Sarah Ready

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this story, this is my honest and objective review. Fated is the 3rd in a series, I've read and enjoyed the first two and this was a good one although I think I liked Ghosted more. I don't know that you have to have read the other two in order to enjoy this one, it works fine as a standalone. Events take place prior to Ghosted (the first in the series, Daniel's story). What I've liked about the series is there's always an element of mystery in these fantastical scenarios that the stories have in them. What's real and what's not? It's not always easy to see where the story is going, for me anyway (which, frankly, it would be boring if you could). So the reader commits to following the author along on all the twists and turns to see where it finally ends up. And as with the other two in the series, you really need to suspend disbelief if you're going to enjoy the story, otherwise you'll be distracting yourself from the story with reasonable but needless and frustrating questions about reality. Trust me on this.
So we have Fiona, sister to Daniel, both heirs to family watch company. Fiona has a young daughter Mila, from a past relationship that ended in heartbreak for Fiona. Fiona's close friend is Max, who of course wants to be more. Fiona's mother abandoned her to her father when young. As mentioned, Daniel is the mmc from the first book, we met Fiona briefly in Ghosted. At the center of the story is the first timepiece made by the Abry family, which went missing decades ago. So of course Fiona's hippy-dippy absentee mother has it, stolen from Fiona's great-uncle Leopold. Fiona has closed herself off to love and legend is that the watch can help you to live your dreams, which Fiona decides to test because why not? She then dreams a very real-feeling world in which she takes over another woman's life (Becca), married to the lovely Aaron McCormick, living on an island somewhere. The dream life is definitely written more vividly than her Swiss life. So where does she really belong? Is she Fiona or is she Becca? Are the dreams even real? Will it be Max or McCormick? What if the dreams exist just to show you how you can make changes in your real life to get there what you have in your dreams? It was a great ride, and the story itself grabbed me until the end. Her books must take so much planning, holy cow.
My main issue here is that while I liked all of the characters (it's hard not to like Aaron and Max, and I'd already liked Daniel in Ghosted although he's kind of a watered-down version here), I had a little bit of a hard time with Fiona. She was a bit cold and hard for me to engage with in the beginning, I assume the distance was on purpose to show how much she'd shut herself away from love. She definitely came to life once the dreaming started. This was a great installment in the series, and I'm looking forward to the next one!… (plus d'informations)

This was such a fun read until it wasn't. When it wasn't, it made me cry.

If you're looking for a slow burn romance, spicy (2/5 chillies spice meter), funny but also has sad moments book, this is it! Like most romance books, you might predict how it ends but boy, oh boy, are you in for a treat.

Sarah Ready definitely knows how to write a book that will pull you in and leave you wanting more. I listened to it in a day, and whenever I wasn't listening to it, I was thinking about it.

I liked Gemma. I loved how she was written as this woman who is lovely, but also a little bit annoying at times. It was sometimes hard to like her and root for her. I guess what I'm trying to say is she was a realistic character, flaws and all. Some of her choices were aloof; completely, and they didn't make sense, but some of them lead her to the path that she wanted. She goes through one particularly difficult event, and honestly, I wish the author delved into it a little bit deeper since we were in the throws of sadness anyway. But I would have loved for that topic to be explored more

Josh. Oh Josh, he was so funny. Argh, so so funny. I loved that. There were some conversations in this book that literally had me bending over laughing. But, I have to say, part of his storyline was some of the saddest in the book. I found myself throwing him a pity party in my head, but somehow I knew he would come out alright.

More than that, this story is also about community. The different ways people show up for each other, family or chosen family. Josh and Gemma truly had fostered communities to shoulder some of the shit that they went through, and made it a little bit lighter. I loved that.

So, if you're looking for a book that will get you out of a reading slump, I would highly suggest this, but please for the love of all good things in the world, read the trigger warnings.

Spoiler alert: Be prepared for a lot of pining and I think we can all agree Ian is a douchebag who deserves to be pooped on by a bird every time he leaves the house.

I got this book in advance from Netgalley, and this is not a sponsored post. However, many thanks to Netgalley, and my inner spidey senses for choosing a wonderful book based of off the cover. Happy Reading :)

*if you see this same review on instagram, don't judge.*… (plus d'informations)

This was a fun romance with some sci-fi elements mixed in! American Serena and Brit Nick have a unique meet cute in Geneva but- oops -he's her boss! Romance takes a back seat until an accident at CERN forces them to swap bodies. They're not just freaky friday-d into each other, but they experiences and memories of the bodies they live in, which was a little disconcerting for me, but for magical realism fans it might be more welcome. It had a bit of a fated mates vibe for me, which I struggle with as a trope. The pacing was great, but some of the descriptions were a little too detailed and too flowery for my taste at times. I think that's a nod to the magical realism/fantasy elements.
I listened to this and the primary narrator, Kelsey Navarro Foster, did a fantastic job. The secondary narrator, James Foster only appears for a short section and totally took me out of the book. I would have preferred the voice Nick had earlier in the book. The book would have been a 4 star for me, were it not for the second narrator and the superfluous descriptors.
Although this is book 2 in a series, you do not need to read book 1 to enjoy it.
Thank you to the publishers (via Netgalley) for providing an ALC of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (plus d'informations)

Fun, slightly-deeper read that asks the question: do you have to give up yourself to be in love? Love-phobic fmc, hooks up and brutally dumps mmc who turns out to be her straight-laced new boss. Set amongst the backdrop of the CERN in Switzerland, and I like that both characters are intellectual. Gets a bit whackadoodle about 40% in, but in a good way. Suspend disbelief and stick with the story, you'll be glad you did. I liked the premise and how the author handled Serena's processing of her feelings for Henry and reconciling them with her tightly-held beliefs about love and identity. Heavy initial clinical focus on science, to the point of being a bit much, but it feels intentional as that was also Serena's mindset at the beginning of the book. The unique writing style in the beginning took some adjusting but I liked it, I just needed to slow my reading down to process the prose in order to more fully enjoy it. This was a good one; new-to-me author and the second in a series. I hadn't read the first book but I didn't feel lost; I'm going back to read that one since I enjoyed this one so much. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this story in exchange for my honest review!… (plus d'informations)