{Thank you to @randomhouse & #ballantinebooks for my gifted copy to read, review & share about with all of you!}
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
It’s been a long time since I was as captivated by a story as I was with this one! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My favorite thing about Jodi Picoult’s writing is her ability to throw a curveball halfway through that I absolutely did not see coming. ↪️
Her 2021 title, Wish You Were Here, left me with my jaw dropped mid-read and this one did the same. Mad Honey by Picoult and co-author Jennifer Finney Boylan is another book I won’t soon forget and will be an excellent book club choice for fall 2022. (It has since been chosen at the @GMAbookclub October pick!! 📚)
In line with her writing, this is one that could easily be spoiled in a review, and must be read to be fully appreciated. I am once again in awe of the level of research, and true education, that Picoult has brought to her writing. This is a timely and necessary story that while intense, has so much to teach us. 👏
Mad Honey arrived on bookstore shelves this week, and I highly recommend adding this title to your fall #TBRList! Have you pick up your copy yet?? You can order your copy HERE if you haven’t already.
I discussed this title, and other brand new book releases, over on my instagram feed @genthebookworm yesterday, and I would love for you to join join on the conversation!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission that helps support this blog at no cost to you. Thank you!
{Thank you to the tagged publisher for my gifted review copies}
May is off to a great start, at least in the book world! 📚📚📚
This morning, I am sharing this week’s new book releases releases that are on my reading radar! 📝
✨Already Read & Loved:
Our Little Worldby Karen Winn
Book Loversby Emily Henry
✨Really (surprisingly!) Enjoyed:
When Women Were Dragonsby Kelly Barnhill
✨Reading Now:
The Change by Kirsten Miller (my #BookOfTheMonth add-on!)
Seen and Unseen by Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster
✨Coming Up Next:
Breathless by Amy McCulloch (#BOTM choice!)
What We Do in The Dark by Michelle Hart
🔆 Are you excited to read any of these new book release titles? Did we pick any of the same @bookofthemonth May selections?? I would love to hear! 💭
I am discussing this week’s new books over on my @genthebookworm account and I would love to chat with you there!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission that helps support this blog at no cost to you. Thank you!
Have Your Reading Choices Shifted At All During The Last Two Years?
While some things have stayed the same, I have found I am less likely to pick up a historical fiction book and much more excited about contemporary romance reads! This was a big shift for me and I am really enjoying it!
You see, I live with both feet firmly planted in reality, and I think I was a little “judgey” about the contemporary romance genre as a whole. But really, what I didn’t realize was that you just have to find your type!
This Is What I Like…
I love when women support other women, when they are just as much about finding themselves as a partner, and when real life issues intersect within the more “Happily Ever After” plot-line. And there are so many of those titles!!
And one of the ones I really enjoyed is In A New York Minuteby the absolutely delightful Forever 35 podcast host and author @KateSpencer and it publishes TODAY! And how adorable is this amazing book mail?! {thank you @readforeverpub!!}
{You can use my affiliate link to order your copy HERE.}
My Thoughts…
I had the pleasure of both reading this and listening to it on #audiobook and it was an absolutely perfect rom-com! I loved the main characters, Franny and Hayes, who after an awkward meeting on the subway go viral on the internet together. This book was perfectly predictable, adorable, and entertaining and I loved the focus on friendship as well.
I appreciated that the characters felt real and authentic and the sub stories and smaller characters were equally cute and relatable, and added some laughs throughout. This isn’t a super steamy read but this meet-cute storyline was just delightful and endearing.
Author Kate Spencer has such an engaging writing style that kept me turning the pages until the very end. For anyone looking for a perfect weekend read, this is a great and super charming choice!
I discussed this book and topic more over on my @genthebookworm Instagram feed and I would love it if you joined in on the conversation!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission that helps support this blog at no cost to you. Thank you!
{thank you to @stmartinspress, @minotaurbooks, @berkleypub & @putnambooks for my gifted review copies}
Last / Now / Next
I am currently in a great reading streak and I am hoping it continues!
I finished Like A House On Fire by author Lauren McBrayer on my kindle this past weekend. It’s one of those books that really examines the gray areas of life and I can’t stop thinking about it. The characters are layered and nuanced and I can’t wait to share more as we get a bit closer to its publication date. {4.26.22}
On audio, I am currently juggling two books, one fiction and one non fiction read and they are both excellent!! I am loving Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead by Elle Cosimano and keep seeing so many 5-star reviews for it all over #bookstagram, so I know I am not alone! {Publishing 2.1.22}
I started Losing Our Minds by Dr. Lucy Foulkes and it is just fascinating, nuanced and is giving me so much to unpack. {Publishing 1.25.22}
Finally, Good Rich Peopleby Eliza Jane Brazier is up next for my kindle reading and I can’t wait! I love a good dark domestic thriller with main characters behaving badly, so this seems like my cup of tea! {Publishing 1.25.22}
So tell me, what are your Last / Now / Next book choices? I would love to hear over on @genthebookworm where I am discussing this more!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission that helps support this blog at no cost to you. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own, and I only feature things I truly love here.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and “the Marie Kondo of relationships” comes an inspirational guide for setting new personal goals, rediscovering your interests, cultivating creativity, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space.
With her acclaimed New York Times bestseller (and Reese’s Book Club pick) Fair Play, Eve Rodsky began a national conversation about greater equality on the home front. But she soon realized that even when the domestic workload becomes more balanced, people still report something missing in their lives—that is, unless they create and prioritize time for activities that not only fill their calendars but also unleash their creativity. Rodsky calls this vital time Unicorn Space—the active and open pursuit of creative self-expression in any form that makes you uniquely YOU. To help readers embrace all the unlikely, surprising, and delightful places where their own Unicorn Space may be found, she speaks with trail blazers, thought leaders, academics, and countless real people who have discovered theirs everywhere—from activism to artistic endeavors to second careers. Rodsky reveals what researchers already know: Creativity is not optional. It’s essential. Though most of us do need to remind ourselves how (and where) to find it. With her trademark mix of research based, how-to advice and big-picture inspirational thinking, Rodsky shows you a clear path to reclaim your permission to have fun, manifest your own Unicorn Space in an already too-busy life, and unleash your special gifts and undiscovered talents into the world.
As a big personal development reader, I have learned so much about boundaries during the last few years, including that idea that to say yes to the things we really want, it also requires saying NO to things as well.
My reading choices tend to be quite seasonal and this time of year, I am drawn towards books that have us looking at ourselves a bit more introspectively.
And it just so happens that one of my very favorite people, @everodsky, published a book the very last week of the 2021, one in which I have been also anticipating since it’s conception…Find Your Unicorn Space.
My love for her 2019 book Fair Play runs deep, and it has made a huge difference in the day to day lives within our family unit. One of the things I love the most about Eve is that she is so real but also no nonsense. Your family and friends can’t read your mind, and ultimately, making something happen requires ongoing prioritization and communication and yes, boundaries!
If you have seen someone off chasing their dreams (or just trying something new!),it’s most likely happening because they put a plan into place to make it happen. We can do anything, but not everything, right? And this is where the unicorn space comes in.
“This personal time–what Rodsky calls Unicorn Space, what makes us interesting–isn’t just a luxury, she explains….Find Your Unicorn Space teaches anyone how to create time in their already-busy life to tap into their unique expression of creativity, and find purpose that will allow them to live a happier, more fulfilled life.”
I could go on and on about Eve Rodsky’s life changing work but instead, I think you should just check out this book and see how it can inspire you as well!
{I also have a giveaway going on over at @genthebookworm where you can enter to win one of THREE copies of Finding Your Unicorn Space HERE}
Disclosure: Some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, I receive a small commission that helps support this blog at no cost to you. Thank you!
I don’t think there has been a publication day I have anticipated more than today in a very long time! 2021 has already been an amazing book year, and February 2nd is an incredibly exciting day for readers. Whether you are looking for fiction or non-fiction, a faster-paced engrossing read, or a layered character-driven novel, a book rich with history, or a memoir, there really is a book for everyone today!
I have been waiting for this day for months and it is finally here! Tuesdays are new book release days and this particular Tuesday has such a great and eclectic mix of titles that there really is something for every reader. <3
It’s October 1st which means we are starting a great month of new book releases! If I were a book, I would like to be published in October because not only is it the best month ever but it is my very favorite time of the year to read! There are so many awesome books coming out during the next few weeks and before the holidays when new book releases tend to slow down a bit until the new year.
Now that we are back into regular routines because of the school year, I am trying to get back into some of my weekly blog series too. I always love sharing new book publications and so here are some I am excited about today!
Fair Play by Eve Rodsky was released today and Reese’s Book Club just announced it is their October 2019 book selection! I love that it is going to get so much attention now because this topic is so important.
While we have learned a lot as the years have gone by, figuring out the daily logistics of life with work, marriage, kids and household tasks is a constant juggling act. Fair Play both takes on and tackles the topics of the mental load, second shift, emotional labor and invisible work that in the 21st century still cause a great imbalance in many families ‘ home lives.
Fair Play was a 5-star book for me and was such an awesome conversation starter in our own marriage. The book is relatable while also having a proactive approach to managing household/family/life tasks while also balancing your own goals and desires.
Can you believe I just read The Tattooist of Auschwitz two months ago?! It was on my TBR list for a while but when an ARC of Cilka’s Journey arrived in my mailbox I knew I needed to prioritize it ASAP.
Cilka was one of the characters in The Tattooist of Auschwitz and I was interested to learn more about her. Cilka’s Journey is a powerful story that was inspired by the true to life experiences of Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Cilka who ends up in a Siberian work camp after being charged as a collaborator for “sleeping with the enemy”. This novel is not an easy read as it confronts the issue of rape during wartime.
While this story does focus on the atrocities that happened to Cilka(and many others), it also shares the heroic efforts she was a part of. Cilka has a compassion for others that guides her through the toughest of times and this part of the story was both heartbreaking and utterly compelling. How Cilka chose to use the gifts she was given to help others was so powerful and a reminder of the beacon of light in humanity even in the most horrific of times.
Your Turn by Dr. Tyra Manning
“Writing my stories helps me remember the good times and the worst of times, and offers me the opportunity to understand them. Writing and celebrating my stories helps me heal. Hindsight gives me many gifts: clarity, acceptance, forgiveness, and new perspectives on past experiences. I am not unique in having lovely and sometimes sad stories in my repertoire. Sharing our life stories teaches us that we have more commonalities than differences. It brings us closer.”
-Dr. Tyra Manning
I love anything that helps remind us that we are more alike than different. I have always been a big fan of sharing our stories because it can help us connect and also help us feel less alone.
Your Turn is a guide and collection of personal essays that demonstrates how to share more effectively and find meaning in the ups and downs of our lives. Manning shares her own personal stories while also providing writing prompts to encourage you to start sharing too.
Thank you to Book Sparks for sharing an advanced copy with me.
While we are still in summer mode over here, you can tell fall is around the corner. There is a chill in the air in the mornings and the start of school for the kids is under two weeks away.
I always get excited to look ahead to a new season, especially when it comes to reading. This summer has had some spectacular book releases including a book I think might be my favorite EVER!
2019 has been a great reading so far, considering how many favorites I had just during the first half of it! I am excited to see what ends up being on my top reads at the end of December if any of these fall reads make their way to the list.
“For fans of Before We Were Yours and Where the Crawdads Sing, a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the New York Times bestselling author of Ordinary Grace.
1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.”
“An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson’s extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony– a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.”
“From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners and the “delectable, moving” (Entertainment Weekly) My Favorite Half-Night Stand comes a modern love story about what happens when your first love reenters your life when you least expect it…
Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak.
During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.
Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice.
With Christina Lauren’s signature “beautifully written and remarkably compelling” (Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author) prose and perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner, Twice in a Blue Moon is an unforgettable and moving novel of young love and second chances.”
“From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.
Be careful who you let in.
Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.
She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.
Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.”
“Secret lives and new loves emerge in the bright Caribbean sunlight, in the follow-up to national bestseller Winter in Paradise…
A year ago, Irene Steele had the shock of her life: her loving husband, father to their grown sons and successful businessman, was killed in a plane crash. But that wasn’t Irene’s only shattering news: he’d also been leading a double life on the island of St. John, where another woman loved him, too.
Now Irene and her sons are back on St. John, determined to learn the truth about the mysterious life -and death – of a man they thought they knew. Along the way, they’re about to learn some surprising truths about their own lives and their futures.
Lush with the tropical details, romance, and drama that made Winter in Paradise a national bestseller, What Happens in Paradise is another immensely satisfying page-turner from one of American’s most beloved and engaging storytellers.”
“A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.
On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me. Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms.
Wild Game is a brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us.”
“Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong.
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn’t true?
Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.”
“Hannah Beckerman pens a life-affirming novel that tells the story of a family divided and the secret that can possibly unite them—a must for fans of This Is Us.
“I loved it (even though it made me cry).”—Jojo Moyes
A secret between two sisters.
A lifetime of lies unraveling.
Can one broken family find their way back to each other?
Audrey’s dream as a mother had been for her daughters, Jess and Lily, to be as close as only sisters can be. But now, as adults, they no longer speak to each other, and Audrey’s two teenage granddaughters have never met. Audrey just can’t help feeling like she’s been dealt more than her fair share as she’s watched her family come undone over the years, and she has no idea how to fix her family as she wonders if they will ever be whole again.
If only Audrey had known three decades ago that a secret could have the power to split her family in two, and yet, also keep them linked. And when hostilities threaten to spiral out of control, a devastating choice that was made so many years ago is about to be revealed, testing this family once and for all.
Once the truth is revealed, will it be enough to put her family back together again or break them apart forever?”
“New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions of readers.
Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine.
Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire moments of transcendent grace.”
“The characters in Happy Like This are smart girls and professional women—social scientists, linguists, speech therapists, plant physiologists, dancers—who search for happiness in roles and relationships that are often unscripted or unconventional.
In the midst of their ambivalence about marriage, monogamy, and motherhood and their struggles to accept and love their bodies, they look to other women for solidarity, stability, and validation. Sometimes they find it; sometimes they don’t.
Spanning a wide range of distinct perspectives, voices, styles, and settings, the ten shimmering stories in Happy Like This offer deeply felt, often humorous meditations on the complexity of choice and the ambiguity of happiness.”
“A revolutionary, real-world solution to the problem of unpaid, invisible work that women have shouldered for too long–from a woman tapped by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine as the expert on this topic for a new generation of women.
It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the “shefault” parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family — and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was… underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn’t enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it.
The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up domestic responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a figurative card game you play with your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what’s important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner.
“Winning” this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space — as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let’s deal you in.”
Non-Fiction, Women in History, Adoption & True Crime
Book Summary:
“The incredible, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach
From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.
The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.
Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. In Before and After, Wingate and Christie tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with Wingate and Christie to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children’s Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.”
I hope this list gives you some new reading inspiration. I would also love to hear what is on your fall reading list!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase, it helps cover some of the costs of this blog at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.
The new books keep on coming and I don’t know about you, but my summer reading stack is getting pretty big! I have way more books than I will ever be able to read during the next few weeks but that is just how I like it…My reading tastes very much depend on my mood so I always love having a lot of choices.
Maybe it is because I am keeping better track of it, but 2019 has had so many amazing book publication already so there have been a lot of wonderful options. I recently recapped some of my favorite books of 2019 (so far!) and you can check that out HERE if you missed it.
Pleasure Reading…
This time of the year I am drawn to books that are engrossing and easy to get drawn into. I have been reading a lot of books that are a bit lighter but have enough depth to not be total fluff. When I think of authors that totally succeed at this kind of writing, Kristan Higgins comes to mind!
I love her books and her writing is engaging and thought-provoking while also being fun and enjoyable to read. These kinds of books work well for “escape reading” which is something I tend to look for during this more hectic time of the year. I read her newest release a few months ago and I am excited to share that it is available today!
Life and Other Inconveniences involves four generations of a family, the ties that bind and the complexities of past choices and how they affect relationships today. Higgin’s offers multidimensional characters, diverse relationships and the ability to weave real-life issues into her plotlines.
While this is a fun and engaging read, Higgins is also able to provide a level of depth that makes her writing thought-provoking and satisfying. Higgin’s ability to share these stories from multiple different perspectives allows you as the reader to see where these characters are coming from, even if you don’t always agree with their choices.
In order to move forward, we must often look back at the choices and decisions we have made and Higgins excels at presenting this story in such a powerful and multilayered way. The ending of this book is bittersweet and real, which I find much more satisfying than a “happily ever after” scenario.
Keeping Lucy was my first book my T. Greenwood and I was immediately drawn into this story and the characters. Greenwood’s storytelling was wonderful and her attention to detail made me easily picture the scenes and the amazingly well-developed characters that were based in the 1960s and early 1970s. I have been wanting to read a book that just captivated me and this one did from the start.
I felt emotionally connected to the characters and was rooting for them all in different ways. Within the very powerful main storyline (that was based on real events) were smaller ones that also were very timely and powerful in their own right. Although it doesn’t seem that long ago, the last 1960s were shockingly different in many ways and I was impressed at how Greenwood could bring me there with such vividness in her writing.
This book was filled with themes of fear, persistence, friendship, hope and the most wonderful thing of all, the power that we can all learn and change. The ending of the book all came together for me in a very satisfying way and I was sad it was over which is a sign of a book you really loved.
The Lemonade Life was the perfect dose of inspiration while also being very relatable. Friedman shares advice and examples of how to live life on your own terms by being more aware of the control we have over our thoughts and emotions. This is what he calls “The Lemonade Life”.
Taking control helps give you the ability to have more positive changes in your own life. You will feel like you are in the driver’s seat instead of everyone and everything around you. While we can’t always control what happens to us, we can control how we respond and move forward.
I got so much out of this book and I know it is one I will refer back to again and again. While not every section was totally applicable to my own life, there was something I was able to get out of each of them. I loved the idea that The Lemonade Life isn’t a destination but a way of life. When we know ourselves, use the tools we have and work towards our own personal goals, we have the ability to live full and happy lives right where we are and as we grow.
You can read my full review of The Lemonade Life HERE.
Because You’re Mine has all the elements of a great domestic thriller, highly detailed characters, mystery, and suspense. I think what I have been missing lately with thrillers is the ability to really get to know the characters and what happened in their pasts to play into their current situations and Frey did an amazing job with this aspect. I also loved getting to know Lee’s son Mason. His character was great and I loved what a big role he had in this book.
This book had a perfect balance of thinking I had it all figured it out and also keeping me on the edge of my seat. Her writing is edgy and this book is full of secrets. I thought I knew what was happening and I was in for a big surprise at the end.
You can read my full review of Becuase You’re Mine HERE.