Rewind Wednesday: April

 Continuing to spotlight a few books that I have re-read throughout the year. I cull our bookshelves often to look for trade-ins at a local used bookstore, so I find myself re-reading favorites to see if they still deserve a spot on the shelves (they usually do!)  Here are a few more of the books I've re-read this year:


Author: Mariana Zapata
Title: Kulti
Publisher: self published
Date Published: 03/20/2015
Format: Audio Book
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. supposed to .It didn’t take a week for twenty-seven-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she’d seen in the international soccer icon—why she’d ever had his posters on her wall, or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies. Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man that hadn’t known she’d existed. So she isn’t prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team’s a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he’d once been. Nothing could have prepared her for the man she got to know. Or the murderous urges he brought out in her. This was going to be the longest season of her life.


Author: Emily Henry
Title: Book Lovers
Publisher: Berkley
Date Published: 05/03/2022
Format: Physical Book
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.


Author: Ali Hazelwood
Title: The Love Hypothesis
Publisher: Berkley
Date Published: 09/14/2021
Format: Physical Book
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.


Author: Charlaine Harris
Title: Club Dead
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 04/29/2003
Format: Audio Book
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Things between cocktail waitress Sookie and her vampire boyfriend Bill seem to be going excellently (apart from the small matter of him being undead) until he leaves town for a while. A long while. Bill's sinister boss Eric has an idea of where to find him, whisking her off to Jackson, Mississippi to mingle with the under-underworld at Club Dead. When she finally catches up with the errant vampire, he is in big trouble and caught in an act of serious betrayal. This raises serious doubts as to whether she should save him or start sharpening a few stakes of her own ..


Author: Sylvia Plath
Title: The Bell Jar
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 01/01/1963
Format: Physical Book
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

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