Review: Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith

Product Description:
Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start.

A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of her.

But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to stay away from each other.

The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling in love was the last thing on either of their minds.

But would it be so bad if it happened anyway?

My Thoughts: 
I picked out Something Like Gravity specifically because it was billed as being similar to Eleanor & Park which I absolutely loved. I didn't read the full description so I had no idea this was a story about a transgender teen. I most likely wouldn't have selected it if I had known but honestly it wasn't a bad story. The only reason I didn't rate it higher was that the story is kind of choppy. 

Chris takes off running in the beginning of the book and his parents and best friend have a major freak out for what seems like no reason. Then the back story behind Maia's sister Mallory's death seems more sinister than it turns out to be so everything just seemed a little off kilter when I was reading. 

My Recommendation:
Overall I enjoyed the story and I'm glad I read it but at the end of the day I probably wouldn't recommend it when asked for my opinion.

Review: Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith

https://www.readingwithmonie.com/2019/05/review-something-like-gravity-by-amber.html

Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Product Description:
Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply—but that almost seems beside the point now. Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can't go. She's a TV writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her—Neal is always a little upset with Georgie—but she doesn't expect to him to pack up the kids and go without her. When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she's finally done it. If she's ruined everything. 

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It's not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she's been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. . . .Is that what she's supposed to do? Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

My Thoughts:
Who wouldn't love to have a way to connect with a loved one in the past? This book got me thinking about who I would call and what I would say to them. It gave my reading experience an added bit of whimsey and fun. 

The characters were so well done that I could totally picture them as part of my family. They were quirky and had real life drama that worked well with the contrast of the fantasy aspects in the book. 

The only thing that irked me a little was Georgie's relationship with her friend Seth. It was too predictable and didn't tie together with the ending. I wish the twist with Seth that Rowell put in at the end was completely left out but overall it didn't take away from me loving this book.

My Recommendation:
I recommend this one to anyone who loves contemporary fiction with a little bit of fantasy thrown in.

Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

https://www.readingwithmonie.com/2014/07/review-landline-by-rainbow-rowell.html

Review: Beauty by Frederick Dillen

Product Description:
As a corporate “undertaker” for a mergers and acquisitions firm in New York, Carol MacLean travels from factory to factory, firing blue-collar workers who remind her of her father and the kids she grew up with. She hates her job. But Carol has been biding her time: her boss has promised that one day, after she has paid her dues, Carol will get to run a company instead of having to bury it.

On what is supposed to be her last assignment, Carol travels up the coast of Massachusetts to a desperate fishing town where the late lobster and day boats cluster around the inner harbor, the blue steeples of the Portuguese church stand tall on the horizon, and the last remaining fish processing plant is in its death throes. That’s when she learns that she’s about to be fired.

To save the town and herself, Carol becomes determined to rescue the factory she’s under orders to shut down. With the help of the townspeople and a roughly charming local fisherman, and by the force of her own resolve, Carol throws herself into transforming the company—but is soon faced with increasingly difficult decisions. Must she choose between the job she has always wanted and everything else?

Beauty explores the ways in which one woman will risk everything—her savings, her reputation, and even a chance at love—in pursuit of her dream.

My Thoughts:

I really wanted to love Beauty. The premise that Carol goes from firing people and shutting down factories to pulling a small town together to run her own sounds like it would be an inspiring story but unfortunately Beauty was too confusing and unbelievable. 

While the writing was very descriptive sometimes it just became too much. It was almost as if Dillen was trying too hard and sentences made no sense until I read them several times. The storytelling also got very choppy at times. There were jumps from one scene to another that just didn't flow well and it confused me for a few lines. 

Then you have the story itself. It's way too over the top. (MINOR SPOILERS IN WHITE FONT - HIGHLIGHT TEXT TO READ) Within days Carol scrapes together hundreds of thousands of dollars from this small fishing community, that seems like they're barely scraping by themselves. Then she makes an obscene amount of money selling illegal fish, has an unlikely love story and the book finishes with an the over-the-top, too convenient ending. It was all too much for me and I finished the book unsatisfied.

My Recommendation: 
I personally wouldn't recommend this unless you're already a Dillen fan.

Review: Beauty by Frederick Dillen

https://www.readingwithmonie.com/2014/05/review-beauty-by-frederick-dillen.html

Review: Dented Cans by Heather Walsh

Blurb:
A family secret is revealed during an ill-fated--yet hilarious--trip to Disney World. Sixteen-year-old Hannah Sampson knows her family is not what you would call normal. Her father compulsively buys dented cans and has a particular fondness for cans without labels, which are extremely discounted because their contents are a mystery. Her mother takes countless pictures of her family and then glues them down into the pages of her scrapbooks, but does not allow anyone to look at them. Ryan, Hannah's mischievous fourteen-year-old brother, is headed straight for the remedial track at the local community college, if he’s lucky. Ben, her eight-year-old brother, is a walking sound effects machine, who prefers to communicate with noises rather than words. While Hannah is focused on escaping her working-class Connecticut suburb, she also finds herself being tugged back home as she worries about her brother Ben. Hannah’s parents inflict one last family vacation on the Sampson children, a trip that goes comically wrong almost from the get-go. Hannah is forced to confront her family's past in Disney World, of all places, when an emotional argument prompts her parents to disclose a secret they have been keeping from the children for sixteen years. Ultimately, she must decide whether to leave her hometown and not look back, or to focus on helping her family.

My Thoughts:
Dented Cans was a quick and easy read but I wanted more to happen. The blurb refers to a big family secret that gets revealed during a miserable vacation to Disney World but that doesn't happen until the end of the book. The rest of the story just kind of breezed by with nothing to engage me. I think just about everyone I know can claim a dysfunctional family but the Sampsons really do have family drama and I think more could have been done earlier in the book to show why Hannah can't wait to get out of her small town.

Also there were little hints of more drama that never got fleshed out. I was left wondering about why her parents were so secretive about where they met. Why was Aunt Lydia staring at Ben so sadly. What really happened to cousin Eddie and where is he now? Why doesn't her Mom let anyone see the scrapbooks? Was something really wrong with Ben or are the sounds his way of coping? Overall this was a pretty good read but I feel it could have been so much more. 

My Recommendation:
I recommend this one for anyone who loves dysfunctional family drama. 

Review: Dented Cans by Heather Walsh

https://www.readingwithmonie.com/2013/01/review-dented-cans-by-heather-walsh.html