My very favorite Bossy November reads!
This month my favorite reads were a playful, poignant novel set during the week leading up to an ill-fated wedding; the memoir of a beloved cooking show personality; a dark academia story that centers around feminism and building new perspectives; historical fiction about a traveling librarian in 1930s Appalachia; a luminous story of astronauts on the International Space Station; and a novel about the power of books.
If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think!
And I'd also love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads?
01 The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Espach layers complex emotional challenges like suicidal thoughts, grief, and loneliness with funny, quirky, poignant moments in this charming, heartwarming novel.
Phoebe arrives at the decadent Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, wearing a green dress and heels, and she's quickly mistaken for one of the "wedding people." But Phoebe is having a crisis, and she's latched onto being at the site of her former dream vacation--which she'd envisioned visiting with her now-ex-husband--as the answer to her problems.
Lila has planned her million-dollar wedding down to the last detail, and Phoebe's depression and her very presence are throwing her for a loop--only the wedding people were meant to have rooms at the inn, and Lila isn't used to having her plans go awry.
Phoebe and Lila are unlikely confidantes and even more unlikely friends. But as the wedding week goes on, each woman is surprised by what she discovers about herself and the truths she is forced to confront.
I loved the tone of this novel. Espach writes a playful, poignant, often funny novel while anchoring the characters in complex emotions: suicidal thoughts, grief, loneliness, and despair. I was struck by the balance of depth and humor, and I was hooked throughout.
For my full review of this book, please see The Wedding People.
02 Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Ina's memoir is personal and thoughtful. Her charm comes through in candid reflections about her fascinating life, and her young life's adventures and missteps are as intriguing as the accounts of her eventual success.
Ina Garten, often called by the name of her former specialty food shop in the Hamptons (and television show), Barefoot Contessa, offers a personal, charming memoir in Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
Ina shares her life story, beginning with a difficult, abusive childhood, continuing to her marriage to Jeffrey while she was still in college, to her government job writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers under President Ford and President Carter, then a flight of fancy that changed everything when she bought and learned to run the Hamptons store Barefoot Contessa--necessitating extended time apart from Jeffrey and, eventually, a very real scare that the relationship wouldn't survive.
I looked forward to getting back to this book each time I could, and I was as charmed by Ina's guileless storytelling as by her blend of delightful spontaneity, creativity, practicality, and stubbornness.
I listened to Be Ready When the Luck Happens as an audiobook.
Click here for my full review of Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
03 Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang
I loved the dark academia setting, Sciona's bid to become the first female in the High Magistry, and her rethinking of long-held assumptions and prejudices. Wang doesn't shy away from a dramatic reckoning for the story's main characters in the end.
For twenty years, Sciona has single-mindedly set out to learn enough complex, intuitive, precise, powerful magic to become the first woman to be accepted into the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry.
But after Sciona blasts the competition at her entrance exam and is admitted, she finds that not all of her dreams have come true. The misogyny and contempt of her peers means she faces a lack of respect and resources at every turn. For example, instead of a lab assistant, she is assigned a janitor without magical training.
The janitor is a cultural outsider with a complicated history, and what he lacks in training he makes up for with the desire to learn more about the forces that may have long ago destroyed his family. When he and Sciona uncover an enormous magical secret, it could not only mean the undoing of the magical hierarchies that many have come to take for granted--it's dangerous enough that those in power want to silence the two of them for good.
I loved the dark academia setting, Sciona's sassy spirit, and the outsider-becoming-an-insider theme. Sciona's fight to pursue magic and her oft-frustrated ambition, her personal journey of reconsidering her assumptions about the Tiranish culture and its people's intentions, and an immense reckoning for all.
Please click here to see my full review of Blood Over Bright Haven.
04 Light to the Hills by Bonnie Blaylock
Blaylock's story centers around a packhorse librarian in 1930s Appalachian Kentucky and adds layers like a complicated past, second chances, mining tragedy, a bad guy who's pure evil, mountain justice, and the promise of a happy ending.
In Bonnie Blaylock's Light to the Hills, it's 1930 in the Kentucky Appalachians, and Amanda Rye is a traveling packhorse librarian, a widowed young mother, and somewhat of a local to the region, albeit estranged from her pastor father and her mother due to past scandal.
Amanda makes a special connection with a mountain family on her route that's facing tough times despite their double work at the coal mine and their small farm. The MacInteers--tough yet tender mother Rai, her clever daughter Sass, playful young adult Finn, and a hardworking father as well as the family's younger children--are hesitant to accept any semblance of help. But Amanda brings them reading materials, apples for treasured pies, and some joyful company, and a deep friendship develops.
Blaylock celebrates tough women, stand-up men, and never-ending hard work. Mining's dangers aren't glossed over, and tragedies abound. But Light to the Hills seems destined to provide happy endings. Blaylock offers up second chances at love, avoidance of punishment for our heroes' missteps when they tell the truth about others' wrongdoings, and a heartwarming chosen-family element (one of my favorite themes).
The story showcases a love for books and the power of the written word.
The bad guy in the story is pure evil, and there's little doubt he'll get a comeuppance by the story's end. The mountain justice that's carried out by the women was thrillingly shocking.
Please click here for my full review of Light to the Hills.
05 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The luminous novel Orbital tracks six astronauts in the International Space Station for one day as they goggle at the majestic beauty of earth, feel emotional distance from those they've left behind, forge bonds with each other, and reflect on their lives while racing past sixteen sunrises and sunsets.
Samantha Harvey's astronaut-focused novel Orbital traces a single day in the lives of six astronauts orbiting the earth at seventeen thousand miles an hour, clinging to Coordinated Universal Time as they pass through sixteen sunsets and sunrises in twenty-four hours.
Their mission necessitates physical and emotional distance from their typical everyday, earthly concerns, forcing intimacy with their fellow astronauts--their only company, and in close quarters, for many months--and inspiring reflections on life, death, loss, the past, the future, family and loved ones, and purpose.
The story within the space station is emotionally full but quiet plot-wise in contrast to the workings of the typhoon, which the book begins to detail as it unfolds and wreaks destruction across a swath of earth. An occasional omniscient view of the earth, the universe, the past, and the future keeps all in perspective for the reader.
Harvey's language is often luminous and poignant. This is beautiful.
For my full review, check out Orbital.
06 How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
This novel about the power of books takes a tough situation that ends in a death and allows for a fresh start--which might push the bounds of realism but offers a hopeful, heartwarming tale of chosen family and friendship.
The book opens in a prison, with female inmates participating in their weekly book club in rural Abbott Falls, Maine. Main protagonist Violet Powell is being released after 22 months' imprisonment for the drunk-driving accident in which she killed an older woman.
Harriet Larson is a retired English teacher who leads the prison book club, and her forays into the local bookstore catch the eye of handyman Frank Daigle, who is still coming to terms with the loss of his wife in a car accident (the accident caused by Violet).
When the three cross paths out in the messy, unexpected, heartbreaking world, their encounters change them all forever.
The tone of Wood's novel feels reassuring that all will work out in the story, and despite the manslaughter, betrayal, guilt, prison, and some truly questionable choices, it does. Harriet's fraternizing with the imprisoned women--both in and out of jail--seems particularly ill-advised, but this ultimately works out fine. Not everything can be resolved, but much is forgiven, and considering the sticky situation at hand and the death at its heart, this is quite something.
For my full review, please see How to Read a Book.
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