Hey y’all! Every time I seem close to catching up on these book reviews, I seem to get further behind. Part of it is that I get so into a flow of reading books, that I don’t want to stop for any reason. Then the month of November was so busy for me spending time with friends and family in town that the moth just flew away. I know that it’s now December and we are all getting ready for the holiday season, but I still wanted to share my September book reviews and also share my fall front porch decor before putting it away for the Christmas decor 😉
The month of September was the month that I moved into the house I’m currently renting so while there weren’t as many books read this month as previous months and in the month of October, I did manage to still read five books. It also helped that I had a few books come of hold from the library and a limited amount of time to read them. I seem to thrive in that timeline for reading.
September books was mostly romance with one young adult novel. I read my first Coleen Hoover book and it blew me away. I can’t wait to read the rest of her backlog of books and she even has a new one releasing January. Without holding back much longer, here are all the books I read in September.
Meet You in the Middle – Devon Daniels
This was an enemy-to-lover trope that I actually really enjoyed. I picked up this book as a random grab when realizing my inspection sticker was about to expire and I had nothing to read while waiting for the service to be completed. Most people assume that it’s a heavily based political book and while there is a bill that is brought up throughout the story and helps move the story along, that’s about the most political it gets. You could honestly pick up this story line and base it in any other work setting. I loved the notes and pranks they would send to the others office and how they could see each other across buildings from their windows. In a classic enemies rom com, I became obsessed with Ben and how he went the extra mile to make sure Kate is doing okay, especially when she was trying to get her first bill passed on the Senate floor.
This book gave me all the feels and I highly recommend any contemporary romance readers to read this book. I read this book as a physical copy purchased at Barnes and Noble.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
The Downstairs Girl – Stacey Lee
This was Reese’s late summer Young Adult pick and reading the summary on the back gave me major Downton Abbey vibes, but set in America. This book was a fascinating read historical wise because you learn so much about the Asian culture during the Civil War Era and how they were treated. I would say if anything, read this book just for that historical perspective. The other part of the book I loved was Jo creating the anonymous section of Ask Sweetie and the relationship built between her and the newspaper owners son.
I gave this book 3 1/2 stars. It does a fantastic job with diversity and creating in depth backstories for every character in the book that was essential for the plot. There were also a lot of plot twists, with a big one that I honestly could have gone without. There were many subplots that went side by side with the main plot of Jo trying to find her voice and place in a world where she is supposed to stay hidden. As a romantic at heart, I also wanted more romance in the ending of the story.
TW: racism (including slurs), rape, sexism, violence, nudity
I read this book as an e-book borrowed from the local library.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟💫/5
It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover
I don’t want to go into much detail about this book and here’s why. I read somewhere that you need to go into this book blind, only knowing what the book cover describes. I’m now telling you to do the same. Everyone needs to read this book and learn about Lily’s story. This book had me hooked from the beginning and I didn’t even know who I wanted to root for in the love triangle. All I know is that by the end of the book, I was bawling my eyes out and was wrecked by this book. This book talks about some very difficult topics and situations and I felt that it was handled beautifully. For this being my first Colleen Hoover read, my expectations are extremely high for her and that frightens me a lot as I try to read all her books published.
For a book that is classified as a romance novel, this book shows the real side to a relationship and the struggles some people go through that are sometimes hard to overcome. There were two lines that stuck out to me the most that I wanted to share: “There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.” and “I want to be you when I grow up.”
TW: domestic abuse, alcoholism, attempted rape, suicide, depression
I read this book as an e-book from the local library, but will probably by a physical copy in the future.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller
The Paper Palace was Reese’s July pick and I waited weeks for this book to come off the waitlist. The premise of the novel really intrigued me, but the actual book was a lot different than I expected. This book deals with a lot of dark subject matter, like domestic abuse, rape, and incest. There was a lot of jumping around in time line from Elle’s childhood and the twenty-four hours of the aftermath of Elle cheating on her husband with her childhood best friend. You begin to learn throughout the novel that the paper palace holds a lot of trauma for Elle, especially with a traumatic even that happened one summer. What frustrates me the most about this book is that there was no warning to any of the subject matter that was discussed and Cowley Heller goes into deep detail about these traumatic events that happened not just to Elle, but too almost all the women in her family.
I think if I knew more about the actual storyline, I would have enjoyed it more, just because I would be more prepared for it. I read this book as an ebook from the local library.
TW: abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, infidelity, incest
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟/5
It Happened One Summer – Tessa Bailey
This book was a recommendation from BookTok and I’m so glad I read something this lighthearted after reading the previous two books. This novel is gives me a mixed vibe of Kardashian meeting Schitt’s Creek when Piper is “exiled” to Washington after getting arrested at a party gone wild. There, she meets Brandon, who is the town grump and widow. Their relationship is the typical meet-hate grow to love relationship, but was it spicy! If you don’t like mature scenes, this book is either not for you or you will need to skip over pages to continue with the story.
The story itself was super cute and I enjoyed seeing the change Piper made while in Washington, especially that she made the change for herself and Brandon was just there as her cheerleader. I also felt that their relationship was shared in importance as the relationship between Piper and her sister, Hannah. The secondary characters were so cute that I can’t wait to learn more about their story in the next book in the series.
I read this as an e-book from the local library.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
September Stats:
5 books // 1,943 Pages // Own: 1 // Library: 4
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