Happy April! I hope you all enjoyed the site’s April Fools joke. We have such a fun time planning it every year.
Spring is upon us. I wore short sleeves and sandals the other day in New England.
Also, if you haven’t tuned into out Twitch channel yet, this Sunday, some of us at the site will be playing silly Jackbox games at 2pm eastern. We also invite our audience members to play to!
Elyse: I just started Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh. ( A | BN | K | AB )
Her books tend to be low conflict and lots of gentle courtship based on dialogue and I need that right now
Claudia: I’m saving that one (for no particular reason). I just finished a book that left me very, very annoyed so I’m taking my time picking my next one.
Tara: I watched The Go-Go’s documentary last week, so now I’m listening to Kathy Valentine’s autobiography, All I Ever Wanted. It’s so good, but I’ve only made it to where she’s 13 years old and it’s ROUGH sometimes. I’m so looking forward to taking in the rest of her journey.
EllenM: I saw the Go-Gos a few years ago when they were at Ravinia (an outdoor music venue in Chicago) and they were REALLY good!
Carrie: I am reading Prospects of a Woman by Wendy Voorsanger, about a woman in the California Gold Rush. I’m not sure what I think of it yet. I just finished a non-fiction collection of letters about a real woman in the California Gold Rush (The Letters of Dame Shirley) and that was fascinating.
EllenM: I just finished a Court of Silver Flames, which left me torn because
Currently continuing with the Elder Races series with Serpent’s Kiss, ( A | BN | K | AB ) which is my favorite one so far.
Kiki: I’m also reading A Court of Silver Flames! I have…very, VERY few positive things to say about the series as a whole (I straight up DNF’ed the third book) but I’m sticking around for my girl Nesta, who I love because she’s mean to all the people I would probably also be mean to.
EllenM: Yeah honestly Nesta is my favorite Maas heroine in a long while.
Shana: I’m almost finished with Love All Year, a holiday romance anthology. It’s a mixed bag, but my favorite so far is Celestine Martin’s cozy Yuletide story about a witch using a love potion on her closest friend and crush. There’s mistletoe, gingerbread, and only one bed! Right now I’m in the middle of Farah Heron’s “Making up with Eid Bae,” and it’s a delicious second chance romance.
Ok, just finished the book, and that Eid story was PERFECTION. So much food porn, and a super sweet feminist hero who’s happy to wear mehndi.
Sarah: Oh this sounds so good!
Catherine: Ooh, I will have to give that one a try! I am currently bingeing my way through Eloisa James’ Wilde series, because it is grant season at work and my brain is tired. Nothing like a reliable series to reread when you have a sad tired brain!
What are you reading? Let us know!
There is always something to do when you have an almost 18-month old and a 12 week-old, but you have to make a little time for self-care and a big part of self-care for me is reading! It has been awhile since the last WAYR that I posted to, so here we go:
Excellent:
The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night’s Sleep – Newborn to School Age by Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright: I am back to reading books about infant and childhood sleep and I would say this is by far my favorite of all of those I have read so far. The strategies and tips are some I immediately started using with my newborn. Highly recommended!
Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband: This was the choice for my 2-person bookclub with my dad. The entire book was full of excellent information about how to think about medical decisions, but the last two chapters on end of life care (and how some people change their mind about how much care they want to receive and some stay the course with what they thought they wanted before they got sick) AND on being a healthcare proxy for someone else when they become unable to make their own medical decisions were vitally important and should be required reading for everyone.
Very Good:
The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman: Wonderful insight into the minds of toddlers – why they have tantrums, how to communicate and work with them, and good real-life vignettes to illustrate various points. The only reason I marked it down from Excellent is that a few of the explanations of emotions were too Freudian for me – for example, around potty training and I am not a Freud fan.
Good:
The Case of the Reincarnated Client by Tarquin Hall: The fifth in the Vish Puri mystery series set in modern day India and revolving around a private detective, this one was by far the weakest of the series. I noticed that this was published by a different publisher than the first four books and I think the change was not a good one for the author – he needed his previous editor. Part of the charm of the first four books was that they were very quirky but still believable. Here, the characters almost became caricatures and so the tone felt off. There was also a lot packed into a rather slim book – a cold case murder concealed during the 1984 Sikh Massacre, the 2016 Indian banknote demonetization, a side case involving a former matrimonial client unhappy with a snoring spouse, and various plot lines with Vish’s family.
Meh:
Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey: The first in the Darko Dawson mystery series set in modern day Ghana, Inspector Dawson is called to the scene of a rural murder in the same area where his mother disappeared many years earlier. I had never read a mystery set in Ghana before and the inclusion of cultural practices including food and drink, traditional healing, business-naming conventions, and various religious beliefs really enriched the story. However the mystery was pretty flat and I felt the villain was obvious from the beginning (both by the clues given and from how the story was written from various view points). CW for children in peril and the practice of child-brides married to priests as “payment” for a family’s supposed sins (this practice is where the title of the book Wife of the Gods comes from).
The Demon King by Lucinda Williams Chima: I have been chipping away at this book since I started it last year during my Summer of YA. I can’t put my finger on my it took my so long to slug my way through it, but all I know is that I didn’t really care about the characters and I didn’t find the world building compelling. I see that it is highly rated and the writing was good, but it never pulled me in.
The Bad:
None
THE INVITATION by Vi Keeland and BACK TO THE BURBS by Avery Flynn and Tracy Wolf. Normally I would enjoy the writing and books, but I happen to read them back to back with tropes I normally don’t like. Both women split from exes via finding them having sex with other women AND then financially hobbling them. I know this is to indicate these are NOT. GOOD. GUYS. Why can’t there be just a relationship that didn’t work out? The other trope is in play here is these are super competent women, but their ultimate success is do his influence. Learn to save yourself, ladies!
Every time this post rolls around, I bemoan my lack of organization keeping track of my reading for the month.
I do know I have been on a Molly O’Keefe binge-read The Crooked Creek Ranch and Boys of Bishop series. I love the way she writes, a very engaging author. The small town settings-I want to move to Bishop, AR! The Crooked Creek series is very fun, I wish there were more books in the series. My favorite was the third book, Crazy Thing Called Love-I’m not one for second chance romance, but this story about a hockey player and a morning television personality really got to me.
I stayed up all night reading The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed The Roommate-which I believe was her debut novel. So this follow up? I was hoping for the best but prepared that it might not be as good-but I LOVED it! What a talented author. Funny dialogue, but also very touching in parts. I don’t think you have to read the first book to enjoy this, but it would enhance the experience. I REALLY love Naomi-her crusty exterior but heart of gold, and the ways Ethan appreciates her strengths and weaknesses. Seriously, cannot recommend these two books enough.
I thought I had read Him, Us and Epic by Sarina Bowen-but nope! Jamie and Wes are such a great couple, I love the way they find themselves back to each other, even though I have stated I’m not a fan of the second chance theme. I think it is because neither holds a big grudge, there is no revenge fantasy-something happened, there was a misunderstanding. People were hurt, but it wasn’t intentional. So a spinoff from this series is The Wags-where one of my favorite characters EVER-Blake Riley-hockey player and all around hilarious guy is the hero of Good Boy. He and Jamie’s sister are the MC, this book made me laugh out loud.
All in all-it’s been a good reading month so far!
@Cleo
Oops – left off 2nd book
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho. An enormously entertaining novella in which Zen Cho continues queering and flipping around established genres – this time wuxia / martial arts movies set in an alt version of South East Asia with magic and lots of queer people. Not a romance.
My reading slowed down these last couple of weeks. I swapped away my hard copy of “The Forbidden Rose” by Joanna Bourne, and sort of accidentally started reading the first few pages as I was about to wrap it up for shippng. As a result, I ended up rereading the whole book overnight. It’s that kind of book for me, and my favorite of her Spymaster series, which is saying a lot because they’re all great.
I’m in the middle of Heyer’s “Cotillion” which I’ve never read before. She doesn’t telegraph very much who the hero is, but I’m on Team Freddy.
I also read a good chunk of “Great Plains” by Ian Frazier. It’s serialized in several old issues of The New Yorker(available in their archives) and the section I read was about Crazy Horse, his life and death, the Indian wars of the 1800’s, and current day ranching and life on the Plains. I love Frazier’s travelogue books. It’s the next best thing to actually being on the road yourself. “Travels in Siberia” is another favorite.