Happy Monday! I had a fabulous weekend where my Saturday was super busy and I lazed around all day Sunday. The perfect weekend, in my opinion. I have three books to review with you guys today—my April reading has been very, very slow and I’m falling way behind on my Goodreads goal. Oh, well! It’s all just for fun and I refuse to make reading a competition.
Let’s dive into the reviews, shall we?
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (★★★★★)
I don’t know why I thought this book was going to be a light-hearted YA novel because it most definitely wasn’t. Trigger warnings abound here, especially for suicide, depression, bipolar disorder, and death. In this novel, we follow Finch and Violet, two teens who are going through incredibly difficult times. Violet’s sister died in a car accident a few months ago and her parents seem to act like everything is back to normal, but she is still mired in grief. Finch has his own battles, namely with an undiagnosed mental illness that causes him to have high highs and low lows. (Likely bipolar disorder.) When Finch and Violet are paired together for a school project, they start to discover that they have a lot to learn from each other. This book was beautiful, gut-wrenching, and heart-warming. There is a twist near the end that I wasn’t fully expecting, and it took my breath away. Well done by the author! All the Bright Places is not a book I would recommend to everyone, but I would recommend giving it a shot if you can handle the triggers.
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (★★★★★)
Oh, how I loved this romance! It’s been really hard to find good f/f romances, and this was the best I’ve read. Delilah Green left Bright Falls after college, but now, 12 years later, she’s back to photograph her stepsister’s wedding. That means facing the family she left behind—her stepsister and stepmother who always made her feel out of place. What she doesn’t expect is to be hit on by her stepsister’s best friend, Claire, at a bar the first night in town, nor to start developing feelings for Claire. What follows is a really sweet love story between two women as well as a story of self-discovery and healing from familial trauma. Delilah’s fears of abandonment felt so true to my own experience, and I loved the way Claire continued to prove she was there for her. I thought this book was so well-written, perfectly plotted, and sexy as hell. I can’t wait to read more from this author!
The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee (★★★☆☆)
Set in the early 1900s, The Downstairs Girl follows the story of a teenaged girl named Jo who is squatting in the basement of a printshop with Old Gin, a man who took her in when she was a baby. By day, Jo is a lady’s maid for a wealthy family and by night, she anonymously pens the Dear Miss Sweetie advice column for a newspaper. Dear Miss Sweetie not only doles out advice to young ladies, but also takes on race and gender issues affecting society at this time, which cause a backlash and threats to unmask the anonymous Sweetie. What I loved about this book is that I learned so much: about the suffragist movement and how exclusionary it was, about the way Asian people were treated during the Gilded Age, and about the way women were viewed in society at this time. There was so much I didn’t know! Like, I vaguely knew that white women excluded Black women and women of color from their suffragist movement, but man, to see it written so plainly in this novel truly brought this injustice into sharper focus. What I didn’t like about this book is that it tried to take on too much; there were so many different plotlines and things started to get a bit messy about midway through the book. I wasn’t exactly sure the point of the book: is it about race and gender during the Gilded Age, or about Jo’s own self-discovery as she tries to find out who her parents are? Is it a story about an Asian woman coming of age, or a discussion about segregation during this time? It was all a bit… messy. The best way to describe this book is that it’s a YA book that reads like a YA book. Which is fine! That’s the point. But if you like your YA to not read like YA, this isn’t the book for you.
What I’m Reading This Week
- Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (print) – I am nearly finished with this book! I’ve been dipping in and out of it all through April, reading a few essays every day. It’s an excellent collection and I’m really glad I picked it up.
- When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (print) – I’m reading this book to fulfill the April prompt for the Unread Shelf Project, which is to read a book published by an indie press. It’s hitting a little too close to home based on what’s in the news right now (synopsis: in a post-pandemic society, women can be labeled as murderers for having abortions, which are fully illegal). The book was published in 2011, so it’s feeling a little too prescient. But it’s really good, too!
- Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (audio) – I’m going to try to sneak in a third audiobook this month, and while this book wasn’t on my radar when it was published, a lot of trusted sources have raved about it so I’m going to give it a try. It’s only 7 hours on audio.
What are you reading?
Oooh those all sound good! I am currently reading The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale which is good, but it’s a memoir and I keep thinking “Honey, make better choices!! If a guy sleeps with you for THREE YEARS but refuses to call himself your boyfriend, not only is that a red flag, it’s a castle covered in red drapery.”
A castle covered in red drapery is going to be my new favorite saying. It is really hard for me to relate to books like that because I just can’t imagine doing that for THREE WHOLE YEARS. It would drive me bananas.
Wow, 2 5-star books! That is awesome! I hope you end up loving “Nothing To See Here.” It was recommended a couple of places but the premise just seemed TOO OUT THERE for me, but then my good friend said it was a must-read so I checked it out and ended up loving it!
I finished “The Gratitude Diaries” last night which is a non-fiction book about a woman’s quest to focus on gratitude. It has me thinking about starting a gratitude habit. Now I am reading “Matrix” by Lauren Groff for my May book club. I’m only one chapter in and the first chapter was meh but I’m hoping it picks up.
You should get one of those five-year journals for a gratitude practice! I’ve really enjoyed the practice so far and it will be fun to look back throughout the years and see what I was doing.
I feel like I’ve been much less stingy about my 5-star ratings this year. I’ve had a lot! Or maybe I’m just picking up really good reads? I dunno!
I think it was your review of Nothing to See Here that made me curious to pick it up! So far, I am LOVING it!
Yes, these sound good. Especially All the Bright Places. I’m going to see if they have it at our library.
Right now I’m reading A Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling and thoroughly enjoying it! The plot sounded so dull (which is why it took me so long to read it) but it’s so good.
That’s awesome that you’re loving A Casual Vacancy. I read that not long after it came out and found it really interesting. And such a different vibe from HP!
The first two sound so so good! I may have to add them to my TBR! I am curious to hear what you think about Nothing to See Here!
I am reading The Younger Wife.
So far, I am loving Nothing to See Here! Did you read this book? It’s really sweet so far.
I’ve had All the Bright Places on my TBR list for years. I think I’ve been subconsciously avoiding it because my cousin, Abbey, told me it made her cry and I’m much more sensitive reading books in my old age than I used to be, LOL. But I remember her saying it was a really good book. Right now, I’m reading Jurassic Park at the request of my cousin, Emily. We both like the movies and she is also a fan of the books. She bought them for me years ago, so I finally decided to read the first one and will read Lost World when I can finally get through Jurassic Park. That’s nothing against the book itself. I’m really enjoying it. I’ve just been a terrible reader since the pandemic struck. I hope I will eventually snap back to my old self, but so far I’m still struggling with a major reading slump.
You definitely have to be in the right place for All the Bright Places! It may make you cry. But it’s also so very lovely. I’m kinda grateful I went into it not knowing how heavy it would be.