Sarah Hogle’s newest release, Twice Shy, is a sweet, earnest, slow-burn romance, with enough humor to keep it from feeling too saccharine.
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Review // You Had Me at Hola
I can think of very few things that feel as satisfying and wonderful as when you’ve been waiting patiently (or, in my case, impatiently) for a book and you finally read it and it’s everything you hoped it would be. With You Had Me at Hola, it was everything I hoped it would be and then some.
Wrap-Up // What I Read in July
I haven’t actually gotten around to posting my wrap-ups for May and June but that’s mainly because I was in a pretty big reading slump for a couple of months. I barely read anything in both May and June (only 7 books total in 2 months). Thankfully, I was able to snap out of it in July and I ended up reading 21 books! And I found so many new favorites!
Review // They Wish They Were Us
Jessica Goodman’s debut, They Wish They Were Us, is definitely one of the most interesting young adult thrillers I’ve read and tackles privilege and entitlement in a way I haven’t yet seen done before.
Review // Romeantically Challenged
If you enjoy forced proximity and enemies-to-lovers, Romeantically Challenged, the first book in Marina Adair’s new When in Rome series, is a cute summer read.
![TWICE SHY by Sarah Hogle
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½
Okay, I’m going to need Sarah Hogle to just hurry up and write allll of the books because I can’t handle waiting for each one to come out.
If you enjoyed her debut, YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER, you’ll enjoy TWICE SHY. That being said, keep in mind that they’re two different books. Where YDEO was more humorous and quick, TWICE SHY was more emotional and sentimental. (TWICE SHY was still very funny!)
Maybell was painfully romantic, sensitive, and quirky. I generally don’t gravitate towards those types of characters; I’m still working on my post-manic-pixie-dream-girl-era anxiety and I tend to find quirky, daydreamer types to be too much (of what, I don’t know, I just often find them to be too much). Still, I adored Maybell. Unlike so many of the quirky-girl, MPDGs of the (thankfully) bygone 2000s, Maybell was whimsical but she was also earnest and relatable. Ultimately, I think this is one of my favorite aspects of Hogle’s writing—her ability to convey relatable and resonant emotions in the loveliest of ways.
If you’re looking for a sweet, earnest, and slow-burn romance, with enough humor to keep it from feeling too saccharine, you need to read TWICE SHY. Wesley and Maybell were so dear that, on multiple occasions, I wanted to just grab them up in the biggest hug (and I’m generally NOT a hugger, so that’s really saying something).
You can find my full review up on my blog (link in bio)!
[image description: Twice Shy held up in front of a tree with Elliott Bay in the background]](https://thehireader.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)