The Rest Of My January Reading

I promise I did more for the last two weeks of January than just read but I can already tell my reading totals don't support that fact! Hahaha! I also read a whole heck of a lot of World War II fiction set in Paris in those last two weeks. Again, that was not planned!

I rarely rate books 5 stars on Goodreads but this book ripped my heart out. There were a few times when the tears just started to trickle and I ended up full out sobbing. It reminded me of my reaction to The Friend Zone by Abby Jiminez where I cried so hard I gave myself a headache. This was the same way, without the headache. There were a few times when I had to just put this book down and cry and cry. This is the story of a young woman who made a terrible mistake and is looking for forgiveness and redemption. And the way in which it happens is heartbreaking. Hoover writes about impossible situations and makes you see them from all sides. What is the right answer when all the answers are hard? What is the best one? You have probably seen that meme, "Book lovers are like: This book will rip your heart out and destroy you. Read it." That's how I feel about this one.

I found this on a blog post titled something like, "5 books to help you understand gun violence in the US" and I was hooked. This was the only book I could get through our library. It is really good and a look at the history of violence as it relates to the US, as well as following two specific situations of gun violence -- one the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 and one the shooting of a young Black man in October 2012. It uses those two stories to talk about different aspects of gun violence and I thought it was really thought provoking.

I'm still finishing up a few books from the Decades Reading Challenge I did last year. This was a suggestion for a book covering multiple decades. It is the story of a Secret Service agent as he served with Eisenhower, Kennedy (including being on scene when Kennedy was assassinated), Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. It was an interesting, close up, look at the Secret Service and the presidency from the 50s through the 70s.

I really like the Boyfriend Material series by this same author so was intrigued to pick this one up. Honestly, it didn't really captivate me. I feel like I couldn't really care about the book or root for any character. I would give this one a pass.

 

After being up all night with Rachel in the ER in January, and then being sick the next day, I just needed some light reading. Nora's series provided that for me and I've slowly been reading the third book, among other things.

I did not enjoy this final book in the series as much as I'd enjoyed the first two, especially. I did find that the interracial relationship felt a bit unrealistic given that this book was set in the 1880s. I didn't think there would be as much acceptance as there was in the novel. I did love how the epilogue wrapped up the series in a lovely way.

This was a fiction book which read like a nonfiction one. It was another Decades Reading Challenge suggestion. I did not know anything about Coco Chanel and so I found it interesting to read a fictionalized account of her story. However, I was left feeling flat at the end as it appears as if Chanel collaborated with Nazis in Paris during World War II. I am not into fashion at all but if you are, you'd likely enjoy this story.

I am doing a new reading challenge for this year and it's a Canadian based one aiming at exposing readers to diverse literature. Reading a book by a Palestinian Canadian author was the first challenge. This book was okay but it's all short stories and those are not my favourite form of literature.

This book was more heartbreaking than I'd imagined. I also started and finished it almost in one reading. I don't clearly remember Meissner's other novels but this book was told from two perspectives in two timelines but the first half of the novel was one timeline and then the second half was the other timeline. It was a different way of reading two timelines and I found it a little hard to switch gears halfway through. This book also reminded me, once again, of who defines "crazy" and what happens when the wrong people are in power?

This was my January lunchtime reading and I couldn't wait for my lunch break every day so I could get back to it. I think this book would be amazing devoured in a couple of big chunks. I wanted to ditch the rest of my work day and keep reading! This was another book combining fashion, Paris during World War II, and a little bit of a mystery. I loved this book!

I found this book boring which was disappointing because I really loved the last book I read by this trio, The Glass Ocean. This book is set in three timelines and, while I loved the one set in the 60s, I just couldn't care about the other two timelines. It took me a long time (a couple of weeks) to read this book because I just didn't want to read it.

Learn from me and don't pick this book up at 10 at night. I could not put it down and ended up staying up way too late to finish it. This book was engaging, the story sucked me in, I loved both timelines, and it was just so good. Plus, I love reading about British spy operations during World War II as you will remember from my love affair with The Rose Code! While there were parts of this book which were really hard to read, I just thought it was so good.

So that was my January reading. My February reading is off to a slow start but that's because I have very few books on my stack right now. I need to get some more suggestions of what to read so if you have something to recommend, let me know!

January total: 20

2024 thus far: 20