Swept Away by Beth O'Leary

Swept Away by Beth O'Leary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Two strangers find themselves stranded at sea together in this epic new love story by bestselling author Beth O’Leary.

What if you were lost at sea…with your one-night stand?

Zeke and Lexi thought it would just be a night of fun. They had no intentions of seeing each other again. Zeke is only in town for the weekend to buy back his late father’s houseboat. Lexi has no time for dating when she needs to help take care of her best friend's daughter.

Going back home with a stranger seems like a perfect escape from their problems. But a miscommunication in the dark, foggy night means no one tied the houseboat to the dock. The next morning, Zeke and Lexi realize all they can see is miles and miles of water.

With just a few provisions on the idle boat, Zeke and Lexi must figure out how to get back home. But aside from their survival, they’re facing another challenge. Because when you’re stuck together for days on end, it gives you a lot of time to get to know someone—and to fall in love with them.
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I have loved every book I have ever read by Beth O'Leary, so when this one showed up on NetGalley, I was quick to request it, and I am so glad I did! The adventurous plot line of this book made this one a little different from her other novels, but all the elements that make her stories so enjoyable were still there. There was excellent character development and growth, which I really enjoyed. I am more of an open door romance fan, so the fact that this wasn't a super spicy romance had me giving it bonus points. And the addition of Eugene the Seagull (my dad's name is Eugene) filled the spot that a dog usually holds in some of my favorite romance novels.

There was one big twist at the end that was kind of a gimme, but it was still a good one, and the fact that I guessed it ahead of time didn't ruin it for me. And there was another twist that happened that I didn't guess that was handled in an unexpected and lovely way that kind of lent a redemptive arc to a relationship that I didn't expect to want so much. There was a lot of miscommunication, which often annoys me, but it was written well and not drawn out beyond the point that it was reasonable, so it didn't feel overdone.

Overall, I would say this wasn't my favorite of O'Leary book (I really loved The Flatshare, and it will be hard to beat that!), but I did love spending most of the day with Zeke and Lexi (and Eugene) as I read this one almost in one sitting.

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Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine

Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she’s living in a rom-com plot instead in this earnestly spectacular debut by a stunning new voice.

Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark secret: she doesn’t believe in Happily Ever Afters. Not for herself, not for her readers, and not even for her characters, for whom she secretly writes alternate endings that swap weddings and babies for divorce papers and the occasional slashed tire. When her Happily Never After document is hacked and released to the public, she finds herself canceled by her readers and dropped by her publisher.

Desperate to find a way to continue supporting her chronically ill sister, Savannah, Margot decides to trade meet-cutes for murder. The fictional kind. Probably. But when Savannah books Margot a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort to pen her first murder mystery, Margot finds herself running from a moose and leaping into the arms of the handsome proprietor, making her fear she’s just landed in a romance novel instead.

The last thing Dr. Forrest Wakefield ever expected was to leave his dream job as a cancer researcher to become a glorified bellhop. What he’s really doing at his family’s resort is caring for his stubborn, ailing father, and his puzzle-loving mind is slowly freezing over—until Margot shows up. But Forrest doesn’t have any room in his life for another person he could lose, especially one with a checkout date.

As long snowy nights and one unlikely trope after another draw Margot and Forrest together, they’ll each have to learn to overcome their fears and set their aside assumptions before Margot leaves—or risk becoming a Happily Never After story themselves.
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Oh, what to say about this book? I was very excited to get to read this ahead of print because the premise sounded so much fun. I am a huge romcom fan, and the idea of a book that was made up of all the tropes that contemporary romance fans loved sounded really promising. And there were a lot of things I really enjoyed about this book. The setting was great, and I really liked the sort of found family aspect that was touched on when Margot found herself in Alaska. And it was a good story. However, this wasn't the kind of book that I found myself rushing home from work to pick up and read before I did anything else, and I have to admit I set it aside a couple of times in order to read something else. That being said, I never considered DNFing it, and I was happy with the conclusion, so I would definitely recommend it to people who enjoy romance, and I do think that I will check out this author as she continues to write more in the future. It just maybe turns out that you can have too many tropes crammed into one book, and for me, it was not as much fun as I thought it was going to be.

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January Wrap-up

Well, it's March, and I am finally getting around to writing some kind of January wrap-up, which is par for the course around here. If anyone ever stumbles upon this dusty little corner of the Internet (Is "Next Blog" even a thing anymore?), you will find procrastination and lack of execution is a real stumbling block in my desire to be a "real" book blogger. Luckily, I have Goodreads to do much of the heavy lifting for me, and I belong to several book clubs on Facebook, so I am still able to enjoy the perks that NetGalley has to offer. As an aside, if you have ever considered joining NetGalley and trying to get your hands on advanced copies of books to review but have thought you don't have enough clout do so, let me be your muse. I started out by searching for a "read now" book that was available to anyone and read it (and it was a really good book...and I got a very sweet email from the author thanking me for my review, which was an unexpected bonus) and reviewed it on Goodreads and on the NetGalley site. I then started requesting books that looked good to me in my chosen genres (women's fiction, general fiction, romance, and thriller). I focused heavily on authors I already love, but I also branched out based on recommendations I found on social media. I have been a member since 2019, and I have been active off and on, so while I have been approved for a total of 96 books (and reviewed 41 so far), I have been approved for 26 titles that have been or will be published in 2025. My goal this year is to read and post reviews for each of these titles before their publication dates, which I admit I have not always done. A special thrill has been that, on occasion, I have gotten books sent directly to my email from publishers for me to review. ME! This has included books by Nora Roberts, Mary Kay Andrews, Christina Lauren, and Katherine Center, and each time, I have had to pinch myself because it has felt like such a gift for a reader like myself to have the opportunity to read these books before they are on sale to the general public. I do not take this gift lightly, and I encourage you to check it out if you think it might be something of interest to you. NetGalley suggests a goal review percentage of 80%, which is a lofty dream. If I get the rest of these 2025 books read and reviewed on time, I will sit right at 60%, which is the best my percentage will have ever been and will be a number I am happy with.

Anyway, on to January! In January, I read 13 books, which was the equivalent of 4568 pages. However, two of these were audiobooks, for a total of 20 hours of listening time. One book, Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone, was an advanced reader's copy from NetGalley that was reviewed here. Five of the books I read I rated five stars. Two of these were the audiobooks I listened to, which were books that I had read in the past, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez and Beach Read (reviewed here) by Emily Henry. One was Promise Me Sunshine, which I immediately requested after reading Bastone's debut novel Ready or Not, which I heard about last year on, of course, social media. It was another five-star read for me. If you are a contemporary romance fan, both of these books should be added to your TBR shelf immediately. Another was The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston, which I loved with every part of me. I had only read one other of her books, A Novel Love Story, which I also really enjoyed (a four-star read for me in 2024), but this one just had me from page one, and I can't wait to read The Seven Year Slip, as well as the book she has coming out this year Sounds Like Love. And then my final five-star review for January went to a real departure for me, which I read to fulfill a category in one of my reading challenges for 2025 (the sci-fi category in my Book BINGO in my reading journal), Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. I do not read sci-fi, but I also saw this listed as a thriller, and in 2024, I really entered by Thriller Era. I consumed those things like popcorn. When I had to dip my toe into the sci-fi waters, I heard that Blake Crouch was the way to go because his books would be sci-fi-ish without being "too much." Well, this book grabbed me by the throat and would not let go. I loooooooooooved it. I did find that I had to really tune in with my brain, and it was a thinking person's book, but the story was fast-paced and amazing, and I have already purchased his Wayward Pines trilogy on audio for my listening pleasure.

The rest of the month was mixed bag of four- and three-star reads that I won't bore you with details of. I really had a fun month with a mix split pretty evenly between thrillers and contemporary romance novels, which are usually my two top genres. As an aside, does anyone else recall really loving the word genre when they first learned it back in school? My first real memory of that word comes from a high school English class, taught by a cherished teacher who really shaped so much of my development as a reader, and every time I type it out, I get a little flash of how he encouraged me to really lean in to my love of reading. Such good memories.

I will be back (she says, with good intentions, but a history of lack of follow-through) with February sometime soon. I should warn you that I am a liberal Democrat whose reading life got derailed by the political climate in February, as well as the 20-hour audiobook version of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Spoiler alert: I may have already found my top book of the year.), so February was not as prolific of a month as January, but I am trying to head back in the right direction in March. We have a lot of months left in 2025, and my 100-book goal is still well within reach. My challenges in my reading journal are looking less promising, but we do what we can do, right?

Happy reading!