If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

I loved this romance with a fake-relationship-turned-real-feelings story. (How often can this story be told?) It's not quite up to the To All the Boys I've Loved Before caliber, but that's a high bar. This was a cute story about Laurie, whose boyfriend of 18 years dumps her for another woman--but they are coworkers at the same law office so her life really takes a turn. So when she somehow gets the cute new guy in the office to pretend to be her boyfriend, she takes it. It was very cute and maybe not quite the most believable story, but when are they ever? I liked Laurie and Jamie together a lot, and it was definitely worth the short amount of time it took to read. 

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Another fun romance read (listen). I really liked Poppy and Alex in this book--it was very clear from the get-go what was going to happen, and I was rooting for it all the way. They were best friends from college but have fallen apart over the last few years, and Poppy wants them to get back into each other's lives. But their lives are distinctly dependent on them living in different places: Poppy is a travel writer based in New York, and Alex is determined to stay near his family in the town where they grew up in Ohio. But they get together every year for a summer trip--and this year, Poppy wants them to take another one. It was super fun--I loved both of the characters, loved their terrible trip they went on, loved hearing their backstory slowly throughout the book. And I was very happy with the ending and how everything got resolved. 

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

I loved Love at First by Kate Clayborn, and I wanted to love this one as much, but it just was slightly less fun for me. Still a good romantic read, but the storyline leaned too heavily on the main character's job as a hand-letterer and made it seem like way more than it actually is for me. She designs and makes hand lettered items, which seems super fun, but there was this whole storyline about how she hides messages in her designs and it can make things come true or not, kind of? And she spent a lot of time looking for hidden signs in actual signs around the city and getting inspiration from signs she sees around New York (always New York), but it just felt wayyyyy too artsy-fartsy for me. I liked the romance a lot--I thought the love interest was a cute nerdy guy and they seemed good for each other. But the way they met and the girl's weird kind-of-magical hand lettering talent just was too over-the-top for me. Still a great read though!

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary

Okay, I loved The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary a few years ago, and when I saw another book by her, I immediately wanted to read it. But this one got so weird and felt like such a stretch that I did not feel the same interest in the characters or wishing for them to get together. The story is about two exes who get into a car accident with each other on the way to a mutual wedding that they were invited to, and then they end up having to carpool with each other (and a few other friends) to the wedding for eight hours. I thought it was going to be lighthearted and funny, but it honestly wasn't. I loved the story of how they originally got together, at an Italian villa where she was the manager and he was a guest, but I felt like the whole story of how their relationship went sour and why they broke up and what problems they had really felt too depressing and wrong. There was so much bad treatment of the girl by the boy and his friends and it really made me not want her to get back into that relationship, even if he had "changed." So I wasn't really excited to see how they got to the wedding and what happened, but I felt like I had to finish it at that point. Oh, and there was a stalker in the story too, which seemed like it was supposed to be funny but it was also kind of creepy and weird. So basically not my favorite audiobook or romance of the year. 

Love at First by Kate Clayborn

I have seen Kate Clayborn's books recommended a few times and finally found the time to download her books as e-books to my phone and just power through them. They were so fun and really enjoyable. I really liked this one about a doctor wanting to Airbnb his new apartment that he inherited from an uncle and his upstairs neighbor who is determined to stop him from ruining their apartment complex's good vibes. I thought it was an excellent way to set up the enemies-to-lovers trope--it felt very believable and I thought some of the hijinks they got up to while arguing and fighting with each other were hilarious. I just really enjoyed this one and immediately wanted to get into her next one. 

Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith

I don't have much to say about this except that it had been on my Goodreads To-Read list for years and years, and I decided to finally check it off by reading it on my phone. But it really didn't deserve to be saved on my To-Read list that long--I don't know where I heard about it from, I've never heard it recommended again, and it was definitely nothing to write home about. It was a story about a girl who buys a lottery ticket for her best friend on his 18th birthday and he actually wins the lottery and becomes a millionaire, and all of the changes that brings in his life and in their relationship. Basically, not all that different from what you'd expect. Nothing terrible, but nothing super interesting or life-changing in it either. It was a cute story but I've already forgotten the characters' names. Oh, and the ending is totally not believable to me (the lottery winner decides to use his money to fund little acts of charity by random people for forever? It seems completely un-doable and not realistic at all). 

Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary D. Schmidt

I've loved both of the Gary D. Schmidt books I've read (The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now) and I have intended to read his newer books for a while. I loved how he took Shakespeare and made it applicable and interesting and fun in The Wednesday Wars and I loved how he did the same thing with the paintings of James John Audubon in Okay for Now. I had no idea what Pay Attention, Carter Jones was going to be about, but I did not expect for it to be about the game of cricket. I thought it was so fun to see this boy's "coming of age," of a sort, and how he became more confident in himself and more connected to his friends and schoolmates through the game of cricket. I also loved the whole weirdness of having a butler in America and how this butler was determined to be a butler even though it was a completely unheard-of thing here. It was very fun to read--although I still have no idea how cricket is played. 

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I'm always seeing book recommendations for books by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and I really loved her one other book I've listened to (Daisy Jones and the Six). So I was excited to listen to another one of her audiobooks. This one was a story about a family in the 60s-80s in Los Angeles, and while they were definitely a dysfunctional family, I loved how the brothers and sisters all loved and supported each other. Their good feelings and good relationship really carried how I felt about this book. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit Riva all were really well-established characters, and I loved each one in their own way. But I especially loved the story of how their parents, June and Mick, met and fell in and out of love and all of the problems they had along the way. I also really loved the atmosphere and the setting and everything about the Malibu background. It's so fun to picture Malibu being this sleepy old little beach town, when it's so expensive and fancy today. I thought it was fun how the sand and saltwater dirtiness mixed with the glamour of the rich famous surfer life of the Rivas, and I thought the ending was really satisfying. 

The Curse of the Mummy: Uncovering Tutankhamun's Tomb by Candace Fleming

Dane bought this at his school book fair with his birthday money and was raving about it and begged me to read it. I planned on just skimming through it to appease him but I actually enjoyed it enough to read the whole thing. It looks like it's trying to be a scary mummy story, but it was actually a really interesting history of the discovery and digging out of King Tutankhamun's tomb, and went into detail about archaeology and the history of the time period. I learned a lot (even though it was written for kids Dane's age) and I thought it was super interesting. It was amazing to learn about how much stuff they found in the tomb and what a years-long process it was to study and label and get everything out.