Today’s post covers the second half of the books I read in May 2021. I shared the first half of the books I read here. My top books of the month can be found here. I also read Only The Pretty Lies, which I reviewed separately here. I will be linking up this post with the Show Us Your Books Link Up, and the Amazon links to the books I’ve read are affiliate links and if you use them and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission. If you’ve read any of these books or are interested in them, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Before I get to the books, I want to mention that I’m working on a fundraiser with Custom Ink to raise funds for Reading Is Fundamental. You can get an awesome Read More Books sweatshirt or t-shirt and all funds raised go directly to the organization!
Now on to the books…
Title: How Lucky
Author: Will Leitch
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Harper, 5/11/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
Daniel is a man with a sense of humor and the desire to help others although he cannot talk or move much due to Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
“Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair. Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped…”
Part mystery and part character study, this book also contains found family. I enjoyed the characters and the story as well.
Title: We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This
Author: Rachel Lynn Solomon
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 6/8/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review, Jewish Own Voices
My Rating: 4 Stars
In this book, Quinn is a harp player for her parents’ wedding planning business, though she finds romance questionable. Tarek works with his family’s catering business and loves the grand gesture to show his feelings. As the two work together often, buried feelings begin to resurface and an earlier unanswered email from Quinn to Tarek is explained, allowing the two to bond over their respective mental health issues. (OCD, anxiety, depression)
“Quinn Berkowitz and Tarek Mansour’s families have been in business together for years: Quinn’s parents are wedding planners, and Tarek’s own a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email—and then he left for college without a response. Quinn has been dreading seeing him again almost as much as she dreads another summer playing the harp for her parents’ weddings. When he shows up at the first wedding of the summer, looking cuter than ever after a year apart, they clash immediately. Tarek’s always loved the grand gestures in weddings—the flashier, the better—while Quinn can’t see them as anything but fake. Even as they can’t seem to have one civil conversation, Quinn’s thrown together with Tarek wedding after wedding, from performing a daring cake rescue to filling in for a missing bridesmaid and groomsman. Quinn can’t deny her feelings for him are still there, especially after she learns the truth about his silence, opens up about her own fears, and begins learning the art of harp-making from an enigmatic teacher. Maybe love isn’t the enemy after all—and maybe allowing herself to fall is the most honest thing Quinn’s ever done.”
Quinn’s family is Jewish while Tarek’s is Egyptian. Though Quinn thinks to herself that she has never dated someone not Jewish, their cultural identities don’t effect their relationship. Their differing views on romance do! I really appreciated the various types of people represented in this book. The mental health topics were especially relevant and important too.
Title: Closer To Fine
Author: Jodi S. Rosenfeld
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: She Writes Press, 5/25/21
Source: Books Forward Friends
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review, Jewish Own Voices
My Rating: 4 Stars
Closer To Fine by Jodi S Rosenfeld is the story of Rachel, a bisexual and Jewish psychology student who moves in with her grandfather in Boston because he lives close to her school. The synagogue they attend is part of the Jewish conservative movement and it was interesting to see the older characters taking offense to some of the innovations the rabbi wanted to make there.
“Closer to Fine is the story of Rachel Levine, a young, Jewish, bisexual woman finding her adult footing in a world full of uncertainties. Rachel has many teachers along the way—a stubborn grandfather, a progressive rabbi, a worldly girlfriend, a wise supervisor, and an insightful therapist—but in the end, it is her own anxiety that is the best teacher of all. As Rachel learns that accepting that which she cannot control is the mark of true growth, she becomes ever more connected to the people who matter most in her life.”
Rachel begins to date a woman she meets at the synagogue. She is unable to tell her grandfather about the relationship because her mother thinks it will kill him. At the same time, she is learning to be a therapist and seeing a therapist of her own. Learning that things are never certain is part of this coming of age story. This book contains homophobia, biphobia, mental illness, and more difficult subjects that I’m happy to share!
Title: How To Become A Planet
Author: Nicole Melleby
Genre: Middle Grade
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers, 5/25/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
This is the second middle grade book I read this month that takes place at the Jersey shore! Pluto is almost 13 and everything is different this summer than every other summer she can remember. She was just diagnosed with depression and anxiety and she feels like she wants to disappear into a black hole. I could feel her struggles and emotions and I thought this was a well written story about depression in young teens. I could especially relate to her mom, who didn’t know what to do to help Pluto.
“For Pluto, summer has always started with a trip to the planetarium. It’s the launch to her favorite season, which also includes visits to the boardwalk arcade, working in her mom’s pizzeria, and her best friend Meredith’s birthday party. But this summer, none of that feels possible. A month before the end of the school year, Pluto’s frightened mom broke down Pluto’s bedroom door. What came next were doctor’s appointments, a diagnosis of depression, and a big black hole that still sits on Pluto’s chest, making it too hard to do anything. Pluto can’t explain to her mom why she can’t do the things she used to love. And it isn’t until Pluto’s dad threatens to make her move with him to the city—where he believes his money, in particular, could help—that Pluto becomes desperate enough to do whatever it takes to be the old Pluto again. She develops a plan and a checklist: If she takes her medication, if she goes to the planetarium with her mom for her birthday, if she successfully finishes her summer school work with her tutor, if she goes to Meredith’s birthday party . . . if she does all the things that “normal” Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom in Jersey. But it takes a new therapist, a new tutor, and a new (and cute) friend with a checklist and plan of her own for Pluto to learn that there is no old and new Pluto. There’s just her.”
Throughout the summer, Pluto works on going to therapy, taking her medication (which I wasn’t sure was the right type as it didn’t seem to help!), working with a tutor to be able to start 8th grade, and interacting with her friends. She also makes a new friend who she begins to feel attracted to as more than friends as well. Pluto feels that her depression has turned her into someone different and throughout the book she struggles with being who she is now. Things are different but she is still herself – just a different version of herself. This book is great for mental health awareness and for teens who feel like everything is changing.
Title: Float Plan
Author: Trish Doller
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Macmillan Audio, 3/3/21
Source: Audio Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
I heard a lot of good things about this book so I decided to request the audio version and listen to it this month. I enjoyed this story about Anna, whose fiance has died. She takes his sailboat on a trip that her finance planned for them and in doing so, meets Keane.
“After a reminder goes off for the Caribbean sailing trip Anna was supposed to take with her fiancé, she impulsively goes to sea in the sailboat he left her, intending to complete the voyage alone. But after a treacherous night’s sail, she realizes she can’t do it by herself and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to help. Much like Anna, Keane is struggling with a very different future than the one he had planned. As romance rises with the tide, they discover that it’s never too late to chart a new course.”
Although I feel like the death of a husband or fiance is something I have read about a lot in books recently, I liked how Anna set out to recover herself on her own. While she did meet Keane and he helped her with a lot of her trip, she did get the time to herself that she needed. The book was very descriptive and made me miss the Caribbean! It also made me imagine seasickness a little too well! This book also contained disability representation.
Title: The Darkest Flower
Author: Kristin Wright
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer, 6/1/21
Source: TLC Book Tours
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
From the title and the cover, I thought this would be a dark thriller, but so far it is more of a PTA moms behaving badly type mystery. A mom was poisoned at the 5th grade graduation – so happy that didn’t happen at Simon’s graduation!
“Attempted murder? Inexplicable accident? Either way, a PTA mom struggled for her life in an elementary school cafeteria, poisoned by a wolfsbane-laced smoothie at the fifth-grade graduation party. Now all eyes are on the accused, the victim, and a woman hired to look deeper. Ambitious defense attorney and single mother Allison Barton is anxious to escape the shadow of the low-down dog of a marquee partner carrying their renowned Virginia law firm. A win for her high-profile new client will give Allison the career she deserves. And PTA president Kira Grant certainly appears innocent―except for the toxic bloom in her backyard and perhaps a bit of a malicious streak. But no one said the innocent had to be likable―or entirely honest. Besides, with an image as carefully cultivated as her garden, Kira would be insane to risk everything on something as outrageous as the attempted murder of one of her closest friends. What about those in Kira’s orbit, a sunny suburb of moms behaving badly? What do they really know about Kira? What does Kira know about them? For Allison, the answers are getting darker every day.”
This book is told from the viewpoint of Kira, the mom accused of poisoning her friend, and Allison, her defense attorney. It is funny how my opinion of the characters changed as the book went along. This was a fun mystery that is the start of a series featuring Allison!
Title: We Are Inevitable
Author: Gayle Forman
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publisher: Penguin Teen / Viking Books For Young Readers, 6/1/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 5 Stars
This book should have been in my monthly favorites post but I read it after I published that one! I truly loved this one though! We Are Inevitable features a hate to best friendship story between Aaron and Chad. Aaron is the owner of his family’s secondhand bookshop and is beginning to face its inevitable failure. He wants to keep it running for his dad, but selling the store seems like the only way out. Then he meets Chad, an optimistic wheelchair user who has all kinds of big ideas. When the town’s out of work lumberjacks decide to fix up the store, a new kind of inevitable takes root.
“Aaron Stein used to think books were miracles. But not anymore. Even though he spends his days working in his family’s secondhand bookstore, the only book Aaron can bear to read is one about the demise of the dinosaurs. It’s a predicament he understands all too well, now that his brother and mom are gone and his friends have deserted him, leaving Aaron and his shambolic father alone in a moldering bookstore in a crusty mountain town where no one seems to read anymore. So when Aaron sees the opportunity to sell the store, he jumps at it, thinking this is the only way out. But he doesn’t account for Chad, a “best life” bro with a wheelchair and way too much optimism, or the town’s out-of-work lumberjacks taking on the failing shop as their pet project. And he certainly doesn’t anticipate meeting Hannah, a beautiful, brave musician who might possibly be the kind of inevitable he’s been waiting for. All of them will help Aaron to come to terms with what he’s lost, what he’s found, who he is, and who he wants to be, and show him that destruction doesn’t inevitably lead to extinction; sometimes it leads to the creation of something entirely new.”
This book also features a love interest in Hannah, a band, grief, addiction, Jewish representation, chapters named after books, and a character who uses they/them pronouns naturally and without the need for explanation. Again, I loved this one and highly recommend it!
Title: The Photographer
Author: Mary Dixie Carter
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Minotaur, 5/25/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
This was about a kind of strange and stalkerish person who decided to immerse herself into a family and become a part of their lives. Delta is a photographer and she plays with Photoshop to create images of the families she photographs that include her in them as well.
“As a photographer, Delta Dawn observes the seemingly perfect lives of New York City’s elite: snapping photos of their children’s birthday parties, transforming images of stiff hugs and tearstained faces into visions of pure joy, and creating moments these parents long for. But when Delta is hired for Natalie Straub’s eleventh birthday, she finds herself wishing she wasn’t behind the lens but a part of the scene―in the Straub family’s gorgeous home and elegant life. That’s when Delta puts her plan in place, by babysitting for Natalie; befriending her mother, Amelia; finding chances to listen to her father, Fritz. Soon she’s bathing in the master bathtub, drinking their expensive wine, and eyeing the beautifully finished garden apartment in their townhouse. It seems she can never get close enough, until she discovers that photos aren’t all she can manipulate.”
What was missing from this book was the why of it all. What happened to Delta that led her to behave the way she did? There was a hint of her back story, but not enough to make her understandable. So while this was a somewhat interesting thriller, I wanted more!
Title: Born A Crime
Author: Trevor Noah
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: One World, 11/15/16
Source: Library
Why I Read It: Book Club
My Rating: 4 Stars
My book club decided to read Trevor Noah’s memoir which is funny because we are a group of Jewish women and Trevor Noah has said many antisemitic things. I appreciated learning about South African life and the essays about his mother were interesting as well as well written.
“Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.”
What took away from my enjoyment of the book was the chapter about his friend whose name was Hitler. In this chapter, Noah describes how his group of friends did a dance party at a Jewish school and as they usually did, they chanted “go Hitler” for this friend. Instead of acknowledging why the kids at the school were offended, he made it into a joke. Sadly, as a Jewish reader, it wasn’t funny. This book also contains abuse, animal abuse, and drug use.
This concludes my May reads, with 9 books in addition to the ones I covered in previous posts. Overall, in May I read 19 print books, 1 ebook, and 4 audio books! I mostly kept up with books I was sent for review, which limits the books I read from my backlist. Maybe one day I’ll catch up, but probably not!
Have you read any of these books or do you want to? What have you been reading lately?