A Love Letter to Whiskey - Kandi Steiner Review

 

“It’s crazy how fast the buzz comes back after you’ve been sober for so long.
Whiskey stood there, on my doorstep, just like he had one year before. Except this time, there was no rain, no anger, no wedding invitation — it was just us.
It was just him — the old friend, the easy smile, the twisted solace wrapped in a glittering bottle.
It was just me — the alcoholic, pretending like I didn’t want to taste him, realizing too quickly that months of being clean didn’t make me crave him any less.
But we can’t start here. No, to tell this story right, we need to go back. Back to the beginning.
Back to the very first drop. This is my love letter to Whiskey. I only hope he reads it”

I’m so happy that I’ve finally got round to reading this; I’ve seen loads of booktubers and goodreads users rave about this book so I’ve been dying to get my hands on it and read it.

This follows the story of Brecks or ”B” and Jamie and begins with them in high school and follows them through their lives until they’re 30 years old. Even though you’re following them both through such a long period, the pacing was great; it didn’t feel like anything was missed or skipped over too quickly and it really felt like you had the whole story by the end of the book which is pretty impressive considering the time span.

It’s my first book from Kandi Steiner and it has only made me want to read more. Her writing was magical and flowed so well. I wasn’t bored at any point and it was just a great, fast, emotional read. I wanted to throw the book against a wall and tear it apart and then pick it up and carry on reading it – it’s a book that will drive you crazy and you’ll want to scream at the characters because of the decisions they make and that’s what makes this so damn good.

The characters also aren’t perfect; they have their problems and had emotions like real people. It wasn’t just Jamie either who was made out ot be the dick in all this like the men normally are, B had so many issues and at quite a few points, I thought she was a major dickhead and I wanted to just shout “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” at her though the pages! There was obvious chemistry between the two of them and also a lot of built up angst and sexual chemistry so if you don’t like angsty romances then you probably won’t like this. 

I do think I ‘ruined’ it for myself – Carol from ‘the readingwallflower’ posed her review on her goodreads and she ended up DNFing for a specific reason and I couldn’t get rid of this reasoning whilst I was reading it. And this is one of the main reasons I gave this 4 stars and not 5, because I had this in the back of my mind. I’m not going to post Carol’s review but you can find it here if you want to read it after you’ve read the book, you can find it here. 

I don’t want to say too much about the plot because I think the less you know going into this the better it will be. It definitely doesn’t detract from the plot as I knew nothing going into this and realy enjoyed this! If you’re a fan of angsty, emotional, romantic reads then you should definitely pick this up!

(Amazon UK I Amazon US I Book Depository)

The Other Half of Happiness - Ayisha Malik Review

"Sofia Khan is just married. But no-one told her life was going to be this way . . .

Her living situation is in dire straits, her husband Conall is distant, and his annoyingly attractive colleague is ringing all sorts of alarm bells.

When her mother forces them into a belated wedding ceremony (elopement: you can run, but you can't hide), Sofia wonders if it might be a chance to bring them together. But when it forces Conall to confess his darkest secret, it might just tear them apart.
A book to make you smile, laugh and cry, this is the story of a mixed-race marriage and a mixed-up family, for anyone who's ever struggled to balance their pride with their principles, or stuck around to try to mend a broken heart."

 

First of all, when purchasing this book, I didn’t realise that it was the second book however I went ahead and read it anyway and didn’t feel like I was missing that much from not reading the first book. The first book appears to be about how Sofia meets her partner and trying to navigate her way through the Muslim dating scene. 

One of the great things about this book is that it is an own voices novel; Ayisha Malik herself is a British Muslim living in London and said that she has drawn on some of her own experiences within this novel.

I struggled with this to start with; it’s told in a chatty diary style fashion which made it easier to read but I felt like it was a bit more difficult to get the detail in the story which you needed and I just didn’t feel hooked. It seemed to have an overall ‘glum’ feeling throughout the book whilst also trying to include the comedy in it and it just felt a bit, wrong? The overall ending also didn’t feel too happy despite it meant to be a happy ending. 

I really enjoyed the way that the book incorporated current world events such as the bombing’s which are set in Pakistan and the questions that Sofia gets asked in her interviews in the book for the release of Sofia’s book. It was interesting to see these events played out in the book and I felt they made me think a lot more about the events in real-life which is also a plus. 

I’m struggling to give many points on this book – it didn’t really have anything wrong with the book but nothing stood out to me an made this all that memorable and whilst it’s great that this is a Muslim own voices novel. I can’t give a book a high rating just for that. I also don’t feel like going and picking up the first book to read and for these reasons, I only gave this three stars.

Leashed - Zoe Dawson Review

This is currently free on Amazon UK for Kindle!

I didn’t enjoy this and it’s such a shame because it had such potential!

Leashed is a book about Callie Lassiter who is meant to be your sweet girl next door but with a tom-boy twist and Owen McKay who’s your typical bad boy lothario who owns his own club. They meet through an encounter with their dogs where Callie’s dog Jack gets Owen’s dog Jill pregnant.

It had the workings to be a good story, I mean romance mixed in with dogs – Hell Yes! But it just fell so flat. The kindle book which I read was only 232 pages, which I feel isn’t too short but not super long either. Yet I felt like the entire story was just rushed. Things were just skipped over completely and it made it a bit more difficult to keep sense of any time that may have passed.

This is also told in dual POV; from Callie’s side and from Owen’s side. There was no clear definition between who POV we were now seeing  - there were no page breaks, no name title to let us know who was now telling the story and it made it so confusing to keep up with who was now talking. I know the book was written in third person so maybe the author felt it might be easier to keep up with because of this but as mentioned, I just felt it could get a bit confusing. This was also the same for the major time or setting changes as there were page breaks; the paragraphs would just carry on going.

There was way too much emphasis on Callie being some sort of tom-boy, like it was literally mentioned in every bloody page. We get it; Callie isn’t your usual girly-girl who wears dresses and heels. The same was said for Owen, it was mentioned so much by him and by Callie about how much of a bad-boy he was, again we get it. It was played upon so much and it just annoying and it started to feel like that maybe Callie was sort of looking down on girls who weren’t tom-boys.

I felt like there wasn’t really enough of a development of their relationship and it was insta-love and went from zero to 100 in no time. I can understand that there was the lust there but that seemed to develop into love just ridiculously quickly I mean they were going on holiday within a month or so of being together and basically meeting and then moving in with each other. Seemed ridiculous to me, even for insta-love status.

I did enjoy the concept and like I said romance and dogs – Yes! But unfortunately the writing and execution just wasn’t enough to make this enjoyable.

This is part of a series which carries on with Callie’s friends POV for the next books but I won’t be continuing on with them.