Leah is fresh out of a job and an engagement, so she moves back to her Cape Cod hometown. Once there, she impulsively decides to rent and renovate a historic home so that she can open a bookshop. A cast of characters forms around her, some of whom we get to know quite well as there are chapters told from their point of view.
There’s Lucy, a teenager whose older sister has been severely injured in a car accident; Eudora, a widow who has become afraid to leave her home; and Luke, a local woodworker who knew Leah in high school.
I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are likable and the bookstore is a charming setting. I would definitely recommend this when you are looking for a lighthearted, feel-good read.
Three books per week seems to be my sweet spot. Since I have started posting weekly updates, all but one has had three books on it.
Here’s what I finished this week:
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Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center
I loved this book! The story centers on Helen, who signs up for a wilderness survival course in an attempt to take back her life after a divorce. Although there is a romantic plotline, this book is much more than that, and I felt challenged and inspired by her adventure and the things she learned about life through the experience and the people she met along the way. Highly recommend and now I’m going to watch the movie!
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How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
This is a charming novel about a woman who tries to keep her dad’s bookshop running after his death. The story goes back and forth between the present day with Emilia and the cast of characters living nearby and the past where we learn how she came to be.
I have to admit there were almost too many characters in this one for me; I kept getting Mia and Emilia mixed up. That could be because I was switching between this physical book and another book on my Kindle app, so I wasn’t giving it my full attention. Also, I have read so many books about bookshops lately that they are starting to blur together. Those things are on me, though, so I would definitely recommend reading this one.
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More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
This was a nice follow up to the first book. I liked hearing what was happening with the characters I had grown fond of and even found myself liking the main character’s aunt Momoko better in this one.
What is your favorite book that you have read recently?
I finished 3 books this week. It could have been 4, but I kept jumping between 2 different books, so they are both half-finished.
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Incense and Sensibility by Sonali Dev – The Rajes #3
I really enjoyed this one. I felt it had more similarities to Austen than the previous book in the series did, and I loved getting into Yash’s story. I am looking forward to book 4.
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The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland – Lost for Words #1
I actually read the second book in the series before I was aware this one existed, but I don’t think I lost too much by reading them out of order. This book centers on Loveday, who is in the second book but not the main focus. She has had a lot of sadness in her life and the book shows how she struggles to overcome it, flipping back and forth between the past and the present. It has some heavy themes, especially of domestic violence.
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Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand – Paradise #1
Hilderbrand’s books are usually a quick read for me, and this was no exception – I read it in one sitting the other afternoon. I enjoyed this story of a woman whose husband dies but turns out to have had many secrets. It was a fun story, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
Do you ever read a book and keep having the vague sense of having read it before? That was my experience with Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone by Phaedra Patrick. Even though there were some parts I didn’t remember, there was enough that was familiar to convince me I must have read this book before. I wouldn’t hold that against the book, though; I am notoriously bad at remembering the plots of books I have read.
Benedict Stone is a jeweler in a small village whose business is almost non-existent and whose wife has recently left him. Then one day his teenage niece surprises him by showing up at his door for a visit. She is reckless and stubborn and turns his life upside down, and he must decide whether to accept the chance to change the way he looks at life.
There is a lot to like about this book. I enjoyed the colorful characters and the great setting. It was very satisfying to see how Benedict took steps toward a better, richer life for himself. Definitely would recommend!
The Door-to-Door Bookstore is a novel written by German author Carsten Henn and translated by Melody Shaw. It is the story of Carl Christian Kollhoff and how his friendship with a young girl who goes by the name of Schascha changed his life.
I was initially drawn to this book because it is about a bookseller, but I quickly felt connected to Carl and wanted to get to know him better. He has a daily routine that includes delivering books each evening to the customers that have ordered from the bookstore he works at. One evening he is joined by a nine-year old girl named Schascha who has decided she wants to be his friend.
We follow along as Carl and Scascha become friends, get to know his customers better, and deal with Carl losing his beloved job at the bookstore. I found the overall tone of this book to be very melancholy, but I am glad that I read it.
Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin is the story of five women and the scandal that binds them together. The book is divided into five parts, one for each of the women.
The writing is sharp and funny. I was a little thrown at first by the choose your own adventure device in part five, but enjoyed it once I got used to it. I appreciated the focus on women’s issues, especially the double standard that exists for men and women when it comes to sex.
Love this quote from the author’s note:
Jane’s favorite line is from the novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Roughly, it translates, “Humans are not born forever on the day their mothers have them; life necessitates giving birth to themselves over and over again.”
I am a big Zevin fan, and this book definitely delivered!
The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up by Laura Pearson is a wonderful book which I devoured in one sitting. I loved the process of watching Shelley recover her memories gradually after waking up in the hospital from a coma. By alternating the timeline between then and now, Pearson allows the reader to slowly get more and more of Shelley’s story.
The book does have a focus on generational domestic violence, so it could be hard to read for some people. I do think it was handled very well, but you may want to avoid this book if that is triggering for you. The characters were well developed and the pace was steady.
The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is one small plot point at the very end which was totally unrealistic. I won’t give more details so as to avoid spoilers. Despite that, I still think this is a great book and plan to read more from this author.
Ordinary Life: Stories is a collection of fourteen stories, each of which focuses on a woman at a pivotal moment in her life. Elizabeth Berg has long been a favorite writer of mine, and this book reminded me why I like her so much.
All of the stories show us ordinary women living ordinary lives but with a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings that are usually hidden beneath the surface and sometimes percolate up to the surface. Berg writes about relationships and the inner lives of women in a way that is so relatable and insightful.
For example, in the first story, “Ordinary Life,” Mavis McPherson locks herself in the bathroom for a week, shutting out her husband and the realities of their life together. She isn’t contemplating divorce; she just needs some time to think, take stock of her life, and to arrive, finally, at a surprising conclusion.
Berg’s writing is beautifully descriptive as well. This quote from the story “What Stays” evokes my memories of growing up with two brothers and the way it was often two against one but with constant changing of who was on which side:
“We kids kept one another company, raised ourselves, excused the obvious problems of our mother. We had no outside friends. That didn’t seem to matter too much, though. We made allies and enemies of one another in kaleidoscopic ways. We weren’t bored.”
These stories are so compelling that I found myself wanting to take my time with each one and not rush through just to finish the whole book.
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper was Phaedra Patrick’s debut novel, published in 2016. I have read several of her more recent books and was interested to go back and read the ones I had missed. I’m glad I started with this one because it was quite enjoyable.
Arthur Pepper’s wife passed away a year ago, and he has continued living with the same mundane routines he always had. On the anniversary of her death, however, he finds a mysterious gold charm bracelet among her things and embarks on a quest to find out where each of these charms came from.
As he follows the clues he uncovers, he learns a lot about the woman his wife was before they met and is himself taken on a journey of hope, healing, and self-discovery.
I found this to be a sweet and engaging story. I sympathized with Arthur as he stepped way out of his comfort zone, and I enjoyed meeting all of the quirky characters along the way. Some of them were quite ridiculous, but Patrick somehow makes them work. I also liked how Arthur’s relationship with his children changed and grew throughout the book.
I highly recommend this book, and this author. I still have a few books of hers to catch up on, and I am very much looking forward to them.
In So Many Words 