Rewind Wednesday: August

My re-reads for August have mostly been audiobooks, but it's been enjoyable! I might be focusing more on new-to-me reads and ARCs, but it's always fun to revisit a favorite as well!

Author: Emily Henry

Title: Beach Read

Publisher: Berkley

Date Published: 05/19/2020

Format: Audiobook

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

Author: Ashley Poston

Title: The Seven Year Slip

Publisher: Berkley

Date Published: 06/27/2023

Format: Audiobook

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

Author: Elena Armas

Title: The Fiancé Dilemma

Publisher: Atria

Date Published: 07/30/2024

Format: Audiobook

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Josie Moore has given the opposite sex—and love—plenty of chances. Four exactly, if you count all her failed engagements, and five if you include the absentee father who kept her existence a secret until very recently. So when her father decides to announce his retirement with a splashy magazine piece about the family, Josie realizes her romantic history is a complicated PR issue.

Matthew Flanagan is in the mud, literally. Not only has he been fired from his job, but also the tires of his car are stuck in the muck after taking a wrong turn as he enters Green Oak, North Carolina. So, he grabs a duffel with his essentials and goes in search of a place to crash until he gets his life back on track. But instead, he finds his best friend’s sister, Josie, greeting him as her fiancé.

What starts as a big messy misunderstanding quickly turns into an arrangement with Matthew playing a new role as doting fiancé. A fifth engagement—and a stunt, at that—makes Josie’s stomach turn, but every dilemma requires a choice between equally undesirable alternatives, and Matthew doesn’t seem to mind becoming one more number in a colorful list of grooms-that-never-were. Despite the ring on her finger, Josie knows this is only temporary, even if the rest of the small town believes that the fifth time’s the charm.

Author: Penny Reid

Title: Truth or Beard

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Date Published: 07/21/2015

Format: Physical Book

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Falling for the wrong twin never felt so good…

Identical twins Beau and Duane Winston might share the same devastatingly handsome face, but where Beau is outgoing and sociable, Duane is broody and reserved. That's why perpetually level-headed Jessica James has been in naïve and unhealthy infatuation with Beau for most of her life, while Duane and Jessica have always been adversaries. She can't stand him, and she's pretty sure he can't bear the sight of her.

But after a case of mistaken identity, Jessica finds herself in the middle of a massive confusion kerfuffle. She's spent her whole life paralyzed by the fantasy of Beau and her assumptions of Duane's disdain, so now that she knows she's been wrong all along, she's unprepared for the reality that is Duane's insatiable interest…and his hot looks and hot hands and even hotter kisses.

She always thought she knew her own mind, but as Jessica finds herself drawn to the man who's been her sworn adversary for years, how much of her heart is she willing to risk?