What I’m Reading (9.7.21)

Happy Tuesday, friends! I had a lovely long weekend, although I didn’t get up to too much—just my usual writing date with Mikaela and then a lovely date night where we watched Booksmart (what a great movie!) And the rest of my weekend was spent deep-cleaning my apartment, napping, and finishing up the books I was reading! Nothing too exciting around here. 🙂

Since I missed my reading recap post last week, I have a double dose of book reviews today. Let’s get into it.

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (★★★★☆)

The second Bridgerton book was a great one and left me feeling really excited about how this book will be adapted for the Netflix show. It follows Anthony, the oldest Bridgerton sibling who is still dealing with the death of his father a decade ago. He knows he needs to marry and sets his sights on Edwina, a sweet, beautiful young woman whose family will benefit from the match. Unfortunately, Edwina’s older sister Kate is not keen on the match and isn’t afraid to let Anthony know it. In the process of Anthony trying to win Kate over, he finds himself wanting to win her heart instead. And oh man, were the scenes between Anthony and Kate so much fun. They had great banter and it’s going to be delightful to see how this translates to the small screen. At times, Anthony could be pretentious and even a bit mean, but he won me over by the end, especially with the way he cared for Kate and helped her through her trauma. And Kate! Kate was so easy to love and root for. She was feisty and intelligent and funny and had a big heart for her family. All in all, I loved this book!

The Guncle by Steven Rowley (★★★★☆)

The Guncle was one of my most anticipated reads this year, and while it was a bit slow to start, by the end, I was completely captivated by these characters. Patrick, a former sitcom star, is suddenly thrust into the role of caretaker to his 9-year-old niece and 6-year-old nephew when their mother dies and their father enters rehab. Patrick—or GUP, as the kids call him, which stands for Gay Uncle Patrick—is dealing with his own grief while also trying to help these kids through theirs. It’s a character-driven novel and, as such, it moved very slowly for me. Eventually, I came to appreciate what this book had to say about grief and family and queerness. It was really beautiful! Also, once I read a review that imagined Neil Patrick Harris in the role of GUP (since a movie adaptation is in the works!), I was all in. He’d be the perfect casting, quite honestly.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (★★★☆☆)

I went into this story knowing very little about it; I just knew that Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue was my favorite book the year I read it and I couldn’t wait to read her next release. One Last Stop follows August, a girl in her early twenties who moves to NYC on a whim. While taking the subway one morning, she meets Jane, a hot-as-hell Asian woman who gives August her scarf to cover up a coffee stain on August’s shirt. And then she keeps seeing Jane on the subway again and again and again. What are the odds that Jane is always in the same subway car as her? That’s when she discovers Jane’s secret: she’s displaced in time. The last thing she remembers is living it up in NYC in her twenties in the 1970s; she’s been stuck on this subway for the last 45 years. What’s August to do but help Jane find out how to get back to where she’s supposed to be while also, oh yeah, trying not to fall in love with her. There was so much to love about this novel—the LGBT representation and details about what it was like to be gay in the 1970s, the cast of supporting characters that I just adored completely, the magical element that was fun to unravel. However, I found it to be overly long (it needed at least another round of heavy edits; there’s no reason for the book to be 400+ pages) and sometimes a bit boring and repetitive. It also had really long chapters, which is a bookish pet peeve of mine. Still, it was still a great sapphic love story with a satisfying ending that made me feel a lot of things!

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood (★★★☆☆)

I’ve had this book on my to-be-read shelf since 2017, after hearing Anne Bogel recommend it on her podcast (What Should I Read Next). It’s also gotten lots of rave reviews, so I was excited to finally dive in last week! This book is about Ona, a 104-year-old woman who befriends an 11-year-old boy who comes to her house every Saturday to help out (as part of a Boy Scouts initiative). But when the boy unexpectedly dies, it’s his father who comes to the house to finish out his son’s commitment. Quinn is an absentee father who never really knew his son, but through helping Ona, he comes to terms with his grief, his life, and his son. It’s a heartwarming book for sure, but it didn’t quite grab me in the same way it’s affected other people. Maybe because it’s a character-driven novel and I didn’t really like many of the characters. Maybe it was the writing itself (overly flowery writing) that just wasn’t to my taste. It’s the kind of book where I can understand why people love it and can also understand why people hate it. A solid 3-star read for me.

What I’m Reading This Week

• Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (audio) – I’m halfway finished with the 14th book in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, and I am loooooving it. Some side plots are giving me anxiety, but mostly, I’m enjoying the novel.
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (print) – I’m reading this book for the Unread Shelf Project’s September challenge, which is to read a book that you want to learn from. I am confident that this book is going to do exactly that!
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (print) – I’m finally reading this much-discussed thriller (I started it last night). On Goodreads, it has a 4.13 rating with nearly 775,000 reviews and many trusted sources have given it 5 stars. So, I’m going into it with high expectations—we’ll see if the book lives up to them.
• Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur (e-book) – My romance of the week! I haven’t started this novel yet, but I’m looking forward to diving into it today!

What are you reading?