Spoiler alert: How to End a Love Story by Yulin Huang is a bit steamy. But, it’s a decent beach read and an overall fun, though predictable story. Amazon: “Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years sincethe tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up. Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all. When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet… the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.” Nothing amazing here, but a fun treat read.

Happy Labor Day – the weekend I publish my summer reading reviews. This summer, I held myself mostly accountable to my summer reading list (published here). As usual, I kept a printout of the covers above my desk for reference and checked off each as I completed it.

So, now for the overall reviews and recommendations from those I had chosen for the summer and those that weren’t on the list:

Best Books of the Summer (5-Stars)
Sandwich
The Eyes and the Impossible

Summer Reading List Reviews
The Housemaid’s Secret (4.5)
In the Shadow of the Greenbrier (4)
Holly (4)
How to Say Babylon (4)
The Woman In Me (3.5)
Family Family (3.5)
Acceptance (3.5)
Several People Are Typing (1)
Congratulations, The Best Is Over (abandoned)
Take What You Need (didn’t read)

I’m always in need of good recommendations, so if you read anything amazing this summer, let me know! Happy school year!

I LOVED The Nix by Nathan Hill and had high hopes for his latest, Wellness. And, I liked it, but it wasn’t as good as The Nix. Amazon: “When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty ’90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.” While I do recommend this choice, it was a little long and sometimes rambly (though there were really interesting tidbits of information therein). If you haven’t read Nathan Hill, pick up The Nix first.

I haven’t read much that’s good about Emma Sasaki’s It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here, but when I needed an audiobook for a car trip and it was “now available” at the library, I grabbed it. And, I am glad I did. While trite, and not particularly well-written, it was a good story and had funny bits, like references to the all-boys Lynden (Landon) and Albany Prep (St. Albans). “Wesley Friends School is Washington, DC’s most prestigious prep school, so of course Aki Hiyashi-Brown is proud to teach at it and send her daughter Meg there. Why wouldn’t she be proud? Parents kill to have their kid enrolled at Wesley. Not only is Wesley the premier academic destination for the children of the capital elite, it’s all about Diversity, Achievement, Collegiality, as all of their very glossy brochures will tell you. Aki should know. As one of the few teachers of color on staff, her face is plastered on every piece of marketing material the school puts out. But when someone graffitis Make Wesley White Again on campus, it exposes dangerous fault lines in the school community—ones Aki may have spent a lifetime learning to ignore. But her headstrong daughter Meg, and Meg’s similarly impassioned classmates, aren’t willing to let slide. Before Aki can sort out her own feelings about the hate crime, the school’s administration jumps into crisis-management mode and assigns Aki as head of the Racial Equity Task Force. Between hasty changes to the curriculum and an anonymous instagram account documenting a history of racism on campus, Aki finds herself caught in the crossfire. Written with the keen eye of a prep-school insider, It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here is a piercing takedown of the American institution of prep schools and a searing perspective on the growing tensions between generations with different ideas of how to fight for what you believe in.” (Amazon) This was amusing and spot-on. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

While I could have sworn I have already read Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, I can’t find any record of such. I certainly did watch the movie, but I can’t remember that either! Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the read. Amazon: “‘One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature’ (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.” I didn’t love the ending, but that is my only complaint. Otherwise, it was a nice, short choice.

I do enjoy Freida McFadden. Ward D was different from her housemaid series, but it was a good quick summer read. Amazon: “Medical student Amy Brenner is spending the night on a locked psychiatric ward. Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out. And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger. Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D. And now she might never escape.” While I figured out the ending before I got there, it was a decent, shivery story.

I was gifted The Second Life of Mirielle West (Amanda Skenandore) by a friend and really, really enjoyed it. When I went to write it up, I discovered that I had bought it for my Kindle in 2022 and never read it. “Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease. At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate. As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis.” (Amazon) This was a fascinating story and I blew through it. Highly recommend.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong was another gift from the friend who gave me Brooklyn and The Second Life of Mirielle West. Amazon: “Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn’t be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love. In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can’t shake the sense she’s hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers. In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.” This is one of those books I really enjoy – woven together generational stories with mysterious circumstances that are revealed at the end. Another excellent choice!

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt was our school summer reading this year. I had high hopes. “After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.” (Amazon) While there were parts of this book that were interesting, as with most of its type, it could have easily have been an article. Overall, it wasn’t particularly enlightening (though there were some takeaway tidbits) and a good deal reiterated things I already knew.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe was an amusing read. I didn’t much enjoy Thorpe’s other book, Knockout Queen, and this was about the same for me overall. Amazon: “As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger. Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price? Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.” This was a passable beach read, but I didn’t love it – something about it was trying too hard.