Susan’s Book Blog

Alexis Hall’s newest book, Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble , is now available. It’s the second book in the Winner Bakes All series. (Both can be read as standalones.) 🎂 🧁 🍰 🍞 🥖 🥐 You can read my original review here .  From quicunquevult.com: Paris Daillencourt is a recipe for disaster. Despite his passion for baking, his cat, and his classics degree, constant self-doubt and second-guessing have left him a curdled, directionless mess. So when his roommate enters him in Bake Expectations, the nation’s favourite baking show, Paris is sure he’ll be the first one sent home. But if Paris can find the strength to face his past, his future, and the chorus of hecklers that live in his brain, he’ll realize it’s the sweet things in life that he really deserves. 🎂 🧁 🍰 🍞 🥖 🥐 ⚠️ Content Guidance: MC with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder (that does get diagnosed), on-page panic attack, hospital stay due to panic attack, treatment plan for anxiety disorder discussed, Islamophobi...

  Cat Sebastian’s newest book,  Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots, now has a cover! And it is giving the grooviest 70s vibes. 🪩🕺🏻 Daniel Cabot is available Nov. 15! Read my review of it here .

 Happy Publication Day to Jacqueline Firkins and her newest work, Marlowe Banks Redesigned .  Check out my original review of Marlowe Banks here and then get your copy! 

  Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo  // 5 💀 out of 5 // I picked this book up just to read the first couple pages, with no intention of continuing because I had an ARC to read next but this had me before the first chapter was even over. There was no putting it down and coming back to it later. I HAD to keep going, ARC be damned.  I am Janice from Friends right now: OH  👐🏼  MY  👐🏼  GAWD  👐🏼      I feel like there is no way anything I say can do justice to what’s in this book. I’m not even sure I have all that many coherent thoughts, just a series of feelings that I’m struggling to articulate.  I was so impressed with how immersive this book felt. It’s hugely experiential.    Mandelo’s descriptions make heavy use of sensory information, with lines like “the cold sank straight through the gagging constriction of his throat to the cavern of his chest, grasping at him from the inside out” and “Andrew… [stood] in the wash o...

Marlowe Banks, Redesigned by Jacqueline Firkins Pub date: Oct 25, 2022 // ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ // Marlowe Banks is an overworked, under appreciated production assistant on a TV show filming in LA with dreams of one day becoming a costume designer. She has a run-in with grumpy actor Angus on set and things don’t really get off on the right foot. They eventually get to know each other through working together but it takes extra work for Marlowe to excavate the real Angus Gordon from all the publicity she reads about him in magazines and online.  Even though this is a romance, the main story arc of the book is more about Marlowe’s journey in discovering who she is, what she wants in life, and figuring out how she’s going to get it. It has more emotional depth than a typical romcom and explores many important topics.  Aspects of the book remind me a little of Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard and Ava Wilder’s How To Fake It in Hollywood, both of which I loved. The blurb totally sold me o...

Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots  by Cat Sebastian  Pub date: November 15,  2022  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 stars out of 5 I’ve been looking forward to reading more Cabot stories since I finished the first two over a year ago, and it did not disappoint.  Daniel Cabot is a character study and a story about the gradual building of a relationship, filled with quiet moments that are both realistic and compelling. It always blows me away how Cat Sebastian can fit SO MUCH character development into so few pages. And you can always count on her to write incredibly unique, richly drawn people who you can’t help but fall in love with. There is a foundation of kindness in this story, as there has been in the previous two Cabot novellas (or, really, ALL her books I suppose) that I find so beautiful and hopeful. Daniel and Alex take care of one another and others - friends and strangers both - in so many little ways and without wanting anything in return. It’s a refreshingly uncynical displ...

 Red White and Royal Blue The Collector’s Edition  by Casey McQuiston  Oct 11, 2022, St. Martin’s Griffin 🇺🇸 ❤️ 🇬🇧   I first read Red White and Royal Blue back in December 2020. I became a fervent fan before I had even reached the end. I had never read anything like it before. I LOVED it. I wanted everyone I knew to read it and love it as much as I did. And now… it kind of feels like they do. 😂  “They” may not be people I’ve actually met in person but I do know, now, a whole lot of people who love the book as much as I do, or more.  RWRB is the book that really started me reading again. I absolutely devoured it, and wanted more. I soon discovered “Bookstagram” and the rest is history. I now have many new favorite books and authors and a whole bunch of amazing people I am lucky to call friends - all because of this book.  👑 The special Collector's Edition of Casey McQuiston's beloved  New York Times  bestselling novel, features: • illust...

  Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang Pub Aug 2022, Harper Voyager I will admit I’m not well versed in the dark academia sub genre so I wasn’t sure what to expect but I can tell you, a full-on Shakespearean tragedy was NOT IT.  ❦ This book is 542 pages long and it FELT like it. I swear it took me 84 years to get through. By all rights, this book should be totally up my alley. I love academic settings, the study of languages, etymology, and translation. And those things play a huge role in this book. I was really excited for it! And honestly it’s a great story but it was just hard for me to keep turning pages for a while. (A long while.) Fortunately, the last 150 pages or so were very exciting; after all the set-up and exposition of the first two thirds, the action really ramped up in the final section (for the most part) and you could sense the end getting nearer. It was kind of a nail biter. And the ...