Saturdays at the Café

Saturdays at the Café is a weekly feature hosted here to talk about and discuss the books I’ve discovered during the past week, added to my shelf and am excited about reading. They may be new/scheduled releases I’ve seen on NetGalley, at the library, or from publishers or they may be older titles my friends have reviewed and shared on Goodreads or blogs.

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This autumn, love is in the air.

Artist Emily Carmichael has always considered Splendid Lake her home, but she never imagined she would ever return. However, when she learns her childhood best friend, Jake Hughes, is struggling to save the beloved Hughes Family Orchard, she doesn’t hesitate to pack her bags and head back to the North Carolina mountains–even if it means battling a corporate giant and resisting the temptation of too many candy apples.

For Jake, the orchard is more than just a business; it’s a living legacy, a bond with his father and a promise to his family. As Jake and Emily work side-by-side to prepare for the orchard’s centennial anniversary, long-held feelings, once hidden beneath years of friendship, begin to surface. For Jake, Emily’s return illuminates what’s been missing in his life, and for Emily, being with Jake stirs long-dormant emotions she’s too scared to name. The air is crisp, the apples are sweet, and the sparks? They’re flying higher than a bonfire.

But with Jake’s ex-girlfriend’s dramatic reappearance and the mounting pressure to keep the orchard from failing, their budding romance is put to the test. Can these two best friends turn a season of chaos into a lifetime of love, or will their romance fall flat before the first frost?

I accepted this for audio review.

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From the bestselling author of I Hope This Finds You Well comes a sharply funny, surprisingly tender novel about a woman stuck in place, her nosy neighbors, and the journey to find where she belongs—with all the heart of a grown-up The Breakfast Club.

Mona thought her living situation was bad… but the real mess is just beginning.

One day is all it takes for Mona’s life to implode. After years of climbing at her marketing firm, she was supposed to be getting promoted and finally moving out of her crumbling apartment building. Instead, she’s jobless, aimless, and still stuck in a space barely big enough for a yoga mat.

Then her eccentric landlady takes a tumble and asks Mona to step in as the building’s reluctant super. The deal is simple: help prep the place for sale, and she can secure the upgrade she’s been chasing. But that’s easier said than done when the neighbors treat “boundaries” as optional. There’s the shouting couple, the mysterious shut-in, a possible panty thief in the laundry room—and Sami, the relentlessly cheerful diner owner who keeps showing up with coffee and unsolicited ideas about community. As Mona gets pulled deeper into the building’s chaos—and closer to the people inside it—she’s forced to confront what, and who, she’s really been trying to outrun. Sometimes, the place you’re desperate to leave is the one that finally shows you who you are.

Wise, heartfelt, and laugh-out-loud funny, Natalie Sue’s sophomore novel is a story about burning out, starting over, and finding your people in the most unexpected places—perfect for fans of The Wedding People and Anxious People.

I accepted this for audio review.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau and The Paris Daughter comes a novel that’s Sliding Doors meets P.S. I Love You. A woman who lost her husband twelve years ago is ready to move on, but her subconscious won’t let her. Is she just dreaming of her late husband—or slipping through to the life she should have had?

Twelve years ago, newlywed Kate Waithman had it all—until the day her husband, Patrick, the love of her life, was killed in a car accident.

More than a decade later, Kate has found happiness as a music therapist and has finally fallen in love again with a kind man named Dan. Life should be perfect, except that on the night she and Dan get engaged, Kate begins having jarringly realistic dreams in which Patrick is still alive—and he and Kate have a daughter. The dreams feel so vivid, so right, that Kate has to wonder: Is Patrick trying to tell her something?

Attempting to navigate between dreams and reality, Kate must uncover her husband’s hidden message. Her quest leads her to a sign language class and into the New York City foster system, where she finds rewards greater than she could have imagined—and learns that even in loss, love never really leaves, but waits to guide us exactly where we need to be.

I accepted this for audio review.

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From New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult, the “compelling” (USA TODAY) novel about a girl who sues her parents for the rights to her own body. Featuring fan favorite Jesse, who appears in the upcoming novel Hollow Bones.

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate—a life and a role that she has never challenged…until now.

Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves..

The publisher offered this for audio review ahead of the upcoming release of Hollow Bones since there is a recurring character.

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A heartbroken romance novelist is forced to address her writer’s block when the villainous cowboy character from her books shows up in the real world, desperately in need of his own Happily Ever After. . . from the bestselling author of GMA book club pick The Love of My Afterlife.

Gertie Bickerstaff writes happily-ever-afters for a living. . . . Or she did, until her own love life fell apart. Now her ex is thriving, her deadline is looming, and she can’t write a single word.

The last thing Gertie needs is more drama—like waking up to find a confused and rugged cowboy on her sofa. And not just any cowboy, but River Oakley, the villain from her unfinished novel. Somehow very real . . . and very shirtless.

River wants to go home. Gertie wants her life back. So they strike a deal: he’ll use his cunning ways to help her win back her ex, she’ll finish the novel, and, surely, he’ll return to whatever world he rode in from.

But as River Oakley proves to be so much more than just the bad guy, Gertie has to choose: the ending she thought she wanted . . . or the plot twist she never saw coming.

Thanks to Kat, a trusted Goodreads friend, for her great review. The audiobook is on my library wishlist.

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For fans of Wild Dark Shore and The Time Traveler’s Wife , a fierce, haunting story of one woman caught between her first love and a mysterious stranger who upends everything—and the two worlds that won’t let her go.

Annie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures alongside her parents and best friend Evan. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is stranded on land and forced to confront how eccentric she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear.

Their connection is instant, electric. Walker’s touch gives Annie visions of the ocean’s hidden world, a life she’s never known but feels inexplicably drawn to. Yet even as she is pulled toward him, Evan—the steadfast love who has always been there—remains on dry land, offering the stability she may have to leave behind. Annie is torn between Evan’s grounding presence and Walker’s magnetic secrets. But then, Walker vanishes—along with the answers she needs about who she really is.

Six years later, Annie has left the sea and buried the past—until Walker’s otherworldly sound returns, pulling her back toward the ocean and the life she abandoned. The truth under the water is more ancient than she ever could have known, and Annie must confront a choice that will test her heart and determine her future.

This is the August selection by Reese’s Book Club. I accepted this for audio review.

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A forbidden love blows open the world of a teenage girl, altering the trajectory of her life – from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Chaperone

“A cancel-your-plans, hold-your-breath, call-your-best-friend kind of book.” —Amy Jo Burns

“Illuminates the beguiling power of first love through characters whose teenage choices precipitate lifelong consequences.” —Sarah McCoy

It’s 1949, early in the Cold War, but St. Petersburg, Florida is warm, lush, and booming with newcomers seeking sunshine and opportunity. For seventeen-year-old Nora, St. Pete feels like paradise, especially after she meets and wins over Leonard, the shy, brilliant son of transplanted New Yorkers. Nora and Leonard are soon spending balmy days and evenings together, and in her adoring, encouraging company, he grows more confident, even as he remains tender and caring. Leonard’s sophisticated mother welcomes Nora into their lives, but his father distrusts her motives.

When his suspicions are seemingly confirmed, Nora is forced to cut contact. In her longing and fear, she takes a chance that changes her life, exiling her from the family she loves and setting off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her into adulthood. It is a mature Nora who tells the story of her turbulent past. Wiser and more worldly, she commits to an honest but compassionate account, and to a future based on trusting, first and foremost, herself.

Sunlight Finds You is, ultimately, a love story set in the past that has much to say about our present. Richly layered and propulsive, it’s a book about extending forgiveness—for ourselves, and for others—and about refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.

This is the August selection by the Read With Jenna book club. The audiobook is on my library wishlist.

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In this warmhearted and witty debut, a mysterious gift spurs a widow to take a cross-country journey to find its sender—and along the way, she rediscovers herself.

Evie Walters has lived most of her seventy-one years according to others’ expectations. But on the day of her husband’s funeral, she receives an anonymous an egret orchid. The same flower a Montana ranch hand once gave her decades ago—Novel Daniels, the boy who thought she could do anything.

So now, she does.

Defying her children’s plans to move her into a retirement home, Evie buys a camper van and leaves life in North Carolina abruptly behind. Accompanied by her devoted rescue dog, she heads west to find her cowboy, befriending an unlikely cast of characters along the way. Free-spirited young vanlifers, roadside waitresses, eccentric billionaires, and kindhearted widowers all show Evie a side of life worth living.

But Evie’s drive toward the future takes her back to the past, to memories of the family ranch and childhood dreams. Now, with a second chance as open as the road before her, there’s no telling who Evie Walters will become.

Thanks to Jodie @ That Happy Reader for featuring this in her Can’t Wait Wednesday post. Scheduled for release in October, it’s an audio review hopeful.

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Celeste Varick has a simple find one of the last wormholes on earth and walk right in. The catch? She has no idea where she’ll land, or that she’s about to fall for the one stranger chasing the same impossible leap.

Everett Ludlow booked the same charter to the same island to find the same wormholes at the same exact moment. A kindhearted skeptic, he doesn’t believe in fate but is desperate enough to leap into the future to save someone he loves.

Forced together in the wilderness, two lost souls start tempting fate, and each other. Neither came here looking for a partner; they came to fix the pasts and futures haunting them. But the longer they brave the wild together, the more the present starts to feel like the one timeline worth fighting for. And as the wormholes draw closer, the scariest leap isn’t through time at it’s taking a chance on happiness together, right here, right now.

A heartfelt, funny, and utterly swoony timeslip romance—a warm, closed-door love story that proves the biggest risk is the one you take with your heart. A standalone return to the world of Maybe This Time.

Performed in immersive Dolby Atmos by a full cast led by Emily Bader (People We Meet on Vacation) and Lewis Pullman (Remarkably Bright Creatures). Perfect for fans of Emily Henry and the time-bending romance of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Thanks to Jodie @ That Happy Reader for her great review. The audiobook was free with my Audible membership.

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A musical prodigy and his mother spend years searching for each other in this beautiful novel of hope, perseverance, and love.

A SWEEPING NOVEL FROM JENNA BUSH HAGER’S NEW VENTURE, THOUSAND VOICES.

Song is a nobody—just a food delivery worker from a village in Northeastern China—but her son, River, is a little wonder.

At the age of three, he toddled to a piano and tapped out his favorite song. At five, he mastered Liszt’s three Liebestraume; at eight, he blazed through the complete set of Chopin’s études. And at every step, through the valleys of loss, illness, and poverty, Song is there to light his way—until finally, at the age of eleven, River is invited to study with a preeminent teacher in Beijing.

But in the chaos of Beijing Railway Station on the busiest day of the year, Song faces every mother’s She loses her grip on River’s little hand and is unable to find him after a desperate, harrowing search.

Over the next days, weeks, and eventually, years, Song and River fight to forge a path back to each other as they carve out new lives that carry them farther apart. An evocative exploration of a mother’s love and a son’s yearning, Little Wonder takes us on an extraordinary journey through a modern Beijing that pulses with the music of humanity and its impossible—and impossibly brave—hopes.

As every musician You start in one key. You wander to other keys, strange and distant places. But in the end, you always come back home.

This is the latest selection by Oprah’s Book Club. Thanks to Jodie @ That Happy Reader for featuring it in her Celebrity Book Club post. The audiobook is on my library wishlist.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours, a rich, panoramic exploration of female friendship, class, new motherhood, and independence

Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other and became immediate best friends. Then, they bonded as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now, they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. When Milly suggests Val move to New York to raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it’s a resounding yes.

Despite their excitement, the pair secretly wonder if their friendship has always worked best as a trio. From that first trip to France, these two motherless daughters were taken under the wing of an older woman named Helene. She showered them with money, love and attention, and showed them the possibilities of a meaningful future. But without Helene, who are Milly and Val?

Milly, a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, is occupied with her desire for independence. Val, a brilliant journalist, is struggling to write her first book and fit into her old friend’s new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they’ve grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to the rift that began all those years ago in France. What they’ve long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood.

Weaving between Brooklyn brownstones and the glittering beaches of southern France, Take What You Can is a dazzling novel exploring what it means to be a mother when you have none, a sister without blood ties, and a woman in pursuit of the life she wants. With her signature sharply-observed prose, Coster illustrates what it means to be—and to stay—someone’s person through all phases of life.

This is the August selection by the GMA Book Club. Thanks again to Jodie for featuring it in her Celebrity Book Club post. The audiobook is on hold at my library.

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The “so clever and fresh” (Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author) author of The Wasp Trap returns with a novel best described as Succession set in the Scottish Highlands where a plot to murder the patriarch’s younger fiancée entangles an innocent outsider in a nest of deadly secrets.

A week in paradise—with the family from hell.

When Patrick is invited by his girlfriend to join her and her family on a luxury holiday in a remote and beautiful part of Scotland, he has no idea that he is about to be plunged into a nightmare of a family, sinister behavior…and a plot to murder the patriarch’s younger fiancée.

Arriving at the house, Patrick meets Holly’s dad, self-made-millionaire Charles, along with her brother Lewis and older sister Miranda. Also on the trip is the widowed Charles’ bride-to-be, Jasmine, who—in her early forties—is around the same age as the three siblings. Lewis and Miranda are horrified by their dad’s impending marriage to this younger woman. Surely, she is just after his money—and is going to steal their inheritance from them. To make things worse, Jasmine is an almost exact doppelganger of their mother before she got sick and died at forty-two.

Patrick finds himself in the middle of this viper’s nest, trying to keep out of the family crosshairs. He starts to suspect that Lewis has dark plans for Jasmine—putting himself in peril as a potential witness who could mess up his scheme. Perhaps more than one person won’t escape this family of snakes…

I kept seeing so many great reviews for this book and it was that by Jamele @ Books With Jams that shoved me over the edge. I accepted it for audio review.

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Cake Series

Thanks to the Audible sale, I was able to get all the remaining books in the Cake series for less than $3 each! 

 

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What books did YOU add to your shelves this week?