Thisldu Book Reviews - May through July: If I Never Met You, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, Beach Read, The New Jim Crow, The Dovekeepers, The Guest List, and Untamed
I am in a reading funk.
There, I said it.
In June, for the first time in years, I didn’t finish a single book over a thirty-day period. And I haven’t written one of these reviews since April. You know, back when Garrett and I were stuck in Nicaragua on our sailboat. A lot has been going on, and because of that, reading and reviewing have fallen to the wayside.
But I’m happy to be back! I know there are more good books waiting for me out there and I’ll get lost in one soon. And it’s not that I haven’t read any good books over the past few months; they just haven’t held up to the distractions of my real life. Like finally getting out of Nicaragua on a repatriation flight in May. And moving to Charleston. Navigating this transitional period during a pandemic. Listening and learning and advocating during this powerful wave of the Black Lives Matter movement. Setting up a new home. Finishing my book and querying agents. Trying to find a job.
My brain has been too overwhelmed to focus on reading, but because books bring me comfort, I’ve still turned to them in these…busy times. I have been reading. Albeit slowly.
I finished three books in May, and four in July: If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub, Beach Read by Emily Henry, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, The Guest List by Lucy Foley, and Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I’d like to note here that I listened to The New Jim Crow and Untamed on Audible, as I tend to prefer to walk and listen to non-fiction than sit down and read it. Below are my thoughts on each of the seven books that I’ve read over the past few months.
Mhairi McFarlane has become my go-to for easy, enjoyable romantic comedy. Her books are fast-paced, characters likable, and love stories are just good—gripping without being heavy, and cute without being overly soppy.
If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane didn’t disappoint. It’s about two coworkers who use each other to fake a romance for their own individual gain, and, well, you probably know how it goes. This book is cute. If you need to escape in a rom-com right now, I recommend it!
Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures read different from Emma Straub’s other novels (The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, All Adults Here), but in a good way! Don’t get me wrong, I liked all three of those other books, but it’s refreshing when an author can make a departure from their regular style and still write an excellent book.
I really enjoyed Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, a Hollywood saga type book that follows the life of a Wisconsin-born movie star. It has the glamour and glitz one would hope for when reading about 1940s Hollywood, but also just felt like a real, raw portrayal of a woman trying to balance her career, family, and self, from childhood to old age. This book was good. I recommend it.
By now you’ve probably noticed that a) I’m a sucker for rom-coms and b) I turn to reading them when the outside world weighs heavily on my shoulders. Beach Read by Emily Henry fit the bill for what I was looking for as we painstakingly waited for news of a flight out of Nicaragua in May, and it came highly acclaimed, appearing on The New York Times Book Review's Summer Romance Reads, Entertainment Weekly’s Hottest Summer Reads of 2020, Oprah Magazine's Best Beach Reads of Summer 2020, Shondaland's Five Books to Read in May, and other impressive lists.
The story follows the relationship between two writers who find themselves in neighboring houses on a Michigan lake. She’s dealing with grief, he’s grumpy. They don’t get along but keep getting thrown together. And then they realize that they’re both suffering from writer’s block, so decide to help one another out. A friendship develops, and then something more.
I’m going to be honest here and say I didn’t entirely love Beach Read. The characters felt too surface level. I like to feel as if they could walk off of the pages and into real life, you know? And the two leads in this book didn’t do that for me. I wouldn’t recommend this one.
I think that The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander should be a required text for all high school seniors. Our school systems need to do a better job of teaching in-depth Black history and current affairs. The New Jim Crow provided so much information that filled the gaps in my woefully inadequate education and understanding around systemic racism, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration. As I mentioned before, I listened to this book on Audible, but frequently found myself wishing I had a hard copy so I could take notes and highlight passages.
Before this point in my life, I did not pay attention to the war on drugs. I did not devote a lot of energy to learning about mass incarceration in the United States. I was ignorant and wrong. At a young age, I saw heroin destroy the life of one friend. Later, in my early twenties, I lost another friend to a heroin overdose. These traumatic events in my life led me to put up walls when it came to anything drug-related. Those walls stopped me from learning about the slew of injustices and oppression and wrongful incarceration of Black people in the United States. Through reading The New Jim Crow, I toppled them down. I am here to keep learning, no matter how painful the knowledge is. Because knowledge is power. And with it, we can create change.
If you have not yet read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, do so now. It’s not a recommendation, it’s a requirement. And don’t stop there, either. Keep reading and educating yourself. We have a lot of work to do.
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman came highly recommended from a friend and has thousands of great reviews but…I struggled to get through this one. I’m not sure if it was the book itself, or all that was going on in the world around me (having just gotten back to the United States during a pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests and also trying to furnish a completely empty apartment after ridding ourselves of most of our possessions last year took up a lot of mental energy), but I just could not focus on this book.
The Dovekeepers is based on an event that occurred over two thousand years ago, when a small dwelling of Jews on top of Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert, held off Roman armies from invading for months. It is rumored by historians that only two Jewish women and five children survived the siege. Hoffman’s work of fiction surrounding this event is told through the stories of four different very different but powerful women, each with their own tragic past and trying present.
Hoffman’s writing is beautiful, which is what drew me in, but beyond that, I just didn’t connect to any characters or their story. I was disappointed because another one of her books, The World That We Knew, was a favorite of mine from last year. I would 100% recommend The World That We Knew but would not recommend The Dovekeepers.
I got about a quarter of the way through The Guest List by Lucy Foley and thought, finally! This is the book that I’ve been waiting for. It was a gripping, fast-paced thriller that drew me in from the start and was easy to read.
The Guest List is set on a rugged, isolated island that juts out of the sea off of the east coast of Ireland. There’s one building—The Folly—on the entire island, and it’s been temporarily taken over by a wedding party. The story leading up to the wedding is told from five different points of view: the bride, the bridesmaid, the best man, the plus one, and the wedding planner. And then, on the night of the wedding, someone ends up dead.
Secrets unravel as the pages go on, but you’re kept guessing the whole time: who has been killed? And who is the killer? I definitely recommend this one!
Untamed is the first Glennon Doyle book that I’ve read (or, well, listened to); I decided to give it a try after listening to her speak on Brené Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us.
I liked this book. I did not love it. I did not hate it. It felt messy—unstructured. But that might be the point. At times, I would ask myself, why, exactly, am I listening to this woman’s story? Because that’s what it is: one woman’s story. I think that it could be inspirational for many, but for me, it was just a nice listen. There were a lot of metaphors in this book. A lot. It became a little exhausting. But, then again, they did help offer some clarity around a few things that I have a hard time putting words behind (for example, my views on religion and faith), and sometimes it’s nice to have a moment where you go, AHA! That’s what I’ve been trying to say, but didn’t know how before.
I’m neutral on my recommendation for Glennon Doyle’s Untamed.
So there you have it! My May/June/July book review. If the paragraphs above were just too long for you to get through today (no judgement, I get it), these are the titles I recommend: If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane if you want a cute rom-com, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub if you want a good Hollywood story, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander if you haven’t read it already, and The Guest List by Lucy Foley if you’re looking for a page-turner of a thriller.
If you’re looking for more book reviews, check out:
Thisldu Book Reviews - April: My Family and Other Animals and Ask Again, Yes
Thisldu Book Reviews - January: Circe, The Most Fun We Ever Had, and Such a Fun Age
Happy reading, everybody!