Secrets in Summer by Nancy Thayer REVIEW

After the harrowing experience yesterday, I was very hesitant to continue with my 'to-be-reviewed' books. However, I needed to exercise and finishing these books while exercising has become my motivation lately. I read half of this already at the hospital while my dad was getting surgery but I know all too well that books can go downhill fast. Not that that's what happened yesterday because that whole book was a mess but when a story goes down. It goes down. I really need to find which genre is my palette cleanser.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this. I enjoyed it more towards the end but the whole book had this calming effect. The way it was written was just very relaxing to me, I don't know why. There are some funny parts but they're more towards the later half of the book as things are winding down. That doesn't mean that the beginning of the book wasn't entertaining, it just means that the later half was more entertaining than the first.

The one thing that really bothered me was the three chapters used for flashbacks, they were quite boring but I think it's because I'm not  fan of complete flashbacks in books. Especially since the topics covered in the flashbacks were continuously covered throughout the book. So it was an unnecessary three chapters. As if she had to have a certain page count and just decided to throw it in.

Darcy is a nice little character, she's a librarian and a little bit over-dramatic. She makes friends with her summer neighbors. But only half-way through the book. I think that was the biggest problem was that the bulk of the story happened in the second half and it left for really nothing in the first half. She took the first half to set up the location and characters. Other than that the book is great. It's barely 300 pages so it's a pretty quick read and I even had a few laugh out loud moments.

I struggled what to tag this as. Though, after some googling I figured out that women's fiction is an umbrella genre so I tagged with both chick lit and women's fiction because it's definitely chick lit.

Unrequited Alice by Sarah Louise Smith REVIEW

As I struggle to get through all of the ebooks that are leeching away at my phone memory, I went with the logical route and decided to start with the books that I have been granted access to read before they came out. Unrequited Alice is one of them, thanks netgalley! I want to point out my huge failure in life when it comes to this and that I have had this for over a month and just read it. The book comes out in two weeks. FML.

So, I haven't read from this author yet but if all of her books are as charming as Unrequited Alice, I might just want all of them.

There's very specific feelings that come with unrequited love. It's really painful and bitter and it's kind of like 'I need to get over this' but then it's like you can't because you're so smitten with this person that will never like you back. I read the title and I was just like 'is this my autobiography?' The answer is no because my name is Hope and Unrequited Hope just sounds super depressing.

The book is charming in it's delivery, we watch two people that are in love pretend that they're not in love. It's that frustration that makes you want to throw your phone out the window. Sarah does this kind of angst well with very subtle humor. The way she writes it makes it seem very true to life. Like, it seems like shit like this could actually happen and I have no doubts that they did. This will probably happen to me one day without the romance aspect.

It was the realism that made me like this. The characters weren't perfect. They were people that have been hurt and act like people that have been hurt. This is how life goes. Of course, the only thing is that a lot of relationships like this don't end in romance and while I was reading in the beginning I dreaded that Sarah was going to go super into the real life aspect and they weren't going to end up together. I wasn't disappointed.