“Dex was a temperamental bag of beaver dung.”īut holy hell, she held a grudge for fucking ever!!!! Once Dex realized he was a douchecanoe, he tried apologizing over and over again and she wouldn’t have it. But you know, something he could get medicine for.” “The snot-faced asshole that I only kind-of, sort-of hoped came down with an infectious illness in his private parts.  I really liked Iris’s inner thoughts about the dickish Dex when she met him and overheard him saying some not-so-nice things. But I am in my late 40s, maybe that’s why. Now it sounds like I hated it, right? I didn’t! I enjoyed a lot of it, it just all felt so….immature. It’s like every popular theme was rolled into one book. It really dragged for me at times.Īnd there were too many common themes competing with each other. Kristen Ashley is also highly descriptive and it works for her, in Under Locke, it felt like too much unnecessary detail and not enough story. While the main characters I think are mid twenties and early thirties, it felt like they were much, much younger, and the narration, while good, sounded crazy young too. The thing I love about Kristen Ashley is the maturity of her stories, and to me, Under Locke felt like a young adult/new adult attempt at a KA book. It’s been compared to Kristen Ashley a lot. I don’t mean to be snarky, I just found this to read like a YA book. Her loser deadbeat dad was in the MC, so she grew up around it, yet somehow she is in her 20s, sweet and innocent and doesn’t curse, doesn’t know how gorgeous she is and yup….she’s a virgin. She left a really bad life behind and needs a new start. Iris (‘Ritz’) just moved from Florida to Austin to live with her half brother. They are in a club, but never at a club, they run a tattoo shop.  But Under Locke didn’t really have the grittiness, nor was it really an MC book.  I do like the grittiness of most MC books I have read though, they are a nice break from the plethora of romcoms out now.  I don’t mind them, but some do run together a bit in my head. I have read and loved a few MC series, but feel like the 3-4 series have read are enough. So when I saw this was out in audio (16+ hours!), I grabbed it. But at over 800 pages, this wasn’t a book I could just squeeze in. Under Locke by Mariana Zapata has been on my radar since it released. Under Locke by Mariana Zapata Narrated by Callie Dalton Standalone New Adult Romance

Under Locke by Mariana Zapata

As is often the case in Atkinson's genre-defying fiction, assignments to track lost cats and unfaithful husbands are never quite what they seem.'- TIME, 32 Books You Need to Read this Summer 'The bestselling British writer returns to Brodie's world for a fifth time in Big Sky, which finds the hero ensconced in a quaint northern English seaside town, making a living as a private investigator. With Atkinson it's Raymond Chandler meets Jane Austen, and amazingly she makes it all work.'- The Washington Post's Best Summer Thrillers There isn't a character here - major or minor - who doesn't sashay resplendently off the page.  'The novel is brimming with the wit and let-justice-triumph tenacity that led the series to print bestsellerdom and a popular BBC-TV series.  Thank goodness the long Jackson Brodie hiatus is over.'- Janet Maslin, New York Times It's a prime example of how Atkinson tells a great story, toys with expectations, deceives by omission, blows smoke and also writes like she's your favorite friend. It's a short chapter called 'Eloping,' and if you have a way of looking at it, do.  It's a bit of a red herring, but it couldn't do a better job of throwing the reader off base and commanding instant interest. 'Atkinson opens 'Big Sky' with one perfect page. The book won the Costa Novel Award and sold over half a million copies, catapulting Kate Atkinson from much-loved author to household name.One of Vanity Fair's Best Books of the Year A beautifully written, compelling and genuinely innovative read. In a parallel story, Ursula lives and we follow her story as she relives the dramatic events of the early 20th century again and again. The story begins on a snowy day in 1910 with the death of baby Ursula. In Life After Life, Kate Atkinson asks some interesting questions about fate and destiny. Here, we've hand-picked eight of the best Kate Atkinson novels to read now. She's one of my favourite writers and even if you've read these books before, they're worth revisiting as there is layer upon layer of detail. Her prose is beautiful and her writing is laced with dark humour. Her books may be award-winning but they're also deeply readable. These are hugely popular and have been turned into BBC TV series, Case Histories. As well as her inventive literary fiction, which has twice won her the Costa Novel Award (with Life After Life and A God In Ruins), she's made a name for herself as a crime writer with four books featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. She started writing short stories in her 30s and won a magazine competition but it was only after she turned 40 that she began her first novel, Behind The Scenes At The Museum.  Kate Atkinson is something of a rule-breaker: she didn't publish her first book until her 40s and she refuses to stick to one genre, with both best-selling literary and crime novels to her name.

Es Nochebuena by Roseanne Thong