The Book Nook Chronicles

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I read a LOT in August, mainly because I was still dissociating from my second miscarriage which I mentioned briefly in my July book review round-up. I decided to put my grief to good use and ended up participating in the American Cancer Society’s Read Every Day Challenge. With the help of family and friends, I was able to raise $395.00 for cancer research, read every day, and finished nine books in the process. It felt small, but that fundraiser saved me from myself that month and I’ll forever be grateful for the people in my life that made it a success.

Life got insane in September, which I’ll tell you all about soon…but until then, check out eight of the books I read during this challenge (The Marriage Contract was number 9, read my thoughts on it here.)

Beaches Review

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4.25 on StoryGraph

Genre: Fiction

Author: Iris Rainer Dart

Page Count: 283

Publication Date: May 1, 1985

Beaches was one of the first chick flicks I remember watching as a tween. For some reason, the fact that it was a book popped into my head right before a beach vacation with family and it only seemed right to read the novel while staying 100 feet from the Maryland Ocean City boardwalk.

I ended up finding out that there was only one copy of the book in the Chicago library system which ended up being quite an adventure taking me to the Harold Washington Library downtown. There are so many books in the fiction section at Harold Washington that they have specific stacks for recently returned titles where the books live before they get put back on their Dewey Decimal shelf. Finding this book before vacation felt like a book lover scavenger hunt and it was great.

The relationship and lives of main characters, Cee Cee Bloom and Bertie White dig into the heartaches of womanhood while celebrating the love female friends can provide us at every stage of our lives.

I resonated deeply on a personal level with Bertie. Her character reminded me a lot of myself–the good girl that is trying to follow the checklist of life while secretly trying to find herself. Bertie also struggles with infertility in the novel, which was extremely timely for me as I was finishing up my expectant management for a miscarriage my husband and I had in late June/early July. If you’ve seen the film or read the book, you know how Bertie’s story ends, but she was the character I needed in that blip of my life and I’ll be forever grateful for her.

Cee Cee was harder to relate to off the bat. She’s a rough and tumble kind of woman who doesn’t need anyone but needs everyone at the same time. I grew to love her and also sympathize for her constant need for independence in response to feeling unloved.

This novel was so much more than its movie, or at least what I remember of it. It reminded me that, like Carrie Bradshaw once said, sometimes the truest loves of our lives are actually the women who stand beside us through thick or thin and are always just a phone call away.

4.5 on StoryGraph

In typical Sally Rooney fashion, Intermezzo contains a great juxtaposition of two brothers, Peter (the oldest) and Ivan (the youngest), while they both navigate age gap relationships and try processing grief shortly after their father’s death.

I’ve always loved the way Rooney creates parallels within her novels, a stylistic choice you will find in almost all of her work. This is the first novel of hers where men were the clear main characters from start to finish and that was a really nice change of pace. This novel does a lovely job of exploring toxic masculinity and how often men bottle up their emotions until they reach a boiling point.

I found Ivan’s relationship with arts director, Margaret, empowering, having very rarely read books where the woman is older in an age gap relationship. Peter’s relationship with Naomi gives me the ick, not because of their age gap, but because of Peter’s clearly unresolved feelings for his ex, Sylvia. There may be a part of Peter that cares for Naomi, but it’s not strong enough to justify him using her to fill a void Sylvia once did. Ironically, Ivan feels like the more mature brother for about 80% of the book because of Peter’s clear inability to express himself or let Naomi go.

As Sally Rooney often does, these characters are so flawed you aren’t sure if you should love them or hate them, but you can’t look away from the train wreck all the same. If you’ve liked Sally’s work in the past, you’re sure to like this one as well.

4.0 on StoryGraph

After reading Scarlet, I was worried this series was going to take a cliff dive into over-written disappointment. Thankfully I was very wrong. Cress was one of my favorites in this series and it sucked me right back into Cinder‘s world much faster than Scarlet did.

Compared to Scarlet which was filled with a lot more darkness, Cress was filled with adventure and intrigue. It almost felt like an episode of Star Trek, with a Captain Kirk-esque love interest and a lot of time spent in spaceships. I’m also a big stan for girl-next-door/bad boy tropes. I knew this had to be coming with this novel being a retelling of Rapunzel and it did not disappoint.

Cress reignited my excitement for this series and had me ready to dive into book four as soon as it hit my Libby shelf.

If I had to rank the books in this series it would go Cinder, Cress, Winter, and then Scarlet. I loved the Lunar Chronicles as a whole which was shocking since extremely futuristic dystopias with aliens are not typically my jam. Meyer however took some of my favorite fairytales and flipped them on their head, which had me needing to know what happened even when some of the books did not do it for me.

The Snow White story has always given me the creeps, so I’m not super shocked this book did not land as much as some of the other ones. I didn’t love how Winter was portrayed and also could not get over how LONG this book was. Seriously, it could have been about half the size and still created just as much impact.

Like in most dystopian finales, there was a lot of death and destruction in this book. I did find it super fascinating that in every novel, Meyer has an adult counterpart of one of the teenagers in the series die (leaving it there so I don’t spoil anything for those who also took their sweet time to discover this series). As a whole, this was a satisfactory ending to an addicting chronicle.

As I mentioned in my intro, I participated in the American Cancer Society’s Read Every Day Challenge last August. As a way to say thank you to those who donated, I asked for a book title to add to my TBR, making those titles a priority on my list. This was the first recommendation I received from my mother-in-law.

This Tender Land is an epic about four orphans who escape the abusive Lincoln Indian Training School in 1932 Minnesota. The novel follows the four children as they try to navigate life on their own in the Great Depression-devastated United States.

Krueger’s story feels like a blend of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, while managing to stand strongly as its own Great American Novel.

Dark and light converge in the tales shared by the book’s main character, Odie O’Banion. Krueger does a nuanced job of showing the reader how the struggles faced by the adult populous trickled down to the children during the Great Depression and how kids were forced to grow up fast, even when they didn’t want to. Each story highlights the hardships people faced, but through the perspective of a child. The novel explores racism, economic divides, and a lot more in its 450 pages.

Odie’s retelling of his life feels fantastical and realistic, much like a fable shared by grandparents with their grandkids (“I walked uphill both ways” kind of vibes). Definitely worth a read if you are in need of some cold hard truths and hope.