Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (10.17.22)

Happy Monday, friends! Whew… October has been a very slow reading month for me. We’re halfway through the month and I’ve only finished three books! It’s been a busier-than-usual month with lots of things going on, and it leaves a lot less time for reading than usual. But that’s life, isn’t it? And I don’t mind being busy right now. It’s feeling very good. But I do hope that the second half of October will allow for more reading time!

I have three book reviews for you guys today: a book I liked, a book I loved, and a book I didn’t care for. The full gamut! Let’s discuss.

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson (★★★★☆)

The third book in Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious series provides a sense of closure of everything that’s happened to the students at this elite academy in Vermont, and allows them to move forward with their lives. The majority of the novel takes place during a snowstorm, with a bunch of the students (including Stevie, our main character, and her friends) snowed in and just trying to figure out how to pass the time. Except Stevie uses this time to continue her detective ways, and she really wants to figure out the reason behind all the crazy things that have been happening to students at this academy. All in all, I thought this was a really great way to wrap up the series (although a fourth book in the series released this year, so I can still follow my favorite teenage detective, yay!) I think the author could have pared it down a bit (there was a lot going on and so many different storylines and characters to keep track of!), but I still really enjoyed reading this novel and I’m looking forward to what’s next for Stevie!

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (★★★★★)

Oh man, how I loved this book! It is going to be extremely hard to pick an overall favorite book of the year because I have read so many excellent ones, and Lessons in Chemistry definitely falls into that category. This novel is about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist. Unfortunately, Elizabeth is trying to break into the chemistry field in the 1960s, a time when women were not welcome in scientific spaces. Instead, after a series of mishaps, she finds herself hosting a cooking show for housewives—but she decides to put her own spin on it, showing her audience just how much chemistry is involved in cooking and how you can utilize chemistry’s basic building blocks to make incredible food for your family and maybe change your life as well. This book is delightful in so many different ways, between Elizabeth herself, her highly intelligent dog Six Thirty, and the friends Elizabeth makes along the way. However, you should also know that there are some harrowing things Elizabeth goes through. After all, she’s working in a male-dominated industry in the 1960s, a time when rape, sexual harassment, and misogyny claims were not taken seriously. I knew that there were going to be some really hard things in this novel, but it felt really, really important to include them and really, really true to the experiences of women like Elizabeth. It’s not easy to read about, but it’s something that should be talked about more. And the least I can do, as a woman who has benefitted greatly from all of the women who came before me, is read their stories. (Yes, this is about a fictional chemist, but the difficulties she experienced are not.)  All in all, though, I really enjoyed this novel and could not get enough of the characters or the story. A new favorite!

Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur (★★☆☆☆)

I don’t know why I keep reading Alexandria Bellefleur’s books. I am sure she is a lovely person and I am so glad she is writing queer romances, but man oh man, her books are just so bland to me. These characters do nothing for me and I don’t even get excited for the characters to kiss or have sex or profess their love. There’s just always something missing for me, where it’s hard for me to believe in the romance. In this novel, Margot is reunited with her first love Olivia when she learns that Olivia is the wedding planner for the wedding where she is going to be the “Best Man.” Cue awkwardness! Even worse, Olivia suddenly discovers she needs a place to stay after a mishap at her apartment and, of course, why not just bunk with Margot for a few weeks? Sparks fly when they become roommates and the women are forced to deal with their past to move forward into the future. This novel requires suspending your belief again and again and again… and it all just felt forced and unrealistic. Near the end, I found myself skimming the book just so I could be finished with it. A rave review, eh?

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

September Reading Wrap-Up

September was an odd reading month for me. I didn’t make it to double digits in books read, which is always a secret goal of mine. But the books I did read were fantastic and many will make my favorites list at the end of the year. It was an odd month with a vacation, an unexpected evacuation, and a really busy month of work, so I’m not too bummed about it. I just know that I feel better when I’m reading a lot, so I’m trying to figure out ways to make that happen.

Books Read

1) Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau (★★★★★ – e-book, Amazon) – A wonderful coming-of-age story about a girl who becomes a nanny and the family she works for.

2) Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey (★★★★★ – e-book, Libby) – A contemporary romance that had a lot to say about the stories we tell ourselves.

3) Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery (★★☆☆☆ – print, owned, indie bookstore) – A book about a young girl who goes to live with her aunt after her father dies; it did not age well.

4) A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus (★★★★★ – audiobook, Libby) – A really sweet middle-grade novel about three orphaned siblings and their quest to find a new family.

5) A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy (★★★☆☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – A historical romance that just didn’t hold my attention like I hoped.

6) The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare (★★★☆☆ – print, owned, Book of the Month) – A powerful novel about a girl in Nigeria who aches for education and a way to share her voice with the world.

7) You Got Anything Stronger? by Gabrielle Union (★★★★★ – audiobook, Libby) – A new essay collection from actress Gabrielle Union that includes poignant essays about motherhood, aging, marriage, working in Hollywood, and more.

8) Pint of Contention by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – A sweet contemporary romance novel about a man who’s hiding a secret and the woman he falls in love with.

9) Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (★★★★★ – print, owned, Amazon) – An excellent sports novel about a woman who returns to the world of professional tennis after five years away to take her Grand Slams record back.

Book Challenges

1) Book Club: For book club, we read Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau, which we all pretty much loved. It was a 5-star read for nearly all of us, and it was fun talking with everyone about the different parts we loved about the novel.

2) Unread Shelf Challenge: The prompt for September was “a book that represents the reader you want to be,” which, hello, talk about an existential crisis! The reader I want to be, though, is someone who reads widely, reads about cultures different than mine, and reads diversely. So I picked up The Girl with the Louding Voice, which was such an impactful read but booooy was it heavy.

3) Goodreads Challenge: Oops, I didn’t read anything for my Goodreads Challenge this month! We’re getting to crunch time so I need to read a lot more books in October than I did in September.

Book Stats

  • # of books read: 9
  • # of pages read: 3,154 pages
  • Genre breakdown: Romance (33%), Fiction (33%), YA/Middle Grade (22%), and Nonfiction (11%)
  • Format breakdown: e-book (44%), print (33%), and audiobook (22%)
  • Fastest read: Mary Jane (4 days)
  • Slowest read: The Girl with the Louding Voice (11 days)
  • Star average: 4.1
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 22%
  • Abandoned books: 0 (hooray!)
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 7 books behind schedule. (I am not planning on catching up on this goal. Now I’m hoping to read at least 125 books!)

Superlatives of September

  • Favorite book of the month: Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Favorite romance of the month: Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey
  • Most disappointing read of the month: Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery
  • The book that totally lived up to the hype for me: Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
  • The book that was the hardest to get through: The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (10.5.22)

Happy Wednesday! After a rather lackluster reading update last week, I’m coming to you today with three excellent reads, two of which will definitely make my favorites list at the end of the year. I’m excited to talk about these books, so let’s dive in:

You Got Anything Stronger? by Gabrielle Union (★★★★★)

Another excellent essay collection from Gabrielle Union. This book starts with a long chapter about Union’s struggle to conceive a child and ultimately deciding to use a surrogate. It was deeply personal and raw, and I found myself tearing up as I listened to Union express how painful it was to not be able to carry her own child and how scared she was during the entire pregnancy. One of the most powerful and moving essays in this book was Union talking about her stepchild’s decision to come out as trans. It was so, so beautiful to witness the way Gabrielle and her husband Dwyane Wade tried so hard to get this right, to make it a coming-out story that was healthy and open and honest. I want to shove this book into everyone’s hands for that essay alone. Throughout the novel, Gabrielle talks about aging, finding that elusive work/life balance, motherhood, and working in Hollywood. She also includes some really poignant essays about racism, including the time she found herself in a Nazi bar in Croatia (in 2019!!) and basically had to run for her life to escape a bunch of white supremacists. This essay collection is truly outstanding and I hope she continues writing. She has a lot to say and I’m here for all of it.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (★★★★★)

I think I might have a new favorite TJR book. Carrie Soto Is Back was such a fun read, and I loved every minute I spent with Carrie, on and off the tennis court. When this novel begins, Carrie has been retired from professional tennis for six years. Her record of winning 20 Grand Slams (the most by a female tennis player) hasn’t been touched, but then, while she sits in the stands at the U.S. Open, she watches 30-year-old Nicki Chan take her record from her. That doesn’t sit well with Carrie so, at the age of 37, she decides to re-enter the world of professional tennis and take her record back. You guys, this book was so, so good. It was fast-paced, exciting, and filled with fully formed characters who I ended up loving. The thing about Carrie, though, is that she is not a very likable character. She’s ruthless, cold-hearted at times, intense, and solely focused on being the best. It’s not about having fun or being the best she can be; she has to be the best in the world or her whole legacy is tarnished. While she could be infuriating at times, I couldn’t help falling in love with her. She was such an amazing, strong, well-rounded character, and I loved the way TJR explored the myth of the perfect female sports heroine. There’s this idea that our sports heroines need to package themselves in this gracious, accommodating way to make them palatable to us. Why do we even need that? Why is it so necessary that we can relate to our sports heroes, that we need that in order to root for them? It’s an interesting question that TJR attempts to answer during this book, and I think she did a fantastic job.

Pint of Contention by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆)

This was a really sweet contemporary romance that also dealt with heavier themes, such as ALS and grief. In this novel, Maggie has been hired as an executive consultant to figure out why King’s Creamery (an ice cream brand on par with Ben & Jerry’s) is bleeding money. She rents a house next door to Ryan, who happens to be George King’s (of King Creamery fame) stepson, and a hunky fireman to boot. When a newspaper expose reveals Maggie’s real reason for being in town, she becomes enemy No. 1, as everyone thinks she’s there to recommend huge layoffs. (And in this town, King’s Creamery is the largest employer.) So Ryan proposes a solution: he’ll pretend to date her and, in doing so, let the townspeople know she’s not to be messed with. While I ended up loving the way things turned out for Maggie and Ryan, I will say that there’s a twinge of misogyny in their relationship. There were times when I really did not like Ryan; he was holding a lot back from Maggie, but expecting her to be forthright and honest at all times. He could be a bit of an asshole, and while I’m glad Maggie saw through his asshole-y ways, I also expect better from my male romance heroes and he just wasn’t it.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.29.22)

Hello from Ft Lauderdale! My mom, stepdad, and all of our pets evacuated on Tuesday to escape Hurricane Ian. I live in a mandatory evacuation zone, as do my mom and stepdad, so we booked an Airbnb on Monday night, prepped our homes, packed up the pets, and took a 5-hour journey to the southeast side of the state! It’s been a wild week, one I will be posting about next week once all of this mess is behind us. (Wonder of wonders, the Tampa Bay area once again escaped a direct hit by Hurricane Ian. How do we keep getting so lucky?! A hurricane hasn’t hit our area in over 100 years!)

For now, I’m sticking to my original posting plan: book reviews! I had hoped to get this post up yesterday but it didn’t happen. Neither of these books is going to make my favorites list, but YMMV.

A Lie for a Lie by Helena Hunting (★★★☆☆)

A Lie for a Lie had the potential to be a wonderful romance but it included my least-favorite twist in these kinds of books (telling you this twist would be a spoiler, so unfortunately, I can’t) and a set of over-the-top parents who engaged in some of my least-favorite behaviors (no, we’re not asking fathers for their permission to marry their daughters anymore). This was a second-chance romance about Rook and Lainey. Rook is a popular hockey player who has been known as a bit of a ladies’ man and is off on his usual Alaskan adventure. Typically, he comes to his cabin in Alaska every summer with his brother to get away from it all, but his brother can’t come this year so it’s just him. Lainey is a marine biologist working on a PhD who comes to Alaska to study wildlife. Rook and Lainey share a very bumpy airplane ride together that bonds them, and then, when they arrive at the airport and Lainey finds out she can’t reserve a rental car, Rook offers to take her to her cabin. (A great premise for a terrible thriller.) Alas, this is a romance novel so nothing nefarious happens. Rather, the two of them spend the month falling in love. And then… Rook has to leave Alaska unexpectedly and wouldn’t you know it: Neither of them leaves any way to communicate afterward. No cell phone numbers, not even a last name. A year later, they reconnect when Rook finds out that Lainey is working at the same aquarium where he’s attending a kid’s birthday party. And, well, I’m sure you know what happens from there. This wasn’t a terrible romance, but I just wasn’t a fan of the far-fetched plot nor did I care for many of the characters. (Open-door romance.)

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare (★★★☆☆)

Oh, you guys. I wanted to love this book so much more than I did. It was beautifully written, a heartbreaking yet also uplifting story about a young girl in Nigeria who simply wants to find her “louding voice.” Adunni wants what girls her age don’t get: a chance at education and a chance to use her voice for good. Instead, at age 14, she is married off by her father to a man three times her age. I showed my naivete here, as I was astonished that this wasn’t a historical fiction novel; instead, it was written in present day, which means these atrocities of girls being married off to much older men and the human trafficking that ensues is a reality for so many Nigerian girls. It’s horrifying. While this book had such a big story to tell, it was one that was very easy for me to set down. And at night, I found myself not wanting to sink into the story, knowing it was just going to break my heart. All in all, it’s a story that I definitely think people should read, and I wish I was in a better headspace to appreciate it.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

My Evolution as a Reader

I don’t remember when I started reading or when I got my first library card, but reading has always been a core part of my identity. Unlike other people who may have fallen off in high school and college when assigned reading was at its peak, I’ve always come back to my books when I need peace and an escape. I was lucky to have a mother who instilled a love of reading in me, and who was always happy to take me to the library on the weekends so I could fill up my arms with new books to read. Let’s discuss my evolution as a reader today, shall we? What was 10-year-old Stephany reading and how does that compare to 20-year-old Stephany and 30-year-old Stephany? It’s been a wild ride.

Elementary School

Once I was old enough to pick out books on my own, I gravitated toward genre series fiction. Give me all of your books about bratty twins, 13-year-old baby-sitters, champion gymnasts, orphans, horseback riders, and kids solving mysteries. I was Here For All Of It. Some of my favorite series included:

  • Sweet Valley Kids/Twins
  • The Baby-Sitter’s Club
  • Goosebumps
  • The Gymnasts
  • The Boxcar Children
  • The Saddle Club
  • American Girl
  • Sleepover Friends

Just looking at the covers of all my favorite book series from my childhood makes me want to reread all of the books, but I know they won’t live up to my memories. (I tried reading the first book in the Sweet Valley High series a few years ago and y’all, Jessica and Elizabeth are TERRIBLE.)

Every Saturday, I would check out 12 books from the children’s section (the most I was allowed to check out at one time) and read them all throughout the week so that I was ready for a new set of 12 books by the next Saturday. At some point during this journey, my mom started making me read one biography every week as a way to balance out all of the silly genre fiction I was reading. But that was fun, too, because I got to read about my favorite gymnasts, figure skaters, and people from history. No prob!

Middle School

I continued reading many of the same series in middle school, although I added a few young-adult series to my repertoire, like Sweet Valley High. Technically, though, my mom didn’t want me reading Sweet Valley High since she thought the content wasn’t appropriate for a 12-year-old. Now that I know the content of some of those books, I don’t blame her. They were dealing with some crazy issues!

At this time, I found myself starting to gravitate toward Christian fiction, too, like the Mandie series and the Christy Miller series. I enjoyed these books so much and loved that they were discussing faith and religion in a way that meant a lot to me. The Christy Miller series, especially, dealt a lot with purity culture. Oh, and of course, I went crazy for the Left Behind series. There was a “kids” version of the series (called Left Behind: The Kids) and I had the entire series in paperback and flew through it so quickly. I wasn’t one to read thriller-type books like this, but it was such a phenomenon in the late 90s/early aughts and I was fully aboard the train.

I don’t think I advertised my love for reading in middle school. I remember that we had SSR (silent sustained reading) periods once a week school-wide, and we were encouraged to bring a book from home. I think I started bringing my own book towards the end of middle school, but was too embarrassed about my love for reading to do so in 6th and 7th grades. My language arts and reading teachers had big bookshelves bursting with books that we could “check out” during class time, so I would usually pluck a book off those shelves during SSR periods.

High School

My love for reading—and my love for hiding my reading—continued into high school. At this point, I started reading more YA books and I remember really, really loving the Love Stories series. Did anyone read this series in the 90s/early aughts? They were like teenage Harlequin romances and I couldn’t get enough of them! My library had a whole rack of these stories and I read them like candy, probably reading some of them multiple times. I also kept reading Sweet Valley High and other genre series about people in high school. I also read a lot of Christian fiction—anything Robin Jones Gunn or authors in that vein.

One of my favorite memories of this time is that my mom started to let me read adult fiction. We would still go to the library together on a near-weekly basis, and we would split off to our separate sections of the library: me to the teen section and my mom to the adult section. And when I was done, I would join her in the adult section where she would usually have a few books picked out for me. Often, these were Christian fiction books, which is the majority of what she read at the time. I fell in love with Terri Blackstock, Tracie Peterson, Dee Henderson, Karen Kingsbury, Kristen Heitzmann, Beverly Lewis, and so much more. I loved these books and still have a fondness for them, although I don’t think they’d hold up to my reread as the person I am today. But I’m glad I got to read these books when I did; they truly fueled my love of reading.

This was also the time I discovered the world of romance novels, and romance novels that had S E X in them. It started when I found a set of romance novels in my great-grandma’s house. I don’t remember why I was there or how I found the novels, but I spent one afternoon laying on the bed in her guest room and devouring a book that involved a man delivering a woman’s baby on the side of the road, and then the two of them reconnecting a few months later. He spent a lot of time kissing her breasts, that’s what I remember most from that book! Ha. It was fascinating to me. I found another romance novel that was similar to that one, but involved a whole bunch of interconnected stories and I basically just skipped to all the sexytimes. (Horny teenager alert!) It was around this time that I also found out that my mom loved Harlequin romances, but would hide them from me. I found her hiding place, though, and during summers, I would spend my days devouring these romances and carefully setting the book back in her hiding place so she didn’t know I was reading them. Ha!

It seems funny to me to think about how women hid their love of romance novels at this time. It was a different time, though, and the romance genre wasn’t what it was today. Plus, my mom and I were conservative Christians and we didn’t even TALK about sex. (Her version of “the talk” was to hand me a book about it.) I’m sure she felt like she was doing something wrong by reading a romance novel, or maybe she didn’t but didn’t think those books were appropriate for me at that time. Who knows?!

College

I maintained a pretty good reading pace in college, but college is where I struggled a lot with my faith. As a result, I read a TON of Christian self-help books during this time. It was prime time for women in their thirties to write books to girls in their late teens/early twenties about how to stay pure and how to “fall in love with Jesus.” And listen, those books were what I needed at that time. They gave me hope and guidance and inspiration. But they also made me question my life and if I was really being pure by reading romance novels. After all, wasn’t I supposed to save myself for marriage? Why was I reading books where unmarried people were having sex? Throughout this time, I would decide that I was no longer reading romances, only books written by Christians. And then… I would miss my romances. So I would go back to them, and then feel so guilty, as if I had failed my future husband and God and myself by reading these “secular” books. Ugh. My poor little college self! (There were Christian romances but ugh, they were so cheesy and poorly written, and I just couldn’t get through them.) My reading life was very chaotic at this point, with a lot of internal angst on what I “should” be reading.

And Beyond

Not much changed after college, and I continued to read the same books as always: Christian books with the occasional romance thrown in there. I didn’t even talk about books much on my blog! As an example, in 2020, I wrote 50 blog posts in my “Books” category. For the first three years of blogging, the only book posts I wrote were book reviews for TLC Book Tours (remember those, friends?!). It wasn’t until 2014 that I started writing monthly book review posts and started to be a little more vocal about my reading life.

In real life, I was still pretty quiet about my love for reading. I didn’t advertise about it, and though I always wanted to bring a book with me to work to read on my lunch break, I felt silly doing so. I guess I just didn’t want to be the weirdo who sits alone on her lunch break reading. Once I had more friends at work, though, and they happily advertised their love for reading and would read at their desks during their lunch breaks, it was almost as if I had the permission to do so myself. This was also around the time when Bookstagram became more of a big thing on Instagram and I started listening to more bookish podcasts. And talking about books with other people meant getting book recommendations and learning that there was a whole wide world of books out there beyond what I was reading. (I also think being part of TLC Book Tours and joining a book club helped me, too, as it introduced me to many books I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up myself.)

Today, I feel like I read much more widely than ever before. I’ve stopped reading Christian books entirely because, well, the Christian church has changed a lot in the past decade and I want very little to do with it now. I still love romances and no longer feel guilty for reading these books anymore, even the ones with very steamy sex scenes. But I also love thrillers and mysteries and literary fiction and YA and contemporary fiction and historical fiction and memoirs and social justice books. I love that I try to seek out experiences and cultures that are so different than my own. I love that I can be a recommendation source for others. And I love knowing that, in another decade, my reading life may look completely different than it does today. Readers are people and, as we evolve, so too does our reading.