What I’m Reading (12.21.20)

Hi, friends. I don’t have a bookish moment this week—it’s been a really hard week over here. My best friend (and writing partner), M., found out that her 13-month-old baby has a canteloupe-sized tumor in her liver and has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. We’re all so devastated; everything feels so surreal and unimaginably difficult. Olive will need surgery ASAP (and possibly a liver transplant) as well as chemo. She starts chemo this week to help stop/slow the spread of the tumor while they wait for the surgery to be scheduled. 2020 has been such an awful mess of a year, and it just keeps getting worse. How do babies get cancer? That’s a question I don’t know the answer to. It is just enormously unfair and my heart is breaking for M and her husband and Olive. (If you’d like to help, M has set up a Facebook fundraiser to help with Olive’s medical expenses. She also has Venmo for anyone who wants to give directly to her.)

Anyway, it feels weird to go from that to talking about my current reads but that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve definitely noticed a need for light, comforting reads right now (which is why I almost abandoned Forever, Interrupted) and I’m going to lean into that. I finished three books last week and here are my reviews.

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob (★★★★★)

One-sentence synopsis: A graphic memoir about Jacob’s experiences as a first-generation American and the hard questions her six-year-old son is asking her, like “If white people are scared of brown people, does that mean my father [a white man] is scared of me?”

Add me to the list of people raving about this book! It is well worth your time and I highly recommend the print version since you get to see Jacob’s amazing illustrations in great detail. I loved learning about Jacob’s experiences in an immigrant family and especially enjoyed Jacob’s discussions about race with her son. There’s also a section that discusses her in-laws’ decision to vote for Trump (even though their daughter-in-law is Indian and their grandkids are mixed race…), and she is super honest about the conversations she had with her husband about this decision and the effect it had on her relationship with them. It felt like such an intimate detail to include! (I’m so curious as to how her in-laws reacted to this inclusion!) I think we all have family members who are Trump supporters and find ways to justify his behavior, and navigating those relationships is, so difficult. All in all, this is a powerful memoir and I’m so glad I have a copy for my shelves because I’m sure it’s a book I will return to (and happily lend to friends so they can learn and grow, just as I did).

Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid (★★★☆☆)

One-sentence synopsis: Nine days after their wedding, Elsie’s husband is killed in an accident.

You guys, this book was so sad. I wasn’t in the right headspace to read such a sad book, and maybe that’s why I didn’t like it as much as TJR’s other books. She doesn’t hit you over the head with the sadness—it’s not trauma porn or anything like that. It feels very real and honest about the experience of grief and unexpected loss. In a grief book like this, there are certain, eye-roll-y tropes that an author can explore and I am really grateful that TJR didn’t do that to us. Instead, she takes us on a journey through Elsie’s love story with her husband as well as the new relationship she’s building with her husband’s mother. It’s worth a read, but you really need to be in the right headspace for it. Have a box of tissues nearby!

Flirting with Fire by Kate Meader (★★☆☆☆)

One-sentence synopsis: Kinsey is a PR pro whose newest assignment is to improve the image of the Chicago Fire Department after Luke, a firefighter, gets into a bar brawl with a Chicago police officer. 

Oh man, I had a loooot of issues with this novel. It just oozed toxic masculinity, both from Luke and Kinsey’s boss who is a real piece of work (and he’s the hero in the next book in this series, so I’m very curious as to how the author is going to give him a redemptive arc). I liked Kinsey’s character a lot, though, and found myself rooting for her easily. Luke, on the other hand, was a hard character to like and, in turn, connect with. His character just had so many inconsistencies and, again, he leaned heavily on his toxic masculinity and it was SO damn off-putting. My advice is to skip this romance. Bleh. (Very open-door romance.)

What I’m Reading This Week

• Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays by R. Michael Thomas – I have two-and-a-half hours left on this audiobook, and it’s super enjoyable. I’ve laughed out loud more than a few times, which is a rarity for me!
• Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson – Once I finish this book, I’ll have read 150 books this year! (Which means I’m going to read more than 150 books in 2020. WHAT.) I love the magical elements of this book and it’s the kind of light read I need right now.
• Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan – This is a new-to-me romance author so I’m crossing fingers and toes that her writing style works for me.

What are you reading?