Warning: Affiliate links appear in the following post. Although shopping the embedded links won’t cost you any additional dollars, it might mean that I download a few extra audio books this month. Your support of my reading habit is always appreciated!
I was hoping to be able to tell you I conquered double-digits this month, but it just wasn’t in the cards. I’m going to publicly acknowledge the fact that I have two (demanding) children, a blog and a full time job, so endless hours of reading every day isn’t something I can commit to. Some of my favorite book-reviewing bloggers knock it out of the park every month and I’m always so jealous! I keep reminding myself that I’m not in that season of life right now. Four to six books a month is super reasonable for me, especially when two of them are almost 500 pages! I will say that I did a fantastic job of selecting books this month and wasn’t disappointed by a single one. If you’re in the market for new reading material, you can’t go wrong with any of these.
I’m using the following scale, courtesy of Goodreads, to rate the books I’ve read. I should probably warn you that I like almost everything I read. I love stories and being transported to a new place, so when books provide a plot I can get lost inside, I almost always like it. It’s much harder for me to love or hate something. When you see a single star or five stars, you’ll know I had a strong reaction to something one way or another.
1 star // did not like it
2 star // it was okay
3 star // liked it
4 star // really liked it
5 star // it was amazing
1. LIZZY & JANE BY KATHERINE REAY // 3.5 OUT OF 5 STARS
When I first picked this one up, I was expecting a modern day retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, but that isn’t at all what I got. Instead, this story is about two sisters named after Austen’s famous duo. Pride & Prejudice was a novel their mother loved and Austen’s stories were tightly woven into their childhood. We begin the story with estranged sisters who are reunited after Jane’s cancer diagnosis. She’s been forced to hand over her business and since her husband travels for work, she is left to raise her two children while fighting cancer and fighting with her sister. Lizzy is a chef at a popular New York City restaurant, who has lost her sparkle and can’t help feeling guilty over her dying relationship with her sister. After some encouragement from her father, she travels home to help Jane out around the house and falls in love with cooking once again. This isn’t your traditional “cooking novel” full of recipes and kitchen anecdotes, but cooks and romantics alike will enjoy Lizzy’s kitchen antics and how food leads her to begin a new relationship. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Lizzy & Jane.
2. ELIGIBLE BY CURTIS SITTENFIELD // 4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS
Now this is a modern day retelling of Pride & Prejudice to be sure. I regretted not grabbing this for my May Book of the Month selection, so I added it to June’s box and it arrived just in time for our vacation. At 400+ pages, it took me several days to finish, but it was a page turner and I was hooked from the very beginning. Although there are marked differences in the storyline and characters, this novel follows the original plot pretty closely. It was fun to follow along, because it was both predictable and unexpected at the same time. I loved Lizzy’s character and Darcy was irresistible in this one! Sittenfield covered plenty of hot topics and there was much more sex than the original version (considering Austen’s had exactly zero). If you loved Pride & Prejudice and don’t mind a little spice, then Eligible is the perfect poolside read. P.S. Did you know this was written by the author of The American Wife? That’s another great novel if you haven’t already tackled it.
3. I LET YOU GO BY CLARE MACKINTOSH// 4 OUT OF 5 STARS
This was my June selection for Book of the Month Club and it did not disappoint. I was itching for a new suspense novel and since the previous month’s wasn’t my favorite, I decided to try I Let You Go. This one is definitely a page turner and had some very unpredictable plot twists. A 5 year old boy is killed in a hit and run accident at the very beginning and the book chronicles how the story twists and turns over the next several years. You follow along with the story of his mother, the driver and two detectives trying to piece together what really happened. I am always excited when a book keeps me guessing, so I’m dubbing this one of my favorite books of the year so far. Although I did manage to figure it out before the end of the book, I changed my mind so many times that it still came as a surprise. There were a few times when I audibly gasped, so prepare yourself for a perfectly twisty plotline. While there isn’t much sexual content or language in this one, there is an abusive storyline depicted in part two, if that tends to bother you.
4. LEAVING TIME BY JODI PICOULT // 4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS
I picked this book up right after it’s release in late 2014. Considering she’s one of my favorite authors, I’m not sure why it took me so long to get started. I first started reading Leaving Time late last summer, right before the kids went back to school, but somehow only managed to conquer 50 pages or so. Again, this is not usually a problem for me! She has a new book coming out in the fall and I still haven’t read Sing You Home, so I promised myself that I would finish this one on vacation no matter what. This story was enchanting. I find myself particularly drawn to her books with an animal story line (I loved Lone Wolf) and I loved how much I learned about elephants and their care in this novel. The story follows a young girl as she attempts to discover what happened to her mother, almost thirteen years ago. Was she murdered? Was she the murderer? Or did she simply disappear? Accompanied by a broken psychic and a former detective turned private investigator, Jenna discovers so much more than she set out to find. The storyline in this book reminded me SO MUCH of a popular film, but I don’t want to spoil anything for you. Despite its 500 pages, you won’t believe how fast you devour this one!
5. THE KITCHEN HOUSE BY KATHLEEN GRISSOM // 5 OUT OF 5 STARS
I don’t even know how to tell you how good this book is. I first heard about it on Anne Bogel’s podcast, but I’ve since seen plenty of reviews from other bloggers. What I haven’t seen? A single negative word about The Kitchen House. It’s been compared to The Help, but they are anything but similar. This one is much heavier, much harder and ultimately much more rewarding. Grissom tells the story of a Virginia plantation, and it’s inhabitants, set in the late 1800s. You are mesmerized by every single character, from the lady of the house to the lowest of servants. Whether or not you’ll like them all is another story altogether. Perspectives change between Belle and Lavinia (the two main characters), but it is done so seamlessly and serves to tell the story in the best possible way. It’s just shy of 4oo pages, but I read it in a single sitting. Josh joked with me that I completely checked out of life the day I finished this one, but I couldn’t help it. I started it one morning while the kids were still sleeping. I read it standing in the pool while they played around me. I read it while the wind blew hard on the beach and the sun dipped low. I finished it in a bathing suit, on the sidewalk outside of a bathhouse while the girls took a shower. I literally could not put this one down. I’m holding myself to the promise of reading everything in my possession before I buy any new books, but its sequel Glory Over Everything is first on my wishlist. I told you before that Secrets of a Charmed Life was the best book I had read all year, but it just got shifted into second place.
6. THE RED TENT BY ANITA DIAMANT // 5 OUT OF 5 STARS
Any time someone asks what my favorite book is, I almost always tell them The Red Tent. My senior year of college (2002, if you’re doing the math), I was in a sculpting class when my cell phone rang. My grandmother, who had been taken to the emergency room with a stomach ache the night before, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and was moments away from surgery. I raced to the hospital in the grubbiest of clothes where my insanely large family lived in a private waiting room for the next several weeks. People always laugh at how we show up for a birth and this scene was strangely reminiscent. I’m not sure the number of days that I slept on a hospital couch, but I distinctly remember reading this for the first time while waiting for the news. I watched the miniseries on television last year and loved it so much, but it’s been almost fourteen years since I read the book. I couldn’t decide if it was really my favorite book or if it was just tied up so tightly in a significant moment of my life that I had elevated it’s worth. I’m here to tell you that I loved it as much the second time around as I did the first. The Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob. If you’re familiar with her story in the Bible, you’ll know that it’s confined only to a few words. What Diamant does, is to flesh out an entire history for Dinah based on surrounding texts and historic details from that time. Suspend your biblical belief for just a moment, because this book challenges everything you thought you knew about Dinah’s story. She’s given a history and backstory and words and it is unbelievably beautiful. You will be completely entranced by how Diamant beautifully weaves the stories of Dinah and her mothers, brothers and father, alongside the story that you already knew.
I’m up to 29 books read this year and I’m dangerously close to finishing another one already. That means I’m almost four books ahead of my goal for the year. Woohoo! I’ve got another ten or so books stacked on my desk to conquer and then I’ll be begging for more recommendations. Ella has also been reading a ton this summer, so I’ll be sharing a kid-friendly book review later this month. Any favorites from your childhood you would love to recommend? She’s looking for a few new authors to explore.
