Year 6, week 22: The Lincoln Highway

This week's book:
The Lincoln Highway: A Novel
By Amor Towles

This was one of Book of the Month's end of the year finalists for 2022 as the year's best book. This book didn't win, but I hadn't read it so, for free, I thought I would give it a whirl. 

The story is told from many points of views, and is a well written book. The story is a cross country coming of age story of two brothers and the people they meet along the way. This book just has the feel of a book that book groups across the country will probably read over the next little while. 

I was mostly cutting tie blankets for my girl scout troop's service project while I listened to the book. It's probably a good thing that I listened and read at the same time, because I'm not entirely sure I would have ever finished the novel. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, but it was a little too long for being thirty-seven weeks pregnant. 

I would recommend this book if you are in the mood for a thick book that is really rather deep into character development and plot. 

Year 6, week 21: The Invention of Wings

This week's book:
The Invention of Wings
By Sue Monk Kidd

This book has been on my TBR pile for a while now. It's one of those books people are talking about, and so I thought maybe I'd give it a whirl. 

I have read two other books by Sue Monk Kidd: The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longing. I enjoyed the other books I have read by her, so I was assuming I would like this novel as well. 

I didn't know much about what the book was about before I started. Her books normally have very strong female friendships or sisterhoods. This book is about a set of sisters, which I am embarrassed to say I didn't know were real people until I read the author's note. The sisters were female abolitionists and feminists. They spoke out against slavery and for black people to have rights. The book is told from two points of view, going back and forth between Sarah (one of the sisters) and Handful, a female slave that was given to Sarah as a child. 

There are so many heartbreaking moments in this book, and I always learn a new horror that was used against people of color in books like this. Why are people so horrible to each other? 

I don't think this was my favorite novel from this author, but I'm still glad I read it. As a quilter it was so interesting to hear the African American woman talk and use quilting as an escape from the horrors of being a slave. 

I would probably recommend this book, with a strong warning that some of the slavery history is so heartwrenching. 

Year 6, week 20: The Rewind

This week's book:
The Rewind
By Allison Winn Scotch

This week's blog is about a book taking place on New Year's Eve in 1999. I tried to finish the novel before new year's, but I kept falling asleep when I tried to read it. I ended up listening to the last half of the book to finish it. 

The book is about two people that dated in college and broke up on graduation day. A decade later both of the main characters are back on their college campus for a mutual friend's wedding, that just happens to be the dawning of a new century. The two haven't spoken and rather hate each other. The day of the wedding, they wake up semi naked and they are both wearing wedding rings and have no memory of the night before. 

The book's plot goes back and forth in between when they are trying to figure what happened the night before and when they were dating in college. I was so excited about this book when I saw it listed as one of the options on Book of the Month, but I was just disappointed in both of the main characters; they are both so selfish and unlikeable. 

I don't know if I would really recommend the book. 

2022 Book Review

Here is the end of the year book reads of 2022. The end total was 209 books, slightly less then last year due to killer morning sickness and such. I listed my top ten books (in no particular order). I didn't list my least favorite because I picked some real stinkers this year, and let's be honest, authors don't try to write bad books. The family added their favorites as well. 

My favorites of 2022:

• The Love Hypothesis
• Searching For Sunday
• Sisters in Arms
• Stolen Tongues
• The Butterfly Garden
• 20th Century Ghosts
• The Whole Language
• It Happened One Summer
• Mexican Gothic (a reread)
• Mad Honey

Kids favorite books

• Mikey- The Aquanaut, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, a Miles Morales Spiderman graphic novel he read by himself
• Lily- The Ichabod, the Scary Tales Retold series 
• Rosie- The Bailey School Kids, Barnyard Dance, We Don't Eat Our Classmates, and Baby Shark 

Husband's picks

"We were trying to read through The Witcher series so that's mostly what we read. We're almost finished, just a couple books left. We also read the Will Smith biography shortly before "The Slappening"...which was weird. I'm hoping we will be able to read more when the new baby comes."

Year 6, week 19: Lovelight Farms

This week's book:
Lovelight Farms
By B. K. Borison

This is last week's blog. We were hit with a storm with killer low temperatures, and then our whole family was hit with the flu. My eldest was hit first, then the middle child, and then the three year old on Christmas Eve. I was last (knock wood) on the day after Christmas. All I can say is 34 weeks pregnant and the flu is no joke, I would not recommend, zero stars. 

And speaking of things that I wouldn't recommend, this week's book. I was listening to it while I made my husband's Zelda themed napkins and was trying to finish a baby quilt for the hubby's best friend's upcoming son. I didn't finish the quilt before the hubs went to see his friends for a guy's night, and then we all got the flu so I haven't finished the quilt yet. Hopefully before we have our own baby girl at the end of January. 

Anyway, this book is about a tree farmer who has to have her guy best friend pretend to be her boyfriend so she can win some competition of some sort with a big money prize that will help her save her tree farm. I thought it sounded like a classic Hallmark Christmas movie, but the writing was so clunky. The heroine has been in love with her friend since the beginning of the friendship, and it appears he is in love with her too. Normally there is plot development and there just wasn't in this book. The romance scenes are boring and the book just doesn't pull in the reader. 

Apparently this is the first book of a series, but I don't plan on reading the rest of the books.

Year 6, week 18: A Holly Jolly Diwali

This week's book:
A Holly Jolly Diwali
By Sonya Lalli

I was so excited about this book when I saw it was listed on one of those super sales on Kindle. I found it on my library app and dove into it right away. All of these Christmas/holiday books have been about two very white people and are a little cookie cutter. I was excited to read a book about a strong Indian woman finding love around the holidays. 

I was hoping to learn and experience a new holiday via this book. Turns out the main character doesn't actually know much about Diwali or about her Indian culture. After losing her job, this uptight Type A woman goes to a wedding in India and falls for a musician. She's torn between this new guy that she thinks will have to be a fling, or the guy she has gone on one blind date back home in England. 

Sadly, I was a little bored with this book. I don't know if I read too many Christmas romances this month or if it's because I'm deep into my third trimester, but the book was only a meh for me. 

Year 6, week 17: A Very Merry Bromance

This week's book:
A Very Merry Bromance
By Lyssa Kay Adams

This week's book is the fifth book in the series. I listened to the rest of the books last year if I remember correctly. 

The books are about a group of professional athletes and other dude bros that start a club where they meet and discuss romance novels so they can be better partners and men. The concept is fun, but sadly is used less and less while the series has continued. I was super excited when I saw that there was going to be another book and that it was going to be a Christmas themed one. 

I'm going to be honest, this book was so much worse than the rest of the series. It's been at least a year since I had read the previous book and I couldn't remember most of the characters, and they were hardly in the book, which is one of the main reasons I have liked the other books. The two main characters have literally no chemistry with each other as well. The male lead is a country singer super star and his romantic lead is a lawyer who helps the poor, and her family happens to be one of the biggest whiskey producers in Tennessee. 

I was so disappointed. I'm sad to say I would not recommend this book. 

Year 6, week 16: Window Shopping

This week's book:
Window Shopping
By Tessa Bailey

I bought this week's book months ago, because I've been binge reading this author's books a bit this year. I looked up if this author had a Christmas or holiday themed book, and sure enough she did. I read this as fast as life (my kids) would let me. 

I'll be honest this is probably not my favorites of her books, but it was still a silly Christmas romance. A former inmate is looking at window display at a big department store in New York when a corny wildly handsome guy starts chatting her up. Before prison our heroine was studying how to do window displays, and the guy just happens to run the whole department store. When he urges her to apply to the new window display designer position, they must fight the instant draw they have to each other.  

If there wasn't a little smut here and there, this could have totally been a Netflix Christmas movie or something, probably not Hallmark though. I would recommend this if you want a slightly dirty Christmas romance this holiday season.  

Year 6, week 15: Alaskan Holiday

This week's book:
Alaskan Holiday
By Debbie Macomber

It's the first day of December, so it's time to start the holiday themed books. The last few years I have started the month with a Christmas romance by Debbie Macomber. All of the books she writes are super lame, like a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, without all the magic. The books sometimes has a Christian themed, sometimes not, but always super G-rated. I bought a whole stack of them at a used book sale earlier this year, just for prepping for December. 

This novel feels like the reader miss the first one hundred pages. The story is about a young chef that has been in Alaska for seven months and has had a "relationship" with a local, but she is heading back to the mainland to work at a fancy restaurant. The guy in Alaska tries to propose in quite possibly the worst proposal ever. She says no, but the whole town thinks she should marry him. The whole no-means-no isn't followed in this book. 

In the past I have just been able to shrug my shoulders and say, it's just silly mind fluff, but holy smokes this book is bad. I don't recommend this at all. 

Year 6, week 14: White Horse

This week's book:
White Horse
By Erika T. Wurth 

There is a lot of buzz around this book on the web in the reading community, so when this was an option on Book of the Month this month I picked it lickity-split. The author is a Native American woman, and November is Indigenous People Month, so I doubly wanted to read it. 

The novel is a coming of age tale that has ghosts and deals with maybe a curse or two (umm yes please!). The second the book came in the mail I started reading it. Originally I was going to read it with my sweet hubby, but due to me being pregnant I fall asleep by the time we put our three kids to bed, we would have never finished the book. 

I would definitely recommend this book, and have already given my copy of the book to my ghost loving sister. 

Year 6, week 13: Fairy Tale

This week's book
Fairy Tale
By Stephen King

This is King's newest book, I do believe. I kept on picking the novel up and then putting it down because I don't have time to sit down and read a hardback book that is over six hundred pages, and it's also on the pricey side. Instead of buying the book, I put the audiobook on hold from the library and waited. I ended up doing a buddy chat for the novel on Facebook messenger. I'm glad I did because I don't know if I would have finished it otherwise. 

This novel feels like three books in one, which are all different genres. The book opens with a high school football player that befriends an elderly neighbor and takes care of him after he has had a fall, then the boy goes to a fairy tale land that totally reminds me of Narnia, and then the book turns into a Hunger Games-ish nightmare land. The book kept giving me whiplash. 

In the buddy chat we were talking about how some of King's novels seem like they are a little too long, and this book is one of those times. Of course, the novel is very well written and has such amazing descriptions, but the novel just seemed a little too long. 

I would probably recommend the book, but it just wasn't my favorite of King's works.