Time for another round of Yvonne’s Shorties! This time around a TBR jar pick I sadly had to DNF and a POPSUGAR challenge title that started out well but didn’t work out in the end.

Title: The Paradox Hotel
Author: Rob Hart
Genre: Science Fiction, Time Travel
First published: February 22nd 2022
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Finished reading: April 3rd 2024
Pages: 336
DNF at 34% (134 pages)

“Whatever Allyn’s reports are telling him, the odds that timeline radiation isn’t to blame here are roughly equal to me getting through the day without punching someone in the face. It’s going to happen.”

REVIEW

I know that science fiction isn’t my typical genre, but I do love a good locked room thriller. Both the time travel element and the hotel setting intrigued me, so I was actually excited when my TBR jar thought it was about time I read The Paradox Hotel. The premise itself is fantastic, and it’s probably the main reason I even made it this far. The fact is… This book and me REALLY didn’t get along. While I loved the idea behind The Paradox Hotel, the execution was somehow completely off for me. The main character January was one of the most enfuriating and simply exhausting characters I’ve had to deal with in recent years, and I was SO over her bad attitude and aggression. Since we see everything through her eyes, despising having to spend time with her made continuing basically impossible. This wasn’t my only issue though. It seemed like the author was trying to be woke by incorporating diversity, but he did so without substance and it ended up having the complete opposite effect instead. There were way too many stereotypes, and why do all the rich white characters have to be assholes and racists?! There were WAY too many characters in general, and it was very hard to keep them apart. The plot itself was both confusing and extremely boring at the same time, and not even the escaped dinosaurs could liven up things for me. I tried looking past my issues, but in the end I just couldn’t find the motivation to continue knowing I had double the amount of pages left than I already read… And I decided to throw in the towel and DNF instead. Looks like my TBR jar wasn’t right this time around!

Title: A Leap Of Faith For The Cornish Midwife
(The Cornish Midwife #5)
Author: Jo Bartlett
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
First published: June 29th 2022
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Finished reading: April 1st 2024
Pages: 332

“Sometimes there were no right words to say, just the right questions to help someone come to their own conclusion.”

REVIEW

WARNING: it’s another unpopular opinion!!

I confess that basically the only reason I picked up this book is because I needed a book with ‘leap’ in the title for the POPSUGAR challenge, although I’ve been meaning to try this author for a while. A Leap Of Faith For The Cornish Midwife is actually book five of a series, but I can confirm that it can easily enough be read as a stand-alone as well. I’m suspecting the previous books all have a different midwife in the spotlight, as there are some references to their personal lives… But book five is mainly about Izzy and her story. I have to say that I was initially quite charmed by this author’s writing, and the first half went well enough. I liked the midwife angle and the Cornwall setting itself was lovely. The characters themselves were initially very easy to warm up to as well, and I enjoyed spending time with Izzy and Noah. These are not the only POVs in play, as A Leap Of Faith For The Cornish Midwife very much has a multiple POV structure. This isn’t where it went wrong for me though. No, my change of heart had everything to do with the fact that there was just way too much drama going on and the story had an overload of heavy topics incorporated into the plot. They just all started piling up until the point it started to become ridiculous as well as over the top, and it took away a lot of the credibility. It also made this story so much darker than I thought it would be… Especially with so much focus on grief and death in the first place. To make things worse, this sequel incorporated two of my major pet peeves: cheating and religion. I wasn’t a fan of the third act break-up nor the focus on toxic relationships either, and the ending felt rather forced. All in all not the book or series for me! I loved the dogs though.

You can also find me at Goodreads. StoryGraph. Twitter. Instagram. Bloglovin’.