Andrea Reads Dots and Ink

5 stars. I don't need to review it. It is perfection. The series is perfection. I marvel at N. K. Jemisin's brain and world building abilities.

I’m so excited to talk about Shauna Robinson’s latest book Lauryn Harper Falls Apart.

Since reading The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks in 2022, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Shauna’s authorial voice. Her protagonists feel so fully realized, and I love her background characters even more!

So what leads Lauryn Harper to the titular falling apart?

Lauryn is deaf in one ear and rather than asking her supervisor to speak up or repeat what he’s saying, she ends up having an embarrassing work mishap that lands her back in her hometown, living with her dad and stepmom, demoted and working at her company’s charity office.

This was a character driven novel, following Lauryn’s attempts to get back in the good graces of her supervisor by saving her hometown’s community center with an Apple festival. Along the way, Lauryn has to work with her ex-best friend, the crew of other employees who have made bad mistakes at work and sent to the “Flop House”, and get reacquainted with her small hometown, that still smells faintly of mustard when the weather is right.

I had a great time reading this story. Lauryn can be a bit frustrating to follow. I kept thinking how so many of her problems could be solved if she just talked about what was happening or bothering her. Also, I think there was a larger discussion that could have been had around the effects Lauryn’s mom played in Lauryn’s views of her hometown. Her mom was a jerk!

The shining jewel of the book, for me, were the secondary characters. Lauryn’s ex/best friend Marina, the crew from Ryser Cares: Randy, Jen, Tessa and Arun, Lauryn’s dad and stepmom Wendy, the local business owners, even Nancy Fletcher. I think the author does a great job in bringing the small town to life with the characters who live and work in these towns, and Lauryn Harper Falls Apart was a perfect example of that.

Overall, I gave this a 3.5 stars.

I’m unwell.

I actually forgot I'm doing this now.

I blame The Diviners. It derailed my reading in August.

In any case, here's my wrap up for August!

Kilts and Kisses at Highland Hall by Hannah Lynn Sweet and quick to read. The romance moved fast with a golden retriever/cinnamon roll MMC who falls first almost IMMEDIATELY upon first sight. I'm hoping this becomes a series! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita A fast paced thriller set in an isolated coastal Alaskan village, where the entire population lives in one massive building. I was overall a fan of the storytelling. The author didn't shy away from more gruesome details, but also didn't linger on the more horrific aspects. There was a cliffhanger at the end of the book which has definitely whet my appetite for book 2! ⭐⭐⭐.5

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso I wish I had liked this more. A perfect example of the "timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly" scifi that I have loved with shows like Doctor Who. However it felt like we as the reader were just dumped into the 3rd book of a high fantasy/scifi series that is no longer interested in explaining world building, we should already know where we are. And our MC is a new mom who keeps talking about mom guilt and how she has to survive for the baby and she's torn about being away from the baby and why did she come but also she's happy to have some space from the baby and ... I think you get it. ⭐⭐

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia WHY did I put off reading this for so long? Perfection! It's been a while since I've sunk into a gothic read and this was an absolute thrill! I am already thinking about the next Moreno Garcia book I want to read. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (Stephen King penname) Oof. This was rough. The premise is so simple, but to actually be in Ray Garraty's head as he takes on this challenge, sees the results of arrogance and overconfidence among these young men and himself, seeing the fears and thoughts being discussed while at the same time having such juvenile teen boy humor thrown around. My Goodreads review was simply: This was exactly what I expected, but I didn't expect THAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Honeycrisp Orchard Inn by Valerie Bowman Such a sharp turn after The Long Walk. I needed a reprieve and another sweet romance was just the ticket! This was a childhood friends to lovers romance with plenty of spice. I wish there had been a bit more banter with the main male character, but I still had a great time and look forward to more in this series! If you enjoyed The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore, I think this series may be worth a shot! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

And that was it for August! I read 6 books by August 18th, and then started reading The Diviners by Libba Bray. That left me in a bit of a slump. I finished The Diviners on September 1, so I'll discuss that in the September wrap up. However I also made a post about The Diviners and you may want to check that out for some of my thoughts!

However, I read and completed 6 books in August! August was overall a great month for me reading-wise, I found a new favorite (Mexican Gothic), read a couple cute romances (Kilt and Kisses at Highland Hall and The Honeycrisp Orchard Inn), read my first Stephen King novel, and knocked 3 books off of my NetGalley shelf. Unfortunately, none of these books were part of my physical TBR, so that still remains unchanged as of yet. I'm going to try and stick to reading as much from my physical tbr as possible through the end of the year.

Moving into September, I'm looking forward to getting into more autumnal reading books. Cozy romances, fantasies that require a blanket and a hot beverage, maybe a classic that's been kicking around on my bookshelf for a while? That sounds perfect.

I am back to work as well, as the school year has started. Unfortunately that means less free time for reading. I will have to be a bit more intentional with my time now.

I'm reading books that I can use for the 52 Book Club Prompt. I've bounced around the prompts, but I want to start checking off the prompts in numerical order.

I've finished the first 9 prompts, so I'm on number 10: Author's Last Name is Also a First Name.

I want to read one of the books off of my physical TBR. So that leads me to Christina Henry's The Girl in Red and Emily Henry's Happy Place.

These books are complete opposites from each other, one is a romance and the other is a horror/fantasy/scifi/dystopian. I'm stumped over which to pick up. Help me choose please!

Cause what was this?

Do you fans of The Diviners actually LIKE Evie? EVIE? Self-absorbed and selfish and impulsive in all of the worst ways Evie?

The atmosphere was great. The spooky creepiness was good. I loved the descriptions, but honestly it started feeling a bit purple prose.

And can we stop adding -ski to the end of our words? Please-ski?

Childhood friends work together to save their families' shared property of inn and orchard by throwing a huge Harvest Festival in a quaint Long Island town, and find something extra along the way.

Look ... 'tis the season, amiright? It's mid-August, and I want to be snuggled up under a cozy quilt and some hot tea with the scents of autumn floating around me. And The Honeycrisp Orchard Inn delivers that vibe!

This was an atmospheric, lighthearted, slow burn romance that truly had me kicking my feet and giggling.

I loved our MCs, Ellie and Aiden, though I wished we had just a bit more conversation from Aiden, as he is the silent type. The friends and family that surround our MCs were so much fun, and I can already see (or at least I'm hoping!) where the series will go next. And I love a couple of animal sidekicks thrown in.

Think Gilmore Girls with a little more adult content. Cause there were some ... #spicy scenes that were a delight.

This is my first time reading a childhood friends romance story, and I think this may be a new favorite trope. The pining. The newfound desire. One of our main characters was doing a lot of realizing!

I had so much fun reading The Honeycrisp Orchard Inn. I am looking forward to the rest of the series as well. If you enjoyed reading, or are interested in reading The Pumpkin Spice Cafe series, or love watching Gilmore Girls, this is definitely a book you want to add to your TBR.

The Last Hour Between Worlds was a chaos fest.

I had originally picked this out on NetGalley, as I for some reason saw the cover and though, wow, that looks like a Peter Pan retelling. It was not. Instead, the blurb tells us that it's a "whip-smart adventure fantasy packed with rival guilds, reality-bending magic, and sapphic pining".

Cool. That sounds awesome.

From the start, we watch as our main character, Kembral Thorne, has just arrived at a huge, luxurious gala for the New Year. Kembral has friends, and enemies at the party, and is caught between wanting to enjoy a night out alone, and wanting to get back home to her newborn, a 2 month old named Emmi. Things take a turn though when a mass murder event takes place at the event, an alternate reality grandfather clock gongs, and Kembral realizes all of the murdered partiers are alive once again, no one remembering dying just before.

This is a very fast-paced, fantasy version of Groundhog's Day.

I am a bit torn about this story. On one hand, the plot around this clock and the party was so interesting. I was there for it. I wanted to see how the party was going to be in each layer of reality, there are 12. Each time, the party theme changed and the Kembral was facing new challenges about how to use the guests who had no knowledge of what was going on to try and counteract events that would lead up to their deaths.

On the other hand, there was no world building. We were given bits and pieces of information about this world as the plot progressed, but it was either not enough information, or was given too late.

In addition, the main character is a new mom. And she will NOT let us forget that! I was so tired of hearing about Emmi, a character that we do not interact with at all. It was exhausting hearing about how tired Kembral was because ... she was a new mom. How no one understood what it was like for Kembral to want to do her job AND be with her child. The guilt Kembral had over not thinking about her daughter for a couple pages of plot.

The romance subplot was also a rivals-to-lovers trope. The two characters had a whole history that we were again fed bits and pieces that often were too little too late. But then suddenly by the end of the story, *SPOILER that doesn't need a warning* they're fully in a deeply committed relationship.

Throughout most of this, I felt like I was reading the 3rd book in a major fantasy series, where both characters had been given deep dives into their backgrounds, along with a substantial amount of previous worldbuilding.

While The Last Hour Between Worlds is the first book a new fantasy series, I will not be continuing with the rest of the series.

Another book checked off the list. And this one did not disappoint.

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita was a fast-paced thriller that used the isolated closed circle trope to induce suspense.

Set in a small Alaskan coastal town outside of Anchorage, the town's entire population lives inside a condo building, basically a huge cement apartment building. The only way in and out of the town is through a tunnel into a mountain, that happens to get snowed in while a detective is checking on a body parts that have washed ashore.

I'm not generally a huge fan of thrillers. I think sometimes they can take a bit too long to get to the point. However this started off with a bang.

As we continue through the story, we switch POVs between different members of the town and the detective who is stuck in Point Mettier. This really helped the flow of the story, keeping it fresh and gives us clues that the body parts may have met a more sinister end.

A Scottish golden retriever groundskeeper and a neurotic accountant meet in a small town. What is not to love?

I found Kilts and Kisses at Highland Hall to be incredibly sweet (though not cloying or saccharine), funny, and just perfectly steamy.

When the man tells you that kissing you is his second favorite thing of the night, and the first is getting to HOLD YOUR HAND AND TALK TO YOU?? While he smells like PINE?!?!