2022 Reading: 4 and 5 Star Reads

I’m back for Part II of my quarterly book reviews! If you missed Part I, you can check it out here: 2022 Reads Q1

4 Star Reads

The Nantucket Inn

Amazon Summary:

Lisa Hodges needs to make a decision fast. Thanks to her dead husband’s gambling addiction, their savings is almost gone. In her early fifties with a large, waterfront home on Nantucket to support, Lisa hasn’t worked in over thirty years, has no in-demand skills and is virtually unemployable.

Her only options are to sell the house and move off-island, or, she could use her cooking and entertaining skills and turn her home into a bed and breakfast. She desperately needs it to succeed because she has four grown children with problems of their own and wants to stay close to them. 

Her oldest daughter, Kate, has a fabulous career in Boston–working as a writer for a popular fashion magazine and engaged to a dangerously handsome, photographer, who none of them have met.

Kate’s twin, local artist, Kristen, has been reasonably content with her on-again off-again relationship with an older, separated businessman. 

Her son, Chase, runs his own construction business and is carefree, happily dating here and there but nothing serious. 

Youngest daughter, Abby, is happily married to her high school sweetheart, and they’ve been trying to have a baby. But it hasn’t happened yet, and Abby wonders if it’s a sign that maybe their marriage isn’t as perfect as everyone thinks.

Come visit Nantucket and see how Lisa’s new bed and breakfast has an impact on almost everyone in her family. It’s the first book in a new series that will follow the Hodges family, friends, and visitors to Nantucket’s Beach Plum Cove Inn.

My Review: I liked this one because it was cheesy, but also realistic. Grown adult children still have drama sometimes, too. I like that it was clean and predictable and I got to focus on just one character at a time. There are several more books in the series that focus on the different family members. As highly as I rated this book, I’m not sure I’ll go back for the others in the series, BUT I did truly enjoy just sitting down and reading this one.

The Love Hypothesis

Amazon Summary:

When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman’s carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding…six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

My Review: This was a delightful romance! It was well written and certainly drew me in and kept me turning the pages. I know it has gotten a lot of buzz about representing women in science, so that is a bonus as well! This one does have some open door romance that I could have done without, but otherwise it was fun from beginning to end.

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Amazon Summary:

How can you find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and even the death of loved ones? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long, and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?

“It is in the dark that God is passing by . . . our lives shake not because God has abandoned but the exact opposite. God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us…”

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp invites you to discover a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of living that is fully alive, and a way of becoming present to God that brings deep and lasting joy. It’s only in the expression of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we’ve always wanted . . . a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. Come to feel and know the impossible right down in your bones: you are wildly loved by God.

My Review: I first read this book 10 years ago and I remember it being good, but since it has been sitting on my shelf for 10 years, I decided to pick it back up and remind myself of what it was really about. Now, I strongly dislike Ann Voskamp’s writing style. She takes 3 pages of flowy, poetic writing to get to the point, and by the time we have arrived at the point, I sometimes scratching my head. BUT, when she does get to the point- her points are incredible and it’s one of those books that I have to read close to my journal so that I can write all these thoughts down. This book was such a needed reminder to me in this hard season that God is still giving good gifts- I just have to remember to look for them and find them.

The Tale of Desperaux

Amazon Summary: Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other’s lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out. 

My Review: What a delightful book! Although written for children, I found myself with a constant smile as I gathered up the moral lessons that were being shouted from the rooftops in this story. It was so well written, I loved the nods to big words and the story line is just adorable and brave, and heartfelt, and full of love and good lessons.

The Ministry of Motherhood: Following Christ’s Example in Reaching the Hearts of Our Children

Amazon Summary:

Because Motherhood Isn’t Just a Job. It’s a Calling. 

A mother’s day is packed with a multitude of tasks that require energy and time: preparing meals, washing clothes, straightening and cleaning the house, and caring for children. These jobs all are necessary and crucially important. But in the dailyness of providing for a child’ s physical, emotional, and social needs, vital opportunities for spiritual nurture and training can be overlooked. 

This doesn’t have to be the case. You can focus your energy on what matters most

My Review: I read this slowly over the course of two months and it was just what my heart needed in this season of raising littles. Sally Clarkson uses real life stories and examples, scripture, and truth to give practical ways to love and serve my children and understand my role as their parent and nurturer. It was a very encouraging read for me.

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved

Amazon Summary:

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

My Review: I don’t know how a book on such a dark subject could be so encouraging and laugh out loud funny, but this was. I love how she is frank and honest about her feelings on facing death. I love how she didn’t sugarcoat things, and she addressed all the stupid Christian-ese things that people can say to a dying woman. I love how she wrestled with her faith but came out stronger in it in the end. I just really loved every page of this book. It was incredibly encouraging to me as I walk through a hard season as well.

The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Amazon Summary: n this revealing exploration of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You’ll learn details about Wilder’s life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn how to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder’s books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world.

My Review: We are DEEP in a Laura Ingalls Wilder stage over here. The whole family is into the show, the books, and so on a whim I searched for other nonfiction books on the topic at the library. We’ve got craft books, cook books and all kinds of early reader books on the Ingalls family. But this one? This was just for me. Although it mostly focuses on the flora and fauna of all the places the Ingalls family lived, it also gives so many factual tidbits about the family and what life was truly like for them. I adored reading about the real life Ma and Pa and their three children. I learned so much about them that I had never learned from reading the fictional series, like the fact that they had a son that passed away in infancy. This book was like a juicy tell-all and I was HERE FOR IT.

A Season for Second Chances

Amazon Summary: Annie Sharpe’s spark for life has fizzled out. Her kids are grown up, her restaurant is doing just fine on its own, and her twenty-six-year marriage has come to an unceremonious end. Untethered for the first time in her adult life, she finds a winter guardian position in a historic seaside home and decides to leave her city life behind for a brand-new beginning.
 
When she arrives in Willow Bay, Annie is enamored by the charming house, the invigorating sea breeze, and the town’s rich seasonal traditions. Not to mention, her neighbors receive her with open arms—that is, all except the surly nephew of the homeowner, whose grand plans for the property are at odds with her residency. As Christmas approaches, tensions and tides rise in Willow Bay, and Annie’s future seems less and less certain. But with a little can-do spirit and holiday magic, the most difficult time of her life will become…a season for second chances.

My Review: I loved how this romance had older characters who were more experienced in life. It made the characters so likable for me that I feel like I fell in love right along with them. They were more sensible and practical, and actually had work to do ha. This was not only cute, but had deeper layers of real life things that need to be dealt with while in a relationship with someone.

Eight Perfect Hours

Amazon Summary:

In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans. From the acclaimed author of the “swoon-worthy…rom-com” (The Washington Post) Dear Emmie Blue.

On a snowy evening in March, thirty-something Noelle Butterby is on her way back from an event at her old college when disaster strikes. With a blizzard closing off roads, she finds herself stranded, alone in her car, without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone.

All seems lost until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together, until morning arrives and the roads finally clear. The two strangers part, positive they’ll never see each other again but fate, it seems, has a different plan. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence.

My Review: Aw, again! I feel like I’ve said it a few times in these reviews, but I just liked this book. It was a sweet romance with some twists and turns, and a hard look at family life when there are dysfunctional family members. I found myself cheering for Noelle all the way, and it made me so happy for her to find love.

5 Star Reads

Call Us What We Carry

Amazon Summary: Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

My Review: I am not a poetry reader, so this one really surprised me! I think we all have heard or seen Amanda Gorman read her poem for Biden’s inauguration. She has a way with words that just PULL ME IN. And this book was exactly that. I could actually understand her poetry and felt like I knew what she was saying. It wasn’t just good words pieced together, it felt like she was writing about our collective experiences (even some that I haven’t lived) and it was heartwarming and hard and good and beautiful all at the same time.

The Selection & The Elite

Amazon Summary:

For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The chance to live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon. But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her, and leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn’t want.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she’s made for herself—and realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.

My Review: Is this book cheesy? Yes, it is. Do I feel like I’m reading The Hunger Games and The Bachelorette at the same time? Why, yes, I do. And I’m just going to go ahead and say that I really am enjoying it! I have only read the first two books in the series and so far there is a lot of angsty drama and I don’t find it bothering me. Each time I finish one book in the series, I immediately want to read the next one to find out what happens.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

Amazon Summary:

We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.

When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.

Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like aWoman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

My Review: WOW! This book was incredible. Even as a nonfiction read, I was engaged and turning pages the entire time. There was so much cultural commentary and research and also her personal opinion that was surprising and convicting and I found myself nodding along. I think that the choice to drink is a personal choice, but I also think that many people do not understand or think about the full implications of drinking. This is a book that I wish everyone could read.

By the Shores of Silver Lake & On The Banks of Plum Creek

Summary: Follow the Ingalls Family as they live and survive in the early 1800s.

My Review: As a kid, I would read this series over and over again. Imagine my delight when I started to read the series out loud to my kids and we ALL fell in love again. Reading it as an adult is even more heartwarming than when I read it as a kid. We are slowly making our way through the whole series. Highly recommend this one!!!

Bibliophile: Diverse Spines & Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany

Amazon Summary: Searching for perfect book lovers gifts? Rejoice! Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany, is a love letter to all things bookish. Author Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. It’s a must have for every book collection, and makes a wonderful literary gift for book lovers, writers, and more.

My Review: Well, THIS was the perfect way to start my reading year. Flipping through these two books gave me SO many book ideas to add to my TBR and lit a fire in my bones to read, read, read! Plus, they are both gorgeous books. I found myself drooling over these two beauties nonstop. I hope I can find copies of them at a used book store to own for myself because they were so, so delightful!

Crying in H Mart

Amazon Summary:

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. 

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

My Review: Wow, wow, wow. Memoir is my favorite genre, and books like this is why I love it so much. There were tears, laughs, and some nodding along as I read about Michelle’s story. How it isn’t all so black and white, but we can all carry some trauma from our upbringing. I could especially relate to her times spent intersecting two cultures, and not knowing how to do that properly. As a kid, she rejected one culture, but came around as an adult and wished she had embraced it more. This was such a touching memoir, but the triggers do abound (cancer, death, suffering, difficult family relationships). I also didn’t love the way the book ended, but since the author is still continuing to live life, it’s a fair enough place to end.

The Poet X

Amazon Summary:

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. 

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. 

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

My Review: The plot itself isn’t the stunning part of this book. It’s that the entire book is written in verse. This absolutely blows my mind and makes the pages turn so fast. The coming of age story was good, although I feel more comfortable reading it as an adult than handing it to a youth, as it deals with a lot of questions toward religion, dysfunctional family, coming out gay (a side character), and choosing relationships as well what they are passionate about. Even though I may not like or agree with all the content, I still found it to be an incredible book that is so well done.

Now let’s check out how I am doing with my yearly reading goals:

• Read 100 books (34/100- well on track)
• Complete a Reading Challenge (I’m working my through several in my book planner)
• Read 20% BIPOC (6/34 is 18% so I’m tracking on that goal!)
• Read 20 books from my own shelves (7/20- for sure have made a lot of progress on this goal!)
• Read 8 Christian Life and Thought Books (3/8)
• Read 15 books published before 2000 (1/15- this has proved to be way more challenging than I thought- where are all the good books published in the 80s and 90s?)

And that is a wrap on my 4 and 5 star reads of this year so far! Have you read any of these? Will you be adding any to your list?