I’m always a little behind on doing my book reviews, ideally I would love to have them ready at the end of each month but that’s ok. When I pulled up this post and started loading the books I read, I was like wow, this was such a good month of books. I really loved each one I read for different reasons, and honestly that feels like the best kind of birthday present I could give myself haha! Sometimes finding good books is a challenge, but this month it was easy peasy. I hope you find something you like!
I’ve always loved reading Nancy Thayer books, and lately have been getting into Elin Hilderbrand a little more too. I love how easy their books are to pick up and put down, how they’re just fun and super descriptive…at this point I am ready to visit Martha’s vineyard and Nantucket A.S.A.P! “The Identicals” was about twin sisters separated when they were young when their parents divorced. One sister was taken to Nantucket and the other to Martha’s Vineyard. I love how this story compared and contrasted the two different locations, it was fun reading about both in the same story. I also thought the story lines of family issues, romance, friendship and sisterhood was entertaining, and also ended well. Just a great easy summer chick-lit read.
“The Four Winds.” What a read. Kristin Hannah was one of the authors that got me back into reading after I took a long sabbatical from it while working, mainly because I was just dead dog tired at the end of a day of teaching, and also reading more for my job than for entertainment at that point. I started back to reading a little more when I had my babies, but after I read “The Nightingale” I was hooked and wanted more. Her books are almost always good reads, there are some I’m not as crazy about as others, but she has an intensity to her writing that draws you in. I couldn’t put this one down! I’ve read a little bit about the dust bowl, the depression era and people going west, but not a lot. “The Four Winds” was a story about a girl who had been basically oppressed by her own family, and how she tried to break out of that only to be completely cut off. Thankfully her husband’s family took her in, and she really started to grow. Living in north/west Texas during this time was completely unbelievable to me…I think I read that they went 4 years without rain…She finally decides to go west with her kids, and this is the story of how they traveled and what they did when they got there. I wasn’t crazy about the ending of the book, it just stabbed me in the heart, but overall it was a really good read and I feel like I learned a lot about that place in time. It made me just feel so grateful for all we have in this society, the freedoms and abundance.
Out of everything I read this month, “When Stars Collide” was probably my least favorite, only because there was just too much language in it. I almost put it down because there was a lot up front, but of course the chapter I told myself was the last one it seemed to lighten up haha. I loved the story line though, it was a bit corny, but cute too. An opera singer and star football player are both hired to going on a tour promoting this fancy watch line. They travel around the U.S. together, helping each other process some personal issues as they get to know each other, but also become entangled in a stalker kind of situation. Of course you can imagine there is romance involved, and it was really funny seeing how they meshed with such polar opposite backgrounds. Another cute beach read, but I honestly don’t know that it would really be on my recommendations list because of the language.
I loved “Family Reunion.” I told you I am a Nancy Thayer fan, and her newest novel did not disappoint. I love reading about Nantucket, she is so descriptive about the island, the scenery, the people, the restaurants, the stores… An elderly woman was living on Nantucket in a huge mansion on the coast, and this is the story of her and her family. There was a lot going on with her kids, her granddaughter and herself, just a lot of different storylines going on but I really enjoyed it all! Easy, fun, clean, I’ll take it!
My cousin’s wife recommended “When The Stars Go Dark” to me, and it was another one I just couldn’t put down. Super intense most of the way through, hit a little close to home because it involved the loss of a child and women being abducted, but it was a great read. There was some language, but the hardest part was just reading about some of the things the detective had to deal with. She returned to her home town after the loss of her daughter, and being an expert in missing persons cases, she ended up helping with a local case, and in doing that it restored some of what she had loss.
I listened to “Girl Stop Apologizing” this month, and really liked this one too. A very motivational read, encouraging women to be who God made them to be, to embrace who you are and not be ashamed, to be bold and do what you need to do to accomplish your dreams and conquer your goals…there was a lot of good to take away from this.
I saw “West With Giraffes” on my kindle unlimited, (I’m doing the free trial because my kindle broke and I had to get a new one, of course you know, a month out of my warranty…but it came with the free trial so here we are…) and I loved it. I am a huge animal person, for the longest time I wanted to be a vet, and if I could do anything in the world it would be to work at a panda reserve in China or to work at Sea World haha, so a story about giraffes coming to the states for one of the first times? You bet I’m on board with that. Based on a true story, a couple of giraffes that had been rescued from Africa came across the Atlantic onboard a huge ship that sailed straight through one of the worst hurricanes in eastern seaboard history. The giraffes somehow made it through, and set off on a journey across the U.S. to California. This was also during 1938, so there was a lot going on…this was a very risky trip to be making at that time. I loved reading about all of it, the best part being about a young man who is so drawn to the giraffes and how he gets himself involved with the transport, falling completely in love with these two beasts.
Jackson has been into jokes for a while now, and he loves for me to look up jokes online for him. Pinterest now floods my feed with them, and I thought this one would be cute to leave you with today. Hope you found something interesting this month to read yourself! I love how books open you mind and can take you to so many different time periods and places, my brain just craves reading now and I hope you can get to that point too! Check out the links below for the reviews I’ve done so far this year! You can also check out my Books tab for reviews from past years, and follow me on Goodreads here!