{"id":527,"date":"2022-07-27T02:48:50","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T02:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2022-09-11T19:25:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T19:25:53","slug":"lost-on-island-st-martin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"Lost on Island St. Martin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I love St. Martin’s Press and all of their imprints. Somehow I am really lucky and I keep getting ARCs from all of their imprints, and 99.99% of the time I absolutely adore<\/em><\/strong> the book. Here are two books that were released on July 26, 2022 and I am just in love with both of them. One is a contemporary romance and one is a contemporary YA, and they are both perfect for me. And as two bonus reviews, a non-fiction, psychology\/self-help-but-not-quite book that came out in February and an upcoming release in October!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Booked on a Feeling by Jayci Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press\/St. Martin’s Griffin for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jayci Lee looked into my childhood (and parts of my adulthood), pulled out all of my hopes and dreams, and turned it into the love story I didn’t know I needed until I was reading it. To then find out it is the third in a set, but is solidly a standalone, just gives me all of the warm fuzzy feelings that I want from an adult contemporary romance. I mean, can I just be Lizzy when I grow up? We can ignore the fact that we are the same age, and that I also have a law degree from a CA law school (though I purposefully didn’t take the CA bar because I already knew I didn’t want to be a CA lawyer) – just let me be her. We have so much in common and if I can’t be her I want to be her friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This follows Lizzy Chung as she goes through an identity crisis after finding an incredibly happy moment to everyone else to be super lackluster (which is a total mood), so she goes to a small town where her childhood best friend Jack Park lives to 1) find out what she wants to do with her life, and 2) take a break<\/strong> <\/em>. We get alternating points of view between the total sweetheart who is just too hard on himself that is Jack and the neurotic type-A personality that is Lizzy, and it had all of the tropes you would want in a book like this play out in the best way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had such a hard time putting this book down, and it had the best HEA\/HFN ending – because everything was realistic. There is something so satisfying about a deeply realistic book that is romantic and sweet. It had a bit of spice, by my standards, though it is fade to black more than some super detailed scenes in other books, and I think that made it better. And the best\/worst part is that now I want to buy and renovate a bookstore even more than I already did. Read this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long Story Short by Serena Kaylor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Wednesday Books for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statistics + Shakespeare + Summer camp = Sold. The description of this drew me in so quickly that I was quite excited to read it, and it did not disappoint. Beatrice had true growth as a person and it was really nice to experience. I found her to be quite annoying at first, but knowing that she was homeschooled, neurodivergent in ways that were extremely specific to social skills, and had a lot of motivation to achieve a specific goal, made it so that I was willing to overlook some of the quirks that rubbed me the wrong way knowing that they would be addressed more fully as the book went on. Well, at least I had hoped – and I was right! I appreciate that Serena did not specifically diagnose Beatrice, because I don’t think it was necessary, and it was nice to not have something very specifically pathological related to why she struggled a bit with social cues and boundaries in communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I loved seeing how Beatrice developed her first friendships and found an appreciation for an art form that I love so much – and I have a soft spot in my heart for R&J, as cliched as it can be. It has all of the tropes that I love, and they were done quite well. It has a very cute HEA\/HFN, and nothing too triggering sticks out to me. I think it is a great example of teenagers coming into their own, truly teenagers being teenagers, and even though I am quite a bit older than these characters at this point, I still found myself relating to the story deeply. This was a really nice book that resonated with me on personal levels and it was just a lot of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pocket Therapy: Mental Notes for Everyday Happiness, Confidence, and Calm by Sarah Crosby<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and St. Martin’s Essentials for a copy of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone in training right now to get a clinical degree in counseling, it was really nice to have a book that condensed so much of the stuff I am learning into a format that would be more accessible to my clients. Sarah Crosby is a psychotherapist in Dublin, Ireland, and all of the techniques\/skills she presents in this book are things that I have either a) already used with clients, b) have intended to use with clients, c) had a therapist use with me (no shame in getting your own help!\u00a0ESPECIALLY<\/em>\u00a0when you are going to be helping others!) or d) things I will now be integrating into my work. Each of the few chapters in this book (it truly is “pocket” sized), are broken up into easy to understand chunks, and have self-reflection\/practice spots called “Take 5” where the reader can immediately put the skill to use and see if it fits for them. I think this is one of the kindest books of its kind I have read, as many books like this either are so childish in their presentation of the material, or they are so analytical that it makes it hard to understand for a layperson. I also really appreciated the focus on trauma and trauma work, as that is a huge part of my intended work with clients, and it was really nice to see how Sarah approached it. I fully plan on encouraging other people in my field to read this, and I will probably recommend this as reference to future clients as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Built to Last by Erin Hahn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press\/St. Martin’s Griffin for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is now just a fact I will love anything I read by Erin Hahn, regardless of the book content. This happened to be a book that was everything I loved in a novel (teen actors grown up, home renovation, romcom, dual POV, etc.), and Erin just writes in a way that is addicting. For her first adult novel she came out swinging, because I couldn’t put this book down. It is funny and the friends-to-lovers kind of story that makes my heart sing. The characters actually struggle with their identities and their relationships, grow as people both individually & in their interactions with others, and take responsibility for their actions. The characters are all flawed, but the “villain” clearly the villain due to terrible behavior and not just as a plot device, and it makes it believable. There are boundaries and respect between all of the characters (save the villain-esq characters) and it makes this book real, to the point I am sad I cannot actually watch the reality show being filmed in this book. End result- I can’t wait to read her next book, whatever that book might be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love St. Martin’s Press and all of their imprints. Somehow I am really lucky and I keep getting ARCs from all of their imprints, and 99.99% of the time I absolutely adore the book. Here are two books that were released on July 26, 2022 and I am just in love with both of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[83,71,49,357,390,354,391,358,18,356,30,29,47,64,360,53,141,125,388,361,355,359,243,79,362,77,35],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastpagepromise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}