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Cocktale Books, 15 Thundermist Road, Bar Harbor, ME (2026)

05/28/2025

I did it. I read a book! Cover to cover! And it was EXACTLY what I needed.

Full disclosure: I’m going through a lot right now. It has made reading HARD. I read a book during a long trip to the UK, but it was a stunted slog of a process (even though the book I read, ‘Letters to Half Moon Street’, was LOVELY.) But this book… this book with brokenhearted Lenny and stoic, patient Miles, was perfection. They both lost important people to death, but they find healing in each other - goal lists, the Staten Island Ferry, new friends, couch surfing, camping, and full human bouts of deep grief. It’s another one of those books where the cheerful cover hides the depth inside. I am grateful for it. (Please note my husbands thumbs up photo bomb. He’s grateful for it too ☺️)

Read if you like..
- some of the most realistic dialogue I’ve read in awhile
- finding life after losing someone you love
- found family and real family
- a wonderful real and funny FMC
- the complicated nature of grief
- delightful inside jokes
- a love letter to best friends, hope, and New York City

03/04/2025

This book was my dream romcom. Two extremely likable leading characters with great banter? Check. Entertaining side characters that enhanced the story instead of detracting? Check. Perfect amount of fairytale magic and hurts-so-good angst? Check. I adored B.K. Borison’s Lovelight series because it was a sleepy little escape, suspended from reality. However, this one feels more urgent, the relationship growing more sharply AND sweetly in a setting we all know well: among the cracks of an everyday life where where it’s easy to complacent in dissatisfaction.

Lucie was a teenage mom that settled into a happy (but romance-free) life of co-parenting with her high school bestie/gay baby daddy. When their 12 year old calls a romance radio show for advice on how to find love for her mom (ala Sleepless in Seattle), they meet its sarcastic - if slightly prickly - host, Aiden, a man who is going through his own set of loveless problems (but mostly by choice.) Lucie and Aiden have instant chemisty, and, when they meet face to face, instant attraction. In less capable hands, I think this could be been a recipe for boredom or superficiality, something cheap and predictable, but sticks the landing. Lucie and Aiden are sweet and s*xy and funny and a little bit sad, and then perfectly wrapped up with a grand gesture bow. So yeah, I loved this one. Right to the top of my absolute favorites list it goes 🥰

Read if you like:
- sleepless in Seattle, obviously
- workplace hijinks
- the sweetest family dynamic
- drunk skeeball
- Baltimore
- she’s an auto mechanic! 😍
- swoon-worthy picnic attempt
- the little inside jokes
- “fvck it” and “I want you to take what you need”

02/22/2025

This was a dreamy little story, full of the most beautiful imagery and fantastical world building. If a haiku could be a novel, ‘Water Moon’ is what it would be.

This is about a magical pawnshop in Tokyo that only appears to the people who need it most: those filled with regret so deep that they are unable to find peace. So they trade it away for a box of tea that will soothe them. But there’s more to this story than what meets the eye (duh) and there is a sinister underbelly to this world of water doorways and night markets built on clouds and sand grains of time. It’s also the story of who Hana - the newly minted pawnbroker- is meant to be, especially when the stranger Keishin knocks on her door one fateful day, and upends EVERYTHING.

Read if you like…
- a book that feels like Hayao Miyazaki animation
- the power of decisions and regret
- a quiet sort of love story
- Japanese philosophy
- truly stunning visuals (paper crane vessels! Songs on sky oceans! Time folding! Enchanted rain!)
- ramen
- gentle (but vicious) fantasy action
- surprise twist at the end

02/14/2025

Ready for another speedy little backlog review? Earlier in January I devoured ‘A Taste of Gold and Iron’ by Alexandra Rowland and why this book isn’t a bigger deal, I have no idea.

From What I Can Remember:
- holy smokes this world is so lovely and original. The two moons, the touch-taste, the feminist power structure (royal or highborn women have full claim to their offspring but the sires do not! Women can share the claim if they choose, or if they are married, or if they love the man, but usually they maintain full claim to strengthen their family name/house/dynasty and the men just have to deal.)

- this is the love story, and honestly the maturing, of the (female!) sultan’s little brother and his body guard. It’s of course not enemies to lovers, however the bodyguard is not a huge fan of the sweet, scared, sensitive prince he has been tasked to care for… until of course he is.

- this book is written BEAUTIFULLY. The story is fascinating, the characters are so wonderful. It’s romantic, full of political intrigue, and funny. I am frothing at the mouth for the sequel, whenever the author chooses to release it 🤞

02/13/2025

Another backlog review! The second book in Thea Guanzon’s Hurricane Wars trilogy!

From What I Can Remember:

- At some point we need to separate these novels from the epic fanfic they evolved from, and I think this book did that. Like, I knew what was going to happen…. But I also didn’t. Thea has created an entirely new world here, new characters that she has allowed to grow in a better way than characters that belong to The Mouse.

- I joked with that I can’t ever remember character names, only vibes, but I do remember Alaric and Talasyn’s names because I LOVE THEM. The banter, the hidden feelings, the stubbornness… it’s so satisfying.

- this world is rich and complicated, but once you sink into the story, you’ll have trouble lifting your head from it at the end. This is one of the first fantasy books where I truly wish I’d waited until they were all published before I read them - but don’t let that discourage you from reading them now! I just say that as a compliment to the full immersion of Thea’s imagination.

- But I’m really just a horndog because my final feedback is just… thank GOD the closet scene remained!!! 🥵🥵🥵

02/12/2025

Hello and welcome again to a new feature on this here Cocktale Books page, what I like to call the “from what I can remember” book review, a backlog recommendation of a book I’ve read in 2025 but have been too busy to write a real post for. 😎 (I’ve got sped kids and a cross country move coming up so my life is bonkersville)

ANYWAY!! Let’s get on with it…

Adrienne Young is an autobuy author for me. I love her descriptions, her melancholy characters, and the gentle hum of magic that fills the spaces of every story. This one wasn’t my favorite, but it was still everything I expected and needed it to be which was a nice fix of her prose.

from what I can remember:

- a woman returns home to the misty northwest after her twin brother is tragically killed in an accident. There’s a long history in this town, and she has secrets but she doesn’t know all of his.

- the accident seems straightforward, except for the fact that she can still feel her brother’s presence like she could when he was alive… that invisible string between twins, but more magical. And she keeps catching sight of her long dead brother, at once both creepy and urgent.

- there’s also a lover she left behind, a tragedy in its own right until the search for the truth brings them closer together.

- it’s a moody, foreboding little book. Moderately short, and very quiet. A little twisty ending, a simple conclusion. Good for “hua hua hua” season, or a candlelit snowy evening.

02/11/2025

I haven’t posted in a long, long time even though I’ve been reading! So for the next couple of days I’m going to post some mini reviews - literally whatever vibes I can remember from books I’ve read so far this year that I liked - as book reviews. First up, ‘Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake’ which had been sitting on my bookshelf for months and months and was a total sleeper hit for me.

From what I can remember:

- Lizzie is a neurodivergent mess in… the best way! Tenacious and funny and achingly tender. She accidentally gets knocked up by a one night stand who turns out is the most wonderful swoony leading man.

- these two are FUNNY. And super s*xy. And a little emo. But they are in each others corner from the get go, in a way I didn’t expect would move me as much as it did.

- the familial trauma that Lizzie is moving through is especially poignant as she negotiates this accidental pregnancy and what kind of mother she wants to be. Insert some daughters become mothers lyrics here - you know the ones.

- I loved this book. It’s the second of a series and I cannot even tell you what happened in the first one. I think it was about dentists? But I’ll remember this one.

01/25/2025

this dedication ❤️ I could write a dissertation on the world of fanfiction, and why it’s the most empowering, radical, creative, nourishing, special little corner of the internet. All the ships, all the fandoms. The good and the bad. The dead doves and the fluffs. From Livejournal to AO3. Pursuit of joy, indeed.

(The book is ‘A Taste of Gold and Iron’ by - just started it!!)

01/12/2025

This one soared to my absolute favorites list. In the world of recent NYT bestsellers, this is like ‘All Fours’s kinder, more uplifting cousin. It’s still about being a mid-age woman. It’s still about the dissolution of a marriage. It’s still about questions of who we (speaking as a middle aged woman here) want to be for the rest of our lives, what we want to do, and how honest we should require ourselves to be. But this one sings on a note of joyful hope that, I’m sorry Miranda July, you’re just too quirky to have. Author Alison Espach gives us Phoebe, an emo academic who is ready to end it all after the demise of her marriage. There’s more to it than that, of course, but when she arrives at the idyllic hotel on the Rhode Island shore where she intends to do the deed, she finds the place filled to the brim with wedding guests. First she meets the bride, then her family, then the bridesmaids and the groom and the grooms daughter and before she knows it, she’s embedded in their lives and drama. It’s convoluted and hilarious and bittersweet and by the end, you will miss this hotel and these wedding people and wish you could make new, wonderful choices like Phoebe does.

Read if you like…
- Any large family dinner scene where everyone is talking over each other and arguing slash gossiping slash philosophizing
- Rhode Island
- Vacation hijinks
- Saying what you mean
- Outrageous moments of absurdity
- A lovely tension
- Crossed wires and fixing could’ve would’ves
- Please note: this book heavily discusses su***de ideation and miscarriage. They are major plot points.
- A sweet little ending

12/31/2024

My top 10 Romances of 2024 💕

12/30/2024

Top 10 Fantasy/Romantasy/Magical Realism books of 2024 😆

12/17/2024

Ooo this was a weird one. It’s been awhile since I’ve read one that’s so cerebral, where the characters are so wrapped up in their own egos that you’re not entirely sure if you even like them. It was kind of refreshing, actually, because I feel like it’s become common (especially in romantic literature) to write these idyllic, lovable people, so that when you read characters that…are decidedly NOT… it feels like a shock. But people, at their core, aren’t entirely likable. And neither are Regan or Aldo. I loved it.

Aldo is a (clearly autistic) singularly focused theoretical mathematician loner, and Regan is the rebellious artist, a disappointing daughter of a wealthy family, with a mood disorder and a record. Their meet cute happens in an art museum where she’s volunteering and he’s doing equations because he likes the “ambiance.” Yes, it goes exactly how you expect.

Olivie Blake’s writing is the surprise though. I didn’t expect it to be so inventive. This is not a simple novel. The style wheedles and waves, careening between sarcasm and weird punctuation and points of views like the reader is embedded in Aldo or Regan’s brains themselves. As for the end? It’s “happily” if we all understand “happy” as the same feeling, it’s “ever” because time is a circle, and it’s “after” because what comes later has come before - we are our future selves. Welcome to the ether.

Read if you like…
- a little bit eternal sunshine, a little bit blue valentine
- Philosophy as math
- Inner ramblings of a trust fund princess
- Addiction and coping
- Content warning: going off meds
- Solid prose as conversation
- s*x as a weapon and as healing
- Chicago

Cocktale Books

05/28/2025

03/04/2025

02/22/2025

02/14/2025

02/13/2025

02/12/2025

02/11/2025

01/25/2025

01/12/2025

12/31/2024

12/30/2024

12/17/2024

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