Other book posts in the past month:
And now everything else I've been reading!
The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberley
This is a romance book (I was somewhat accidentally heavy on those this month) written by a husband and wife writing team. It's definitely the first romance book I've read written by one of those! Story follows a man and a woman who used to be writing partners but maybe just wrote one, really well received, novel together before calling it quits. Now their agents want them to write another so they go back to a cottage in Florida where they stay for ~2 months while they write this book, even though they are barely speaking. WHAT WILL HAPPEN?!?!? Pretty much exactly what you expect. The writing felt a little clunky at times but it was fine. 3 Stars
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Two of my sisters and I are reading these together, one a month (although SOMEONE finished Catching Fire AND Mockingjay in March (it wasn't me)). I hadn't read this since 2015ish and hadn't seen the movie in about that long (still waiting to watch that since I thought we had the DVD still...but we didn't) so it was fun to revisit it all. I remember the main story points but forgot many of the details. I was also surprised by how little of the book they are in the arena, most of it is leading up to that! Really fun to read these, long distance, with my sisters. 4 Stars
The Subway Girls by Susie Orman Schnall
I really enjoyed this author's book last year, We Came Here to Shine and that's why I picked this one up too. About a real promotion for the NYC subway in the 1940s-1950s-ish. They had month "subway girls" who posed for a picture which was then posted on the subway cars. They were minor NYC celebrities at the time. That advertising campaign is refound in the present day by an advertising woman looking for inspiration for a new NYC Transit campaign. It's fun and nice to see a part of history that isn't based around a war. 3.75 Stars
Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal by Jefferson Bethke
I, on principal, agreed with most of this book but he spent about the first 2/3 of it explaining why the "nuclear family" is not ideal and how we all need to spend much more time with our families. But kept saying that in a way that you didn't leave space for anything else in our lives. Like jobs to earn money to feed and shelter said family. It is in no way logical to assume anyone could work from home so they can be ultra flexible in their schedule (that's not exactly what he was saying but it felt like that at times). My husband works at a hospital and it is literally impossible for him to work from home unless the hospital is going to install a multi-million dollar machine in our basement (see: impossible). It took until almost the end to give other examples of how families can make this work but I was kinda checked out by that point. 3.25 Stars
One Night on the Island by Josie Silver
Another romance book! This one takes place on a TINY island off the coast of...Ireland? Iceland? Somewhere mostly cold and remote. Accidental double cabin booking...I wonder what will happen there?? I spent most of the book feeling rather clasterphobic at the thoughts of being stuck on an island that small for many weeks on end (the weather was always too bad for a ferry...I don't know how nobody seemed to run out of food). I have accepted that romance and romance-adjacent books require you to suspend some belief. 3 Stars
Wild Irish Rose by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles
An unexpected new book in the Molly Murphy series, which I read and enjoyed through most of 2020 (post here). Molly is again up to her old crime-solving ways, much to the dismay of her detective husband, even though he admits that she's pretty good. Except it's about 1907 and woman just didn't do that then. She IS good at solving mysteries and I figured it out shortly before she did so that's good? 3.75 Stars
When You Get the Change by Emma Lord
This was a YA novel set around Broadway loving teens in NYC. It was SO FUN. I think this is the summer before their senior year and two kids are competing for an internship with a Broadway talent agency AND the girl is also trying to find her long-lost birth mother since she's just been with her Dad since she was a baby. Adoption and NYC and musicals, yes. 3.75 Stars
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
I read this in the week leading up to our sons' joint birthday party which was appropriate timing even though we didn't really change anything about that party (I was too worried about 18 kids and 32° outside to be creative in my planning!). She often referenced how her ideas could apply to business or personal affairs but it felt like most of her examples were business based and thus left me a little lacking in knowing how to make our personal gatherings flow smoother. Other than setting expectations. I would definitely have appreciated more familial examples. 3 Stars
The Next Ship Home: A Novel of Ellis Island by Heather Webb
My SECOND Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th Century novel this month! That was not planned. I actually flew through this historical fiction about two women whose paths cross on Ellis Island. One as an immigrant and one as an employee. It sounded like a horrible place to be and I had no idea the corruption that took place. Still, I really rooted for and empathized with these women, both trying to make the best of their very different life circumstances, part of being a woman back then. One of these times when we go to NYC we are actually going to make it to Ellis Island. 3.75 Stars
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
This one was a bit...strange. A woman is devastated over her mother's recent death by cancer. She's not sure if she wants to stay married to her husband. So she goes on an Italian trip that she was supposed to take with her mother and there she runs into her mother...30 years previous. And there is romance ALTHOUGH IT IS HARD TO CONDONE CHEATING. Although the lines of that are...wavy. I mean, a summer on the Italian coast sounds DREAMY but there were parts of this that just didn't sit well. 2.75 Stars
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Emotional graphic novel about the author's journey from Vietnam in the 1960s to California. You all, SHE LEARNED TO DRAW TO WRITE THIS BOOK. What the what. She said it took her many years (maybe decades) to have the skills to do it and that alone is astonishing. The story is incredible too and so moving. And it's a graphic novel so immersive but only took maybe 90 minutes to read (which I feel bad about because those books have to take FOREVER to make). 4 Stars
The Suite Spot by Trish Doller
When I start thinking about my favorite books I've read in a year, there is always one, maybe two, that immediately stand out. For 2021 that one book was Float Plan by this author. SO, when I saw she was writing a book about that protagionist's sister, well I was immediately on board and put in my library hold weeks before it's release. This one doesn't take place in the Caribbean BUT in northern Ohio, yes, my border state. AND Cedar Point gets a few shoutouts (strangest of all, I had JUST hours before starting this book gone down a rabbit hole of online articles about roller coasters and was thinking about Cedar Point for the first time in years. I haven't been since 2005). ANYWAYS. A woman is fired from her hotel job in Miami and, desperately, takes a new job, sight unseen, in Northern Ohio. Immediately I pitied her because coming from Miami to OHIO in April can be rough. We still get snow up here in April sometimes. And then the job doesn't turn out to be quite what she expected, instead of running a hotel it entails a bit more. AND she has her 4 year old daughter (who actually seemed believable as a 3-4 year old and not too old or too young for her age) and her boss is reeling from the loss of his family. Wow, I have a lot to say about this one. There were like, 2 lines, I really didn't like but other wise this whole book was pretty delightful and I found myself blazing through it pretty quickly. I don't think I liked it as much as Float Plan but it was still a delightful romance (See! Another one!) 4 Stars
Lease on Love by Falon Ballard
This is a book that I have ABSOLUTELY no idea how I came across it but I think I was desperate for some library books when none of my holds were moving a few weeks ago and read this because it was on my TBR AND on the shelf at the library. NYC, mostly Brooklyn, set contemporary romance (I'm not sure what it says about my mental state that I read so many romances this month). Major heads up, there is quite a bit of language and it's a bit open door at times (this is what I get when I pick up books knowing next to nothing about them). BUT...the story sucked me in, a woman gets fired from her finance job (and has a love of spreadsheets!) and then decides to try running a floral business out of her new rental house while not falling in love with her landlord. Which is what she does (it's way less creepy than that may sound). I read this in under 2 days which is fast for me when not on vacation. I enjoyed it quite a bit (I'm writing this with 30 pages to go so I hope those last 30 pages aren't a mess). 4 Stars
Read with Luke
On the Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
This was a read aloud with Luke that took us all month to get through (it has LONG chapters)! He really liked My Side of the Mountain which we read together last fall (and I had read as a kid) but I had never read further in the series so this book was a surprise. It was more wilderness travel and much less "this is how a kid sets up a home and survives in the wilderness". Which is interesting but in a different way. Also, Luke predicted a plot point many, many chapters before I did. And I can't help wondering how parents can just let TWO of their kids live in the woods, quite a ways from home. That's just...different. (I'm also writing this with a chapter to go and, again, I hope that's not a mess) 3.5 Stars
What have YOU been reading lately?
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