The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading Christina Lauren's newest fake-marriage, tropical-island-set rom-com The Paradise Problem; I'm listening to Moonbound, Robin Sloan's fantasy-science-fiction story; and I'm reading Lisa Wingate's Oklahoma story told in two timelines 90 years apart, Shelterwood.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
In Christina Lauren's newest romantic fiction, Anna and West are a young married couple on the verge of divorce.
But this isn't heartbreaking for either party, because they were only married to reap the benefits of married student housing at UCLA.
Several years after saying goodbye, Anna is struggling to pay for her father's cancer treatment and has just been fired from her cashier's job at the corner store...when West shows up on her doorstep. The two were never divorced after all, West has a trust fund--and he has to stay married to Anna to collect on it. Which means traveling together to a tropical island for his sister's wedding, pretending to be soulmates, and fooling West's family.
This is an adorable fake-dating-in-paradise setup with funny dialogue, a wonderfully imperfect main protagonist, steamy moments, and a tantalizing prospect of a Happy Ever After ending.
The writing team of Christina Lauren also authored the books The True Love Experiment, The Unhoneymooners, In a Holidaze, Love and Other Words, Something Wilder, and Autoboyography.
You might also be interested in the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Rom-Coms Perfect for Summer Reading, Six More Great Rom-Coms Perfect for Summer Reading, Six of My Favorite Light Fictions Reads of the Past Year, Six More of My Favorite Light Fiction Reads of the Past Year, Six Great Light Fiction Stories Perfect for Summer Reading, and Six More Great Light Fiction Stories.
02 Moonbound by Robin Sloan
In Robin Sloan's science-fiction-fantasy tale Moonbound, it's eleven thousand years in the future, and young Ariel lives with his brother in a land controlled by a powerful wizard. Yet to the wizard's constant dismay, Ariel seems destined to never quite live up to his destiny, and he never behaves quite evilly enough, either.
Dragons feature heavily in the lore of the kingdom, including their ages-old trip to the moon, where they still reside and, we are told, wield control over the Earth.
An ancient, sentient AI creature takes up residence inside Ariel, serving as an internal voice and a documentarian of Ariel's life experience.
A young girl arrives, telling the story of her own timeline, and she and Ariel begin to figure out they may be able to advance their own goals if they work together.
Clever beavers feature heavily in this book, which feels odd to me. I can't wait to figure out how each of the story's seemingly disparate pieces fit together.
I'm listening to Moonbound as an audiobook.
Robin Sloan is also the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough.
03 Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate
In 1909 Oklahoma, one Choctaw sister goes missing from a white settlement, and young Olive takes the younger Native American sister to find the only family the girl has left.
In 1990 Oklahoma, law enforcement ranger Valerie Boden-Ordell is seeking some peace and quiet in her new post. But controversy over a new national park in the area, a missing teen hiker, and the discovery of the decades-old graves of three children mean there's a lot of work for Valerie to do.
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