What I’m Reading (12.9.19)

Happy Monday, friends! I spent my weekend decorating my apartment for Christmas and I love the way everything turned out. The cats are currently very interested in the tree (it’s already fallen once, but luckily, that was before I put any ornaments on it) and Ellie tried to play tug of war with one of my tinsel garlands as I was decorating so… we’ll see how things go this year, ha.

It’s been a few weeks since my last reading update so I have four books to review with you all today! Two I loved, two I felt ambivalent about. So it goes!

Books Finished

1) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (★★★★☆) – Station Eleven is the kind of atmospheric book that sticks with you. Even weeks after finishing it, I’m still thinking about it. It follows a series of people who have survived the Georgia Flu, a pandemic that wiped out 99% of people in the world. There’s a traveling theater troupe, a man and his brother who found out about the flu right as it was happening and were able to barricade themselves inside, and another group of people stranded in an airport. It’s a slow, meandering story and I loved listening to it on audio as I could sink right into it. It’s not a book that’s for everyone, but it really worked for me.

2) American Love Story by Adriana Herrera (★★★★☆) – Oh, how I loved this novel! Herrera’s romances are just so great and her writing style has improved leaps and bounds from her first two novels. American Love Story is about Patrice who has moved to Ithaca, New York to become a professor at Cornell and reconnects with Easton, the assistant district attorney of Ithaca with whom he had a torrid love affair some months back. Their love story was beautiful to witness, especially because they were both so scared of what awaited them in a relationship but couldn’t deny their growing feelings for one another. There was also an important secondary plot weaved in involving Black men being stopped by police and harassed. Both Patrice and Easton had to grapple with this in very different ways. This storyline culminated in a way I wasn’t expecting but was dealt with using sensitivity and heart.

3) Still Me by Jojo Moyes (★★★☆☆) – This novel concludes the Me Before You trilogy and I felt like this novel was just okay. At times, Lou felt like a caricature and did things that had me rolling my eyes. (Like the beginning of the novel, as Lou is going through customs at the airport and starts texting with her mom. NOBODY WOULD DO THIS.) In this novel, Lou has moved to NYC to become the personal assistant to a very rich man’s wife. They live in a ridiculously expensive apartment across from Central Park and Lou is tasked with helping the wife manage all of her appointments and charity events. She’s also halfway across the world from her new boyfriend, Ambulance Sam, and that causes a lot of tension. This book gave me a lot of anxiety, especially the scenes between Lou and her boyfriend, and it just wasn’t the enjoyable reading experience I expected from a Moyes book. I’m glad I read this trilogy, however, seeing as Me Before You is one of my favorite books, and liked getting more from Lou and her antics.

4) The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman (★★★☆☆) – This book seemed tailor-made for me, and I really loved the first three-quarters of it. It follows Nina who works in a bookstore and keeps herself busy (and her anxiety at bay) by filling up her time with trivia nights, book clubs, and more. She lives alone with her cat Phil and her only family is her mom who lives halfway around the world and has never been great at being a parent. Then she finds out that the father she never knew about has died and she has an entire family living nearby. Sisters and a brother and nephews and nieces. It throws her carefully ordered world for a loop. I loved Nina’s character but have to agree with another reviewer that she reads as neurodiverse and I think the story could have been much stronger if that had been explored. I also kind of… well… hated the last quarter of the novel and the way things wrapped up. I think the love interest turned out to be a shitty person and I found the family dynamics to be a little too perfect at the end. (It really drives me crazy when an author tries to redeem EVERYONE in a novel – that’s not reality. Some people cannot be redeemed.) Anyway, it was a bit of a disappointing read for me, meh.

What I’m Reading Right Now

1) Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler – When I finish this novel, I will have completed my A-Z reading challenge, hooray! I started the audiobook completely blind: I don’t know anything about Zelda or F. Scott Fitzgerald or their marriage at all, so I’m letting the story sweep me away.

2) The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger – I’m halfway through this novel that I picked for my July BOTM selection and it’s both enjoyable as well as frustrating. (I really have little patience when female friendship is written like a competition.) It’s a story about a gifted school that is starting in a community and a group of moms who are trying to get their kids accepted into the school.

3) Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore – Another BOTM selection for me that I’m getting around to right now! This is historical romance but the thrust of the novel involves the suffragist movement of the late 1800s and I am here! for! that!

Up Next

1) Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan – I’ve been nervous about reading this book because it’s about a woman who presumably suffered from a psychotic break, but I’m in a good place with my mental health right now and I think I’m ready to tackle this book.

2) Co-Wrecker by Meghan Quinn – I’m on the lookout for more romance authors to read and found this book on the Goodreads page of someone who reads a lot of romance (I’m talking 150+ romance novels a year!). I’ll start it this week.

What are you reading right now?