And dare I say this is my favorite TJR?! 🤔🤷🏼‍♀️
I kinda just don’t want to say anymore about it - and I know that seems like I’m taking the lazy way out - but I loved going into it blind because it was nothing like what I was expecting - it was SO MUCH MORE!
TJR does not disappoint. And if you know and understand that…you don’t need me to say anything anyway. YOU ALREADY KNOW!
Trust TJR and trust me - get yourself a copy ASAP, clear your calendar, and get ready to be emotionally wrecked - in the best way possible.
My grandma used to love to go to garage sales. One of her favorite things to buy at them was books, and it was at a garage sale with her when I came across a copy of Forever by Judy Blume…I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into. I was young, had never had a romantic relationship, and certainly had never had sex…so trust me when I tell you this entire experience felt salacious to me!
Obviously, rereading this at my age hits totally different than it did back then. I am not the intended audience, but I was curious. I flew through it in no time and here are my very quick, no-depth thoughts:
-Michael’s behavior reads a lot more scary to me as a 46-year-old than it did when I shouldn’t have been reading this kind of content as a 13-year-old.
-Katherine’s parents were very lenient and fairly checked out, imo.
-It was just so sad how they fell apart at the end after giving so much of themselves to each other.
Obviously this was a trip down memory lane. I occasionally come across posts that talked about books that made you and this was definitely one for me. It was forbidden and opened up a world that I wasn’t quite ready for but was very curious about. It was written in the 1970s and times have changed so much culturally and socially so that compare/contrast was also interesting. If anything, I appreciate revisiting a piece of my childhood - just at the edge of where Michael and Katherine are in the story.
I never gave a lot of thought to Auntie Em and Uncle Henry in all the years I watched and loved The Wizard of Oz. In Before Dorothy, we learn all about her backstory - where she was born, how she met Uncle Henry, how they ended up in Kansas, and how Dorothy came to live with them.
While it was fun to see Gaynor’s exploration into those parts of the story, there is also so much here about the hardships of farm and prairie life, the Dust Bowl, the stock market crash, and subsequently, the Great Depression of the 1930s. I loved Auntie Em’s strength and resilience through all the hardships - mentally and physically. We also see her vulnerability as she struggles with her feelings towards motherhood. Her character is fully fleshed out and it added such an interesting and creative new lens to the beloved franchise so many of us know and love.
While I do feel like the middle part dragged a little bit, the Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the story were fun that there was no way I was gonna skim or skip any of it!
I don’t know if this one is for everyone, but if you enjoy historical fiction and/or The Wizard of Oz…you will have so much fun with this one!
I, along with the rest of the world, was glued to the gymnastics portion of the 2024 Olympics. Simone Biles is a once-in-a-lifetime athlete and I wasn’t about to miss her amazing twists and turns after her withdrawal from the 2020 Olympic competition. By the end of the Olympics, Simone wouldn’t be the biggest name in the room - it would be Jordan Chiles.
Eventually stripped of her Bronze medal, Chiles addresses the controversy and its impact on her as a person and as an athlete. But the story started long before that moment - when she was just a young girl with too much energy. Her mom enrolled her in a gymnastics class, and by the end of it, her potential was already obvious to her coach.
From there, Chiles has dealt with it all - extreme coaches, doubt in herself and her abilities, racism in a sport that is predominantly white, body image issues - and it was amazing to see her persevere and overcome so many obstacles.
Advocating for other Black gymnasts, hyping up and supporting her teammates, praising her friendship with Biles and Biles’ endless support of her…this book was a gem! It’s confident and hopeful, determined and inspirational.
As a former college athlete, there was so much in this book that made me pause, think, and reflect on my own experiences. I am a firm believer that sports usually do more good than harm, but I also think it can get dark pretty quickly. Chiles shows the good and the bad of elite sports and parents can use this valuable information to their advantage as they navigate competitive youth sports.
I kind of steered clear of this one because I saw reviews that were all over the place. It made me nervous, though I don’t know why because I loved her debut, Black Cake.
In an effort to clean up some of the ARCs that have gone to my NetGalley shelf to apparently die, I finally dove into this one…and was not disappointed. Wilkerson wrote a propulsive genre mashup that I flew through in just two days!
When Ebby is left at the altar, she retreats to her friend’s cottage in France to heal her broken heart. While there, she not tries to heal from her broken engagement, but the past trauma of watching her brother being murdered when she was just 10 years old also bubbles to the surface. She doesn’t want to live with the nightmares and the anxiety anymore, so she focuses on herself, enlists a therapist, and starts opening up about what she saw all those years ago.
As mentioned above, this is a genre mashup with pieces of historical fiction, mystery, romance, and coming of age which explores themes like reckoning with your past, healing family secrets, grief, trauma, self-love and acceptance. Shifting between timelines seamlessly, Wilkerson stunned me with her relatable characters, her ability to weave so much interesting history through a beloved family heirloom, and an ending that gave the reader so much hope.
In 2022, Leila Mottley became the youngest ever nominee for the Booker Prize when her debut, NIGHTCRAWLING, was longlisted. She was just 17 years old when she wrote it! Since then, I have been eager to see what she wrote next and THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG was worth the wait!
GIRLS is about three young mothers who have all been failed by their parents, their men, themselves, and society. In our current culture, teen moms are generally looked down upon; Mottley tackles those stigmas with clear empathy and compassion quietly challenging beliefs surrounding sexual health and education, abortion access, and pregnancy care. It’s a beautiful tribute to motherhood and its transformative power, regardless of age.
What they can’t get or find from their parents, the Girls find amongst themselves - community, trust, hope, and support. Even though their friendship isn’t perfect, they continue to show up and offer the help and support they each desperately need. And while the book is centered around young girls, this is a story about womanhood in general…the unspoken ways women stand up for one another during life’s most difficult times, lending a helping hand, and a shoulder to lean on.
“I was just a fragile thing in a sharp world, like every other girl is before they meet themselves.”
In the end, they did it - they grew and learned, they created a support network of found family, and they found themselves! It was powerful, emotional, and beautiful. I couldn’t help but want the best for each of these characters - for their innocence to be transformed into strength and resilience. It all came together perfectly and it’s clear that Mottley is an author that transforms her readers!
AIR is the final installment in John Boyne’s Elements series. Each of the four books are novellas (each one around 160 pages), and overall, they are very dark and disturbing reads. It is imperative that they’re read in order as characters from each book are introduced in subsequent books.
For me, AIR specifically, was pretty anticlimactic. These books, the themes they’re tackling, are quite bombastic, so I expected nothing less from the last one. I feel like I was left a little bit let down.
I also have an overwhelming desire to reread the entire series back-to-back and will probably do that sooner than later. I do not know the reasoning behind these books being published separately and over time, but I do believe a consecutive read would relay the intentions more effectively to the reader.
All of this to say…I don’t feel like my overall review is complete. I think I need another reread to give the series a fair and more articulated response…stay tuned!!
OMG…I have found my FAVORITE BOOK of the YEAR so far!
The writing is beautiful - lyrical and propulsive and consuming. I abandoned wifely and motherly duties for the day because I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! I felt every single emotional up and down of this emotional roller coaster - my jaw dropped in disbelief, my eyes swelled with tears of hurt and pain, and my mouth slightly upturned with potential hope. I wanted the very best for all of these characters, and while I may have written a different ending, I was also completely satisfied with how it all came together in the end.
Was it perfect? No. Did I care? Also no.
If pushed, there is one particular part of the story that felt a little too convenient for me and I didn’t particularly love, but it also gave me a new appreciation. In all honesty, without this aspect, I have a feeling the story would have wrapped up differently - and that would have potentially made me throw the book across the room. Lidija Hilje knows best, and my first thought after finishing the last page was, “I’m so completely jealous of the people that get to read this for the first time.”
Then I texted/DMd all my bookish buddies and told them to read it ASAP. I want this book to get ALL THE BOOK LOVE and I want it to be the book of the year!
Unfortunately, it’s not out until July 8, 2025…but get your preorders in, cancel all plans for that day (and maybe the following day), and ENJOY! Then DM me so we can chat!!
“I am all too familiar with unease as my normal resting state. Since birth I have been mis-wired. The receptors that should have been loaded with serotonin and dopamine on Saturday cartoon-and-pancake mornings from my childhood were replaced with the sensation of being submerged inside a glass cage with a slow leak that dripped just enough water for me to know I’d drown someday, just not necessarily that day. That was until I discovered all the ways to leave myself, if only temporarily.”
Leah is unraveling. She is solidly in the depths of motherhood, somewhat resentful of her husband’s career at the expense of her own, and steeped in hatred for her meddling mother-in-law. What started out as an innocent glass of wine at the end of the day to soften the edges, quickly takes a dark turn that engulfs the entire family.
This is a heart-wrenching look at the day-to-day life of an active alcoholic. How the slow spiral quickly takes on new life and how those on the sidelines of their life quickly get sucked up in the winds of the tornado, too. While this story stops short of the recovery aspect, it shines light on the actual addiction and how it comes to consume families.
There isn’t much to like about Leah, and despite her unlikeabiilty, I found myself rooting for her. Her struggle felt authentic - she knew she was in a dark place, but having no control over her addiction, she repeated the patterns that would come to eventually destroy her. It’s a slow-burn character study that had me captivated. I do think the ending was a bit too neat and tidy - maybe not super realistic given how deep the tendrils went - but overall, I found this to be an excellent debut!
Be aware of ALL the triggers…if you’re a sensitive reader, proceed with caution!
So this is basically a big fat bummer for me. After loving Erlick’s debut, THE MEASURE, I did have high hopes for her next book. I was also reasonable with my expectations…and while her signature style of taking something just *slightly* beyond our current realm of thinking and making it realistic enough to get us thinking is there, the execution fell way flat.
The first half and the second half of this book felt like two separate books to me. Admittedly, I did head into this one thinking it was more literary fiction…but the first half didn’t feel that way at all to me. It reminded me of Annie Harnett’s book, THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS. For a majority of this book, we are on a road trip across America and there is little talk about the actual Poppy Fields.
In the second half, we finally make it to the Poppy Fields and the books tone takes on a more serious tone. I’m gonna say - I much preferred the second half…and by then, I just really didn’t care.
Something just felt very off with this book…was it the marketing? My incorrect assumptions about the premise? Erlick’s execution of the plot? I’m not sure…but this was a huge fail for me and I’m really sad about it.