KJ's Book Reviews

  KJ's 2024 Reading Recap 📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖 📖📖 📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖 This year I read 29 books This was the first year I really fell off the social media grind of it all. I decided to delete my "bookstagram" and in turn deactivate my personal Instagram. I also stopped keeping up with all the book reviews. (I am writing this on March 14, 2025, however, I have the ability to say I posted this January of 2025 so that's what I will be doing, as if anyone even reads these posts anymore, I am simply calling out into the void that is the internet.) This year I created a book club What originally started out as me and two friends has slowly shifted into a group of five women. Only one person has left the club so far, I am so grateful I was able to start something like this with my friends. Here's the books we managed to read in 2024 in order.  1. True Biz - Sara Novic (my pick) 2. Yellowface - R.F. Kuang  3. Everything Sad is Untrue - Daniel Nayeri 4. Th...

  It Ends With Us Written by Colleen Hoover Originally published in 2016 ~390 pages Rate 5/5 The controversy!! To label this book as a romance novel gets more people to read it, might not be the most ethical way to market the book, but romance sells!  A few months ago the movie premiered and since then the story has reached an even larger audience. Since the book's original publication in 2016, it has won the Goodreads Choice Award for best romance. This book has been incredibility successful and there's a reason for it.  Hoover does an excellent job at portraying the complexities of abusive relationships. Some might deem this story as a romanticized version of domestic violence, and to that I say, everyone's story looks different. The story illustrates just how easy something so good could turn so wrong in just a matter of seconds. I watched the movie before I read the book and both mediums portrayed the situation as gruesome and disgusting. I felt awful and covered my e...

The Liars' Club Written by Mary Karr Originally published in 1995 ~320 pages Rate 5/5 When it comes to writing reviews on memoirs, I feel like I should refrain from "judging" the book, after all this is someone's life story. So, I will start off my expressing my admiration for the author. I consider it brave that Mary Karr so willingly put herself into such a vulnerable situation by sharing her story.    Karr shares her experience learning how to love despite growing up in a home where love wasn't explicitly shown very often. What do you do when your born into a family that doesn't know how to love? In Karr's case, you unknowingly teach them how to love. I enjoyed Karr's commentary on the events happening around her when she was a child, she was incredibly witty. For a long time I didn't really like kids, they seemed gross, messy, and loud. However, I recently started working at an elementary school after living in college towns for the past three ...

  If Cats Disappeared from the World Written by Genki Kawamura Originally published in 2012 ~202 pages Rate 5/5 A short yet impactful story about a man's last days on earth as he experiences a prolonged game of "would you rather" with the devil.. The "would you rather" propositions the main character was faced with made me reflect and question my own reality and daily decisions. As the story progresses, the whole world is impacted unknowingly by the  main character's decisions while the main character sees the short-term effects of his choices . He begins to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of even the smallest of objects/ideas. Readers never get to find out the main character's name, he is merely defined by how he decides to spend his last days on earth.  At times the verbiage felt too juvenile considering the narrator is in his 30s, but I'm not sure if that's because of the way it was translated. That's the only compliant I rea...

  The Unhoneymooners Written by Christina Lauren Originally published in 2019 ~430 pages Rate: 3/5 After years of reading, I am starting to wonder if I actually don't like reading romance or if all the romance books I pick just aren't my type of romance. The last book I read that I would categorize as romance was The Song of Achilles (read 12/20/23-01/18/24) and I did enjoy that. There was a little bit of a marketing issue I noticed with this book. The book description claims the story as an enemies to lovers romance, but that was not at all what I read. There was only one seemingly rude circumstance that later got cleared up as a misunderstanding on Olives part. There was a little bit of bickering, but it felt incredibly tame and unproblematic. I would only consider this a fake dating trope. Spoilers ahead  The only enemy I saw in the story was Ethan's brother, but that was the plot twist. Dane being deceitful was the only element that saved the story for me. Dane and Oliv...

  101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think Written by Brianna Wiest Originally published in 2016 ~450 pages Rate 2/5 I think this would be a very nice coffee table type of book, or a book where you would read one chapter every day. I just listened to this book.  From my understanding, this is a compilation of essays written by different people and then edited by Brianna Wiest so the essays concepts/ideas are numbered.  Of the 101 essays in the book, only a handful of them provided concepts and ideas that were new to me. The book doesn't go into too much depth with most of it's claims so if this is the first self-help book a person reads it would be magnificent. For those who have already dived into self-help/psychology related materials before, the book might be deemed as a waste of time.