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The Subtle Art of Finding Oneself In Michiko Aoyama's "What You Are Looking For Is in the Library"

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"Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped.." Synopsis :  What are you looking for? This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it. Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The co...
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Godly Heathens by H. E. Edgmon | ARC Review

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"But I also can't tell him I've spent my entire life looking at myself through fog, pretending to be alive and hoping that one day I'd actually start to feel like I was, and now I'm terrified there's no hope left." Synopsis : Infatuation. Reincarnation. Damnation. Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers’ queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who’s a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn. But even Enzo doesn’t know about Gem’s dreams, haunting visions of magic and violence that have always felt too real. So how does Willa Mae Hardy? The strange new girl in town acts like she and Gem are old companions, and seems to know things about them they’ve never told anyone else. When Gem is attacked by a stranger claiming to be the Goddess of Death, Willa Mae saves t...
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Loving the Dead and Gone by Judith Turner-Yamamoto| ARC Review

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"Everywhere I looked I saw people hurting, disappointed, weighed down with longings they couldn’t name.." Synopsis :  A freak car crash in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. For forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of secrets that have turned her mean. A fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past. Darlene, a seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself still alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla’s family, and sets loose Aurilla’s own memories of longing and infidelity. As Aurilla’s forbidden and heartbreaking story of love, death, and repeated loss alternates with Darlene’s, the divide of generations and time narrows and collapses, building to the unlikely col...
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Spells For Forgetting by Adrienne Young | ARC Review

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"There were some things that were a part of you, no matter how badly they hurt.." Synopsis :  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 t...
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As Time Unfolds by Barbara Zerfoss | ARC Review

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"The heavenly-painted leaves won’t remain long. Might we enjoy them so much if they did?" Synopsis :  A young girl disappears. Can secrets inside a three centuries-old journal save her life in time? Advertising agency owner, Bethany Miller, inherits an ancestral home from the biological mother she never knew. Inside a grandfather clock named The Timekeeper, she discovers a treasured family journal. Generations of first daughters each wrote one entry, sharing family secrets, chronicling courageous acts, the freeing power of forgiveness and more.  Reading the women’s stories and timeless wisdom, Bethany begins to reassess her busy life and contemplates taking a chance on romance, but she can’t forget an alarming encounter with a girl’s soul-piercing eyes.  They shot her a dire warning … right before she disappeared. Those eyes cause Bethany’s past, present and future to collide. Is history right on time to save a girl’s life? Review :  As Time Unfolds had a promising p...
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The Secrets That She Kept by Salem Miles | ARC Review

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"We are all works in progress, and it takes real guts to admit when you’re wrong and try to move from there.." Synopsis : When popular high schooler,  Julianna Stefanie Robinson takes her life days before her final year of high school commence, her best friend, Dalia Parker, and her twin brother James Robinson are left to pick up the pieces as Julia left letters to those she feels she has wronged. But as they deliver them to their recipients and start getting closer to each other, Dalia and James realize that there were quite some skeletons that Julia hid in the closet, ones that could change their lives..forever.. Review :  First of all I'd like to thank the lovely @salemwrites_ for providing me with the ARC of this wonderful book.  The synopsis gave me major 13 Reasons Why vibes (one of my favourite books) and I knew then that I'd love this book too.  And in this respect, "The Secrets That She Kept" didn't disappoint. This book explores the typical Ame...
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To Get To The Other Side by Kelly Ohlert | ARC Review

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"You are a human being, not a machine. Nobody can be happy one hundred percent of the time. It isn’t realistic. It’s not what we’re made for.." Synopsis :  Trixie isn’t exactly sure what she was thinking when she stopped her car in the middle of downtown Chicago, scooped up a chicken struggling to cross the road, and drove off… but she does know that she has to find a new home for herself and her new feathered friend. The landlord at her apartment doesn’t allow pets and has caught Trixie in one too many pet-smuggling attempts in the past. Bear likes his quiet life with his close-knit family, who own a flower business, but he’s in for a rude awakening when his meddlesome sisters post an ad to rent the spare room in his simple home, without asking his permission. Still, when Trixie responds to the ad, he agrees to let her move in, despite immediate worries about keeping things platonic. Determined to keep her new room, befriend Bear, and give her rescue chicken the care she des...
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