Monthly Round-Up: June 023

Leave a comment

I had a very adult-fiction-heavy month, which is all fine and good; it’s where I’m reading right now! I also felt like i read more, but I guess I didn’t! Oh, well. My favorite this month was this one:

Same Time Next Summer (audiobook)

It was a very fun, summery book,and perfect for the long hot days of June.

As for the rest:

YA:

Unnecessary Drama (audiobook)

Middle Grade:

The Many Fortunes of Maya
Harriet Spies

Adult Fiction:

Big Gay Wedding (audiobook)
The Guncle
A Darker Shade of Magic (reread)
Family Lore (audiobook)

What was your favorite this month?

Audiobook: Unnecessary Drama

Leave a comment

by Nina Kenwood
Read by: Maddy Withington
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some swearing, including a few f-bombs, teenage drinking (though it’s legal in Australia), and some off-screen sex. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Brooke is off to her first year of uni, and she just wants a fresh start. Sure, she’s overly anxious and prone to making lists and cleaning when she’s stressed, but now that she’s in Melbourne and away from everything, she’s going to be a New Person. That all falls apart when she discovers that one of the roommates in her shared house is Jesse, the boy from high school who completely dumped on her when she was 14 and has been her nemisis ever since.

You know where this is going, right?

Not only is it a very cute, solid, enemies-to-lovers trope – of course Jesse and Brooke start out hating each other, but slowly become friends. BUT there’s ALSO fake dating! When out at a bar to celebrate their other roommate, Harper’s, birthday, they run into Brooke’s ex-boyfriend, and because she doesn’t want to look like a pathetic fool, she ropes Jesse into being her boyfriend for the night. Except that lights a fire….

There’s also the “no dating roommates” rule at the house…

It’s a lot of cute, silly, fun. Fun that made me laugh out loud and shake my head at the pure anxiousness and need-to-be-in-control that Brooke has. Jesse is a good foil for everything, and he turns out to be really sweet. I love that it’s set during the first year of uni, and talks about the transition from high school to college. And the narrator with her Australian accent was a delight too.

So, yeah, I really liked this one.

Harriet Spies

Leave a comment

by Elana K. Arnold
First sentence: “If you’re not a people person, you probably wouldn’t like living at a bed-and-breakfast.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s a main character who struggles with lying a lot. It’s in the Middle-Grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore, but it could also end up in the Beginning Chapter Book section (grades 1-2) of the bookstore as well.

Harriet has gone to live with her grandmother at the bed-and-breakfast she owns for the summer. She’s there not because she wants to be, but because her mother is pregnant and on bed rest, and her father travels too much for work. Harriet’s not entirely happy to be at the Bric-a-Brac B&B, but she’s determined to make the best of it. That is, until the Captain’s binoculars go missing, and no one believes Harriet that she didn’t take them. (Harriet has a bad habit of lying about things. You can see why the adults don’t quite believe her.) So she determines that she needs to find the binoculars to prove to everyone that she didn’t take them! She ropes in her new friend. Clarence, and they set about trying to figure everything out. 

On the one hand, this one is cute and sweet and really hits that 6- to 8-year-old sweet spot. It’s a simple story, but the reader is kept interested in it going through. There are a lot of fun places to see on Marble Island, and Harriet even gets to set up a clubhouse for herself in an old shed and discovers her father’s old dollhouse in that he built furniture. On the other hand, was there a reason for Clarence to be Black? He kind of falls into the magical friend trope – Harriet is a terrible friend to him and just uses him to help figure out the binocular mystery. He, in turn, helps her be a better friend. While I get that he’s Black for diversity’s sake, there’s really nothing indicative of his Blackness. 

Otherwise, though, it’s a fun little book.

The Many Fortunes of Maya

Leave a comment

by Nicole C. Collier
First sentence: “Even though I’ve never seen one in person, wood thrushes are my favorite bird of all time.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s talk of separation and possibly divorce. It’s in the Middle-Grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore.

Maya’s planning on having a fantastic summer. She’s going to hang out with her best friend, Ginger, play soccer, get the MVP of their team, and make it onto the Chargers, the same team her Daddy played on when he was a kid. Except things don’t go as planned: the MVP goes to Ginger, who is also spending more time with Angelica, soccer camp isn’t everything Maya wanted it to be, and – even worse – her dad moves out, as he and Maya’s mom go through a trial separation. This throws Maya for the biggest loop: she thought her family was perfect the way it was…and no one asked her! How is her summer going to be great with all these bad things happening?

This one was super sweet and charming. I liked how the problems were quite serious for an 11-year-old – what is more important than friendships and your parents staying together? I liked that Collier wrote a book with a realistic portrait of parents whose marriage is struggling, but who put their child first, and are kind and loving. Even in their problems, it’s depicting a positive relationship. I liked that Maya was able to see that her friends being friends with others isn’t bad and that she was able to branch her passions out beyond just playing soccer.

A solid middle-grade book.

Audiobook: Family Lore

Leave a comment

by Elizabeth Acevedo
Read by the author, Sixta Morel & Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Release date: August 1, 2023
Content: There was a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, talk of sex and p0rn, and abuse by adults towards children. It will be in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

I have a tumultuous history with magic realism. A lot of the time, it doesn’t sit well; if there’s going to be magic, my brain reasons, then why don’t we have it be magic. Give me someone pulling cars out of their dreams, if you want to set it in the real world. But the idea that someone’s “magic” can predict death, or tell if you were lying, or – heaven help me – have a magical vagina, you lose me. 

On the one hand: I have really loved Acevedo’s books in the past. I think she’s a brilliant writer and I’ve really enjoyed the tales she’s had to tell. I was excited by this one: the stories of sisters who have immigrated from the Dominican Republic, and their reflections on their lives and loves as they lead up to the living wake of the oldest sister. Sounds good, right? 

But, the narrator is Ona, an anthropologist, and the book’s framework is her collecting and telling these stories. I was fine when it was the stories, but Ona? Ona – she of the magic vagina – I intensely disliked. That’s an understatement. I loathed it when she was around when she interrupted the story with her own observations and her own narrative. I wished I could have skipped it – I was listening to it on audio; I suppose I could have, but it’s not the same as skipping pages in a book – and moved on with the part of the story I was interested in. 

I finished it. But, in the end, my dislike of Ona and magical realism trumped whatever good the book had.

Audiobook: Same Time Next Summer

Leave a comment

by Annabel Monaghan
Read by Brittany Pressley and Dan Bittner
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some mild swearing, and a couple of f-bombs. There is also some sexy times, but mostly off-screen. It’s in the romance section of the bookstore.

Sam has always felt most alive on the beach at her family’s Long Island summer home. With the waves, the freedom, the long days, and with Wyatt, the boy next door. They even had one spectacular summer where they spent every day together, falling in love. But at the end of that summer, they had a falling out, and now it’s been fourteen years since they’ve seen each other. Sam is back at the beach house with her fiance, Jack, for a week as she is dealing with a misstep at her job and they’re trying to figure out where to get married that October. And guess who’s back next-door? Wyatt, of course, fresh in from LA to help out with a music festival in their beach town.

What does that mean for Sam? Has she gotten over him? Is closure what she needs? Or maybe a whole new lease on life?

This one was really sweet. I liked Sam as a character, and I liked that she learned to come back into herself over the course of the book. It wasn’t as steamy as some of the other ones I’ve read lately, but it went hard for the summertime, hippy living, beach town vibe and it absolutely nailed that. I loved the narrators, and the way they made the characters come alive. It was thoroughly delightful, especially on audio.

The Guncle

Leave a comment

by Steven Rowley
First sentence: “All right, here goes nothing.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Some swearing, including multiple f-bombs, talk of death and addiction, and off-screen sex. It also deals really frankly with death and grief. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

Patrick O’Hara is a retired TV star. He had his moment, he was famous, and he made his money. And now he’s living in Palm Springs, happily away from the world. Except it’s not happy – he’s still mourning the death of his partner, Joe (a drunk driver hit them, and Patrick is still wary about getting behind the wheel of his car), and so when his best friend (and sister-in-law) dies, he’s completely wrecked. Except that his brother, Sara’s husband, tells Patrick that he’s addicted to painkillers and needs rehab and that he wants Patrick to take care of his two kids. Which, of course, Patrick refuses… until he doesn’t. At first, being the guardian of 9-year-old Maisie and 6-year-old Grant is almost too much for Patrick, but over the weeks, he learns how to handle everything.

That’s really all there is to this book. But, it’s also not all there is. Both Patrick and the kids are grieving, and it’s their path to figuring out how to live without the people they love in their lives. It’s Patrick growing and learning, and opening up to connection again. It’s being fun and silly in the summer heat and making memories that will last. So, it’s not just the plot; it’s the characters and their individual paths that make this book really enjoyable. It was charming and funny, while also being serious and open about grief and grieving.

I really enjoyed it quite a lot.

Audiobook: Big Gay Wedding

Leave a comment

by Byron Lane
Read by Noah Galvin
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, some tasteful on-screen foreplay, and a giant, graphic, naked gay wedding cake. There is also homophobia, including the use of the other f-word. It’s in the fiction section of the bookstore.

There is a farm in rural Louisiana called the Polite Society Farm. It’s run by Chrissie (I’m not sure if that’s spelled right) Durang, whose husband passed away a couple years back. She’s made do, but she’s hoping that her son Barnett, who is coming home for a visit, will take over so she can retire. The problem is that Barnett isn’t coming home to help his mother out. He’s coming home to get married. To his future husband, Ezra. And his mother doesn’t know yet.

It seems trite to say “hilarity ensues” but hilarity really does ensue. From Chrissy spite-eating all of Ezra’s mushroom-laced chocolate and getting high as a kite to the side characters (Ezra’s family! Pawpaw!) to just the hugeness and over-the-top-ness of the wedding, this one had me guffawing (seriously) while listening. But there’s some depth to it. Chrissy’s not happy with her son being gay, living in Los Angeles, or marrying a man. She’s a homophobe (as was her dead husband), and she learns and grows to accept both her son and his lover. It’s quite lovely to see. The town’s pretty homophobic as well, but there are some bright spots and learning lessons. And, if the sheep death at the end (spoiler, but not much of one) didn’t have me tearing up.

The audiobook is spectacular. Galvin does a fantastic job with the characters and keeping the book flowing and embracing the crazy. I’m not sure I would have laughed half as much if it weren’t for the audiobook.

So, yeah, highly highly recommended. So much fun.

Monthly Round-Up: May 2023

Leave a comment

It really is funny how life ebbs and flows. This month I listened to SIX audiobooks, but only read four print books, and one of those was a graphic novel! Times and seasons indeed.

My favorite this month:

Darkhearts

It was so much fun to listen to! As for the rest:

Non-Fiction:

Walking with Sam
Soil (audiobook)

Adult Fiction:

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club (audiobook)
Daughter of the Moon Goddess
Wolfsong

Graphic Novel:

School Trip

YA Fiction:

Harvest House (audiobook)
Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success (audiobook)
The Night in Question (audiobook)

What was your favorite this month?

Audiobook: Soil

Leave a comment

by Camille T. Dungy
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some mild swearing (I think? Maybe not?) and frank talk of racism and violence against Black people. It’s in the Creative Non-fiction section of the bookstore.

The premise of this is simple: Camille Dungy owns a house in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and she wants to make her overly-chemicalized turf lawn into something more environmentally friendly and sustainable. She writes about the process the “prairie project” as she and her husband dub it, but the book is more than that. It’s a reflection on environmental writing and the people who usually write (read: white, rich, often men) about the environment. It’s about the intersection of social and environmental justice. It’s how, as a Black woman, Dungy feels not only called to work the land but also compelled to protect it and welcome all living things.

This was such an enjoyable audiobook experience. Dungy is an excellent narrator, and I felt myself not only learning from her but having my own need to garden and see growing things affirmed. I should be better about growing things that are native here, as opposed to just planting any old thing (and seeing what grows), which is kind of what I do now. But, I loved and respected what Dungy had to say about the earth, the environment, and about social justice.

Excellent.