Kiss, Marry or Kill: 35
THREE five-star books! Plus a new trend that IS LITERALLY EXERCISE and I will die on this hill, and the thing that may be worse than voice mail... maybe? Sorry?
This is my weekly series for subscribers only, where I’ll share things that caught my eye this week in a fun and flirty way (kiss), a sustainable way (marry), or a not-so-good way (kill). And yes, this trendy game is technically “f***, marry, or kill” but we run a family-friendly-ish show around here.
Kiss (things I like right now)
Meet Me on the Bridge, Sarah J. Harris
I LOVE time travel books, but sometimes I’m like “read one, read ‘em all.” Man (or woman) goes back (or forward) in time, falls in love, has to return to their own era—will the lovers reconnect? But this one felt special, because it was part time travel love story, part “choose your own adventure.”
Remember those books, from when you were a kid? I’m old, so maybe you don’t. You’d read a short chapter, and at the end, be faced with a choice—”to open the door, turn to page 12; to walk past the door, turn to page 28.” It gave you a tremendous number of stories to live out, and every decision led you somewhere new. This book embodied the best parts of that, through a rich, deep, and often dark storyline.
Meet Me on the Bridge follows Julia from childhood to her mid-20’s, when her struggle with narcolepsy becomes even more pronounced. (Ironically, I unwittingly picked up two books in a row where narcolepsy played a role—what is the universe telling me?) Then, she’s thrown a real curve ball: She can go back in time. Kind of. Not anywhere. Just one place that for some soon-to-be-known reason, really seems to matter.
From here, the various storylines diverge, mix, match, and come back together in truly surprising ways, and though I couldn’t always follow along perfectly (time travel is tricky!), there were some unexpected and delightful twists here too. In the end, all was explained and I closed the book happy, thinking, “That really was a different kind of time travel story.”
