What I Read in September
Happy October! I’m excited that fall is here, which means more time cozying up with a good book. We’ve had a pretty big change over here: we got a puppy! Taking advantage of this remote work time and seeing a life dream come true has been so rewarding. His name is Cash (short for Cashew) and he’s as cute as he is bite-y. Living with a puppy also means less reading time, but I listen to audiobooks a lot as I play with him. We can’t wait until he’s a little older and we can take him on runs and to the park!
Ok, on to September reads. Some hits and misses, but if I could pick just one to recommend to everyone, it would be Pretty Things by Janelle Brown. The Lake Tahoe setting was very personal to me!
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
3/5 Stars
Set in 1600s Norway, a small fishing village’s male population is completely wiped out during a storm. The women left behind are accused of witchcraft.
I had such high hopes for this. I LOVE Norway, and the premise sounds so good. But ultimately, I felt like the plot moved too slowly. There was not much intrigue; characters turned out to be exactly as they were portrayed, so if you have sketchy feelings in the beginning about that shifty husband, you're definitely right. And if you already know who you can't trust, it just becomes one drawn-out story of hopelessness. In addition to that, the scenes were not particularly dynamic; mostly just characters in conversation.
There was a wonderful sense of atmosphere though, and the setting was well rendered.
Pretty Things by Janelle Brown
5/5 Stars
Nina, a grifter on the run, poses as a guest at the Lake Tahoe estate owned by a rich family who wronged her and her mother during her childhood. As she sets up a last big con on this family, secrets come out.
Wow, this was an amazing read! Characters felt fully imagined, plot twists were solid, and pacing was perfect. I love the Lake Tahoe setting too. There's a lot of heart to this story as well, and I genuinely felt for the main character's plight. A stunning read!
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
4/5 Stars
This story of female friendship and sexuality follows a showgirl’s rise to fame—and sexual discovery—in Victorian London.
Delightfully written, compulsively readable, scandalous, and entertaining. The main character was complex, the plot was unpredictable but made sense, and the historical time period was well realized. I just had one issue with the very end, which seemed to run out of steam with the long political speech that felt out of no where to me. But overall, this is as fantastic book and well worth the time.
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
2/5 Stars
A death in the community forces one family to reconcile with all the ways they have wronged or disappointed each other.
I am just so frustrated by these types of books that are like 90% commentary and 10% actual plot. I'm probably in the minority, because I've seen several bestsellers lately in this style (notably Little Fire Everywhere and A Good Neighborhood). But to me, it is just so unsatisfying to basically have the author tell you what you should think about what's happening. Almost every novel will have some sort of expository narration or backstory to orient you in this world, but the hope is that eventually that gets out of the way and then the present action takes the lead. That doesn't seem to ever happen in this book. It just felt bogged down by a bunch of extra commentary I didn't feel was really needed.
The commentary is also not very nuanced. This book literally says things like "she wanted to be good" and "she wanted to do the right thing." Those are such basic, obvious statements that surely there must be a more artistic way to SHOW that through action. It's also kind of insulting as a reader to have the author constantly point out something so obvious.
Then there's the pacing. Because every event is interrupted by long passages of B roll commentary, all the momentum gets deflated. I was constantly wondering, "why are we talking about this? And where were we again?" It's like trying to watch a movie but the person next to you keeps pausing it to explain to you what's happening. With so many tangents, we're left with very little action. But if you like character-driven novels over plot-driven ones, you may enjoy this more than I did.
Nature’s Housekeeper by Michael Gurnow
4/5 Stars
A nature-hater with a passion for philosophy is influenced so much by Henry David Thoreau that he leaves his professorial career to become a trial maintenance worker at a local state park.
Gurnow is definitely a talented author with creative jokes and descriptions that got genuine laughs from me. But this book also has a solid philosophical side, debating preservation vs conservation and why humans should care in general about the environment. People who are already nature lovers will have a tough time with the first half of this book though, as I often found myself shaking my head how someone could be so ignorant about nature. But Gurnow comes around, and believe it or not I found his scenes about trail maintenance interesting.
At first I was put off by how the jokes were a mile a minute in the first part of the book, thinking it could use a bit more restraint, but then I thought, why not make the most of every sentence? It definitely made for an enjoyable and memorable read.
The Wife Stalker by Liv Constantine
3/5 Stars
Joanna swiftly loses her husband to Piper, the hot new arrival in town. What follows is her desparate attempts to get him and her children back, but nothing is as it seems.
This was a fast read that keeps up the momentum, but the ending just felt rushed and I still had a few questions at the end. I just hate the feeling that the author is deliberately keeping things from you, when all the other characters know what's going on.
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
4/5 Stars
Ten years ago, Laurie’s daughter, Ellie disappeared at 15 years old. Now, Laurie meets a 9-year-old girl who looks eerily like Ellie, and renews her quest to discover what really happened to Ellie.
I was pleasantly surprised at the emotional depth of this book. I felt that it started slow, especially since I've come to expect a faster pace for this genre, but I now know it was just building a solid foundation so that the emotional weight that comes at the end will hit right. This story is not really about solving a mystery, but about what to do after something brutal happens. Like I said, pleasantly surprised.
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
4/5 Stars
A young man named Milkman Dead comes of age in 1960s Michigan and goes on a quest to discover his family history.
Beautiful as always from Toni Morrison. Although this story didn't resonate with me as much as The Bluest Eye and Beloved, I still marveled at the writing in Song of Solomon. Lyrical and rich with meaning, it is well worth the read. I love Toni Morrison for her female characters and relationships, and I think the fact that this novel doesn't focus on that is the reason I didn't quite connect with it the way I wanted to. The final few pages are incredible; what a poetic ending.
Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon
2/5 Stars
Based on the real life of Nancy Wake, an Australian spy in Vichy France, this book follows her progression from expat socialite to commanding resistance fighter.
I did not finish at 3/4 because it was just too long. I also have much higher standards for WWII novels because there are so many, and this one wasn't special to me. It seems like a fine book if you don't read the genre much, but as someone who has read a lot of WWII novels, this one just felt done before. The marriage (especially the husband) seemed idealized, the escape into the Pyrenees felt very much like Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, and I have a hard time believing that this pretty woman in wartime was able to accomplish so much unscathed. I guess I would have preferred something more realistic and gritty. You can certainly have a romanticized war novel (All the Light We Cannot See or The Book Thief come to mind), so long as the style is unique or unusual, and Code Name Helene was not that for me.
