Stephany Writes

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?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (3.14.22)

Happy Monday, friends! Florida had a weird cold front blow through this weekend. After weeks and weeks of temps in the mid-80s, it got down to the upper 30s. !! Brr. The cold weather isn’t going to stay around (wah), but it shouldn’t as warm this week as it has been lately, so that’s something to be happy about.

Last week, I finished two books and liked both of them. That’s always nice! Here are my reviews:

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build New Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (★★★★☆)

In Atomic Habits, James Clear lays out a specific formula for how to become more successful at habit formation: You must make your goals obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. On the flip side, you must make habits that you want to break invisible, unattractive, difficult, and dissatisfying. If you’ve read about habits before, there’s really nothing new that Clear brings to the table so there isn’t anything earth-shattering in his approach or this book. But it is a good primer on habit formation and there were some specific nuggets of information to help me with my own habit practices. Specifically, the idea of starting as small as possible and trying to become just 1% better on a regular basis. However, I cannot stress enough how triggering this book can be for someone healing from diet culture trauma. I found myself falling into some problematic thought patterns as I was reading this book, as I considered my own weight and health and the habits I “should” form. (For example, one of the “good” daily habits that Clear lists is weighing yourself every morning. Um, what? That is a troubling daily habit! Unless you’re training for something and need to fit into a specific weight class, there is no reason to weigh yourself every day!) Even with his problematic language, I am still giving this book 4 stars because it was helpful in some respects and I appreciate the approachable style of the writing.

We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work is not wasted. It is simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.

One of the most common questions I hear is, “How long does it take to build a new habit?” But what people really should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repititions are required to make a habit automatic?

The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (★★★★☆)

Man, I really liked this contemporary romance. I love that Olivia Dade’s characters are always a bit older (late thirties, in this novel, which isn’t “older” in the grand scheme of things, but is a little unusual for the romance genre) and some of whom are fat and aren’t trying to change themselves. So refreshing! In this novel, Marcus is a lead character on a Game of Thrones-esque show. When a fan of the show, April, tweets a photo of herself cosplaying as one of the other leads in the show, she is inundated with horrifying messages about her weight. And, of course, some truly terrible men include Marcus in the conversation, thinking he’ll be as disgusted by April’s body as they are. He’s not; instead, he asks April out on a date on Twitter. (Mostly to shut up these stupid men, but he’s also attracted to her as well.) Thus begins a really sweet love story between Marcus and April. There are a handful of other storylines mixed into this novel, such as April’s love of writing fanfiction and Marcus’s public persona as “just a pretty face” even though he’s incredibly intelligent. They both have a lot of internal growth and healing to do. I could have done without the included fanfiction stories and really dumb movie scripts (I skipped over all of them, which just goes to show that they weren’t necessary to the story). All in all, this was a fantastic contemporary romance! (Open door.)

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (3.7.22)

Happy Monday, friends! I have today off work (woop, four-day weekend!) and I may try to do my March 5K today so I can get it done early in the month. Why not?!

I finished three books last week, all of which earned 4 or 5 stars from me, so it was a most excellent reading week for me. Here are my reviews:

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard (★★★★★)

You guys, this thriller was just so good! I had high expectations going into the novel because so many of my trusted sources have been raving about it for months, and it fully met every expectation I had. This book within a book centers around Eve Black who was 12 years old when a serial killer murdered her family. Twenty-odd years later, she’s written a true-crime book about the event and the serial killer, who has never been caught. His nickname was the Nothing Man because law enforcement truly had nothing on him. No evidence, no patterns, nothing. She publishes the book, which is when Jim, who is the Nothing Man, starts to read it and realizes how close she has come to the truth. Which means, of course, he must stop her the only way he knows how. It’s a dark and grisly novel with graphic depictions of murder and rape, which is usually a no-go for me as a highly sensitive person. But it didn’t bother me too much. While it was gruesome and hard to stomach at times (I couldn’t read the book at night), I also appreciated the underlying theme of remembering the victims. We can all name a serial killer (or a dozen), but how many of us can name the victims of serial killers? All in all, this book was excellent and while I guessed the ending, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

I also really liked this passage about trauma and how our brains process it:

I was only twelve when this happened. Even while I was still in the bathroom, my brain was preparing me for my survival, opening the deepest vault in my memory bank so it could send the worst of what I was about to see straight in there. When the vault started to approach capacity, it just dumped some stuff straight out. This is how I’ve come to understand the effects of trauma on the mind of a child. That night is a jigsaw puzzle missing pieces and some parts of it have clearly been put together wrong.

(print, library)

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun (★★★★★)

This book was so… dare I say it?… charming! It follows Charlie who has just become the new lead of a Bachelor-esque show called Ever After. Charlie has only agreed to be on the show so he can relaunch his career in tech, which came to a crashing halt six months ago. When the show begins, Charlie is shy and awkward and can barely make conversation with the women. Enter: Dev. Dev has been a producer on Ever After for six years and becomes Charlie’s handler for the show. Dev has to get Charlie to loosen up and enjoy the process. What Dev doesn’t expect is to fall in love with Charlie… and for Charlie to fall in love with him. I can’t even handle how cute this book was, how much I loved Charlie and Dev, and how fun the cast of characters are. There is incredible mental health representation in this book (Charlie has OCD and social anxiety, while Dev struggles with depression) as well as queer representation. I really loved the scenes of Charlie figuring out his sexuality (is he asexual? bi? gay? demisexual? graysexual?) because sexuality truly is a spectrum—even if you identify as straight. The conversations he had with Dev and other people in his life about his sexuality were so heartwarming and I truly want everyone who is questioning to have that level of support. It’s so very needed. This book truly scratched my Red, White, and Royal Blue itch and it will have a lasting place on my bookshelf. (#ownvoices, e-book, Libby)

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling (★★★★☆)

Mindy Kaling’s second memoir has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long, long time and I finally read it to fulfill March’s Unread Shelf Project prompt, read a biography or memoir. I sped through this book in a day and a half (it’s only 230 pages with lots of pictures) and enjoyed it. It didn’t make me laugh as much as her first memoir did, but I loved reading about how she got her show and the day-to-day life of a showrunner. I also appreciated her thoughts on being a curvier woman in Hollywood and how she became a confident woman (a lot of hard work! Confidence is not something that just happens, especially for women of color in Hollywood, but working hard every day can breed a level of confidence that carries you throughout your life). While it wasn’t the most memorable memoir (I think I will have forget I read this in a few weeks’ time), it was an easy, quick, enjoyable read. (print, owned, Thriftbooks)

What I’m Reading This Week

  • The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (audio) – I am a little less than halfway through this mystery, which is the most recent release of Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. I can’t believe I’ll be all caught up when I finish this book! I’m enjoying it, although there is some talk about how the pandemic was over once everyone had access to vaccines. (Oh, how I wish!)
  • Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (e-book) – I’m about 50 pages into this contemporary romance and I am liking it a lot! It’s about a famous actor who starts dating a non-celebrity, and the fanfiction they write together. The catch? The famous actor is the star of the TV show they write fanfiction about, and revealing his identity could kill his career.
  • Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (print) – It’s obvious that I need a little bit of help in the habits department. I’ve heard really good things about this book and I’m hoping it will give me tangible steps to take as I try to build better habits into my daily life.
  • Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber (print) – This slim novel (it’s under 200 pages) is broken into short vignettes, so I’m reading a couple a day. I’ve read two chapters so far and it’s… okay. I’m not sold on the book yet.

What are you reading this week?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (2.28.22)

Hi, friends. I hope you all are doing well and taking care of yourself right now. It’s been a hard weekend and the news out of Ukraine is horrifying and really scary. I am continuing to pray for peace, as neither the people of Ukraine nor the people of Russia have asked for any of this. <3 (My news sources right now are Jessica Yellin and emilyinyourphone on Instagram, as well as the Pod Save the World podcast, if you’re looking for good options to keep up-to-date on what’s going on without going crazy.)

It’s hard to make the transition to a silly post about books, but alas, I know it’s good to have distractions right now. I finished three books this week, all 4- or 5-star reads, so it was an excellent reading week for me! Let’s dive into the reviews:

The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert (★★★★☆)

Dark romances aren’t normally my jam, but I tend to make an exception for Katee Robert. Her mafia romances are some of my favorites! I used to exclusively read romantic suspense books before I moved on to more contemporary/historical romances, but I always love diving back into a world that’s just a bit more dangerous than you’d find in a typical romance. In this book, the first in a new series, we’re drawn into the world of Rose Romanov, who will one day be the head of the Romanov family. She’s been dating a “normal” guy named Jackson for a few months when she finds out he’s actually part of one of their rival mob families and has been sent to spy on her family. Chaos ensues from there. I really liked this book and I’m excited about this new series. I do have to say, though, that it is very, very open door and some of the sex scenes were a little too much for me, even. But all in all, a solid read where I really had no idea how things would resolve for the two main characters. (e-book, Amazon)

All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle (★★★★★)

What a sweet, heartwarming book! In All the Lonely People, Hubert Bird is an 82-year-old Black man who lives alone in London and doesn’t have much in the way of friends. His wife died 13 years ago and he keeps himself sane with his weekly phone calls from his daughter who lives in Australia. To appease his daughter (who is very worried he’ll become a lonely old man), he has made up a fanciful life where he spends all his time with three friends that he met at a group event. When his daughter announces that she’s coming to visit him after a handful of years away, he realizes he needs to make some new friends—and fast. This is a book about loneliness, about how to make friends no matter what age or stage of life you’re in, and about the magic that can happen when we open ourselves up to others. I was completely captivated by Hubert and his life (the book switches back and forth in time, taking us through Hubert’s life from the time he was a young man to how he fell in love with his wife to where he is now), and this is a book I could confidently press into the hands of any reader. (#ownvoices, print, library)

“Although things were noticeably better than they had been when Hubert first arrived in England, that didn’t mean racism had suddenly disappeared. It was still there every day in newspaper headlines, in the stereotypes appearing on TV, in the assumptions strangers made about people who looked like him. The only difference with this kind of racism was that it was marginally more likely to result in graffiti scrawl across a family’s front door than a physical attack or a beating. Instead it remained an ever-present background noise that, from time to time, if the situation allowed, could be tuned out for a moment’s respite.”

When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton (★★★★☆)

This novel begins at the end of the 1950s—John F. Kennedy has just become president, Fidel Castro is prime minister of Cuba, and Beatriz Perez and her family are trying to build a life for each other in Miami after fleeing Cuba. But Beatriz quickly becomes drawn into the dangerous world of espionage, as she is recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Castro’s inner circle. While the beginning of this novel was slow, it really seemed to gain speed once everything was established and I had a hard time putting it down. On the surface, this book may seem like a spy novel but it’s really about so much more than that. It’s about family and sisterhood, about being a refugee and how everyone in a family is impacted differently (some by embracing the new country and culture, others by fighting to get back to their home country). It’s about resistance movements, courage, and love for country. It’s a gorgeous love letter to Cuba and Cubans who fought for the resistance. I really, really liked this novel! (#ownvoices, audiobook, Libby)

What I’m Reading This Week

  • The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochran (e-book) – I just started this queer romance and I am already sucked into this crazy, lovely world. The setting is a Bachelor-type reality TV show, and I am here for that.
  • The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard (print) – Everyone has been raving about Catherine Ryan Howard, so I suggested one of her books for book club. I’ve been told it’s actually pretty dark and gory, which I don’t normally go for, so we’ll see if I can stomach it. (At any rate, I will only be reading it in the daytime!)
  • The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (audiobook) – I was positive that I had more books left to read in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series before I got to the latest release, but nope! Once I read this book, I will be officially caught up. I can’t believe it! I’ll start this on Tuesday.

What are you reading?