First of all, I've made a conscious effort to slow down on my reading. For a while I was just feeling meh about nearly everything I read, and I'm happy to report that that isn't the case any more. I'm still participating in some blog tours, but aside from that most of my reading is all based on what I want to read. That has helped a lot! Instead of never finding time to crack open books I've been waiting for, I'm reading some of the books I want to read right away and I love it.
Summer has always been one of my favorite times to get some extra reading in, and these three five star reads would be a great choice for anyone to pick up.
The Islanders by Meg Mitchell Moore - I love this author, so I'm always happy to pick up anything she's written. The Islanders does not disappoint. Anthony has come to the island to lick his wounds and regroup after his sophomore novel doesn't live up to expectations (to put it mildly). His father is a best selling novelist, so the stakes are high for Anthony, and in addition to his professional failings, his personal life is faring no better. Lu is tired of being a stay at home mom, but her husband doesn't listen to her when she tries to talk to him and her secret life as a blogger is turning into something more successful than she ever imagined. Joy is busy with raising her daughter and running her business selling whoopie pies, but her daughter is pulling away from her as she enters her teenage years and her business is facing some competition on the island this summer. All three of these characters' stories converge by book's end, and I loved every single page of this novel. The Block Island setting was also one that intrigued me as a friend of mine has vacationed there for years.
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes- I occasionally read romances and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I love them. This book left me with a book hangover for a while; it was hard to find anything to live up to how much I loved this book. Evvie's doctor husband has died just a year ago at the young age of 33. She's spent the year grieving as everyone expects her to, but Evvie's feelings about her husband's death are more complex than her just grieving. When she rents out a bedroom in her house to Dean, a major league baseball player who has a case of the yips causing his career to tank, the two begin a friendship that both are in need of. There's a little predictability to this story, but I read it in just a day and couldn't put it down.
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - Gilbert's been writing for a while, but I hadn't read anything of hers until now. I went into this one having heard rave reviews, but slightly skeptical myself. I quickly was sucked in, and because I was on a sixteen hour car ride home from vacation, I devoured this novel in one sitting. Starting in 1940, we follow the life of Vivian Morris who has been kicked out of Vassar College. Her parents send her to New York City to live with her aunt Peg who runs a struggling theater company. Vivian meets an interesting cast of characters who make up the theater and enjoys life in the big city, but when her behavior results in a scandal, Vivian is impacted by her decisions for years to come. I love novels that span an entire lifespan and this story is written in Vivian's perspective as a letter to someone asking how Vivian was connected to them. By book's end this question is answered as Vivian has reflected on her life and the one true love she had.
We're already halfway through 2019 and I can't imagine that these books won't be on my best of 2019 list. I've been so lucky to have had one great book after another this summer.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed Evvie Drake and look forward to City of Girls as well.
I forgot to add that The Islanders intrigues me as Block Island is so very familiar to me....A lovely, quiet place.
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