It’s time for my first half of October book review! I am sharing what I read in October, although I am skipping some of my favorites to share later in the month. 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!
Title: Heard It In A Love Song
Author: Tracey Garvis Graves
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, 11/9/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
I begged the publisher for this book being that Graves’ last book, The Girl He Used To Know, was my favorite book the year I read it. I ended up with two copies (plus the Net Galley ebook) so stay tuned for a giveaway! The book is about two people who have been hurt in the past finding new romance.
“Love doesn’t always wait until you’re ready. Layla Hilding is thirty-five and recently divorced. Struggling to break free from the past―her glory days as the lead singer in a band and a ten-year marriage to a man who never put her first―Layla’s newly found independence feels a lot like loneliness. Then there’s Josh, the single dad whose daughter attends the elementary school where Layla teaches music. Recently separated, he’s still processing the end of his twenty-year marriage to his high school sweetheart. He chats with Layla every morning at school and finds himself thinking about her more and more. Equally cautious and confused about dating in a world that favors apps over meeting organically, Layla and Josh decide to be friends with the potential for something more. Sounds sensible and way too simple―but when two people are on the rebound, is it heartbreak or happiness that’s a love song away?”
I thought this was a sweet friends to lovers book with slow burn on the romance and more of a story about healing and growing as individuals.
Title: The Last Thing He Told Me
Author: Laura Dave
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 5/4/21
Source: Book of the Month
Why I Read It: Trying to read some of my BOTM books!
My Rating: 4 Stars
This has been a very popular and publicized book that I finally picked up this month. Although it is ostensibly a thriller, it did not seem really all that thrilling. When a man goes missing, leaving his new wife with his daughter, she tries to discover what happened to him.
“Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared. Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.”
I found the past cover up interesting, and the developing relationship between Hannah and Bailey was nice to read about. I enjoyed the book, I just definitely wouldn’t call it the best thriller I ever read, or even much of a thriller at all.
Title: Seven Days In June
Author: Tia Williams
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 6/1/21
Source: Library Audio App
Why I Read It: Heard it was great.
My Rating: 4 Stars
This is another that seemed loved across the board, and my second from Reese’s Book Club in a row! This was a romance plus much more, including parenting, chronic illness, being Black in the world of publishing, and more.
“Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award‑winning novelist, who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that fifteen years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. While they may be pretending not to know each other, they can’t deny their chemistry—or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years. Over the next seven days, amidst a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect—but Eva’s wary of the man who broke her heart, and wants him out of the city so her life can return to normal. Before Shane disappears though, she needs a few questions answered…”
I thought this book was well written and contained a lot of layers. Both Shane and Eva have been through trauma in the past and the story includes drug use, self harm, and loss. Although Eva and Shane seem perfect for each other, both of their pasts put together made me wonder if they would actually last!
Title: Instructions For Dancing
Author: Nicola Yoon
Genre: YA Contemporary / Romance
Publisher: Delacorte, 6/1/21
Source: Book of the Month
Why I Read It: Trying to read some of my BOTM books!
My Rating: 4 Stars
I was very excited to finally pick up the newest book from Nicola Yoon. We actually own three of them but I had only read one while Gabbie had read all three. This book was about loving while knowing that love ends.
“Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually. As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything–including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he’s only just met. Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it’s that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?”
There is a magical realism component to this book with Evie’s visions and it also addresses divorce and loss. The main theme is not wasting the time that we have and it was heartbreaking. I think YA readers will really love this one.
Title: In Another Light
Author: AJ Banner
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Lake Union, 10/5/21
Source: Get Red PR via Net Galley
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
I had never read this author before but I thought the new thriller In Another Light would be a fun way to kick off spooky season. Once I started, it was hard to put down as I wanted to know what would happen!
“Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job―restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes. Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe. Aided by an eccentric colleague, her curiosity sparked, Phoebe investigates her doppelgänger’s life and death―and uncovers surprising clues to a shared past. Phoebe’s emotional journey soon leads to shocking revelations about those closest to her…and even herself. When she’s driven to the brink, how much of what she discovers can she trust?”
Unfortunately, the plot of this book relies on the overused theme of questionably reliable narration due to mental health. Much of what is revealed is discovered due to coincidences so some suspension of disbelief is necessary too. It contains references to loss of a child.
Title: Murmuration
Author: Blake Auden
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing, 10/5/21
Source: TLC Book Tours
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
I received three books of poetry from this publisher as part of an Instagram book tour. They were all short and quick reads. This one was mainly about heartbreak and loss.
“This book is an attempt to create something beautiful from this chaos; to make sense of the things we dare not breathe to life. Focusing on loss, heartbreak, mental health, and the impact of isolation on a tired mind, these poems are the starlings that gather above the water. These pages are the hope that we can learn to heal; that the future can survive the past.”
There were images included with the poems and some pages contained brief thoughts. There was also a bit of bird related imagery that was interesting.
Title: Turning To Wallpaper
Author: Heidi Wong
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing, 9/28/21
Source: TLC Book Tours
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
The second book of poetry that I read, Turning to Wallpaper was more reliant on deeper imagery and imaginings that were harder to understand. The poems in this volume speak about being Asian in the time of Covid, loss, and assault.
“n Turning to Wallpaper, lush, elegant language contrasts with the disturbing and at times gruesome imagery to create a collection that knows exactly how to haunt the reader. Wong’s words and artistry are vibrant with color, richly textured, defiant, and unapologetic in their boldness. Her speaker undertakes a spiritual journey of remembrance that transcends body, tradition, and even nation in the pursuit of authentic art—art that is constructed using radical acceptance of the past as a means to leave it all behind. This is a story where no wounds are softened or left unconfronted.
Unconcerned with conventional beauty, it is undeniably beautiful.”
This is a lovely volume that also contains beautiful art work and although I felt some of it went over my head, I enjoyed the experience of the book overall.
Title: Rooms of the Mind
Author: Makenzie Campbell
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing, 9/14/21
Source: TLC Book Tours
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
The final book in this set of three was also about loss and heartbreak, but also ended with hope. The poems are divided into sections called rooms, which are named after the feelings of loneliness, fear, heartbreak, nostalgia, love, and hope.
“From the author of the wildly successful 2am Thoughts and Nineteen comes Rooms of the Mind — a journey into the parts of our psyche that can either hide and protect us or expose us to all that exists. Here you’ll find an exploration of pain, heartbreak, and wonder at what the world might bring us next.”
The poems in this book talk about the one who got away as well as new love.
Title: The Moon, The Stars, and Madame Burova
Author: Ruth Hogan
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow, 9/21/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
I loved the book The Keeper of Lost Things and was excited to read another book by Ruth Hogan. This book features many characters who are woven together in two timelines as a young woman finds out she was adopted and is connected to Madame Burova as she starts to find out about her past.
“Madame Burova—beloved Tarot reader, palmist, and clairvoyant—is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront. After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them. In London, it is time for another woman to make a fresh start. Billie has lost her university job, her marriage, and her place in the world when a sudden and unlikely discovery leaves her very identity in question. Determined to find answers, she must follow a trail…which leads to Brighton, the pier, and directly to Madame Burova’s door. In a story spanning over fifty years, Ruth Hogan has conjured a magical world of 1970s holiday camps and seaside entertainers, eccentrics, heroes and villains, the lost and the found. Young people will make careless choices which echo down the years….but it’s never too late to put things right.”
I found it interesting that Madame Burova is Romani and a fortune teller. It made me wonder if this was playing into stereotypes, but at the same time, this is not a culture I have read about before. I enjoyed the unique cast of characters in this book. It does contain references to animal mistreatment, racism, and sexual harassment.
Title: Voices From The Pandemic
Author: Eli Saslow
Genre: Non Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday, 9/28/21
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review.
My Rating: 4 Stars
Eli Saslow conducted interviews with many types of people who describe the effects of the pandemic on their lives. It was quite moving in some cases and infuriating in others and brings you back to the times these interviews took place – from March-December of 2020.
“The Covid-19 pandemic was a world-shattering event, affecting everyone in the nation. From its first ominous stirrings, renowned journalist Eli Saslow began interviewing a cross-section of Americans, capturing their experiences in real time: An exhausted and anguished EMT risking his life in New York City; a grocery store owner feeding his neighborhood for free in locked-down New Orleans; an overwhelmed coroner in Georgia; a Maryland restaurateur forced to close his family business after forty-six years; an Arizona teacher wrestling with her fears and her obligations to her students; rural citizens adamant that the whole thing is a hoax, and retail workers attacked for asking people to wear masks; patients struggling to breathe and doctors desperately trying to save them. Through Saslow’s masterful, empathetic interviewing, we are given a kaleidoscopic picture of a people dealing with the unimaginable. These deeply personal accounts make for cathartic reading, as we see Americans at their worst, and at their resilient best.”
It was very interesting to read about these people’s experiences and I’m sure that looking back, stories like these will become part of history.
There you have it – 10 of the books I read this month. Of these books, 9 were print and 1 was an audio book. 9 were adult and 1 was YA. Genres included contemporary, poetry, thriller, and non-fiction.
Have you read any of these books or do you want to? What have you been reading lately?