It’s been a little while since I did a book post. I haven’t read a lot of amazing books, kind of run of the mill books. But these are the best books I’ve read in the last few months and a few of them would probably make my Best Books of the Year list!
1 – The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Holy cow! This book was a wild ride! I loved it and could not put it down. 5 stars. Avery is an unorthodox therapist who is fighting a mysterious battle of her own while trying to help a couple work through infidelity but there seems to be more to the story than it seems, and somehow their story is intertwined with her own. I can’t say more without giving it away but wow! So good!
2 – The Two Lives of Sara by Catherine Adel West
This book was a beautifully written story that transports you to 1960s Memphis. Sara has left Chicago under circumstances she won’t talk about, with a new baby and nothing else. She takes refuge in a boarding house and the people there become her family. This book will be a hard read for a lot of people. It deals with a lot of hard topics. (CW: Rape, racism, violence.) There are so many layers to this story. Sara struggles with motherhood, bonding with her baby, letting her guard down and trusting people, loving people. Her anger is righteous and understandable. The one flaw of the book for me is that with any story, you want to see the main character grow. So much of this book I was rooting for Sara to find happiness and the ending just left me sad. That is not to say that it’s not worth reading!
3 – Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli
What a brilliantly painful read. I loved the whole book from start to finish. The depth of all the characters was so wonderfully. The utter pain of grief and how everyone around you expects you to move on quickly; the feeling of walking through water as you process the sadness; the anger and hurt you feel when someone you love dies–all written with such precise perfection. The book does deal with suicide, so trigger warning. One thing I found perfect was that they never reveal the “why” of the suicide and I think that is also perfect because so many people who commit suicide do not leave a note, and loved ones are left behind with the “WHY?” and this book illustrates that brilliantly.
I loved the characters. I loved the family. I loved Eve’s friends. I loved the glimpse of growth/healing and moving on at the end. And even though it was rage-inducing, I loved the absolute toxic poison of Eve’s mother in law as she processes her own grief around her son’s suicide. Everything about this book was good.
4 – The Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love and Orgasms by Olive Persimmon
This book will not be for everyone, but it was very well written and really, really funny. I found myself chuckling out loud many times while reading this. Sort of a memoir–Olive writes about living in New York in her 20s and 30s and failing at dating. She goes through a 5 year dry spell and wants to change that, and write a book about it, so she goes about connecting with people in the sex–positive industry to explore and learn a lot of new things. She learns about tantric sex, about foot fetishes, about online dating, about platonic professional cuddlers. She details several dating relationships and what went wrong. Overall it was a fun, and often steamy read. At times it was graphic, so if that’s not for you skip it, but I didn’t find myself offended by any of it.
5 – Milk Blood Heat: Stories by Dantiel Moniz
This is a beautiful, compelling book of short stories and each one is more interesting and intense than the next. The topics are about girlhood, infidelity, mothers and daughters, death, and family estrangement.
I really liked the focus of the stories being on girlhood, on daughters and how they relate to the world and their families. The first story in the book is dark and shocking and sucked me right in. My only complaint was that each story ended with me wanting more. Maybe that is the way of short stories…..This debut book of stories is promise of more to come. I am looking forward to reading her future art!
Happy Reading!
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