I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy. I'm on Goodreads here and I'm there more than I should be. I'm on Instagram here and also there more than I should be. Friend/follow me!
My only other stand along book post in the past month was this one:
I guess I've been reading too much to blog about it! But here we go now!
I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpot
I really enjoyed this essay collection, largely about motherhood and finding yourself in the midst of also mothering/wife-ing/working/keeping a house/etc. There were some parts I could really relate to and some parts I could less relate to but overall I really appreciated reading her thoughts and would read anything else she writes. 3.5 Stars
Let Me Feed You: Everyday Recipes Offering the Comfort of Home by Rosie Daykin
This is a cookbook where I marked too many of the pages as things I was interested in making but then I couldn't renew it and so it got returned before I had a chance to make any of them. But there were a lot I was intrigued by. A lot of dishes I also wasn't interested in because I am a fairly picky eater but it would be worth checking out again. 3.25 Stars
Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum
YA about a girl, Hope, who was in an iconic (and fictional) photo taken on 9/11 and how that has affected her life in the ~16 years since that horrible day. I remember that day, watching from tv hundreds of miles away, and we've visited the memorial in New York. It was fascinating reading about how it affected those who were much closer and had people they knew personally perish. It's all fictional but I imagine a lot of the emotions and feelings are true. 3.5 Stars
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley
This is a graphic novel that took about an hour to read. I've read all her previous graphic novels and enjoyed this continuation of her story of struggling to get pregnant and then being pregnant and the aftermath. I will say that while this was not as graphic as it could have been, there were some female anatomy drawings that I was surprised to see, especially because I was sitting on the porch of our vacation cottage reading this next to Luke, to whom I don't yet want to explain what uterus's and fallopian tubes are. Nothing graphic, just more than I wanted my 6 year old son to see. And I turned the page quick enough that he didn't. But just a heads up. 3 Stars
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
This was a delightful novel that I would classify as chick-lit. A women, Evvie Drake, is in the process of leaving her husband, like ready to walk out the door with a suitcase, when she gets a phone call that he was in an accident and died (this all happens in the first 10 pages). It picks up again a year or two later when she's still trying to figure out how to move on with her life when she's not quite the grieving widow everyone thinks she is. And then a friend of a friend baseball player needs a place to stay and ends up in Evvie's guest suite and things proceed from there. I read this on vacation, where we weren't near a (warm) beach but it was a still a delightful vacation read. 3.5 Stars
The Last Year of the Way by Susan Meissner
Historical fiction about the last year of World War II when German and Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to camps to live with their families in the US. A young (12?) Japanese girl and German girl befriend each other and only have a couple months together before they are both sent back to their families' homelands. It was heartbreaking reading about what Americans went through in our own country but also what they faced when they each went back "home". 3.25 Stars
P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
The second book in the To All the Boys I've Loved Before... series, which I had been wanting to reread since I watched the delightful Netflix movie last summer. Lara Jean is just a delightful protagonist and I really root for her. I love the relationships she has with her sisters and Dad and how Lara Jean is navigating high school and boys. I plan to reread the final book in the series soon. If you've seen the movie you should read the books. I think they are both just so fun. 3.75 Stars
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Not the first book I've read in the "slightly grumpy older person befriends a lost younger person" genre. Arthur's wife died and he visits her every day at the cemetery. There he meets Maddy, a teenager who is trying to escape high school and her father who she just hasn't had a connection with since her mother died many years ago. Arthur and Maddy become friends along with Arthur's next door neighbor, showing that you don't necessarily need the family you were born into, sometimes you need to make your own. 3 Stars
Permission to Parent: How to Raise Your Child with Love and Limits by Robin Berman
I agree with pretty much everything she said in this book and a lot of it was good reminders. BUT the first half was filled with what felt like overdone examples of a kid misbehaving and how if the parent had just said this then the kid would have magically complied/listened/done what they were told. It was hard to take any of her examples or advice too seriously after that. That all calmed down in the second half, it just took awhile to get there. 2.75 Stars
The River by Peter Heller
I picked this up because it was on the shelf at my library and Anne Bogel had raved about it multiple times. Two college age boys are going on a month-ish long canoeing trip down a river in Canada. They have no contact with the outside world. Then they find out there is a forest fire looming and maybe a couple having a domestic dispute on the river...a lot is happening. It may have been more intriguing if I knew anything about serious canoeing BUT...this just didn't land well for me. I read it, it was fine, I won't be raving about it. 2.5 Stars
The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale
Another one I won't be raving about. This was about a housewife from Utah who magically gets her script bought by a Hollywood agent which causes her to run into a famous actor who then befriends her and helps her get a second scrip bought and the housewife gets a role acting in that movie with the famous actor...it was just a bit far fetched. AND I have a hard time believing this housewife's husband would REALLY be ok with her being "best friends" with a famous, handsome actor, to the point where they talk on the phone daily. Really. REALLY?? 2 Stars
Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand
I always enjoy Elin Hilderbrand's books and this was no exception. It's her first historical novel, taking place mostly on Nantucket in the summer of 1969, then the moon landing was happening and the Vietnam War and racial tensions were high. It didn't feel a whole lot different from her usual books, except no cell phones. Reading these always feel like summer and I always enjoy them. 4 Stars
I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi
A similar plot to The Late, Lamented Molly Marx, except I liked that one better. A woman dies and we follow her in the afterlife, as she watches over her husband and daughter left behind. Told from the perspective of all 3 as they try to figure out the circumstances of her death and how they move forward. It was fine but nothing noteworthy. 2.75 Stars
Summer by the Tides by Denise Hunter
I've read most of her books and they are light, fluffy, predictable, but enjoyable Christian fiction. This one takes place on the Atlantic coast somewhere...maybe Georgia or one of the Carolinas? I really don't remember much of the plot besides attractive 20-somethings meet, don't get along, then get along, then don't, then end up together. They are easy, breezy summer reads. 3 Stars
Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey
This was a delightful book about a rom-com obsessed young woman who is looking for her own Tom Hanks, not him literally but the characters he plays in Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. She grew up watching rom-coms with her mother, who has died, and feels like the movies are her connection to her mother. Then she ends up working on a movie set in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio and her life starts to feel a little rom-com-y. It felt like reading a rom-com in the best way and I really enjoyed it. 3.75 Stars
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This had to be a feat to write. It's written as a oral history of a fictional rock band in the late 60s-early 70s as they navigate making an album and fame and drugs, sex, and rock n roll. I am in awe of how Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote this book, I can't imagine it was easy to do with all the characters and voices and timelines to keep straight. I really wanted Daisy Jones and the Six to be a real band by the time I was done. 3.75 Stars
Chapter Books Read with Luke
The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
I remember reading this at least a couple times as a kid and I knew it was one I wanted to read to Luke once we started chapter books. It's a bit dated but that didn't seem to throw Luke off at all and it was a nice book to read with him. We have the second checked out from the library right now! 3.75 Stars
Home Again by Kallie George
I think this Heartwood Hotel series has been Luke's favorite of all the chapter books we've read together. It's the final of the 4 book series, this one taking place in the summer so we had to wait until it was actually summer (he was out of school) to read it! It was charming like all the rest in the series and expanded the world a little more. It was a bit strange that we read two mouse books back to back AND this had surprising plot overlap with The River which I was reading myself while reading this to Luke. 4 Stars
And that's it! What have YOU been reading?? Please tell me so my over grown, but always looking to grow some more, TBR can be longer.
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