[31] Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
Fiction / Women, was looking for something to listen to & have liked her other books, Audiobook

Synopsis: Nine people show up for a week-long wellness retreat in Australia and quickly discover it’s nothing like they imagined it would be.

Review: This is VERY character driven and Moriarty does such a wonderful job building her characters and making them realistic. I thought it would be hard to keep the nine of them and the staff at the retreat straight, but it wasn’t at all. I was a bit bored listening to this though. It moves along pretty slowly until the middle. Then it’s all suspense but by that point I was over it. I liked how she wrapped it up at the end though. This is a good book, I was just in the wrong mood for it. I would like to watch the TV version to see how it compares!

Recommend? No

[32] Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, #3 in Part of Your World Series, Kindle

Synopsis: Justin and Emma have the same curse – whenever they break up with someone, that person goes on to find their soulmate. So they hatch up a plan – if they date and break up on purpose, then they’ll find their soulmates! The only problem is Justin lives in Minnesota and is about to have a lot of family responsibility, and Emma is a traveling nurse with a lot of emotional baggage, headed to Hawaii. Emma moves her plans to be in Minnesota for one of her contracts, and Justin and Emma quickly discover they’re going to have a hard time purposefully breaking up.

Review: This book sounds really gimmicky and silly but I promise you it’s not. There’s a lot going on besides them trying to break their curse, which becomes much and much less of the focal point as the story progresses. I don’t want to spoil all that though (but do note there are a lot of trigger warnings at the beginning of the book (that I skipped right over to avoid spoilers)). I loved these two characters together and how their relationships tied in with the characters from the previous two books. It’s been so long since I read those I’d forgotten the plots and I was a bit shocked when it all came back to me.

Recommend: Yes! And you don’t need to read series in order

[33] The Reality of Everything (Flight & Glory, #5) by Rebecca Yarros
Fiction / Women, Saw on Kindle Unlimited/last in series, Kindle

Synopsis: It’s been two years since the man Morgan loved died in war and she’s still paralyzed with grief. She uses the life insurance money from him to buy a beach house in the Outer Banks – a place they both loved. She plans to spend the summer remodeling the house and getting her life together before she starts her new teaching job. She does not plan to fall for neighbor Jackson, a single-dad and Coast Guard search-and-rescue pilot who flies the exact same helicopter the love of her life did.

Review: Wow wow wow. I absolutely loved this book, and am kind of shocked because Morgan was such a background character in the rest of the series. But so was Samantha, and I loved her book (#3) as well. So, yeah, wow. I tried to savor this book and enjoy is slowly because I didn’t want it to end. Morgan is dealing with so much grief and goes into special therapy for it and Samantha comes out to spend the summer with her. Jackson, of course, is completely perfect, loving, and patient. It’s a super emotional book, with everything Morgan is going through with her grief, how her friend group has been treating her, with Jackson also being another military pilot, and with Jackson’s drama with his daughter’s mom. And there are some super intense rescue scenes that made the book unputdownable at the end (so much for savoring it). I will be thinking about this book and characters for quite a while!

Recommend? Yes! I think it would help understand Morgan’s situation if you’ve read books 2-4 though, so… that’s a lot of homework.