I feel like my reading of late has been really up and down… I blaze through a book or two, and then I seem to get mired in a book for a week or two while life gets in the way or I’m not compelling forward by the story. In any case, here’s what I’ve read of late…
–Marissa
High Country by Nevada Barr is another great Anna Pigeon novel, this time set in Yosemite National Park. Reading an Anna Pigeon novel is like visiting an old friend for a few hours…
The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister feels like a good companion to Where the Crawdads Sing or books by Sarah Addison Allen. I really loved The School of Essential Ingredients, so I was eager to read this latest, which definitely kept me guessing throughout. Beautiful prose, evocative scenery, this is great women’s fiction!
Mine by Courtney Cole was a super fast read, and though it wildly pulled at the strings of plausability, it was a solid suspense novel of the wronged wife taking revenge into her own hands!
Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis is a collection of (often NSFW) essays about, well, being a southern lady, and not so much of a lady at times. Definitely funny in places, and poignant in places, this is a great one to pick up and put down to read along.
Naturally Tan by Tan France is his breezy autobiography about growing up gay in England, meeting his husband, fashion advice, and being on Queer Eye. Fast and fun!
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary is just a delightful romance. 🙂 A boy and a girl share a flat, but work opposite schedules and thus never meet, but communicate solely through Post-It note. You know how it’ll end, but it’s utterly charming.
The Farm by Joanne Ramos is probably supposed to spark more ire than it actually did (I even discussed it with a fellow reading buddy!), but didn’t really strike me as implausible… a “farm” in upstate New York takes exceptional care of women who are serving as surrogates for the rich and famous, though they must stay for the duration of their pregnancy. And? 
How Not to Die Alone by Richard Roper could have been a serious downer, but instead was a quite charming British story of a bloke who clears flats after someone had died without family and who once told a fib… which has blossomed into a large, large lie. When he falls for the “new girl” in the office, he has to decide how to live – a lovely story!
Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach knocked my socks of, in a good way! I thought it would be just a cookbook (and for the record, I rarely “read” cookbooks, no matter who it is), but I was so pulled into her story, her commitment to family dinner, and to her easy, breezy recipes then I read it cover to cover, marking recipes and reading passages to my husband. I aspire to be Jenny, and I’ve definitely been making dinner more at home thanks to her cookbook!
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