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The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

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The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

Throughout her life Sybil Van Antwerp has used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings around half past ten Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has. A mother, grandmother, wife, divorcée, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

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eileentnguyen wrote a review...

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eileentnguyen

Aug 25, 2026

The Rachel Incident

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 3.5Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.0

This was such an ode to your 20s. I really enjoyed this read about how messy your 20s are and how it just feels like everything is an absolute. However when you look back and you realize not everything was the end of the world. Just a bittersweet coming of age story that I was able to relate to.

Bits and pieces of the story dragged a bit but I didn’t mind because I loved the meaning of the story overall.

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eileentnguyen completed their yearly reading goal of 80 books!

1d

eileentnguyen's 2026 Reading Challenge

80 of 80 read

A kingdom of Sand and Ice (kingdom of gods, #2)

A kingdom of shadow and ash (kingdom of gods, #1)

35

13

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1d

The Rachel Incident

Caroline O'Donoghue

Where would I start, and how would it even make sense? How could you understand the year in Shandon Street unless you were there, with us, living it? Rachel Murray is twenty-one years old, platonically infatuated with her housemate James, and less-than-platonically infatuated with her enigmatic, married English professor Dr Byrne. Over the course of a year, as Rachel and James's lives become more and more deeply entwined with those of Dr Byrne and his perfect wife Deenie, tensions rise, and a shocking secret threatens everything they hold dear. The Rachel Incident is a sharp, poignant, and beautifully told story of losing and finding yourself and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

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eileentnguyen started reading...

2d

The Rachel Incident

Caroline O'Donoghue

Where would I start, and how would it even make sense? How could you understand the year in Shandon Street unless you were there, with us, living it? Rachel Murray is twenty-one years old, platonically infatuated with her housemate James, and less-than-platonically infatuated with her enigmatic, married English professor Dr Byrne. Over the course of a year, as Rachel and James's lives become more and more deeply entwined with those of Dr Byrne and his perfect wife Deenie, tensions rise, and a shocking secret threatens everything they hold dear. The Rachel Incident is a sharp, poignant, and beautifully told story of losing and finding yourself and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

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eileentnguyen is interested in reading...

2d

Ripe

Sarah Rose Etter

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels. When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

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eileentnguyen is interested in reading...

2d

Destination Funeral: A Novel

Paige Harbison

Four friends. One funeral. An endless Saturday. When Babe—the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers—dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm-swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will. Didion expects nothing more than an awkward visit with her sister and, maybe, a sundrenched funeral attended by beer-soaked locals. Instead, she arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again—along with the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and blew them apart. What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels. Because the next morning, it’s Saturday again. And again. And again. Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them ten years ago. Something on the island isn’t ready to let them go—and if they can’t find a way to fix things, it may never let them leave.

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eileentnguyen is interested in reading...

2d

The Rachel Incident

Caroline O'Donoghue

Where would I start, and how would it even make sense? How could you understand the year in Shandon Street unless you were there, with us, living it? Rachel Murray is twenty-one years old, platonically infatuated with her housemate James, and less-than-platonically infatuated with her enigmatic, married English professor Dr Byrne. Over the course of a year, as Rachel and James's lives become more and more deeply entwined with those of Dr Byrne and his perfect wife Deenie, tensions rise, and a shocking secret threatens everything they hold dear. The Rachel Incident is a sharp, poignant, and beautifully told story of losing and finding yourself and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

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eileentnguyen is interested in reading...

2d

Bitter Sweet

Hattie Williams

When a young book publicist finds herself in an all-consuming workplace affair with her literary idol, she learns that the things you love most can sometimes be the very things that tear you apart in this intoxicating and moving debut novel.Charlie hasn’t always had high hopes for herself. But now at twenty-three, she’s landed her dream job as an assistant at a historic London publishing house, moved into a stunning townhome with two of the most glamorous, kind and generous people she’s ever met, and her favorite author, the award-winning, generation-defining, charming Richard Aveling, is about to publish his magnum opus—and Charlie is going to be working with him.She couldn’t be more excited to help publish the man whose writing has inspired her since she was a teenager. When Charlie bumps into Richard while having a smoke in the rain, the attraction is immediate, and the moment feels nothing short of cinematic.So when the Richard Aveling begins to take her advice over that of more senior staff, Charlie finds herself drawn to him despite their thirty-year age gap, his marriage, and the disparity in their power at the publishing house. Once Richard makes it clear that he’s drawn to her as well, they begin an affair that Charlie never saw coming; it is a relationship founded in control and silence.Too soon, she can’t imagine her life without Richard, and too late, she understands that losing him will unravel more than just their relationship…it might also unravel her.Tender and poignant, Bitter Sweet is an intimate exploration of power, of vulnerability, of what it means to love another person, and of what it means to love yourself.

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eileentnguyen wrote a review...

3d

eileentnguyen

Aug 23, 2026

Heart the Lover

3.0

Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 3.0Characters: 2.5Plot: 3.0

Ouch, my heart hurts but not for Yash but for Jack.

Just goes to show you how your first love can linger on but doesn’t always necessarily mean your first love is the best one for you.

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3d

Heart the Lover

Lily King

'You knew I'd write a book about you someday' Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

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eileentnguyen made progress on...

3d

Heart the Lover

Lily King

63%

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eileentnguyen started reading...

4d

Heart the Lover

Lily King

'You knew I'd write a book about you someday' Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

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eileentnguyen wrote a review...

4d

eileentnguyen

Aug 22, 2026

Starside

1.0

Enjoyment: 0.5Quality: 0.5Characters: 0.5Plot: 0.5

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IM FREE FROM THE SHACKLES OF THIS HORRIBLE BOOK

I will preface and say I only read this for book club otherwise I never would’ve picked it up or DNF it very early on.

This has the most generic plot line of any romantasy book but the writing is sooo choppy and ellipses are added in consistently for dramatic moments. PSA, just adding some smut doesn’t automatically make a book ‘adult’ and even then the smut was soo cringy to read, that hurt me. It felt like she added the word ‘fuck’ to make it more adult. Fuck was said 224 times out of a 500 page books. That’s almost every other page.

The only positive thing I can say is this is true enemies? Ryker legit could care less for Aris but then the romance?? It was a complete 180 and suddenly they’re so into each other after only speaking two sentences to each other at a time.

The plot was a repetitive circle of Aris getting in a near death situation and then somehow surviving due to someone else and then boom two chapters later it happens again. But then somehow believes she’s made it this far and can complete the quest. Girl you’ve only made it this far because of other people.

If I have to hear one more time how heavy her sword is?? This book is over the course of like 20something days and you’re telling me she didn’t build any ounce of upper body strength??

I stg she has to be a cat because how is she close to dying every other chapter. If one of those arrows didn’t miss, this book could’ve been shorter LOL

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eileentnguyen finished a book

4d

Starside

Alex Aster

From Alex Aster, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Lightlark series, comes her first adult romantasy. Enter the world of Starside, where swords wield magic and power is not inherited...but claimed. Hundreds of years ago, a brutal war split a land in two. Starside is the realm of magic and immortals—the descendants of the gods, living in a power-rich paradise. Stormside is where mortals fight for scraps of that magic. Every fifty years, the gates between them open, and fifty challengers are allowed to journey across Starside on a deadly quest to access a pool of magic that can heal, grant wealth, or extend life. Everyone has their reasons for entering, but Aris has only vengeance. As a child, a goddess set fire to her village, killing her family. Aris isn’t after the gods’ magic—she’s going to kill them. First, she must survive the Culling, the king’s deadly competition to choose his fifty challengers. An orphaned blacksmith’s apprentice, Aris doesn’t have the superior weapons of the heirs from the Great Houses. But the greatest swords—ones that contain power—are not inherited or bought, they are claimed, by both sides. And when Aris claims a great sword, it makes her not just a real competitor—but a target. Getting past the gates is only the beginning. Starside is deadlier than it seems. If the ancient creatures, magic-wielding beasts, and bloodthirsty immortals weren’t dangerous enough, a new peril has even immortals fearing what rises from the ground at night. With a blade most would kill to claim, Aris can’t trust anyone. Especially not Harlan Raker, the merciless and mysterious king’s guard who betrayed her years ago—and who may now be the key to her survival. But Aris is hiding a secret tied to her family’s death. And when it’s revealed, not even the gods will be able to stop what’s coming…

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