It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted by Kathryn at Bookdate is a weekly post to share what you’ve recently finished reading, what you’re currently reading, and what you plan on reading this upcoming week.
So here is what I just read, am reading, and what I plan to read next:
What I Read Last Week:
Title: The Favorite Daughter
Authors: Patti Callahan Henry
Immediate Thoughts: Heartfelt, tender, and absorbing!
Rating: 8.5/10
Publication Date: June 4, 2019
Title: Fatal Inheritance
Authors: Rachel Rhys
Immediate Thoughts: Picturesque, mysterious, and incredibly captivating!
Rating: 9/10
Publication Date: June 11, 2019
Title: The the Stars and Back
Author: Camilla Isley
Immediate Thoughts: Cute, sweet, and fun!
Rating: 7.5/10
Publication Date: April 25, 2019
Title: Slow Dancing at Sunrise
Author: Jo McNally
Immediate Thoughts: Light, winsome, and engaging!
Rating: 8/10
Publication Date: June 25, 2019
Title: The Baobab Beach Retreat
Author: Kate Frost
Immediate Thoughts: Atmospheric, tender, and hopeful!
Rating: 8.5/10
Publication Date: November 14, 2017
What I’m Currently Reading:
“The first time they met, Mags saved Ava’s life. The second time they met, Ava saved Mags’s.”
Ava Hart is the most reluctant cast member of a reality TV show based on her big city family’s (mostly staged) efforts to run a B&B in small-town Nova Scotia. Every family has its problems, but Ava has grown up seeing her family’s every up and down broadcast on national television, after the show becomes an unexpected success for reasons that will take a heavy toll on the Harts.
Mags Kovach is the charismatic lead singer of a struggling Halifax rock band hoping to be the Next Big Thing. For years she’s managed to contain her demons and navigate the uglier aspects of being a woman in the music world, but after a devastating loss, she turns her anger on the only person she can: herself.
As their private tragedies continue to set social media and tabloid headlines on fire, their every move subjected to an endless stream of public commentary, it will be their unexpected friendship that will save them. They will push back against the roles they’ve been forced to play, and take back control of something they thought they’d lost forever — the right to their own stories.
What I’m Reading Next:
Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century! It’s 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother’s historic home in downtown Nantucket: but this year Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, a nursing student, is caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests, a passion which takes her to Martha’s Vineyard with her best friend, Mary Jo Kopechne. Only son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother who is hiding some secrets of her own. As the summer heats up, Teddy Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, a man flies to the moon, and Jessie experiences some sinking and flying herself, as she grows into her own body and mind.
In her first “historical novel,” rich with the details of an era that shaped both a country and an island thirty miles out to sea, Elin Hilderbrand once again proves her title as queen of the summer novel.
Nice slate of titles, Zoe!
I’m listening to Death is Not Enough by Karen Rose and reading The Highlander’s Lost Lady by Anna Campbell and loving both.