Tag: goodreads choice awards

“Now is Not the Time to Panic” by Kevin Wilson Book Review

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General Information:

Format Read – Audiobook

 

Synopsis – Aspiring writer and outcast teenager, Frankie is expecting to have another boring summer, until Zeke enters her life.  Together, they create a poster combining their talents to post around town.  It’s all fun and games until more and more of their posters start popping up not by their doing, causing the small Tennessee town to panic about potential Satanic meanings behind their work.

 

Review:

This was one of the sweetest and simplest books I have read all year and I enjoyed every second of it.  While it is not very long, Wilson is able to greatly capture that feeling of being young and an outcast while finding that person that is just like you.  This has been one of the GoodReads Choice Awards nominees for Fiction that I have been able to relate to the most.  The characters are fun and enjoyable and I was captivated by their journey.

 

Frankie is a teenager who wants to be a writer and just likes to keep to herself as she sees herself a little bit as an outcast.  She has been writing a novel all summer and it is her pride and joy but also does not really show it off to anyone else.  She is expecting to have another boring summer until Zeke moves in with his grandmother, changing the course of both of their summers.  While Frankie is an aspiring writer, Zeke wants to get into the field of illustration.  Both of them hit it off right away, bonding over their love for their crafts while finding the meaning behind what they are creating.  One day, they decide to make a poster combining her writing and his art and post a few around town.  It was just meant to be a fun creative project to keep them entertained over the summer, but it turns into so much more.  They begin to notice that their posters are being posted all over town in greater quantities than they have put up.  More people their age are talking about the saying on the poster, and it is making Frankie and Zeke feel like rebels; their work is getting out there and means something to the masses.

 

This is a story that anyone can read and relate to, especially if they have felt left out at some point in their lives.  That is what I loved most about this novel; it is simple but means so much.  There is nothing really special about the way it is written but because it is so simple, that is what makes it accessible to a wider range of audience. What pulls me out of the story a bit is when we see these same characters in the future when a reporter comes in contact with Frankie inquiring about the Panic that took place in her hometown.  It was something about how the characters were written during this time period that just seemed off.  They were not as enjoyable as their younger selves were and I think that is what pulled me out of the story for a bit.  But there was enough good and young love and inspiration that overtook the lack of character building in the final act.

 

Everything about the characters made me fall in love with this story and to just keep reading on.  As simple as it may be, I think that this is something everyone should pick up.  If you have ever felt like you do not belong, there is someone out there that will match your energy that also needs you.  

“Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout Review

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General Information:

Format Read – Audiobook

 

GoodReads Choice Awards – 2022 Fiction Nominee

 

Synopsis – Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William decide to leave New York City and head up to Maine to wait out the pandemic over the next few months, learning what it means to be isolated and how to look at all the positives that life has to offer.

 

Review:

Another book I picked up on my quest to read all of the GoodReads Choice Awards nominees, I am not surprised that we had another one that focused on the pandemic.  I feel as though we are going to be getting a lot more of these kinds of stories that focus on either the actual pandemic that took place in 2020 or stories having themes of a disease or pandemic (like in “To Paradise”).  While I think that a lot of these authors found a creative outlet in writing about what was going on, it can begin to feel repetitive, especially when you are doing a challenge like myself where a lot of these types of books are getting published around the same time.

 

I did not know that this story was the fourth in a series going into it, but I did not find any issue jumping into the story without having the appropriate background knowledge of who the characters were.  I really like that about a story that may be a part of a literary fiction series but you do not need previous books to catch up.  I bet if I had read the three former books –  which I do plan on reading now – I would probably have more information on the relationship between Lucy and William with their children and their relationships, but I felt as though I knew enough about them from what I was given in this novel to know what was going on.  That means a lot to someone like me who is new to reading adult literary fiction and gives me confidence in the series as a whole.

 

Overall, I think the book was just pretty average.  There was nothing that took me out of the story too much that made it hard to get through but also there did not seem to be a lot of uniqueness or creativity that made it an absolutely amazing read.  The main idea behind the story was something that I have gotten a lot of recently with pandemic-focused books, but I also took a lot away from it and was something I needed to hear during the time I was listening to it.  The characters had their own unique personalities but nothing too different that separated them from the average family going through this time like everyone else.  I enjoyed a lot of parts of the book with Lucy just contemplating the simple things in life that she had not noticed before.  Going through an event like the pandemic changed a lot of people; they were more focused on the little things that happened every day in their lives as they were missing them.  The basics of seeing someone cross your path or people watching as individuals do their jobs became such a rarity during 2020 that hearing what Stout had to say about them through Lucy made it all worth it.  Those were some of the best aspects of the book and the reason why I was able to enjoy it the way I did.

 

Overall, there is nothing too different about an average family set during the pandemic, but when you think back and listen to Lucy explain the simple things in life, it makes the novel all worth it.   

“To Paradise” by Hanya Yanagihara Book Review

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From the author of the popular book “A Little Life”, Hanya Yanagihara is back with her next novel “To Paradise”.  Broken up into three stories during three different alternative time periods of American history, we follow a family through the years of 1893, 1993 and 2093 who all have one thing in common besides their bloodline: a townhouse located in New York City.  We follow three different stories from different generations of the Hawaiian family living in NYC, and how illness can impact them the same way even when they are living hundreds of years apart.

Now I have yet to read “A Little Life” so this is my first time reading any book by Yanagihara.  A lot of people seemed to like “A Little Life” so I was excited when I saw her newest novel was nominated for the GoodReads Choice Awards for Fiction.  I am on a journey of reading all of the GoodReads Choice Awards winners and this is the second one I have picked up.  This is a large book, over 600 pages, and I listened to it on audiobook, which I think is the way to approach it as there are a variety of voice actors for the different characters we explore.  Without the audiobook, I am not sure if I would have been able to make it through as easily as I did.  But there is a lot to unpack with this book and I wish it would have been adapted in a different way that Yanagihara did.

The book is broken up into three major storylines, each taking place 100 years apart.  The book is over 600 pages, but it is not evenly spread out amongst the different time periods.  There were a lot of interesting aspects of each of the stories, but my major issue with it was that even though they all had similar themes and locations, there was not really a reason why all of them had to be told in one book as one story.  It was way too long to be one novel; I wish it was broken up into a trilogy because it would have made the individual stories flow better and give them their time to be expanded upon.  I was interested in what each time period had to say about the state of America and the illnesses that were running through each of the stories, but the first two took up the first half of the book and the third was the other half.  If it was broken up into three novels as part of a series, the first two books would have had their chance to be better fleshed out and much more enjoyable than they were. 

Each of the stories were written in a way that kept me entertained in its high moments and really dragged in its low points.  It is hard to describe, but I wanted to keep reading because in certain moments I was so invested in the characters and what they were doing, but then it would take a complete 180 and I would be bored in an instant.  I am not sure if this is Yanagihara’s writing style or if it was me, but as much as I wanted more from these stories, the times that dragged really dragged.  I think this book would have been better as a series, even if I thought that some moments could have been cut out.  Maybe this was because Yanagihara was limited to staying within one book.  The best of the books that did not have me bored was the third story as it was the one that was the most fleshed out and was given the most opportunity to be a complete story.  While the characters and story were there and entertaining, I was not fully engaged with all of the parts evenly.

An heart-wrenching and interconnected story that can keep you entertained from time to time, but the unevenness of the stories makes the book drag more than it should.

 

“The Hotel Nantucket” Review

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I like to give myself challenges because I like the feeling of completing something.  I have decided to read all of the books that were nominated for a GoodReads Choice Award in 2022.  I started with the fiction category as that is the first category listed and picked The Hotel Nantucket as my first book in this challenge because it was the only one available as an audiobook that was checked in at my library.

“After a tragic fire in 1922 that killed 19-year-old chambermaid, Grace Hadley, The Hotel Nantucket descended from a gilded age gen, to a mediocre budget-friendly lodge to inevitably an abandoned eyesore -until it’s purchased and renovated top to bottom by London billionaire, Xavier Darling.  Xavier hires Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton as his general manager, and Lizbet, in turn, pulls together a charismatic, if inexperienced, staff who share the vision of turning the fate of the hotel around.  They face challenges in getting along with one another (and with the guests), in overcoming the hotel’s bad reputation, and in surviving the (mostly) harmless shenanigans of Grace herself — who won’t stop haunting the hotel until her murder is acknowledged.

One of the major things that stood out to me about this book was that we focused on a whole cast of characters.  There are a few characters that we focus more on, but this story is driven by the ensemble we are following.  All of these characters connect back to the hotel in some way, which I found very entertaining.  But, I also think there were too many storylines that I personally got lost with some of the smaller characters and their plotlines.  It reminded me a lot of the movie “Knives Out” with all of the moving parts between the staff and guests of the Hotel Nantucket.  I just think it was not for me at the moment of reading it with how lost I got at times.

This was also my first Elin Hilderbrand book that I have read.  I have seen a lot of her novels available as Book of the Month choices so I have always been intrigued to pick one up.  I think that Hilderbrand has a nice and simple style of writing that can bring any type of reader into her universe.  I have never been to Nantucket, but I felt like I was there thanks to this book.  It was the writing style that kept me reading and I can greatly appreciate that especially since I personally got confused with the cast of characters but that was all my fault.

I do not think I gave this book a fair chance when I was reading it.  While it was a fun story with an interesting batch of characters, I felt lost trying to keep up with everything that was happening.  I want to give this book another chance in the future but this is where I  stand with it at the moment.