bayleereads's reviews
144 reviews

My first Kindle read was an absolute success! I really REALLY liked this one!!! Zanders, our MMC, had me rolling my eyes for the first fifty or so pages, but once he started falling for Stevie... I was GONE. He's the equivalent of a teddy bear. Stevie is one of my favorite FMCs I've ever read about-- she's headstrong, funny, confident, and isn't afraid to speak her mind. I loved Stevie & her brother's relationship, and I loved Zanders' relationship with his best friend + family. Not quite a five-star read for me because it felt a tad too long and there were a few repetitive sayings I got tired with ("curly haired flight attendant" for example." Overall, I highly recommend and I already started book no. 2 in the series about Stevie's brother and BFF!

Y'all I ATE 👏🏼 THIS 👏🏼 UP 👏🏼!!!!! Yet again, Ali Hazelwood has written such a fun book! This was so sexy and FUNNY (I literally LOL'ed multiple times)! I adored Jack-- he's definitely my favorite of the men Ali has written. Even though Elsie was a hot mess, I loved her and related to her people-pleasing tendencies. Elsie has diabetes so we have disability representation, and there was ace/aro representation in a side-character. I really liked all of the important side characters- especially Elsie's roommate and Hedgie 🦔 Although the science-y stuff always goes over my head in Ali's books, it was done very well and I was able to follow it in this book. There were a couple repetitive references that irked me after a while (cheese and how massive of a man Jack is), but I'm overlooking those because the rest of the story makes up for it! Highly recommend this one :)

Oof y'all... buckle up. This one was a doozy. If this had been written by any other author, I probably would have DNF'd. But since it's TB (my favorite author), I forced myself to finish it. I don't want to rage-rant about this book because that's not in my nature, but I just want to point some things out that made this a rough read for me.
Hallie has to be the most immature FMC I've ever encountered. She gave me stalker vibes-- who continues to crush on a man from high school for FIFTEEN YEARS without him knowing you exist? That was c r e e p y to me. She also makes all her problems everyone else's problems and I *hate* when people do that. She's inconveniencing other people because she has time management issues and doesn't know how to process her grief healthily. Hallie and Julian had no chemistry whatsoever. And why is he so obsessed with her smile and KNEES?!? Istg her knees and/or smile was mentioned every five pages (probably even more frequently). The storyline was somewhat entertaining, but what was that ending??? It felt rushed and last-minute added. 
TBH, the only things going for this book (imo of course) was the smut (which actually sometimes made me cringe???) and Julian's sister Natalie. She was genuinely the only character I liked (so I'm looking forward to Unfortunately, Yours). I just found myself wanting the book to end and did not enjoy having to pick it up-- it felt like a chore. 

This book wasn't as bad as a 2.5, but doesn't deserve 3 either. So I split it down the middle. Definitely my most disappointing read of the year, which breaks my heart because it was written by my fav author. 

Finally decided to give up on this one. As a plus sized person, I found a lot of the dialogue to be triggering and overwhelming for me. The social media comments/messages are extremely negative and just not good for my mental health.

Also I’m not a bachelor/bachelorette watcher so I was completely disinterested in that plot line.

This was such a beautiful memoir. I feel like this book wasn't necessarily written for an audience, but more for the author herself, as part of her grieving and healing process. Listening to Michelle talk about her family using such raw emotion was both heartwarming and devastating. I also loved the food aspect, given I'm a foodie (and I've never had Korean food before, but this book definitely made me want to try it!) I thought this was a heartbreaking yet powerful book about a mother and daughter’s bond and how irreplaceable that bond is, which reminded me a lot of mine and my mother's relationship. I’m not rating this 5 stars since it didn’t *amaze* me as much as other memoirs have and some parts felt choppy/non-cohesive. Definitely recommend, though!

I wanted to love this one more than I did, but I still liked it! I am not a fantasy TV show watcher (like GoT), so this one didn't really resonate with me as much as it might have for others. I am also not into cosplay or fan-fiction, so this is another reason why it didn't hit the mark for me. A lot of the cosplay/fantasy/fan-fiction references went over my head. I loved the plus size representation and Marcus' love for April, however I found it almost too good to be true-- very insta-love-y. I also found our FMC to be quite dense and judgmental, which made me dislike her for most of the book. I liked the dyslexia, familial emotional manipulation, and anxiety representation too. Overall, this book was okay and I *did* like it, just not as much as I had hoped.

I finished this one a couple weeks ago and still haven’t written a review because I have so many thoughts about it. I found this book to be an excellent hybrid of memoir and advice. Tessa is articulate and clear about what chronic illness patients go through. It also contains a wealth of information that can be useful to someone newly diagnosed and even to some who have been ill for years (like myself). It's very graphic and very honest, and I think every Spoonie can relate in some way to this book, whether you suffer from IBD or other types of painful invisible illnesses. While I did love it and found it informative and relatable, I did find myself skimming through some of the repetitive and preachy parts. Overall, I definitely recommend :)

Okay, y'all-- don't hate me. I liked this one, but I didn't *really* like it. There were some really unique parts I enjoyed that I don't see often, such as the family running a funeral home, falling in love with a ghost, and of course the ever so popular family drama trope. However, I found myself bored through some parts and just felt "meh" for half of the book. It felt overly descriptive, a lot of which seemed unnecessary. I wanted more of Florence's story about the murder she solved as a teenager (I could read a whole book just on that!) and I really wish this would have been dual POV, including Benji's POV as well. Although I predicted the ending early on (within the first 100 pages), I still enjoyed the ending nonetheless. I was a little confused and weirded out that it took three months (if you have read this, you probably know what I mean), which borders the miscommunication trope for me, which I wasn't a fan of. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book! It just didn't hit a lot of marks for me.

This was such a cute romance! It has a lot of different tropes, such as second-chance, forced proximity, found family, fake dating, small town, and I'm probably missing some! This was cute and light-hearted, but it also dealt with topics such as grief and career-changes. I loved the LGBTQ representation with Cleo and Kimmy, too! This one didn't quite hit 5 stars for me because 1) there were too many characters with not enough background development (I had a hard time remembering who was Kimmy and who was Cleo) and 2) although I loved Harriet, she drove me bonkers with her secret keeping and miscommunication. Lots of things could have been avoided in this book if people just SPOKE TO EACH OTHER!!!
Overall it was a cute read and I will continue to read every book Emily Henry writes!

Aubrey Gordon does it again! As a fat person, listening to this book healed parts of my own anti-fat biases towards myself, and towards the fat community. I highly recommend this book to everyone, but definitely more to people who are passionate about human rights and social justice, and to those who haven’t had the chance to unpack their own anti-fat bias/fatphobia yet. The format was really digestible, and I really appreciated that every chapter included reflection questions, as well as actions readers/listeners can take to fight for fat justice. I BEG OF YOU TO READ THIS-- especially if you have a fat friend or family member, provide medical or mental health treatment to fat folks, or if you tell yourself “I don’t mind fatness in others, I just don’t want to be fat myself.”