Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (2.9.22)

Happy Wednesday, friends! I know I promised to re-start my weekly reading recaps on Monday, but I needed another day to finish the two books I’m reviewing below. One of the reasons I stopped doing my weekly recaps is that sometimes I felt like I was rushing to finish books so I would have something to write about on Mondays. I’m going to try not to do that, which means these recaps may be later in the week than I planned. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dig into the books I just finished. Both were 5-star reads for me!

Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope by Megan Phelps-Roper (★★★★★)

This memoir from a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church (she’s the granddaughter of the founder) is our February selection for book club, and it was fascinating. I’m sure everyone knows about WBC and their horrific picketing outside of events and military funerals, even the funerals of the children killed at Sandy Hook. Their signs are upsetting so I won’t repeat any of them here, but suffice it to say that WBC believes that any terrible event (like a mass shooting at an elementary school) was from God because we have gravely sinned. Megan Phelps-Roper left the church when she was 26 after spending her entire life entrenched in the cult-like atmosphere of WBC—she started picketing at a startlingly young age and eventually became WBC’s premier voice on social media. It is through social media and meeting people who wanted to genuinely converse with her and challenge her beliefs that she started to really question WBC’s mission and what she truly believed. I truly commend Megan for leaving the church because that takes a level of bravery and courage that most people don’t possess—not only to change what she believed, but also to lose almost her entire family in the process. (Those who leave WBC can no longer be in touch with people inside WBC, so Megan hasn’t spoken to her parents and many of her siblings since she left a decade ago.) In the book, Megan talked a lot about free speech and how even hate speech is protected under the First Amendment (she’s firmly in the camp that hate speech should be protected). It was reallllly uncomfortable for me to read this part of the book, to recognize that even people spewing truly hateful rhetoric are essentially protected under law. I’m still gathering my thoughts about what I think about this because, on the one hand, I can see where Megan is coming from and understand the slippery slope that can happen when we start placing limits on free speech. On the other hand, hate speech can lead to serious violence and cause serious harm to those who are being talked about. That is also a slippery slope. In any event, I think this will make for a very lively book club discussion!

A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy (★★★★★)

Self-published romance novels are usually a miss for me, but I gave this one a chance because Anne Bogel raved about it on her podcast. The cover is completely ugly, haha, but this is a good lesson to never judge a book for its cover! This book was phenomenal! I just loved every minute I spent enmeshed in the worlds of Joshua and Cassandra. Their banter was perfectly written and the way they moved from enemies to cautious friends to lovers to husband and wife was so beautiful. There was something so sweet about their love for one another, especially considering they both had their own demons to face before they could fully commit to each other. Their meet-cute was also something I’ve never seen in a romance before: what if you had married a man and only spent one night with him before he left you for months… and the next time you see him, neither of you even recognizes one another? AHH! So good! This is one I want to press into the hands of every historical romance lover I know!

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian (audio) – I have just a few hours left in this YA novel about two gay teenagers growing up in the late 1980s and how the AIDS epidemic affects their love story. I am really worried the ending is going to rip me apart.
  • Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (print) – I just started this novel (another YA!) yesterday and I’m flying through it. It’s so well-written!

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (10.4.21)

Happy Monday, friends. I think this might be my last “What I’m Reading” post. Of course, I’ve said that before and brought these posts back, so never say never. But as my reading has slowed down from the frenetic pace I was reading in 2020 and 2019, I find myself struggling some weeks to finish a book so I can write these posts. Instead, I’m going to move to a monthly reading recap. I’m making this change mostly to take the pressure off myself to finish books quickly so I can post about them in this recap. Reading is supposed to be fun, a hobby, not something that I put pressure on myself to do.

Maybe my reading will pick up again and I’ll bring these posts back, but for now, this is the last weekly reading recap, and I only have one book to review! So this will be a quick recap. 🙂

Rising Star by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆)

This Hollywood romance follows Griffin, an actor who is finishing up his role in a long-running medical drama, and Alice, a Ph.D. student who is taking some time off from finishing her dissertation and picks up a job as an extra on the show. When Alice gets kicked out of her apartment and Griffin needs a dog and house sitter for 3 months while he films a movie, the stars align for them and she becomes his roommate. And we all know what happens from there: They fall in love, of course! It’s a slow build to the romance, which I really loved because it made the moment they finally put their feelings on the table that much sweeter. It was a sweet romance with a lot of heart, and I enjoyed my time with it.

What I’m Reading This Week

I’m currently reading One Two Three by Laurie Frankel, and only have about 100 pages to go until I’m done with it. I am enjoying this novel so much! It’s written in such an interesting way (from the perspectives of 16-year-old triplets, and the chapters alternate between them) and I’m breezing through it.

After I finish that, I’m going to pick up The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrick Backman. I’m also going to start Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig on audio.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.27.21)

Happy Monday! This was a big family-focused weekend, and it was really lovely. I went to my nephew’s birthday party, which took place at a big trampoline park, and I even got on the trampoline for a while, which was a whole lot of fun! I also got to see Mikaela for a writing date, although we had a shortened meeting since the Panera we went to closed at 7! (Our writing dates are usually two hours long, and we arrived at 6.) It’s so weird to see how staffing shortages are affecting companies like Panera. The Panera nearest to me closes at 3 p.m. every day! Crazy. Sunday was spent with the fam, watching football, which was delightful as always.

I finished two books last week, and I’m hoping my reading pace will pick up a little now. I was slowly reading through Caste (25 pages per day) and A Place for Us was a nearly 400-page book that really felt like a slog for me.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (★★★★★)

This book is truly excellent. It is so well-researched and well-written, and some of the research truly blew my mind. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson posits that there have been three caste systems in place: the original caste system of India, the caste system established by Nazi Germany, and the caste system in the United States that puts white, wealthy people at the top of the caste and Black people at the bottom (originally established during slavery and continues to this day). The comparisons to the U.S. caste system and Nazi Germany’s were especially chilling—like the fact that the founders of the Nazi party used U.S. race laws as a basis for developing Nazi laws. And even for them, some of our laws (like the one-drop rule) were too harsh. There was also a passage about how people in the U.S. would gleefully send postcards to family members to show and describe lynchings that were happening near them. Or how in Germany, former Nazi leaders aren’t revered. There aren’t statues of them. And, in school, teaching about the history of Nazism is super important. All of that seems pretty obvious things that should be done, and yet, in the United States, we are just now reckoning with all of the Confederate statues we have and the Confederate leaders whose names line streets and schools. Not to mention, even talking about slavery and race is becoming illegal in schools (critical race theory, anyone?). Anyway, this book really blew my mind. It was a hard read but an incredibly important one, especially for white people. We have to read these stories. We have to better understand how we are complicit in this system.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza (★★★☆☆)

Gosh, this book was such a slog for me! I expected to like it more than I did since it’s gotten rave reviews from everyone on my Goodreads list, but it just wasn’t for me. The novel focuses on an Indian-American Muslim family as they gather to celebrate the wedding of their oldest daughter, Hadia. She’s invited her younger brother, Amar, who has been estranged from the family for three years. The novel jumps back and forth in time, spanning decades as we learn more about this family and how Amar came to be estranged. The book read more like a series of vignettes, dropping us into a different time and place every few pages and from the point of view of either Hadia, Amar, or their mother. I think where the novel lost me, though, was in the last few chapters of the book, which take place nearly a decade after Hadia’s wedding and is just a series of navel-gazing chapters from the father’s point of view and honestly, I didn’t care to hear from him at all. Maybe it’s my own father issues at play here, but it felt like a redemption arc that I wasn’t here for. I basically skimmed those chapters and by the end of it, I really think that section could have been removed and the novel would have been just fine. Maybe even better. Anyway, not a favorite for me but most people rave about it, so I am most definitely in the minority here!

What I’m Reading This Week

I’m currently making my way through Rising Star by Susannah Nix, a contemporary romance that takes place in Hollywood, which is one of my favorite settings, especially for romance. Either today or tomorrow, I’m going to start One Two Three by Laurie Frankel. Her previous book, This is How It Always Is, is one of my favorite books but I’m trying to temper my expectations for this one. Surely it won’t be as good as that one, right?!

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.20.21)

Happy Monday, friends. This weekend was a bit of a quiet one for me, which I needed after an emotionally draining week. I didn’t even have the energy/inspiration to do my usual Wednesday and Friday blog posts! Whaaat. This week, I was also less inclined to read and more inclined to lump on the couch and watch episode after episode of Brooklyn 99 (which I’m rewatching and finding it to be such a comfort right now).

Somehow, though, I finished two books this week—a short, 5-hour audiobook and a contemporary romance that took me ELEVEN DAYS to read (unheard of for me, especially for a romance novel). Neither book was particularly great (in my opinion), so I’m hoping the problem with my reading life right now is just that I’m not reading anything super engaging, not that I’m losing my reading mojo.

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal (★★★☆☆)

In this YA novel, we follow two high school girls during a particularly brutal night in their lives. Lena and Campbell don’t know each other before the novel begins but will form an unbreakable bond by the end of it. The novel starts during a football game at the high school. Campbell is working at the concession stand and Lena has stopped by to get a Coke when a fight breaks out right outside the stand. The police are called as things escalate and Lena and Campbell have to figure out how to find their way out of the melee without getting hurt themselves. The novel switches back and forth between Lena and Campbell’s perspectives, and it should be noted here that Lena is Black and Campbell is white. Obviously, they are experiencing this night in two vastly different ways, and I found it to be such an interesting way to tell this novel (especially considering a Black author wrote Lena’s perspective and a white author wrote Campbell’s.)

YA novels can sometimes be hard to rate because, many times, the ones that may fall flat for me may be perfectly written for younger readers. I love it when YA books don’t feel YA, but I also recognize that’s not the point of this genre either. This is the kind of book that will likely be incredibly impactful for high school readers, but for me, I found it hard to sink into the story. There were so many details that didn’t make sense and seemed thrown in just to create tension. And so many other details were left out of the story, making it hard to form a connection with the characters. All in all, a book that is probably best left for the readers the YA genre is intended for.

Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur (★★★☆☆)

Annie has come to Seattle to visit with her best friend, Darcy, for two weeks… and to tell her that her job is relocating her to London. She decides to surprise Darcy with the visit, only to find out that Darcy is away on vacation with her girlfriend and won’t return for a few days. Enter: Brendan, Darcy’s brother who has had a crush on Annie his whole life. Brendan has some free time and decides to show Annie the best of Seattle while she’s here, and maybe also convince her that love isn’t a waste of time. Sparks fly between the two of them and it makes Annie question what she wants: Does she really want to move to an entirely new country for a job she doesn’t even really like? Or has she found her happily ever after in Seattle? It’s a sweet contemporary romance, but considering that it took me 11 freaking days to read it, it didn’t really keep my attention. I didn’t believe in the chemistry between Annie and Brendan, and I grew very tired of all the rom-com tropes (especially the grand gestures from BOTH characters at the end). I’ve read two novels by this author and neither have been particularly great, so I think she’s just not for me.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson – Still slowly making my way through this book (which I think is part of the reason why my reading has slowed down so much lately). I should finish it sometime this week, though!
  • A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza – Another book I am reading oh-so-slowly. I only got through 150 pages last week! Ergh. I’m enjoying it, so I don’t want to abandon it, but I will also be happy when I finally finish it and can move on to something else.
  • The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary – I loooooved Beth O’Leary’s debut, The Flatshare, and I’m hoping that I enjoy this one just as much! I’ll start it today or tomorrow.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.13.21)

Happy Monday, friends! This weekend was a good one, albeit quieter than I would have liked. That’s how it goes sometimes. I was super happy on Sunday, though, because it was the first Football Sunday of the season. It was so much fun to spend the day at my mom’s watching the games (the Dolphins game was a nail-biter—still can’t believe we squeaked out a win!)

I finished two books last week and both were 4-star reads. Woop!

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (★★★★☆)

This was an excellent thriller, and I can understand why it was such a hyped book of 2019. The story begins as Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, begins a new job at The Grove, a forensic psychiatric hospital. It’s there he meets Alicia Berenson, who was found guilty by reason of insanity of killing her husband. Since the day she killed her husband, she has not spoken and refuses all kinds of therapies. Theo believes he can be the one to get Alicia to talk again (which is the main reason he joined The Grove; Alicia’s story was splashed all over the news and he was intrigued by it). As with all thrillers, there are many twists and turns, revealed through Theo’s sessions with Alicia as well as Alicia’s own journal entries. The ending truly shocked me (and seemed to come out of nowhere), but it wasn’t super far-fetched, in my opinion. It was the right amount of shock that had me wanting to reread the book immediately to see how I missed the clues. Well done, Alex Michaelides!

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (★★★★☆)

I don’t want to talk too much about the plot of this book, since it’s the 14th in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series and these books must be read in order. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, friends. Do not slide into this one without knowing everything that led up to it! It’s just not going to have the same impact. Anyway, I loved this book and the two main mysteries. There were so many great details involved and I’m always happy to be in Three Pines, surrounded by my favorite characters. They have become a comforting place for me. In these books, there is always a plotline involving the overarching police force and Gamache’s place within it, and this time, those scenes lacked a little bit of the intrigue that they usually have. Still, this was a wonderful book and it’s hard to believe that I’m veering closer and closer to being caught up with the series!

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?