Daily Joys – 162
A quiet Saturday and a lot of reading. Grateful and trying to stay slow.
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 Daily Joys – 161
Grateful for time with Kelly. Grateful for friendship. Grateful for another successful school year.
3.5 stars. Sweet, touching story of Albert who finally decides to open up and live the life he wishes he had been brave enough to live. Wonderful, sweet story.
I read this in one swallow. It was super fun, lighthearted but sweet and just a really enjoyable summer read. If you want something light and fun, I highly recommend this one.
Billie Starr’s mom has made a lot of mistakes in her life. She’s always saying she’s sorry. She’s trying to make better choices but keeps getting caught up in things she doesn’t mean to. There was parts of this book that I really enjoyed. I liked Billie Starr and wish there was a bit more of her in the story. I liked the best friend and the next door neighbor. But some of the story didn’t make sense to me. Why would she not have gone back for her raincoat this whole time? Even though I understood how that circled back in the end, I couldn’t understand someone who wouldn’t go back to get her things. She just seemed to be jumping from one unwise decision to another. There were a lot of characters to keep track of and many of them didn’t feel as fleshed out as they could have been. Similarly the sub-plot lines came and went and didn’t all feel relevant. I still enjoyed the time I spent with it. with gratitude to netgalley and Flatiron Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
“By here, he means somewhere on the western edge of the United States. It’s possible to grow up in the wrong house, on the wrong street, in the wrong town, in the wrong part of the country. It’s possible to go to the wrong school. To have the wrong dad. To be pushed to do the wrong things. But it is also possible to survive all these psychic indignities if you have one, maybe two people who recognize you for who you are. His mom saw him. By seeing him, she saved him.” I loved this book. Shapiro’s latest explores two families, going through tumultuous times, as she weaves back and forth in time to show us how they ended up here and the journey they took both in the past and into the future. The book opens up with three teens in a car accident, where one of them dies. And of course, that moment changes the lives of the parents (and the kids) forever. Then it shows the neighbors next door, with their 11 year old son, who decides to run away from home. Then the story goes back in time and it goes forward in time and by the end of the book, you are in love with every single character and your heart has been broken and put back together in a million little ways. This story is about family, resilience, being there for each other, and marriage. It’s so very beautiful. I absolutely loved it. with gratitude to edelweiss and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
3.5 stars I think the only reason this doesn’t get more stars from me is because I enjoyed the first book so much and this one wasn’t as interesting, to me, comparatively. If I hadn’t read the first one and read this as a standalone I am confident I would have loved it even more.
This was a quick read but since I am not particularly a fan (or not) of JFK Jr. this didn’t really speak to me. I liked the audio and the voice of both of the characters but I found the book to be mostly boring to be honest.
I think I might be done with Colleen Hoover. This one just felt lazy to me. Both of the stories felt super dragged out just to make a book. I thought all of the characters were not well developed and the plot was way way too contrived. This one wasn’t for me.
This was a well-written and unexpected mystery. I liked the fast pace and I actually quite liked the twist, too. I enjoyed the time I spent with it.
“But Zeke needed to know. You had to choose sides. And you always chose the person who didn’t fuck everything up. You chose the person who was stuck with you.” What an incredibly unusual story. This is the story of Zeke and Frankie who spend a summer together making a poster that has Zeke’s art and Frankie’s words on it. They then plaster the poster all over town. Next thing you know, it gets enmeshed with a story some teens make up to get out of trouble and things get out of hand and copies start appearing all over the world. It becomes a phenomenon. Crazy things happen. It gets out of hand. And the whole time, no one knows they started it all. “I thought that the saddest thing that could happen was that something inside your head worked so hard to make it into the world and then nothing happened. It just disappeared. Now that I’d put those words into the open air, I needed them to multiply, to reproduce, to cover the world.” This book captured the feeling of being a teen and coming of age in the 90s. What art is. What friendship can look like during those years: intense and like it’s your whole world. The characters are so real, jump out of the page so much that you can’t help but root for them. “And I wanted to say that it wasn’t his fault, that it was an accident, but maybe everything is an accident. Maybe nothing in the world is intentional. Maybe everything that has ever happened and ever will happen is some dumb mistake. So who cares if you apologize?” Wilson’s stories have so much heart and are so unique and so bittersweet and the characters are so flawed and yet beautiful. It’s not possible not to love the books. And this was no exception. with gratitude to netgalley and ecco for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
I think this was a 3.5 star read for me but I bumped it up because i learned a lot about history while I was reading it and I felt grateful that this book is out there. It’s a tough subject and I will say that much of it was tough to read but I am still glad I read it. |
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