On the bookshelf in January

One thing I'm trying to be more intentional about this year is reading self-help books.  Typically they're just really not my favorite.  I don't like to feel like I'm being preached at.  If I'm going to read a book, then I want to be able to escape to another world, not be told what I'm doing wrong in my own lol.  Can you tell I'm not a fan of critiquing or criticism?  I'm fine just the way I am!!!  With that being said, I did try to force myself to read one chapter a day in a self-help book before I could read my other book, before my grad classes started back up.  It worked for me & I was able to finish one book & I would highly recommend this method for any of you who struggle to get through self-help books as well!  Accountability, people!

The self-help book I read was Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren. Here's the deal. Because I don't love self-help books in general, I probably am a really harsh judge of them. With that being said, I gave this book two out of five stars. I liked the different ideas that she presented & it definitely made me ask some questions of myself that I hadn't thought of before. However, I felt like it was pretty repetitive & if you're not Catholic, some parts are a bit confusing.

Next up I read When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. My Mom absolutely loved this book & highly recommended it to me & here's the thing... you know when you find a really funny video & you can't wait to show it to someone & then when you finally do, they don't think it's anywhere near as funny as you did? Yeah that's the same kind of let down I had with this book. Just being truly honest here! The book follows a middle-aged man named Reese as he has flashbacks from his childhood & then back to where he is now. He meets a precious little girl named Annie who is in need of a new heart. It was very interesting to observe how their paths crossed & how much they would mean to each other by the end of the book. Reese is evidently burdened from carrying some very deep secrets & shame from his past. Continuing on with being honest, I thought his secret was going to be much worse based on the build up. After sharing that opinion with my Mom, she thinks that part of that could be that because I'm a school counselor, I hear some rather dark things fairly often so his secret may not have felt near as deep or as dark as the secrets & stories that I'm used to hearing on a daily basis. Additionally, there's quite a bit of medical talk as well as quotes from Shakespeare. Those two things just really threw me off from the beginning. I ended up giving this book three out of five stars.

Then I read In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. This sweet little book was so easy to read + fairly short so I flew through it. It had a good plot that I was very intrigued by so I wanted to keep reading! The story line follows main character, Dannie, & her relationships + friendships with the important people in her life. One night, Dannie has a dream that takes place five years into the future & it is not AT ALL what she thought her life was going to look like. She spends the years leading up to that point trying to do anything & everything to avoid her life taking a turn. However, life is not something that we can control. Not even in a good book. ;) Overall I really enjoyed this book, however, I didn't love the ending. It left me feeling bummed & confused & honestly a little bit hollow. I like for fictional romance books to end with a "happily ever after" & this one definitely doesn't fall into that category. I gave it four out of five stars.

Haha can you tell I do a lot of my reading in bed?! Next up I read A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler. If I'm being completely honest, I had a love / hate relationship with this book. I hated it because it talks about racial issues & white privilege & shows just how broken our world is & that's kind of hard to come to terms with. Not because I don't think that those topics aren't happening, but because it's more comfortable for me to live in the dark. Anyone else relate to that? But that's also exactly why I loved this book. We NEED to be reading more books like this. Books that are accurate depictions of real life stories that are happening throughout our world today. I'm sure you've seen Albert Wilson's name in the news at some point in the last year. I'm not trying to get into a discussion or argument on whether or not he is guilty or innocent, but this book reminds me a lot of his story. The characters of this book practically crawled out of it, grabbed my shoulders & shook me. We need to be checking ourselves regularly. Our biases. Our stereotypes. Our hearts. This book makes me want to be better. I highly recommend it. Four out of five stars.

I read Forever Wild by K. A. Tucker in one day y'all. It was such an easy + short read & was pretty predictable so I flew through it. Forever Wild is the third book in this series (& I think the last one?). They're all three really sweet love stories that incorporate life struggles & adventure as well. I'll leave my reviews of the first two books below!

Okay after reading the Simple Wild by K. A. Tucker, I’ve decided that I’m moving to Alaska & nobody can change my mind! Such a sweet sweet story about love, forgiveness, & living everyday like it could be your last. The story follows a young adult girl named Calla and her estranged relationship with her father. Calla, who lives in Toronto, gets a call from a woman in Alaska, where her father still lives, to tell her that her father is sick & that she should come to see him. Calla is presented with an opportunity to get to know her father, whom she hasn’t seen in twenty four years. There’s a few surprises & a lot of sweet moments that made my truly love this story. There is a sequel which I also read this month — the second I finished this book, I had to pick it up! There’s a couple scenes that are pretty rated R in my opinion which I didn’t love, but overall, I just loved the story for the message that it gave.

Wild at Heart is the sequel to the book above! This one is quite a bit longer & has a lot more rated R scenes than the first one, but I loved it just as much if not more! I don’t want to share too much about this book because I don’t want to give anything away from the first one. A third book is coming out in December & you better believe I’ll be buying it right away! I might have to look into reading more from K. A Tucker in the meantime. ;)

Have you ever heard of the “goodreads” app? It’s a free app that lets you track your reading progress, rate books you’ve read, keep a list of your want-to-read books, set yearly reading goals & follow along with what your friends are reading as well! It even gives you suggestions based off of your ratings & the types of books you read. We both really like it. You should check it out!

past book reviews...

I’ve been doing book reviews for awhile now & I’ve read some really good ones! Click here to go to the ‘book’ section of my blog to scroll through them.

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