Top Ten Tuesday – 10 Books to Try If You Enjoyed Emily Henry’s Book Lovers
/19 Comments/by Suzanne
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Books for People Who Liked Author X. I decided to go with Emily Henry and to share some books I think fans of her most recent novel Book Lovers would also enjoy. Book Lovers was a enemies/rivals to lovers romance that featured a small town setting, wonderfully complex and bookish characters, family relationships, and loads of witty banter. The books I’m sharing today each have one or more of those wonderful elements.
10 Books to Try If You Enjoyed Emily Henry’s Book Lovers


1. THE BODYGUARD by Katherine Center – “Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka “bodyguard”), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.” This book is such a delight. It’s got the wonderfully complex characters, an idyllic farm setting, and hilarious banter that will have you laughing your way through the pages.
2. THINGS WE NEVER GOT OVER by Lucy Score – “There’s a reason Knox doesn’t do complications or high-maintenance women, especially not the romantic ones. But since Naomi’s life imploded right in front of him, the least he can do is help this runaway bride out of her jam. And just as soon as she stops getting into new trouble he can leave her alone and get back to his peaceful, solitary life. At least, that’s the plan until the trouble turns to real danger.” This book has a fabulous small town setting and is an opposites attract, grumpy-sunshine romance, that also has a fair share of family drama and relationships.
3. EVERY SUMMER AFTER by Carly Fortune – “For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart. When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past. Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.” This book is a bit more of an emotional story than some of my other selections, but it also features a small town setting, complex and flawed characters, and a second chance romance.
4. THE SIMPLE WILD by K.A. Tucker – “City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot.” This one features a remote Alaskan setting, family drama galore, and an enemies to lovers romance.
5. MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU by Samantha Young – “The cozy comforts of an English village bookstore open up a world of new possibilities for Evie Starling in this charming new romantic comedy.” This one features a small town setting, a bookish protagonist, as well as some town rivalries and fractured relationships.
6. THE EX TALK by Rachel Lynn Solomon – “Shay Goldstein has been a producer at her Seattle public radio station for nearly a decade, and she can’t imagine working anywhere else. But lately it’s been a constant clash between her and her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, who’s fresh off a journalism master’s program and convinced he knows everything about public radio. When the struggling station needs a new concept, Shay proposes a show that her boss green-lights with excitement. On The Ex Talk, two exes will deliver relationship advice live, on air. Their boss decides Shay and Dominic are the perfect co-hosts, given how much they already despise each other. Neither loves the idea of lying to listeners, but it’s this or unemployment. Their audience gets invested fast, and it’s not long before The Ex Talk becomes a must-listen in Seattle and climbs podcast charts. As the show gets bigger, so does their deception, especially when Shay and Dominic start to fall for each other. In an industry that values truth, getting caught could mean the end of more than just their careers.” This is an enemies to lovers that is packed with hilarious banter.
7. ONE NIGHT ON THE ISLAND by Josie Silver – “Spending her thirtieth birthday alone is the last thing that dating columnist Cleo wanted, but she is going on a self-coupling quasi-sabbatical–at the insistence of her boss–in the name of re-energizing herself and adding a new perspective to her column. The remote Irish island she’s booked is a far cry from London, but at least it’s a chance to hunker down in a luxury cabin and indulge in some quiet, solitary self-care while she figures out her next steps in her love life and her career. Mac is also looking forward to some time to himself. With his life in Boston deteriorating in ways he can’t bring himself to acknowledge, his soul searching has brought him to the same Irish island in search of his roots and some clarity. Unfortunately, a mix-up with the bookings means both solitude seekers have reserved the same one-bedroom hideaway on exactly the same dates. Instantly at odds with each other, Cleo and Mac don’t know how they’re going to manage until the next weekly ferry arrives. But as the days go by, they no longer seem to mind each other’s company quite as much as they thought they would…” Like Every Summer After, this one is a bit more emotional at times than some of the other stories I’ve chosen. But still it features a remote setting, a wonderful community, an enemies to lovers romance, and an intimate personal journey for its characters.
8. WHEN IN ROME by Sarah Adams – “Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance.” This one is a heartwarming small-town, opposites attract romance that is filled with lovable quirky characters and also features close-knit family vibes which I adored.
9. THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL by Abbi Waxman – “The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They’re all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She’ll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It’s a disaster! And as if that wasn’t enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn’t he realize what a terrible idea that is? It’s time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn’t convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It’s going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.” Obviously this one features a bookish protagonist, and it’s just full of heart and humor.
10. BY ANY OTHER NAME by Lauren Kate – “An enemies-to-lovers romance about an editor, her bestselling author, and one life-changing secret.” Bookish characters, enemies to lovers romance, and lots of personal growth for the main characters as well.
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Question: Have you read any of these or are you planning to read any of them?
Thriller Thursday Reviews: Lying Beside You & The Angel Maker
/9 Comments/by Sharon
It’s Thursday so you know what that means. Another Sharon edition of Thriller Thursday! This week I am reviewing the latest books by two must read authors for me. Michael Robotham’s, Lying Beside You and Alex North’s, The Angel Maker. Both of these books were in my top anticipated reads for 2023, so I was very excited to read them and happy that they lived up to the hype I had set for them.
Lying Beside You Goodreads Author: Michael Robotham
Publication Date: February 14, 2023
Publisher: Scribner
Lying Beside You is the third book in Michael Robotham’s Cyrus Haven series. I fell in love with Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac in the first book Good Girl, Bad Girl and my love for them grew in the second book When She was Good, so I could not wait to reunite with them. In this third installment, a man is murdered, and his daughter, Maya Kirk, is missing. Cyrus is called in to help profile the killer and piece together Maya’s last hours. Not long after Maya’s body is found, another woman goes missing and Evie is the only person to get a glimpse of the man that has taken her. Can Cyrus find this man before it is too late for this other woman, as well as Evie?
There is so much I loved about this book. I will start with the mystery of who killed Maya. Robotham did an excellent job of creating suspense as we follow the police and Cyrus as they try and solve this mystery. He gives us just enough breadcrumbs to follow without giving anything away until the very end. I loved watching as the police and Cyrus tried to piece together the evidence they had. There were a lot of layers to unravel to find the killer and what his motive was. It was not until the end that I started to piece things together, and I never figured out who the killer. I was on the edge of my seat when everything came to a head.
While I love the mystery Michael Robotham created, my favorite part of the book was seeing Cyrus and Evie again. I love these characters so much. They are both still flawed and broken characters, and I loved watching them try to navigate their lives. Evie is still trying to find her way in the world and interact with people. At Cyrus’ insistence she gets a job and she had me smiling as she stumbles along. I love the relationship between Cyrus and Evie, they have a father-daughter/brother-sister relationship, and I loved watching them try and navigate this.
Cyrus is also dealing with the fact that his brother, who killed their parents and twin sisters nineteen years ago, is about to be released from the psychiatric hospital and will be coming to stay with him and Evie. Cyrus loves his brother and has forgiven him, but he is still dealing with all the pain his brother caused him. He wants to help his brother reenter society. Evie on the other hand cannot understand how Cyrus could be so forgiving and does not trust his brother at all and lets him know it. This just created another layer to a well written story.
Robotham does a great job of giving the backstory on both Cyrus and Evie, so this book could be read as a standalone, but I would really recommend reading the first two books in the series first as I think that would give more depth and feelings to this book.
Lying Beside You was everything I hoped it would be and more. I really hope we get more books in this series as I am not ready to let Cyrus and Evie go. 4 ½ stars
The Angel Maker Goodreads Author: Alex North
Publication Date: February 28, 2023
Publisher: Celadon Books
Alex North’s latest novel The Angel Maker is a dark thriller that follows Katie Shaw as she searches for her estranged brother, Chris, who has gone missing and Detective Laurence Page as he searches for the killer of a distinguished professor who was brutally murdered. As evidence is uncovered, it leads to two old cases, an attack that happened to Chris when he was fifteen and a serial killer that could see the future.
Katie Shaw was always expected to watch out for her brother Chris, and she always did, except for one day when she was seventeen years old, and that will be a day she regrets for the rest of her life. Instead of walking her brother home from school, Katie went off with her boyfriend, and Chris was brutally attacked. Years later Katie is happily married with a child of her own. Chris had a hard life after the attack and turned to drugs and living on the street. Katie has not seen Chris in two years, but when she gets a call from their mother saying that Chris had turned his life around but is now missing, Katie knows that she has to be his big sister once again and this time she is determined to keep Chris safe.
I really liked the parts with Katie as she searches for Chris. She is carrying a heavy burden when it comes to Chris. The last time she saw him he stole money from her, and she called the police on him. But even still, when her mother calls and tells her that Chris is missing, that sister/brother love is there, and she will do anything to protect him this time. I loved her determination and mother bear persona that came out.
Alan Hobbes is a wealthy and distinguished philosophy professor who has been brutally murdered, but before he was murdered he let his staff go and got all of his affairs in order. Almost like he knew he was going to die. As detective Laurence Page investigates the death of Alan, he discovers that this case is somehow connected to the attack on Chris as well as a serial killer named Jack Lock, who is long since dead but was known as “The Angel Maker”. These chapters were very dark, especially as we learn more about who Jack Lock was and what he did.
This book had a lot going on in it, with multiple characters and timelines and it did get a bit confusing at times, but I loved the mystery of how everything was connected. This was definitely a book that needs to be read slow to take in all the information and keep things straight. While I did like North’s other two books, The Whisper Man and The Shadows better, I still enjoyed The Angel Maker. 3 ½ stars
Top Ten Tuesday – Books By My Favorite Authors That I Still Need to Read
/45 Comments/by Suzanne
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is TTT Rewind (Pick a previous topic that you missed or would like to re-do/update.). I decided to take this opportunity to share Books By My Favorite Authors That I Still Need to Read. Even though I’ve been making a major effort to read more of the books I own and specifically to tackle the backlists of my favorite authors, somehow I still have books by my favorites that I haven’t gotten to yet. The ten I’m sharing today are ones I really hope to get to this year.
Books By My Favorite Authors That I Still Need to Read


1. NIGHT ROAD by Kristin Hannah – “Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, Night Road raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness. It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope. This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love.”
2. GET LUCKY by Katherine Center – “How do you change your luck? Katherine Center’s marvelously entertaining and poignant novel is about choosing to look for happiness—and maybe getting lucky enough to find it.”
3. THE DARK VAULT by V.E. Schwab – “Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive. Mackenzie Bishop’s grandfather first brought her here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now her grandfather is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive. Follow Mackenzie as she explores the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking, through these two timeless novels, now bound together in this thrilling collection. With stunning prose and a captivating mixture of action, romance, and horror, The Dark Vault delves into a richly imagined world where no choice is easy and love and loss feel like two sides of the same coin..”
4. CONFESS by Colleen Hoover – “Auburn Reed is determined to rebuild her shattered life and she has no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn’t expect to become deeply attracted to the studio’s enigmatic artist, Owen Gentry. For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?.”
5. WAITING FOR TOM HANKS by Kerry Winfrey – “Can a romcom-obsessed romantic finally experience the meet-cute she always dreamed of or will reality never compare to fiction, in this charming debut adult novel from Kerry Winfrey. Annie Cassidy dreams of being the next Nora Ephron. She spends her days writing screenplays, rewatching Sleepless in Seattle, and waiting for her movie-perfect meet-cute. If she could just find her own Tom Hanks—a man who’s sweet, sensitive, and possibly owns a houseboat—her problems would disappear and her life would be perfect. But Tom Hanks is nowhere in sight. When a movie starts filming in her neighborhood and Annie gets a job on set, it seems like a sign. Then Annie meets the lead actor, Drew Danforth, a cocky prankster who couldn’t be less like Tom Hanks if he tried. Their meet-cute is more of a meet-fail, but soon Annie finds herself sharing some classic rom-com moments with Drew. Her Tom Hanks can’t be an actor who’s leaving town in a matter of days…can he?”
6. WOLFSONG by T.J. Klune – “Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left. Ox was sixteen when he met the boy on the road. The little boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the little boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the little boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane. Ox was seventeen when he found out the little boy’s secret and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega. Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces. It’s been three years since that fateful day—and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.”
7. DEAR CAROLINA by Kristy Woodson Harvey – “One baby girl. Two strong Southern women. And the most difficult decision they’ll ever make. Frances “Khaki” Mason has it all: a thriving interior design career, a loving husband and son, homes in North Carolina and Manhattan—everything except the second child she has always wanted. Jodi, her husband’s nineteen-year-old cousin, is fresh out of rehab, pregnant, and alone. Although the two women couldn’t seem more different, they forge a lifelong connection as Khaki reaches out to Jodi, encouraging her to have her baby. But as Jodi struggles to be the mother she knows her daughter deserves, she will ask Khaki the ultimate favor…Written to baby Carolina, by both her birth mother and her adoptive one, this is a story that proves that life circumstances shape us but don’t define us—and that families aren’t born, they’re made….“
8. DAUGHTERS OF ROME by Kate Quinn – “A.D. 69. Nero is dead. The Roman Empire is up for the taking. With bloodshed spilling out of the palace and into the streets of Rome, chaos has become the status quo. The Year of Four Emperors will change everything—especially the lives of two sisters with a very personal stake in the outcome….Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister, Marcella, is more withdrawn, content to witness history rather than make it. Even so, Marcella has her share of distinguished suitors, from a cutthroat contender for the throne to a politician’s son who swears that someday he will be Emperor. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside down, Cornelia and Marcella—along with their cousins, one a collector of husbands and lovers, the other a horse-mad beauty with no interest in romance—must maneuver carefully just to stay alive. As Cornelia tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams, Marcella discovers a hidden talent for influencing the most powerful men in Rome. In the end, though, there can only be one Emperor … and one Empress.”
9. I FOUND YOU by Lisa Jewell – “‘How long have you been sitting out here?’ ‘I got here yesterday.’ ‘Where did you come from?’ ‘I have no idea.’ In East Yorkshire, single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home. In Surrey, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed. Two women, twenty years of secrets and a man who can’t remember lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell’s brilliant new novel.”
10. OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES by Abbi Waxman – “A hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything. At any given moment in other people’s houses, you can find…repressed hopes and dreams…moments of unexpected joy…someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband.”
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