Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading – the February Edition

The Marriage Plot
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
4 of 5 stars

This was the January book pick for #twookclub. At first, I was excited to read it because I had heard nothing but rave reviews. It was the book I voted for. And then, I started hearing more and more people talk about it. How it was slow and boring. How the characters, especially Maddy, were annoying. Some people even gave up on the book before finishing. So I opened the book with a lot of apprehension. The book was not an easy read, but I can surely shelve it as one of the best books I’ve ever read. The characters were dynamic and interesting, the plot was intriguing, and the themes were compelling. There was something about each main character – Maddy, Leonard, and Mitchell – that called to me. I loved them all and feel like it so accurately depicted the life of a 20-something college graduate and all the mistakes and experiences they go through. I absolutely adored Eugenides’s writing style. And it made for a great, honest discussion during our #twookclub chat. I’m so grateful for all of you who made it to the chat!

 

 

What Happened to Goodbye
Author: Sarah Dessen
5 of 5 stars

Mclean Sweet is a 17-year-old girl who had her world rocked when her parents announced they were getting a divorce. Her mom was leaving her father to marry the coach of her father’s favorite basketball team. And her mom was pregnant with the coach’s twins at the time. Not being able to handle a completely new relationship with her mom, her new stepfather, and her twin babies, Mclean decided to move in with her father. It was a hard decision but the right one to make at the time. Mclean and her father, a restaurant consultant, moved around a lot in the next 3 years as he traveled from city to city wherever the restaurant he was consulting at needed him. In each new city, she developed a new persona and a new name. It was her way of coping but it wasn’t until she started in the town the book took place in that she discovered how damaging these personas could be. In this new town, she didn’t have a chance to be someone new. In this town, she was Mclean. Mclean found a group of friends who liked her just as she was, even if her life was pretty messed up. It was a story about friendship and family, and how desperately we need both. With each new Sarah Dessen book I read, I find another character I connect with and love. Her characters have so much depth and life to them that I can see myself in them. There is something about the way Dessen crafts plots and characters that draws you in from the first page and leaves you sad when you finish as if you just had to leave behind some of your best friends. Another beautifully written story and one I completely recommend.

Cover Me
Author: Catherine Mann
4 of 5 stars

I’ll admit: military-driven romances are my guilty pleasure. If you find a great author, these books can seem so authentic and real, the characters tangible and the books incredibly difficult to put down. Catherine Mann is one of those authors (Suzanne Brockmann and Cindy Gerard are two other I wholly recommend). The series of hers I’m reading through now follows the lives of pararescuemen, which is a branch of the military I’ve never read about before. This book followed the lives of Wade Rocha and Sunny Foster. Wade is a PJ who jumps out of a plane to rescue Sunny, a guide and a lady who knows her way around the Alaskan territory. The book is action-packed from the first sentence to the last as Sunny and Wade uncover a murder plot and try to find out who is behind the serial murders happening in her small, cut-off-from-the-world town. Their romance is sizzling (and believable!). The character development is spot on. And while this isn’t a whodunit type of book, it was still a thriller to see how it all unfolded.

What is your guilty pleasure when it comes to reading? If you read The Marriage Plot for #twookclub (or for your own reading pleasure!), what did you think of it?

Categories: Books

Book Review: Night Swim by Jessica Keener

Title: Night Swim
Author: Jessica Keener
Published: 2012
Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Review from Goodreads: Sixteen-year-old Sarah Kunitz lives in a posh, suburban world of 1970 Boston. From the outside, her parents’ lifestyle appears enviable – a world defined by cocktail parties, expensive cars, and live-in maids to care for their children – but inside their five-bedroom house, all is not well for the Kunitz family. Coming home from school, Sarah finds her well-dressed, pill-popping mother lying disheveled on their living room couch. At night, to escape their parents’ arguments, Sarah and her oldest brother, Peter, find solace in music, while her two younger brothers retreat to their rooms and imaginary lives. Any vestige of decorum and stability drains away when their mother dies in a car crash one terrible winter day. Soon after, their father, a self-absorbed, bombastic professor begins an affair with a younger colleague. Sarah, aggrieved, dives into two summer romances that lead to unforeseen consequences. In a story that will make you laugh and cry, Night Swim shows how a family, bound by heartache, learns to love again.

My review:

This book started off really slow for me. It took me a while to really dig into the book and feel the flow of Keener’s writing. It felt very disconnected at the start and I didn’t feel like I understood who Sarah was.

But then Sarah’s mother died. And then the story really picked up. This is when the dysfunctional family fell apart. When Sarah started making some really bad decisions that I didn’t quite agree with. When her big brother left home to pursue a music career, when her father began dating someone much younger than him, and when Sarah begins to experience life itself. I felt that this was the moment I could finally feel her character and who she was.

This wasn’t a fluffy, silly novel. Keener hit readers hard with issues of sex, drugs, and death and how all three affect you, no matter your age. It’s about a girl who has had her entire world turned upside down and is scrambling to figure out where she fits in the mess that remains. The cover of the book itself was stunning and the writing began to tug at my soul as I became more entrenched in Sarah’s life and the decisions she was making.

Ultimately, it was a book with hard themes that were a little difficult to read about at times but a book with raw and honest writing. While it had a clean, albeit predictable ending, it also felt very honest and I ended the book with a tiny smile on my face, knowing Sarah and the Kunitz family were going to be all right.

And the author has also generously agreed to give away one copy of the book to one of my readers! Leave a comment on this post to be entered in the giveaway. Giveaway ends Wednesday, February 1 at midnight and I’ll announce the winner on Thursday.

I received this book for free from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. All words and opinions, unless otherwise stated, are my own.

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading – the January Edition

One of the things I’ve wanted to do more of with this blog is book reviews. I am a bookworm by nature and read a lot but I don’t want this blog to become a book review blog. Instead, I’m testing out a different style of reviewing books. Three at a time, short snippets of what the books are about, and my overall thoughts. We’ll see how this goes!

Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
5 of 5 stars
Genre: YA lit

I loved this book. It has a silly title and maybe it has a silly premise, but this was one of my favorite books I’ve read in a really long time. Anna was a character I could connect with, even if she was 17. The plot completely drew me in and had me hooked from the get-go. It was about 17-year-old Anna whose father decided she needed to spend her senior year at a boarding school in Paris. She had to leave her entire life, including her “almost boyfriend”, best friend, and job at the movie theater. She arrived knowing nobody, not understanding French, and a complete stranger to Paris. But in the way books do, she immediately found a great group of friends to help her understand the country and have a home in a foreign place. And, of course, there was a boy. His name was St. Clair and what I enjoyed most about his character was that he was not a perfect male specimen. Romance novels have a tendency to place the male hero on a pedestal, perfect and faultless. It’s not reality and always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. St. Clair had an exuberance to life but also a long list of faults that made him even more adorable and most importantly, human. He also had a girlfriend. Throughout the book, you witness the love story between two teenagers who so badly want to be together but circumstances keep that from happening. As Anna begins to fall in love with St. Clair, she also begins to grow up – a lot. She has to discover how to be independent in a strange country and most importantly, true to herself, her beliefs, and her desires. As many of you are aware, I have mad love for romance novels. This one? It is the perfect teenage romance novel. It was witty and heartbreaking and while I expected to enjoy the story, I never expected for it to be such a page-turner, something I couldn’t put down and couldn’t stop thinking about when I did. I was happy for the characters when it ended but also so very sad that their story was over and they wouldn’t be a huge part of my everyday life anymore. Completely, wholeheartedly recommend.

What Women Fear: Living in a Faith that Transforms
Author: Angie Smith
4 of 5 stars
Genre: Christian Non-Fiction

I’ll admit I have never read a single blog post that Angie has written, nor knew all too much about her before hearing about this book. But when I heard the title and read the description, I knew I had to read it. Fear and anxiety are something I struggle with on a daily basis and sometimes, it feels like I’m not fully trusting in God or fully a Christian because of this. This book was divided into chapters that delved into different fears we may have: fear of rejection, abandonment, and betrayal, fear of failure, fear of not being significant, fear of God’s plan for my life, fear that God isn’t real, to name a few that really struck a chord with me. Angie Smith has a powerful testimony and she hasn’t lived an easy, blameless life. She has struggled and has dealt with many of the issues talked about in this book. This made her words seem so much more meaningful and not idle chat. She didn’t seem to think any of these fears were silly or that doubting God’s existence made us less Christian. These are legitimate fears that the enemy is hard at work in our lives to make us believe. This book is something I can see myself re-reading, especially certain chapters, because it spoke directly to my heart and made me take a long, hard look at my fear and exactly who is the mastermind behind it all.

Favorite quote: “Here’s the part we need to cling to: If what we are being called to do is in God’s will for us, we truly can’t fail. I know it sounds like I’m making a flippant statement that should be on a poster with a guy hitting a golf ball, but what I mean is that we simply may not have the same meaning as God for the word “failure.” To me, failure means it doesn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. To God, it means I didn’t pick up the brush.” (pg. 68)

Summer of the Midnight Sun
Author: Tracie Peterson
4 of 5 stars
Genre: Historical Christian Fiction

I used to devour Tracie Peterson’s books when I was younger. Once I “graduated” from the YA section, these were the books I tended to stray to the most. She writes historical Christian novels, full of intrigue and excitement. This book was no different. I remembered reading about Jacob and Leah in previous books by the author but they were secondary characters. This book focused mainly on Leah and her estranged relationship with the love of her life, Jayce. After a ten-year separation, they find themselves together again and soon find themselves defending Jayce after he is accused of murder. They also have to contend with Pinkerton agent, Helaina, who is hellbent on getting Jayce to Seattle and seeking justice for his charges. Helaina was one character I didn’t care for in the least and I think the author intended it that way. I was so enamored with Jayce and the blossoming relationship between Leah and Jayce that her intrusion made me quite upset! I was hooked from the first page until the last, which left me hanging and hungry for the second in the series. There’s something about the way Peterson creates characters and plots that draws me in and I’m not sure why I took such a long break from her books.

Have you read any of the above books? If so, what were your thoughts? What is your idea of failure?

Categories: Books

Book Review: Shiny Objects by James A. Roberts

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Title: Shiny Objects
Author: James A. Roberts
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Rating: 2 of 5 stars

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Review from Goodreads:

In this cross between In Praise of Slowness and The Tipping Point, consumer behavior expert James A. Roberts takes us on a tour of America’s obsession with consumerism—pointing out its symptoms, diagnosing specific problems, and offering a series of groundbreaking solutions. Roberts offers practical, helpful advice for how to correct the materialistic trends in our lives, trends that lock us into a cycle of stress and financial hardship. A new The Paradox of Choice for the modern reader, Roberts’s Shiny Object is far more than a polemic against spending or a critique of capitalism—it’s an exploration of how we can learn to live happier, fuller, more productive lives today.

My review:

I could not get into this book at all. I was really excited about reading it because I loved the concept behind it. I’ve never been a materialistic sort of person. Money was something that was very limited during my childhood and watching my parents struggle with debt and money issues gave me the gumption I needed to make smart money decisions on my own. Materialism is not something that runs in my veins.

The voice of this book was very conversational and easy to understand. The author did a good job of moving the book along with his points and not spending too long on any one subject.

Ultimately, though, I could not connect with the message in this book. It’s one I believe in and hope I am doing my best to cultivate (being less materialistic, that is), but I don’t feel like I learned anything new about what materialism is, what it has done to our country (and around the world), or how to lessen the impact it has. I’m very curious as to who the target audience for this book is because I felt as if it wasn’t a book targeted at twenty-somethings, though I believe this message is something a lot of twenty-somethings need to hear.

I was expecting a bigger impact from the message in this book, but it fell flat for me.

I received this book for free from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. All words and opinions are my own.

Categories: Books

Twitter Book Chat

This past summer, I somehow managed to read through the entire Harry Potter series. It was a big undertaking, but the best part of the entire thing was the weekly chats about the books. There’s something about Harry Potter that begs to be talked about and dissected and through that experience, I developed some great relationships. (And those people are still satisfying my Rupert Grint lust with links to pictures and videos. You guys are my favorites.)

When we finished the series, we were all a little sad not to have these weekly chats. It was fun to meet every week and talk about the book, but we did end up getting a little burned out. We had plans to continue our Twitter book chats but life got busy. So it was pushed aside for a while, until I brought it up again on Twitter last week. Somehow, I’ve volunteered myself to organize this book chat but I’m happy to do so. I’ve been meaning to join a book club for a while now and while I still intend to attend a non-virtual one, this one will work for me for now. (And do I even need to mention how doing this chat with some of my best Internet friends fills me with warm fuzzies? I didn’t think so.)

And this is where you come in!

Through Twitter, I think we’ve decided on the last Sunday in November for our first Twitter book chat. (Ironically, this is also the day before my birthday so I’m hoping I can join. I just don’t know what I’ll be doing then.) But now we need to decide on a time, a book, and a hashtag. I’ve created a poll for the time to see what works best with everyone’s schedules and want your suggestions for a possible book and hashtag (right now, #twitterbookchat could work, but I’m not sure if it’s too long. We could shorten it to #tbc.). I’ll choose 3-5 books from the suggestions, post a poll on Friday, and announce the November book on Monday. Then, you’ll have four weeks to read the book before our chat! (In the future, I hope to do this process a week prior to the month’s beginning.)

If you’d like to join, you’re more than welcome. No RSVP needed! 🙂

For now, leave me book suggestions in the comments and your thoughts on what the hashtag should be. Don’t worry about repeating others’ suggestions, I’ll choose some of the most popular books to vote on.

I’m super excited about this so I can’t wait to see your suggestions!

(And I just realized my last three blog posts have centered around books. If you haven’t noticed, I kinda love to read.)