The Bibliostar

  I am... conflicted. This book spooked me at times. It definitely grossed me out. I cared about the characters. Yet overall I am left with a feeling of yep, that was a book. I have clicked back and forth between 3 stars and 4 stars so many times. Let's get into it. SUMMARY: Graduation trip!!! To Australia!!! What could possibly go wrong in Australia??? Everything. Phoebe Rays is a poor teenager growing up in the Florida Keys. Her grandmother is dying a slow and terrifying death of Alzheimer's. Things are Not Good. Things are made better by her group of rich friends, but Phoebe knows that is soon to end with the summer as they head off to college while she cares for Gram. The graduation trip is the last time she will see them for a while. Spooky cave, bad air, mysteries, and teen drama follow. MY THOUGHTS: This feels wild to say, considering how I felt in the midst of reading this book. But like not much happens???? For example, I really liked ...

  Oh noooo, the first Frieda McFadden book I didn't like. I am so sad. SUMMARY: Blake Porter is a high level business guy. Marketing? I think it was marketing. We are in Manhattan, because Frieda wrote this. Blake lives with his fiance, Krista, in a brownstone in the Upper East Side. I am pretty sure it is East. The fancy Gossip Girl side. Life is just the bee's knees for these two. Blake was recently promoted, they are engaged, they are RICH rich. Uh oh Spaghetti-Os, Blake gets fired. NYC rent is of the Devil, so after a couple months of job searching, they are in danger of losing the brownstone. Time to find a roommate! Enter Whitney. MY THOUGHTS: So the twist was a twist. Did I call it? Yes. Was I sad I was right? No, I love being right. Did it make reading the last 30% of this book way less enjoyable? Absolutely. I know Frieda's whole thing is twists. She is the M. Night Shyamalan of thrillers. But this was more The Beach That Makes Yo...

This book rules. I had a fantastic time reading it today. It’s funny, sad, suspenseful. Just a great book. SUMMARY: Lottie Jones is just the cutest old lady on Bluebell Lane. All her time is spent at church with her two best friends, playing bingo and gossiping. Her son is getting remarried, so that offers plenty of drama. She retired from her job at the bank seven years ago and has been living a quiet life ever since. She killed her last victim over a decade ago. Now, a young woman comes knocking, dredging up secrets buried in 1985. She wants to make a docuseries about the time Lottie was wrongfully accused of murder. Will she finally be able to get the truth out of Lottie? MY THOUGHTS: Lottie is such an interesting character to follow. Like, she is so funny. Her realization that she is getting too old to live alone and do the things she loves is heartbreaking. You really start to care about her and want her to be happy. Then at the end of a long sequence of her happily d...

  This book was a let down. I was so enchanted by the premise. But then. Sigh. Let's get into it. SUMMARY: Arleta Starstone is a baker living in the small village of Adenashire. She makes her meager living by selling her baked goods at the local market. She has two other names: Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer. Anyway, one day her Gay Orc Dad(love him) enters her into a baking competition in Elf Country aka Langheim - without her knowledge. She is accepted!...What a travesty. This is the worst thing that ever happened to her, apparently. Goodness. Informing her of her acceptance is Theo. Theo is an elf who for some reason is just immediately in love with Arleta, and she him. Like, right off the bat. After some complaining and escape attempts from Arleta, Theo manages to get her to go to the Baking Battle. We meet more fun side characters, we do surprisingly little baking to be honest, we get a happily ever after the end. MY THOUGHTS: Yo what ar...

  Welcome to THE DOME dun dun dun SUMMARY: We follow Xavier Oak, a 13 year old boy with a blended family. He is currently on a summer trip with his father and pregnant stepmother at their lake cottage. He is NOT happy with this as he wanted to stay home with his mother and brother and play D&D with notable Cool Girl Serena. So he wakes up on the second day of the trip ready to text Serena about their campaign. BLEHEHEHEHEH That's right. There is a whole goat outside. The lake? Gone. They wander around for a few days. They manage to figure out that they are in a dome due to rocks and math. UHOH! Right when you thought things couldn't get worse, stepmom goes into labor. Three years pass. Another family arrives in the dome. And they are the worst kind of monsters you could imagine. They are white people from the south. MY THOUGHTS: This book got WAY more political than I could have imagined. Which is great! I love a book that has something to say. However this fel...

  First things first: this book maybe sorta kinda hates the mentally ill. Secondly:...I really liked this book. So like, yeah. People with mental illnesses aren't portrayed great. As a person who was once nearly institutionalized though, I can't really say that I cared too much. This book is like the rest of Freida's books: absolutely ridiculous and impossible to put down. Just be warned going in that the portrayal isn't great, and be sure to skip this one if it isn't something you are up for right now. Summary: Our main character is Amy. I can't remember her last name even though I just finished the book. Please don't judge me. Amy is a medical student. Just...vaguely. She has yet to decide what sort of doctor she wants to be. The only specialty she has completely ruled out is psychiatry. But uh oh! She is currently on psychiatry rotation! And now she has been tasked with spending the night in the hospital's psychiatric ward, Ward D. Ward D ...

"I definitely don’t have an off-switch in my brain that says it’s okay to let this one go." That's the book, basically. Summary: Marty Gray is our main character, and she never learned how to let go. Her brother disappeared when she was eight years old. Twenty years later, she still lives in the home her parents fled ten years ago, desperate for a new start. After spending most of her life investigating her own brother's disappearance, Marty starts an ill-fated podcast about two hikers who went missing in a local ghost town. Nearly a year after the spectacular failure of this podcast, three men are murdered in a parking lot in Marty's town. Like every other mystery Marty has ever heard of, she can't get this one out of her head. My Thoughts: Marty really grew on me. Like, she definitely needs a fantastic therapist and also maybe a nap. But she feels like a real person with real trauma. She makes several stupid choices, but you always see where she is coming fr...