Expectation: A slow-burn coming-of-age story about forbidden love.
Reality: A beautiful, sensual and deep exploration of desire and connection. While closely aligned to the film adaptation, the source material is worth the read.
Does listening to audiobooks count as reading? Here it does. Let’s discuss your favorite reads — or listens.
All tagged a good cry
Expectation: A slow-burn coming-of-age story about forbidden love.
Reality: A beautiful, sensual and deep exploration of desire and connection. While closely aligned to the film adaptation, the source material is worth the read.
Expectation: A lighthearted break-up story with the usual rom-com tropes.
Reality: A surprisingly affecting exploration of self-discovery and navigating heartbreak from the perspective of a dumped male.
Expectation: A crowd-pleasing finish to a beloved series.
Reality: Uneven, but ultimately satisfying, fans of the series shouldn’t skip this one as it is a closer cousin to the first novel than the second.
Expectation: A romance novel rooted in the world of tech and gaming.
Reality: Nuanced and gorgeous writing, paired with a genre-melding plot made this one of the most immersive and surprising stories I’ve read all year.
The stories are raw, painful and incredibly difficult. Only a few have happy endings. I had to pause the book several times to collect my thoughts. I cried frequently. That’s a testament to how Graff structured the book, its phenomenal narration, and the fact that it is an oral history.
Expectation: A mushy, hopeful tale of a teen manifesting a monster to help him grapple with the death of a parent and the ways it will change his life.
Reality: A simply told, yet incredibly impactful exploration of the ways in which we lie to ourselves.
Expectation: A science-fiction version of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Reality: A deeply emotional, highly philosophical and ultimately feel good “what if” story.
A decades-spanning examination of a completely unremarkable life faced with remarkable situations.