The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll

HOLY CRAP.

This book.

To say that this was a wild ride would be an understatement. The pacing and plotting of this book is batshit crazy. Pardon my French.

I'll be honest, I didn't care much for Jessica Knoll's debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive . I felt her characters in that book were vapid, shallow and that overall the book lacked depth. In fact, I couldn't even finish it.

But this book - I absolutely devoured.

Knoll's sophomore effort is an addictive, twisty, thriller that sinks its claws into you and never lets up until the last page. If you enjoyed her writing style in Luckiest Girl Alive - you'll be happy that The Favorite Sister is just as snarky and bitchy, and full of pop culture references that hit the proverbial nail on the head. It's campy, overwrought, completely over the top and absolutely delicious.

I think if you can see this for what it is - it's brilliant and wildly entertaining. Knoll uses a reality TV show as the backdrop for her latest thriller, a murder mystery in which the most popular cast member ends up dead at the end of the season and the question everyone is asking is "What Happened?"

It's a smart move given the public fascination with celebrities and their lives. She gives us an all star cast of women who are supposed to represent the title of the show Goal Diggers. They're all unabashedly successful, young, wealthy and unapologetically ambitious. But behind the scenes we find that the show is scripted, the women are pitted against one another and everyone has a secret to hide. It provides a perfect landscape for Knoll's scathing social commentary on hot topics such as race, violence against women, female comradery, feminism and social image. A big one being women supporting women - but only as long as it serves everyone's agenda. It's exactly the backstabbing content the consumer wants and producers are only too happy to provide.

The reveals come at you fast, but this isn't Knoll's first time around the block and she knows her audience. She deftly gives enough information to keep you turning the pages - I never lost interest and only at the end did I have an inkling of what actually happened. This didn't detract from the book for me though. If past paced popcorn thrillers are your kind of thing - pour a glass of wine and pick this book up because it'll keep you entertained.

This book was read during the Booksparks and Popsugar 2018 Summer Reading Challenge, a free finished copy of the book was provided for review. All thoughts are my own.

Bookgawker's Buy it or Borrow it suggestion: Buy It

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How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

Okay gushing review here.

ALL THE STARS for How to Walk Away by Katherine Center. 

Just please, please trust me and read this book. 

It's not very often that I find something so compelling that I can't put it down. I'm a fast reader, but this book took less than a day to read and I enjoyed it so much. I think that there will be a lot of people comparing this to Me Before You - and I can see some similarities, but this book is just so much more hopeful than MBY is, it's about recovering and getting up out of the ashes when life literally shatters your plans. It's about finding that there are all types of happy endings and how to move forward through hardship. It's about self love and acceptance, and finding value in yourself as a human being who is worthy of loving oneself and accepting the love of others. And this book doesn't do this by glossing over the emotional hardships and challenges that come with a life altering injury. I thought the author did a great job of addressing the emotional state of her main character and the way she worked through her recovery in a way that was accessible and easy to empathize with. It's an emotionally engrossing read that I think many will enjoy.

Margaret's first person narrative reads like a conversation with a friend. It's warm and inviting, even though the hard parts. She's surrounded by a quirky sister, sometimes overbearing mother, and supportive father. These characters are flawed, but still relatable and I loved hanging out with them, and watching them work through their fears and conflicts together.

Overall this is probably going to be one of my favorite books this year, it's the one I immediately told my bestie to grab a copy of and will be recommending to all my friends this summer.

Book Gawker's buy it or borrow it recommendation: Buy It

A free finished copy of this book was provided to me by Booksparks for their Summer Reading Challenge 2018.

All opinions are my own

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All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

Every time Emily Giffin releases a book I'm not quite sure how she can top her last - but she does.

Every. Dang. Time. 

Here's what I love about her work, she's not afraid to tackle relevant issues or messy relationships and does so with great finesse with her approachable, easy to relate to writing style. Her previous work has always been page turning prose that takes on social issues, delves into familial drama or navigates tricky relationships - but I'm not sure I've read another book by her that is as timely, powerful and emotionally charged as All We Ever Wanted.

Nina Browning has everything she could ever want. She belongs to Nashville's elite and uber-wealthy Belle Meade community, her son Finch is a star student at an elite prep school and is headed to Princeton and her husband Kirk is a successful businessman and devoted father.

Tom Volpe's life is a little less glamorous. By day he works a blue collar job as a carpenter, and by night drives Uber on the side. He hasn't been lucky in love and money is tight, but he makes enough to get by. He's a single dad - doing the best he can to provide for his daughter, Lyla.

Then an obscene photograph of a passed out girl at a party, complete with blatantly racist caption surfaces. The girl is Lyla and the photo originated from Finch's phone.

Nina and Tom find themselves in uncharted territory as parents, navigating what happened that night and questioning everything they thought they knew about their kids, parenting, ethics and those around them.

In a post Weinstein, #MeToo era - I think that many readers will find this book to be an incredibly relevant commentary on race, sexism, elitism, social class and a parent's approach to all of the above. It's a novel that is easily digestible, accessible and thought provoking that will resonate with Ms. Giffin's demographic. This isn't to say that there aren't a few weaknesses - I for one, really felt that the last 25% of the book was rushed and wish that the conclusion would have been a little more satisfying. I wanted a little more gumption from certain characters, but at the end of the day this is not my novel. These are not my characters. More importantly, I think what this book does really well is pose the question - "What would you do?" And to me, I think that exploration is really the point of this book.

Well done, Ms. Giffin, I can't wait to read what you come up with next!

Thank you, Random House / Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy for review.
All opinions are my own.

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