Happiness Forever by Adelaide Faith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sylvie is obsessed with her therapist. Not like fascinated but obsessed like she wants to spend 24-7 with her, thinks about her hundreds of times a day, stops herself from texting her nonstop. Wishes she could be her dog. And on and on.

This story is mostly about how Sylvie’s obsession and therapy sessions. I can’t decide if I liked it or not but there were a few sections that really spoke to me:

“Exactly. It’s hard when you see other people from the outside but you only know yourself from the inside. It’s so hard to compare.”

“Well, you are seeing the inside of a person when you’re reading … you get to see their thoughts, not just the outside of them. And maybe you find that easier to relate to.” “Right,” Sylvie says. “It reminds me of your idea of videoing yourself so you can see yourself as a person,” the therapist says, “but the other way round.” “I’m seeing other people the way I see myself, from the inside,” Sylvie says. “It’s probably why a lot of people read—for human connection.”

“It can feel easier to give your life over to someone else and have them make your decisions for you. But I don’t think that will work for you in the long run. At some point you will want to make the decisions yourself, for your life to seem real and true to you.”

“Maybe a novel seems appealing because a novel has already been written,” the therapist says. “All the decisions have been made. You get to just see things unfold. But in life, you have to face the unknown and make decisions. It can be hard, but that’s what life is like for everybody. It’s all the unknown. Nobody knows what is going to happen.”

I loved these little gems.

with gratitude to netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

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The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Erlick is so good at writing stories with interesting premises. Her stories themselves are interesting but what I love the most is the thought-provoking concept the story is built around. This one is about grief and our relationship with it.

If we’re grieving someone, so much so that we can hardly breathe, is it better to not remember them? Is it better to dull the edge of that grief? What if it disappears forever? What if the positive memories go with it? Where’s the limit? Where do we draw the line on what’s worth erasing and what’s worth keeping? How far are we willing to go?

All such interesting food for thought without clear and correct answers. That’s the kind of stuff great books are made of.

with gratitude to netgalley and HarperAudio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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