Tag: women’s fiction

Posted on

Recent Reads from Sonali Dev

Sonali Dev has become one of my favorite authors, and I have recently read a novel and a short story of hers. The novel, Lies and Other Love Languages, is the story of Vandy Guru and her daughter Mallika. Vandy Guru is an advice columnist who is struggling with grief after the loss of her husband, and her daughter Mallika is an aspiring choreographer who is struggling to find her niche. The story also involves Vandy’s estranged childhood friend Rani Parekh and the secrets that tore them apart.

The book moves back and forth between the past and the present day until finally the story merges near the end of the book. Sometimes all that switching is difficult for me to follow or engage with, but I didn’t have any trouble with this one and was interested in both storylines. I was most invested in Vandy and Rani but gradually connected with Mallika as her character was fleshed out more and more. I also really liked the ending.

The Wedding Setup is a short story about Ayesha Shetty, a young woman who has thrown herself into the family business after the death of her brother. At her best friend’s wedding, she runs into an old flame while trying to avoid a doctor her mother is trying to set her up with. It was cute but mostly predictable, but I did enjoy the little twist at the end.

Posted on

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted

Elizabeth Berg is one of my favorite writers, and I really enjoy her short stories. She has a way of telling (mostly) women’s stories that brings out the deeper truths behind our mundane lives. The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation is a collection of thirteen stories, with one bonus story in the edition I read. Several of them, as you might guess from the title of the book, are about our relationship with food.

My favorite story was “How to Make An Apple Pie,” which is a letter from an older woman named Flo to Ruthie, a neighbor’s daughter who has moved away. Ruthie’s mother has asked Flo to send her recipe for apple pie, and Flo does so in the form of a meandering letter filled with memories of their times together and a lot of exposition on the making of the recipe. I would love to have Flo as my neighbor lady. The bonus story was another letter from Flo to Ruthie entitled “P.S.” where she talks about how to have a dinner party without being a nervous wreck. So good!

One of the quotes that really spoke to me was from “Sin City,” about a woman named Rita who takes a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas: 

“But time does not hold still, and Rita thinks now that it’s a blessing, she thinks that what it means is that your life is free to make or unmake every day.”

To go along with that quote, Berg shares this in the Reader’s Guide: “I like to celebrate the things in life that make it worth plowing through each day.”

I love books like this that allow me to reflect on my life in comparison to what is going on in each of the characters’ lives and that affirm the choice to keep pushing forward and make new decisions when we need to. Highly recommend!

Posted on

The Seven Day Switch

The Seven Day Switch by Kelly Harms

Celeste Mason and Wendy Charles can’t stand each other. Celeste is the epitome of a stay-at-home mom, while Wendy is the ultimate working mom and a productivity consultant to boot. Then after a neighborhood potluck where they drink too much sangria, they experience their very own Freaky Friday and wake up in each other’s bodies.

What follows is a humorous, messy week as they try to live one another’s lives while figuring out how to get back to their old selves. I appreciated how they each move back and forth between trying to change things they don’t like about the other person’s life and having moments of empathy for each other.

Posted on

Get Lucky

Get Lucky by Katherine Center

This is a fun book. I enjoyed getting to know Sarah Harper as she finds her way after making a dumb mistake and losing her job in New York City. She goes home to Houston to visit her sister Mackie, who is dealing with infertility issues, and ends up offering to be her surrogate! On top of all that, she also runs into Everett, the sweet guy she dumped in high school.

There were a lot of humorous moments between the pregnancy, her old boyfriend, and her new job. Center also does a good job exploring the ups and downs of the sister relationship, and I really liked how things ended up with them.

Posted on

The Half of It

The Half of It by Juliette Fay

This may be a weird take, but I had trouble enjoying the first half of this book because we are told early on that the two main characters (Cal and Helen) have been estranged for 40 years, but it takes many chapters and several jumps between the past and the present before we find out what the event that broke them apart was. I have a hard time relaxing into a story when I know there is something coming but have to keep waiting for it.

Once we had the whole story of what happened, it was easier for me to care about the characters and enjoy letting the story unfold. I especially liked Helen’s colorful friend Francie; she was a lot of fun.

Posted on

Catch Us When We Fall

Catch Us When We Fall by Juliette Fay is the story of Cass Macklin, who finds herself broke, homeless, and pregnant after losing her boyfriend Ben. Ben & Cass had spent most of their twenties drunk, and now Cass is faced with the challenge of sobering up for the sake of her baby. She turns to Ben’s brother Scott, who plays for the Boston Red Sox, for help. Scott takes her in despite his longstanding issues with his brother and his lack of faith in Cass’s ability to stay clean.

Even though this book deals with the heavy subjects of alcoholism and dysfunctional families, I found it very uplifting. I really enjoyed the relationships in this book, and I found the characters very realistic and relatable. It was good to see both Cass and Scott grow and heal as they face their childhood trauma. Fay does a good job of showing how much a support system means in the struggle to overcome addiction while also revealing how necessary it is for a person to get and stay sober for themselves rather than for someone else.

I highly recommend this book!

Posted on

Wherever the Wind Takes Us

In Wherever the Wind Takes Us by Kelly Harms, Becca Larkin is fresh out of a twenty-two year marriage and all she has to show for it is an expensive sailboat. Selling it will give her enough to make a new start, so she and her daughter Liv decide to sail it from Maine to Miami to meet a buyer. After a rough first leg, Liv calls handsome sailing instructor Grant Murphy for help and abruptly leaves the boat. For the rest of the journey, Becca learns how to sail while trying to resist her attraction to the much younger man.

I could relate to both Becca and Liv, having seen divorce from both sides. Liv is struggling with trying to understand what has happened and how to relate to her parents separately, while Becca is trying to maintain a good relationship with her daughter without revealing too much sensitive information. I also thought Harms did a really good job of explaining the intricacies of sailing in an interesting way, and I enjoyed the romance between Becca and Grant.

Posted on

The Bright Side of Going Dark

The Bright Side of Going Dark by Kelly Harms, which was published in 2020, reads like a modern morality tale. Mia Bell is an influencer who lives her life on a social media site called Pictey. When her fiance breaks up with her just days before their wedding, she fakes the event to satisfy her followers and sponsors. Then her mother confronts her with her reliance on social media, and Mia responds by throwing her phone off a cliff. 

Meanwhile, Paige Miller is a techie loner who notices Mia’s absence, hacks into her Pictey account, and begins ghost posting on her feed. Paige is dealing with her own issues, including job stress and her sister Jessica’s mental health crisis, but she convinces herself this will be a good thing somehow. Of course, it all comes to a head when Mia finds out what Paige has been doing.

This was a fun read, although slightly heavy-handed in its message. My favorite part was seeing how Mia adjusted to being offline and made connections in real life.

Posted on

Smells Like Tween Spirit

I have thoroughly enjoyed the entire Class Mom series by Laurie Gelman, and this one was no exception.This first three books were about Jen Dixon’s adventures as class mom for her son Max during his elementary school years, and this one covers her involvement as he moves into middle school and gets into wrestling.

She is also juggling helping her parents as they get older and her adult daughters as they are finding their way in the world, in addition to teaching spin classes and spending time with her adorable granddaughter, all while facing symptoms of perimenopause.

I love Jen’s character so much; she is snarky and fun and truly cares about the people in her life. The situations she finds herself in vary from serious to comical, but she always comes through. I devoured this book in one sitting and found it just as good as the first one.

I would recommend starting with the first book in the series so that you get to know the characters and their stories before getting to this one.

Posted on

Wedding at Bella Beach

Wedding at Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth – Bella Beach #7

This is the final full-length book in the Bella Beach series and covers the wedding of Emma Sinclair, who was the main character of the first book. There is a novella about Emma’s daughter Alexis coming out this December called Christmas Wedding at Bella Beach.

This was a fast, feel-good read. It’s probably good that the series is ending because the author spent quite a bit of time making sure we remembered what had happened with each of the characters in the previous books. It did still have some new developments and, of course, there were all the fun things leading up to the wedding.