I may have stopped cohosting a monthly Reading link up but that doesn't mean I've stopped reading. I still want to share the titles I've been consuming so I hope you're ready for some book reviews!
After You by Jojo Moyes
Goodreads Synopsis:
“You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”
How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?
Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.
Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future...
For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.
Thoughts:
I didn't know what to expect going into this book but I did know we would find Lou at a dark place and this was exactly that. I felt immensely sorry for her and was rooting for her to pull herself up by the bootstraps but everyone grieves differently so
Characters:
Stars:
3 out of 5. As Kristin pointed out this book seems like a middle not an end of a story so fingers crossed there is a third book to this series!
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Goodreads Synopsis:
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
Thoughts:
I really enjoyed this novel! I look forward to see how the movie adaptation lives up! I read this in a mere three days (thanks to the 3 hour block of time that was the glucose test) and highly recommend this to anyone who is a woman, a mother or a friend.
Characters:
I loved all the characters in this book (even the ones I didn't like totally nailed that "love to hate button".) From Madeline's sass but fierce devotion, to Jane's transformation and Celeste's fragility they were female friends I wouldn't mind having. No one is perfect is this book and that's probably why it was so real and enjoyable.
Stars:
4 out of 5. This is my third Moriarty title (What Alice Forgot and The Husband's Secret) and I can't get enough of her. Does that lady spin a yarn or what?!
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
Goodreads Synopsis:
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
Thoughts:
I wanted to love this because of all the hype that surrounded Hawkin's first novel but I just felt meh about it. Sometimes I envision a different story altogether from the blurb and this was one of those cases (and my version was way more exciting.) I kept seeing scenes from What Lies Beneath (which I really liked when it came out, go figure) but none of the action. It really came down to having this drawn out narrative and then a very rushed ending that didn't tie everything up for me in a satisfactory manner.
Characters:
Ok, so this is where I say there were too many narratives and I was confused so many times as to who was who (and maybe some of that confusion is due to having pregnancy brain, but I can't be positive.)
Stars:
3 out of 5. I was expecting something more profound perhaps? It was a good story but the ending left something to be desired.
***I also read Jennifer Weiner's Who Do You Love but I'm saving that for this month's Collaboreads: A book you can finish in one day.
PS: I LOVED it.***
