About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Matt Haig
Positive The New York Times Book Review Though Grace engages in near-relentless self-loathing, Haig draws her with wisdom and heart ... A sinister hotel development plot and its predictable villain lack the juice of Grace’s arc ... Affecting.
Katherine Lin
Positive The New York Times Book Review Lin expends more narrative energy interrogating Ellie’s inner life than Ian’s infidelity, crafting a subtle, character-driven story about interracial marriage ... Lin is deft and never overbearing in her handling of race ... At times, You Can’t Stay Here Forever drifts listlessly through the aftermath of Ian’s death. There aren’t clearly drawn, propulsive questions in its pages.
Paulina Porizkova
Positive The New York Times Book Review For readers seeking juice from celebrity memoirs, Porizkova doesn’t scrimp ... In No Filter, a taut 240-page memoir-in-digestible-essays, Porizkova dips into a collection of expected topics for a veteran model. There are hardly revolutionary arguments on aging ... and her tallness, although \'there is no height difference in bed\' proves a delightful kicker. Porizkova relies too often on clunky, drawn-out metaphors, likening grief to a bout of food poisoning or hope to an elusive source of light, like catching a firefly ... The memoir truly comes alive — in style and substance — when Porizkova smashes the facade of her glamorous marriage to Ocasek ... Porizkova walks a delicate line, capturing their complicated marriage and its many conflicting truths.
Elin Hilderbrand
Pan New York Times Book Review The Hotel Nantucket, by Elin Hilderbrand...tries mightily to be a beach read...[and is] likely to be successful as such ... But [it] neither captured my heart or attained that overused marketing promise of \'unputdownability\' ... Hilderbrand revels in the granular details of the Matouk-sheet-swathed lodging, which boasts showers thoughtfully tiled in oyster shells and complimentary minibars stuffed with bluefish pâté. The author sets sumptuous scenes ... I only wished for the same richness in the characters and their stories ... Hilderbrand’s spiky, astute observations...are too fleeting ... High stakes are heaped upon their secrets ... But their truths, once revealed, don’t deliver on the hype. Stylistically, Hilderbrand...overdo[es] it on distracting, dated internet-y slang...that barely survived a few quick digital eras, much less the glacial pace of publishing.
Jennifer Weiner
Mixed The New York Times Book Review ... go[es] down with the ease of a Dirty Shirley, but [didn\'t] capture my heart or attain that overused marketing promise of \'unputdownability\' ... Stylistically, at times Weiner overdoes it on distracting, dated internet-y slang that barely survived a few quick digital eras, much less the glacial pace of publishing ... Though a wedding is handy for the plot, it seems anachronistic that Ruby, an ambitious, Brooklyn-bred N.Y.U. student, would spontaneously decide she wants to marry Gabe right after graduation, a decision she doubts just as quickly. Still more people fall in undying love for indiscernible reasons; at one point, two characters barely exchange words at a club, hook up and subsequently wake up soul mates. Most compelling is the matriarch Veronica Levy, a formerly famous author whose books are made into movies. But would Ronnie really have said goodbye to all that because an indiscretion from her past made the New York lit world feel icky? ... Weiner’s take on the Pond People’s shoddy entertaining rings all too true...This conflict left me longing for more; the flimsy teen romance between Ronnie’s daughter, Sarah, and a Pond boy, Owen Lassiter, doesn’t do it justice.
Andrew Morton
Mixed The New York Time Book Review ... an earnest examination of the yin-and-yang, Jackie-and-Marilyn dynamic between Queen Elizabeth and her late younger sister, Princess Margaret. The result is less deliciously inspired ... it’s hard not to lament a lack of scoops, or surprises, in Elizabeth and Margaret. Morton describes their relationship as \'intriguing but neglected,\' but lingers on the oft-told saga of whether or not Margaret would relinquish her title to marry the much-older Group Capt. Peter Townsend, who wore the scarlet \'D\' of divorce ... Morton provides rich context on the coldness of royal life ... In their current incarnation, the British royals strive for Barbour jacket-clad approachability, but Elizabeth and Margaret is a damning reminder of the monarchy’s imperialist roots.
Camille Perri
Positive Vogue The book is a psychic break from the tropes of rom-coms past, blissfully free of tired bro BS and women made to chase emotionally unavailable men ... When Katie Met Cassidy cements what Call Me by Your Name started ... Perhaps most powerful of all, When Katie Met Cassidy isn’t bogged down by death and disaster. On the contrary, it’s allowed to blossom in its own, magical little world ... with all the makings of a Garry Marshall or Nora Ephron classic.