Two Can Play - Ali Hazelwood

49%

07.04.26

Hazelwood is a very engaging writer on a sentence level but 'a couple clear up a misunderstanding and then have lots of sex' is not a plot. With no conflict nor any character development, it just wasn't all that interesting.

Check and Mate - Ali Hazelwood

57%

06.02.26

You can tell from the title that this is ridiculous in almost every way but Hazelwood is good at what she does and somehow it's still cute and engaging and relatively unpredictable (and quite educational about chess) if you don't think too carefully about the Cinderella fantasy of it all or the disappointingly flat ending.

The Wishing Game - Meg Shaffer

53%

05.01.26

I knew I had to write a review for a book I'd finished yesterday but it took me a good ten seconds to remember what that book was. Which isn't a great sign. I really liked Shaffer's The Lost Story but this, while competently written, was somehow both emotionally detached and overly sentimental. 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

 70%

04.02.23

It's been so long since I've read a book that actually lived up to the hype that this was like a long, refreshing drink. The characters weren't particularly likable, the style was a little leaden, something unlikely happened two-thirds through in order to inject some energy into the story... but somehow it all worked. Smart, complex, full of pop culture and high culture references - what relief to read a really good contemporary novel!