Long Overdue Book Post

This post is long overdue, and I almost thought about just forgoing it....but I love having these posts to look back on (and because I often forget what I've read!). So without further ado, here we go!!

My favorite book from the first batch pictured above is Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The rest of that first batch were all pretty good, but nothing too special that stood out to me. The next batch pictured below had a lot more favorites! I typically love the idea of memoirs, but not the actual reading of them. ;) But I loved Educated! I enjoyed the first two books in the American Royals series, but I felt like Rivals was a bit of a let down. The series has kind of run its course in my opinion. I will probably still read the next book, but I'm not super excited about it. I read This Time Next Year around the start of 2022 (it is set on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day) and adored it! Becoming Mrs. Lewis was a bit of a slow start for me, but I ended up really enjoying it.

The first two pictures in the collage below were thoughtful gifts from my sister! Emily sent me Every Summer After & Meant to Be right before we were embarking on our journey to Alaska this summer, which was just so thoughtful of her. Since 99.9% of the books I read are hard copies from the library, I didn't have anything to take with me on the trip. So I got to enjoy those two books as we travelled across the country, and I loved them both so much! Once we got to Alaska, we didn't have library access quite yet so I purchased People We Meet on Vacation at Wal-Mart, and that was a fun, easy read during the stress of house-hunting. I have typically enjoyed all of Sally Hepworth's novels (The Secrets of Midwives was the first of hers I read if I remember correctly, and I loved it!), but I am enjoying them less and less each time a new one is released. The Younger Wife is her most recent, and it was just okay for me. Taylor Jenkins Reid's Carrie Soto is Back is one of my top reads as of late! I loved it so, so much & I think I appreciated it all the more after reading Andre Agassi's memoir Open (which I also loved!) a few years ago.

Okay, two terrible books from the collage below--do not waste your time on Searching for Sylvie Lee or The Summer Place. I kept hoping the endings of these two books would redeem them, but no such luck. I adored Nora Goes Off Script, and John Crist's memoir was super interesting to me. Katherine Center's The Bodyguard is another one of my tippy-top favorites! I loved it so much that I started grabbing every Katherine Center book I could from the library.

This last collage below is comprised of books I've read aloud to our kids recently or books that I read that aligned with our Marvelously Made philosophy. All of the children's novels included in the collage we loved except for Green Ember; that one was kind of a flop for us. As far as the parent books, Free to Learn was my favorite! I found myself stopping again and again to read excerpts aloud to Derek. 

Hopefully it won't be quite as long before I publish another one of these posts! We have a trip to Hawaii coming up soon & I plan to get lots of reading time in on the plane & on the beach!