Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (10.23.23)

Happy Monday, friends! I am pleased to report that my LASIK procedure went splendidly – no complications at all! I will have a full report on Wednesday, but just wanted to share that good news. Yay! Now, let’s dive into some recent reads:

America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie (★★★★☆)

This book is a chonker at 580 pages, and it took me over two weeks to read it. Normally, I don’t love reading such a long book but there was just something about settling in to read a fictionalized retelling of a president’s daughter’s life that appealed to me. This book is about Martha Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter. The book kicks off in May of 1782 when Martha is 9 years old and they have to flee their home at Monticello during the Revolutionary War. From there, we follow Martha throughout her life and heavens, is it a brutal one. She grieves the loss of her mother just months after leaving Monticello in 1782, spends her most formative years in France with her father who has been appointed as Minister to France, gets married young and has ELEVEN BABIES, and deals with so much abuse and neglect from her husband. And then, we can’t forget, she witnesses her father having a love affair with Sally Hemings—an enslaved girl who is the same age as her.

I can’t imagine all the research and interviews that went into crafting this book. It is so well-researched and nuanced. It’s a hard thing, writing about a white woman who believed in abolition but also enslaved people of her own. It’s a hard thing to read, but I think the authors did an excellent job of creating a nuanced picture of a complicated woman’s life. If you’re up for a nearly 600-page book about a historical figure, this one is definitely worth your while. (library paperback, 2016)

Drowning by T.J. Newman (★★★★★)

T.J. Newman is such an electric writer. I will read everything she writes forevermore. This novel is about a commercial plane that crashes into the ocean and the amazing rescue effort that takes place. T.J. Newman has a way of creating characters that are so easy to root for and crafting a propulsive plot that keeps me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. This novel was an adventure and the way she writes reminds me a lot of Andy Weir—this novel had a lot of technical elements that went over my head, but that was okay because I could understand the heart of the novel and the rescue attempt that was happening. If you have flight anxiety, her novels are probably not for you, but I find them to be incredibly written. I’m ready for this book and her previous novel, Falling, to be movies! (library hardcover, 2023)

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon (★★★★☆)

Chandler Cohen has just had the worst sex of her life with a man she met at a bookstore bar… only to find out that he’s her next ghostwriting client. Finn Walsh is an actor who starred in the cult favorite werewolf teen drama, The Nocturnals, and is now ready to write a book about his experience. Over the next few months, the two of them will be traveling together to various comic-cons around the country and working together to write this book. And when Finn finds out that their night together was very unsatisfying to Chandler, he’s horrified and wants to do better. So they strike up a deal: When they’re not writing or at cons together, Chandler will teach him the art of true satisfaction.

This book was steamy, steamy and I loved it. I really enjoyed how sex-positive this book was and how open the two of them were with each other, both in the bedroom and out of it. The book also touched on mental health, including  OCD, which I found really well done. At times, the writing felt a little elementary (a lot of telling, not showing) but all in all, a book I really enjoyed. (library e-book, 2023)

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (10.11.23)

Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb (★★★★☆)

Brendan Slocumb is making a name for himself in the subgenre of musical literary thrillers. Super-niche, right? But somehow, it works. These are not fast-paced, page-turny thrillers, but rather more of a slow burn. This book is all about a man named Frederick Delaney. He’s one of the greatest musical composers of the twentieth century, but there’s a discovery that could lead to two people unearth the true secret of his greatness: All of his works were actually composed by a young Black woman whose name has been lost to history. This book is about the love of music, the way Black people’s contribution to music is often erased, and corruption. I listened to the audiobook, which was expertly narrated, and those last few hours of the book were incredible. I couldn’t stop listening! A fantastic book with a well-paced plot, vibrant characters, and a satisfying conclusion. (library audiobook, 2023)

Queen of Thieves by Beezy Marsh (★★☆☆☆)

This book has a pretty low Goodreads rating (3.49) so I didn’t have high hopes for it. I tried reading it as a print book, but I found the writing to be a bit cheesy and elementary, so I decided to listen to the audiobook. Sometimes, a book that’s not well-written comes off better in audio form! Unfortunately, this is not the case for this book. It’s 1946 in London and the city is trying to rebuild itself after the Blitz. It’s a tough time with food rations and few job prospects, which is why many Londoners seek “unseemly” professions like thieving. The best thieves are under the wing of Alice Diamond, dubbed “the Queen of Thieves.” Her all-female gang of thieves is the scourge of high-end stores throughout London, and when Alice takes a young, pregnant girl named Nell under her wing, Alice thinks she’s found a new right-hand woman. But is she? While I appreciated learning about this time and place in history, I just found this book to be rather boring. It should be exciting, right? Female thieves! London in the ’40s! But no, it wasn’t well-written and the plot was meandering. I’d skip this one. (library audiobook, 2023)

Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas (★★★☆☆)

Ahh… this book. It was a nice, easy read but I finished it feeling a bit unsatisfied. It follows the story of Kathleen and Devon. Kathleen’s husband of three days was unexpectedly killed in an accident and in turn, it gives his cousin, Devon, the earldom and ensuing estate. He doesn’t want this responsibility—nor to be saddled with his cousin’s three young sisters and his widow. Not to mention, his cousin was in massive debt that Devon is now forced to deal with. And then, as these romances are wont to do, the more time Devon and Kathleen spend with each other, the more they realize their deep feelings for one another. This was a fine romance, but I found Devon to be particularly churlish and demanding. He was just an asshole, not a rake with a heart of gold. Eh. I’ll probably keep reading the series when I need a palate cleanser, knowing I’m not going to get much depth from the books. (library e-book, 2015)

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.22.23)

Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan (★★★★☆)

I had very low expectations of this novel. I DNF-ed Monaghan’s debut, Nora Goes Off Script, because I didn’t love the writing and hadn’t heard rave reviews about this one. But you know what? This romance really, really worked for me! It’s about Sam who is engaged and comes back to her family’s summer house with her fiancee, Jack, to tour a wedding venue. It’s there that Sam comes face-to-face with her past, and her first love, Wyatt. The memories of their love story come flooding back to Sam and she starts to question if she really wants to marry Jack and really wants the life she would have with him. This is a very popular trope in these romance novels—second-chance romance—and it’s one I tend to really like. I mean, Sweet Home Alabama isn’t one of my favorite rom-coms for nothing! I loved the beachy setting and Sam’s sweet relationship with her younger sister. I loved how this story was so much bigger than the relationship; it was also about Sam and what she wanted and how she was letting herself think small because she was afraid of getting hurt. It’s not a perfect book, but it was one I really enjoyed. (paperback, 2023)

Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger (★★☆☆☆)

Lisa Unger is a cult favorite in my book club, and she’s a local author, which is pretty cool. But, oof, this book was not very good at all. It’s about a girl named Wren Greenwood (yep) who matches with a very cute guy on a dating app. Sparks fly during their first date and they quickly fall into a relationship. But then, suddenly, he’s gone. What happened? Did she share too much too soon? It’s an interesting premise, especially bringing online dating into the equation of a thriller. But ultimately, the execution just wasn’t there. The twists and turns weren’t surprising at all, and the ending dragged on and on and on. It was also hard to understand why Wren was so in love with this man, as the author didn’t give us too many details about the man she was dating. I was skimming the pages at the end. And also, the writing was just bad. I haven’t read a Lisa Unger book in a while, but I don’t remember the writing being so bad. She tried so hard to be literary and provoking but didn’t need to be. I don’t read thrillers for the prose; I read them because I love a propulsive story. (hardcover, 2021)

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant (★★☆☆☆)

I need to stop reading books written by white cishet guys. Honestly. This book offered nothing for me. Is it because I’m already good at rethinking and considering all sides of an issue? (This is an Enneagram 9 to a tee!) Is it because I’m not afraid of admitting when I’m wrong and reframing the way I think? Is this book just for over-confident white men who need to learn how to consider other perspectives? I don’t know. But I didn’t get anything useful out of this book. I just found the advice to be rather elementary and trite. I mean, YMMV. The book somehow has a 4.23 rating on Goodreads, so many people are getting useful advice from it. And that’s awesome! The message is a good one, and I hope it helps a lot of people. It just wasn’t for me. (hardcover, 2021)

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.11.23)

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim (★★★★☆)

Mia’s father is missing. He took her younger brother, Eugene, to the park, and only Eugene returned, bloody and in a panic. Eugene is disabled, however, and cannot speak so the mystery remains: Is Mia’s father alive and hurt in the park? Did a freak accident happen and he’s dead? Did he just take up and leave his whole family and life? That’s the mystery at the heart of this novel, but this novel is not a mystery. It’s a complex family story about racial identity (Mia is Korean-American with a white father and a Korean mother), the disability community and how we treat those who are so-called “nonverbal,” the theory of happiness, and being the sibling of a disabled child. Kim sets this story in the summer of 2020, and the pandemic is a full-fledged character in the novel. For me, I liked the way different parts of the pandemic were included in the story, but YMMV. There were times when I found that Kim got a little bogged down in the details of the story she was trying to tell, but mostly, I was in awe of how she weaved so many complex plotlines so effortlessly. I loved this story and this family. I ached for them as they tried to find out what happened to their father. And I love the emphasis on the disability community, specifically the nonverbal community, and how all of us can be doing so much better by them. A novel I certainly recommend! (hardcover from Book of the Month, 2023)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (★★★★★)

I reread this beloved classic with a whole bunch of other bloggers, and it was such a delightful time! I originally read this book for the first time in 2018 and I was astonished at how much I forgot in just five short years (or long? I mean, there was a whole pandemic in the middle of those years). Francie Nolan is such a beloved character to me, though, and I enjoyed following along on her journey from a young girl living in poverty with her parents and younger brother to a young woman on her way to college with a sweet beau by her side. This book remains one of my all-time favorites. (paperback, 1943)

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone (★★★★☆)

Ariel Pryce and her husband are newly married, and she joins him on a business trip to Lisbon. But the first morning they’re there, Ariel wakes up alone. Her husband is gone. There’s no note and he’s not answering his phone. What happened to him? And what will Ariel have to do to get him back? This thriller was a good one, and I found myself on the edge of my seat as I tried to figure out exactly what was going on. I liked all the twists and turns the book took and thought the final reveal to be so satisfying. However, I want to give a trigger warning that there is so much violence against women and sexual assault in this novel (including an on-page rape scene). All in all, a decent thriller that I would recommend if the trigger warnings aren’t dealbreakers for you. (library audiobook, 2022)

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I Read in August

I read 14 books in August, which is much, much more than I’ve been reading lately. I read a lot of fantastic five-star books and some duds, and also abandoned two books during the month (The Whispers by Ashley Audrain and The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan). I won’t go into too much detail about the books I read, lest this post becomes a million words long, but I will break this into sections: My Top Three Books of August, Other Books I Liked, and Books That Were Meh.

My Top Three Books of August

An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena (★★★★★) – This was a really fun mystery—the setting of an old hotel in the middle of a snowstorm was brilliant. This one had lots of twists and turns, and it was quite creepy at times! Add it to your list if you love a good thriller.

Something Wild & Wonderful by Anita Kelly (★★★★★) – Anita Kelly is quickly becoming an autobuy author for me, as both of her books have earned five stars from me! This one was delightful, involving two men falling in love while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I have a passing familiarity with thru-hiking, so it was fun to get a glimpse of it through this novel. The love story was so, so sweet, too.

Falling by TJ Newman (★★★★★) – This book has been everywhere lately, and now I know why. It was such a good, pulse-pounding thriller! It’s about an airline pilot who starts a flight and gets a message that his family has been taken hostage and he must crash the plane (filled with 100+ people!) to save his family. I could not get enough of this book, and I’m astonished it’s a debut.

Other Books I Liked

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (★★★★☆) – I enjoyed this book all about the different ways cults and cultish groups (like MLMs, startup culture, Instagram influencers, etc.) use language as a powerful tool of engagement. Amanda Montell knows her stuff, and I appreciate the way she broke down how language can have such a positive and negative influence on our lives, depending on the way words are wielded.

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frankel and Cecilia Kang (★★★★☆) – I’m not one to read a business book, but I’m endlessly curious about Facebook and the way it has become such a linchpin in our society. This book could be very dry at times, but I learned a lot about the way Facebook started and how it kept going through controversy after controversy.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (★★★★★) – I love a good time travel story. I don’t get bogged down in the details of how it is happening, which I think makes it easier for me to enjoy than it is for others. This novel was really about Alice and her relationship with her father. They had such a sweet relationship and I found myself really loving their interactions, both in the time before and present day. We read this for book club and everyone loved it!

Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends by Marisa G. Franco (★★★★☆) – I’m always here for a book about friendship. In this book, Dr. Franco discusses why we need friends, how we can make friends, how we can maintain our friendships, and more. I love that she used attachment theory to help us better understand how our own attachment styles can limit ourselves when it comes to friendship. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those lucky ducks with a secure attachment style.)

Love & Saffron by Kim Fay (★★★★☆) – This epistolary novel was such a delight! It follows two women exchanging letters back and forth in the 1960s. Joan is a single twenty-something who aches to have her own writing column while Imogen is in her late 50s and writes a monthly column for a magazine. This novel is pure and sweet and will definitely make you hungry with all of the recipe-swapping they do. I really enjoyed it.

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth (★★★★★) – This was a supremely satisfying thriller involving two sisters named Rose and Fern. Fern has sensory processing disorder and relies a lot on Rose to help her through life. And then Rose reveals to Fern that she wants to have a baby, but is having trouble getting pregnant. Fern decides then that she can have a baby for Rose… she just needs to find a man who can make that happen. There is a point in the novel when I started to realize what’s actually going on, and man, I just loved the way everything was revealed by the end. Such a well-paced thriller!

Books That Were Meh

Women Are the Fiercest Creatures by Andrea Dunlop (★★★☆☆) – This novel is billed as a feminist look at the tech startup world, but I really found all three women that the novel centers around to be pushovers. There’s Anna, who has recently divorced her husband of many years, Jake; Jessica, Jake’s new wife who is much younger than him; and Sam, Jake’s college girlfriend who has a few secrets of her own. As Jake prepares to take his social media company public, things start unraveling for everyone involved. It was fine, but nothing outstanding, and not one I’m rushing out to recommend.

To the Limit by Cindy Gerard (★★★☆☆) – This is a reread of a romantic suspense series published in the early aughts. It involved a woman and her ex-boyfriend teaming up to find the drugged-out daughter of a very rich man. There was plenty of action and a twisty-turning plot that kept my attention. Does it hold up for 2023 me? Not really. There is some dated language and Donald Trump references that didn’t age well.

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Manda Collins (★★☆☆☆) – This historical mystery involves a female newspaper columnist who is hellbent on solving a murder and a detective inspector who is annoyed as hell at her for disturbing his investigation. It’s got that satisfying enemies-to-lovers trope that I usually loved, but this one was just kind of bland. I didn’t feel the chemistry between the characters and found the mystery itself to be a bit convoluted.

Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne (★★☆☆☆) –  I usually enjoy a Lauren Layne romance, but this one was so bad! It involves a twenty-something socialite and a grumpy lawyer who live in the same apartment building in NYC. He thinks she’s flighty and materialistic, she thinks he’s boring. But somehow they get to know each other and realize they were wrong about one another. Blah, blah, blah, boring.

On the Hustle by Adriana Herrera (★★★☆☆) – Another book that was just fine, but not extraordinary in any way. I really found myself growing tired of the female main character and the way she constantly pushed away her love interest for a reason that just didn’t make sense to me. What she needed was some good, old-fashioned therapy, but the author never addressed that. (Be warned, friends, the sex scenes in this one are spicy! All of the chili peppers!)

What was the best book you read in August?