Recent Reads January/February 2022
The Kommandant’s Girl - Pam Jenoff
This was a recommendation from a coworker of mine, and I am so glad it was available to me on Hoopla, what a great story to start off 2022. This is the story of nineteen-year-old Emma, a newly married Jewish girl in Poland during WWII. Her husband is part of the resistance and suddenly disappears, and Emma has to dissapear as well. She takes on the new identity of Anna Lipowski and moves to Krakow to live with her husband’s Catholic aunt. During her time in hiding, Emma/Anna is hired to work for a high-ranking Nazi official, and she must compromise her marriage, her safety, and question her beliefs to survive. This was a really great read and I highly recommend it!
This memoir has been on my to-read list for quite a while, and I am happy that I have finally gotten around to reading it. It blows my mind that this author is the same age as me; to be doing the things she was doing as a kid and a teen all while never having gone to school, it’s just incredible to me. Tara’s parent’s are off-the-grid type fundamentalists, preparing for the End of Days. To them, a structured education is not important, what’s important is learning to live off the land. It is incredible to think that this is the life someone my own age lived, and I am left speechless at what Westover had to overcome to be who she is today. I don’t want to say too much about the craziness that is real life in this book, because I don’t want to spoil anything This is a really worthwhile read, I highly recommend this one!
The Second Life of Mirielle West - Amanda Skenandore
Set in the 1920’s, Mirielle West is a socialite and wife of Hollywood hotshot Charlie West. When a small burn turns into a devastating diagnosis, Mirielle’s world is forever changed. She is sent away from her home and family in California to an exiled community in Louisianna in hopes of being cured. Here, Mirielle learns what friendship and family truly are, and thus begins her second life. I don’t know much about leprosy other than I remember it being a part of the Bible stories I read in grade school and high school; it’s so rare today that I don’t even recall learning about it in nursing school! This gave a look into the disease in the early 1900’s and how people were treated. It was interesting to see the layers of societal standing in this community, and also see the way Mirielle developed throughout her journey. Definitely worth a read!
The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles
This was our book club pick for this month. I struggled at the beginning to get into this book, but was determined to finish it since it was our book club read. About 1/3 of the way into the book, it began to really flourish and I became invested in the characters and where their journies were going to take them. Emmet Watson has just returned home and is reunited with his younger brother, Billy, after a stay in a juvenile detention facility. Their father has passed and his debts have made it that Emmet feels it is smarter to sell their home and start over somewhere else. To his surprise, Emmet discovers two of his juvie buddies, Duchess and Wooly, have stowed away and have their own ideas for an adventure. This novel is told from the viewpoint of many different charactesr, and while incredibly wordy at times, the characters will really draw you in and keep you turning the page.
This has been on my recommendations list for a while, so I finally decided to give it a try, and I’m so glad I did! I often will add books to my want-to-read list (or my to-read pile) and then not read the synopsis again before starting the book - this was one of those books. I had no idea it was a whodunnit, and the twists that come up are truly unexpected! If you like trying to figure out the culprit and also having some shocking story development, this is a good one for you to read! Set on a remote island leading up to a fancy wedding, there are twists and turns and character relationships you’d never expect. At the end, I think I actually said “oh man!” out loud. Really enjoyed this one.
I honestly feel neither here nor there about this book. I feel like it might be the fact that I listened to this on audiobook, but I just wasn’t pulled in by this story. Dani wakes up with a raging hangover, and fuzzy memories of having an argument with her husband at a work party the prior night, so she’s not at all surprised that he’s not in bed next to her. However, the longer he’s gone, Deb comes to realize he has disappeared. This story jumps back and forth between present day and the past, when Dani and her husband Ian met while married to other people. It explores the relationship between Dani, her own daughter, and her step-daughters in the aftermath of Ian’s disappearance. In trying to write about it, I’ll be honest and say I can’t even really remember the ending it was so meh to me.
This story was kind of a Hallmark movie with a sassy twist. Alexis Spencer has just lost her job and her boyfriend, so she decides to go on a bender. When she wakes up, she’s in a frat house, and it’s 2002. Alexis, who has always blamed her past self for her current failures, comes face to face with her past in this story about accepting oneself and taking accountability. This was a breezy listen through the Hoopla app, and I can only imagine it would be reasy for a tangible read, too. Definitely recommend if you need something light & breezy to read or listen to. It will keep you laughing, but also make you think about what you may need to own up to yourself.
Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
This has been in my to-read pile since I finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I was so excited to finally get around to it! It is written in an interview-style, with members of the formerly famous band, Daisy Jones and the Six telling the story of how they rose to fame. It’s a true sex, drugs, and rock and roll story. You will fall in love with the characters and really feel for them as you follow their rise to fame, and their downfall, as a band and personally. I also really loved that at the end of the book, there were lyrics for all the songs mentioned throughout the story. So glad I finally got to this one, I loved it.
The Summer We Lost Her - Tish Cohen
This story didn’t really get to the action until about halfway through, but once it got there, I had to keep going to find out what happened! Matt & Elise Sorensen are a married couple working through life and the hardships and tragedies it brings. Elis is a competitive horse rider, and has qualified for the Olymics, however, when their young disabled daughter goes missing, their life is thrown into a complete tailspin. It really was interesting following the story with each thread intertwining together to weave a tale of mystery and navigating marriage. This was an easy listen, and I enjoyed it.
The First Phone Call From Heaven - Mitch Albom
I haven’t read anything by Mitch Albom since The Five People You Meet in Heaven was all the rage years and years ago. This story is about residents in a small town who begin receiving phone calls from people who have passed on. The story reaches national attention, and poeple begin to flock to this small town in hopes of receiving their own calls from heaven. I myself am not a very religious person, but I did enjoy this story, though I was not surprised at how the story ended. This was another quick, easy listen for me and I finished it in less than two days.
Girls Burn Brighter - Shoba Rao
This is the story of Poornima and Shavitha, two young girls from Indravalli, a region in India, whose lives are forever intertwined. This story was heartbreaking but encouraging, to see what these girls went through to survive while also seeing the grit they had to overcome even the worst of circumstances. This book covers a wide array of topics, from poverty to violence, to feminism and beyond. I highly recommend this one!
This one has been sitting in my TBR pile for a while now, and it went in a direction I totally did not expect. Dannie has her whole life planned out - she is chasing her dream career, she has a long-term boyfriend whom she knows will soon be her fiance, and she is checking off item after item on her five year list. That is, until one night she wakes up five years in the future in a completely different life. She wakes up the next morning back in the present, and moves through life trying to keep her life “on track.” There is love and lots of heartbreak in this book. It’s an easy quick read that might make you shed a tear or two.
The Girls in the Stilt House - Kelly Mustian
It’s 1920’s in Mississippi and Ada and Matilda, two teenage girls from the opposite ends of The Trace, form an unlikely friendship forged by a murder. The story follows both young women as they make strides to beat the odds stacked against them in a time when women making a way on their own was unlikely. I listened to this one on audiobook and will admit that it took a bit for it to pull me in, but once it did, I was hooked! Part of the reason I had a hard time listening was because I wasn’t a fan of the voice reading the audiobook, so if you struggle with audiobooks to begin with, I’d definitely recommend getting a hardcopy of this one to read, but definitely read it!
An Unwanted Guest - Shari Lapena
This was my book club’s pick for February, and I think I speak for all of us when I say, meh. When I think of a murder mystery, I want suspense, I want to feel for the characters because I don’t want anyone to die, I want to have some jumps! This had none of that. The characters were boring and I didn’t care about them. There was nothing too shocking about the murders, and I figured out who the killer was about 1/3 of the way through the book, and I was so disappointed at how it all wrapped up. I feel like I read a lot of hype around this book, but I wasn’t feeling it at all.
I totally have a thing for 1940’s WWII fiction, but since I listened to this one on Hoopla, I totally missed the blurb on the cover that mentioned that this is based on a true story. Stefania Podgorska, a 16-year-old Catholic girl who has been working for the Jewish Diamant family in their store when in 1942 the Germans occupy Przemysl and for the Diamants into a ghetto. What follows is the story of a young woman’s courage and love in what I can only imagine was the most terrifying time of her life. I really enjoyed this story, and I finished it while cooking dinner one night. My husband walked in on me while I was listening to the author’s note which told what happened to each character in the story after the war. I had to pause the audiobook and laugh at myself because I was finishing up cooking dinner with tears in my eyes. I had never heard of Stefania Podgorska before, but I enjoy a story of true heroism, and this is it. I definitely recommend this book, and then take some time to look into the history of Stefania Podgorska.
I feel like 15 books in two months is pretty impressive, though the weight is uneven; I read 10(!!) books in January, but only 5 in February. Either way, I hope I can keep up this pace - I challenged myself to read 75 books this year, and I am 3 books ahead of schedule, and currently reading 3 books (one audiobook, one at my bedside, and one in my work bag). Here’s to another year of great stories!!
