This has been a great week all the way around, lots of reading and running and baking and also did you know it’s almost Christmas? I’m freaking out in a good way. I don’t know how much reading time I’ll be able to get in while the kids are on winter break but I’m cautiously optimistic.
I spent the weekend reading The Unseen World. I am really impressed with Liz Moore! I loved Heft and I loved this one too. I felt like it started out a bit slow but I was still absorbed in the story right away. A lot of it is about a girl and her father working on coding together so it had sentimental value for me going in; Rich and Lucy have a nice bond over coding projects that they do together. This was a great story and very well done. I did often think that the narration was a little detached and lacking emotion, but in the end it paid off in a big big way. I would like to read this again someday.
After that, I read Winter Storms, the last book in Elin Hilderbrand’s Christmas trilogy. While I love her, and I love Christmas, and loved the first two in the series, this one was only okay for me. Part of it was that, in general, I don’t tend to love series so I was pretty ready to move on from the Quinn family by this point. This had its charms but was very very predictable. There was a weird little thing throughout about the election; the book was meant to take place over Christmas of 2016, but clearly written before Election Day, and she tried to work around that in a way that came out clumsy and awkward. She would have been better off just sidestepping that completely. I still love her, this just wasn’t one of her best.
Next up was Black-Eyed Susans. Somebody, please, make me stop with the thrillers. I don’t know why I keep going back. At least with this one I kind of knew what I was getting into; I was inspired to read it because of a bad review by Roxane Gay. (I love Roxane and her reviews are fantastic.) She didn’t completely pan this, but she said there was a twist that was “too much” and my curiosity got the best of me. I didn’t end up thinking any of the twists were that big a deal, but like always I was disappointed nonetheless. It was a page turner for sure but went all over the place and left a lot unresolved and made no sense in the end. I need to either stop with this genre or find a really good one.
This morning I started My Name Is Lucy Barton and I am totally enchanted! I love Elizabeth Strout’s writing. This is really short and quick and I can already tell I’m going to be wishing it were longer. I’m feeling a real connection with this one. I’m sure I’ll finish this today, not sure what’s next. NOT a thriller, though!
