I didn’t expect to spend the first half of October assigned to a wildfire (it has been such a weird year) but despite logging more than 100 hours of overtime this month and subbing a few yoga classes for a fellow teacher, I still found time to read five books, which was a pleasant surprise!
(As a reminder: I always track my reading both on Goodreads and via Instagram stories.)
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“EVERYONE HERE IS LYING” BY SHARI LAPENA
William Wooler is having an affair. Well, he was having an affair. After William’s lover, Nora, ends things at a seedy motel, William travels home to find his stubborn and petulant nine-year-old daughter Avery home alone, after being tossed out of school for back talking. William lashes out. He strikes Avery across the face and leaves his home, only to return several hours later to find Avery missing.
I didn’t love this book – but, then again, I rarely love thrillers. I usually just pick them up when I need something to keep my attention for a few hours, which this did. The twist was completely unexpected and also unrealistic, and I had a hard time believing Avery was a real character. But, again, it held my attention and was easy enough to finish. I did like the way it ended, though.
“MAD HONEY” BY JODI PICOULT AND JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN
A dozen years after escaping from an abusive relationship with her son Asher, Olivia has settled into her hometown and taken over her family’s beekeeping business. But, one day, everything changes when a now-teenaged Asher is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Lily. Olivia must confront her reality: How much of his father did Asher inherit? How well did she know her son? Is he innocent?
I recommend! “Mad Honey” was about 100 pages too long, and I found myself losing interest a little bit after the first twist, but my interest picked back up after pushing through. The authors had this habit of referencing something once, and then coming back to that same reference in greater detail a few chapters later which was a little annoying, but it wasn’t enough to make me put it down. “Mad Honey” touched on a lot of social issues, but none of them felt out of place in any way.
“THE HOUSE OF EVE” BY SADEQA JOHNSON
1950s Philadelphia: 15-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to become the first in her family to go to college, until a taboo love affair threatens to derail her goals and keep her confined to the poverty that her family has faced, generation after generation. 1950s Washington, D.C.: Eleanor Quarles falls in love with William Pride, a fellow Howard student who hails from a well-off Black family. Eleanor struggles with gaining the acceptance of William’s family, and hopes a baby will bridge the gap.
This book was very predictable, but I still loved it. This book dove deep into class privilege and racism in the 1950s. It was heartbreaking but ended on a very (again, predictable) optimistic note. I came to love both Ruby and Eleanor and I would definitely recommend this book.
“TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW” BY GABRIELLE ZEVIN
Sadie and Sam bond over their love of video games as children. After falling out of touch, they reconnect in a Boston subway station. Sam, a student at Harvard, and Sadie, a student at MIT, decide to spend a summer together creating a video game of their own. Their game, “Ichigo,” experiences overnight success, and Sadie and Sam are thrust into the world of video game design that will test their precarious friendship.
I am very much in the minority, but I did not love this book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it the way everyone else seemed to. I thought the writing was slightly pretentious. This novel didn’t have a traditional plot and just followed along in the journey of two kids-turned-teenagers-turned-adults, and didn’t really have a concrete ending. It was about 100 pages too long and got really hard to follow in some places, where I just wanted the plot to continue but Zevin felt compelled to write page after page of anecdote and memory and fantasy. I don’t understand the hype this novel got.
“THE WOMAN IN ME” BY BRITNEY SPEARS
In her much-anticipated memoir, “Princess of Pop” Britney Spears reflects on her childhood in Louisiana, her rise to fame as THE teenage pop star of the ’90s, her relationship with Justin Timberlake, her marriage to Kevin Federline, her journey into motherhood and her 13-year-long conservatorship that led her to stand in front of a courtroom and tell her story.
Oh Britney! This book broke my heart. I was born in 1989 so I grew up listening to Britney’s music, and I just want to give her a huge hug. This book was written in a very simplistic style (my favorite line: “This seemed like a fantastic idea to them because they were idiots”) and it just reads in Britney’s sweetheart voice. “The Woman in Me” didn’t read salacious in any way. It was just Britney telling her side of the story. I feel so bad for her and everything she went through after all the ways in which she was taken advantage of as a young girl thrown into stardom. I am forever Team Britney.
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Ryan and I will be moving next month, so hopefully that won’t detract too much from some quality time with my Kindle. Our new place will have a real fireplace, though, so I’m already excited for some fireside reading time!
