Well, friends, it’s been close to a year since I last wrote and what a year it has been. If I could fast forward through the tough, scary times that we are living through and get us all through to the future, I would do so in a heartbeat. And that’s strange for me, because I am someone who generally feels that time is going way too fast and I want to stop and savor it. Not right now, not during the pandemic. I haven’t been able to get my mind off the news very easily (not that I should – it’s important to be aware of all that is going wrong right now and try to help, however we can), but we all need a break for our mental, physical and spiritual well being. More than anything else, turning the pages of an actual fiction book (not reading on an electronic device – I can’t absorb as much and as well electronically) has provided me with a true respite from my worries. I thought I would share my favorite, most transportive reads thus far and I will be back with more distractions later in the summer. As a side note, reading physical books is the gift that keeps on giving. Besides sharing my favorites with you all to enjoy, I am boxing the books pictured above up and sending book packages to two friends, which makes me happy. There are very few things I enjoy more than sharing and discussing books I love with friends. Stay safe and well friends, and hope you find time and space to get lost in one of the reads below.

Lighter Fare

Beach Read by Emily Henry

I loved everything about this book. It’s relaxed Midwestern, Lake Michigan setting, it’s premise — two writing rivals from college end up living and writing in neighboring beach houses years later, and of course the tension that ensues when they challenge each other to write a book from each other’s genre [he has to write a romance novel; she a gritty, research based, serious, Hemingway-esque bestseller]. While the storyline is somewhat familiar, the character development of both January and Everett, the main characters, is something unique and special. The journey that is this occasionally sad, sometimes funny and often sweet novel has the reader rooting for both rivals by its end.

Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
This novel is about another competition featuring two very different main characters who continue to be drawn together after a past gone awry – this time, on a cooking show. Ashne Raje is trying to save her father’s slowly dying Indian restaurant in California, Curried Dreams, when a friend in TV suggests that she be a chef on her latest reality TV show, Cooking with the Stars. The twist? Ashne is paired with her “secret” high school boyfriend who is now a famous international soccer star and whose heart, unbeknownst to her, she broke so thoroughly that he found his way onto the show as a form of payback. Lots of emotional turmoil, sparks and yummy cooking ensue.

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms

A great read about a single mom/high school Librarian who allows herself the gift of a responsibility-free summer in New York City when the estranged husband who left her asks her to allow him take care of the kids for the summer. While spending weeks in a COVID-free NYC, with the company and advice of her two best female friends, one of whom is a fashion magazine editor, Amy goes through a makeover, rediscovering herself and happiness in the process.

Angsty Page-Turners

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

With a job offer at the NYC law firm of her dreams and engaged to a man she knows and loves with all her heart, Dannie Kohen has her entire adult life mapped out. She is ready to take off into it when one night she falls asleep, and for one hour, lives an entirely different experience that feels more significant to her than anything else to date. What happens when she can’t let go of that dream and the man who starred in it, a stranger, subsequently walks into her life? That is the question that forms the basis for this surprising story with two major plot twists, one that I absolutely did not see coming. Warning: this is not a happy read, but it’s a good one that really makes you think

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

I happened upon this book because I was entranced byLily King’s first novel, Euphoria, which was a fictionalized, heady account of a period in the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead in 1930s New Guinea. The only thing Writers & Lovers shares with Euphoria besides being very well written, it that it is the story of a woman struggling to stay true to her professional passion while questioning her personal ones. Writers & Lovers, takes place in Cambridge, MA in the late 90’s and follows a young, impoverished, writer named Casey reeling from the loss of her mother and a failed relatonship who has been writing a novel for six years while waitressing to make ends (barely) meet. Told from Casey’s first person perspective, the reader really feels her struggle, excitement, and all of her artist’s observations keenly as the story of her personal and professional lives becomes more complicated, intertwined and in desperate need of resolution. A beautiful, emotional, unique novel that stayed with me long after I’d read it.

Strange Family Drama/Suspense

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

One of the only silver linings of this pandemic, for me, has been reconnecting with geographically far flung friends over zoom meetings as now so few of us are able to safely meet wherever we live in the U.S. locally anyway. I recently reconnected with some ladies that I lived in London with as an Expat from 2007-2009. We have spoken a few times and decided to restart a book club of sorts. Because one of the ladies only enjoys reading mysteries, we selected The Family Upstairs and also because of current events and a desire to be more informed, we chose to read Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates’ letters to his son which form the basis of his book, provided excellent if heartbreaking reading material, but by no means can this important book be considered a distraction. It requires one to dig in and think and feel deeply. Hence, I will just say, if you want to learn more about the necessity for the Black Lives Matter movement, you really should read it.

As for The Family Upstairs, told from three characters differing perspectives and moving back and forth through time and varying European locations, this book was a dramatic rollercoaster. It took me on a ride back and forth between contemporary England, late 80s Chelsea, and the Cote D’Azur in which we were given slices of English manor life, family drama, a cult of sorts, dysfunctional relationships galore and the resolution of a murder mystery and a case of mistaken identity. It was a easy reading page-turner that kept me guessing until the very last sentence. I found the book captured my interest so thoroughly (despite it being a genre that I don’t typically pick) that I passed it on to my husband who read it in record time and who would have had zero interest in my other selections above. SO if that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is…

So there you have it, friends. Hope you find something in this bunch of books that sounds good to you; if not, it was nice to have a way to connect with you, from afar, and hopefully bring you some well needed distraction. Enjoy whatever moments of peace and beauty you can this summer. I’m rooting for us all.

Very truly yours, M