My Week in Books // 9-29-21

I can hardly believe this is the last week of September already! Time just seems to go faster and faster! I hope the weather is beginning to feel like fall where you’re at because the heat just keeps on coming here in Colorado! I’m mostly scared we’ll just skip fall altogether and go straight to cold, so here’s hoping I’m wrong!

The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient, #3) by Helen Hoang

It would be hard for me to choose a favorite between this one and the first book in the series (The Kiss Quotient – my review here), but suffice it to say this is such a great trilogy and Hoang can write romances! She exocutes tenderness and compassion with eloquence – and if I’m being honest – her male characters seem too good to be true! This was the perfect escape at the right time in my reading life; the wait was worth it!

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

This is the second book I’ve read by Sally Rooney (you can read my thoughts of Normal People here) and I now know I just have a love/hate relationship with her writing. She is masterful at writing about the mundaneness of every day life. She can write sentences that’ll stop you in your tracks. And some of her stream-of-consciousness paragraphs had me going back to reread and contemplate at a much slower pace. But, for all her creative genius on a sentence/paragraph level, she fails to hook me on the overall stories and characters. By the time I get to the end of the book, I have very little care left in me and I’m relieved the slog is finally over. I’m not totally sure I can appreciate a book that requires so much time and effort that leaves me feeling empty when it’s all said and done. It’s hard to rate or review a book that certainly shows a writer’s incredible ability on one level, but also leaves the reader totally blank on another.

*** Dancing With the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime by Debora Harding

At the tender age of fourteen, Harding was kidnapped, raped, and left to die on the side of a road. What follows is her account of trying to reconcile the after affects of this horrific incident, as well as trying to come to terms with her abusive mother and complacent father. This book is sad and depressing; fans of Educated and The Glass Castle would be able to appreciate the resilienceness that the authors must possess to make a meaninful life after such atrocities.

(#partner #freebooks: All books noted by asterisks (***) indicate I received the book for free from the publisher, the author, or another promotional company to review. All opinions are my own.)