I don’t know how it’s already nearing the end of September, but here we are, weirdly wild weather, fall decor and shortening days and all! Here’s what I’ve been reading lately…
–Marissa
Paper Ghosts by Sarah Addison Allen once again returns us to this author’s wheelhouse… North Carolina, magical realism, a romance, and the power of women. This novel follows two timelines (present day and 1976) through the line of the Wester woman (or Wester witches?) as they fall in love, make choices, outrun heartbreak and show the bonds of familial love. I loved it as I love all of her novels!
Blunt Instrument by Amy Bloom was an easy (and fairly short!) audiobook listen of this mystery novel. Dell Chandler is a PI who has been asked to investigate the death of Professor Bullfinch at Cromwell University, and the list of suspects and scrapes Dell gets into are myriad. This was easy listening (though the ending felt super abrupt!), but not as memorable as I thought it might be.
Thank You for Remembering by Emily Harding was a sweet, tender romance novel. Marnie has retrograde amnesia, and she is reluctantly cared for when she returns home by her grumpy neighbor Ben. They work together to try and uncover her memories, and of course, fall for each other in two very different ways. I thought this was sweet, witty, easy, and warm. I loved it!
Fallow by Sarah Anderson is… weird, but I like it. 🙂Natalie has a dead end job, so when she’s offered the chance for a life of luxury and no worries in exchange for being an in-house surrogate, she jumps for it. We get the see the perks, the weird relationships with the parents, how it’s a job and then a weird twist that takes over the last third of the book. This kept me intrigued throughout, though those first two thirds were definitely my favorite! Thought provoking!
Start at the End by Emma Grey is a “sliding doors” novel, which I actually didn’t know when I went into this audiobook. Audrey and Fraser are deeply in love, but a tragedy just days before their wedding splits the novel into two different POVs and timelines. This is a contemporary romance novel, but for a decidedly different lens – we’re doing it for book discussion soon and I’m sure we’ll have much to chat about!
