense. Or perhaps, if it's too good to be true, then it probably is.

Maybe the only quibble I have with this is that it follows five separate characters, and they remain separate for the entirety of this story. Usually with multiple points of view, even if they start out on different narrative threads, they do eventually come together, so I was a bit surprised that they didn't here. It means the whole thing felt a little less cohesive than I would've preferred, and I didn't quite get that satisfying narrative unity at the end. But it's really a small quibble.

I just love stories that can surprise me, and this one certainly did. It's fun, intriguing, at times even a bit horrifying, and it thoroughly kept my attention. I'm a little late to the John Marrs party, and this is my first book by him, but it for sure won't be my last.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

Bet you don't hear me say this a lot about thrillers, but here's a fun one, everybody!

Meredith McCall is a psychiatrist dealing with her own personal tragedy. In the midst of her grief and guilt, she can't help but be drawn to the one person who must understand how she feels. When she sees him one day on the street, she feels the impulse to follow him. But what starts out innocently enough soon turns into something more. And when he shows up in her office as a patient, Meredith knows it can't possibly be a coincidence. Can it?

I pretty much judge psychological thrillers by two criteria—how riveting they are and how much eye-rolling they induce in me. Obviously, I want maximum of the former while keeping the latter to a minimum. And this story totally ticks both boxes.

I think the word unputdownable gets thrown around a lot when it comes to books, but this one definitely fits the bill. In fact, I dare you to pick it up and then try to put it down. There's something so eminently readable and binge-worthy about this story, and I couldn't help but want to read just one more page.

In terms of twists, I think that gets made into a big deal with this genre. But whether you'll be surprised here will probably depend on a few things, namely how many other books of a similar vein you've read. There are usually only a few ways such a story can play out. And since I've read a bunch, I wasn't that surprised. But it didn't take anything away from the story for me and I enjoyed it nonetheless, regardless of the surprise element.

If you're going to read this book, it's probably best to go in blind as is the case with any book of this genre. But maybe the one thing to know to set expectations correctly is that under the big umbrella of psychological thrillers, this bends heavily towards romantic suspense. While it isn't a romance, it does have heavy sexual undertones and some spicy scenes, which totally makes sense since Vi Keeland is an author known first and foremost for her romance books. In fact, this looks to be her first foray into the thriller genre, and if it's anything to go by, I definitely can't wait for more.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

I don't know, you guys. This feels more like a crazy fever dream or maybe a drug-induced trip than a proper romcom.

Delphie has unexpectedly died. As if that isn't surprising enough, she comes face-to-face with her soulmate in the waiting room of her Afterlife Therapist. But before she can fully introduce herself to the dreamy man, he's sent back to Earth with no recollection of their meeting. Now Delphie has just ten days to find him on Earth and get him to kiss her, or else she will remain dead forever.

You got me with that premise. It's undoubtedly intriguing, with loads of potential for the story to go every which way, all of them interesting. But almost from the very start, it felt like something was a little bit off, and I just couldn't shake that feeling throughout the whole story.

When I'm reading a romcom, my criteria isn't that high. I'm looking for banter, lots of sparks, and adorable characters I just want to squish and cheer for. But this story didn't really have any of that. I kept waiting and waiting, and eventually we reached the end.

Instead, this felt more like a zany slapstick comedy, where the heroine kept almost getting what she wanted, but through a variety of strange coincidences, all of them rather cringey, she does not. She almost runs into the man of her dreams, but she has a wardrobe malfunction that exposes her nether regions. She almost runs into him again, but instead has to draw a naked woman. She almost runs into him a third time, but alas, misses him by minutes and has to dance the hand jive on stage in front of dozens of strangers. Like, what? And this kept going on and on.

But what about the characters? Surely our heroine is sweet and loveable? Well, she's quirky, I'll give you that. And also rude and snippy. But for reasons unknown, the recipients of her ire all want to be her friend. They constantly invite her along to everything even though she has rejected them for years. The thing is, if someone were rude to me over and over, I wouldn't want to be their friend. But hey, I'm just a cold-hearted reader, so what do I know.

Okay, but surely there is sparks and tension galore? Well, no on that front too. I didn't feel even a blip of chemistry anywhere in this story. Delphie is just her usual mean self to our main male character, and he takes it like a champ and still lusts after her.

The one thing that's meant to make Delphie seem more sympathetic to readers is her relationship with her next door neighbor, Mr. Yoon. But that was a miss for me too. The whole thing gave off a weird vibe. She kept treating him like a child who didn't know better even though he's just an old man who can't talk.

So there you go. I suspect someone played a joke on me and swapped my copy of the book with one titled The Love of My Rudelife. Because that's the only explanation I have for why I didn't enjoy this book that everyone else so clearly adores.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Okay, lots of thoughts on this one. Going to try to unpack them all here.

The God of the Woods starts out really well. I found the beginning to be compelling, with lots of interesting characters and perspectives. But then as the investigation into Barbara's disappearance heats up, a few things started to really bother me, and it went a bit downhill from there.

When it comes to verbosity in a book, readers generally fall into two camps. For some, if they love a story, then stretching it out an extra hundred pages by filling it with lots of beautiful writing but no additional content makes it even better. But for me, my motto is always shorter is better, and fluffing it out to pad the page count doesn't do it for me. So you see where I'm going with this.

What starts out as compelling quickly turns meandering for me. The longer the story went on, the more unfocused it seemed. There are a lot of perspectives in here—I count seven—and every time something was about to happen, we immediately switched to a different perspective, effectively losing the momentum. And when we come back to the original one, the exciting scene had already happened off-page and it's mostly glossed over.

But it isn't just the perspectives, which I honestly don't mind that much. It's also how unnecessarily convoluted the mystery was, in large part due to the way it was written. Every time the police needed to talk to a witness, that person would inevitably end up missing. So we would have to spend time tracking them down just to have a conversation with them. In addition to the two disappearances which are central to this story, I counted no less than six other characters who disappeared at one time or another. It was exhausting.

Surely though, once these witnesses are found, they would be able to answer some simple questions, right? Well, no. Everyone in here lied every chance they had, often for no reason that I could discern and against their best interests. It felt like drama for drama's sake, making the mystery feel even more tortuous and chaotic. You know, just in case the reader thought it was too easy or there weren't enough pages in this book.

My other big issue is that the author has a real knack for writing dumb female characters. It drove me a bit nuts in Long Bright River and here it is again. This time, we have Alice and Louise, two of our main characters, both being portrayed as spineless fools. You guys know I love my female characters to be strong and smart, so to have to read about women who let people walk all over them while making one bad decision after another got old real quick.

Then after all of that (almost 500 pages), this mystery had to be one of the most unsatisfying I've ever come across. Clues were laid out seemingly to point to one direction or another, but then the story disregards almost everything it had said before and ends on something completely different. And some of the clues were never addressed at all, as if they've served their purpose to mislead us and now we can just forget about them.

Still, for all my complaints, I did find this to be a fairly engrossing read. There were many moments I got really into it, and the pages just melted away. But there were also many moments where I could not believe yet another character has disappeared or Alice and Louise are yet again being dumb and weak, and I could just feel my eyeballs rolling around in exasperation.

Clearly I'm in the minority here. Everyone else is loving this, so you shouldn't take what I say too seriously. Sometimes there is just a mismatch between a reader and a book, and that's probably what happened here.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Elin Hilderbrand's final Nantucket novel, Swan Song feels like both a fond farewell to her book franchise, as well as a love letter to the island that is her cherished home.

Chief of Police Ed Kapanesh is set to retire. But before he does, he has to get through one more summer in Nantucket. Of course there's no chance of smooth sailing. Trouble arrives soon in the form of a new couple who comes to town, and they immediately take the island by storm, stirring up all sorts of drama and intrigue.

What is it that makes Elin Hilderbrand's books so irresistible? Is it her plot or her characters? Or is it that Nantucket is an aspirational place for most of us, filled with seemingly wealthy and beautiful people with nothing better to do than soak up the sun and stir up drama? So to step into these stories feels like a break from normal life, a vacation of sorts. Or even better, a staycation without the hassle of having to leave the comfort of one's couch.

And Hilderbrand definitely understands and plays that up. Her stories always have that light, playful, conspiratorial tone, inviting the reader into the exclusive lives of these Nantucket elites. She never takes the stories and the characters too seriously, and the result is the perfect dose of fun and escapism.

Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket year round and knows the island inside and out. And you can feel that in her stories. All the local restaurants and beaches and gathering places she includes adds so much authenticity and charm to the whole thing, and it makes you want to visit Nantucket. In fact, now that Hildebrand is done writing Nantucket stories, maybe their tourism board can just scoop her up since she's pretty much already doing that job.

One thing to note is that the blurb makes this seem like a mystery, but it isn't really. Coco disappears off of a boat, and we alternate between the police trying to figure out what happened and the events leading up to it. But that's rather misleading because it implies there are suspects and motives and clues, not to mention a denouement that explains it all. But none of that really happened here. So just make sure you don't have the wrong expectations going in.

The other thing worth mentioning is that I didn't really like any of the main characters. Now that isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me, but in this case, I feel like I could've connected with the story just a little bit more if I did. Initially, Coco and Kacy were both interesting, but then as the story went on, they started to annoy me a bit with their inability to communicate and make good decisions. In other words, they were both rather immature, and then you add in the Richardsons, and at times, this felt like a story about a bunch of teenagers rather than adults. But that is a small quibble since I obviously had a lot of fun with it.

Oh, one last thing. This is marked as part of a series, though I've only read one other book in it. I neither felt like I was missing out on the ones I haven't read, nor did I feel like the one I did read contributed anything substantial to this. The books in the series share some similar characters as they take place in the same Nantucket universe, but it isn't necessary to read all of them (or even one) prior in order to maximumly enjoy this one.

There's definitely a bittersweet feel to this final book. But fortunately for me, I am rather late to the Elin Hilderbrand party. I only discovered her a few years ago, though she has written 30 books. So even though she may be done with Nantucket, I still have many more of her books to go before I have to call it quits.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars