Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

Why I have it: popped up in my Goodreads algorithm because I loved Games & Rituals.

Summary: When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a way to seduce him. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected wife.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Groundskeeping by Lee Cole

Why I have it: because it was in Bookish Beck’s favourites for 2022.

Summary: Owen Callahan moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting family. He takes a job as a groundskeeper at a local college, in exchange for attending a writing course. He meets Alma Hazdic, who seems to have everything Owen lacks, notably success as a writer. They begin a relationship. Alma, who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants, struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with his family.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Why I have it: my best reading buddy insisted I give it a go.

Summary: Harvard junior, Sam Masur unexpectedly reunites with childhood friend, Sadie Green, and they begin working on a video game together. They create a blockbuster. Overnight, the world is theirs but being brilliant, successful, and rich, aren’t qualities that protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

I’m thinking: Yes.