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THIS WILL ONLY HURT A LITTLE by Busy Philipps

I love a good celebrity memoir, especially when I have just finished a book and am not sure what to read next. I recently learned about Busy Philipps’ 2018 memoir, This Will Only Hurt A Little, and the timing was right to slot it in after my last audiobook. I finished it quickly – in less than a week – and found it pretty interesting. Busy Philipps is an actress whom I know best from Dawson’s Creek in the early 2000s, but she’s been in a lot of other things, including currently in Girls5eva. This Will Only Hurt A Little

THIS WILL ONLY HURT A LITTLE by Busy Philipps

HOME STRETCH by Graham Norton

One of the categories in the 2022 Everyday I Write The Book Blog Reading Challenge is “Book Discovered In A Bookstore”, which is intended to encourage browsing the stacks in a trusted bookstore and finding a previously unknown book. When I was in Corolla, North Carolina at the end of March, I paid a visit to my favorite indie, Island Bookstore, with this mission in mind. I discovered a book called Home Stretch by Graham

WE DO WHAT WE DO IN THE DARK by Michelle Hart

We Do What We Do In The Dark by Michelle Hart is a coming-of-age novel about a woman in college who has an affair with a married female professor at her school shortly after the death of her mother. The secret relationship has a significant impact on her, one that she still feels years after they stop seeing each other. We Do What We Do In The Dark is ultimately about loneliness and the need

SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE by Tia Williams

Warning: Unpopular opinion ahead. When I recommended Seven Days In June by Tia Williams to my book club, I had heard great things about this romance between two Black authors who had been involved as teenagers and then reunited in their 30s. I am not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I got, and in the end I was pretty disappointed by Seven Days In June. This is a very popular

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS by Therese Anne Fowler

I am a sucker for a family drama, so when I saw that Therese Anne Fowler (author of A Good Neighborhood, reviewed here) had a a new one out, I immediately wanted to read it. It All Comes Down To This is about three sisters, Beck, Claire and Sophie, who are in their 30s and 40s and are each dealing with some sort of dissatisfaction in their lives. When their mother dies and instructs them

SORROW AND BLISS by Meg Mason

My second five star book of the year was Sorrow And Bliss by Meg Mason. It’s a novel about Martha, a British woman approaching 40 who has struggled with mental illness since she was young. She is married to a very kind man named Patrick, but when the book opens, they have decided to split up because their marriage has become untenable. Going back and forth between flashbacks and the present day, Mason describes how

TRUE BIZ by Sara Nović

True Biz by Sara Nović is one of those books that I am glad I read, but that took me much longer to read than it should have because it didn’t go down that easily. It’s about a community I know very little about – a boarding school for deaf students. Tuesday, the school’s principal, is hearing but had deaf parents. She works hard to keep the lights on at the school, which is facing

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus

Lessons In Chemistry is a hot book this summer, and politically timely as well. It’s about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist and mother living in California in the 1960s who faces repeated discrimination against women scientists and is forced to give up her job. Out of desperation, Zott agrees to helm an afternoon television program about cooking, where she achieves a degree of fame but still has to contend with the irrational ire of the male

TRACY FLICK CAN’T WIN by Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta has been a must read for me over the years. Few people capture the quiet desperation of suburbia like Perrotta, creating memorably flawed characters seeking redemption after years of failure or mediocrity. The Leftovers was a rare foray into dystopia, but most of his books remain firmly in the realm of depressing yet often humorous realism. Tracy Flick Can’t Win, the recently-released sequel to 1998’s Election, revisits type-A overachiever Tracy Flick, who, when

MARRYING THE KETCHUPS by Jennifer Close

In Jennifer Close’s novel Marrying The Ketchups, the Sullivan family are a close-knit bunch: three generations of Chicagoans whose lives revolve around their namesake restaurant in Oak Park. When the family patriarch dies a few days before his beloved Cubs win the World Series and Hillary Clinton loses the 2016 presidential election, the rest of the Sullivans are thrown into an uneasy upheaval. They remain committed to the livelihood of the restaurant, but they also

FLYING SOLO by Linda Holmes

In summer 2019, I read a debut novel that I loved: Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes. It is the story of the relationship between two flawed and damaged people who manage to find a way to be together. I loved that it was edgy, a little dark, and totally realistic. I really enjoyed reading it and was sad when it ended. So I was very excited to pick up Holmes’ second novel, Flying

THIS TIME TOMORROW by Emma Straub

I have been hit or miss with Emma Straub over the last several years. I liked The Vacationers a lot, mostly liked Modern Lovers, and was disappointed in All Adults Here. But when I learned that Straub’s latest novel, This Time Tomorrow, involved time travel and relationships with parents, I knew I wanted to read it. I am happy to report that This Time Tomorrow definitely falls into the “liked it a lot” camp. Why

MR. WRONG NUMBER by Lynn Painter

I am hard core mood reader, and sometimes, I am in the mood for a romance. I know exactly what I’m going to get, and that’s fine, because it’s just what I want at that time. That’s how I ended up reading Mr. Wrong Number by Lynn Painter, a book I had put on library hold a while back after reading about it. Mr. Wrong Number is about Olivia, a woman with serial bad luck

MEMPHIS by Tara Stringfellow

Memphis by Tara Stringfellow is the story of trauma and resilience threaded through three generations of Black women in Memphis. Hazel, her daughters Auggie and Miriam, and Miriam’s daughters Joan and Mya, all live in the family house in Memphis over the course of decades, under different circumstances. Hazel lives in the house built by her husband for only a few years before he is killed by racist lynchers. Auggie moves in with her mother

COVER STORY by Susan Rigetti

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti is one of those books that is best to go into without knowing too much. It’s about the friendship between two women – an NYU student named Lora Ricci and a contributing editor at ELLE named Cat Wolff – and the ways in which their lives become interdependent. Cat lives at the Plaza and says she is a wealthy Russian heiress, but who is she really? And what does she