Well, I don’t have anything clever to say. Here we are…with seven more book reviews!
A Love Letter Life
Synopsis: As Jeremy and Audrey write, if you can fall into love, you can fall out. True love is something you choose to live out each day through your actions, decisions, and sacrifices. To find and still seek, now that is love. From the moment you meet your potential spouse, you can be intentional about shaping a beautiful love story, uniquely written for who God created you both to be. Whether you’re single and searching, in a serious dating relationship, or desiring to love your spouse better, Jeremy and Audrey equip you to pursue an intentional, creative, and faithful love story by sharing theirs.
My Review: I have listened to Jeremy and Audrey’s podcast for a few years now, so I was excited to also read their book! I really enjoy their podcast and how they are champions for real, authentic marriages that take effort. I did like this book, and enjoyed hearing all their practical tips. However, there was something about the story that almost rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like Jeremy and Audrey have an “easy” love story and therefore it’s easy for them to give “advice”. They have only been married for a few short years, so while their advice seems sound, it also didn’t feel experienced. Their love story is a total fairy tale, and while I have nothing against that, it just isn’t the case for many couples, so this may not be the book for everyone. I would love for the Roloffs to continue in their ministry and to continue writing about marriage and how they make it work through the years!
The Mother-in-Law
Synopsis: From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they’ll never have the closeness she’d been hoping for.
But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.
That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something…
My Review: I could not put this one down! For the record, I have a wonderful mother-in-law, so I couldn’t personally relate to the story, but I found the story very compelling! It’s a whodunnit mystery and I literally had no idea who did it until the very end. Once the mystery was revealed, it was a tad gruesome, just as a warning. The whole story unpacks relationships and friendships and grief and parenting and so many more real life circumstances in novel form.
#GirlBoss
Synopsis: Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age
Flash forward to today, and she’s the founder of Nasty Gal and the founder and CEO of Girlboss. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she’s written #GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers.
#GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn’t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It’s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.
My Review: I’m not sure how this book got onto my TBR list. It’s not my thing at all- not the fashion, not the louder than life feminism that comes across on the cover, and not the idea of being a #girlboss. And yet I still decided to read the book. And I just kept on reading. Memoir is my favorite genre, and even though I’ve never even heard of Nasty Gal, I was very fascinated by her story. I really enjoyed some of her financial and out of the box business wisdom, and her life story was fascinating. Again, I don’t know anything about her company nor am I into the things that she is into, but I did enjoy reading about her life experiences.
The Cafe By the Sea
Synopsis: Years ago, Flora fled the quiet Scottish island where she grew up — and she hasn’t looked back. What would she have done on Mure? It’s a place where everyone has known her all her life, where no one will let her forget the past. In bright, bustling London, she can be anonymous, ambitious… and hopelessly in love with her boss.
But when fate brings Flora back to the island, she’s suddenly swept once more into life with her brothers — all strapping, loud, and seemingly incapable of basic housework — and her father. Yet even amid the chaos of their reunion, Flora discovers a passion for cooking — and find herself restoring dusty little pink-fronted shop on the
My Review: I seriously loved this book! It was so charming but not full of fluff. I felt like it had grieve interwoven with joy and adventure interwoven with the predictability of a chick lit novel. It was quaint and I really, really enjoyed reading it!
Content Warning: (I’m going to start adding content warnings to my book reviews for everyone. Since I am a conservative Christian, I know that most of my audience holds similar beliefs and I think that it’s important to acknowledge content that might go against core beliefs, or that might have triggers for other readers). This book does have the development of a gay couple. It would also rate it PG13.
The Farm
Synopsis: Nestled in the Hudson Valley is a sumptuous retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages—and all of it for free. In fact, you get paid big money—more than you’ve ever dreamed of—to spend a few seasons in this luxurious locale. The catch? For nine months, you belong to the Farm. You cannot leave the grounds; your every move is monitored. Your former life will seem a world away as you dedicate yourself to the all-consuming task of producing the perfect baby for your überwealthy clients.
Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines and a struggling single mother, is thrilled to make it through the highly competitive Host selection process at the Farm. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own young daughter’s well-being, Jane grows desperate to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she’ll receive on delivery—or worse.
My Review: I had such high hopes for this book. The synopsis was SO compelling because I felt like it touched on so many hot topics that our culture is consumed with. How much are we willing to spend to have children? How genetically modified can we make our children? Then there is the idea of surrogacy. Should it be legal? Should there be costs involved? What would that look like? How similar is it to adoption? There are so many questions without answers around these subjects, and I was hoping that his novel would unpack some of them. I felt like the premise of the story started off great, but the whole book kind of fell flat. It didn’t pique as much interest/curiosity/emotions as I thought it would from reading about the story. It still did bring up some really good questions in my mind about surrogacy and how we feel about it, but I would really only give this novel a 3.5/5.
Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors
Synposis: It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.
Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco’s most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that’s not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who’s achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules.
Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha’s arrogance. And then he discovers that she’s the only surgeon who can save his sister’s life.
As the two clash, their assumptions crumble like the spun sugar on one of DJ’s stunning desserts. But before a future can be savored there’s a past to be reckoned with…
My Review: Ok. I’m a sucker for a Jane Austen retelling. And I’m a sucker for a book that is written through the lens of another culture. So it’s safe to say that I loved this book. I found it so entertaining and humorous and I was gunning for the characters. I could feel their hatred and eventual love for one another, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still very into the story. I also loved how creative the author was in flipping the script so that the main character was female instead of male. I recommend this one! One caveat is that it is fairly long and there were many times where I felt like the descriptions of various foods and locations were just dragging on.
Cozy, Minimalist Home
Synopsis: Cozy Minimalism isn’t about going without or achieving a particular new, modern style. Nope. It’s simply a mindset that helps you get whatever style YOU LOVE with the fewest possible items.
In Cozy Minimalist Home, accidental stylist and bestselling author Myquillyn Smith
My Review: I LOVED Smith’s first book The Nester, so I was so excited to read this book! As soon as I started reading it I realized that YES, I am a cozy minimalist. I’m not a minimalist in the sense of having nothing, but I’m a minimalist in the sense that I only want things that are homey and cozy and have meaning. But then, the book started to go a little downhill for me. Smith walked through step by step instructions on how to dress a room in it’s cozy minimal best. I felt that her instructions were very clear and easy to follow, but it just didn’t “spark joy” for me. HA. Perhaps I read this book at the exact wrong time as I was reading it as we were making our emergency move from our tiny house back into our big house. Maybe I was feeling bitter/annoyed that I had to live in the house and therefore rejected all the thoughts of house design?
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Synopsis: In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry. The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.
Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government’s new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow
My Review: This was another book that I was sure I was going to love based on the synopsis. It was FASCINATING to hear that there was a book written about a blue woman (it really is a thing- the people were blue!) who was a
And that’s all for now!