Stephany Writes

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?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (4.4.22)

Happy Monday! I had a really lovely weekend—I snuggled itty-bitty Eleni (she’s so smol!), went to a pet race with the dogs, and caught up with my cousin and her toddler at a nearby park. It was a weekend full of people and my heart is very full.

I have three book reviews for you today! I don’t think any of these will be making my favorites lists, but they were still interesting, engaging reads. Let’s get into it:

Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson (★★★★☆)

What an excellent essay collection! In this book, prolific author Michael Eric Dyson pens letters to people who have lost their lives to violence. From Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner to Emmett Till and Sandra Bland, he devotes his words to them, to discuss the way racialized violence has continued to proliferate throughout society since their deaths. I found his essay reliving the moments of George Floyd’s death particularly powerful, a true indictment of the system that failed Floyd. There’s really no solution here, which some people find fault with. But what truly is the solution, when Black people are still being killed by police and vigilantes today? It’s a powerful essay collection where you can truly feel the frustration and pain in Dyson’s words.

Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by Jeff Chu (★★★☆☆)

I liked but did not love this book. Perhaps if I read it when it was published, I would have appreciated it more. It was written nearly a decade ago, and man, I just have to have hope that things have gotten better for queer people in the church. In this book, Jeff Chu travels throughout the United States on a spiritual pilgrimage to investigate how to be queer and Christian. From big cities to small towns, mega-churches to tiny congregations, Chu speaks to queer people who have chosen to remain involved in a church and a faith that wants them to be something they are not. It’s sad and frustrating and an indictment on the church as a whole. In his travels, he meets men who have decided to remain celibate, men who married women even though they are gay, and so many people who were kicked out of leadership positions in their churches because of their queer identities. There was very little hope and light in this book, and for me, it just reminded me why it took me so long to embrace my own queer identity: The church doesn’t accept you unless you are hetero. And I deeply desired being accepted by the church (and by God). I am grateful to Chu for taking on this mission, and for talking to people who think the way he lives is an abomination to Christianity. And I just hope and pray the church becomes more and more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. (A note of hope: I checked and there are 21 queer-affirming churches within driving distance of where I live.)

One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare (★★★☆☆)

This was a good historical romance, but it was much too long (nearly 400 pages). I loved the way the relationship between Amelia and Spencer developed in a natural way, from friendship to something more. And I enjoyed the way they both had to come to terms with their own shortcomings: Amelia with the way she enabled her brother again and again, Spencer with his agoraphobia. But I also felt like a lot of the things that happened in this novel didn’t make a ton of sense. There was a whole extra character in this novel who really didn’t need to be there and I don’t know if I totally bought the reason for Spencer and Amelia to get married so quickly. This is one of Dare’s earlier novels and it is proof that her writing and plotting has grown leaps and bounds since this novel was written.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (3.22.22)

Happy Tuesday, friends! I have a whoooole lot of book reviews for you guys today—five, in fact! I had a very low-key weekend, which meant I spent the majority of my time curled up on the couch reading. My favorite! Let’s dive into the reviews, shall we?

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (★★★★☆)

This book, the 17th in Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, is not my favorite of the series but it was still a very good mystery. I think it needed a stronger edit (it was far too long) but I do like that the pandemic was mentioned. It was vague and in Penny’s fictional world, everything went back to normal after the vaccines were available (if only!), so that felt a little triggering to me, but it was interesting to see the pandemic have a place in a recent work of fiction. It makes me wonder how other authors will address it! There’s a central mystery here, a murder to be solved, and then lots of other side plots that were hard to follow at times. There was a lot of time spent on side characters and side plots that were never fully developed. Even still, I love being in this world Penny created and I will always love my time spent with Gamache.

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber (★★★☆☆)

This was an enjoyable read, as Christian pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes a series of essays on all the different people she’s met who have made an impact on her faith and her life. It could be a person in her church who she just can’t get along with or a young girl on a flight who needs someone to talk to. Nadia has an approachable writing style and I really like how she explains certain Christian concepts in footnotes—super helpful for people who didn’t grow up in a church setting and may not know what things like the Eucharist is. Two things to note: Nadia has no problem swearing in her book and it’s also very Jesus-y (she is a pastor, after all). So if profanity or Christian-speak bother you, I’d steer clear. Otherwise, it would be an easy read that you could probably finish in one afternoon!

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley (★★★★☆)

I always love a sweet YA romance and this one didn’t disappoint. After her brother dies, Rachel returns to her hometown where she has to work with her former best friend and long-time crush, Henry, at his family’s bookstore. When she left town a few years ago, Rachel sent Henry a letter confessing her love to him, but he never responded to it. Now she’s back, grieving, and unsure how she feels about Henry after all this time. I really loved both Rachel and Henry so much and this book hit me in my feels, watching Rachel grapple with the grief of losing her brother. It would destroy me to lose my brother and I just wanted to give Rachel a big hug (and send her to weekly therapy!) All in all, a beautiful story about grief, teenage crushes, and books.

Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead by Elle Cosimano (★★★★★)

I’m always a little apprehensive about the second book in a series, especially when I loved the first one so much, but I’m happy to report that this book (the follow-up to Finlay Donovan is Killing It) is just as good as the first. Someone has put a hit on Finlay’s ex-husband (via a post on an Internet forum), and Finlay has to find out who it is. She’s drawn back into the world of contract killers, the Russian mob, and crazy disguises as she and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero try to track down who is behind this post while trying to save Finlay’s ex-husband’s life for the sake of their young children. It’s a fast-paced thriller with lots of fun twists and turns, an exciting love triangle, and great espionage, and I loved it from beginning to end.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone (★★★★★)

I flew through this book in two days, and it was excellent. As others have stated, this book should be in every high school library because it discusses important topics of race, police brutality, gun violence, and affirmative action in an accessible, powerful way. Justyce is a high school senior who is headed for an Ivy League school in the fall but can’t seem to escape his Blackness and all the people who look down on him because of the color of his skin. There’s the cop who tries to arrest him even though he was doing nothing wrong, the white guys at school who think he’s a thug, and a horrifying incident while he’s driving in the car with his best friend Manny. It’s a story that gripped me from the get-go. I loved being in Justyce head, and even more, I loved the letters he wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (hence the title), as he grapples with his identity, race, and how to make a difference when sometimes it feels like nobody will look past the color of his skin. I very much want to press this book into the hands of Black teen boys who want to see themselves reflected in novels, and into the hands of anyone committed to anti-racism.

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?