Hockey player, Nathan Hawkins, and figure skater, Anastasia Allen, do not start off on the right foot. Ana seemingly hates hockey players, especially the ones that play for Maple Hills. Ana and Nathan meet at one of the Nathan’s parties and end up hooking up. However, after Ana flees the scene. As they grow up the try to discover themselves and each other while playing their respective sports.
Lucy Albright is very nervous to see her ex-boyfriend, Stephen, at her friend’s wedding. They have a very intense and complex past. In 2010, they got together after seeing each other at a party. While Lucy gets very attached to Stephen, he doesn’t reciprocate the feelings. As their relationship gets more complicated, feelings are hurt, secrets are spilled and people are torn apart.
Alex Volkov is a man with a dark past and an even darker heart. His past is filled with trauma and tragedy that forced him to be closed off. However, when he is forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he begins to feel foreign emotions. Ava Chen tries to see the good in everyone, even a man who never shows kindness. They shouldn’t want each other, but they cannot resist. Secrets unravel and the past threatens to pull them apart.
When new nurse, Tate Collins, meets an airline pilot while visiting her brother, the pair are forced to get along. They start a no-string attached agreement, but even with that in place, feeling begin to grow. As this happens, Tate discovers Mile’s past and why he says he is not emotionally available. Do Tate and Miles have a future? Or will that complicate their lives too much? I really enjoyed this book. It was a light-hearted, easy romance read. A perfect book to take on a trip or read at the end of your day. It is very easy to connect to both Tate and Mile’s varying perspectives.
King of Wrath by Ana Huang is a fun contemporary romance that has a universally loved trope: billionaire CEO arranged marriage. Vivian Lau is rich, but she is new to money, and therefore has certain social blocks. If she marries Dante Russo, though, she will be catapulted into high society as the elite of the elites. Dante only agrees to marry Vivian because of the fact that if he doesn’t, his younger brother will pay for mafia-related poor decisions.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is a complex contemporary novel with elements of mystery and magical realism. The story follows a young man named Toru Okada who, at the beginning of the novel, is told by his wife to look for their missing cat. His journey takes him from the suburbs of Tokyo to a supposedly haunted house to the bottom of a well to a strange dream world that somehow affects reality. In the process of looking for their lost cat, he loses his wife as well.
When Jane Belleweather, a 17 year old, wins a 58 million dollar lottery ticket, she is stressed out. She is conflicted on what to do next and who to trust. She is left with only a few options with what to do with her ticket. Give her ticket to her hoarder mother, tell her journalist best friend, or trust her ex-boyfriend, who came back into her life after disappearing. Does Jane end up claiming her prize? What will happen next? Read more to find out!
In the young adult novel Holding Up the Universe, Libby Strout and Jack Masselin live two separate lives with the same goals: to be wanted in society. Libby, formerly known as “America’s Fattest Teen” who was cut out from her house after a massive panic attack, and Jack, a high school boy living with Prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, even the people he loves, come together through a demoralizing prank.
