Welcome to October! This is my busy month with work, so between that and still trying to unpack I feel like I haven't had a ton of time to read. I still did manage to read 4 books over the past month, and happily, all of them were very good!
This Is How It Always Is | Laurie Frankel
This was such a nice surprise. I picked it up on Audible after seeing it EVERYWHERE. I had no idea what it was about, only that people had great things to say about it. This ended up being a contender for my favorite book of 2017. I loved the little kid in the center of the story. A total read alike (watch alike?) for this is This Is Us. Pick this one up if you're looking for a family drama story with a little heft.
The Wife Between Us | Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
I received this as an ARC and couldn't put it down. It comes out in January 2018 and I'm calling it as one of the best psychological thrillers of next year. The story is told from two angles- from a young wife who is about to marry the enigmatic and powerful man of her dreams and from the ex wife of the same man. The protagonist was well developed, there was a lot of tension and uncomfortable scenes, and I was surprised on more than one occasion. Such a good read! I think it's still available on Netgalley if you don't want to wait until January.
Young Jane Young | Gabrielle Zevin
File this under... books I read in one day. Young Jane Young is about an intern who has an affair with a married congressman. It happens during the early 2000s- before we really knew how deep the internet goes- and to help her work through her feelings, she blogs about it. Predictably, the affair is not kept hidden forever and her blog is discovered. There's a major plot point that I thought was way off base- but nothing that kept me from enjoying it. The best part was how the story was told- from the perspectives of a ton of different players. Interesting, sweet book that makes a lot of great points about what happens to women when sordid affairs happen versus men. Full review here.
Turtles All The Way Down | John Green
Turtles All The Way Down was possibly the book that I was most excited for this year. John Green is the author of The Fault In Our Stars and Turtles is his first release since. Green is also an internet personality and runs a You Tube channel with his brother Hank. He's so open about his struggles with mental illness (OCD) and has talked about how the popularity of TFioS exacerbated his symptoms. The protagonist of Turtles- Aza- has her own struggles with OCD and anxiety. This was one of the most authentic examples of a person with OCD in literature. She's fixated on hygiene and worries about getting c diff. She knows that her thoughts are not her but she doesn't seem to have the skills to cope with it yet. This is a very John Green book- you have teens that are extraordinary well read and thoughtful that do a lot of talking about the meaning of things- but hell, I was a well read teen who did a lot of philosophizing at that age so it does happen. He's so good at capturing that late teen early adulthood time in life and Turtles is a very worthy follow up up TFioS. Loved it!
I clearly have a new release addiction. What's your favorite new release of 2017?
Find me me here!
