Summer TBR Wipeout 2018: Intro Post

Last summer I had so much fun doing the Summer TBR Wipeout hosted by The Candid Cover, so I am really excited to join in again this year.  For all the details on this low-stress summer challenge, visit The Candid Cover here.  I think this will be the perfect chance to finally get to some titles I've been putting off.  Here's what I'm planning to read this summer:

Bonus read, if I can get it from the library in time:

What are you reading this summer?

 

Month in Review: June 2018

June was a low-key but fun month around here.  We took some long weekend walks, including one at Rutgers Gardens.  I spent a Saturday afternoon with my sister and stepmom walking around Michael's, the craft store, getting ideas for our next projects.  I went to a hibachi restaurant for the first time and it was really fun!  We went on a double date with my sister and her husband to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.  No matter how ridiculous these movies get (and this one was pretty ridiculous), I'll still continue to watch them.  We ended the month with a first birthday for one of our nephews and the high school graduation party for another nephew and niece (we have so many nieces and nephews!).  And, as you can see below, I got a lot of reading in!

The Books

The One That Got Away // Outlander // Results May Vary // Hurricane Season
 

When Life Gives You Lululemons // The Year of Less (review to come) // Hidden Figures (audio) // Prince in Disguise (review to come)

Princesses Behaving Badly (review to come) // Bachelor Nation (review to come) // My Lady Jane (review to come) // Jilliand

The Academy (review to come) // The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo (audio) // The Thousandth Floor // The Husband Hour (review to come)

The Radium Girls (review to come)

The Posts and Reviews

Backlist Mini-Reviews: Little Mermaid Retellings
Quotables #9 
Review: A Lady's Guide to Selling Out 
Guest Blogger: Literary Baby Names 
Review: Hotel on Shadow Lake 
Book Haul #1
Top Ten Tuesday: My Summer TBR
Backlist Mini-Reviews: The Bethany Chase Edition 
Mid-Year Goals and Challenge Check-In
Top Ten Tuesday: I Can't With These Series
Review: Hurricane Season

The Posts I Loved 

Suzanne at The Bookish Libra discusses challenge fatigue

Sarah at Sarah's Book Shelves talks about letting go of the guilt for not reading the classics

Aj at Read All The Things! reviews Jacob Have I Loved, one of my favorite childhood books

Katie at Doing Dewey wants to know how you balance blogging priorities

Greg at Book Haven lists some kickass movie quotes

How was your June?  Do you have any summer plans?





Review: Hurricane Season

Hurricane Season
Lauren K. Denton
Published April 3, 2018

Betsy and Ty Franklin, owners of Franklin Dairy Farm in southern Alabama, have decided to put life’s disappointments behind them. At least in theory. Ty manages their herd of dairy cows, while Betsy busies herself with the farm’s day-to-day operations and tries to forget the longing for motherhood set deep in her heart. But when Betsy’s free-spirited younger sister Jenna drops her young daughters off at the farm to attend a two-week art retreat in Florida, Betsy’s carefully constructed wall of self-protection begins to crumble.

As those two weeks stretch much farther into the hot Alabama summer, Betsy and Ty learn to navigate the new additions in their world and revel in a home that’s suddenly filled with the sound of laughter and life. Meanwhile, record heat promises to usher in the most active hurricane season in decades.

Four hundred miles away, Jenna is fighting her own battles. She’d once been free to travel and pursue a career in photography, but all that changed with the appearance of two pink lines on a plastic stick and a boyfriend who hit the road. At Halcyon art retreat, she finally has the time and energy to focus on her photography. As the summer continues, she wonders how her rediscovered passion can fit in with the life she’s made back home with her two children.

When Hurricane Ingrid aims her steady eye at the Alabama coast, Jenna must make a decision that could affect both her and her children’s futures, and Betsy and Ty find themselves protecting their beloved farm as well as their own hearts. - from Goodreads

Betsy and Ty Franklin run a dairy farm in Alabama, and although they enjoy their lives, having a child is one dream that has so far not worked out for them.  In Nashville, Betsy's sister Jenna is a single mom to Addie and Walsh; her dream of pursuing photography has been on the backburner for years, until she is given the opportunity to attend an artists' retreat in Florida.  Leaving her children with Betsy and Ty, Jenna heads to Florida.

The writing drew me into the story almost immediately.  It's warm, inviting, and comforting.  I felt transported to both the Franklin Dairy Farm and the Halcyon Art Retreat.  I honestly got lost in the settings in this book, and that doesn't happen often. 

At first I had reservations about Jenna; I thought maybe she would be kind of flaky, just taking off on a whim to try something new.  But she wasn't; she really surprised me.  Photography was something she really enjoyed and was good at, but it kind of fell by the wayside when she had her daughters.  I appreciated that she wanted to do the art retreat not only for herself and her creativity, but for her daughters, to show them that she was going after her dreams and they could, too, someday.  She wanted to see if she could build a better life for them, not just as a coffee shop manager, but by pursuing something she loved.  Although it was heavy-handed at times, I thought there were some good insights about the struggles mothers, especially single mothers, face feeling like they have to choose between their children and their careers or other passions.

I liked Betsy, as well.  Her life hasn't turned out quite the way she imagined, as the wife of a dairy farmer and facing a struggle with infertility.  Her relationship with her sister has cooled a bit over the years, but she would still do anything for Jenna, even take in her children for several weeks as Jenna attends the retreat.  I could really feel Betsy's struggles with her nieces - she loves them, but can she really take care of them?  She questions what kind of mother she would be, while at the same time, it made her pine even more for children of her own.  I loved that Ty was a calming force in her life, solid and steady, and didn't pressure her.  My one quibble with Betsy is that I consistently had a picture of an older woman in my head, when in actuality she was only 30.  I don't know why, she just felt older than her years. 

I did think the pace of the book was a little slow, and sometimes felt repetitive, like the characters just kept experiencing the same things over and over.  I also thought the author was a little heavy-handed in pushing forth some of the themes of the book, but it didn't really take away from my enjoyment of the story too much.  I loved getting to know these characters and watching them grow and come together.

4 stars 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: Bellewether

Can't-Wait Wednesday is hosted by Wishful Endings and helps us spotlight upcoming releases!

Bellewether
Susanna Kearsley
Expected publication date: August 7, 2018

Some houses seem to want to hold their secrets.

It’s 1759 and the world is at war, pulling the North American colonies of Britain and France into the conflict. The times are complicated, as are the loyalties of many New York merchants who have secretly been trading with the French for years, defying Britain’s colonial laws in a game growing ever more treacherous.

When captured French officers are brought to Long Island to be billeted in private homes on their parole of honour, it upends the lives of the Wilde family—deeply involved in the treasonous trade and already divided by war.

Lydia Wilde, struggling to keep the peace in her fracturing family following her mother’s death, has little time or kindness to spare for her unwanted guests. French-Canadian lieutenant Jean-Philippe de Sabran has little desire to be there. But by the war’s end they’ll both learn love, honour, and duty can form tangled bonds that are not broken easily.

Their doomed romance becomes a local legend, told and re-told through the years until the present day, when conflict of a different kind brings Charley Van Hoek to Long Island to be the new curator of the Wilde House Museum.

Charley doesn’t believe in ghosts. But as she starts to delve into the history of Lydia and her French officer, it becomes clear that the Wilde House holds more than just secrets, and Charley discovers the legend might not have been telling the whole story...or the whole truth. - from Goodreads

I haven't read any of Susanna Kearsley's books yet, but I have two on my TBR and they sound so good!

Top Ten Tuesday: I Can't With These Series

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.  This week's topic is series we've given up on or don't plan to finish.  I have a bad habit of starting series and not finishing them, either because I just forget about them, lose interest, whatever.  Here are some series I'm giving up on:

Red Rising: I recently finished the first book, and it was kind of a slog for me.  I felt like I was doing a lot of skimming and the world didn't really make sense to me.

The Royals: The first book, Paper Princess, just felt too trashy to me and I have no desire to continue with the series.

Ravenspire: The Shadow Queen was bland and uninspired, so although the next book delves into a new fairytale, I don't have high hopes.

The 5th Wave: The first book was perfectly fine, but I don't see a need to continue.

Dividing Eden: Even though this is only a duology, and part of me wants to complete it just because it's only one other book, the first installment was repetitive and scattered.

Red Queen: Mare is one of the worst characters ever, and I'm tired of her.

Three Dark Crowns: This series just keeps getting longer and longer, and for me the writing is just not good enough to want to continue.

The Great Library: Although I actually kind of enjoyed Ink and Bone, it had so much going on that it made me tired just reading it, and I'm not dying to know what happens next.

Dorothy Must Die: Considering I didn't even make it through the first book, there's little reason for me to continue with this series.

Me Before You: This is the only outlier in the group.  I loved Me Before You, and I thought it ended perfectly.  I don't need to know what happens to Lou next, I already had hope for her.  I worry that if I read the next two books, and they aren't as good as the original, the magic will be lost.

Are you giving up on any of these series?

Mid-Year Goals & Challenge Check-In

Since this year is just about half over (already??!), I thought it would be a good time to check in on the reading and blogging goals I set at the beginning of the year, plus the challenges I've been taking part in.

Blogging Goals

1. Participate in at least two reading challenges. Pass!  I'm participating in two year-long challenges (and will be doing a summer challenge), and I'll recap those below.
2. Come up with new or different ways to present our travels. So far this year I've done two travel posts related to our trips to Las Vegas and Chicago.  I'm hoping the weather starts cooperating and we can get in some hikes.  I feel like I need to brainstorm a bit more and also decide how much I want to showcase posts like this on the blog.
3. Learn more about the technical side of blogging.  Fail!  I don't know why I added this as a goal.
4. Start doing monthly recaps.  Pass!  I work on the monthly recaps a little bit all month long, and so far it's been really fun to put them together.
   

Reading Goals:

1. Read or reread at least six classics.  So far I've read three classics, so I'm right on track with this goal.
2. Read at least one nonfiction book per month.  Pass!  I've read 13 nonfiction books so far, at least one every month except April (and since I barely read anything in April, I'm not counting that as a failure!).
3. Listen to more audiobooks.  Pass!  I've been listening to audiobooks in the car during my work commute, and it usually takes me about a week or two to get through one book.  One thing that's really been helping my audiobook and nonfiction reading goals is that I've been combining the two and listening to a lot of celebrity memoirs.  I've listened to over 71 hours of audio so far this year.

Beat the Backlist 2018 is hosted by NovelKnight.  I chose 30 titles to read for this challenge.  So far I've read 16 titles from my challenge TBR, so I'm right on track!  Apparently I have a lot of backlist titles on my TBR, because I've also read 14 other older books that weren't even on my challenge list.

 

The 2018 Nonfiction Reading Challenge is hosted by Doing Dewey.  I decided to do this challenge to help me with my goal of reading more nonfiction this year.  I made a tentative list of books I'd like to read.  While I'm not doing so great with the books I initially picked (a couple DNFs, etc.), I've been reading and reviewing quite a bit of nonfiction this year and really enjoying it.  As I mentioned above, I've read 13 nonfiction titles so far this year. 

 

 

How are you doing on your goals and challenges?



Backlist Mini-Reviews: The Bethany Chase Edition

The One That Got Away by Bethany Chase (2015)

Sarina is an architect in a long-term relationship with Noah.  She's sure a proposal is coming soon, but first the two have to get through Noah's year-long work assignment in Argentina.  Right in the middle of that, Sarina's one-night-stand from eight years ago, Eamon, comes back to town.  He hires Sarina to remodel his house, but could there be something more between them?

I enjoyed the writing in this novel; it's easy to read and approachable.  It felt like having a conversation with a friend.  However, I didn't care for most of the characters.  Eamon is presented as too good to be true, and the way Sarina justifies certain things when it comes to him didn't sit well with me.  Also, the way Eamon demanded that Sarina break up with Noah was off-putting.  I felt bad for Noah at times; he was so in love with Sarina and would do anything for her, but at the same time, there were issues in their relationship that couldn't be overlooked.  I was often exasperated with the characters and how they were acting, but then it hit me how realistic it was - so many of us play petty games in relationships, we refuse to talk about our feelings or be honest with someone because we think we know how they will react.  We just don't communicate, and that's exactly what these characters were doing, although it went on way too long.  As much as I disliked Eamon and Sarina sometimes, it was Sarina's stepfather John that made it worth it for me.  He was such a sweetheart of a guy; you could feel how much he loved Sarina and was proud of her.  I loved how close they were, even though Sarina's mother had passed away years before.  3 stars

 

Results May Vary by Bethany Chase (2016)

When Caroline finds out that her husband (and high school sweetheart) Adam has been having an affair with a man, her world is turned upside down.

Finding out your spouse has cheated on you is devastating, and Caroline feels even more betrayed to find out Adam has been sleeping with a man.  Has he been lying to her their whole marriage?  Can she forgive him and move on?  Results May Vary touches on many deep subjects, but it never felt too heavy.  Caroline was a very relatable character.  She is devastated and ready to leave Adam, but on more than one occasion, she thinks perhaps she is being rash.  She and Adam have shared so much of their lives, and does she really want to re-enter the dating world?  Thankfully, she was surrounded by family and friends who helped her.  I loved her sister, Ruby - although she could seem a bit flighty, she also knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to work hard to get it.  I wanted more of Adam in the story; maybe a chapter or two from his POV could have helped me understand him and his motivations better.  As the book went on, and the secrets kept adding up, I liked him less and less.  He seemed like too much of a smooth talker.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, its meditations on marriage and how well anyone can really know their spouse, and the straightforward writing style.  4 stars