MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

It’s been an interesting and busy year – as you may have noticed, I haven’t posted a blog post in a while; in the past six months, I’ve graduated college, moved to a brand new big city, and started my very first full time job. So I’ve been very busy and have neglected this page. But now that it’s a new year and I’m starting to find my grove in adult life, one of my 2023 resolutions is to get back into the Twin Speaks blog! And while I’m doing this, Sophia is managing our Instagram (make sure to follow us @twlnspeaks)!

While I’ve been busy this year, I also managed to spend a lot of time reading, and I read around 150 books this past year, which is absolutely insane. So here is my list of the 10 best books I read in 2022!

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

I got this book from the library as a whim because I thought the cover was pretty, and it ended up completely blowing me away. It tells the story of two different generations, but the meat of the story is in the earlier generation, with a forbidden love story between two people living on Cyprus, one on the Greece side and one on the Turkey side. It was a beautiful story that completely grabbed me and hasn’t let me go since I first read it. It also has a tree as a narrator, which I found super unique and really interesting. It was beautifully written, with complex and lovable characters, a great plot, and a rich setting. One of the easiest five stars I’ve ever given a book!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

My absolute favorite book of all time is Beartown by Fredrik Backman, so it’s no surprise to me at all that I absolutely loved this book and gave it five stars. Ove is so grumpy and negative, but by the end of the book it’s basically impossible not to love him. I don’t typically cry over TV shows, books, or movies, but this is one of the few books that have had the honor of make me not just cry but sob over the ending. I love the way Backman tells stories, and his writing style is so unique and amazing that he is an instant-read author for me for sure. And this book is being turned into a movie starring Tom Hanks, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with it and how they adapt it for the big screen.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

I read Homegoing in 2022 as well and loved it, but when I finally got around to reading Transcendent Kingdom, I was absolutely floored. It’s a beautifully written novel about a complicated relationship between a grad student and her mother who is going through a mental health crisis. This book is such a rich portrayal of family ties and family grief, and it holds the honor of being another book that made me shed a few tears. I read it towards the beginning of the year, but it continues to hold a grip on me, and it’s a storyline that I continue to think about and truly think I will for years.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

I was surprised when this book snuck it’s way into my favorites of the year. One of my 2022 book resolutions was to read more nonfiction, and I was expecting that to feel like a chore, but it really didn’t. This storyline was so interesting, and I think Krakauer did a really good job weaving together the murder that happened as well as the background of Mormon fundamentalism (which is something that I think the Hulu show was lacking). I was completely hooked on this story, and I recommend it to anyone looking to get into nonfiction.

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Another nonfiction book made the selection! As someone in my early 20s who recently moved to a new city, this book was exactly what I needed to read. Alderton is funny, relatable, and her insights hit me over the head with how much I needed to hear them. I also think it’s a new TV show on Peacock as well, which I definitely need to check out. I’ve been recommending this book to all of my peers who have recently graduated college and moved to new places, and I think that if you’re in the same boat, this could be a good read for you!

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman

I was fortunate enough to get hold of this book before it was released (thank you NetGalley!), and I’m so glad that it’s finally out so that everyone else can read it too! It follows a queer Muslim character as she grows up in Queens and finds herself among the streets of New York. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who needs plot in their books, since this is much more of a character study than anything else, but the writing is gorgeous and the characters are so rich and complex and I absolutely fell in love with the main character Razia.

The League of Gentlewomen Witches by India Holton

I love romance books, so I’m surprised that this is the only one of that genre to have made it onto this list. Although this is the second book in a series, I liked this one more than the first one, and I don’t think you need to have read the first one to enjoy this one. It tells the story of a witch and a pirate who were born to hate each other, but find themselves stuck together while both trying to steal something that they believe is rightfully theirs. This book had my giggling and kicking my feet in the air, and it’s just the right amount of silliness that I love in my romance books. I cannot recommend this enough – a romance book with sword fighting and flying houses! What more could you want?

The Things We Do To Our Friends by Heather Darwent

Unfortunately, this book isn’t out yet, so I can’t force everyone I’ve met to read it, but I was lucky enough to get a copy of this early (again, thank you NetGalley!), and I was obsessed with it. It’s dark and confusing in a similar way to Bunny by Mona Awad, and it explores the complexities of female friendship in a similar way. It’s dark and twisted and grabs you in from the very start as the story starts to unfold in front of you. It’s out January 10, and I can see this book becoming an instant hit.

Of Woman and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

This book was actually also on my dad’s list of favorite books of 2022, which made me laugh a little, but I can see why! I’m a sucker for an intergenerational family story, and this book follows a bunch of different generations of a Cuban family, specifically the women of the family. It’s beautiful and spans many decades and settings, and I instantly loved it. It was also a fairly short read, so this can get you ahead on your reading challenge on GoodReads or Storygraph pretty quickly!

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

This is another book that weaves different generations together, this time with a female pilot and the actress a hundred years later playing her in a movie. I definitely found the storyline following the pilot to be much more interesting, but the actress’s storyline also brought everything together. This was a great read about being a female in male dominated spaces, such as Hollywood or in the piloting world, and I really enjoyed seeing how their lives were the same yet so different.

There’s my top 10 books of 2022, in no particular order! Stay tuned for my least favorite books of 2022, which will be coming shortly (and, if you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know how much I love to talk about books I hated).

What were your favorite reads of 2022? Did you agree or disagree with any of mine? Let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: LIGHTLARK BY ALEX ASTER

Lightlark by Alex Aster has gotten a lot of social media attention recently, and most of it has been bad. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a book’s Goodreads rating drop from 4 stars to less than 2 stars in one day because of how many one star reviews people were giving it. Of course, this made me incredibly intrigued, and I knew that I absolutely had to read it and see if these one star reviews had any basis, especially since my TikTok for you page went from people praising this book and telling me that I absolutely had to read it to people saying that it was horrible and hating on Alex Aster in the span of around five hours.

The Lightlark Controversy, (Poorly) Explained

I’m going to try to explain what is going on with this book, but there are so many moving parts and so many things that I’m bound to forget some or explain some poorly. A few months ago, I saw Alex Aster posting on TikTok promoting her book that was coming out. Most of these were either talking about the tropes that were in the book or talking about how excited she was that her book became a viral sensation on TikTok and that it was coming out soon. I thought nothing of this; if I had a book coming out, I would probably be doing the same thing. She was also posting about how the rights to turn it into a film had been bought before the book came out, and I remember thinking “Oh, good for her,” and then moving on.

More recently, however, once people started receiving arcs and actually reading the book, they started complaining that the tropes and quotes that Alex had been posting to promote her book weren’t actually in the book. Then, the idea of diversity within characters was brought up, since people were mad that the one “diverse” character in the book was a lot like tokenism.

And with the attention of her book, information about her background started coming out. Now, this is the part that gets a little muddled in my opinion. I’m not sure if she ever claimed to be self-made or anything, but it came out that she comes from a very privileged background and her sister is a millionaire with potential connections in the publishing world, which people did not like at all. (Another interesting thing that came up is that she also had a failed attempt at a music career – Addison Rae was even paid to promote it).

Once more and more people got the book and began to read it, they began to review-bomb the Goodreads rating, giving it hundreds of one star reviews and causing a lot of controversy.

My Review of Lightlark

I decided to read Lightlark to form my own opinion. I tried to go into the book without the preconceived bias that TikTok had given me (but who knows if I successfully did that).

The fact of the matter is that this is not a very well-written book. I found that the majority of this book was info-dumping, which was exhausting and confusing to read. The world-building wasn’t woven into the story but instead just slapped onto the page in paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions. I also found some of the worldbuilding to be very lazy, especially the names. Nightlings? Sunlings? Moonlings? It’s just a little too on the nose for me.

The characters themselves were very surface level, especially Isla, who I found to be a very nothing protagonist. She fell into the trap of supposedly being an amazing fighter and “special,” but her personality was so boring and nothing about her character explained why she could beat a 500+ year old in combat. She was so boring and a blank slate, and she had no chemistry with either of the “love interests.” Honestly, I spent the whole time assuming that she was actually in love with Celeste, since Celeste was the only character that she seemed to have any chemistry with.

Aside from the big picture things, I also found the physical writing to be not great. Every sentence had the same structure and felt very choppy, and most of the writing was telling rather than showing. Some of the descriptions of things (see below) caused me to physically put the book down and question my life choices:

• “Lightlark was a shining, cliffy thing”
• “The sun had fallen. It was just a yolky thing…” (This one was the opening sentence of a chapter and happened only a few pages after the first one)

The concept of the book was compelling, but I found it to be poorly executed. The curse was not explained very well, the pacing was all over the place, and I found it to just kind of be boring.

Do I think it deserved all of the one star reviews from people who haven’t read it? No. Do I think Alex Aster deserves all of the hate that she is getting? Absolutely not. I think if you’re curious, you should give the book a chance and see what you think, but just know that I personally thought that this book got incredibly overhyped before its release.

Have you read Lightlark by Alex Aster? What do you think about this whole controversy? Let me know in the comments!

The Problem with Persuasion (2022)

I am a big fan of Jane Austen, both novels and movie adaptations. From reading Northanger Abbey to watching Clueless, I can never get enough of her universe. I’ve always found the Pride & Prejudice 2005 vs. 1995 debate to be funny and unnecessary, since each of them have their own separate strengths. In my opinion, there can never be too many Jane Austen adaptations. At least, I thought that until I watched Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion.

This adaptation of Persuasion confused me, not because the plot itself was particularly confusing (for the most part, the plot structure followed that of the book) but because I could not for the life of me figure out who the intended audience of this movie was. Anne’s constant breaking of the fourth wall and use of modern slang suggested that the writers of this adaptation wanted Anne to somewhat embody Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s portrayal of Fleabag. However, this poses some problems in my mind.

The venn diagram of people who enjoy Fleabag and people who love Jane Austen is pretty much just a circle. Maybe I’m stereotyping here, but to me, it seems like anyone who has watched and enjoyed Fleabag loves reading Jane Austen, and anyone who loves reading Jane Austen has watched Fleabag or is intending to watch Fleabag. For that reason alone, turning Anne Eliot into a Fleabag-esque character doesn’t make sense from a viewership standpoint; it’s not a selling point that Anne is like Fleabag because people who watch Fleabag were probably already planning on watching any adaptation of Persuasion that was released.

I completely understand the idea behind the inclusion of modern slang and having Anne break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience; it sort of felt like a way to try to make the dialogue, the story, and Austen as a whole more accessible and for a wider audience, since, sometimes, the writing style and dialogue can be confusing. But there are tasteful ways to do it, and I do not think that this adaptation correctly did it. Modernizing the dialogue should still be timeless, but even in just the time between the production and the release of this movie, some of the lines were already ridiculous and dated.

I also question the choice to modernize Persuasion as opposed to any of Austen’s other works. Northanger Abbey, for example, is about a teenager who is coming of age and growing up before the readers’ eyes; the youth of Catherine’s character makes it more sensible that she would be speaking in slightly more modern slang. But with Anne Eliot, who is Austen’s oldest protagonist, and Persuasion, which is Austen’s most mature novel, it falls flat and seems out of place.

Another reason why Persuasion was an odd choice out of all of the Austen novels to “give the Fleabag treatment to” is that Persuasion, as Austen’s most mature novel, is most likely not going to be the first Austen experience that a lot of people have. Which brings me back to the question: who is this novel for? The modernization suggests it’s for people who are unfamiliar with Austen, but the source material itself suggests otherwise.

One thing I’ve noticed as well is that people whose favorite Austen novel is Persuasion also tend to be Austen purists; they don’t want any even minute changes to their beloved novel. Which means, in my opinion, that this movie was doomed to fail from the start.

But in my eyes, the moment this movie failed was when I learned that Henry Golding was not playing the love interest. How are the casting directors of this movie going to take one look at Henry Golding and decide to put him in a period piece and NOT make him the love interest and instead cast a stiff, unlikeable Captain Wentworth? Henry Golding as a love interest was a missed opportunity, and I need to see him in more period pieces immediately.

I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on Persuasion (2022), especially people who haven’t read the books or are otherwise unfamiliar with Austen. Maybe I’m being a close-minded Austen snob with my dislike of this movie, and I’m fully open to that possibility. But either way, Henry Golding needs to be the love interest in a period piece.

Have you seen Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion? What did you think? Please let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: THE STEMINIST NOVELLAS BY ALI HAZELWOOD

I admittedly was not the biggest fan of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis or Love on the Brain (which I know is a pretty controversial opinion). One of my main critiques about those books was the fact that a lot of them seemed to just drag on and on and were much too long for the story they were telling, which is why when I heard about the novellas that she was writing, I was excited. I was hoping that the stories she was telling in these would work better in the shorter form and that the pacing would work better than in the novels.

There are three STEMinist novellas: “Under One Roof,” “Stuck With You,” and “Below Zero.” I listened to all of these on audiobook, and each of them took me around three hours maximum to listen to them, which means I listened to most of them all in one sitting.

One thing I thought was cute and good about these stories is the structure with all three of the friends being in all three of the stories, each one following a different friend. I really liked that format, especially since when the previous main character would show up in the next book, I would get excited and feel like I was seeing a friend. I also really liked seeing the development in characters continue through the three books, even though I wish there was a little bit more of each friend.

I also think that Ali Hazelwood knows how to write a scene with tension. I found myself giggling and gasping during all of the interactions between the love interests.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all that I liked about these books. I was hoping that the shorter format would fix a lot of problems I had with Ali Hazelwood’s full novels, but really, it just made them feel rushed. I think that she needs to find her length sweet spot, since some are too long and slow and some are too short and rushed.

Also, it took me around halfway through the second book to put together the fact that Ali Hazelwood has given us the same exact story five times, just packaged in a different scientific career for her main characters. All the books follow the exact same structure and format, and all of them are just miscommunication tropes that take up an entire story, which is one of my least favorite tropes. Most of them are so frustrating to listen to because if the characters simply listened to each other for five seconds or acted like grown ups.

The writing and characters were juuuuust different enough that it took me a second to put two and two together that these are all basically the same story, but once I did, I couldn’t look past it. I think Ali Hazelwood built really rich and developed characters in the first book that she wrote, but it feels like she is incapable of creating new characters and has just been reusing them over and over again.

This is also a much smaller critique, but I don’t understand her obsession with talking about the size of her protagonists. I understand mentioning it at some points in the stories for description purposes, but in these books, it felt like I was constantly being hit over the head with these.

That being said, there was something about these novels that were so entertaining and that I couldn’t put down. I’m not sure what it is, since when I look at these books with a critical lens, I get so frustrated with them. But when I turn my brain off, I cannot get enough. Which is why I continued to write everything that she has written, despite the fact that it’s continually the exact same story over and over again. And I will be reading whatever it is that she writes next.

Have you read any of the STEMinist novellas by Ali Hazelwood? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

MY FAVORITE NONFICTION BOOKS

I have never been a huge fan of nonfiction books, especially growing up; I found them often kind of boring. In my mind, school was for learning and reading at home was for escapism and for reading made up stories. So recently, when I’ve found myself starting to read a little bit more nonfiction, I was very surprised. Although, full disclosure, when I say that I’ve been reading “a little bit more” nonfiction, what I mean is that I read about four nonfiction books per day instead of zero.

Here is a list (in no particular order) or my favorite nonfiction books that I’ve read recently.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

One great thing about this book is that it reads almost entirely as if it were a fiction novel. This book follows, as the title suggests, three women throughout the United States and their vastly different lives. One thing that really drew me to this book was that, despite the women this book follows’ differences, there were common themes threaded through each story. It was an easy to read book that I think makes this a great nonfiction option for people who tend to stray away from nonfiction and turn more often to fiction books.

Cultish by Amanda Montell

This was my most recent nonfiction read, and it was an absolutely fascinating look into the language and habits that cults and cult leaders use to trap people into their toxic lifestyle. What was especially interesting about this book, however, was the fact that, while it did focus on some of the well-known cults like Jonestown, it also talks about exercise cults like SoulCycle and pyramid schemes. The analysis of how these groups that aren’t widely shown as cults use the same tactics as the well-known cults was so interesting to look at.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

I’m kind of cheating by including this book in this list because I didn’t read it by choice, I read it years ago in my 10th grade English class. But this book is so enthralling and so heartbreaking and such an interesting look into the disaster on Mount Everest. It definitely stuck with me for a long long time, both because of how well written it was and how devastating it was. It’s not a book that I would have ever picked up on my own, so I’m glad that I was basically forced to read it for class in high school.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Everyone and their mother has read this book at this point, so I’m just adding to the loud chorus of people praising this book. It’s a very sweet memoir about a woman and her mom and the way she tries to stay connected with her mom’s culture through food after the dead of her mother. This book made me cry, but it also made me laugh, which is, in my opinion, a sign of a great book. It’s such a touching and well-written story about a mother-daughter relationship that captured me and I think is going to stay with me for a long time.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

This is another book that pretty much everyone is at least aware of, probably because they saw the movie starring Michael B. Jordan (which was excellent, might I add). I actually watched the movie before reading the book, but the movie piqued my interest enough to want to check it out. The book is definitely more fact-based and less dramatized, with a lot more statistics and facts about prison and incarceration, and while I understand why they made the changes for the movie that they did, I’m glad that I also read the book because I feel like it gave me better insight into the main themes of the books and the problems with prisons that exist, particularly in the American south.

Those are my favorite nonfiction books that I’ve read in recent years, but I’m always looking to expand my TBR list and diversify my reading habits, specifically with more nonfiction books, so if you have any other recommendations, please let me know in the comments! 

REVIEW: I KISSED SHARA WHEELER BY CASEY MCQUISTON

I’ve read Red White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (you can read my reviews of them by clicking the titles!), so I was very excited to get approved to have early access to their YA debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler. And while I had some problems with this book, I did overall enjoy reading it, and I thought it was really cute.

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

RATING: 3 STARS

As a fan of McQuiston’s other books, I was excited to pick up their YA debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler. And this book definitely made me feel all warm and fuzzy like One Last Stop and Red White and Royal Blue did; it’s a heartwarming queer story about overcoming adversity and learning more about yourself, especially in a super religious, southern high school.

But one thing I couldn’t help but notice about this book is that I feel like it tried to do too much at once, to the point that it felt like it should have been about three separate books. The plot felt a little bit disjointed at times; there was the part when Chloe, Rory, and Smith were all trying to figure out what happened to Shara, there was the time after Chloe finds Shara, and there was the whole graduation plot. It just didn’t feel very much like a cohesive plot; instead of all of these subplots being woven together, it was like one was written to completion and then the next one would start. Because of this, I found the pacing to be really strange, and I feel like this book was trying to do all too much at once.

Overall, though, I think this book has an important message. I’m probably a little bit older than the target audience for this book, but the world definitely needs more YA books like this, so I recommend this book to anyone who needs to be reminded that they’re not alone in high school.. 

(Also this is such a dumb criticism I had, but as someone who was involved in high school theatre, the fact that a high school had enough operatic singers to put on Phantom of the Opera felt incredibly unrealistic to me, and it continually took me out of the plot.)

REVIEW: THE AGATHAS BY KATHLEEN GLASGOW AND LIZ LAWSON

Thank you to Netgalley for the early access to this book!

I saw The Agathas on the Netgalley dashboard and was immediately hooked; Agatha Christie vibes in a YA mystery? Sign me up! I was so excited to be approved for this title, and I jumped into the book as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations.

Who killed Brooke Donovan? It’s the biggest mystery of the summer, and everyone in Castle Cove thinks it’s the wrong guy. Fans of One of Us Is Lying and Riverdale can’t miss this page-turning who-done-it that’s sure to be the next must read Young Adult thriller!

Last summer, Alice Ogilvie’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. She’s not talking, so where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or it was, at least. But now, another one of Steve’s girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice’s ex–best friend. And it doesn’t look like Brooke will be coming back. . .
 
Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke’s grandmother is offering to anyone who can share information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn’t so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.
 
In order to get the reward and prove Steve’s innocence, they need to figure out who killed Brooke Donovan. And luckily Alice has exactly what they need—the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there’s anyone that can teach the girls how to solve a mystery it’s the master herself. But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they’re about to walk into. 

RATING: 2.5 STARS

I think I’m in the minority when it comes to this book. I’ve seen so many reviews raving about it, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, because maybe there is just something about this book that I’m missing.

The Agathas promises more than it delivers. Perhaps it set my expectations too high with its title, comparing it to any Agatha Christie novel, but I found that, while the concept is compelling, the plot itself fell a bit flat. For one thing, a lot of the speech patterns were awkward, and it was very clear that there were two adults who were trying (and failing) to pass as teenagers.

I also found that as the story went on and Alice and Iris became more involved in each others’ lives, it was hard to differentiate between the two of them. By that I mean that there was almost no stylistic differences between the two characters’ points of view.

The plot and mystery itself I think was well done, although the entire time, one of the only things I could think of the entire time was why so many people were just handing these teenage girls so much information, Ricky especially. Alice and Iris being the ones who solved the mystery just didn’t make sense to me.

Overall, the story itself fell flat, especially with the random side characters who were kind of there but kind of not and the Agatha Christie mentions that weren’t in it enough to be a theme but in it too much that it was awkward.

I was disappointed in the execution of this book because the idea and concept was there, but it just fell flat. I’m hoping to pick up some other books by either of these two authors, because I think that they clearly have talent, and hopefully, this book is an outlier in their respective collections.

Have you read The Agathas  or anything else by either of these two authors? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you again to Netgalley for the ditigal ARC of The Agathas!

REVIEW: PORTRAIT OF A THIEF BY GRACE D. LI

WARNING: This review contains moderate spoilers. Proceed with caution!

I feel like I’ve seen this book all over TikTok, especially from the author’s sister, who, might I add, is doing a fantastic job marketing this book. It’s been so hyped up, and it was compared to Ocean’s Eleven, so I knew this was a book I had to read as soon as possible. A critique on colonialism mixed with an art heist made up of college students? Sign me up! And I’m so glad that I did read this book; it definitely deserves all the hype it got.

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

RATING: 3.75 STARS

This book definitely took me by surprise; I was expecting something much more action-packed with most of the focus being on the heist, but what I got instead was a character study into immigrants and the children of immigrants and their feelings towards their identities. While at first it took me off guard and I found myself wishing for more action, I grew to really love the emphasis on the characters’ introspection and inner monologues.

I also loved the found family aspect of it; we get to see people who have known each other for years become closer and people who did not know them at all join the family, resulting in a great dynamic that I loved. At times, the switching POVs gave me a little bit of whiplash, but overall, I’m really glad that there were all of their POVs, since all of them had their own internal (and external) struggles that I wanted to see.

I really liked all of the characters EXCEPT FOR Irene, who I found so annoying. And I feel bad saying this, because I’m pretty sure the author based her off of her sister who has been making all of the TikToks, and she seems like a nice enough person (and her videos are very funny), but she was just an insufferable character. I feel like she was the opposite of a team player, and everything she did had me wanting to punch the wall and wonder why she would do things like that without consulting the rest of the group. I also thought that her hatred of Alex at the beginning was so unfounded. I understand that the author wanted to give them an enemies to lovers arc, but I feel like Irene just hated Alex for the sake of hating her. It made absolutely no sense to me.

I also found some of the writing and descriptions to be a little repetitive, but the writing itself was so beautiful and well-crafted that I didn’t really mind that.

Overall, I think that the title really fits the content of this book; rather than focusing on the heist, Li focuses on sketching a portrait of the thieves themselves and their inner thoughts and motivations, which is something I really grew to like. This was a stunning debut novel from Li, and I’ll definitely be looking out for any future books that she writes!

Have you read Portrait of a Thief? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: LOVE ON THE BRAIN BY ALI HAZELWOOD

(This is a spoiler-free review!)

Thank you Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC!

I read The Love Hypothesis at some point last year, and I thought it was cute; the emphasis on academia and women in STEM was so welcome, and I’m a sucker for a cheesy romance book. But some parts of The Love Hypothesis fell flat to me, so I was looking forward to reading Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood and see if she has evolved as a writer at all. And I feel like in some aspects, I liked it more than The Love Hypothesis, but in some aspects, it was even cringier than her other book.

Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project—a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia—Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.

Sure, Levi is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. And sure, he caught her in his powerfully corded arms like a romance novel hero when she accidentally damseled in distress on her first day in the lab. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school—archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away.

Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle. Perhaps it’s her occipital cortex playing tricks on her, but Bee could swear she can see Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas…devouring her with those eyes. And the possibilities have all her neurons firing. But when it comes time to actually make a move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?

RATING: 3 STARS

I found the characters of this book to be loveable, and I was rooting for them, which I think is very necessary for a romance book. I especially liked Bee’s characterization with her purple hair and her love of Marie Curie (although I felt like there was not enough Marie Curie for it to be a theme but just enough for it to be an awkward amount of Marie Curie). I do, however, feel like this book falls into the romance trope trap where the love interest is supposed to be stoic and grumpy, but instead he comes across as just kind of having the personality of a brick.

I really liked the plot line of Bee’s twitter account and her promotion of women in STEM and affordable graduate school, but sometimes I felt like it took a back burner and would go long stretches without mentioning it and then randomly bring it up again. I wish there had been a little more focus on that aspect of it.

The romance was very cute. I found a lot of it to be very predictable and fall into the tropes of romance books, but I think the cheesiness and predictability was part of the fun of the book; I liked being able to know things that Bee didn’t, and I found myself smiling about it, especially since I knew Levi’s feelings wayyyy before Bee did.

However, I did feel like the ending came out of nowhere. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t go into details, but there was a MASSIVE tone shift in one of the very last chapters of the book that took me completely off guard and felt so out of place. It was weirdly intense for a book that was pretty light and fluffy for the rest of the book.

Overall, despite these issues that I had with this book, I found myself grinning and feeling all warm inside while I was reading this book, so I give it a mostly positive review.

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood is out on August 23, 2022! Thank you again to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for early access to this book!

Have you read any of Ali Hazelwood’s books? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

REVIEW: JOSH AND HAZEL’S GUIDE TO NOT DATING BY CHRISTINA LAUREN

Warning: This review contains spoilers! Proceed at your own risk!

As a fan of Love and Other Words and The Unhoneymooners  by Christina Lauren, when I was at the library and saw Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, I immediately added it to the growing stack of books in my arms. And it was one of the first books out of the stack that I ended up reading because I was excited about it, and I wanted a feel-good, happy romance to go through.

Hazel Camille Bradford knows she’s a lot to take—and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and thrill for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter means she’ll say exactly the wrong thing in a delicate moment. Their loss. She’s a good soul in search of honest fun.

Josh Im has known Hazel since college, where her zany playfulness proved completely incompatible with his mellow restraint. From the first night they met—when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes—to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air.

Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them…right?

RATING: 3 STARS

This book almost got a higher rating from me, but then they threw in my very least favorite trope at the very end (but I’ll get to that later). It had so much good going for it for about the first three quarters of the book, so I was surprised at how quickly they were able to throw in a wrench in my enjoyment of the book.

When I first started reading about Hazel and her characteristics, I was a little worried that I would dislike her, and I felt like she was teetering at the edge of manic pixie dream girl, which is a character trope that I can’t stand. But one thing about Hazel is that, while she is quirky, her quirkiness causes her flaws. I also like that she was able to be different without falling into the “I’m not like other girls” trope; she didn’t hate on women just for being standard women, and I really liked her friendship with Emily. Although a lot of her actions were very cringey, I ended up growing to love her and root for her.

Josh, on the other hand, had almost no personality at all. I think there’s a difference between stoic and has-the-personality-of-a-brick, and Josh definitely falls into the latter category. It was so disappointing, because Hazel was such a developed character, but Josh was just kind of boring.

I really loved the concept of this book: two people who are friends constantly trying to set each other up on blind dates, unaware of the fact that they’re really falling in love with each other. I loved watching them interact on these double dates knowing that they were falling for each other before they even knew that. I do, however, think it took them wayyyy too long to admit their feelings for each other; it was kind of squeezed in at the end and was rushed, despite the fact that they had already slept together, like, three times!

And coming to the part that made me almost hate this book: the pregnancy at the end. I don’t know why I absolutely hate this trope, but it just felt so unnecessary. There was pretty much no purpose of it; it didn’t affect the plot at all, since she finds out about it after both of them have already realized that they’re in love with each other. I also absolutely hated the scene where she found out; I think it’s so overdone and never really done well. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that this all happened with about twenty pages left in the book. It was all so rushed and unnecessary.

It was too bad that the ending was so bad to me, because I really enjoyed the book up until that point. I had such a negative reaction to the ending of the book that I had to remind myself that I liked the book up until that point to stop myself from giving this book 2 stars instead of 3 stars.

Overall, this is a pretty standard romance book, complete with overdone tropes but some loveable characters and very cute scenes. It’s definitely not my favorite Christina Lauren book, but if you don’t mind the cheesy overdone tropes of the romance genre, this might be worth checking out.

Have you read Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating or anything else by Christina Lauren? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!