Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao was fantastic up until the end. I really enjoyed the story of the friendship of Poornima and Savitha who are poor girls, living in India, and basically unmarry-able. The lengths that Poornima goes to find Savitha after she disappears are impressive and engrossing, but ultimately not believable. That element, as well as the ending, make me not recommend this one too highly, even though it has received rave reviews. However, other than the last 10 pages or so, it was a good one.

I was wary to start The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah because I loved The Nightingale so much and I couldn’t believe she could do that again. And, while The Great Alone was not quite as good as The Nightingale (reviewed here), I did really love it. Leni has a broken family. Her father, returned POW from Vietnam is abusive to her mother and generally angry and unable to hold a job. They head up to Alaska to escape their lives, only to discover how impossible life is in the wilderness. One might argue that this story is somewhat predictable, but it really held my interest and kept the pages turning all weekend. It gets a thumbs up from me.

After having abandoned Everything Here is Beautiful halfway through (I just couldn’t get into it), I pushed through on Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion even though I didn’t like The Interestings (and can’t even find my blog post about it, which means I must have abandoned it). The Female Persuasion focuses on protagonist Greer’s crush on famous feminist, Faith Frank. It takes place during Greer’s college years and then her 20’s. However, the book is also told by others’ points of view and jumps around a bit. The story was interesting and had some good twists and turns, but overall, I forced myself to finish and wish I hadn’t picked it up in the first place. Hoping that my next choice, Kristin Hannah’s new one, The Great Alone, is going to be great. Anyone read it?

You knew I would read Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal since Reese Witherspoon chose it for her book club last month. It’s the story of Nikki who disappoints her parents by dropping out of law school to tend bar. She moves out of the house and ends up teaching a creative writing course at the community center in the Punjabi neighborhood from which she has previously distanced herself. The widows who sign up to learn English end up telling erotic stories instead. There’s a mystery to solve in the middle of the story as well. I like this book, but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. It was definitely a good story (and even racy), but it got bogged down in the middle through about 50 pages before the end and I can’t say that I loved it overall. Others might disagree and I could have been distracted more than usual this week, but I only give it partial praise.

Go out immediately and purchase Educated by Tara Westover. Even better, buy it from Amazon through the embedded link! I haven’t read a book in a while where I thought about it all the time when I wasn’t reading it. Those who know me know I love a good memoir and I had read many reviews of this one (speaking of memoir, if you are a fan of memoirs and haven’t read The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, tee that one up after Educated). Tara is raised in a Mormon, survivalist family and kept out of school. Her father collects scrap metal and her mother is an herbalist and midwife. Tara, however, breaks free of this life and pursues education, ending up with a PhD from Cambridge. It’s a remarkably dark and yet uplifting story. I could not put it down and cannot believe that anyone could have survived the life she led. Fantastic read – one of the best I have read in months.

I have been fortunate to find a bunch of new releases at the library recently. And Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala was among them. I had it on my to-read list because it was described as: “On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.” I thought it might be fun to read a book set in DC. Little did I know that the author attended St. Alban’s (as did the protagonist). The Cathedral references begin on the first page. And, while he could have refrained from using the phrase “Cathedral lawn” as many times as he did, those and other DC references made it that much more fun to read. The story was a tragic one about a Nigerian son who comes out to his parents and they cannot take the news. It is a short book – almost a novella – and well worth reading. While difficult, it was a beautiful story and, for the most part, well-written.

Why wouldn’t you pick up a book whose tagline is: “Five women go on a hike. Only four return.”?! I’m in. And, if the author is Jane Harper, of The Dry, I’m even more in. However, ultimately, Force of Nature didn’t deliver for me. The story was a good one – a corporate retreat into the bush in Australia. The company owners who are along for the retreat are being investigated for fraud by the same officers who come to the investigation after one member of the group goes missing. Every other chapter is either from the investigation point of view or from the women’s time in the wild. But, it was too slow and I found myself finding other things to do rather than read. So, this one fell flat for me in a way that The Dry didn’t. I’m sure this one will get a lot of hype, but I, for one, would skip it.

I must be on a beach-read kick because I followed up Now That You Mention It with Jojo Moyes newest, Still Me. I have to admit the guilty pleasure of Jojo Moyes. Me Before You was a favorite and one of my first blog posts in 2013 (if you haven’t read it, you need to grab it immediately – forget the movie). Still Me is the second sequel to Me Before You (is there such a thing as a second sequel?). After Me was good, but not as good as the first. In Still Me, Louisa has moved to Manhatten to be the assistant to a wealthy second wife. In moving for the year, she has left behind Sam, her paramedic boyfriend. Through trials and tribulations, she makes a life for herself and learns about who she is alone. While I didn’t want to love it and, indeed, wanted to be above this guilty pleasure, I adored it. Still not quite as perfect as the first, but a great read nonetheless!

I haven’t read any of Kristan Higgins’ other books and I don’t think I will. I read about Now That You Mention It in an Indie bookseller’s publication, and it sounded interesting. However, while the story was good, it was a beach read at best (I will admit that the constant references to Tufts did keep me more amused than others might have been). Nora is a successful gastroenterologist, living a good life in Boston when she heads out for pizza and is hit by a van. She recovers on the Maine island where she grew up, makes new friends, and finds new romance. Yep. That kind of book. Predictable, cheesy, yet somewhat satisfying. The writing wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t too great either. Unless you are looking for something mindless and saccharine, I’d give this one a pass.

Grist Mill Road by Christopher Yates was a great read. It had just enough suspense to keep you going and the story was unique. The story begins with Hannah who is tied to a tree by Matthew and shot with a BB gun while Patrick looks on. And then, Patrick ends up married to Hannah. The book, told from varying point of view explains how we get from point A to point B.