30 First Dates by Stacey Wiedower

Blurb:

"30 dates, 30 wild ideas, total media frenzy… but only one Mr. Right.

Erin Crawford is a relationship blogger with a bucket list and a vendetta. After having horrible luck in her own relationships, she decides to start a blog called "30 First Dates." Her mission: go out with 30 men before her 30th birthday. It's her quest to find a non-jerk in 30 dates or less. As she blogs about her sometimes humorous and sometimes just sad dates, she also begins to cross off her bucket list of 30 things she wants to do before she turns 30—killing two birds with one stone by complaining the items on her dates! In fourteen months she skydives, skinnydips, crashes a wedding, travels to multiple cities and lives way outside her usual comfort zone. The only question is, as her birthday approaches and her list rows smaller, will Erin be able to find love? Or is she destined to be a first-date-only kind of girl?"

My Review:

Let me start off by saying it's so refreshing to find a book that takes place in Dallas. I can only think of one other book that took place here, and it's so exciting to read about my city. I've been to the bars they mentioned in Uptown, I have family in Frisco and it was fun to actually see the story take place and be able to put a real location to the book.

Anyway. How cool is is it when a blogger makes it big? At first I thought this was going to be similar to The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart by Anna Bell since both involve bucket list type plots, but this was still a refreshing and different story.

Erin's dates were hilarious and had me cracking up. Her blog entries were cute to read, too. Sometimes the things that happened to her were a LITTLE unrealistic - like...a blogger to immediately make it on national television with instant fame and success? Maybe not real life, but that's why we read fiction, right?

 

 

It was predictable but also cute - a light, fun little escape. I totally enjoyed reading it.

My Rating:

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Blurb:

"Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming."


My Review:

I think something is wrong with me. I'm the only person I know who didn't swoon over this book. I love Gillian Flynn, I really do. Gone Girl is one of my all-time favorites and has set the bar for all psychological thrillers. Dark Places was really great too. But for some reason, Sharp Objects just fell flat.

There were some things I did enjoy about the book, though. I loved Camille as a character. She was complex and flawed and has lived a hard life. There were so many layers to her that I didn't expect when I started reading but was interesting to watch unfold. The character-writing overall was great.

I also did not expect the ending. Yes, the whole story felt like it was written in a monotonous voice - it's slow and honestly boring at times. But when I got to the end, I was surprised. I maybe saw about half of it coming.

So why did I not love it? It just didn't fit the "thrilling" part of a psychological thriller. It needed more energy. It needed to make my heart race. With most books like this I am rushing from page to page, my eyes darting through the paragraphs trying to figure out what will happen next. But with Sharp Objects, I was just bored.

Now that the HBO limited series has come out, everyone I know has been talking about Sharp Objects. Since I'm a reader and surely you can relate - I just had to read the book first. When I started reading this, I posted to my Instagram story about it and I could tell right away how big the show is right now. So many people commented that they are watching it and reading it and how much they love it. Maybe my hopes were just too high. It's not a bad story and it's very well-written. It's just...monotonous. Tedious. And slow.

My Rating: