Happy Monday, friends! I had a wonderfully low-key weekend and I’m starting this week feeling super refreshed and ready to tackle my to-do list. Thankfully, it’s a short week for me as I leave Thursday night for Boston. Woohoo! My week should be fairly busy, too, so it was good to have this relaxing weekend to prepare for it.
Last week, I finished two books and loved both of them! My reviews are below:
The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant (★★★★★)
Oh, you guys. This book was so very lovely. It’s about an 85-year-old woman responding to her granddaughter’s question, “How did you get to be the woman you are today?” To answer that, she takes us back to 1915 when she was 15 and just beginning to discover who she was and what she wanted out of life. She talks about her immigrant family, the library club she joined where she met all of her closest girlfriends, her life as a young working woman, and more. The story just made me feel so warm and happy – I love when a book can do that. There wasn’t anything life-changing about the novel, but that’s not always the point of stories. Sometimes, it’s just nice to read about a woman reflecting on her life, the good parts and the painful parts.
Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center (★★★★☆)
I loved this novel! It’s a romance about a woman firefighter who moves to a suburb of Boston (ironically, the same town as where The Boston Girl took place!) to help her estranged mother who has just had surgery. She has to transfer to a new station, one that hasn’t ever had a female firefighter before and whose crew isn’t quite happy about her arrival. Well, most of the crew. There is one guy – a rookie who starts on the same day as she does – who seems pretty happy to have her around. (You can guess where this is going.) The story had powerful themes about forgiveness and learning to love after your faith has been shattered, and it’s one I highly recommend!
What I’m reading this week…
> The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham, on audio. I have around six hours left in this audiobook and I have a feeling things are about to get pretty crazy in this intense thriller!
> Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner. I’m about halfway done with this novel and it’s been pretty good so far. The main character, Rachel, isn’t my favorite but maybe she’ll grow on me by the end.
> The Fearless King by Katee Robert. I’m starting this spicy romance this week! I love Katee Robert and I have a feeling this book will be excellent. That’s the hope!
What are you reading?
That’s fun that you read two books set in Boston right before visiting! I really want to read The Boston Girl. I had kind of forgotten about that book so thanks for reminding me. I’ll have to add it to my request list.
I went through my shelves on my day off last week and figured out what to get rid of and what I can/want to read before the end of the year. So now I have a small stack of books to read before the end of the year (one of my 19 in 2019 goals was to read all my unread books and donate/sell the ones I don’t want to read). So over the weekend I read Bossypants by Tina Fey which was entertaining. I didn’t watch 30 Rock so some of the references went over my head but overall it was a good book. Now I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Both of these books are books I borrowed from friends A LONG TIME AGO so it’s time to get them back to their owner! The Huntress also just became available for me on my Kindle so I will read that next!
OMG, The Boston Girl sounds like what City of Girls was trying to be amirite?!?!?! It sounds really good and warm and fuzzy.
Did Things to Save in a Fire talk a lot about the specifics of fire fighting, too? I think that would be interesting to read about. I love that part of reading – learning about something I never would have otherwise, less I’d picked up a reference book or something. Hopefully what I am saying makes sense to you (kind of like learning about gardening in The Garden of Small Beginnings).
I just started A Gentleman in Moscow on the train this am. I can tell I am going to love this character but that I really need to focus on the writing to take it all in. It’s not confusingly written, there is just a lot packed in there!