Book Review: "Destination Funeral" by Paige Harbison

I don’t know if I’d ever want to get stuck in a time loop. That being said, though, I sure do love reading about them!! Thanks so much to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. Paige Harbison has done it again!

“Does it really matter if you make a mistake, I wonder, as long as you know it’s a mistake?”

Babe Bennett was larger than life. Everyone on Mercy Island had a story about her. When she died, the reading of her will and her memorial service summoned her two daughters, Didion and Sammie, and their two closest friends, Matt and Austin, to the island.

Estranged from her mother for the last several years, Didion has to see her sister and her friends for the first time in a while. There are a lot of hurts and resentments that have cropped up, not just for Didion, but the others as well. How could they go from being inseparable every summer to not speaking at all?

When they learn that Babe has left her summer house, Birdsong, to all four of them, they have to decide what to do with it. Her will stipulates that they have to spend a weekend all together, with no phones or internet access. And then they discover that they keep waking up to find it’s Saturday, so the weekend will never end. It’s up to them to find their way out of the time loop—and maybe confront all the things left unsaid for so long.

This was a funny and emotional story. There were so many issues they all dealt with. I will say that Didion is a hard character to warm up to, but once she got out of all of her spirals, I felt for her.

The book publishes 7/21.

Book Review: "The Unmaking of June Farrow" by Adrienne Young

I picked this up as part of my continuing quest to read books I already own as opposed to just chasing new and shiny ones. Adrienne Young utterly slayed me with this incredible book. I am slain.

“It came for my grandmother, as it came for my mother, and now it had come for me. For years, the town of Jasper had been watching me, waiting for the madness to show itself. They didn’t know it was already there, brimming beneath the surface.”

June Farrow’s family has lived in Jasper, North Carolina for generations. The women in June’s family are known for their flower farm, and they’re known for the curse that has affected them. They remember June’s mother, Susanna, who disappeared when she was pregnant, only to leave the baby with her mother and disappear for good.

June took care of her grandmother in the last years of her life, her memories disappearing. But even before her grandmother died, June was already seeing and hearing things, and experiencing memories she doesn’t recall occurring. She knows the time will come when she will need to be cared for, and that is why she’s always pushed the idea of love and children away.

After her grandmother dies, June finds a photograph that sends her reeling. She tracks down a few other clues to try and figure out what is happening to her, and then she realizes that the door she’s been seeing isn’t a hallucination: it’s real. She can walk through it. But when she does, what she finds could change both the past and the future, and make her realize what she truly wants.

I thought this was truly beautiful and so moving. I’m a huge fan of magical realism and time loops, so the book worked for me completely. Adrienne Young is an incredibly talented storyteller, that’s for sure!!

Book Review: "The In-Between Bookstore" by Edward Underhill

Darby moved to NYC to go to college and put some distance between him and Oak Falls, his small Illinois hometown. As a trans man, getting a fresh start was exactly what he needed, away from those who looked down on him.

Now, as he nears 30, he’s just lost his job, his rent is increasing, and he’s feeling rudderless. It feels like all of his best friends are making progress in their lives, while he’s not. When he learns that his mother is planning to sell his childhood home and move into a new condo, he decides to move back to Oak Falls.

So much has changed in Oak Falls since Darby left. But one thing hasn’t: In Between Books, the store where he worked in high school. In fact, when he goes into the store, the new releases and the newspapers are all from 2009. And the kid behind the counter seems so much like Darby at 16…could it be Darby?

As Darby tries to connect with his teenage self, he also tries to figure out where his life went off track, and how to fix it. He also encounters Michael, his best friend while growing up, whom he hasn’t seen since their friendship ended dramatically before Darby left Oak Falls.

I love time travel and time loops, and how characters learn from the past. But this book never really took off for me. I didn’t really feel like Darby learned much, and I felt like everything in the book was left fairly unresolved.

Edward Underhill has written three YA books that I’ve enjoyed, so I was looking forward to his adult debut. I like the way he writes, so hopefully his next book will have more of a spark for me.

Book Review: "The Other Side of Now" by Paige Harbison

Oh my god, I absolutely LOVED this book! I’m so grateful to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for putting this book on my radar and giving me an advance copy.

For as long as she could remember, Meg Bryan (yep, that’s her name) wanted to be an actress. She’s finally achieved stardom on a soap opera-type show called Brilliance under her stage name, Lana Lord.

But while the fame can be great, having to worry about every calorie she consumes and when she’ll need work done again gets tiring. Why doesn’t achieving the goals she has set, getting to live her dream make her happy? After a bit of a breakdown at her 30th birthday party, she decides to run away for a bit, and books a trip to the Irish village where she and her best friend Aimee had planned to attend acting school.

Avalon is everything she dreamed it would be. But strangely, everyone seems to know her here—as Meg. She has a best friend, a dog who seems to know her, and there’s a sexy bartender who is flirty yet irritated with her. When she looks in the mirror, she sees her old self—before plastic surgery, weight loss, and hair styling changed everything.

In Avalon, Meg doesn’t act—she works in a shop. But she often wonders about the path not taken. And when she discovers that in this life, her best friend Aimee—who died when they were younger—is alive, she’s thrown completely. She has no idea how she got here or how long she’ll stay, but is this the right path?

I tend to love these Sliding Doors-type books, but this one just wowed me. Maybe I’m overly emotional because I met one of my best friends 31 years ago today and he’s been gone for nearly three. Whatever the reason, this was amazing.

The book will publish 6/3/2025.

Book Review: "Remember Me Tomorrow" by Farah Heron

Give me a time loop and some romance, and I’m happy. This book gave me both plus a little mystery, so needless to say, I absolutely loved it.

Aleeza has finally had enough. She’s tired of her best friend and roommate throwing her over for guys or people she thinks are “cooler” or more popular. So a month into the second semester, she’s able to find the last vacant dorm room on campus. It may be small, it may be a single, but it’ll be hers.

She’s surprised to find a dresser full of men’s clothes in her room, since it’s supposed to be empty. But right away people in her new dorm start treating her strangely, and she quickly discovers that she’s been assigned to a room where another student, Jay Hoque, lived before he disappeared several months before.

No one is sure what happened to Jay, but most of the gossip says he slept around with a lot of women and didn’t treat them well, and there are also rumors that he was part of a big cheating scandal. As an aspiring investigative journalist, Aleeza can’t help but be drawn to figuring out what happened to him.

Imagine her surprise when she starts getting text messages through the dorm system—and they’re from Jay. Strangely, he says that he is in his room. It turns out that somehow Jay is messaging her from a few months in the past. As they build a relationship of sorts, can Aleeza figure out what happened to him so he can prevent it from happening in the past?

I thought this was a really good story. The interplay between Aleeza and Jay was really sweet. While the mystery part got a little confusing with lots of characters thrown in, I was definitely hooked and needed to know how the story would resolve itself.

Book Review: "Woke Up Like This" by Amy Lea

There are a number of ways to get to my literary heart. One is to manipulate my emotions. (I'm totally a sap, as those of you who have been following my reviews for a while should be aware.) Another is to throw me a time loop or time travel storyline. (I'm addicted.) So when it came time to pick my Kindle First Reads pick for September and I found that Amy Lea's Woke Up Like This was a YA rom-com with a time loop, what do you think I picked?

Charlotte Wu is a type-AAA high school senior. She's never met a situation that couldn't benefit from a checklist, and she thrives on being the glue that holds everything together. With just a few weeks left of high school, she's determined to check the last thing off her high school bucket list—plan the perfect prom. But standing in her way is JT Renner, her ridiculously handsome, charming nemesis, who wears "smedium" shirts (to show off his biceps) and serves as student council president. One day as the two are decorating for prom, Charlotte falls off a ladder—and JT's ripped body mostly breaks her fall.

When Charlotte wakes up, she's in bed...and then she discovers that she's somehow 30 years old and her fiancé is a bearded JT, who somehow is even more muscular than he was in high school. Is this some kind of practical joke? How did they somehow wind up 13 years in the future? How could they have wound up engaged when they absolutely hated each other in high school? And perhaps most importantly, how can they get back to 2024 and the last few weeks of high school?

Of course, finding a way back to the past isn't easy. And while it's difficult to constantly pretend they're in love with one another, as they occupy their future lives, they learn about what they've missed over the last 13 years and how much has changed. At the same time, Charlotte starts to realize that some of the things that annoyed her most about JT are actually kind of charming in adulthood, and there is a lot she never took the time to understand about him in high school because she was so mad at him.

As their feelings toward one another grow, Charlotte wonders what will happen if they can ever get back to their high-school selves. Will things be different between them? Will they even remember this time from the future?

I thought this really was a fun read. It's definitely predictable but I love the whole concept of seeing your future self and then using some of that knowledge to change your behavior. If you enjoy cute YA rom-coms with a little bit of a time loop thrown in, pick up Woke Up Like This when it officially releases October 1.

Book Review: "The Seven Year Slip" by Ashley Poston

Ashley Poston’s The Dead Romantics was one of my top three favorite books last year. And now, The Seven Year Slip is definitely a contender for a similar position in 2023!

First things first: if you’re not a fan of magical realism and weird time loop-ish storylines, you may not enjoy this. But I couldn’t get enough.

Clementine has been mourning the death of her larger-than-life aunt Analea, with whom she shared many adventures and stories since childhood. Analea believed sadness and ennui could be cured by picking up your passport and traveling somewhere exotic. Her aunt’s loss is devastating, and even though she left Clementine her apartment, she’s finding it difficult to imagine living there without her.

One day she arrives home at her apartment to find a handsome man, Iwan. He has a Southern drawl and a love of cooking. He says he’s the son of her aunt’s friend, and her aunt said he could sublet the apartment for the summer. Then Clementine realizes that he exists in the past. Seven years in the past. And she lives seven years in his future.

Analea told Clementine that the apartment was a pinch in time–a place where the past and present sometimes combined in strange ways. There was no rhyme or reason to when this would happen, but how do you stop your heart from falling for the person who seems to complete you? And when she finds Iwan in her present, what will happen?

Poston definitely knows how to hit all of my buttons. I loved this story so much, and it left me a complete puddle of emotions. I hope others love it as much as I did!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for an advance copy of this amazing book. It will publish 6/27.

Book Review: "The Do-Over" by Lynn Painter

This Valentine’s Day will be totally unlike what she imagined…

Emilie is super excited for Valentine’s Day. She can’t wait to tell her boyfriend Josh that she loves him. But the day starts out badly on her way to school and gets progressively worse and worse. She goes to hide out at her grandmother’s house to wallow in her misery…and promptly falls asleep.

But when she wakes up, she’s back in her own bed. And it’s Valentine’s Day again. Apparently she’s stuck in a time loop and has to relive the whole dumpster-fire of a day over and over again, from academic disappointment to family upheaval, not to mention a cheating boyfriend. And then there’s the fact that she keeps running into her lab partner—sometimes literally.

So when she decides to throw caution to the wind and do what she wants rather than what people expect, it’s tremendously freeing. But what happens when the time loop ends? Will the things she’s done and the people she’s connected with matter, or will they be forgotten?

I really enjoyed this fun, sweet, YA rom-com. Lynn Painter always brings such heart and humor to her books, and I thought this was really so good. It was a great change of pace for me!

Book Review: "See You Yesterday" by Rachel Lynn Solomon

As if freshman year of college isn’t bad enough, you get caught in a time loop? So is the premise behind Rachel Lynn Solomon's See You Yesterday.

Barrett had high hopes for her freshman year of college. She was hoping for a brand-new start, away from the problems that plagued her in high school. But on the first day of class, she discovers her high school nemesis will be her roommate, she gets tormented by a guy in her physics class, she screws up her interview at the school paper, and her attempt to make friends at a frat party ends in a fiery mess.

When she goes to bed that night, utterly depressed and defeated, she feels like college isn’t much better than high school. But when she wakes up, she discovers she’s repeating that day from hell. Again and again and again, no matter what she tries. And then when she runs into Miles, her tormentor from physics class, she finds out she’s not the only one experiencing this phenomenon—he’s been stuck for a long time.

Despite the fact that she doesn’t want to deal with the scientific aspects of the time loop they’re stuck in, eventually she and Miles decide to work together to try and solve the time loop mystery. But while some of the approaches are fun, none seem to succeed. The more time they spend together, the harder they start to fall for one another. But if they ever get out of the loop they’re in, will they remember what they’ve shared?

Solomon always delivers fantastic books, whether YA or adult, and this is no exception. I loved the banter between Barrett and Miles, and the relationship between her and her mother. This is so sweet and emotional and romantic, and it certainly makes me hope I never get caught in a time loop!

Book Review: "Wrong Place Wrong Time" by Gillian McAllister

Can going back in time help her save her son?

You’ve probably saw this thriller all over the place this summer, and for good reason: it’s fascinating and tremendously addictive, with some twists you might not see coming.

It’s late one night, and Jen is waiting for her son Todd to come home. She knows she shouldn’t worry about him now that he’s 18, but she can’t shake her protective instinct. She sees Todd approach their house, and then she sees a man walk over to him. Much to her horror, she watches Todd stab the man to death.

Todd is arrested and refuses to have a lawyer. Jen and her husband Kelly feel powerless to help their son, but more than that, Jen is desperate to understand who this man was, and why her son killed him.

But when she wakes up the next morning, ready to fight for her son, she finds it’s the day before the murder. She feels she’s losing her mind, but she knows she has to do everything she can to prevent the murder from happening. That becomes much harder when every morning she wakes up it’s one day earlier.

I enjoyed this very much. The pace was a little slow at times but the whole concept was so compelling. Jen’s fierce love for her son and her husband gave the story such emotional heft.