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while i really enjoyed O’Leary’s previous novel and was anxiously awaiting this one. It just didn’t do it for me. I couldn’t get attached into the characters enough and wasn’t really rooting for them the way a novel like this needs the reader to be. Still looking forward to her next one.
“It is following good mental health hygiene—which is the real self-care, although it’s so, so boring! It is cultivating contentment rather than chasing happiness.” I have never heard of Kelly Williams Brown before this book. I have not read her previous books and I think I was drawn to this book because it mentioned crafts. As a crafty person, I have to say that most of the crafts in this story are simple and not anything to write home about. But I still read them all because Kelly’s humor is all over them and it’s fabulous. I loved her voice throughout this whole book. The way she talks about her life and her mistakes and things that happen to her and the way she describes the people in her life (even those who abandon her or whom she abandons) is magical. She clearly is a person full of life and joy. “The guy tells me what he says he tells everyone he transports in my current circumstances: he hopes that I take this as an opportunity to rest, to reset, to try again. That it is never too late for anyone, and if I’m still here, there’s a reason. He guesses everyone needs a break every now and again. I should take the break and make the most of it. I should take it and use it to figure out what it is I’m still here to do.” I kept cringing for most of this book because she makes one mistake after another and really pushes her life into places where you want to shout “no, don’t do that!” and it’s like watching a car accident. but you also can’t help but be in love with her and root for her and want to wish her the very best. “I hadn’t realized how very dark and small my world had become. I’d dropped each joy, one by one, not noticing they were gone or really remembering I’d had them at all. I stopped listening to music, stopped dancing, stopped going on country drives. I stopped enjoying food, found no pleasure in good company, but instead a temporary lessening of misery, which made me a super-fun presence. Depression is so talented at turning you from a foodie into someone who wishes they could just eat a compressed nutrition bar every day, except about everything.” Because her personality is so colorful, her vitality is so obvious that you can’t help but wish well for her. And there’s so much emotion and truth in her words. There’s so much wisdom in the lessons she learns as a result of ongoing insanity that has become her life for a while. “So perhaps here is the point of it all, my precious plums: bad things happen for good reasons or bad reasons or no reasons at all, to all of us. There is nothing to be done about it except perhaps breathe, abide, and hold on to the faith that no matter how awful today was, you never have to live it again.” And in the end there’s so much peace and grace and self-compassion that you are left with nothing but hope for her and her life. I enjoyed every moment i spent with this story. I will say the chapters around suicide are hard to get through and can definitely trigger folk. with gratitude to netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars This was an interesting read about Daniel, who is confined to his home and ends up seeing a kidnapping. The story revolves around him and his life and there are many funny bits. The whole book is written with this light touch that’s representative of Daniel’s positive outlook in life despite his circumstances. And even though serious and scary things are happening, it also all feels a bit absurd. I liked this book and how different it was.
““The reason they’re morons is they spend years, decades, hell, their whole lives regretting or apologizing for things nobody else even remembers. They carry those things around like bags of sand that keep them from going to all the places they could’ve gone and would’ve gone if they hadn’t been so busy thinking about the goddamn sand.” This is a unique book. The blurb mentions “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Breakfast Club” and in fairness, I do see elements of both of them though thinking about either of them too much might take away from enjoying this book itself. I read the whole book in a single sitting. I loved the way it was diary entries mixed with dialogue and narration. “Soldier didn’t need to show me all the time that he loved me. He knew it and I knew it and that’s that. What he was doing was giving me a safe place to put my own love. It’s like he was saying, I’m never going to leave you. I’ll wait for you. I want you to know that I’ll always wait for you, that it’s safe to love me, that you have a place to put all the feelings you can’t give to anybody else because it’s too dangerous, because you’re worried they won’t understand, and they won’t wait for you. I’m here. I love you. And I will wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.” I loved each of the characters and I loved their unique perspective of life and why they had decided to be where they were and what they were grappling with. I loved that most of them seemed real to me and I loved how they were thrown together and the one thing they had in common was enough to bind them. “And if you’re wondering why no always trumps yes, it’s because when you’re married it takes two to say yes but only one to say no. Besides, there’s no risk in saying no. No means everything stays the same, you’re in control, and you don’t feel like you’ve lost out on anything.” This is a great story with some profound insight about life, how painful it can be and what it means to respect each others’ choices and what it means to love each other (and ourselves) just the way we are, with pain and all. with gratitude to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
3.5 stars This book was an unexpected surprise. It starts out as a light, funny read and then evolves into something touching and lovely. It’s about Wren who finds out that her childhood (and still) best friend has died. She is asked to clean his apartment and has to deal with all the people who are circling his friend’s belongings. She’s finding out all the things she didn’t know about her friend and finding out some things about herself in the process.
This is a real and touching story about a well-loved Shakespeare teacher a Columbia who gets early onset Alzheimers. It’s also a story about a complicated family with ex-wives and step-children and abandonment and love and belonging. It’s also a love letter to New York City and its people. I’ve lived in New York for all of my twenties and the characters in this story jump off the paper and are real and textured. They try, they fail, and they try again. They let each other down, they love each other fiercely. They take care of each other. They stand by each other. They show up for each other. Each character in this book is unique and familiar and it’s not possible not to fall in love with them. with gratitude to netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is definitely not Weiner’s typical type of book. It’s not light and a beach read. Which is totally fine but I do wish they would change the covers so it doesn’t look like it’s a light and breezy book. I wasn’t expecting the plot to be what it was and while I did like the book, I would have liked to know what I was getting into.
3.5 stars. Somehow this book ended up being different than what I thought it was going to be. It was a lot longer than I thought it needed to be and it was serious with a lot of serious subject matter and yet a romance, sort of, maybe in between genres? I did like it but I somehow didn’t love it. I sort of knew where it was going and lost patience in the middle when it took way too long to get there.
I loved this book. It reminded me of “Plainsong” which was my favorite read from two years ago. I was quiet and sad and also beautiful. Even though it was a “mystery” there wasn’t much mystery to most of the story. It was character driven and each of the characters was textured and layered and i loved them each a little bit.
I decided I would marry Martin one day because I believed that someone who would spare you from having to watch the world take its course had to be the right person. It took me forever to read this book. I started it and then there were so many characters that I just couldn’t get into it. They were each interesting but none of them were interesting enough to keep my attention for some reason. Maybe because I was distracted and my attention kept wavering. “No, Selma, I mean as a couple,” my mother had insisted. “I mean have you thought of being a couple with the optician?” Selma had looked at my mother as if she were a cocker spaniel and said, “But I already had my couple.” But I wasn’t willing to give up on it. I put it down and then picked it back up many, many times. I grew frustrated with myself. I grew frustrated with the book. Why couldn’t i just read it and enjoy it? He loved Alaska. My father saw him only rarely, which made love much simpler, because those who are absent can’t misbehave. Each of the characters had their own story and then slowly they started intertwining. And slowly I found myself falling in love with each of the quirky characters. Enough that I didn’t want to let them go. “Hello, Luisa,” Frederik said, and because it was so obvious, he understood right away that I didn’t have an opening sentence. In the blink of an eye, he took over and simply pretended he had called me. And the story enveloped me into a lovely cocoon. I was transported into their town, into their lives. I cared about their stories, their pain, their joys. The author had slowly managed to make me fall in love with each of them. You can live for years with a gnawing question, you can let it hollow you out, and then have it disappear in a flash, in a single moment of waking with a start. My mother left my father; the fact that he had left her already some time before didn’t change a thing. My mother was in a different time zone and so, from her point of view, she had left him first. The characters in this story are real. They are quirky and they are real. They have real pain, dreams, joys, and they care about each other deeply. The writing is exquisite. This story has incredible heart. It’s the closest I’ve seen a writer get to Fredrick Backman. So I’m going to tell you now: When the time comes, when the question arises and you can’t find an answer right away, then remember that you made your grandmother and me very happy, you brought us enough happiness for an entire life from beginning to end. The older I get, the more I believe that the two of us were only invented for you. And if there ever was a good reason to be invented, then it’s you. In the end, I loved this book so much. I do wish there was a way for the beginning to be a little less slow but alas it takes time to fall in love with people, even in books. with gratitude to netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars I thought I wasn’t going to like this book. I live a few blocks from Stanford and too many of the parents in this book are slightly over the top versions of parents around me. It was a bit close to home but I still enjoyed my time with it and really liked some of the subplots.
3.5 stars. Read this one in one sitting. It was fun, uplifting, engaging and a joy to read. I will likely forget most of it but it doesn’t matter, it gave me joy while I read it and that’s really all I seek from books like this. Recommended. |
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