Cloud Cuckoo Land Anthony Doerr
Goodreads blurb: When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.
Constantinople, 1453:An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.
Idaho, 2020: An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?
Unknown, Sometime in the Future:With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.
Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.
my take: 4 out of 5. This was a hard book to rate and talk about. I think at the end it was a total 5 out of 5 stars book for me. However the beginning was rough. I started this book probably like 3 times. I started it as soon as I got the ARC, and made it a couple of chapters until i let it go for a bit, only to revisit a couple of weeks later. Finally recently pushed by a friend I powered through and boy am I glad I did. How it all ties up together in the end was just a beauty of storytelling. IT is a disappointing and hopeful story all at once. Sad and yet inspiring. Read it you wont regret it (just keep pushing past the first chapters like it did).
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
Goodreads blurb: 1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done. With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
my take: 4.25 out of 5. Was the intertwining of these stories a bit predictable? yes. However that does not mean it is not a beautiful and powerful story on what it meant to be a woman in the 50s. Inspiring Historical fiction, which is one of my favorite categories always. The women were very well written and it was a very quick read.
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
Goodreads blurb: April Coutts-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide… including a murder.
my take: 4 out of 5. This is surprisingly my first Ruth Ware book, and why did I wait this long??? The story was great and I totally did not see the ending coming, which is my favorite part! I had two other people pegged and never the actual one (i mean those who read it im happy to discuss :)). Quick read, yet engaging, it was my perfect road trip audiobook on my way to Disney
Dream On by Angie Hockman
Goodreads blurb: What would you do if your dream man turned out to be real? When law student Cass Walker wakes up after surviving a car accident, she is flooded with memories of her boyfriend, Devin. The only problem? Devin doesn’t exist. But everything she remembers about him feels so real, like the precise shade of his coffee-brown eyes; the texture of his favorite hand-me-down scarf; even the slightly crooked angle of his pinkie, broken after falling off a trampoline in third grade. She knows he’s a figment of her imagination—friends, family, and doctors confirm it—but she still can’t seem to get him out of her head.So when she runs into the real Devin a year later in a Cleveland flower shop, she’s completely shocked. Even more surprising is that Devin actually believes her story, and soon they embark on a real-life romance. With her dream man by her side and an upcoming summer job at a prestigious law firm, Cass’s future seems perfect. But fate might have other plans…
my take: 3.5 out of 5. A cute and quick to read romance, that I liked I just did not dream about it afterwards. IT is a cute premise, with a theoretically complicated love triangle, although for me it was just always very obvious. I think Devin needed to be cooler for me to be more invested in the triangle.
Tati's Tidbits 