On the bookshelf in March
The first book I read in March was The Road She Left Behind by Christine Nolfi. Just gotta be real about this one… it was not one of my favs. I thought it was super predictable & honestly kind of boring. There was just no spark that kept drawing me in. I was never excited to pick it up & read it. I do love a good story about rekindling relationships & forgiveness, but overall, this one just didn’t do it for me. I gave this book three out of five stars (which actually felt pretty generous if I’m being totally honest).
I was getting a little bit tired of romance & was wanting a change in genres so the next book I read was Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read. My Dad read this one earlier this year & recommended it to me when I was looking for something different. This one was horrific & fascinating all at the same time. I didn’t want to keep reading it, but I also couldn’t put it down. It really makes you think about the lengths you would go to for survival. For example, their plane had crashed in the Andes mountains & there was no sources of nourishment for the survivors. Once they had exhausted all of their resources, they began to eat the flesh of their fellow travelers who had died in the plane’s crash. I get an upset stomach just typing that out. I can’t imagine being put into a situation where your options are that, or death. I don’t really like thinking about it. That’s part of why I wanted to stop reading, but I wanted to know how they were found, so I had to keep reading! Like I said, I don’t typically read books like this, so it was fun to throw this one into the mix.
Next I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. To jump into what this book is about, here is a little excerpt from the beginning of the book…
‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’
OOF. So basically, the main character of this book, Nora, enters this “other world” that is between life & death. She interacts with Mrs. Elm, the librarian from her high school, who guides her along this strange journey where she selects different books to “read / live” based on her “book of regrets”. Then, as she begins to read said book, she is transported into that new life. Nora lives in this new life & interacts as herself until she feels disappointment or that there are other lives that might be better for her, in which case she is transported back to the midnight library, where she is prompted to select another book. The idea of parallel universes, that one different decision can change the whole course of your life, is a lot to wrap my mind around. I’ll be honest, the first chunk of this book was pretty depressing because Nora does not want to live. That can be difficult to read. I enjoyed witnessing the different lives that Nora got to “live” & it really made me think about my own & how different things could be. Overall, I gave this book three out of five stars. I felt like the ending didn’t have as much oomph as I was hoping for & I felt like it was pretty predictable. But the self-reflection & inward thinking were great things that came out of this book, on a personal level, for me!
The last book I read this month was Love You, Love You Not by Jo Watson. I have to be completely honest about this one… I really didn’t love it. There were times where I’d get into it & then other times when I’d dread picking it up. It was super quirky & honestly a bit weird — I just had a hard time connecting with it because the story was a bit all over the place. & then there was some majorly rated R sections towards the last fourth of it. My Mom read it before I did & we had similar reactions to it. Overall, I gave it two out of five stars. Typically I’m pretty generous with my ratings, but I just couldn’t be nice with this one! I wouldn’t necessarily not recommend this one, but I just think it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into before you start it!
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