Tag: contemporary fiction

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Never Meant to Stay

Never Meant to Stay by Trisha Das is a romantic comedy set in Delhi, and I loved it! I especially loved everything about the female main character, Samara. She is capable and kind and fun, and I wish I had her ability to make people feel cared for and encouraged. Sharav, the male main character, is a good man who has been carrying the burden of leading his family since his father died. In an effort to be responsible, he has found a suitable woman and gotten engaged.

When Samara needs a place to stay before returning to New York, she comes to live with Sharav’s family for a while. Finding them all still grieving their husband and father in different ways, she looks for ways to help them through it. 

I am so glad I picked up this book. The characters were well developed and interesting, and I enjoyed the setting and culture. The story was fun and warm, and I thought the romantic aspect of it was well done.

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The Seven Day Switch

The Seven Day Switch by Kelly Harms

Celeste Mason and Wendy Charles can’t stand each other. Celeste is the epitome of a stay-at-home mom, while Wendy is the ultimate working mom and a productivity consultant to boot. Then after a neighborhood potluck where they drink too much sangria, they experience their very own Freaky Friday and wake up in each other’s bodies.

What follows is a humorous, messy week as they try to live one another’s lives while figuring out how to get back to their old selves. I appreciated how they each move back and forth between trying to change things they don’t like about the other person’s life and having moments of empathy for each other.

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Get Lucky

Get Lucky by Katherine Center

This is a fun book. I enjoyed getting to know Sarah Harper as she finds her way after making a dumb mistake and losing her job in New York City. She goes home to Houston to visit her sister Mackie, who is dealing with infertility issues, and ends up offering to be her surrogate! On top of all that, she also runs into Everett, the sweet guy she dumped in high school.

There were a lot of humorous moments between the pregnancy, her old boyfriend, and her new job. Center also does a good job exploring the ups and downs of the sister relationship, and I really liked how things ended up with them.

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The Half of It

The Half of It by Juliette Fay

This may be a weird take, but I had trouble enjoying the first half of this book because we are told early on that the two main characters (Cal and Helen) have been estranged for 40 years, but it takes many chapters and several jumps between the past and the present before we find out what the event that broke them apart was. I have a hard time relaxing into a story when I know there is something coming but have to keep waiting for it.

Once we had the whole story of what happened, it was easier for me to care about the characters and enjoy letting the story unfold. I especially liked Helen’s colorful friend Francie; she was a lot of fun.

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Catch Us When We Fall

Catch Us When We Fall by Juliette Fay is the story of Cass Macklin, who finds herself broke, homeless, and pregnant after losing her boyfriend Ben. Ben & Cass had spent most of their twenties drunk, and now Cass is faced with the challenge of sobering up for the sake of her baby. She turns to Ben’s brother Scott, who plays for the Boston Red Sox, for help. Scott takes her in despite his longstanding issues with his brother and his lack of faith in Cass’s ability to stay clean.

Even though this book deals with the heavy subjects of alcoholism and dysfunctional families, I found it very uplifting. I really enjoyed the relationships in this book, and I found the characters very realistic and relatable. It was good to see both Cass and Scott grow and heal as they face their childhood trauma. Fay does a good job of showing how much a support system means in the struggle to overcome addiction while also revealing how necessary it is for a person to get and stay sober for themselves rather than for someone else.

I highly recommend this book!

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Wherever the Wind Takes Us

In Wherever the Wind Takes Us by Kelly Harms, Becca Larkin is fresh out of a twenty-two year marriage and all she has to show for it is an expensive sailboat. Selling it will give her enough to make a new start, so she and her daughter Liv decide to sail it from Maine to Miami to meet a buyer. After a rough first leg, Liv calls handsome sailing instructor Grant Murphy for help and abruptly leaves the boat. For the rest of the journey, Becca learns how to sail while trying to resist her attraction to the much younger man.

I could relate to both Becca and Liv, having seen divorce from both sides. Liv is struggling with trying to understand what has happened and how to relate to her parents separately, while Becca is trying to maintain a good relationship with her daughter without revealing too much sensitive information. I also thought Harms did a really good job of explaining the intricacies of sailing in an interesting way, and I enjoyed the romance between Becca and Grant.

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The Seven Year Slip

The Seven Year Slip is my first Ashley Poston novel, and I was drawn to it for the magical realism aspect of the story. I have enjoyed several books in this genre over the last couple of years, and this was no exception.

Clementine is an overworked book publicist who has just moved into her deceased aunt’s apartment on New York’s upper east side. Her aunt had claimed that the apartment was magical, and, now that Clementine is living there, it is time for her to experience it for herself. She falls asleep on the couch one night only to awaken seven years in the past. Her aunt is still alive but is abroad for the summer, and the apartment has been sublet to a young man named Iwan.

What follows is an engaging story of love and loss across time. I thoroughly enjoyed the love story and was moved by how Clementine deals with the grief surrounding her aunt’s passing. I thought the supporting characters were very well done and liked the message about following your passion in life. I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

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The Bright Side of Going Dark

The Bright Side of Going Dark by Kelly Harms, which was published in 2020, reads like a modern morality tale. Mia Bell is an influencer who lives her life on a social media site called Pictey. When her fiance breaks up with her just days before their wedding, she fakes the event to satisfy her followers and sponsors. Then her mother confronts her with her reliance on social media, and Mia responds by throwing her phone off a cliff. 

Meanwhile, Paige Miller is a techie loner who notices Mia’s absence, hacks into her Pictey account, and begins ghost posting on her feed. Paige is dealing with her own issues, including job stress and her sister Jessica’s mental health crisis, but she convinces herself this will be a good thing somehow. Of course, it all comes to a head when Mia finds out what Paige has been doing.

This was a fun read, although slightly heavy-handed in its message. My favorite part was seeing how Mia adjusted to being offline and made connections in real life.

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The Library

The Library is the first book I have read by Bella Osborne, a UK writer who has been publishing mostly romcoms since 2015. This book is one of her uplifting bookclub reads, and I’m sure the library setting was what got it on my radar. The main characters are Tom, a sixteen-year old boy who feels invisible, and Maggie, a seventy-two year old woman who has been on her own for the last ten years.

Tom and Maggie meet at the village library and become friends as they join forces to help save the library from being closed by the council. It is definitely a feel-good story with a heavy emphasis on books, so right up my alley.

I could identify with both characters in different ways. I can relate to Tom feeling invisible and finding solace in reading, and I can relate to Maggie having a good life but still finding something missing. For instance, Maggie finds that in her situation, the thing she misses most of all is the hugs.

“It was a peculiar quirk of polite modern society that without a partner or offspring in your life you were denied that one key comfort humans require – the need for physical contact. An embrace can be on many different levels but the basic sensation of emotional and physical warmth given freely by another is most noticeable when it is no longer there.”

I also appreciated the focus on books and reading being part of one’s life. I loved how Tom grew in his confidence with books and the library until he was recommending books to others, and these words from Maggie really resonate with me:

“Books are such an underrated essential. Every book is a key that unlocks another world, leads us down the path of a different life and offers the chance to explore an unexpected adventure. Every one is a gift of either knowledge, entertainment or pure escapism and goodness knows we all need that from time to time.”

All in all, this was a lovely story and an enjoyable read.

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Short Story Reviews November 2025

3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years by John Scalzi

⭐⭐⭐/5

This short story is the first of The Time Traveler’s Passport, six Amazon Original stories that are free to read with Kindle Unlimited. I found this one quite interesting with a good twist at the end. Scalzi has an intriguing take on how time travel could work and what part it would play in society.

The Toy Car by Rose Tremain

⭐⭐/5

This is a coming-of-age story about a young man from Greece who visits his mother’s home country of England at her insistence so that he can see what else is out there before he follows in his father’s footsteps as the owner of a small taxi company. I didn’t really connect with the characters, so this was a miss for me.