discussion

Let’s Talk Bookish – Reading Goals

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, where they discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and spread the love by visiting each others’ posts.

JANUARY 7: 2022 READING GOALS

As we enter the new year many of us will be setting goals on Goodreads and choosing new year’s resolutions. What are your goals related to your blog or books/reading in general? Are you going to have resolutions this year, if not why not?

Happy New Year, everyone! And welcome to 2022 and the first LTB of the new year. Appropriately, this first topic will revolve around goals for 2022. I’d love to hear what all your goals are as well, so please let me know down below! Without further ado, let’s get into my goals.

I just set my goodreads again to 50 books. I think I reached about 70 last year (same goal of 50). I guess normally I’d like to try and stretch this year and read more, but considering how busy I know I’ll be, even 50 seems a bit daunting this year. Nevertheless, I will of course try my best to fit it all in!

I don’t particularly have any resolutions, but I do wanna try and work in reading as much as I can to become a habit and less of a chore. It is definitely fun to read but as with anything, trying to fit something into a busy schedule can become a bit tedious. Here’s to hoping it’ll be something natural and completely worked in by the end of the year!

One thing I want to try and do less of is blind choosing of a book just to read. While I have run into some real treasures, I think the majority of my time is more or less wasted on books I found mediocre. With so little time on my hands, I think making a more careful selection will at least leave me more satisfied that I tried to find books worth my time rather than leaving it all up to chance. That isn’t to say that I will never do that, but I definitely want to limit the randomness in my book selection this year. There are so many good books I have yet still to read, there isn’t much of a need to always pick up random things off the shelf.

Here at DTRH we’re definitely going to try and deliver good content for you all, as much as we possibly can. It is fun, and it’s also nice to have a goal and schedule to try and fit into our lives. So please stay tuned for all the future content! And as usual please let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see more of.

One last thing that I’d really like to get into are ARCs. I have rarely ventured into this world, as it is a little bit like taking a stab in the dark as well. But I’d love for our blog to be a great place for ARC reviews as well so that you all can be more informed if you were looking forward to some of the same books! I have gotten my hands on an ARC recently, and I hope to share that all with you soon.

What are your goals for 2022? Anything for your blog or just for reading in general? Anything majorly different from last year? Let me know in the comments below!

5 star

Review: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

We all have stories we never tell.
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.

Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.

I heard that there was some hype around this book, and indeed the waitlist in the library was quite lengthy on this one. That being said I didn’t know much about it going in aside from its synopsis, so I still count it as one that I just “picked off the shelf.” Maybe I’m just coming off a streak of not-so-great reads, so this one just suddenly felt amazing to me. But mostly I think I just related to the themes and therefore enjoyed it a lot.

The Last Thing He Told Me is a mystery-type novel with suspense elements. A vague descriptor I know. But essentially our protagonist, Hannah, a lowly woodturner from New York, meets her husband Owen and starts a new life with him and his daughter Bailey in California. In the face of a crisis at Owen’s work, he mysteriously disappears and leaves behind a few cryptic messages for the family that he has left behind. As more and more mysteries pile up in Hannah’s pursuit of her husband, more secrets threaten to unravel her life as she knows it.

This novel is quite short, and a very fast-paced read too. The storyline mostly takes place in the present, with a few chapters sequentially further back in time, giving more backstory on her relationship with Owen. I found the pacing of the book enjoyable, and the way the flashbacks give sequentially more information was really well executed.

The book also felt really well planned out in terms of the way the events play out and the way information was given. I didn’t really have trouble remembering any details given to me, yet there was also enough to be shrouded in mystery so I didn’t see things coming from a mile away. The foreshadowing was also great in this book, and the ominous feeling of foreboding was well incorporated.

The mystery/thriller part of the novel is a little bit less by-the-book. It wasn’t really the most thrilling, nor the most mysterious. So if you’re the type of reader looking for that, I wouldn’t really get too wrapped up in this one. I’ve heard it said that this book also wasn’t the most realistic. I didn’t really have a problem with it—I thought it was reasonably realistic, and didn’t feel that it was ridiculously unbelievable.

What struck me the most was the themes of family that were in this book. That’s always a theme that I like seeing explored, and it was interesting how the ending wasn’t what I expected at all. This was a good example of a satisfying ending that didn’t feel too out of the blue nor irrelevant to the main story. It almost sat as kind of an inevitable ending, which really brought me on an emotional journey that I enjoyed.

I’m giving it the full five points here because overall the pacing was great and the suspense elements were just enough to keep me reading ahead. I also enjoyed the themes and the way the author wove in the present and past plots together to come up with a coherent ending. There’s even some Easter eggs in the book if you’re observant enough! I definitely recommend this one.

Overall Recommendations

The Last Thing He Told Me is about our protagonist, Hannah, living her new life in Sausalito with her new husband and his daughter, when everything goes south. Her husband’s company gets in trouble, and her husband disappears. As she searches for him, more and more secrets from the past begin to be revealed. Why exactly did her husband run? Find out in this exciting fast-paced thriller/mystery, filled with many themes of family and difficult choices, and how it will all culminate together at the end. If you enjoy emotional journeys (with slight thrills), this will be the book for you!

book tag

Birthday Book Tag 2022

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Good morning everyone! It does not look nice outside, but when does it ever on a cold early January day? This is the perk of being born in the winter.

I have chosen to do this birthday book tag again that was one of the first posts I did last year after an almost 2 year hiatus from the blog. It was a lot of fun and I thought I would give different answers now that I’m a year older with answers reflecting my last year.

I also wanted to take this time to thank all of you new friends who joined us on this journey in the last year. I have loved interacting with your blogs, the books you read and just sharing things with all of you.

Birthday Cake – a book with a plot that seems cliche but you adore it anyway

If I’m Being Honest was such an unexpected contender for top books of last year because it seemed like such a cliche. Mean girl can’t get the guy she likes so she tries to make him think she’s not so bad by helping the nerdy guy she made fun of previously. And then falls for him unwittingly! When I put it like that, yeah, it doesn’t sound like much, but I loved the way the authors went about this, especially because Cam wasn’t necessarily likable at first but I got to understand her. Plus, the nerdy “loser” isn’t just your typical stereotype, and their relationship felt so organic to me.

Happy birthday song – a book that certainly deserves all the hype it got

The Love Hypothesis has topped so many people’s lists last year, popping up literally everywhere in the book community. Being a scientist myself, I had wanted to check this book out solely for the fact that the protagonist is a Ph.D. student with an author who is in scientific academia. The hype actually made me wary it wouldn’t meet my expectations. But lo and behold, this was everything I wanted for the science references AND the romance was too adorable! It makes so much sense that so many adored it, and I feel it’s 100% well deserved.

Happy music – a book with some very beautiful and truly meaningful quotes

I talked briefly throughout a number of posts that I was dealing with some betrayal from people I’ve known for many years. We didn’t get to meet in person (thankfully because I would’ve been an absolute mess) in the aftermath of everything so I always felt like I didn’t have closure, but I didn’t want to hold onto the anger and hurt when they lived their lives like hurting me was no big deal. Forgiving What You Can’t Forget came right at the time I needed it in the aftermath of this storm (God’s timing!), and it has wonderfully quotable lines (and tips) that stuck with me – even when the rhyming got a little annoying.

Getting older – a book that you read a long time ago but you think you would appreciate more if you read it as a more mature reader

I actually did in fact re-read this book last year when I took on tutoring a friend taking senior year English class. Let’s be honest, I wasn’t particularly enthused to have to pick up The Great Gatsby again. I didn’t much like it the first time around when I had to read it for class. But when I did look at it again now as a mid-twenty something year old, I understood more of what the book was trying to say? Maybe it helped that I’ve read so much more since then, and I’ve experienced more in my life that made me empathize with the depictions in this classic. Nonetheless, I can fully say I enjoyed it more as a more mature reader.

Party guests – your most anticipated book release for this year

Book of Night, hands down. In lieu of the fact that I have yet to see ANY new news about the sequel to Ninth House, I will have to settle with this release that is apparently in the same vein as Ninth House. I haven’t forayed too far into dark academia books but the synopsis has me super excited for this one to hopefully fill the void in my heart.

Sweet birthday memories – a book that kept you incredibly happy during a sad or demanding period of your life

I was dealing with some anxiety earlier in April that even led to wearing a 48-hour heart monitor. Needless to say, it was a darker time in the year. But it was around this time I got to reading this gem of a book, Counting Down with You, that helped me forget a little about my anxieties even for just a tiny while. I loved the cultural insight, the romance, and everything in between – you can read the full review here.

Birthday presents – a book that surprised you with how much you loved it

One of my earliest reads of 2021, Vicious Spirits caught me by surprise because I didn’t really like its companion novel so much? With this book, I already met most of the characters and I actually much preferred the two leads in this one over the leads for the other book. I am always an advocate for more Asian stories, especially written from an Asian author with some of their experiences imbued into it, but this one just blew me away. I think the romance made more sense in this book and there was more closure for the major plot arcs.

Well, friends, that wraps up my birthday post for 2022. I hope you enjoyed. Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart (and Fives’) for being a part of our book community in sharing who we are and what we love.

Much love to you all! XX