Published by Gallery Books on 14 May 2019
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Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in... well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

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I loved Olive and Ethan's banter and bickering. It fulfilled some kind of middle school satisfaction in me. Olive is hilarious and terribly unlucky, and I audibly laughed out loud several times, especially when she struggled with telling white lies. She acts super suspicious when she does it, which is totally me.

I hold a mean grudge so I wasn't totally satisfied with the end, but overall, I loved it and had a lot of fun reading it. My favourite contemporary romance of the season!

Would you go on an all-expenses paid trip with an enemy/frenemy? (I wouldn't. Again, I hold a mean grudge.)

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Published by Crown on 26 Jul 2016
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Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

It starts with a man in a mask kidnapping him at gunpoint, for reasons Jason can’t begin to fathom—what would anyone want with an ordinary physics professor?—and grows even more terrifying from there, as Jason’s abductor injects him with some unknown drug and watches while he loses consciousness.

When Jason awakes, he’s in a lab, strapped to a gurney—and a man he’s never seen before is cheerily telling him “welcome back!”

Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born.

And someone is hunting him.

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I picked up this book after loving Recursion--also by Blake Crouch--so much. I had seen many people talk about anticipating Recursion (the newer release of the two) because they enjoyed Dark Matter so much. Some of these readers were underwhelmed by Recursion, saying it was just more of the same of Dark Matter. Now having read both, I can definitely see the huge similarities between them. So if you do decide you want to read both of these books, I would recommend giving yourself some time in between before starting the next one.

And now, if you have no idea what I'm talking about because you haven't read Recursion and you haven't seen my review of it, I'll get on with my review of Dark Matter and try to keep my comparisons to Recursion minimal!

It's terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world.

The concept that Crouch plays around with in this novel is the multiverse. Think almost Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller, and this was (very fast-paced too), but it also read very heavily like a romance, which was surprising. There are certainly those mind-bending moments characteristic of the best sci-fi, but a lot of the story is also simply about Jason getting back to his family, and particularly to his wife Daniela. Romance is a bit of a hit-or-miss for me, but I was really invested in Jason and Daniela finding their way back to each other!

We're all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.

Blake Crouch is officially an auto-read author for me! I'd like to check out his Wayward Pines series next!

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Published by Crown on 11 Jun 2019
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Memory makes reality. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is learning as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

Neuroscientist Helena Smith already understands the power of memory. It’s why she’s dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious moments of our pasts. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face-to-face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?

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I love sci-fi and have ventured in many a story exploring memory; Recursion is the best of them. Memory, changed memories, and changing realities are tricky things to write about. It's easy to get confused when you're following an "everything was not what it seemed" kinda story (i.e. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton and The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh fell short of my expectations). Yet Recursion was executed so well; I was able to follow the concepts and stay engaged, and still continue to be surprised as events unfurled.

Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human--the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

What is False Memory Syndrome? How is it spreading? Why/how are the consequences so devastating? How much longer can the world tolerate looping through recursive memories and realities before everyone goes completely crazy? These questions kept me plowing through this adventure.

Recursion was as mind-bending for me as Inception was; I'll have to give it a reread eventually and create an infographic to straighten out the timelines in my head! I'll also have to read more Blake Crouch; I'm thinking of going for Dark Matter!

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Published by Hogarth on 14 May 2019
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In twelve stunning stories of love, family, and identity, Xuan Juliana Wang’s debut collection captures the unheard voices of an emerging generation. Young, reckless, and catapulted toward uncertain futures, here is the new face of Chinese youth on a quest for every kind of freedom.

From a crowded apartment on Mott Street, where an immigrant family raises its first real Americans, to a pair of divers at the Beijing Olympics poised at the edge of success and self-discovery, Wang’s unforgettable characters–with their unusual careers, unconventional sex lives and fantastical technologies–share the bold hope that, no matter where they’ve come from, their lives too can be extraordinary.

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I was really excited about this collection and was ready to rave about an Asian-American author and stories about the Asian-American experience, but unfortunately I felt completely disconnected from the characters and writing.

What I love about diverse stories is how they bring forward unique people/experiences and at the same time show how we're all human, all the same, all in this together. However, I didn't get that intimate feeling from these stories. I felt like I only got a sense of a type of person but not any particular person from these stories, if that makes any sense; the characters felt more like archetypes than real people. Perhaps short stories are not long enough to delve into these characters.

Theirs was a Chinese love. It was not about making each other happy. It was about sacrifice. It was a love devoted to suffering for the beloved. They were supposed to sacrifice over and over again for each other, each getting a turn to give up something he or she did not want for the other, until one of them died.

There were some interesting concepts with lots of potential though. I was particularly hopeful about "Home Remedies for Non-Life-Threatening Ailments," "Algorithmic Problem-Solving for Father-Daughter Relationships," and "Echo of the Moment."

"Home Remedies for Non-Life-Threatening Ailments": A silly list of emotional problems and advice on how to deal with them.

"Algorithmic Problem-Solving for Father-Daughter Relationships": A father tries to understand his daughter algorithmically.

"Echo of the Moment": A woman reinvents herself with luxurious outfits swiped from a dead rich lady's wardrobe.

The Goodreads rating for this collection is average, but the Goodreads reviews are quite positive, with many speaking on the beautiful writing and raw emotion. But again, I felt distant and disconnected from these stories and characters, and no emotional chord was struck within me whatsoever. I'm confused and would be very curious to hear from anyone else who has read this collection!

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Published by Berkley Books on 09 Feb 2017
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A murder... A tragic accident... Or just parents behaving badly? What's indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mum Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

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It took me awhile to get into the mundane suburban gossip, and it reminded me of Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple at first, but I before I knew it, I was as keen on all the gossip as all the mothers were. I particularly loved Madeline; she's loyal af, loves a good fight, and is hilarious.

As the story progressed, the mundane gossip gradually got heavier, involving themes of bullying, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

The first 100 pages were slow but the last 100 pages were wild. Because my mind was lulled into the mundanity of suburban life, the plot twists really caught me.

Now that I've finally read the book, I'm looking forward to binging the show that everyone's talking about! I can already tell that there's gonna be lots and lots of drama!

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Published by Random House on 08 Jan 2019
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On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.

Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.

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This book started off strong with short chapters alternating between two timelines: one from the night of the crime from Aurora's perspective, and the other 30 years later when her body was discovered. However, the story started to drag on after awhile and the suspense created at the beginning of the book was lost.

My main qualm was with Jonah. Besides the fact that I didn't like his personality or his character, I felt that the way he jumped on every lead in the investigation detracted from the story's suspense. Much of the book was him suspecting each member of the group of friends at one point or another.

On the other hand, none of the friends in the group ever suspected one another. I felt that this story could have been much more suspenseful and psychological if they did. Another way to amp up the psychological aspect of the story could have been to dive deeper into the personal psychological changes in each of the friends since Aurora's disappearance. The fact that there was a change was stated but hardly explored.

The end wasn't satisfying. But I did get to the end. Despite my desire for more suspense, there was enough curiosity in me to keep reading to the end and know once and for all what happened to Aurora.

Reading buddy: Tegan's review, Sadia's review

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Published by skirt! on 01 Sep 2009
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Delving into the long, extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of book, exploring Chanel's philosophy on a range of universal themes--from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.

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I was hoping that this book would be memoir-like and show some insight to Chanel's perspective on life/work/fashion, but this book is more about the legend of Chanel (rather than about who Chanel was as a real person), lauding her accomplishments much like a fan would. I suppose it must be difficult to write a memoir on Chanel, as I learned from Karbo's account that Chanel was "Mademoiselle Misinformation"; she regularly fibbed about her background when asked, and she even hired many people to write her memoir, gave every writer different accounts, and fired every one.

The book was broken into thematic chapters rather than organised chronologically, which was a bit confusing, and I wasn't interested in the parts when Karbo inserted herself into the narrative. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to read, but it'd be a nice book to use as decor and flip through occasionally.

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Published by Penguin Books on 23 Feb 2016
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I read and read and read with an intensity I'd never really known before. I mean, I'd always considered myself to be a person who liked books. But there's a difference between liking books and needing them. I needed books. They weren't a luxury good during that time in my life. They were a Class A addictive substance...

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping. It is not where we are, but where we want to go, and all that. "Is there no way out of the mind?" Sylvia Plath famously asked. I had been interested in this question (what it meant, what the answers might be) ever since I had come across it as a teenager in a book of quotations. If there is a way out, a way that isn't death itself, then the exit route is through words. But rather than leave the mind entirely, words help us leave a mind, and give us the building blocks to build another one, similar but better, nearby to the old one but with firmer foundations, and very often a better view.

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Published by Penguin Books on 23 Feb 2016
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I wanted to be dead. No. that's not quite right. I didn't want to be dead. I just didn't want to be alive. Death was something that scared me. And death only happens to people who have been living. there were infinitely more people who had never been alive. I wanted to be one of those people. That old classic wish. To never have been born. To have been one of the three hundred million sperm that hadn't made it.

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Published by Crown on 13 Nov 2018
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In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

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Michelle Obama is smart, strong, driven, perceptive, and an excellent story teller. The way she weaves together her values, her accomplishments, personal anecdotes, and social issues is seamless, avoiding sounding too preachy. Even if you're not into politics (tbh, politics go over my head), I would still recommend this memoir.

Even when it's not pretty or perfect. Even when it's more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

It is told in three parts: "Becoming Me," "Becoming Us," "Becoming More." The first part talks about her life from the South Side of Chicago to her time as a law associate at the prestigious law firm Sidley & Austin. The second part begins when she and Barack start dating, and the third part begins with her as First Lady. Admittedly, "Becoming More" does get a little politic-heavy, which is natural considering the phase in her life that part is covering, but again, her story telling is seamless, and I read it more as an insight into her values and her determination to make a difference.

This is the story of a woman who didn't back down when society told her she couldn't. She worked harder. She made plans and executed them flawlessly. She did everything she was supposed to. She rose from the South Side of Chicago, went to Princeton, then Harvard, and straight to work at Sidley & Austin. She did everything she was suppose to and found that it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to make a difference in the areas she cared about. And there is so much she cares about. So many she cares about.

His was the lone voice telling me to just go for it, to erase the worries and go toward whatever I thought would make me happy. It was okay to make my leap into the unknown, because... the unknown wasn't going to kill me.

Michelle Obama is an amazing woman and a blessing to us all. She is an inspiration to all of us to have bigger hearts and reach bigger goals.

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Published by Gallery / Saga Press on 08 Mar 2016
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We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves--they're the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling, accidental universe tolerable.

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