#TNReads: Real Quick Reviews for Lazy Readers Featuring Justin A. Reynolds

Jess needs some extra cash. Living in NYC is expensive but it’s a great place to work as a makeup artist. So Jess decides to lie her way into a paid psychology study, ironically about ethics and morals.

What follows is a twisted tale of deceit and danger and a revelation that turns everything upside down. Jess could never have imagined the consequences of her actions in this suspenseful story that soon turns into a game of cat and mouse. This second collaboration from Hendricks and Pekkanen is winning rave reviews. I hate to spoil the fun by saying more. Read An Anonymous Girl for yourself.

Daughter of Moloka’i is the sequel to 2004’s bestselling Molokai and it continues the saga by following the daughter Rachel and Kenji were forced to give up for adoption in Moloka’i. I don’t think it’s necessary to read the books in order, but you should definitely read both because they’re each fantastic.

Ruth is a spirited, animal loving orphan at the Kapi’olani Home for Girls in Honolulu. Half Hawaiian and half Japanese, Ruth is unaware that her parents are alive and quarantined on the leper colony of Moloka’i. Adopted by a Japanese family at the age of four, Ruth has a happy childhood while being raised on a farm in California. She grows up, marries and has children, owns a business; basically lives the American dream. Then everything changes on December 7th, 1941.

When I first picked this up I had no idea it would largely be about the WW2 Japanese internment camps. It’s a dark part of American’s history, and Brennert spares no details as you read the degradation and injustice suffered by Japanese residents at the hands of the US Government. They lose their homes and livelihoods and spend years detained like animals. Brennert does a great job of relaying the history and politics of those years, while also maintaining a compelling story.

But the story doesn’t end there, and Brennert brings the feels when Ruth reconnects with her birth mother Rachel later in the story. It’s a beautiful story, one that educates and breaks your heart, but cherishes the beauty of life’s small moments.

It’s been ten years since Neely Kimber has been back to her hometown in Tennessee, but she finally returns to lick her wounds after her dream job in NYC falls through. Fortunately for us readers, that means she is forced to face the friends, family, and ex that she left behind. Dane Madden is the man she left behind, but never forgot and who can blame her?

This book has everything you need in a swoon-worthy contemporary romance novel: A strong female lead with flaws, a cute hometown complete with an abandoned horse barn, and a hot single dad to do dirty things to her in that abandoned horse barn. You’ll like this one.

The story goes like this: Jack meets Kate at a party, witty banter ensues, numbers are exchanged and we’re off to the races. Kate dies, Jack “dies” and time travels back to the moment they first met over and over again. He thinks he’s supposed to save her, but every time something goes wrong. And he ends up back on the stairs where they first met…again. I can see this being a great movie, but in book form, it became a bit repetitive after the 3rd or 4th repeat.

But that shouldn’t deter you from picking this book. Jack is a great main character, and if you’re looking for an excellent character-driven story, you’ve landed on the right book. Every character in this book has meat – from Jack’s best friends to his parents, to the doctors he encounters on his mission to save Kate. It’s hard not to fall in love with Jack and Kate because they make it so easy.

This book is more than a love story – it’s about the choices we make and the consequences we have to deal with for those choices. Throughout his many do-overs, Jack learns to find a balance between his new love and the rest of his life. He learns that secrets don’t help anyone. And he learns that he’s willing to do anything for love. Even that (dying). This book is an original. I look forward to what Justin A. Reynolds writes next!