I swear I was all over the place this month.
I read a few library books, a few Kindle books and a few books from my own collection at home.
I really struggled to finish books this month, for who knows what reason. I returned an unfinished library book (more on that below) and at one point I had four books simultaneously in progress before I finally found the motivation to finish half of them.
Still working on the third, and the fourth is the one I returned.
(As a reminder: I always track my reading on Goodreads.)
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Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Recommend
If you absolutely love an unlikeable character getting their comeuppance, this one is for you. Natalie is an insufferable tradwife influencer, who flaunts her just-out-of-reach — yet seemingly attainable — farmhouse lifestyle to her millions of followers. At one point, Natalie wakes up in the 1800s and finds herself living on an actual farm with kids she doesn’t recognize and an older version of her husband. At no point did I see where the plot was taking me, and
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Recommend
I was a little worried about the format of this book. There’s no first-person or third-person narration, and it’s told entirely via letters and emails to and from the main character, an elderly woman named Sybil. I don’t typically like unconventional storytelling methods and I was nervous I’d have a difficult time following along, BUT this book actually did up being really well done. I didn’t adore Sybil (I think some of her nonchalant racism threw me off a bit) in the same way many readers seemed to, but I did find her to be endearing. This book started off a bit slow, but captivated me in the second two-thirds.
So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder
Recommend
This very millennial book follows the lives of five close college friends throughout three decades of their lives as they reunite for five main social events. From a skeezy New Year’s Eve party to a destination wedding to a suburban holiday party to a funeral — it explores the ways we change and grow apart in ways we swear we never will. I didn’t particularly like all of these characters but I related to all of them at different times, some more than others. It was a bit hard to keep up with the main characters (for example, the story is centered around six friends, but one never has a narrative) and the side characters (about halfway through the book, one of the side characters has a narrative) but once you can keep them all straight (a physical book made this easier) it was really easy to sink into. The writing was immersive and transitioned seamlessly between each character’s point of view, and I definitely cried at the end. I really did love this one.
Homesickness by Colin Barrett
This collection of short stories was gifted to me last year by a friend on my birthday. None of these 40-ish page stories had a beginning, middle or end — rather, you’re dropped into the middle of a very mundane situation and left to observe it like a fly on the wall. While mundane, every story was driven by a thread of tension and witty humor, and Barrett’s writing was very vivid and beautiful. It was easy enough to power through a short story before bed and read these here and there while reading other books. My favorites were “The Ways” and “Whoever Is There, Come On Through.”
And… a Did Not Finish:
The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave
Don’t recommend
I made it about halfway through this book before I finally gave up. It started out strong but just got to be so bad. The writing was terribly repetitive. Each sentence was about three words long, and two of those words were used in the previous three-word sentence. As soon as the book would get interesting, Dave veered away from the excitement to some convoluted back story that just pulled me out of the moment. I realized I actually had no clue what the book’s plot was supposed to be outside of an escape story, had zero attachment to the main characters, and couldn’t keep any of the new characters straight. I can usually push through bad writing just to find out how a book ends, but I really didn’t care enough about any of these characters to stick it out and find out their fates.
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