What I’m Reading (11.18.19)

Happy Monday, friends! It’s going to be a busy week for me, especially when you add in the NaNoWriMo writing I have to do every day. I may end up giving myself an “off” day from writing this week just to keep my sanity in check. But we’ll see! I’m taking it day by day.

I finished three books last week. Here are my reviews!

Books Finished

1) The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (★★★★★) – I loved this novel so very much! The characters of Tiffy and Leon were just so perfect and perfect for each other. Tiffy needs a place to stay after her boyfriend breaks up with her but since she doesn’t make much money working at a niche publishing house, it needs to be cheap. Enter: a flatshare. Leon needs money to help pay his brother’s lawyer fees and since he works the night shift as a palliative nurse, it’s perfect. He has the apartment from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tiffy has it the rest of the time, including the whole weekend. Of course, things easily become complicated between the two of them, as they tend to do in romance novels, as they begin sharing notes back and forth and their lives become more entwined than they ever imagined.

2) Vox by Christina Dalcher (★★★☆☆) – This book was so unsettling. In Vox, women have been silenced. They are allowed to speak up to 100 words a day. They keep track of their word count via a bracelet, which zaps them if they go over their limit. The zaps generally get more and more severe the more words they speak over their word count. Women have also been stripped of their jobs and queer people have been sent to work camps. The world is bleak and horrifying. The author was a bit heavy-handed with her parallels to this society and politics today, and I started to wonder why she felt the need to write this novel. Why not a novel where women are empowered and rule the world? Why do we always have to envision a world where women have no rights? (I get it: the 2016 election was a wake-up call for a lot of us and recognizing what happens when we sit at home and don’t take action, but is this the best cautionary tale? I’m just not sure about that.) I gave it three stars because I thought the last half of the novel was super engaging, even if it did wrap up just a little too neatly for my taste, but it’s more of a 2.5 rounded up to 3.

3) The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (★★★★☆) – The Testaments is the follow-up novel to The Handmaid’s Tale and I really liked it. I can understand why many people thought the novel was unnecessary or didn’t like it, but it was fine by my standards. In this novel, which takes place 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, we get a deeper glimpse into Gilead through the eyes of an Aunt, a young girl who will soon become a Wife, and another young girl living in Canada. I found it fascinating to learn about Gilead through these lenses because it gives a much broader look into what this society is like. I found all three storylines engaging and I loved watching them all come together in the end.

What I’m Reading Now

1) Big Bad Cowboy by Carly Bloom – I honestly thought my Libby app had gone crazy when it informed me that this e-book was ready for me. I don’t even remember placing a hold on the title! Two romance readers whose tastes I trust have rated it 5 stars on Goodreads, so maybe I saw their reviews and put the book on hold? I don’t even know! At any rate, the book is really cute and fun. It’s not blowing my socks off, but it’s a nice, light read, which is what I need right now.

Up Next

1) Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery – Last week, I said I was going to start The Joy Luck Club for book club, but since we have our meeting tomorrow and I had to prioritize The Testaments since it’s a two-week book with a long wait, I’m not going to get to it in time. Womp! Instead, I’m starting the next book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Yay!

2) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel – I’ll be starting this book on audio during my commute this week. It’s been on my TBR for years!

What are you reading right now?