Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (7.19.22)

Happy Tuesday, friends. Things feel a lot more hopeful and optimistic this week than they did last week. I am so very grateful for that! Living with an anxiety disorder is no joke, and every time an anxiety spiral strikes, I am reminded of that.

I didn’t have a ton of time for reading last week. Some of it was that I just wasn’t in the right headspace for reading and some of it was just a busier week in my life. But I still managed to finish two books and really liked both of them:

It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey (★★★★☆)

I’ve been burned by Tessa Bailey before, but a few trusted readers had good things to say about this book so I decided to give it a shot. I’m so glad I did! I really, really liked this contemporary romance where the main character felt like a play on Alexis Schitt of Schitt’s Creek. In this novel, Piper is an influencer/socialite who has gotten into too many scraps for her stepfather (a famous movie producer) to handle. So he sends Piper and her younger sister to a small fishing town in Washington to try to revive her late father’s dive bar. It’s there she is cut off from her old life, has to learn how to survive on her own, and meets a man who may change her world. Brendan is a sea captain (the same job that got her father killed) who doesn’t think much of Piper when she arrives and thinks she’ll hightail it out of town soon enough. But he’s surprised by her tenacity and strength, as she learns how to exist in a new world and revive her father’s bar. This novel fully tugged at my heartstrings and ugh, I just loved the love story between Piper and Brendan. They were so perfect for one another! I have some issues with this book, though. I felt like Brendan was pretty one-dimensional with zero flaws. He’s the kind of man that makes dating very, very hard because real people are not built like him. I just wanted a bit more personality from him. Secondly, the ending was fully ridiculous and over-the-top and a lot of it didn’t make sense with the way the characters were written leading up to these final scenes. But romance authors these days seem to put a lot of stock in these fully ridiculous endings (I wish they wouldn’t) so it is what it is. All in all, though, a fantastic romance and I’m excited to read the next book in the series soon.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo (★★★★★)

This book tries to answer the question of how we got to where we are today: escalations of white male rage, white male conservatism, and violence against Black people, people of color, and immigrants. And wow, does Oluo do an incredible job answering that question. This book takes on all pieces of our society that have been affected by white male mediocrity: politics, sports, higher ed, women in the workplace, social justice movements, etc. I was particularly aggrieved by the chapters on women in the workplace and women in politics because the injustices women have had to put up with because of white male mediocrity are endless and continuing. This book isn’t here to offer answers. It simply serves as a way for us to recognize how we have continued to lift up white male voices and forget the women and the people of color who are also engaged in our society. Only when we recognize that there is a problem can we begin to move forward. This is a wonderfully written book that I think is well worth a read.

It’s the expectation that many white men have that they shouldn’t have to climb, shouldn’t have to struggle, as others do. It’s the idea not only that they think they have less than others, but that they were supposed to have so much more. When you are denied the power, the success, or even the relationships that you think are your right, you either believe that you are broken or you believe that you have been stolen from. White men who think they have been stolen from often take that anger out on others. White men who think they are broken take that anger out on themselves.”

What I’m Reading This Week

  • The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson (audio) – I have a couple hours left in this audiobook (the second in Johnson’s Truly Devious series). I’m enjoying it a lot!
  • A Beastly Kind of Earl by Mia Vincy (e-book) – Man, I love Mia Vincy’s historical romances. Her covers are atrocious but the writing is exceptional. I’m 100 pages into this romance and loving it so far.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (print) – So many people have raved about this book! I have very high expectations, but I’m trying to temper myself. I just started it yesterday so I don’t have any opinions just yet.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (7.11.22)

Hi, friends. Happy Monday. Things feel really hard right now. A little over a week ago, my mom tested positive for Covid and we had to postpone all of her birthday celebrations (her birthday was on Friday). She’s doing ok, but dealing with intense fatigue and I can’t help but worry about her constantly. Add to that, we’re pretty sure my stepdad also has Covid now and I am very, very worried about him. I’ve spent a lot of time mired in “what-if” scenarios and downward spiraling. Case in point: Yesterday, I went to put gas in my car and my card didn’t work correctly and kept telling me to “please see cashier,” and I promptly burst into tears and cried all the way to the next gas station. (Where my card did work correctly.) Needless to say, I scheduled an emergency therapy appointment for this afternoon because I need to get my shit together.

Let’s talk about something much more fun, though: books! I finished three books last week, all of which I really liked:

Twice Tempted by a Rogue by Tessa Dare (★★★★☆)

I enjoyed this historical romance. It’s the second in a series and I read the first book so long ago (or so it seems) that I totally forgot how these stories were connected for a good 30% of the book. Obviously, with nearly any romance series, reading the books in order is not required. There is a very light sub-plot that carried from the first to the second, but it’s not crucial to the plot. In this story, Rhys has returned to the place he lived as a child after 14 years away and comes face-to-face with Meredith, the girl who used to follow him around constantly. Only Meredith is not a little girl anymore. She’s now the proprietor of the local inn, a widow, and single-handedly keeping their small town alive. I loved the banter between Meredith and Rhys, and while Rhys could get a little caveman-y at times, I liked that Meredith didn’t stand for it and made sure he knew that. Meredith was an outstanding character who was so easy to root for, and I’m so glad she got her happy ending.

The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas (★★★★☆)

In The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano, readers are taken on a journey through nine different ways Rose Napolitano’s life could go based on a conversation she has with her husband one morning. When they got married, they both were in agreement: They weren’t going to have children. Rose has never had that maternal instinct and knows becoming a mother would affect her career. But sometime along the way, her husband changed his mind so what is Rose going to do? Have a baby to save her marriage? Or insist that she’s not going to have a baby and lose her husband in the process? There are myriad ways Rose’s life can play out, and this book delves deep into all of them. The structure of the book could be chaotic at times as it wasn’t told in a linear fashion. Instead, each chapter brings in a new “life,” so you might read Rose Life 1 and then the next chapter is Rose Life 4 and the following is Rose Life 2. Sometimes, Rose’s lives are mixed in together in one chapter. At a certain point, I stopped worrying about which Rose I was reading and just enjoyed each chapter as a story. While I really enjoyed this book—it was well-written, propulsive, and a really fun take on the idea of different lives without bringing in a magical element—I had real issues with the ending and felt that the book sort of started falling apart near the end. But still, a wonderful story about something that needs to be talked about more: a woman’s decision not to have children.

You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn (★★★★☆)

I didn’t know much about Kal Penn before reading this book. I knew of him, but I’ve never watched any of his movies and it was only recently that I learned he left acting for a time to work in the Obama White House. But I always enjoy a celebrity memoir on audio, even better if they’re going to talk about working for Obama, so I picked up this book. It was really good! He discusses racism in Hollywood, starting with the 90s when an Indian actor getting cast on a show or movie usually meant adopting a really silly Indian accent. He talks about getting cast in his breakout role, how he came to help the Obama campaign in 2008 and later join his staff, and how his relationship with his now-fiance Josh bloomed. It was a really great memoir and it was made all the better by listening to the audio. Kal Penn reads it himself and he does a wonderful job.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (7.4.22)

Happy Monday, friends! And happy Independence Day? I guess. I’m finding it very hard to be patriotic for a country that doesn’t believe in my bodily autonomy, is trying to kill the planet as fast as possible, and doesn’t care about election integrity. BUT I DIGRESS.

I read some really good books last week, one of which will likely make my favorites list at the end of the year, so let’s dig into the reviews:

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon (★★★★★)

Oh my heavens, I loved this book so very much. It’s a story about love and loss, falling in love and heartbreak, and what happens when a girl can start seeing the entirety of a relationship play out in her head after seeing a couple kiss. In this book, Evie is dealing with the divorce of her parents who she thought had the perfect love story and has decided to swear off romance and romance novels forever. As she’s dropping off a bunch of her romances into a Little Free Library, a woman comes by and hands her a book called Instructions for Dancing. She doesn’t really know what to do with this book but there’s an inscription in the book for a nearby dance school. So she decides to visit the school to drop it off. What she doesn’t know is that she is about to change her life with this visit to the dance school. It’s there she is drawn into the world of dance, where she meets X, and where she finds herself again. It’s a beautiful story that may have you in tears at the end, but it was just so lovely. I really thought it was clever the way Yoon sprinkled in romance tropes throughout the book, from the way men are usually described in romances to all of those silly meet-cutes. I also really appreciated the way Yoon explored this idea that many, many relationships have a shelf life. There’s usually a beautiful beginning followed by a breakup, but it’s what happens during the middle that counts. The middle is worth it, even if the end is coming. I have a hard time recognizing that fact (I’m always like, “Why go on a date if it’s not going to lead to forever??”) and this book was a good reminder that even if a relationship does end, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t beauty and goodness in that relationship.

The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland (★★★★☆)

Loveday Cardew has a mysterious past, but it’s one she doesn’t share with anyone. And then she meets Nathan, a poet with a penchant for the absurd, and he seems to have a thing for her. But why? And why are all of these mysterious packages arriving at her bookshop, reminding her of her past? The past she desperately wants to leave behind. This book had a slow start and it was going to be a solid 3-star read for me. In the beginning, it was hard to understand the main character’s motivations and to feel much of a connection with her. But I think that was the point, and a genius decision on the part of the author. As Loveday began to open up to the people in her life, so too were the readers brought into her inner life and began to understand why Loveday acted the way she acted. There were so many times when I wanted to shake her, but the more I learned about her trauma and her motivations, the easier it was to understand why she acted the way she did. A brilliant book that was made even sweeter with the bookstore setting.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn (audio) – I’m a few hours into this audiobook by actor and former Obama staffer Kal Penn, and I am loving it. I love reading about the ins and outs of an actor trying to make it in Hollywood (although the racism he endured as an Indian actor trying to make it in the 90s is super infuriating).
  • Twice Tempted by a Rogue by Tessa Dare (e-book) – This historical romance by one of my faves is excellent so far. I anticipate it will be an easy 4-star read for me.
  • The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas (print) – I’m zooming through this fictional novel about the different paths a woman’s life can take when her husband suddenly decides he wants to have kids, while she is vehemently opposed to the idea. It’s really, really good so far.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (6.28.22)

Hi, friends! Another “What I’m Reading” post dropping on a Tuesday.

Last week, I finished three books and it was a mixed bag for me. No real standouts in this batch, but still a nice week of reading.

Pony by R.J. Palacio (★★★★☆)

I ended up really, really enjoying this novel and I can see why it’s so beloved by everyone. The novel is about a young boy Silas whose father is taken in the middle of the night by men that Silas just doesn’t have a good feeling about. So, with the help of his ghost friend Mittenwool and a pony that arrived shortly after his father was taken, Silas sets out on a journey to find and rescue his dad. The story has some fantastical elements, mostly the fact that Silas can see and interact with ghosts, but there was something really charming about it. I loved the relationship between Silas and Mittenwool (who was likely only a few years older than Silas) and there were some really sweet moments that melted my heart. A heartwarming story!

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite (★★★☆☆)

This was quite the slow-burn romance as I don’t think the characters even kissed until more than halfway through the story! Slow-burn romances aren’t typically my favorite but then again, I know an author is doing a great job of making me believe in the characters’ chemistry when I’m yelling at my Kindle, “Just tell her how you feel already!” In this sapphic historical romance, Penelope and Agatha are two forty-something women who get to know one another when Agatha needs Penelope to deal with a bee problem at her printshop. Penelope is a celebrated beekeeper and I learned so much about beekeeping (well, beekeeping in the 1800s) from this novel. I loved the care Penelope had for her bees; an insect I find more annoying and terrifying than beautiful and majestic. There were some over-the-top elements in this book and way too many sections about the King and Queen and sedition battles, but overall, it was an enjoyable romance to read.

Outlawed by Anna North (★★★☆☆)

What a perfect book for me to read last week! This novel is about a dystopian society that takes place in the 1890s. In this America, a mysterious Flu has wiped out most of the population and now a woman’s sole role is to get married and have lots of children. Women who cannot get pregnant within a reasonable time frame (usually a year) are cast out of society or labeled as witches and killed. I know, I know. It doesn’t seem like the perfect book right now, but hold on. The novel centers around Ada, a young woman who gets married but finds out she’s barren. She’s soon cast out of her husband’s home and when there are rumblings that Ada might be a witch, her mom ships her off to a nunnery. It’s there that she learns about Hole in the Wall, a gang of outlaw women who are just like her—barren and cast out. She joins the gang and finds a group of women and nonbinary people who become her new home. There was a lot I liked about this book, mainly the cast of characters and the setting. I’ve never read a Western before! But there were some things about it that rubbed me the wrong way and I was especially unsettled by the ending. After I finished the book, I was perusing the reviews on Goodreads and this one by a Goodreads user named Renae was really eye-opening. The review begins by calling the book out for toxic white feminism and the reviewer made a really strong case for how problematic the book is. It’s the kind of book I would hesitate to put into anyone’s hands, but even still, I enjoyed the novel itself and it was what I needed to read in the days after Roe v Wade was struck down.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon (audio) – I’m more than halfway through this YA romance and oh, it’s just so wonderful. I’m really loving it, and I’m especially loving the way Yoon is playing with the romance genre and themes within it in this book.
  • The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland (e-book) – I just started this novel, which has been languishing on my Goodreads TBR since 2018. I don’t have too many thoughts about it right now, so stay tuned. 🙂

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (6.20.22)

Hi, friends! Long time, no talk, eh? I had a lovely time away on my trip to Niagara Falls with my mom and I cannot wait to recap the trip on the blog and show you guys all the amazing photos I took. The Falls are truly breathtaking! Unfortunately, two days after coming home from my trip, it finally happened: I tested positive for Covid. Womp, womp. I made it two years and three months at least?! I’ve spent the past five days laying on the couch watching TV and reading, and while my symptoms haven’t been pleasant, it could have been much worse and for that I am super grateful. I’ll be writing a post all about my experience with Covid, though, so stay tuned. 🙂

Today, I have a ton of book reviews for you! I didn’t get nearly any reading done on my vacation but a Covid quarantine meant I was able to just lay around and read as much as I wanted to! (I’m not always able to read when I’m sick, but I was able to with Covid—a silver lining if there ever was one.) Let’s dive into the reviews, shall we?

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane (★★★★☆)

I enjoyed this YA story that deals with dark themes—eating disorders, suicide, grief, and depression, to name a few—and is interwoven with a sweet love story that keeps things from feeling too dark. Zander is spending her summer at Camp Padua, a camp for at-risk teens. Her parents hope that being in a different environment will be a balm for her after a tragic event. It’s there she meets people who may seem “crazy” at the outset, but wind up becoming the people she can be the most herself with. It’s a story about friendship and love and loss and how to keep moving forward when life feels unimaginably hard. I thought the ending was a little too cutesy-perfect, but it was also nice to see these teens who have been dealt a rough hand get a happy ending.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (★★☆☆☆)

Oof, unpopular opinion alert! I did not like this book. I should have trusted a good friend who told me it was boring and not worth my time, but then other people raved about it, so I wanted to give it a shot. I shouldn’t have bothered, quite honestly. The Plot is about Jacob Finch Bonner who is a struggling author teaching at a third-rate MFA program. One of his students in the program brags about this incredible idea for the book he’s writing, which annoys Jacob. This student promises that the book will be a bestseller, will get a movie deal, etc. And then the student dies… and Jacob’s like, “Hey, why don’t I write this book and become a famous best-selling author instead?”

There was just so much I didn’t like about this book. Jacob, for one, was such a boring, blah, and one-dimensional character. He was just not someone I wanted to root for. I found all the long-winded soliloquies about the writing craft and how important writing is to be so very mind-numbing. I am just not here for people who are so precious about writing. (These are often the people who also find literary fiction to be the best, and maybe only, genre to read.) The foreshadowing in the book was so heavy-handed that I could see the ending coming from a mile away, and I’m not even someone who’s good at guessing the ending to thrillers. All in all, this book did not work for me at all.

Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn (★★★☆☆)

I’m sad that I didn’t love this book as much as I thought I would, as I had such high hopes for Penelope and Colin’s romance! I liked the story but I really did not enjoy Colin’s character. He was moody, temperamental, and cynical at times. It seemed like every time Penelope did something that Colin didn’t think was “appropriate,” he lost his temper at her and it was disappointing. He’s written as such a fun, light-hearted, sweet man in the Netflix show and I wanted more of that character from him. Penelope was a wonderful character to root for, though, and I enjoyed her character arc throughout the novel, especially as her secret comes to light (I won’t spoil it, but if you watch the show, you know what it is). And even though I didn’t love Colin in this book, there is an interesting idea in this novel of what happens when you start to truly get to know the person you’ve loved from afar and recognize that they are as human as you and have their own set of vulnerabilities and weaknesses and issues to contend with.

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier (★★★☆☆)

For me, this was a very uneven thriller that struggled from a lack of focus. The story starts with a kidnapping: Marin and Derek’s four-year-old son Sebastian is kidnapped a few days before Christmas at a busy shopping plaza. The story then moves forward one year; Sebastian is still missing but the trail to find him has gone cold. Marin and Derek are still married but living seemingly independent lives. Then, Marin finds out that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman and this seems to spark something in her. She may have lost her son, but she’s sure as hell not going to lose her husband, too, so she has to figure out what to do about her husband’s side piece. The story moves back and forth between Marin’s point of view and McKenzie’s, the woman Derek is having an affair with. And honestly, I was simply bored by the whole plot up until the last 50 pages. It didn’t feel like it was going anywhere, the whole kidnapping plot faded to the background, and all of the characters were kinda blah and one-dimensional. Thankfully, those last 50 pages saved the book because the twist at the end was so very good! I was really impressed with the way the author revealed the twist and the way it all came together in the end. I just wish the author had given us a bit more excitement during the first 250 pages because it was such a slog until the end.

Almost Just Friends by Jill Shalvis (★★★★☆)

I really enjoyed this contemporary romance! It was the kind of book where I felt bereft when I finished it because I didn’t want to be done with these characters. The novel follows Piper who has spent most of her life taking care of her younger brother and sister. Their parents died when Piper was a teenager and while they were in the care of their grandparents, Piper had to step up into the mother role for her siblings. Now, her siblings are off on their own and Piper is finally ready to live a life of her own: she wants to sell the house her grandparents owned and leave their small town in California to attend medical school in Colorado. And then her siblings come home, both harboring major secrets that have the potential to ruin all of Piper’s best-laid plans. Not to mention, Piper’s elderly neighbor’s son has just arrived back in town and he also has the potential to ruin her plans with his tall, dark, handsome, and steady presence. It’s a story about family and sacrifice and, yes, plans. And also love, loss, grief, and learning to live with that grief. I really, really enjoyed this novel.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Pony by RJ Palacio (audio) – I am so close to finishing this audiobook… just about an hour left. I’m not loving it as much as everyone else seems to (sensing a theme in my reading lately?), but we’ll see how the ending plays out.
  • The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite (e-book) – I just started reading this f/f historical romance so I don’t have many thoughts about it yet. But I’m hoping I enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the last book of hers I read!
  • Outlawed by Anna North (print) – This book has a low Goodreads rating (3.5) but maybe I’ll end up enjoying it more, since I’m in a weird reading mood these days.

What are you reading?