Jen Ryland Reviews

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Review of the Wife Upstairs

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The Wife Upstairs is a modernization of Jane Eyre and has a lot of twists and turns. Check out my review of The Wife Upstairs – this review is spoiler free but I’ll also have a link to my secret spoiler discussion page – come on over!

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins. To be published by St. Martin’s Press on January 5, 2021. I received an advance reader copy of this book for review.

Synopsis of The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane walks dogs in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the jewelry of her well-heeled clients. But Jane’s luck changes when she meets Eddie, Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for. As Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea. Can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?

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Review of Take it Back

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If you love legal thrillers, you’ve got to check out this award-winning book set in London and featuring themes of family, culture, gender, and sexual violence. Read my review of Take it Back!

Take it Back by Kia Abdullah

Take it Back by Kia Abdullah. To be published on December 8, 2020 by St. Martin’s Press.

Synopsis: Zara Kaleel shattered the expectations placed on her by her family and forged a brilliant legal career. But her decisions came at a high cost. Now, battling her own demons, she has exchanged her high profile career for a job at a sexual assault center. When Jodie, a sixteen-year-old girl with facial deformities, accuses four boys in her class of an unthinkable crime, the community is torn apart. Zara is determined to fight for Jodie, to find the truth in the face of public outcry. And as issues of sex, race and social justice collide, the most explosive criminal trial of the year builds to a shocking conclusion.

Review of Take it Back

Take it Back was a gripping legal thriller with multiple twists and turns and a lot of layers.

A white, physically disabled daughter of an alcoholic accuses her four Muslim schoolmates (boys of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent) of rape. Former barrister-turned-rape-crisis worker Zara, herself a lapsed Muslim, becomes the girl’s advocate. The community explodes as everyone takes sides, putting Zara into even more conflict with her family and worsening her Valium addiction.

I really enjoyed Take it Back. While the tortured/addict protagonist is a common trope in the police procedural and legal thriller genres, this book featured a character I hadn’t seen before. Zara’s backstory, which included fleeing an arranged marriage, alienating her Muslim family, and being hooked on Valium, was multi-layered and well-developed. The public reaction to the rape case pitted advocates for victims of sexual assault against members of the British South Asian community, men against women, and student against student.

Told in multiple POVs, Take it Back managed to reasonably develop a huge cast of characters. All the twists and turns kept me guessing who was telling the truth until the very last page. 

Really enjoyed this one and I will definitely keep an eye on what Kia Abdullah does next! Do you read legal thrillers? Talk to me in comments!

Review of White Ivy by Susie Yang

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Part coming of age story, part family saga, part tale of obsession, White Ivy is a unique and thought-provoking read. Check out my review of White Ivy by Susie Yang (and a link to my spoiler post for White Ivy.)

White Ivy by Susie Yang. Published on November 3, 2020 by Simon and Schuster. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.

Synopsis: Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar. She was taught how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops by her immigrant grandmother. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen—and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, where her dream instantly evaporates. Years later, Ivy has grown into a poised yet restless young woman, living in Boston and haunted by her conflicting feelings about her upbringing and her family. When she bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister, a reconnection with Gideon seems not only inevitable—it feels like fate. Ivy sinks her claws into Gideon and the entire Speyer clan by attending fancy dinners and weekend getaways to the Cape. But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.

Review of White Ivy

I requested White Ivy thinking (based on the title and synopsis) that it was a thriller. It’s not. White Ivy is part intergenerational immigration story, part family saga, part tale of romantic obsession.

The book spends a great deal of time setting up Ivy’s family history and relationships and describing some pivotal experiences in her childhood. The narrative spans over ten years of Ivy’s life and delves into the history of her family in China and details about their immigration to the United States. Once I got to the end of the book, the inclusion of all this backstory made more sense to me. To understand Ivy and her obsession with Gideon, you need to understand her relationship with American culture and with her family. To understand her decisions, you need to understand her deep-seated need for belonging and stability.

This was definitely a character-driven book, with Ivy at its center. The book does play on some stereotypes (the overly strict immigrant parents, the bland, passive WASP love interest) but the book also allows these characters to break out of their expected roles and surprise the reader.

Susie Yang is a talented writer, with a sharp eye for detail and characterization. There is a lot of information in the book that’s interesting but takes time to pay off. I’d argue that to understand Ivy and her choices, you need this information. But some readers used to the pace of modern commercial fiction (especially those, who, like me, go in expecting a fast-paced thriller) might not have the patience to wait.

White Ivy does have a slight suspense element, something the entire first three-quarters of the book sets up. The book’s final set of revelations were unexpected and interesting and I’ll be curious as to how other readers interpret them.

If you’re in a book club, White Ivy would be an excellent choice, a book that I think would spark many interesting discussions.

Come Check Out My White Ivy Spoiler Post

I’m not in a book club at the moment, so if/when you’ve read the book, come check out my SPOILER DISCUSSION! Let’s talk about the book!

Have you read this or are you planning to?

Mini-Reviews: Three Books About Love and Strangers

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That feeling when you’re patting yourself on the back because you finished your September Reading and then you realize October 6 is right around the corner! Check out my Mini-Reviews of Three Books About Love and Strangers…

Mini-Reviews: Three Books About Love and Strangers

Reviews of Three Books About Love and Strangers:

This post contains affiliate links.

Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards. To be published on October 6, 2020 by Sourcebooks. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance review copy.

Synopsis: When Mira flies home to spend Christmas with her mother in Pittsburgh, a record-breaking blizzard results in a cancelled layover. Desperate to get to her grief-ridden mother in the wake of a family death, Mira hitches a ride with a group of friendly college kids who were on her initial flight.As the drive progresses and weather conditions become more treacherous, Mira realizes that the four other passengers she’s stuck in the car with don’t actually know one another. Soon, they’re not just dealing with heavy snowfall and ice-slick roads, but the fact that somebody will stop at nothing to ensure their trip ends in a deadly disaster.

Review of Five Total Strangers

Five Total Strangers had plenty of suspense and atmosphere. When Mira gets stranded between flights in a blizzard, I could feel the cold and her frustration as she scrambled to figure out a plan. And one falls in her lap: the nice girl who sat next to her on the plane offers her a ride. Mira, who isn’t old enough to rent her own car, and her up on that offer, along with three other random college students who are also stranded.

But soon, strange things start to happen and it seems like someone doesn’t want this group of strangers to reach safety at all. Which one of the strangers is the culprit? Will Mira ever reach her destination?

I give Five Total Strangers a big thumbs-up for the suspense and twists but a thumbs-sideways for the conclusion, which left something to be desired.

The Code for Love and Heartbreak by Jillian Cantor. To be published on October 6, 2020 by Inkyard Press. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance review copy.

Synopsis: Emma Woodhouse is a genius at math, but clueless about people. Emma’s senior year is going to be all about numbers, and seeing how far they can take her. When she and George, her Coding Club co-president, are tasked with brainstorming a new project, The Code for Love is born—a matchmaking app that goes far beyond swiping, using algorithms to calculate compatibility. George disapproves of Emma’s idea, accusing her of meddling in people’s lives. But all the happy new couples at school are proof that the app works. At least at first.Emma’s code is flawless. So why is it that perfectly matched couples start breaking up, the wrong people keep falling for each other and her own feelings defy any algorithm? Emma thought math could solve everything. But there’s nothing more complex—or unpredictable—than love. 

Review of The Code for Love and Heartbreak

The Code for Love and Heartbreak took a while to get going for me. This is a retelling of Emma by Jane Austen, and it was a very loyal retelling rather than an “inspired by.” For a while I was worried that this one wasn’t going to work for me. The plot was a bit slow right off, and I had forgotten how bossy and insufferable Emma can be.

But around halfway through the book. The Code for Love and Heartbreak really started to grow on me. I grew to have a lot of empathy for Emma and her frustration that she can’t control everyone around her (same!)

So while The Code for Love and Heartbreak was a bit of a mix for me, if you are a big Jane Austen fan you might want to check it out – I thought the retelling was really clever. In the original Emma is a (rather failed!) matchmaker and in this book, she was updated to be a coder making a matchmaking app.

One Way or Another by Kara McDowell. To be published on October 6, 2020 by Scholastic Press. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance review copy.

Synopsis: The average person makes 35,000 decisions every single day. That’s about 34,999 too many for Paige Collins, who lives in debilitating fear of making the wrong choice.
When Paige is presented with two last-minute options for Christmas vacation, she’s paralyzed by indecision.
Just when it seems like Paige will crack from the pressure of choosing, fate steps in — in the form of a slippery grocery store floor — and Paige’s life splits into two very different parallel paths. One path leads to New York where Paige falls for the city . . . and the charms of her unexpected tour guide. The other leads to the mountains where Paige might finally get her chance with Fitz. However, before Paige gets her happy ending, she’ll have to face the truth about her struggle with anxiety — and learn that you don’t have to be “perfect” to deserve true love. 

Review of One Way or Another

One Way or Another was a Sliding Doors style multiverse romance. My main issue with these books (and I have discussed this with Lauren at Love Is Not a Triangle) is that … they nearly always have triangles. And this one does have a bit of one. Paige is in love with her best friend but does, in another universe, explore a relationship with another guy.

On the plus side: this book was a true YA homage to the rom com, with references to many rom com movies and tropes. Side Note: if you love YA rom coms, check out my post on the Best YA Rom Coms It also addressed the issue of anxiety and how it impacts your life (and I really understand that, as a fellow anxiety sufferer.)

It was fun to see Paige get to live out two different Chrismases: one in New York City with her mom, and another in a rustic cabin with the friend she has a crush on.

I am sad because I liked one of the guys better than the other and he was not the one Paige picked. And, yes, that can be the problem with this kind of book – things don’t always go the way you hoped. But still, I really enjoyed this one and definitely recommend it. It was a fun story and I am happy for Paige and her chosen guy.

Hope you enjoyed my mini-reviews of three books about love and strangers. And, in one case, possible love with a stranger? Talk to me in comments!

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