Ohhhh look at me! Two book recap posts in one year!!

I’ve actually been reading quite a bit lately, so let’s start with our Literate Lushes picks.

Literate Lushes

May 2022: Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr. This month was my pick and I picked a book I’d read and posted about before. It was a big hit, and there were some great discussions around the book and the ending.

June 2022: The Girl with the Louding Voice, by Abi Dare. I had a little trouble getting past the grammar at first, but then you get used to it and can hear the protagonist’s voice speaking that way, and it works. It’s heartbreaking, and heartwarming, and insightful. I truly appreciate books like this one that give me insight into something that is completely foreign to me, but I SHOULD be aware of. Human trafficking is beyond comprehension.

July 2022: The Housekeeper, by Natalie Barelli. Like I’ve mentioned before, mystery/thriller is not my favorite genre, but I told myself I’d stop skipping these picks, so I read it, ha! It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t my favorite. I will say that the ending had a pretty good twist at the end that I didn’t expect.

August/September 2022: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton. I did skip this one though, haha. I was pretty in to some other books on Kindle or from the library that were on a time crunch, and I had to pick which ones to finish. This one didn’t grab my attention right away so I didn’t get too far in to it. Other Lushes seemed to like it, so maybe I just didn’t give it enough time. I also was listening to it on Audible, and I think the voice was a little boring.

October 2022: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’m actually quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I think I liked the honesty of Evelyn’s character, even if some of her behaviors are not ones I would approve of – she was never ashamed of them. I’m not sure it lives up to the hype, but it was a good read. And most of us wore green to our book discussion for this group, which was fun!

November 2022: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, by Bianca Marais. I forgot to read this one! I’ll have to go back and read it.

Extra Kindle reads:

The Girl in his Shadow, by Audrey Blake. I love historical fiction like this one. This one takes place in London in 1845, and tells of a young woman that’s a gifted surgeon in training, but you know…she’s a woman…so she can’t be one. I really enjoyed this book.

The Surgeon’s Daughter, by Audrey Blake. I enjoyed The Girl in his Shadow so much that I read the sequel. Bit of a spoiler alert for the first book, but this one follows the main character’s journey through medical school at a time when women weren’t allowed to go to medical school. So interesting to read about that time and so thankful we’ve made a lot of progress (although obviously still not perfect).

The Good Left Undone, by Adriana Trigiani. I love me a good family story telling. And this one did not disappoint. It takes place in Italy and Scotland, and I just love exploring foreign countries through books. I think the stories of past and present were woven together really nicely, and one of the final scenes had me crying sad tears, in such a good way.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb. I borrowed this one through Libby, and it didn’t grab me enough for me to finish it before it was due. I may give it another chance later.

Me Before You, by JoJo Moyes. Books like these feel like guilty pleasures to me, like trash TV, ha! So if I’m being honest, as much as a part of me wants to be hyper critical so that I can look sophisticated in my reading preferences, I did enjoy this book! But, I also can’t bring myself to read the two sequels. I don’t really know why…maybe I should talk to someone about it…(see what I did there?)

The Last Letter from Your Lover, by JoJo Moyes. See above paragraph for my disclaimer, but I also enjoyed this book. It was a little disturbing at times, but I liked the love story woven throughout.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson. Back to historical fiction. Loved it! It’s very similar to A Giver of Stars – they’re both about the packhorse librarians in Kentucky around the 1930s, but this one has a totally separate plot line about the blue-skinned people of Kentucky. At first I thought it was a made up part of the book, then realized it was WAY too crazy to throw in randomly (it’s a historical fiction book, not sci-fi or fantasy..) so I googled it and lo and behold, it was a real thing! Bananas.

We Are Not Like Them, by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza. There’s a new local Facebook bookclub that I joined, and although I have yet to attend a gathering in person, I’m enjoying the book selections so far. I think this book would have been really good for discussion topics. It was great to get perspectives from both sides of the story regarding a police officer killing an unarmed black young man. So much work to be done in this area of social justice.

The Paris Library, by Janet Skeslien Charles. You guessed it: historical fiction. This one bounces between Montana in 1983 and Paris in 1939. I think what impacted me the most is the regret one can live with because of a bad decision, and how that can impact the trajectory of your life. Woof. Similarly: the positive impact one person can have, and totally change the trajectory of someone else’s life, without even knowing it.

Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys. Oh geez, I’m sensing a pattern and I’m not sure if I should apologize, embrace it, or try to expand my reading horizons. Historical fiction, present, again. I love/hate books like this: fictional, but based on an even that really happened, so you know the stories are true enough for many people that lived through that event. And that’s just devastating. This book follows a group of Prussian refugees as they try to escape the Russian army towards the end of WW2, and is based on the real story of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which had a much higher death toll than the Titanic. This was a book that I had to skip to the last pages to see how it ended just so I could cope with reading through it.

The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd. Hey, NOT historical fiction! I really liked the fantasy/magic of this book, and the slow unraveling of all of the characters and how they relate to each other. I did thing that the flashbacks were oddly placed sometimes, or cut off for the sake of the story development rather than the flow of the story. But overall I really enjoyed this one.

That Summer, by Jennifer Weiner. Mmmmm, I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this one. Definite trigger warning for sexual assault. I enjoyed reading the story line and seeing how it developed, following the threads, but I didn’t like how the ending was a slap on the wrist (spoiler? Sorry…).

The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea. I really enjoyed this book, especially coming from a Hispanic culture. There were cultural and language aspects I enjoyed relating to, and also many that I was thankful I couldn’t relate to. My grandmother went to great lengths to raise my aunts and uncles away from gangs and drugs, and I’m so thankful she had the grit and conviction to do that. I quite literally would not be around if she hadn’t: she packed up her children and moved to Arizona, which is where my mom met my dad. But back to the book: it was a great reflection on life and death, and the impacts we make when all is said and done.

In a Holidaze, by Christina Lauren. Another pick from my Facebook book club that I probably wouldn’t have picked on my own. This one leaned a little heavier on the romance, and you know what? I’m here for it! I even got the butterflies on some of the passages! I love my husband tremendously, but there’s nothing quite like those butterflies when you’re first getting to know someone. It was nice to relive that without cheating on Jeff!

Extra book buys

The Winners, by Fredrik Bachman. Oh man, all the feels. For those that know or have read prior book posts, Fredrik Backman is my man. My literary man. I love ALL of his books (literally and seriously, they’re all amazing to me). This is the third (and fiiiiinaaaaal?) installment of the Beartown series, and man, it did not disappoint. I bought a presale book from Barnes and Noble and…IT. WAS. SIGNED. I’m not kidding when I say I got a little teary eyed when I opened it – Jeff is my witness. So, yes, I liked this book. His writing is just so beautiful, about life, and loss, and love. And it’s heartbreaking – I stayed up until 1am one night to finish it, and had to change my shirt because I was crying and wiping the snot off my nose with my pajama shirt. Also, I MIGHT have started a very rough Etsy shop with Beartown items because I couldn’t find any already made (and the author posted on his IG that he has no desire to make any and people can sell stuff…so that made me feel better).

Extra library reads:

The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak. I loved the premise of this book: parts are told from the perspective of a tree, which seemed pretty weird at first. I think this might be considered historical fiction? I definitely learned about Cypriot and the Greek and Turkish divides within it. This was a beautifully written story.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix Harrow. No historical fiction here! And I loved it. This book was so unique and such a great story, I couldn’t put it down.

(I think I’m missing one or two here…I’ll have to keep better track of library books…)

Currently reading

The Book Woman’s Daughter, by Kim Michele Ridarchson

January 2023 Literate Lushes pick: If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood, by Gregg Olsen

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