If you’re looking for a good book to read, you’re in luck! Cozy up to my April Reading List!
Hey, hey, are you ready to talk about books?!
I’ve been doing a TON of reading lately — the weather has been so lovely lately and I love curling up on the porch with a glass of wine and my Kindle while the kiddos run around.
I’ve also got quite a bit of traveling coming up, which always means lots of reading. I read an entire book on the plane the other day, which I always consider a success.
I’ve been really loving THIS podcast for book ideas. I am a podcast lover — I tend to listen to podcasts and audiobooks way more than music (nerd alert) and it’s always interesting to hear from other book lovers.
Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum
I read this book on the airplane ride to Portland last weekend and I really loved it. It was cute and fun, but with a lot of heart. Be advised that it’s a YA book, so it deals with the high school crowd, but I really enjoyed it and hard a tough time putting it down.
Via Amazon:
Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?
It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.
In a leap of faith—or an act of complete desperation—Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can’t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
There are several things that made me want to add this to the list — the location (Brooklyn), the time period (the 50’s), the fact that it was named one of Buzzfeed’s Most Buzzed About Books for 2016, and the interesting character dynamic. This story isn’t about a husband and wife, or a woman and her girlfriends, but two best friends who actually live together and raise their children side-by-side.
Via Amazon:
Brooklyn, 1947: In the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born, minutes apart. The mothers are sisters by marriage: dutiful, quiet Rose, who wants nothing more than to please her difficult husband; and warm, generous Helen, the exhausted mother of four rambunctious boys who seem to need her less and less each day. Raising their families side by side, supporting one another, Rose and Helen share an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic winter night.
When the storm passes, life seems to return to normal; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear and the once deep friendship between the two women begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost, but not quite, wins. Moving and evocative, Lynda Cohen Loigman’s debut novel The Two-Family House is a heart-wrenching, gripping multigenerational story, woven around the deepest of secrets.
The Year We Turned Forty by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke
I’m 36, so I am quickly approaching 40 and have quite a few friends who have already turned 40. It definitely is an age that makes you reflect on your life, so the premise of this book struck a chord with me. I am looking forward to diving in when it is released later this month.
Via Amazon:
If you could repeat one year of your life, what would you do differently? This heartwarming and hilarious novel from the authors of The Status of All Things and Your Perfect Life features three best friends who get the chance to return to the year they turned forty—the year that altered all of their lives, in ways big and small—and also get the opportunity to change their future.
Jessie loves her son Lucas more than anything, but it tears her up inside that he was conceived in an affair that ended her marriage to a man she still loves, a man who just told her he’s getting remarried. This time around, she’s determined to bury the secret of Lucas’ paternity, and to repair the fissures that sent her wandering the first time.
Gabriela regrets that she wasted her most fertile years in hot pursuit of a publishing career. Yes, she’s one of the biggest authors in the world, but maybe what she really wanted to create was a family. With a chance to do it again, she’s focused on convincing her husband, Colin, to give her the baby she desires.
Claire is the only one who has made peace with her past: her twenty-two year old daughter, Emily, is finally on track after the turmoil of adolescence, and she’s recently gotten engaged, with the two carat diamond on her finger to prove it. But if she’s being honest, Claire still fantasizes about her own missed opportunities: a chance to bond with her mother before it was too late, and the possibility of preventing her daughter from years of anguish. Plus, there’s the man who got away—the man who may have been her one true love.
But it doesn’t take long for all three women to learn that re-living a life and making different decisions only leads to new problems and consequences—and that the mistakes they made may, in fact, have been the best choices of all…
The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
I am SO looking forward to this book, to the point that I keep putting off reading it just so I can savor the idea for a bit longer. The editorial reviews are INCREDIBLE and the reader reviews are FIVE STAR (literally — five solid stars on Amazon). I have an overwhelming feeling that this will be one of those life-changing stories that stays with me for a very long time.
Via Amazon:
Cassie O’Malley has spent the past two and a half years in a mental institution—dumped there by her mother, against her will. Now, at 18, Cassie emancipates herself, determined to start over. She attends college, forms new friendships, and even attempts to start fresh with her mother. But before long, their unhealthy relationship threatens to pull Cassie under once again. As Cassie struggles to reclaim her life, childhood memories persist and confuse, and Cassie must consider whose version of history is real, and more important, whose life she must save.
A bold, literary story about the fragile complexities of mothers and daughters and learning to love oneself, The First Time She Drowned reminds us that we must dive deep into our pasts if we are ever to move forward.
That’s it for this month! I’d love to hear what you’ve got on your list.
Have a great day, friends!!
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