Book Review: "The Champions" by Kara Thomas

Hadley is new to Sunnybrook, as her mother took a job as the superintendent of schools there. She is biding her time, hoping her senior year will result in her being named editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and getting accepted to Columbia so she can study journalism.

She’s not particularly thrilled that her first assignment is to write an article about the Tigers, Sunnybrook’s football team. They’ve won two consecutive state championships and are hoping to make history by winning a third. Everything in school—and in the town—revolves around the Tigers.

She receives an anonymous email warning her to stay away from the football team, and another telling her not to go to a party being thrown by one of the star players. But Hadley goes to the party, and one of the players that she interviewed collapses and falls into a coma. The players wouldn't let Hadley call an ambulance, and everyone was acting strangely. It turns out he was poisoned.

Eleven years ago, five of Sunnybrook’s cheerleaders were murdered. When another football player winds up dead after causing trouble at a game, Hadley is determined to figure out what’s behind the tragedies. Her investigative methods make her an outcast, but she’s able to track down some people who remember what happened 11 years ago.

What secrets are being hidden? Who is responsible for what is happening? Could Hadley be a target? And most importantly, can the truth be uncovered before someone else dies?

This was a great story, full of drama and twists and turns. It’s a follow-up to Kara Thomas’ book The Cheerleaders, but this can be read as a standalone. Reading this made me glad I didn’t go to high school when social media existed!

Book Review: "We Could Be So Good" by Cat Sebastian

I don’t know if it’s clinically possible, but I feel like this book made my heart grow two sizes larger.

Nick Russo is a talented reporter for the New York Chronicle in the late 1950s. He’s always wanted to be a reporter, and has worked his way up from a rough childhood. But that’s not his only struggle—he’s a closeted gay man at a time when being discovered could lead to his losing his job, going to jail, and even death.

“But he’s twenty-five and he’s already so tired. He’s so careful, all the time, about everything, from not letting himself look too long at other men to being almost paranoid about who he picks up.”

When Andy Fleming, the son of the publisher, starts working at the paper, it’s clear to everyone that he’s biding his time. Of course, Nick is immediately attracted to Andy, despite all the reasons why he shouldn’t be. Although Andy turns out to be a good reporter (even if he’s being groomed to take over as publisher), he’s also a bit of an absent-minded klutz, and Nick can’t help but want to take care of him.

Little by little, their friendship deepens, although Nick knows it’s just a matter of time before Andy finds a woman to settle down with. But somehow, they both seem to fall for each other, although how can they hope for a happy ever after?

This was such a fantastic book, full of self-discovery, romance, tension, and a good dash of history. I couldn’t get enough of these characters!!

Book Review: "Best Served Hot" by Amanda Elliot

In Amanda Elliot's follow-up to Sadie on a Plate, the heat gets turned up when two restaurant critics team up.⁣

⁣ Julie loves being a restaurant reviewer on social media. She works as an executive assistant in order to support her side gig as @JulieZeeEatsNYC, and her more than 50,000 followers love her food photos and videos.

⁣ ⁣ What Julie wants more than anything is an actual job as a restaurant reviewer for a newspaper, and her dream job is to work at the New York Scroll. But when the Scroll doesn’t even contact her after receiving her application, and they hire Bennett Wright (whose mom is friends with the paper’s CEO) instead, she’s angry and hurt.⁣

⁣ While at a food festival in Central Park, Julie runs into Bennett, and their encounter devolves into Julie confronting him for his snobby attitude toward social media and those who use it for restaurant/food reviews. Her video footage of their confrontation sees her follower count jump dramatically—and it brings more traffic to Scroll's social media, too.⁣

⁣ Seeing benefit for both of them, Bennett proposes that they collaborate. They’ll both visit the same restaurants at the same time and contrast their approaches and opinions. And after some initial hijinks, they start to enjoy each other’s company, and they learn from each other.⁣ Of course, the more they collaborate, the more the chemistry intensifies. Is this a reservation for love or disaster?⁣

⁣ I love books about food and restaurants, so this was right up my alley. I loved Sadie on a Plate (and Sadie makes a cameo in this book), and this is fun, steamy, and romantic. I enjoyed the discussion about social media and the battle of print vs. internet, too.

⁣ Thanks so much to NetGalley and Berkley for the advance copy! The book publishes 2/21/2023!⁣

Book Review: "The Winter in Anna" by Reed Karaim

This book was utterly exquisite and moving, yet told with such gorgeous simplicity.

"We would like to think we will recognize the people who come to matter to us at first sight, but of course that's absurd. They often slip into the corners of our lives, unnoticed, then taken for granted, until one day, if we are lucky, we see them anew with startled comprehension, and think, There is my best friend, or There is the woman I love, or There is someone who saved me."

In a split second, Eric Valery decides to drop out of college just before he graduates, and gets a job as a reporter at a newspaper in small-town Shannon, North Dakota. It is there he meets Anna, a fellow employee, whose outer calm belies a life full of disappointment, pain, and emotions, the depths of which no one truly knows.

It's not long before the two strike up a close friendship, and Eric begins to understand there is so much more to life than what he thinks and has experienced, understands what life is like for those who truly struggle. Anna, too, learns from this friendship, as she gets to experience Eric's confidence and idealism, and feels buoyed by his enthusiasm for the small town in which they live and work.

Little by little, Anna begins to trust Eric, and reveals to him the secret pain she carries with her. She teaches him that there is so much more to life than what he sees in front of him, but all of it—moments both happy and sad—are what makes life richer, even if it is difficult. And as Eric faces his own sadness and his own indecision, he realizes that we cannot always choose the circumstances we're handed, but what we do with those circumstances is what makes a life.

The Winter in Anna is Eric's reflections on his relationship with Anna years later, as he remembers the person who perhaps meant more to him than anyone, although the realization of that fact may not have come right away. It's a portrait of a young man with his whole life ahead of him, who finds someone that both directly and obliquely changes the course of his life.

"No one had seemed to defy the idea that our future is written in our past more than Anna."

There was so much I loved about this book. I found the characters so fascinating, so complex, and even though one key plot point is revealed in the first few pages of the book, my love for these characters kept me reading every single word. Reed Karaim infuses his book with such emotion and so many life lessons, and his prose is absolutely gorgeous. Even his imagery is poetic. Take this example:

"The afternoons swell with diffused light, the trees are kaleidoscopes, the sky cracks gently along the edge, and all the colors spill into early evening. It's a time when the unexpected perfection of a particular day can stop you in midstride, when your thoughts slow down to take on a renewed clarity and you make a series of small resolutions to do better from here on out as you turn up your collar against the approaching winter."

I'm always loathe to compare writers since everyone is so unique, but Karaim's style and lyricism reminds me of Kent Haruf and Leif Enger. I read this book on a plane ride and just fell in love with it. It's one of those times I wish I was reading the actual book instead of a digital copy, so I could tell people on the plane how special this book was. (I'm usually not interested in making conversation with people on planes so I can concentrate on reading, so this is a big deal.)

Some may find the pacing a little slow, but I really thought The Winter in Anna was one of those special books you hope to find every so often, and you don't want it to end, nor do you want to lose the memories of these characters.