This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Goodreads blurb: What if you could take a vacation to your past? With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?
My take: 4.5 out of 5 I do not like time travel books at all yet I absolutely adored this one. After the stumble for me of Modern Lovers, this felt as good if not even better than The Vacationers, which I loved. This book reminded me of one of my favorites: The Midnight Library. IT had that same adventure meets existential crisis and finding out the meaning of life vibe which I love. Like Sci – fi meets the self help aisle. Also, given the fact that I turn forty in less than 2 month, the fact that it casually arrived in my hands right now is not lost on me. I think all my almost going to be 40 friends should read this one, the ending hit close to heart.
I am now going to pick up All Adults here which I bought a while ago and haven’t gotten to it and put it back to the top of my TBR
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary
Goodreads blurb: Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth. These three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They’ve all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up–Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the same man. Once they’ve each forgiven him for standing them up, they let him back into their lives and are in serious danger of falling in love with a man who seems to have just one or two but three women on the go…. Is there more to him than meets the eye? And will they each untangle the truth before they all get their hearts broken?
my take: 4.25 out of 5 .This book is nothing like what I imagined in all the right ways! I loved some of her earlier books, but her last book, The Road Trip , I really did not like so I went into this not knowing which Beth I was going to get. and in this book I got great Beth O’leary. This book was engaging and so well written. I loved the process I loved the ending and I loved all the characters. A great beach read this summer!
Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young
Goodreads blurb: A rural island community steeped in the mystical superstitions of its founders and haunted by an unsolved murder is upended by the return of the suspected killer in this deeply atmospheric novel. Emery Blackwood’s life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily. Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among the community that fractured her world in two. She’d once longed to run away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saiorse Island and chase new dreams; now, she maintains her late mother’s tea shop and cares for her ailing father. But just as the island, rooted in folklore and tradition, begins to show signs of strange happenings, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that no one wants to remember. August Salt knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night that changed everything. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from the past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises that span generations threatens to reveal the truth behind Lily’s death once and for all. Evocative and compelling, Spells for Forgetting is a vivid exploration of lost love and the unraveling of a small town and its many secrets.
This is an ARC review thanks to a gift from the publisher, the book comes out September 27th, 2022
my take: 4.5 out of 5. I had never read Adrienne Young but have Fable in my TBR so I was excited to read this ARC. I will remedy this lack of Adrienne Young ASAP as this was such a great read. Both whimsical and emotional, haunting and touching, supernatural yet very character focused. This is a deeply human story with a Supernatural edge, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I also enjoyed the multiple perspective narratives, and I especially liked the chapter narrated by the island itself. The ending was fabulous and just cryptic enough that maybe we could get a continuation?
Tati's Tidbits 