And here we are, a new year! Here are my starter reads for the year…
–Marissa
Exiles by Jane Harper is the latest in her Aaron Falk series (and rumored to be the last?!), and again, does not disappoint. Aaron is heading to his best friend Raco’s house for a postponed christening and gets pulled into helping with not one, but two, investigations into disappears in the area. The prologue hooks the reader in right away, and I was also happy to see Aaron landing in a good place in his personal life by the end, even if the disappearances were tragic. I enjoyed this one!
Tranquility by Tuesday by Laura Vanderkam was mentioned when she was interviewed by Gretchen Rubin on her podcast, and I liked what she had to say, so I bought her book. Not everything was a good takeaway for me, but I did glean some gems, including planning “big and little adventures” each week, something we’ve been sorely lacking in lately! I’m sure I’ll reread this at some point!
Flight by Lynn Steger Strong was an audiobook listen, and clocking in at only a few hours, was just the right length for me at the time. This novel takes place over three days at Christmas as three siblings converge at Henry’s house in New York, not at their recently deceased mother’s house in Florida. Sibling and marital tensions, a missing person, grief and personal confusions all mix together in this novel. I enjoyed this one!
Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica tells the story of two couples, actually. Nina and Jake are having marital trouble, and then Jake goes missing unexpectedly. Lily and Christian (Lily is Nina’s best friend) are the other couple who may or may not having something to hide from the other. This was a good twisty novel about how good people make bad choices and how far loyalty will stretch.
A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone is *not* a Hallmark of a novel – far from it – but I was HERE for it! Mix together a plus-side adult film star, a faded boy band member, a Hallmark-but-not-Hallmark movie, Vermont snow, and a cast of colorful and entertaining characters, and then throw in some very explicit sex scenes and you’ve got this rockadoodle novel. It was funny, it was sexy, it was big-girl-proud, and it was exactly the kind of Christmas novel I was wanting. I LOVED this. 🙂
American Cozy by Stephanie Pedersen is a small non-fiction book that tries to meld the feeling of Danish hygge with the American sensibilities of cozy, with mixed success. Enjoyable, but not memorable.
Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert was an audiobook listen for me, and I’ve enjoyed her past “Brown sisters” stories so I was interested in this one, but it didn’t have the same *spark* as the others did for me… and then I realized pretty early on it was actually a young adult novel, which explained a LOT. Cute, but unmemorable for me.
stubbornsunshine.com 