Share Your Shelf #24; The Books I Read in March

It's time for Share Your Shelf with Dara and I. This post and link up are dedicated solely to books and book reviews and it's one I look so forward to each and every month. I am always looking for new and more book ideas. 

I had a fabulous month of reading with 12 really great books. I had a few more on my list to be read but ran out of time before they were due back at the library. 

 

1. The Love Haters by Katherine Center-- This was a fun listen! Katie is sent to video Hutch for a feature on the Coast Guard and is hopeful to talk Hutch into letting her film a day in the life post for her own channel. But Hutch is not at all like what Katie was prepped to expect. She's nervous about the fact that she can't really swim and hasn't worn a bathing suit in a long time. It was a really cute story about not only falling in love but learning to love oneself too. 

 2. Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe-- Margo's life is turned upside down when she finds out she's pregnant. She drops out of college and is determined to do whatever it takes to feed her and her baby. She sets up an Only Fans account (a pornography site) and with the help of her retired wrestler dad tries to up her subscriber count by creating a character for herself. But she's blindsided when the baby's dad suddenly asks for full custody and is afraid her account will actually hurt rather than help her son. 

 3. Finlay Donovan Crosses a Line by Elle Cosimano (a 12 chapter preview from NetGalley)-- While I only got to read a 12 chapter preview, I just LOVED it! This book starts shortly after where the last one ended. Vero is on house arrest back in her home state, Finlay's life is in shambles without her. Then one day Finlay heads down to see Vero and the two team up to try and figure out who set Vera up for the fall. It was funny and fast paced and I can't wait to see how it ends. 

4. Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister -- Such a gripping story! Cam is blindsided one morning when the police show up at her work asking questions about her husband. Turns out he has taken 3 people hostage in a building downtown. The story takes us through that day told from Cam's and the hostage negotiator's point of view. Then the story jumps 7 years into the future to see how both of them and their families are holding up. As more clues about the case seem to start cropping up the story comes to a head as we find out what really happened that day. 

 

  

5. Road Trip by Mary Kay Andrews-- Another ARC from Netgalley. It was a sweet story. Sisters Maeve and Therese have little in common and rarely see eye to eye on anything but then their mother dies they find out she had been saving money for years in the hopes that her two daughters would take a trip to Ireland together to dig into their family history. At first they are reluctant to go and, even once they agree, the trip starts out rather rocky but soon the two are drawn into the family secrets they uncover and find that the trip completely changed them both. 

 

 6. Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid--  This was a really neat listen! I've never had a story told in two timelines that deal with ALL the same characters. In this book Hannah is moving back home to LA to live with her best friend while she restarts her life. One night she has the choice to stay at a bar with an old flame she lost touch with or go home with her best friend. The story splits and we learn how this one choice would have impacted Hannah's life. I'm not usually one for parallel universes but it worked really well. The two stories quickly spiral into VERY different scenarios. It threw me off the first time we switched stories but usually I could pick up right where we left off without any problem. 

 

  

7. Better Left Unsent by Lia Louis--  When a glitch finds all of Millie's written email rants sent she's mortified that everyone finally knows what she really thinks and feels. With the help of a few understanding co-workers and a couple of best friends they encourage Millie to embrace the honesty and stop apologizing. In fact most of them agree that more people owe Millie an apology than Millie owes them but Millie wants desperately to be liked by everyone and has gotten so used to hiding who she really is that this glitch forces her to grow in uncomfortable ways. It was sweet and cute. 

 

8. Fake Skating by Lynn Painter--  Adorable! Dani spent her life visiting her mom's hometown each summer and had a best friend Alec and for the summer they were inseparable but then she moved away and the two lost touch. Now Dani and her mom are moving in with her grandfather for Dani's senior year but Dani is nervous about seeing Alec after all this time. Teenage Alec is nothing like Dani remembers, as the hot shot hockey star of the school Alec is the type of guy Dani typically avoids. But fate intervenes and the two are thrown together in a fake dating trope which leads them both to reconnecting.  

 

 9. Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson-- Jet was attacked in her own home Halloween night and while she woke up in the hospital just 36 hours later everything is not going to be okay. Doctors are sure that Jet has just one week left to live since her injuries put her at a fatal risk for an aneurysm. She decides that in the one week she has left to tackle the mystery of who tried to kill her and why. Determined to do something meaningful with her life, Jet will solve her own murder.  

 

10. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center--  Cassie is a hot shot firefighter in Austin Texas when one wrong move and a call from her mom finds her restarting her life in a fire department outside Boston. The firehouse is old and the guys on the crew have never worked with a female before. Cassie starts working the same day as the new rookie, the only guy on the crew who not only doesn't seem to mind that Cassie is a female but also seems in awe of her abilities. Cassie has not been attracted to any man in more than 10 years and is horrified to find herself changing-- slowly starting to forgive her mom, crying, thinking perhaps she might have feelings for the new rookie. It was a really sweet story.  

 

11. Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb (In Death # 62)-- Eve gets called away from a fancy gala to the home of a murder victim who was killed when he stumbled upon a robbery of a private vault in his home. The victim's father had a vault filled with priceless, stolen art objects that the victim and his family only recently learned about but before they could find a way to return the items to their rightful owners someone broke in and killed him. Now Eve has to figure out who knew about the vault and killed the poor man. Another fabulous Eve Dallas novel. 

 

 12. Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton-- A historical fiction novel told in 2 timelines. In 1958 Elisa and her family are fleeing Cuba during the time before Castro took over. In 2017 Marisol is returning to Cuba with her grandmother's ashes after discovering her grandmother wants her ashes spread in her home country. We learn about Cuba's history through Elisa's story and what life was like in the midst of a revolution while we learn about how those Cuban's that stayed built a life for themselves under Castro's rule. 

 

 

 

 

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