BATB Score: 6/10 🍎 🔪 okay but not wow Best to: Freida McFadden’s latest 2024 work “The Teacher” book number 27; wow imagine making 27 unique masterpieces Best as: once you have your hands down best seller best book ever “Never Lie”, it is truly difficult to compete with your own legacy BATB lingering thoughts: people expects more from you all the time and it’s insane and exhausting to always one up oneself - better to please no one Best for: reading Freida McFadden for the

BATB score: 6/10 🖤 Best as: okie I think I’ve cracked Freida McFadden’s writing style! first 150 pages: character build up but basically nothing much meh meh bleh bleh second 50 pages: some mystery that makes you question every character eh who is who last third 50 pages: close to figuring out the truth (you think!) start questioning yourself whether this book was even worth the read final 30 pages: surprise! last 5 page: another surprise!!! epilogue 3 pages: and another sur

BATB score: 3/10 😒 meh. Best as: a string of women across generations within the same family line who have all been a victim or a witness of sexual harassment from other men family members BATB lingering thought: difficult to love the characters and thus difficult to be moved by or feel for the book Best as: doubles as memory + attention-to-detail test as there are ~10 character stories that intertwine ♾️ Best to: if you have not read any of Gregg Olsen book, read “If You Te

BATB score: 2/10 🙈 (I am sorry) this book was a waste of time - watery, no meat, no character love, no climax, nothing really, just redundant words. Best as: a fictional diary of a fictional grandmother going to Ibiza for the first time > scuba diving, old dusty Airbnb, new neighbors, poker at the casino, protecting the environment, some magic water, fortune telling, and the multiverse BATB lingering thought: the 80~ chapter breakdown is ADHD weird Best for: Matt Haig, pleas

BATB score: 5/10 🛶👒 not bad not bad Best as: a long weekend read for the pure fun of reading - isn’t that what reading is supposed to be for? BATB lingering thought: these days, reading has become a bragged hobby, an academic show-off, an I read, you Netflix? thus every book you read has evolved to be part of your intellectual identity and so naturally you steer to the boring scholarly accepted books > now what’s the joy in that? Best for: if you are bored of Netflix, this

BATB score: 3/10 🫥 Best as: okay. I am done with Matt Haig fiction. Best to: good storyline about a alien on a mission on earth; earth’s stranger’s point of view of humans; yet, very wordy and slow narration Best for: the chapter “Advice for a Human” concluding 97 advices for humans was sweet Best quotes: “Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.” “Dark matter is needed to hold galaxies together. Your mind is a galaxy. More dark t

BATB score: 9/10 💛 Best for: you can not read this book if you haven’t read the first book in this sequel - “The Perfect Child” Lucinda Berry Best as: Dr. Lucinda Berry, former psychologist and leading researcher in childhood trauma, is such a great author on mind thrillers 👏 Best to: know that it is only available on Kindle BATB lingering thought: I loved “The Perfect Child” so much that I very much wanted to read this short story sequel “A Welcome Reunion” that I bought a

BATB score: 6/10 *reader discretion advised* BATB loves Lucinda Berry to the point that BATB bought a kindle to read Lucinda Berry unpublished books 🤪 Best as: not one of Lucinda Berry’s best works but not bad Best to: you really have to stick around through 90% of the book, running through each character and family tree, for the climax which is in the last 10% of the book Best for: reading for the sake of enjoyment Best quotes: “Becoming a mom birthed my biggest fear - losi

BATB Score: 3/10 🥀 *reader discretion advised* BATB truly dislike fantasy (romantic?) fiction - ugh cringe; will not be continuing on the route to complete all 5 series - byeeee Best as: Amazon Q3’24 top 10 most read fiction books; so might as well give it a try as a true book enthusiast Best to: the first 300 pages was so slow and boring BATB score 0/10; the last 100 pages, wasn’t too bad but wasn’t that great either Best for: damsel in distress meets beauty and the beast m

BATB Score: 10/10 👏 Freida McFadden, girlfriend, you did it again! Best as: wow what a come back International Thriller Writers Award; book published Oct 2024, ending on a high note 🎵 that perfectly concludes 2024 👏 Best to: know that Freida McFadden is a pen name; the real author is a physician specializing in brain injury; this serial murder mystery with all the details of the human anatomy is truly juicy Best for: if you are in to fiction, thriller, psychopaths, murders

BATB score: 6/10 🥶 Best as: 400+ pages long novel about the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, about never truly knowing your mother’s story, and re-kindling what seems impossible BATB lingering thought: it’s just long~~~~ Best for: you know how your mother is your worst enemy; this novel shares two daughters’ journey to try to unlock mom 🥹 Best to: are you willing to put in the work to re-kindle with mom, knowing that a better relationship can exist? cue psycho

BATB score: 5/10 💔🧳 a Netflix series book adaptation featuring Gong Ji-cheol Yoo BATB lingering thought: I’ve always wondered what criteria were use to select books to make a series/movie adaptation from especially Netflix Original high standards; what the hell, it was a mediocre book with zero thriller nor romance nor revenge Best as: the book’s premise of rental wife / husband is interesting; could it be that Netflix picks just the fundamental concepts of a book and then

BATB score: 6/10 👩‍⚕️ 🩸 Freida McFadden, girlfriend, this book wasn’t it Best to: a re-edit of her book Suicide Med 2014 with 20% plot optimizations and cutdowns; Dead Med 2024 was still 450+ pages long and was sorta kinda almost but not a hit Best for: if you haven’t read anything Frieda McFadden, check out The Housemaid, The Boyfriend, or Never Lie first and foremost Best as: oiii so many characters and intertwined stories, readers must try to keep up BATB lingering thoug

BATB score: 3/10 📝 *reader discretion advised* BATB doesn’t think BATB has enough patience for Japanese authors - may we never meet again Best to: seriously 20+ pages just for the stationary shop owner to greet the first arriving customer hello 🫠 Best as: introduction to a stationary store: the pen, the different pens, the paper, the different paper, the ink, the seal 🖋️🔖💌 Best for: heartfelt short stories they say, heart burn slowest burn short but long stories I say

BATB score: 5/10 😴 I am too young to be part of Oprah’s Book Club; took me a year to finish this slow burn book 🫠 Best as: was curious to know what kind of book makes it into Oprah’s Book Club 2023 Best to: ahh… long novels, slow narrations, a lot of character build up, sisterhood, family dynamics, inter-generations relationships, death of family members Best for: 50+ years old, early retired, slow and mellow lifestyle, read on the backyard patio, hard cover, hot tea, autum

BATB score: 7/10 🧍‍♂️ wahhh.. almost there but didn’t quite hit the spot - so close! Best to: Freida McFadden signature style writing - hook the reader into this suspense, mystery, theories on how the story is going to unveil itself for 250+ pages alongside the confused main character; and then surprise, after surprise, after surprise until the epilogue - all your guesses are wrong wa ga ga! Best as: you are invested, you read this far, you need to know, you will finish this

BATB score: 9/10 👏 oh my god Freida! girlfriend WTF, my stomach churns, shortage of breathe, need to pause, need to slow down, and need to digest, before you reveal the truth Best to: an extremely moving read, welcome to Freida McFadden’s signature writing style, that moves your brain, your heart, your gut Best as: I strongly believe that reading a book is supposed to be like this, it’s supposed to be fun, one that you can’t put the book down, one that you don’t regret readi

BATB Score: 8.5/10 🤯 BATB wanted to know what kind of masterpiece writing does it take to win 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature (also congratulations Han Kang well-deserved 👏 ) Best to: eloquence in narration - word choice, sentence structure, convey character emotions, graphic narration, oddest plot, open-ended confusing ending Best as: imagine being award with the utmost prize of 2024 for something you wrote in 2007, which was only translated in 2015, to someone like me just

BATB score: 7/10 👠 okay but not wow Best for: McFans - Freida McFadden’s fan club to might as well read everything that she has ever written (all 27 books and counting) because why not 🤷‍♀️ Best as: a blueprint on plotting against your coworker; I never liked my coworkers anyways - office bullying is a real deal Beat to: okay, I hate some of my coworkers and do wish them the very worst Best quote: “never give other people the satisfaction of seeing you cry.”

BATB score: 9/10 BATB linger thought: Freida’s real mother was the first person to read the first draft of this book and she said “wow”; sometimes we all need a wow Best to: read an academic book and then read a Frieda McFadden book or else you will just be too smart for life Best as: it’s like I try to guess what’s going to happen and still completely missed it Best for: McFans Best quote: “I’m done living in the fast lane. Done rushing to make deadlines and getting pushed d