Show Us Your Books: June 2019

I don't have a lot of witty repartee this month...let's just get to the books!

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Trooper

This book had been on my TBR for a really long time. It was good, but not as good as I had hoped. Large estranged family forced together to sit shivah for dead patriarch. Focused on romantic relationships and fidelity and family and parenthood and talked a lot about how the main character loved women- the idea of them, and the idea of fucking them. Like, maybe that's how guys think...but it got old to read repeatedly. 

Providence by Caroline Kepnes

I was nervous going into this one because I loved You so much. This had a completely different vibe; TBH I was not expecting the supernatural-ish aspect of this story. Sometimes it was boring but sometimes it was super intriguing and moving.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book freakin' wrecked. It wrecked me hard. So hard that I was bawling like a baby at 8:00 in the morning, and then went back to bed because I was emotionally drained before my day ever started. It's about love and relationships and family and who we want to be and how to make things work and looking at what we want versus what we think we want.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Ever want a book to work and it just...doesn't? That's how I was with this. It is sort of like a prequel to Jane Eyre, and gives back story on Rochsester and Bertha. I think the point might have been to make Rochester look bad...but it didn't make me hate him. I just think it was a really shitty, sad situation and kinda makes Jane Eyre that much happier. I may be biased though because Jane Eyre is one of the very few classics I actually enjoy. It's apparently modernist style...so if you like Hemingway, maybe try it?

I Almost Forgot About You by Terry McMillan

This book is hard to talk about because there were things I liked it but it is easier to talk about what I didn't like. The good: female characters who act their age but are still vibrant and interesting; a mother who wasn't overbearing; marriages that worked and marriages that didn't, instead of pretending they are all one way or another. The bad: there was a lot of reliance on dialog and action, without a lot of the internal thoughts/explanations you often get from main characters so it was to tell sometimes what was sarcasm and what wasn't- also I missed several things, apparently, because they were hinted at but not confirmed and then later it was treated like a known fact;  there were so many characters and facets of the story that it felt a little disjointed...things just didn't flow as well as I would have liked. A review on Goodreads stated a similar opinion and said it was a disappointment because McMillan's earlier works were much better, so I would definitely still give this author another shot.

What have you been reading lately?