I have had The Wife Upstairs on my list for a while. It’s the type of book I enjoy – a page-turning thriller that’s a great summer choice – nothing too deep here. “Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for. Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?” (Amazon) This was fine, but not as good as some other thrillers I have read of late.

Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney was a disappointment. I didn’t like her previous book, The Nest, much either. “Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring—the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five. Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company—Good Company—afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?” (Amazon). While it sounds good, the execution wasn’t. I’m not sure I will pick up another one of hers.

Where have I been hiding?! Well, I’ve been on vacation and decided to take a hiatus from posting. Consequently, I am going to be posting about a lot of books all at once (rainy day…thanks, Elsa). The first of my vacation reads was The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi. It’s apparently the first in a trilogy. The second in the set came out this summer. “Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own…Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow—a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.” (Amazon). I liked this one, but not as much as I expected. Perhaps too much hype-ahead-of-time?

I took a break from the Summer Reading List to cover Elin Hildebrand’s newest (as I have said before – and all her titles that I have read are linked below – you have to read one each summer, even if you know what it’s going to be like). 28 Summers is the story of Mallory Blessing and her inherited summer house on Nantucket (oh, to be so lucky…): “When Mallory Blessing’s son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he’s not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It’s the late spring of 2020 and Jake’s wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother’s bachelor party. Cooper’s friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere—through marriage, children, and Ursula’s stratospheric political rise—until Mallory learns she’s dying.” (Amazon) This was standard Hilderbrand — nothing amazing (though this was pretty engrossing), but a good read, nonetheless and perfect for summer.

The Matchmaker
Summerland
The Rumor
Here’s to Us
The Identicals
The Beach Club (she clearly hadn’t gotten into the cover art she is now known for when this one came out)
The Perfect Couple
Winter in Paradise

The library really came through for me this early summer. Book two off my can’t-wait-to-read-this-summer list was My Brilliant Life by Ae-ran Kim. It was a short and sweet read that I enjoyed, but didn’t LOVE. Apparently it also was a movie from 2014. Amazon describes: “Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang—his sixty-year-old neighbor and best friend—and through the books he reads to visit the places he would otherwise never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing together his parents’ often embellished stories about his family and childhood. He hopes to present it on his birthday, as a final gift to his mom and dad; their own falling-in-love story.” Perhaps a better description is from the movie: “Dae-soo and Mi-ra gave birth to their son Ah-reum when they were both 17 years old, and Ah-reum was diagnosed with progeria, which makes his body age prematurely. When Ah-reum turns seventeen, with his body that of an eighty-year-old, he decides to write a story about how his parents fell in love.” It’s a sweet story and worth a read.

Nothing like the first week of June to start one of the 12 books on my can’t-wait-to-read summer list. No matter that school is still in session! I have only read one other Kazuo Ishiguro book (When We Were Orphans reviewed here) and I was lucky enough to get Klara and the Sun from the library. There is a lot of hype around this book right now and I was excited to dive in. Sadly, I hated the first half and tolerated the second. I can see why people might enjoy the story, but it wasn’t for me and left me with too many questions and small irritations along the way. Amazon’s description: “Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?” Even this description falls flat for me upon reading it. Please share in the comments why you liked this one, if you did.

I LOVED Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. As heartbreaking as it was, I could not put it down. Not having any knowledge of the author’s story or NYT column, it was an incredible memoir and I was lucky to have downtime this weekend to enjoy it. Amazon, as usual, provides the description better than I could: “In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.” I can’t say that this is a light/fun summer read, but it’s such an immersive and interesting one. I can’t give it enough praise, so I will just say, grab it.

Happy Memorial Day – the weekend I publish my summer reading recommendations and my own list for summer reading.

I have already posted my choices for good summer reads that I have vetted. This post covers those I am looking forward to biting off myself. I couldn’t keep it to ten this year!

Let me know if you have read and enjoyed or hated any of them. They will be packed in my beach bag…

As I do each year, I have listed here my favorites for the first six months of the year so you can easily find them to take to the beach (or to your home if you can’t get to the beach this year). This year was light on 5-star books, but there are a good number of 4.5-star choice to enjoy.

I will post another list of those I am reading this summer – who knows if they are going to be good or not…happy summer, everyone!

Links to read my blog posts are here:

5-star
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Anxious People

4.5-star
This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing
Blood, Bones, and Butter
The Women in Black
The Midnight Library
Leave the World Behind
The Splendid and the Vile
Don’t Look for Me
Eat a Peach
Dear Child
When We Were Orphans

2020’s summer books are here.
2019’s summer books are here.
2018’s summer books are here.
2017’s summer books are here.

Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson is a decent thriller that will keep you on your toes. Amazon describes: “Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of. Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window—an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. It must be a play of the early morning light or the remnant of a waking dream, Bree tells herself, shaking off the bad feeling that overcomes her. Later that day though, she spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daugh­ters’ private school . . . just minutes before Bree’s infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. It happened so quickly—Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow. The mysterious woman makes contact, and Bree learns she, too, is a mother. Why would another mother do this? What does she want? And why has she targeted Bree? Of course Bree will pay anything, do anything. It’s her child. To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small—but critical—task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price.” Definitely a summer read, nothing deep here, but a good read nonetheless.