The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: August 5, 2025
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Eli Francis is stuck. Stuck in an assistant position at the online magazine Vent when he should be a writer. Stuck with a boss who dangles a promotion but would rather he just fetch the coffee. Stuck working alongside the ex who has had no trouble moving up at work…or moving on.
When Eli’s roommates push him to date so he can get over his ex once and for all, they set him up with Peter Park. Tall, handsome, and unbelievably awkward. The date is a complete disaster, and further proof to Eli that love isn’t for him. But when his boss overhears Eli recounting the catastrophic night, he suggests teaching Peter to be a better boyfriend through a series of simulated dates so he can write an article about it.
But Eli has other ideas…Eli plays along, pretending to write the article, while secretly interviewing Peter about growing up queer in the South and coming-of-age dating wise in adulthood. Eli hopes writing this sort of piece will finally get him the promotion he deserves. And in exchange, he will teach Peter how to be a better boyfriend.But the more time Eli spends with Peter, the closer they become, and the lines between what’s real and what’s fake begin to blur. Before long Eli is forced to face his greatest fears to become the writer he wants to be and secure the love he’s always needed.
The Build-A-Boyfriend Project follows Eli, a gay trans man who works for a San Francisco magazine writing puff pieces. He longs to write something more meaningful, but his boss rejects his ideas, wanting to keep the magazine light.
After a disastrous first date with Peter, a gay Korean man with no experience dating men, Eli decides to pitch an article about teaching Peter to be a good boyfriend while secretly writing a serious thought piece about Peter navigating life as a gay man within his Korean culture. He’s sure that his boss will want to publish it when he sees how good it is. He gets Peter to cooperate with the lessons for the article he’s supposed to be writing.
I love the fake dating trope and The-Build-A-Boyfriend Project is an original take on it. There are some funny moments because Peter is just so clueless. It also has more substance than a typical rom-com. I really enjoyed reading about Eli and Peter.
Recommended.
(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)
I’ve also reviewed I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver.
September 17th, 2025 in
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The New Girl by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication date : February 1, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Lia Setiawan has never really fit in. And when she wins a full ride to the prestigious Draycott Academy on a track scholarship, she’s determined to make it work even though she’s never felt more out of place.
But on her first day there she witnesses a girl being forcefully carried away by campus security. Her new schoolmates and teachers seem unfazed, but it leaves her unsure of what she’s gotten herself into.
And as she uncovers the secrets of Draycott, complete with a corrupt teacher, a golden boy who isn’t what he seems, and a blackmailer determined to get her thrown out, she’s not sure if she can trust anyone…especially when the threats against her take a deadly turn.
Lia Setiawan is the new girl at Draycott Academy, an elite boarding school. She’s there on a track scholarship and feels out of place amongst her uber rich classmates. On her first day she witnesses a student dragged away kicking and screaming by campus security. What is the truth behind this incident? What other secrets are students and teachers alike harboring at Draycott? Is Lia in over her head at her new school?
The New Girl is a YA thriller written by Jesse Q. Sutanto, the author of the Four Aunties series and the Vera Wong series. The New Girl is fairly serious, unlike Aunties and Vera, which have some comic relief. Like the Four Aunties series, Indonesian culture plays a part. Lia is Chinese Indonesian, which is a problem for her boyfriend’s parents, who are native Indonesian.
The New Girl was my book club’s August selection. I don’t want to delve into too much detail and risk spoilers, but I will say that none of us were completely satisfied with the book. The epilogue didn’t make sense. We also struggled with the fact that the person who did the big bad thing didn’t seem to feel any guilt around it and was just concerned with whether or not they were going to get caught.
I didn’t hate this book but I’m going to stick to Sutanto’s adult books – I think they are more to my taste.
August 31st, 2025 in
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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
My rating: 4.75 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?
The winner of the Booker Prize 2023 and a critically acclaimed national bestseller, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
Prophet Song is speculative fiction that takes place in Ireland. Eilish and Larry live normal middle-class lives until one day, the government, run by The National Alliance Party, declares an emergency. Her husband, a high-ranking unionist, is taken away by the government and Eilish has no idea where he is or what happened to him. Her oldest son is in danger of being drafted.
A rebel force rises to oppose the government and the unrest increases. A curfew is imposed. Life becomes bleak and dangerous. People are risking their lives to cross the border and get out of Ireland.
Not only is Eilish trying to protect her four children, but she is also caring for her elderly father who has dementia. If she wanted to leave it would be difficult. Should she even try?
Paul Lynch never states what the emergency is or what the ideology of either side actually is. This makes it easier to imagine that what the government is doing could happen anywhere. In fact, it’s currently beginning to happen in the United States, which makes this book even scarier. This also keeps the focus on the question of, “What would you do if you were put in this situation?” and not on how you feel about the specifics of what the government and rebels think.
A warning: Lynch does not use quotation marks or paragraph breaks. In general, I find a lack of punctuation pretentious and annoying. I’m sure he had his reasons, but I found it much easier to listen to the audiobook because of this.
Prophet Song was one of my book clubs’ pick for June. There was so much to discuss – we discussed it for the entire hour without even hardly referring to the host prepared questions. The conversation just flowed naturally. This is a book that stays with you.
Highly recommended.
August 25th, 2025 in
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The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia by Sonia Daccarett
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication Date: August 12, 2025
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sonia Daccarett grew up with a Jewish mother and a Christian Palestinian father in Colombia during the drug-war 1980s. When she asks her parents questions about their family’s ethnicity and religion they answer evasively, defining their family religion and ethnicity as “nothing.” Grandparents and family members who speak Yiddish, Hebrew, and Arabic and fled from places called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Bethlehem, and the Ottoman Empire, does not sound like “nothing” to Sonia.
At the same time, Sonia grapples with her American education at school. She is both enchanted and challenged by the tropical landscape of her childhood in a remote suburb of Cali, which is rapidly changing as cocaine trafficking and drug cartels begin to dominate the city’s life.
As she tries to discover what her family is, Colombia begins unraveling around her through violence, kidnappings, and the death of acquaintances and friends. At the same time, her parents’ marriage and their personal identities are rocked by the faraway Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Soon, she will have to decide whether to stay in Colombia with her family or leave them behind to find the answers she seeks.
Sonia Darccarett’s memoir, The Roots of the Guava Tree, is about being the child of a Christan Palestinian father and a Jewish mother in Columbia. Both of her parents were humanists so this isn’t so much a book about having a dual identity and having to figure out how to meld them. It’s more a book about how she felt like she had no identity. Whenever she asked her parents about religion, they told her they had no religion and that she should never talk to anyone about religion because it would just cause problems. That was hard because almost all of her classmates in the English language school she attended were Catholic. They didn’t know she was half Jewish and said Anti-Semitic things around her. She struggled with feeling like she didn’t fit in.
Sonia’s parents were distant in other ways. Her dad preferred to spend his time in his study reading newspapers to spending time with the family. Her mother was a very serious, almost gloomy person. In their effort to shield Sonia from anything religious, they didn’t even let her attend her grandparents’ funerals because they would be religious ceremonies. It’s interesting that whenever Sonia asked about religion, they told her she could decide what she wanted to do when she was an adult but didn’t make any effort to teach about the religions they grew up with. She wondered often how she could make that choice with no information.
The Roots of the Guava Tree is an insightful memoir about growing up feeling like an outsider in your own country.
(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)
August 15th, 2025 in
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Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: October 18, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin’s tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child’s first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents.
In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.
Seven Empty Houses is a short story collection. It was first published in Spanish in 2015. Short story collections are hard to review because most of the time, some stories are better than others. That’s the case here.
These stories are bizarre, in a disturbing way. In one of them, the grandparents are running around in the backyard naked, for reasons never made clear. In another, a mother makes her adult child drive her around to different houses that she breaks into just to have a look around and take a trinket or two.
Most of the stories were too unsettling for me but I did like the longest one in the collection, which follows the decline of a woman with dementia. I felt like the author did a great job getting inside the woman’s head and portraying her thoughts as she gets more and more confused.
This was my May book club pick. It made for a lively discussion because we all had different interpretations of what the stories meant. One thing we agreed on is that they were all weird!
Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: April 27, 2021
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business—”Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!”—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers.
But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
Dial A for Aunties follows Meddelin Chan, a woman who has a wedding business with her Chinese-Indonesian immigrant mother and three aunts. Her mother does the flowers, Big Aunt makes the cakes, Second Aunt does the bride’s makeup and Fourth Aunt provides entertainment. When Meddelin accidentally kills her blind date (!), the four women instantly and without question come together to help Meddelin dispose of the body.
Meddy and her family have a huge wedding they are working the day after Meddy’s date gone wrong. Her date’s body gets accidentally shipped to the wedding venue. What follows is a madcap adventure with Weekend at Bernie’s vibes.
Normally, I’m not a fan of madcap comedy – I hated Weekend at Bernie’s. However, it works in Dial A for Aunties. I think because it didn’t seem quite as ludicrous reading it as it would have seemed watching it on screen.
Jesse Q. Sutanto also wrote Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, which I loved. Dial A for Aunties is not quite as funny as that book is, but it is still funny, and I enjoyed it enough that I plan on reading the second book in the four-book series, Four Aunties and a Wedding soon.
Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
Publisher: Forever
Publication date: November 15, 2022
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything.
It couldn’t save their marriage.
Yasmen wasn’t prepared for how her life fell apart, but she’s is finally starting to find joy again. She and Josiah have found a new rhythm, co-parenting their two kids and running a thriving business together. Yet like magnets, they’re always drawn back to each other, and now they’re beginning to wonder if they’re truly ready to let go of everything they once had.
Soon, one stolen kiss leads to another…and then more. It’s hot. It’s illicit. It’s all good—until old wounds reopen. Is it too late for them to find forever? Or could they even be better, the second time around?
Before I Let Go is the first book in Kennedy Ryan’s Skyland series. It follows Yasmen and Josiah who got divorced two years ago after their marriage was rocked by tragedy. Their two children Kassim and Deja were both devastated by their divorce, especially their teenage daughter Deja.
After the divorce, Yasmen and Josiah continued to run Grits, the restaurant they own, together. When Josiah starts dating again, it brings up mixed emotions for Yasmen. She’s the one who asked for the divorce but now she’s wondering if she made a mistake.
Even though Before I Let Go is a romance, it deals with some serious issues surrounding grief and how different people deal with it. I enjoyed it. I appreciated the comic relief that Yasmen’s friends, Hendrix and Soledad provided. The next two books in the series are their stories.
I had the opportunity to hear Kennedy Ryan speak at an event hosted by my local romance bookstore. Her talk was inspiring. She puts a lot of thought and deep research into her books. I’m looking forward to reading more of them.
The Namaste Club by Asha Elias
Publisher: Harper Audio
Release Date: July 1, 2025
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Just inland from Florida’s sun-splashed Treasure Coast is the Namaste Club yoga center. An exclusive oasis of palms, lakes, and adorable guest villas, it’s perfect for getaways where Shakti, a serenely blond Instagram influencer, holds yoga retreats for well-heeled Miami ladies. The Namaste Club is a place of reflection, a place of release and redemption…or at least, that’s the sales pitch.
This weekend, however, is Transcendence Week, and a new bunch of South Florida burnouts have arrived. There’s Indira, fabulously wealthy after her divorce from the fast-frozen fruit king of Florida. There’s Indira’s bestie Jessica, also divorced and trying to get her groove back. There’s Barbara, heir to a massive family fortune, who’s taken a vow of silence for the retreat that will be sorely tested. And then there’s Carol Anne from Vero Beach, a happy tradwife and proud gun owner who recently did something…inadvisable; she’s just here while things cool off in her hometown.
And then, of course, there’s Daniel, the toned, man-bunned apprentice yoga instructor. He’s cute if you like that sort of thing. And many of the rich ladies do.
Last but not least, there’s Bubba, the retreat center’s resident twelve-foot American alligator. Before Transcendence Week is over, Bubba will have his moment of glory as well— when one of the visitors winds up in his jaws.
Who will be living their best life? Who will get their comeuppance?
The Namaste Club follows a motley crew of characters who come together for Transcendence Week at the Namaste Club. There are divorcee best friends Indira and Jessica, conservative gun-toter Carol Anne, Barbara, who’s chosen to take a vow of silence during the retreat, and Daniel, the hot yoga teacher in training. They are led by their young, blonde yoga instructor with a fake Indian accent, Shakti. They share the resort with a twelve-foot alligator named Bubba. By the end of the week, one of the attendees ends up dead in Bubba’s jaws.
One of the blurbs for this book said that it’s White Lotus meets Nine Perfect Strangers and as fans of both, I have to agree. It’s got a serious murder mystery plot line that is interspersed with moments of hilarity. It wasn’t so funny as to be madcap, which I appreciated. I’m not a fan of screwball humor.
Like Nine Perfect Strangers, we know up front who was killed. Then the story goes back to the beginning of the week and goes from there, tracing what led up to the person’s death. It was well-plotted and took some surprising turns towards the end.
This is Asha Elias’s second book. Her first, Pink Glass Houses, is a satire about PTA moms. I’m definitely reading that soon. I think she may be the next Liane Moriarty!
Crash Test: A Novel by Amy James
Publisher: Avon/Harper Audio
Release Date: July 1, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Formula 1 meets Red, White, & Royal Blue in this contemporary romance in which an F1 phenom battling for the championship is sent spinning after his secret love is involved in a massive crash.
Twenty-four-year-old Formula 1 driver Travis Keeping is halfway through an incredible racing season, with the championship well within his sights. But when a massive crash in Formula 2 leaves driver Jacob Nichols in critical condition, Travis’s world is flipped upside down. No one knows, but he and Jacob have been dating for almost a year.
Now the only boy he’s ever loved is clinging to life, his F1 team can’t understand why his performance is faltering, and he’s locked in a cold war with Jacob’s parents, who want him as far away from their son as humanly possible. Travis is sure everything will get better when Jacob wakes up, but he soon realizes he’s underestimated Jacob’s parents’ influence on their son.
As the F1 season barrels on, Travis and Jacob find themselves alone and miserable on opposite sides of the globe. But with some new friends by their sides, both drivers will be pushed outside of their comfort zones and onto a journey of self-discovery—one that just might lead them back to each other in the end.
When Formula 2 driver Jacob Nichols is involved in a huge crash that leaves him in the ICU in critical condition, Formula 1 driver Travis Keeping’s first instinct is to run to his side. However, no one knows that he and Jacob know each other, let alone that they have been dating for the past year. Travis’s performance falters and his team can’t figure out why. Not only is he worried about Jacob, but also Jacob’s parents discover their relationship and manage to keep Travis away from Jacob by moving him back to his hometown so they can take care of him. Jacob is not happy that Travis outed him to his parents.
Jacob is Travis’s first love and he’s lonely and miserable without him. Can he convince Jacob that their love is worth fighting for?
I loved Crash Test. Travis reminded me of Roy Kent from Ted Lasso – gruff on the outside but secretly sensitive. I listened to the audiobook which has duet narration. The narrators for both Jacob and Travis are perfect for the characters. Patrick Zeller, who voices Travis has the sexiest voice. He reads the character with so much emotion in his voice; it’s more like listening to a radio play. I was truly amazed. Jacob’s character is carefree and that came across wonderfully in Gary Furlong’s reading.
Usually, I only listen to audiobooks when I’m doing something else, like driving or working out. This book captivated me so much that I listened to it while following along in my print copy before bed because I couldn’t stop.
Highly recommended.
July 2nd, 2025 in
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Deep End by Ali Hazelwood
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: February 4, 2025
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
So, they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water…
Scarlett is an elite collegiate diver at Stanford. Her teammate Penelope confides in her that she broke up with her boyfriend Luk, an Olympic gold medal swimmer who is on the swim team at Standford, because he likes kinky sex and she doesn’t. Scarlett shares that she too likes kinky sex. At a party, a drunken Pen tells Scarlett and Luk that they should hook up because they have the same kinks. Awkward.
At first, Scarlett is not interested but she manages to work the fact that they like the same things into almost every conversation, making it even more awkward. If that were me, I’d never mention it again after Pen embarrassed me like that!
Luk might be interested in starting something up with Scarlett and they spend a very long time talking about it before anything actually happens. Scarlett alludes that whatever she’s into is scandalizing. However, when they eventually start hooking up – because of course they do, just look at the book cover – it’s not that kinky. No one even ties each other up! If you’re a dark romance reader, you will find this dusky, not dark. I don’t mind dusky but then why is all the build up like Scarlett the biggest perv ever? Do Ali Hazelwood fans have that delicate of sensibilities? As one, I say no.
It pains me to say that Deep End did not meet my expectations for an Ali Hazelwood romance. It was good but not great. Characters from her other books had cameos, which I always think is fun. I still recommend it, especially for her fans. Just know that it’s more of a four star, rather than five star read.
Other books by Ali Hazelwood I’ve reviewed:
The Love Hypothosis
Love, Theoretically
Check & Mate
Bride
Not In Love
