I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump. It’s a weird feeling because I don’t really get into reading slumps and yet, here I am. I thought about throwing my TBR list to the wind and just picking up a book that piques my interest, but I think the best course of action is to lean into it. Let my mind be occupied by other things. Binge watch a TV show, scroll through Instagram, play copious amounts of games on my phone. This reading slump doesn’t have to mean anything and I don’t need to try to push through the feeling. I’m still reading… but at a much slower pace. (For example, I start The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny on Monday and I’m only 100 pages in.) I pick it up when I want and don’t force myself to read if I don’t want to. This too shall pass, right? At least I hope so.

I’m wondering, though, if the reading slump is due to The Grapes of Wrath, which I started reading last weekend and ended up abandoning this week. The first 85 pages were painfully boring and the dialect was hard to read. It made reading feel like a chore, so I dropped it and didn’t feel one iota of guilt about it. I *may* try to listen to the audiobook version buuuut it’s a 21-hour audiobook and I don’t know if I have it in me to devote that much time to this story.

With that said, I still finished two books this week. (*emoji of a monkey with his hands over his eyes*) They were both contemporary romances, though, and this genre is my kryptonite and also the best thing for me to read if I’m in a funk or a reading slump.

Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren (★★★★★)

Oh my heavens above, I loved this sweet contemporary romance novel so, so much. I actually stayed up late last Sunday night to finish it because I just couldn’t go to sleep without knowing what was going to happen with Hazel and Josh. Hazel is a free-spirited, quirky elementary school teacher who desperately wants to find love but she’s yet to find someone who wants her to be her full self. Most guys like the quirkiness of her personality at first, but then want her to calm down and be more “normal” as time goes on, and she isn’t about that. Josh, on the other hand, is her polar opposite, a calm and serious man who just found out his girlfriend of two years has been cheating on him for quite a long time. Hazel wants to cheer him up, so she proposes that they set each other up on blind double dates. Of course, throughout the course of their dates (most of which go horribly awry!), they start to fall for each other. My heart broke for both these characters as they came to terms with their feelings and the vulnerability of falling for their best friend. It was a fun, easy read with a lot of heart, and I am just so glad Christina Lauren’s books exist in this world.

The Sweetest Thing by Jill Shalvis (★★★★☆)

I picked up this contemporary romance over the weekend, and I am so glad I did because I really think it helped me get over my reading slump. It’s the second book in the Lucky Harbor series, following two characters who were introduced in the first one. Tara and Ford met 17 years ago during the summer and had a whirlwind fling – a fling that resulted in a pregnancy. While Ford wanted her to keep the baby and marry him, Tara made the decision to leave Lucky Harbor and give the baby up for adoption. Now they’re two adults in their mid-thirties who want to believe they’ve moved on, but when Tara appears in Lucky Harbor again, sparks fly and it’s time for them to decide if they have what it takes to make a relationship work. This book fulfilled everything I wanted in a romance: witty dialogue, a realistic plot, and steamy bedroom scenes, and reaffirms my love for Jill Shalvis.

I’m currently reading…

> The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain, on audio. I only have two hours left in this audiobook, and it’s been such a great story to listen to. (The narrator is fantastic!) I am very nervous to see how everything turns out, though!

> The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny. As I mentioned above, I’m not very far into this novel and it’s really unlike me to slog through a Louise Penny mystery, so I’m hoping that the reason for the slog was due to trying to read The Grapes of Wrath simultaneously. TGOW was totally bringing me down!

What are you reading?

Happy Monday, friends! I am feeling good after a really relaxing weekend. There were plenty of naps, as well as family game night with my brother, nephew, and mom. We played a three-and-a-half hour game of Monopoly where we had these bouts of laughing so hard our sides hurt. I’m still thinking about some of the stuff that happened and giggling to myself! Those are the best kinds of nights. <3

This week, I finished reading one book, abandoned another book, and am currently in the middle of reading three books. The book I abandoned, Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan, was a surprising one to me. I think it might be a case of reading a book at the wrong time, so I may try to pick it up at another time, but I wasn’t connecting with it. The book also dealt with the death of the author’s father and best friend, and I’m still heavily grieving my grandfather’s unexpected and traumatic death so that part of the book was too much for me to handle right now. I think I may try to come back to it in a year or so when my grief isn’t so raw.

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo (★★☆☆☆)

Dozens of my friends have read this book and loved it. So many five-star ratings and exclamations of how sweet this book is. So, I picked it up thinking I was going to read a really sweet love story… and was sorely disappointed in it. It follows Lucy and Gabe, two people who meet in college (on 9/11, no less) and have an immediate connection with each other. But life has other plans and they don’t meet again until a year later, and this time, their love feels fated. Unfortunately, when Gabe is offered a job as a photojournalist in the Middle East, they make the tough decision to break up because Lucy’s life and her career in TV are in New York, and she’s not willing to give it all up for him. What follows after that is thirteen years of pining, of desire, of love. Annnd… of really selfish decisions made on the part of both Lucy and Gabe. I found Lucy to be a difficult person to relate to and wanted to shake her due to the choices she made. Apparently, though, I was told that because I don’t have a past love like the one Lucy and Gabe had, I couldn’t understand why they felt this pull to one another. I call bullshit on that. I agree that there are just some loves we have where there’s an intensity and a connection that cannot be explained or replicated with anyone else. But I don’t agree that that means that love supersedes everything else. I don’t believe that it gives someone permission to hurt people in their lives and to make selfish decisions that can have massive ramifications.

I’m currently reading…

> Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren. Oh boy, do I love a good friends-to-lovers romance, and this one is delivering. I’m nearly finished with it (less than 100 pages to go), and it’s been such a fun read.

> The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain, on audio. I’ve had this book on my Goodreads want-to-read list for years (originally added it to my list in 2013!), and I chose it because it was one of the few audiobooks available on Overdrive that didn’t have a wait. I’m a few hours in, and it’s so intriguing!

> The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I was never assigned to read this book in high school, so I’m reading it to fulfill my yearly goal of reading four “classics.” It’s a pretty hefty book (nearly 500 pages), so I imagine I’ll be sitting with this one for a little while.

What are you reading?

Happy Monday! I actually didn’t know if I’d have a “What I’m Reading” post ready for today because I haven’t spent a ton of time reading this week. At least, reading books for review/tracking purposes. I have been reading – about Ireland! My mom and I settled on our itinerary but it required a lot of research and reading on my part. I checked out Rick Steves Ireland 2019 from the library and have spent my week pouring through the pages (while skimming a lot of the sections, which is why I’m not counting it as a book I’ve read) so I can figure out what we need to see, what we can skip, and how to build an itinerary that will allow us to see the best sights without completely overwhelming me (I cannot go-go-go all the time). And work was insane this week, so I didn’t even spend any time reading on my lunch break (unheard of for me!). I’m hoping this week was an anomaly because I don’t like reading so little.

Anyway, I do have a book review for you because I finished a book! And I’ll probably end up finishing 2-3 next week, so I should be back on track. 🙂

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne (★★★★☆)

I’ve been greatly anticipating Sally Thorne’s follow-up novel to her bestseller (and my all-time favorite romance), The Hating Game, so I was so happy to get my hands on 99 Percent Mine. Within the first few pages of this novel, I knew the story was going to be dramatically different with much more complex characters. (Which just showed me that Thorne is not a one-trick pony and has a vivid imagination.) It involves a woman named Darcy who has been in love with her twin brother’s best friend, Tom, since she was a teenager. And then, after Darcy’s grandma dies, both Darcy and her brother inherit her cottage and must renovate it and sell it – those are their grandma’s instructions. Lo and behold, Tom is the man who is going to renovate the cottage – and he’s single for the first time in eight years. The story has Thorne’s typical snarky humor, and I just loved how lively and realistic her characters were. They didn’t feel like caricatures, but real, breathing people with passions and interests and pain and depth. Their romance was sweet and fun and downright steamy. While I didn’t love this with the ardent fervor that I loved The Hating Game (there were times when Darcy frustrated me and I wished the author had given her a bit more agency in her life), I still really enjoyed this novel and I hope we don’t have to wait three years for her next romance!

I’m currently reading…

> Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I’m still working my way through Anne and I am just loving every second of it. I was worried that I would reread this book and not understand why I loved it so much when I was younger, but I can totally see why it captivated me. Anne is such a wonderful character! She’s made me giggle multiple times. 🙂

> They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery. On a much different note, I’m reading this important book about racial justice and police violence in between pages of Anne. I’ve had this book on my TBR for a while now, and I’m glad I’m finally getting around to reading this because it’s important and necessary.

What are you reading?