Welcome to another month of Author Love, where I highlight an author whose works I've read the vast majority of, all of which I've enjoyed! Previously I talked about Sara Ackerman and Kristin Harmel. Might all these authors end up being women? Highly likely, I probably read 90% women authors and most men I read write non-fiction.
Today I'm talking about Taylor Jenkins Reid. She is the rare author who I know exactly how I came across her. For some reason I entered a giveaway on Goodreads for Maybe In Another Life and won. It was the first Goodreads giveaway I ever won (and have only won a handful more since) and it was INCREDIBLY exciting to get a free book in the mail. Already I was inclined it rate it highly (which is probably the whole point of those giveaways).
That book was enjoyable enough that I added the rest of Taylor Jenkins Reid's released books to my TBR. At the time her books were all contemporary women's fiction. Not romance but there was at least a romance in each one. They were exactly the types of book I was looking for at that time. Interesting and page turning without violence or anything too controversial.
She took a turn to her writing in 2017, going from slightly more lighthearted books to more complex sagas, often spanning longer periods of time and just story lines you could tell took awhile to work through. She has 3 released books since this shift and all have been very different in form but also have slightly overlapping characters (none of which are so prominent that you'll lose something by reading them out of order). The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is going through a older movie star's life and the 7 husbands she had a long the way. Evelyn Hugo hand picked a certain young female journalist to tell her stories to and her reason for that is revealed along the way. It's told through interviews and flashbacks.
Then there was Daisy Jones and the Six which is an oral history of a fiction rock band from the 1960s or 1970s. When I first heard of this I didn't bother to add it to my TBR because I had never heard of this band so why would I want to read the oral history? You all, it's a fictional band by the time you are halfway through the book you'll wonder how the heck aren't they real because their story just jumps off the page. I cannot imagine the planning it took to create a novel in that format. It feels so incredibly real (also, I'd like to hear their nonexistent music).
Those two books were HUGE departures from her earlier work and definite page turners that made me think. They are exactly the right spot of commercial without being annoying fluffy. On the edge of being literary fiction without being pretentious. That is a very fine and hard line to follow but TJR (I'm calling her that for the rest of this post), does it so skillfully and perfectly.
The other three books I'm going to talk about are the three I happen to own (one being that first one I got for free!). Even though, it took me longer to track down one of them within my house than it should have (I reorganized a whole bunch of my books in January and I'm still not sure where they all ate).
First up is Maybe in Another Life which I've heard described as a Sliding Door story although I am not familiar with that movie (??). A woman on the peak of turning 30 returns to her hometown of LA, fresh on the heels of a bad breakup. Her BFF takes her out to a bar one night and at that point the story splits into two possible time lines, based on two different choices she could have made that night at the bar regarding her high school boyfriend. We all know the repercussions that one choice can have, the kind generally of more consequence than what leftovers to have for supper. Her life goes very differently in the two timelines, even though there are echoes of each in the other. Some things in her life here just meant to happen. And which one is the "real" story line??? This one gripped me and was a very pleasant introduction to TJR.
The next one is one I really remember reading, on my front porch, flying through it, in tears at points, because I just HAD to know what happened. That one is One True Loves. Emma marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse and they are living a lovely life in Massachusetts. Then, on their first anniversary, Jesse goes on a work trip (he's some how related to the travel industry). And he disappears. His helicopter goes missing over the Pacific Ocean and he's presumed dead after some time. Well, Emma falls apart a bit, as expected. She moves back in with her parents, who seem to be lovely people who pre-read every book they give her (I believe they own a bookstore?) to make sure nobody dies in the story. Many years later, Emma is able to move on with her life with Sam, an old friend. THEN. Jesse is found. What do you do when your love, who was presumed to be dead, reappears??? I have thought about this story line SO MANY TIMES in a few different applications. How the end of one dear thing can bring about something else. I could not put this down to see how it ended.
Her most recent book is Malibu Rising which is one of the bit more complicated stories than her earlier work. This was the book I picked for Matt to give me for my birthday last summer and I very vividly remember reading it on vacation. (FANTASTIC vacation read, by the way). It follows the family of a famous rock star, his 4 adult kids, in the 1980s, in Malibu, California. (The rock star was apparently briefly mentioned character in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but I have no memory of this.) The kids have all had their lives affected in different ways from their Dad's fame and wealth (he's not a super present character in the book, much more mentioned than seen). I love a good complicated family drama where the drama isn't from anything too complicated. It was page turning, fun, and addictive. Again, a perfect beach or vacation read. Slight content warning, this is rich people in the 1980s in California so some drug usage.
I've enjoyed every one of Taylor Jenkins Reid's books, I always expect them to be a fun, page turning read and I haven't been let down yet! Perfect for summer or any time you just want to dive into a good book!
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