Happy Monday! I have three book reviews for you today so I’m definitely back on track with my crazy reading pace after a slow start to February reading. I’ll probably end up rounding out the month with three more books to bring my total to 10 books read in February. Yay!
Here are my reviews:
The Last King by Katee Robert (★★★★☆)
After Beckett’s father dies, he is shocked to find out that his father willed his childhood home to his aunt, a woman both Beckett and his father detested. Beckett is determined to learn how this happened, so he begins to flirt with his aunt’s assistant, the beautiful Samara, in order to find out. Samara has her own motives for getting close to Beckett, though, as she’s been tasked by his aunt to get some dirt about Beckett so she can force him to sell his father’s company to her (a long time ago, Beckett’s aunt was passed over for CEO for the company Beckett now runs, and she’s held a grudge against the company and Beckett ever since). But, as with every romance novel, this is not a story of revenge and backstabbing. It’s a story of Beckett and Samara, who cannot deny the chemistry between them even though they try to. This romance is steamy but I loved it so much. Beckett and Samara were so perfect for each other, and their chemistry jumped off the pages. Samara was such a badass heroine, and I was so glad to see her get a happy ending.
Landwhale: On Turning Insults Into Nicknames, Why Body Image Is Hard, and How Diets Can Kiss My Ass by Jes Baker (★★★☆☆)
Jes Baker’s memoir of living as a fat person in a fatphobic society is a difficult one. She takes readers deep into her life, starting with her childhood and the troublesome relationship she had with her father, and moving into adulthood and what it’s like to date and travel and live as a fat person. I found portions of this book to be illuminating for me, especially her thoughts on dating, but most of her essays didn’t fully meet my expectations. I can’t even put my finger on why I didn’t fully love this book; maybe it’s just that I’ve read my fair share of body-positive memoirs and this one just fell short in terms of writing and the depth explored in the essays.
There, There by Tommy Orange (★★★☆☆)
There, There is a novel that seeks to explore the experiences of urban Natives, those who never grew up on a reservation and may not even feel much of a connection to their Native culture but still feel the pull to understand this part of themselves. Each chapter introduces a new character, and it was hard to keep them all straight, so at one point, I just stopped. I looked at each chapter as a short story, a new exploration of all the ways racism and poverty and addiction affect the Native population in different ways. Each chapter mentions a powwow, which is the culmination of all the stories and how they all begin to converge into one. It’s an ambitious novel, but it didn’t fully pull me in like I wanted it to. There were just too many characters and it was hard to build empathy for any of them.
I’m currently reading…
> The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo. I’ll finish this quick novel today, as it has been moving fast for me. It’s a novel that so many of my friends have loved but there’s something about it that’s rubbing me the wrong way. I’m interested to see how it ends, though, and how I’ll feel about it.
Next up on my reading list is…
> Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan. So excited to dive into this nonfiction book this week! I’ve had this on my TBR list for a while, and it’s a pretty slim book (under 250 pages) so it should be a quick read for me.
> Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren. Ooh, am I excited for this contemporary romance! I added it to my Amazon cart on a whim a few weeks ago, and I can’t wait to start reading it this week.
I also read “There, There” for book club and I struggled with it, too. I really wanted to keep track of the characters as I think it would have deepened my reading experience. But I was reading it on my kindle so there was no way I was going to page back to figure out how characters fit together (I find it so hard to do that on a kindle). One part I really liked (liked is a weird word to you, though) is the part where the guy talks about inviting others to stay in his house and then he gets moved out of his bedroom into a closet or something along those lines and so on and so on. I thought it was an impactful allegory for what our nation has done to Native Americans.
I just finished the 9th Inspector Gamache book. I think it was my favorite so far. Must of the book was dedicated to the throughline story of the corruption within the Surete de Quebec. There was also a murder but that was almost a subplot in this book. I loved it and gave it 5 stars. The next book isn’t available in ebook from for 3 months so I am going to have to read the physical copy as I can’t wait that long! After finishing that book last night, I started “Rabbit Cake” which is supposed to be a quirkly book told from a 10-year old’s point of view. I had a hard time putting it down last night so I think it’s going to be a good book!