Holy September Reads, Batman!

How, HOW was it so many weeks ago that I added book reviews? I feel like I’ve not been reading as much lately, or reading slower, or not being compelling by as many titles. Late summer slump? Nonetheless, here’s what I’ve had on tap lately…

–Marissa

The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler is a women’s fiction pick, all about three friends who decide to monetize the invisible work and mental load of wives, from arranging groceries to signing permission slips to sourcing whatever their clients need. I loved the premise of this novel (if you’ve read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky, you are familiar with invisible work!), but I found it… slow and the characters not THAT compelling as a trio. I wanted to like this more than I did.

Neon Gods by Katee Robert because sometimes, you need a smutty Greek gods novel whilst on vacation.🙂

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim is a hard plot to summarize, but just trust that Kim is going to weave such a compelling, fascinating, moving novel (just like her last, Miracle Creek, which I also highly recommend!). A family grapples with their suddenly missing patriarch, the only clue being Eugene, the little brother of main protagonist Mia, who returns from a walk one day without his father and without being able to reveal what happened : Eugene has a rare genetic condition called Angelman syndrome and cannot speak. From there, the novel combines the mystery of the disappearance, family secrets, an exploration of Angelman and associated disorders, and a family in crisis. This had so many twists and turns and was so fascinatingly written, I couldn’t stop reading. Highly recommended!

The Six : The Untold Story of America’s First Woman Astronauts by Loren Grush is exactly that… a blow-by-blow retelling of the backgroun of each woman and how they came to join NASA, their training, their “firsts”, and of course the death of Judy Resnik aboard Challenger. As a “space nerd”, I was into this, though I often got bogged down in some of the chapters “pre-flight” if you will. Still, an interesting look at these six trailblazers (Ride, Resnik, Fisher, Sullivan, Lucid and Seddon) – recommended for fellow space nerds.🙂

Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier by Marisa Meltzer was interesting… not a gotcha or a takedown, since Weiss is such an elusive character, but this charts the meteoric rise of Glossier and how things unraveled (though not in Theranos fashion!) once the peak was over. Easy to read, interesting the look through this at the lens of the whole #girlboss era, and an inside look at startups and the cosmetics industry.

The New Mother by Nora Murphy was an audiobook listen, and was a solid psychological suspense novel about, well, a new mother.🙂 Natalie is on the struggle bus with her newborn and after her husband goes back to work, leaving her and the baby in their new home, she looks for any way to get through the day – enter Paul, her kind neighbor who is a huge help. But Paul ain’t all that.😉 Predictable, but still a solid listen.