Happy After All by Maisey Yates

 

"It's a truth universally acknowledged--at least, in a romance novel--that the moment the main character has her life in order, the exact person she doesn't want to meet will come along and knock all that careful order into disarray. For example, when a respectable motel owner who has decided to focus on her writing career and her own personal happiness is beginning to feel satisfied with the way she's rebuilding her life, a disastrously gorgeous man will walk in and disrupt everything."

Amelia fled to Rancho Encanto to rewrite her life. She's not looking for romance. Then Nathan Hart comes to her motel to write for the summer. He's aloof and keeps to himself, but Amelia can't help feeling a spark of attraction between them. Not only are they both writers, they're both grieving loss and trying to move forward and heal. But heartbreak is hard to overcome. 

"We would never have met if our lives hadn't crashed and burned. But it doesn't feel like something that happened because of tragedy. It feels like a small miracle. An oasis in the middle of the desert, which in many ways is what Rancho Encanto is."

This is such a good book! I loved how Yates starts each chapter with a romance trope, and how Amelia, a romance writer, uses that framework to narrate her own story. I thought it was very clever and fun. But this is not a simple summer romance. There's a range of emotions in this one: laughter and loss, hurt and hiding from that sadness, grumpiness, joy, lots of tears, and love. Both Amelia and Nathan had to navigate their own grief in order to find healing and hope. I also loved Amelia's found family full of quirky characters living in this small desert community. They made me smile. 

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin

 

The main characters:

FRANKIE O'NEILL--a graduate student grieving the death of her father and struggling to finish her master's thesis; she's come to her family's small summer cottage on June Lake to try and pull her life together. 

"Bird song, wind in the trees, the rhythmic lifting and clanking of the dock in the waves, the water lapping the shore. Sounds as familiar as her own breath. It was a comfort to hear them, as she'd hoped. But the feeling wouldn't last....Because she was not a girl at home in the woods and falling in love with birds for the first time. She was twenty-six, homeless, and staring down a host of uncomfortable new firsts in her life. She was unemployed and unemployable. Bereft of friends and allies, she was out of options, out of ideas, and out of places to go."

ANNE RYAN--Irish musician, young wife and mother; she's dealing with her own grief and struggling to connect with her five-year-old son, Aiden, who no longer speaks to her or her husband, Tim. She, Aiden and Tim have come to June Lake hoping to reconnect. 

"Nobody tells the truth about having children, Anne knew. ...Nobody ever admitted that being a mother is an epic of failure. There were just so many opportunities to fail: when your baby won't eat, or sleep, or stop crying, or won't look at you, or won't speak to you. Or stares at his hands and won't respond when you say his name. Or screams unconsolably for some unknown reason. Or when you take your attention off him for one minute and he vanishes into thin air."

My thoughts:  I loved this book. The quietness. The beautiful prose. The tentative friendship between Frankie and Anne's young son, Aiden. The baby crow Frankie saves and returns to its family. Hers and Anne's separate journeys through loss and grief, and the friendship and healing they find along the way. I loved the remote setting, and all the talk and descriptions of crows. It's such a transporting and captivating novel. A perfect read for the end of summer. 

My rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  

Happy Reading!

 

I also really enjoyed reading Garvin's The Music of Bees. 

What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama

 

What it's about:

Five lost souls, each with a yearning inside them to be or do something more. And a wise community librarian who guides them to the book that will help them see a path forward to seizing opportunities and fulfilling their dreams. Each book is different. But then so are the five characters. There's Tomoka, who is a young sales assistant in a department store; Ryo, who wants to open his own antique store; and Natsumi, a former magazine editor who is struggling to balance motherhood and her career. I really liked those three, but I think the last two were my favorite:  Hiroya, an unemployed artist who feels like a failure; and Masao, who just retired from his job of forty-two years and now doesn't know what to do with his life. Every chapter introduces another character, another book, another dream. I enjoyed their individual journeys and their moments of intersection. 

My thoughts:  

This was a bittersweet read for me. Don't get me wrong, I loved this quiet literary novel, but it's the book I was supposed to read this month with Melody. We planned it back in February. And I kept wanting to talk to her about it, ask her which character she liked best, compare notes, hear her thoughts and insights. I know she would have loved the Japanese setting and how books played a role in each character's journey. I really wish I could have read this book with her. I bet she would have given it 5 stars. I did. 

Happy Reading!

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

 

Blurb from Goodreads:  Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

My thoughts:  This novel is quietly enchanting, especially the first half. I loved Takako's time at the bookshop with her uncle, and how books and reading became so important in helping her find her way out of her depression. I also loved reading about Jimbocho, Tokyo's famous book district. What a cool neighborhood! In the second half, Takako leaves the bookshop and her aunt, Momoko, who has been gone for five years, comes back. I didn't like Momoko very much, and Takako doesn't spend much time in Jimbocho or at the bookshop in this part of the book, so I didn't enjoy the last half nearly as much as I did the first half.  

Here are two of my favorite quotes from this book...the first one is Takako's Uncle speaking of his adventurous youth traveling the world, and the second one is Takako talking about her newfound love of reading.  

"I wanted to see the whole world for myself. I wanted to see the whole range of possibilities. Your life is yours. It doesn't belong to anyone else. I wanted to know what it would mean to live life on my own terms."

 

 "It was as if, without realizing it, I had opened a door I had never known existed. That's exactly what it felt like. From that moment on, I read relentlessly, one book after another. It was as if a love of reading had been sleeping somewhere deep inside me all this time, and then it suddenly sprang to life. ... I'd never experienced anything like this before. It made me feel like I had been wasting my life until this moment."

Happy Reading!

P.S. This book counts towards Susan's Bookish Books Reading Challenge. 

 

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

 

This is a thoughtful and poignant novel about how books and reading can provide help, healing and hope, bring people together, and create lasting friendships. And I loved it.

It begins with Mukesh Patel, a lonely and grieving widower, whose wife loved books; Mukesh wants to connect with his granddaughter, Priya, but doesn't know how. An overdue library book of his wife's leads him to the local library where he meets Aleisha, a lonely teen working at the library for the summer who doesn't actually read much, and who has no idea what book to recommend to Mukesh. 

But then she's given a list of eight books with the heading: "Just in case you need it," and she starts to read them...and recommend them to Mukesh. And these books help Mukesh connect with his granddaughter, and with Aleisha, and pushes him to socialize more; they also help Aleisha connect with her mentally ill mother, and with a boy she meets on the train. Many other lives are touched in this book because of this one reading list. 

The Reading List is a captivating novel that touched my heart and kept me reading all day long. I loved the characters. And the ending totally made me cry. It's a good one...and another book that's perfect for Susan's Bookish Books Reading Challenge.

Happy Reading!

A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson

Marnie MacGraw is a bit of a matchmaker--she believes in love and sees sparkles in the air when she meets two people who are meant to be together. Of course, she's already found her match. She loves Patrick--even though they are complete opposites--and she wants to have a baby with him. But she also knows she needs to be ready to accept whatever the universe brings her way.

Patrick Delaney is an introvert. He used to be a up-and-coming sculptor, but then a fire ruined his hands, scarred his face, and killed his girlfriend. That was seven years ago, but he thinks about it everyday. And even though he loves Marnie, he guards his heart from loving her too much because he can't risk the pain of losing her. And he thinks he's too empty inside to ever be anyone's father. 
 

Then along comes Fritzie. She's eight. She loves doing cartwheels and asking too many questions. And she's Patrick's daughter. A daughter he never knew he had. And she's about to change Marnie's and Patrick's life forever. 

My thoughts: I enjoyed everything about this book. It alternates between Marnie's and Patrick's POV, which worked well because the two of them are so different and I liked being able to see the same situation from both of their perspectives. I thought Patrick's struggle to get over his grief and guilt, figure out how to be a dad to an extroverted eight-year-old, and embrace the chaotic joy of having Marnie in his life was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. His and Marnie's relationship is messy, diverting, funny, flawed, hopeful and full of heart. I was rooting for them to make things work because I liked them so much. For me, A Happy Catastrophe turned out to be a sweet and charming romance. 

Happy Reading!

The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin...

The 3 main characters:

Jake Stevenson sports the tallest mohawk in Hood River County. He's also a talented trumpet player. And he's a paraplegic. One year ago, just before he graduated from high school, he cracked his back in a stupid accident and now he's confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Now everything is messed up and he feels like he's "just killing time in the jail that was his life. This life (that) had replaced the life he was supposed to have--one of music and promise, the other life that now felt like something he had imagined."

Alice Holtzman is forty-four years old. She's a beekeeper, and still grieving the death of her husband. And recently she's been struggling with panic attacks. She tries not to let anyone see that she "was made of a million tiny broken pieces held together by cookies, solitary driving, and the sheer determination not to go crazy in public."

Then there's Harry Stokes, twenty-four, balding, and riddled with a paralyzing social anxiety. He struggles to talk to people, to find a job, to make decisions. He's good at writing lists, but his lists never seem to help him figure out life.

The rest of it:

These three characters are an unlikely trio of misfits that somehow form a family, first as Alice teaches Jake all about her bees, and then when they draw Harry out of his shell. They work together, and help each other; and when Alice's bees are threatened, they join with the community to try and save them. In the process, they find friendship, hope, newfound peace, and joy. 

What can I say? I loved this book. I loved all the quirky characters, and the bees, and the happy ending. The Music of Bees is poignant, touching, uplifting, and heartwarming. And I definitely recommend it. 

Happy Reading!

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

 

Short summary of the plot: 

Natalie Harper has a safe job she doesn't really like, and a safer boyfriend she just doesn't love. But everything in her life changes when her mother unexpectedly dies. Now Natalie is in charge of her mother's beloved bookstore, The Lost and Found Bookshop, and she's also responsible for her aging grandfather who's been experiencing memory issues. To make matters worse, the bookstore is drowning in debt and unpaid bills. The logical answer is to sell it. Only the historic San Francisco building that houses the bookshop belongs to her grandfather, and he refuses to sell because he's convinced there's a treasure hidden somewhere inside. But the old building is practically falling down around them and in need of some serious repairs, none of which Natalie can afford. So, to keep her grandfather happy, Natalie has to figure out some way to save her mother's bookshop. 

My thoughts:

The thing I loved most about this book is Natalie's sweet relationship with her grandfather, and how she tries so hard to honor and take care of him. I also loved the bookstore and its interesting history. Bookstores have always been a favorite setting of mine. Then there's Peach Gallagher, the ex-marine Natalie hires to do some repairs on the bookstore, and his cute daughter Dorothy. They're both such great characters; I loved them, too. Books, family, friendship, loss, hope, and love. All of these things make this novel a joy to read. And it's got a happy ending, too! And right now, don't we all need one of those?

Happy Reading!

A bookish melody...

The book:  The Ballroom by Anna Hope
The setting:  Sharston Asylum, England, 1911
The main characters: 

     1. Ella Fay, a mill girl, newly arrived

"Was she mad, then, for breaking a window? Mad for kicking and biting those men? Was that all it took? ... She felt a power in her then. The same feeling she'd had in the mill, but now it took root, lifting her spine. It was dark, she was alone, but her blood was beating; she was alive. She would study it, this place, this asylum. Hide inside herself. She would seem to be good. And then she would escape. Properly, this time. A way they wouldn't expect. And she would never go back."

     2. John Mulligan, Irish, one of Sharston's "chronic" patients

"(John) did not want to sleep. Knew what was waiting for him there:  a woman and a child. Dan's stories did not frighten him; neither did Brandt and his threats. It was what was inside him that did .... he thought of where he was. And how long he had been there. And what was simple broke apart and became a shattered, sharded thing."

     3. Dr. Charles Fuller, a young doctor and musician

"Charles was content. He had escaped his family. Wrested the rudder of his life from his father's hands. And now here he was, five years later, first assistant medical officer, with a salary of five pounds a week, and a newly appointed bandmaster and head of music. It had been his first action in his new post to institute a program of pianism in the day rooms:  an hour a week in each, carried out by himself. He believed he was already seeing a positive effect among the patients. He had great plans for the orchestra, too; under his care he was determined to see the ballroom thrill and live as never before."

The verdict:  This is a book that should be savored, not merely read. Anna Hope's writing is magical, and I love the way she lets Ella's and John's story slowly unfold over the course of this novel. Their relationship is sweet and poignant, especially considering they're locked up in an asylum for lunatics, (although they both seemed sane to me). Besides examining human nature at close range, this book also delves into the disturbing idea of eugenics which seemed to be a popular scientific theory in 1911. The Ballroom also chronicles how those deemed mad were treated a hundred years ago. I found all the various aspects of this well-written novel entirely absorbing:  I rooted for the characters, took umbrage at their treatment, and hoped for a happy ending for all. If I were rating this book on Goodreads, I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars. It's not exactly a light-hearted happy-go-lucky novel, but it is a compelling and moving one. And I'm very glad that I read it...and that I got to read it with Bettina.. Be sure to visit her blog and check out her awesome review. Then go check out this book.

Happy Reading!

A bookish journey to Yemen...

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali (and Delphine Minoui)

It's always an eye-opening experience to read about the sad lives of young girls trapped in third world countries like Yemen where poverty, illiteracy and ignorance are rampant, and where a man's "honor" trumps everything including justice and the basic human rights of women. In Yemen, there's an old tribal proverb:  "To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old-girl." Nujood's father marries her off to a stranger when she is only 10. Her husband is more than twice her age and rapes her on their wedding night. After several months of his brutal treatment, Nujood manages to escape and make her way to the courthouse in Sana'a where she asks a judge to grant her a divorce. Her case, the first in Yemen's history, made international headlines. I can see why. Somehow this young girl of 10 found the courage to defy her father, her husband, and the ancient customs of her country to speak her own mind and demand her freedom.

I'm a simple village girl whose family had to move to the capital, and I have always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. ... Today I have decided to say no.

Her story, simply yet powerfully told, made me want to cry. It also made me wish I could do more to help girls like her. Because while Nujood's story turns out well in the end, there are thousands of others like her who haven't gotten their happy endings yet. That's why it's so important for books like this one not only to be written, but to be read. At only 178 pages long, Nujood's story is an unforgettable and inspiring one. I'm very glad I read it.

Happy Reading!

 

In Order to Live

"I wasn't dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea. I didn't even know what it meant to be free. All I knew was that if my family stayed behind, we would probably die--from starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of a prison labor camp. The hunger had become unbearable; I was willing to risk my life for the promise of a bowl of rice."

Yeonmi Park's story of growing up in North Korea is one of deprivation, oppression, hardship, and struggle. Her escape into China when she was only thirteen is an even more harrowing tale of suffering and survival. I doubt I could have endured even half of what she went through. Reading her story made me appreciate even more the country I live in, and the freedoms I enjoy...and often take for granted. It breaks my heart to think that such terrible atrocities are still happening in the world today, and that oppressive societies like North Korea still exist. How is that even possible?

Park's unflinching memoir is both eye-opening and heart-breaking. It's also a story that everyone should read! I think what I admire most about Yeonmi Park is her courage, resilience, and inner strength; and her hope and optimism through it all. (And the fact that she loves books and reading as much as I do.) In writing this book, she says, "I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea. Both of these events shaped me, and I would not trade them for an ordinary and peaceful life ... I have seen the horrors that humans can inflict on one another, but I've also witnessed acts of tenderness and kindness and sacrifice in the worst imaginable circumstances. I know that it is possible to lose part of your humanity in order to survive. But I also know that the spark of human dignity is never completely extinguished, and that given the oxygen of freedom and the power of love, it can grow again."

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:

Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner

Two books that inspire:

Elizabeth Smart and Malala Yousafzai.

On the surface, these two girls could not be more different.

One was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the other in the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

One is blond, the other brunette. One is Mormon, the other Muslim.

What they have in common is that both experienced something horrible and shocking as teen-agers, and they both survived. More importantly, they have each shown an amazing spirit of hope, grace, courage, and unfailing optimism. I admire both of them and I think each of their memoirs are worth reading. Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from their books:

My Story by Elizabeth Smart:

     "When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice. We can choose to be taken by the evil. Or we can try to embrace the good. ... Life is a journey for us all. We all face trials. We all have ups and downs. All of us are human. But we are also the masters of our fate. We are the ones who decide how we are going to react to life."

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai:

     "I thank Allah for the hardworking doctors, for my recovery and for sending us to this world where we may struggle for our survival. Some people choose good ways and some choose bad ways. One person's bullet hit me. It swelled my brain, stole my hearing and cut the nerve of my left face in the space of a second. And after that one second there were millions of people praying for my life ... I know God stopped me from going to the grave. It feels like this life is a second life. People prayed to God to spare me, and I was spared for a reason--to use my life for helping people."

Happy Reading!