Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (5.16.22)

Happy Monday! I had a full, happy weekend that involved a puppy playdate, pool time with my mom, a 5K walk in a favorite park, a writing date with Mikaela, and finally (FINALLY!) starting Ted Lasso. Two episodes in and I am hooked. I can’t wait to watch more episodes today!

I’ve been on an abandoning streak this month and last week, I added two more books to my stack of abandoned May reads: Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey, a f/f romance that just wasn’t keeping my attention. I thought about powering through but I was so bored by the plot and annoyed by the characters so I gave it up. The other book was Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong, which I tried listening to on audio but it was just a bit too literary for my tastes.

Thankfully, the books I did keep reading were great reads: 4 or 5 stars! I guess this is why I feel no shame about abandoning books. Why read something that makes reading feel like a chore when I could be reading something that I love?!

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (★★★★☆)

This was such a fun YA thriller, and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series. This novel follows Stevie who has just started at Ellingham Academy, a private boarding school in Vermont for “the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists.” Stevie has come to the school with one plan: to solve the cold case of what happened to the wife and daughter of the founder of Ellingham Academy—they were kidnapped in the 1930s and never heard from again. Unfortunately, midway through her investigation, someone turns up dead on campus and Stevie has a new case to solve. This novel was really fun and propulsive. I liked that the author made Stevie a bit of a bumbling “detective,” which is to be expected because she’s just a kid. I didn’t know where the story was going, which is always fun for me, and I thought the ending was pretty excellent. There’s a love story interwoven in this novel and, y’all, I’m not here for it. It seems like a love triangle might be emerging (maybe? I hope so?), and I just want Stevie to see the light because this guy ain’t it.

The Maid by Nita Prose (★★★★★)

This book has been getting all of the buzz and I’m here to say: It’s 100% warranted. This book was excellent in every sense of the word. Nita Prose created a world with fully developed characters that I couldn’t help rooting for, most especially Molly Gray, the maid at the center of the story. This book is being categorized as a thriller but it’s really so much more than that. It’s about Molly, a hotel maid who has just lost her grandma—her only family—and is trying to make it through each day as best she can. She’s a little different (maybe she’s on the spectrum?) and takes her job very seriously. One day, while cleaning the room of one of their VIP guests, she encounters a dead body in a bed and soon becomes the prime suspect. Molly completely stole my heart from the very beginning of this novel and I found myself wanting to just give her a great big hug with every terrible thing that happened. She’s such a lovely character, someone who is so true to who she is because she doesn’t know there is any other way to be. And the way other hotel staff step up to help her clear her name made me so happy. This is a thriller, yes, but it’s mostly a heartwarming story about friendship, family, grief, and being yourself no matter what. I loved it so, so much.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (★★★★☆)

I picked up this slim collection for The Unread Shelf Project’s May prompt: read the shortest book on your shelves. At just 108 pages, it fits the bill and I read this in spurts over a few days. It’s one you could probably easily breeze through in one sitting, but I liked taking my time with it. Written during the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, The Fire Next Time consists of two letters: one to his nephew and one to the American people to caution them about the reality of racism. So many times, I had to stop and take in a sentence because it was just so powerful and impactful.

“It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all of the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”

What I’m Reading This Week

  • All the Feels by Olivia Dade (e-book) – Olivia Dade’s romances never let me down, and I love that her female main characters are always plus-size. We need more body diversity in our romances! I’m about halfway through this romance and loving it.
  • Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Souleika Jaouad (audio) – This book is a heavy one (about a woman who gets diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer at age 22), but it’s incredibly well-written and really hard for me to put down! The audiobook is read by the author and you can really feel her emotions as she reads. This will be a 5-star read, I’m sure of it.
  • Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (print) – I’m not sure right now is the best time to be reading this book, which takes place in the 1970s and involves a Black nurse working in a family planning clinic, but I’m going to give it a shot. I’ve heard great things about this book; I cracked it open last night, so I don’t have much to say about it just yet!

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (5.9.22)

Well, after having a great run of five-star reads, this week was a bit of a downer one. I abandoned two books—both romances. I abandoned Feel the Heat by Kate Meader at around page 80 because it just wasn’t keeping my attention and the story felt very convoluted. I also abandond Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma at around page 70 because, y’all, the plot was so bad and the writing was not much better. Why did I get this from BOTM?! Ugh. Waste of a credit for sure.

Anyway, let’s dive into my reads this week. Hopefully, next week will be a much better one for me!

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz (★★☆☆☆)

This novel had so much potential, but it was just so poorly executed. Hazel Sinnett has one goal in life: to become a doctor. Unfortunately, that’s not the path a woman growing up in the early 1800s can take, so she has to study and learn in secret. But what she needs most are bodies—corpses—to study. Luckily, a chance encounter with a resurrection man, someone who digs up bodies for a living, will give her exactly what she needs. But resurrection men are disappearing, the threat of Roman fever looms large, and Hazel also has this pesky little issue of an almost-fiance to worry about. A book about a woman trying to become a doctor in the 1800s is a fascinating premise, but my goodness, this book was just so boring for the first 60%. If I wasn’t reading this book for book club, I would have abandoned it but I kept trucking along because I hoped it might get better. It didn’t. In fact, it just got worse until there was a twist near the end of the book that made no sense and tanked my already “blah” impression of the book. I’m going to have some Strong Feelings at book club later this month!

Yours in Scandal by Lauren Layne (★★★☆☆)

Robert is a thirty-something mayor of New York City whose term is ending. He’s trying to figure out what’s next for him. Most people assume he will try to become governor to kick out the current guy who isn’t all that great. Then his campaign manager finds out that the current governor’s daughter, Addie, is now living under a different identity. In her early twenties, she lived a wild life of partying and drinking, behavior that’s not very becoming of a politician’s daughter. In the years since, Addie has reinvented herself, and now, all she wants is to live a life far outside of politics. When Robert hires Addie’s event planning company to throw a party at his home to celebrate the end of his term, sparks fly and secrets are revealed. It’s a sweet, uncomplicated love story that didn’t really hit me in the feels like I had hoped, but I did like the political setting and watching the love grow between Addie and Robert.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (audio) – I’m almost finished with this audiobook, just a few hours left to go. I’m really enjoying it!
  • The Maid by Nina Prose (print) – I just started this thriller but I’m fully invested already. The protagonist reminds me a lot of Eleanor Oliphant (from Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine), and I just want to befriend her immediately.
  • Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey (e-book) – I haven’t started this f/f romance yet, but I’m looking forward to sitting down with it soon. I hope it’s a good one!

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (5.2.22)

Happy Monday, friends! I have great news to share: my passport renewal was approved and I should get my new passport sometime this week. I never ended up paying for the expedited passport, and now I’m glad I waited because it turns out that I didn’t need it after all. Woohoo! Niagara Falls trip is a go.

Last week, I finished four books! A very good reading week for me, indeed. Three of those were five-star books. Have I become more lenient with my rating system this year? I’ve rated 17 out of 42 books five stars—40% of my reading this year. (!!!) Am I just picking books I know I will love? Am I being less critical of what I read? Who knows!

Here’s what I read last week:

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (★★★★★)

I read 70% of this book last Sunday and even stayed up late to finish it because I had to know how it would end! It was a fantastic dystopian novel, even though the setting felt more real life than an unimaginable future. Hannah lives in a post-pandemic world (a pandemic that rendered women who were diagnosed with the disease infertile) and now, abortion is fully illegal. What’s more, only the most serious convicted felons are imprisoned in this world. Other convicts are instead “chromed,” in which their skin is genetically altered to match the class of their crime for a period of time. Yellow is for low-class felonies and red is for murder. Hannah is a Red, as having an abortion is considered a murderous offense. This book was so propulsive and there were so many great twists and turns. It was published in 2011, so the plot feels oddly prescient for what’s in the news today. It has a pretty low Goodreads rating (3.6) and normally I wouldn’t read a book with such a low rating, but I’m glad I gave this one a try because I really, really loved it.

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (★★★★★)

This book took me almost the entirety of April to read, as I read it very slowly and carefully. This book is truly a masterpiece and such a unique way to tell the history of Black people in America. There are 80 essays from 80 different Black authors in this collection. Each essay covers a five-year span of history starting with 1619 and continuing through to 2019. The essays are short, maybe just a few pages long, and each writer takes their own unique spin on their essay. Maybe they discuss an important court case at this time, or an important Black figure, or how their own history intersects with that of someone born hundreds of years before them. The book is broken down into sections spanning 40 years and at the end of each section was a poem, some of which I skimmed and some of which touched me incredibly deeply. All in all, this book is an excellent addition to an anti-racism library and I encourage everyone to pick it up.

“But the past is close. The slave codes of 1705 are close. The past is filled with people who carried out evil acts with foresight and determination, supported by the complicity of their peers. It contains progress but just as many reactionary entrenchments of old power. White supremacy became the norm in America because white men who felt threatened wrote laws to foster it, then codified the violence necessary to maintain it. They can maintain it with the same intention today, if we allow it.” (p. 81)

The Lemon Sisters by Jill Shalvis (★★★☆☆)

Brooke and Mindy Lemon used to be close when they were younger but after Brooke was in a helicopter crash that almost took her life, she changed, left her hometown of Wildstone, and hasn’t been back in the six years since the accident. All of that changes when Mindy arrives on Brooke’s doorstep, frazzled and with her three kids in tow. Mindy needs a break from her life. Her husband works all the time and she’s worried he’s cheating on her, and being the sole caretaker of three children has caused a mental breakdown. So they decide to switch places for a few days: Brooke will take care of Mindy’s kids and Mindy can take a break. Brooke decides to go back to Wildstone with the kids and it’s there she has to come face-to-face with her past—and the guy she left behind. This story is quintessential Jill Shalvis, who is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors. It’s more about the women and the issues they need to work through than the romance, which many people might appreciate. I did love the themes of marriage after kids and asking for what you want, as well as healing from trauma and finding your way back to yourself. This would have been an easy 4-star read from me, but there was some fatphobic language that rubbed me the wrong way so I docked it a star because of that.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (★★★★★)

Well, the reviews were right: This book is a gem! It was such a delightful read with characters who were so easy to root for and an ending that made me smile. When Lillian receives a letter from her best friend Madison, asking her for a favor, she decides to drop everything and help out her friend. What Madison needs is for Lillian to take care of her twin stepkids who will be coming to live with her. Oh, and um… they might have a propensity to burst into flames when angry. The fire doesn’t hurt them, but can wreak havoc to the people and world around them. What I loved most about this book were the twins, Bessie and Roland, who are two sweet children who have had an unlucky lot in life and just need someone who is going to be in their corner. Lillian was also a character I really loved, especially her take-no-shit demeanor. All in all, an excellent read that will have a place on my favorites list.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz (print) – This is our May book club pick and I’m about 100 pages in. It hasn’t really grabbed my attention yet, so we’ll see how it goes.
  • Feel the Heat by Kate Meader (e-book) – My current romance, which I’m also not fully invested in yet. Might be a downer week for books!
  • Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (audiobook) – I’ve decided to give the Truly Devious series a go, after reading some great reviews. YA set at a private boarding school in Vermont? Sign me up!

What are you reading this week?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (4.25.22)

Happy Monday! I had a fabulous weekend where my Saturday was super busy and I lazed around all day Sunday. The perfect weekend, in my opinion. I have three books to review with you guys today—my April reading has been very, very slow and I’m falling way behind on my Goodreads goal. Oh, well! It’s all just for fun and I refuse to make reading a competition.

Let’s dive into the reviews, shall we?

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (★★★★★)

I don’t know why I thought this book was going to be a light-hearted YA novel because it most definitely wasn’t. Trigger warnings abound here, especially for suicide, depression, bipolar disorder, and death. In this novel, we follow Finch and Violet, two teens who are going through incredibly difficult times. Violet’s sister died in a car accident a few months ago and her parents seem to act like everything is back to normal, but she is still mired in grief. Finch has his own battles, namely with an undiagnosed mental illness that causes him to have high highs and low lows. (Likely bipolar disorder.) When Finch and Violet are paired together for a school project, they start to discover that they have a lot to learn from each other. This book was beautiful, gut-wrenching, and heart-warming. There is a twist near the end that I wasn’t fully expecting, and it took my breath away. Well done by the author! All the Bright Places is not a book I would recommend to everyone, but I would recommend giving it a shot if you can handle the triggers.

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (★★★★★)

Oh, how I loved this romance! It’s been really hard to find good f/f romances, and this was the best I’ve read. Delilah Green left Bright Falls after college, but now, 12 years later, she’s back to photograph her stepsister’s wedding. That means facing the family she left behind—her stepsister and stepmother who always made her feel out of place. What she doesn’t expect is to be hit on by her stepsister’s best friend, Claire, at a bar the first night in town, nor to start developing feelings for Claire. What follows is a really sweet love story between two women as well as a story of self-discovery and healing from familial trauma. Delilah’s fears of abandonment felt so true to my own experience, and I loved the way Claire continued to prove she was there for her. I thought this book was so well-written, perfectly plotted, and sexy as hell. I can’t wait to read more from this author!

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee (★★★☆☆)

Set in the early 1900s, The Downstairs Girl follows the story of a teenaged girl named Jo who is squatting in the basement of a printshop with Old Gin, a man who took her in when she was a baby. By day, Jo is a lady’s maid for a wealthy family and by night, she anonymously pens the Dear Miss Sweetie advice column for a newspaper. Dear Miss Sweetie not only doles out advice to young ladies, but also takes on race and gender issues affecting society at this time, which cause a backlash and threats to unmask the anonymous Sweetie. What I loved about this book is that I learned so much: about the suffragist movement and how exclusionary it was, about the way Asian people were treated during the Gilded Age, and about the way women were viewed in society at this time. There was so much I didn’t know! Like, I vaguely knew that white women excluded Black women and women of color from their suffragist movement, but man, to see it written so plainly in this novel truly brought this injustice into sharper focus. What I didn’t like about this book is that it tried to take on too much; there were so many different plotlines and things started to get a bit messy about midway through the book. I wasn’t exactly sure the point of the book: is it about race and gender during the Gilded Age, or about Jo’s own self-discovery as she tries to find out who her parents are? Is it a story about an Asian woman coming of age, or a discussion about segregation during this time? It was all a bit… messy. The best way to describe this book is that it’s a YA book that reads like a YA book. Which is fine! That’s the point. But if you like your YA to not read like YA, this isn’t the book for you.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (print) – I am nearly finished with this book! I’ve been dipping in and out of it all through April, reading a few essays every day. It’s an excellent collection and I’m really glad I picked it up.
  • When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (print) – I’m reading this book to fulfill the April prompt for the Unread Shelf Project, which is to read a book published by an indie press. It’s hitting a little too close to home based on what’s in the news right now (synopsis: in a post-pandemic society, women can be labeled as murderers for having abortions, which are fully illegal). The book was published in 2011, so it’s feeling a little too prescient. But it’s really good, too!
  • Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (audio) – I’m going to try to sneak in a third audiobook this month, and while this book wasn’t on my radar when it was published, a lot of trusted sources have raved about it so I’m going to give it a try. It’s only 7 hours on audio.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (4.11.22)

Happy Monday, friends! I had such a lovely weekend, especially considering that the weather cooled down dramatically. It seems like we always get a surprise cold front every April and it’s always much appreciated. I was even able to turn off my A/C for a bit, which was really nice. We’ll be back up in the 80s this week, but it was great to have this reprieve from the heat.

Last week, I finished two books and both were 4-star reads. A good reading week, indeed. Here are my reviews:

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins (★★★★☆)

I enjoyed this thriller, which can most definitely be categorized as a “popcorn thriller.” It’s a bit of a homage to Jane Eyre with Jane being a dog-walker in a rich neighborhood and Mr. Rochester (Eddie) being recently widowed when his wife and her best friend died in a boating accident. I loved the way the story played with the themes of Jane Eyre (which is one of the few classics that I really like!) within the bounds of a contemporary thriller. You’ll likely figure out where the story is going, but I still found it enjoyable.

The Switch by Beth O’Leary (★★★★☆)

I really enjoyed this contemporary novel, which is a bit of a cheeky nod to The Holiday. In this novel, Leena is a twenty-something who has been running on fumes since her sister’s death and when she botches an important presentation at work, her company forces her to take two months of paid leave. Eileen is 79, recently divorced after her no-good husband left her for someone else, and is ready to enter the dating world again. Leena who lives in a flat in London hatches a plan with her grandma Eileen to switch houses for two months. Eileen can live in London and have a few flings in the city and Leena can stay at Eileen’s home in a small, rural town and get away from her life for a time. It’s a sweet story that goes back and forth between Eileen and Leena’s points of view. Both stories were engaging and fun, and I just love a cast of characters that are in their eighties. We really do not get enough stories of people in this stage of life, and it was so refreshing. There was a lot of romance in this book, but it was a light touch and I think it added just enough to the story without being overpowering. There is a bevy of trigger warnings for this book, though—grief, domestic abuse, cancer, and death of a loved one—so take care if you do decide to read it.

‘Never been one for worst-case scenarios,’ Jackson says. He crouches to dip his roller in the tray; his wrists are flecked with paint now, new, brighter freckles. ‘When they happen, you cope. And it’s usually one you’ve not thought of that gets you, so why worry?’

God, what I would give to think like that. The sheer simplicity of it. (p. 179)

Same, girl, same.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?