A gripping, compelling psychological thriller that explores interesting issues related to reproductive rights, motherhood, friendships and relationships in general.
Lana Stone and her partner Tyler Jones have been trying to start family for years and have even undergone several unsuccessful IVF cycles. Lana, who is determined to continue, decides to use an egg donor. She would like the donor to have Bulgarian genes, the genes of her people. Lana’s mother defected from Bulgaria during the Cold era. When a suitable donor is found, Lana is fascinated by the photo of this beautiful Ivy League graduate girl.


When a suitable donor is found, Lana is fascinated by the photo of this beautiful Ivy League graduate girl. Unfortunately, Lana and Tyler’s relationship has been under a lot of strain with the gruelling regime of infertility treatments and heart-breaking pain of miscarriages. Tyler tells her he needs a break, although Lana suspects there has to be another woman involved for him to walk out on her in the middle of a very expensive and time-sensitive procedure.

Lana decides to go ahead without informing Tyler and gets pregnant. When she sees the familiar face of her egg donor on a train, something compels her to follow the girl. The girl falls down, Lana helps her ..and here is her chance to learn about her future baby’s mother. Katya seems to be such a spontaneous, joyful person and Lana finds herself immediately drawn to her sparkling personality. They go dancing, which is, of course, a madness in Lana’s condition. While Lana is busy dealing with an unexpected complication, Katya goes missing. The police are not sure there was any foul play involved, but Lana won’t give up on her new friend and continues investigating.

I am going to stop here, as I don’t want to give away the story. The plot is compelling and the book is bound to keep you turning pages obsessively. Is it plausible? Well, the boundaries of what family and parenthood is are becoming blurred nowadays. More and more people become parents later in their lives and a lot of couples struggle with infertility, so the questions raised in this novel are pertinent. Who is Lana to her baby? Being pregnant, carrying a baby to term and giving birth does not make you a biological mother in the eyes of law, since the DNA is Tyler’s and Katya’s. Who is Katya to her baby? Does she have any right to know what happens to the child who is going to have her genes? Does she have any right to know if the child is happy and taken good care of? With the recent advances in fertility treatments, it is possible to remove faulty parts of DNA and replace them with a small portion of a donor’s mitochondrial genetic material, so a baby potentially can have three or even more genetic parents. These are ethical questions we will have to ponder and answer in the near future…

I really liked the characters in this book. Lana is such a positive and loyal person, who wants to know and understand the other person’s feelings and motivations. Tyler remained a bit of a mystery to me, since there were fewer chapters with his point of view. Katya…well, you will have to decide for yourself. There are also some great secondary characters such as Angie, Lana’s friend from her infertility support group and Penka Dimitrova, Katya’s mother.

I also found the New York City setting fascinating. It isn’t just the subway which is the scene of Lana and Katya’s first meeting, but also The Met where Lana works, the park where Lana and Tyler go to have their talk, the club where Lana and Katya go dancing and so on. The city contributes to the overall atmosphere of this novel, focused on strong, independent women and their longing for a meaningful connection instead of safe anonymity and indifference.

If you like psychological thrillers, you should definitely read this emotional and thought-provoking debut novel of Daniela Petrova.

Thank you to Edelweiss and G.P.Putnam’s sons for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

A sweet funny story of perpetually late, disorganised, honest and kind-hearted Nadia and shy, all-round-good, romantic Daniel.
Nadia has just come out of a really bad relationship and feels she needs to change her lifestyle and daily routine to make it calmer, healthier, more organised. One of the changes in her routine is making sure she does get on that 7.30 am train to work. And so she does..on Monday, sometimes even Tuesday. Then life creeps in, late nights with friends, Netflix, too much wine..and the New Routine gets abandoned until next Monday. One day her friend Emma texts her that The Missing Connections, a lonely hearts section in the newspaper they both flick through on a regular basis, has a message describing somebody who sounds like Nadia. Naida is intrigued, so when her friend responds on her behalf, she is more embarrassed and excited than angry. Unfortunately, meeting each other in real life proves unexpectedly difficult as they keep missing their opportunities for months and months. meanwhile, the story goes viral and lots of people root for the Train Guy and Girl from #Our Stop entry to meet and fall in love.
The book was a bit slow at the beginning, but by the middle I was so involved that I couldn't put it down. It is lovely, heart-warming and very modern. Only in our times, it can be considered creepy to start a conversation on the underground train, but not so to search for somebody's recent and not so recent photos on Instagram.
Loved the story of Nadia's friends Emma and Gaby.
Recommended for anybody who loves romcoms and believes you can meet your One anywhere as long as you are emotionally ready.
Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

This book was a delightful surprise. Light, enjoyable, magical and, above all, delicious, as food and savouring food is an integral part of this wonderful debut novel by Roselle Lim.

Natalie Tan gets the worst kind of telephone call. Her agoraphobic mother Miranda was found dead just outside their family house in Chinatown of San Francisco. Natalie left home seven years ago, having committed the worst sin in her culture, the sin of not respecting her mother's wishes. Natalies has always dreamt of being a cook and having a restaurant of her own, while her mother thought she would never be able to cook as well as their formidable Laolao Qiao (grandmother). In the seven years Natalie spent away from her home community, she enrolled in and failed culinary courses, which left her with no formal qualifications and evergrowing self-doubts. She also left a lovely, gentle man at the altar. You see, she and her mother were abandoned by Natalie's father before she was even born, so running away has become Natalie's default mode: beter leave before being left.

Back in her home community, she is helped to organise the funeral rites for her mother. The neighbourhood itself seems to have lost all its colours. The shops are failing as only rare customers find their way to Natalie's street and a real-estate agent-vulture is ready to sink her claws into whatever business property is left. Natalie finds out she has inherited her grandmother's restaurant which has been closed after her laolao died but still has all the necessary equipment. Miranda left her daughter her blessing to follow her dream, as well as her grandmother's book of recipes. For her restaurant to become successful, Natalie has to cook three dishes from this book for three neighbours who are in need of help. Laolao's food had magic healing properties that Natalie is only happy to try to recreate. Natalie gradually discovers that these people never abandoned Miranda in her time of trouble. They brought her shopping and kept her company for all the years Natalie was away. This is not the only discovery she makes. She finds out more about her family and the reasons for their choices in life: My mother taught me to let your love make their own choice. My laolao taught that you needed to honor it.

Natalie's road to fulfilling her dream and bringing joy and harmony to her community is not straightforward, but that's what makes this novel such a wonderful read. Her first attempts to cook for her neighbours backfire and she needs to work out where she went wrong and what to do to make things right. There is also an added element of mystery (Why did severely agoraphobic Miranda step outside on the day she died?) and romance.
If you love food and believe in cooking with all your heart in order to take care of people around you, this is a book for you. Food is one of the protagonists of this novel. When Natalie describes what she eats or cooks, she engages all your senses and focuses on colour, sound of crunching, texture, complimentarity of tastes. She makes you imagine sunshine of a spring day and delicious smells of Sunday breakfast cooked by your mom.

If you think 'no man is an island'and we should all help each other (sometimes just by listening and respecting the other's wishes and choices) to succeed, you'll find Natalie's neighbourhood full of incredible individuals who know the true meaning of the word 'community'.

On a separate note, writing about depression and its influence not just on the person who is suffering from it, but also their family and friends. Roselle Lim's portrayal of Miranda is sensitive and full of love and understanding. The use of magical realism - the bowl of tears, the criss-cross cut wounds of angry words, the magic flutter of birds flying away to mark and celebrate the feeling of freedom- all these images add to the beauty of the novel and make it even more memorable.

Definitely recommended. I'll be looking forward to reading Roselle Lim's future books, hoping they will be as enjoyable as her debut novel.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Berkley for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

I am a big fan of Jane Green and have read quite a few books of this talented writer over the years. I believe ‘The friends we keep’ is her best, although it doesn’t focus on a romantic relationship, but on something else equally important: on friendships and our life choices that can either destroy our closeness or help us love and support each other unconditionally.

Evvie, Maggie and Topher meet on the first day of University. They become great friends and even, sharea house at some point. Evvie, half-Jamaican, half-American, is a former child-star. She has a few weight-related issues she is going to struggle with through all her life. Pretty and stylish, she is also the only one who doesn’t come from a wealthy family and has to work to earn her living. While working in a pub, she meets Ben, a fellow-bartender, who she calls Evil Ben because he behaves in a particularly unfriendly way towards her. Maggie, on the other hand, develops a crush on him and even has a drunken snog, only to be disappointed to find out Ben didn’t remember much about that evening. Topher is sensitive, witty, supportive, and very uncertain of his sexuality.

After the graduation, Evvie and Topher find jobs in New York, while Maggie is about to start working in London. Evvie has to stay in the town for another week, which is going to mark all her life one way or another.

The story moves easily between the three protagonists as years go by. We see how Evvie becomes an internationally famous model, but still makes dubious choices as far as men in her life are concerned. Topher lands a role in a soap opera and has a great relationship built on trust and understanding. Maggie marries Evil Ben, who turns to be sweet, wonderful and great in bed. The here friends reunite on the wedding day and make a pact that if they happen to be alone in their 50s (very unlikely in case of Maggie, they think), they will come and live together.

As the story continues, they mature, make choices, wise and not so wise, and… drift apart. Until they all meet together for their thirtieth university reunion. As their lives haven’t turned out as they expected, isn’t this a great opportunity for re-discovering themselves and their friendship? Only there are a few secrets and betrayals that might threaten this newly-found happiness unless they are honest with each other and try to understand and forgive past mistakes.

All the characters in this book are fully-developed and feel so real, that you get attached to them and keep turning pages to find out what happens next. I loved the way Jane Green chose to tell the story over three decades. This is life, and every friendship, every relationship develops in time.

I can highly recommend this great book to anybody who has wondered about the importance our friends have in our lives, about the reasons we drifted apart with some of our friends, about choices we made in life and how they played out, and anybody who believes in forgiveness and second chances.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Berkley for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

 “Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are.”


City of girls is a lifestory of Vivian Morris, a woman in her nineties, told in a letter to a younger woman Angela, whose connection to Vivian we do not discover until almost the end of the book. Vivian came from a well-off family. I really enjoyed the description of Vivian’s year at Vassar where she managed to fail every single class mainly due to a total lack of interest. Vivian was then sent to New York City to live with her Aunt Peg, an owner of theatre. In her own words, Vivian was good at two things in her life: sewing and sex. The first skill she puts to work designing and making costumes for the plays in Aunt Peg’s theatre. The second, well, there was plenty of that too, as 19 year-old Vivian throws herself into a life full of parties with other showgirls and all sorts of men.

In her preface Elizabeth Gilbert said that she wanted “to write a novel about promiscuous girls whose lives are not destroyed by their sexual desires.” Looking back at those years (the first part of the book is set in early 1940s with the WWII going on), Vivian reflects: ‘I might have realized that some of the fun young men with whom I was cavorting every night in New York City were just the right age to be put on the front lines when America inevitably did enter this war. If I'd known then what I know now - namely: that so many of those beautiful young boys would soon be lost to the battlefields of Europe or to the infernos of the South Pacific - I would have had sex with even more of them’.

I cannot deny that Vivian is not always a likeable character, she is way too self-absorbed for that, but there is a special energy and vitality about her that makes you want to continue reading this book in order to find out how this coming-of-age story is going to turn out. The later parts are not as colourful and full of joie de vivre, which is only natural, as they deal with a more mature Vivian.

An engaging book set in an interesting period of time and full of well-developed colourful characters.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Riverhead Books (Penguin Publishing Group) for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.


Title: City of Girls
Authour: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Expected Date: 4th of June 2019