May 2015 Must-Reads

May 2015 Must-Reads from MomAdvice.com

I hope that you guys had another great month of reading. This post is running a bit behind this month since we were traveling, but I had to be sure to sneak this one in before June is in full swing. Since we had a long flight to Italy and back this week, I tackled four books on my trip and I have a couple of other great ones to share about this month. I hope I will have some new ones to add to your beach bag because it is almost beach bag season! You know I can’t wait for that after this long winter season in Indiana.

Here are six books I tackled this month!

Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

(currently available for pre-order, hits stores on July 7th!)

I am a huge fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid. In fact, this book made my top ten a couple of years ago and would definitely be one I would recommend adding to your beach bag. NetGalley sent me an advance reader of this book which I could not wait to dig into. If you are like me though, when your favorite authors come out with books you quickly devour it and then have to impatiently wait for the next book from them.

At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. What unvold are two story lines- what would happen if she left with him and what happened if she refused.

In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her.

Maybe In Another Life is a fun escape that would make a great addition to your beach bag this summer. Fans of Life Intended will enjoy this as the reader is taken into two different directions as a moment in the narrator’s life leads them down two separate paths and you see the parallel lives unfolding. A satisfyingly sweet story that reminds us that just one simple decision can alter our lives in two different directions entirely. Reid is a beautiful storyteller and her books are always a personal treat for me!

4 Out of 5 Stars

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I have picked this book up from the library time and time again and kept returning it. The story did not grab me the way Gone Girl did. When my girlfriend gave this one five stars on GoodReads though, I decided to pack it for my trip and devoured it in a single day and can’t wait to see this one developed into a television show.

The story follows a reporter with a troubled past who has to return to her hometown when she is assigned a story on the murder of two preteen girls in her small town. Returning home is a challenge as she has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother and is reminded why she left the town in the first place. As the mystery unfolds about the brutal murders of these two girls, she must confront her own twisted past and discover who the killer is just as the reader does, in a wild twist.

I will say that this is dark and I think that is why I have struggled with it before. Flynn’s writing makes you feel uncomfortable because her imagery is so raw and graphic. It is disturbing in the way that I felt about Flowers in the Attic when I read it as a kid. Sure, it’s disturbing… but you can’t look away. Kind of like a train wreck. Flynn creates a necessary tension for such a dark tale and the writing creates a vivid picture for the reader of these dark characters and town.

A perfect twist at the end, makes this a satisfyingly dark thriller that I really enjoyed. Read at your own discretion!

4 Out of 5 Stars

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

I love our weekly reading check-in on the Facebook page and everyone has been talking this book up as a book that they just could not put down. I am always game for a good thriller so I snagged this one from the library and read it in two days. You were right. I couldn’t put this one down! Thank you all for recommending it!

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. But their game turns dark when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.”

From there, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they plot Miranda’s demise, but soon these co-conspirators are embroiled in a game of cat-and-mouse–one they both cannot survive–with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.

This is a book of cat and mouse, mouse and cat, cat and cat…Really, the reader just doesn’t know where this one will go and who to trust. This is a fantastically twisty thriller that you must pack in your beach bag this summer. The author does a great job of weaving narrators and twisting the plot so that the reader is left guessing up until that final page. A satisfying ending with a well-woven story. You will love it right up until that final shocking page!

4 Out of 5 Stars

Paper Towns by John Green

Did you catch my interview with John Green on the site? An incredible moment for sure! The only John Green book I have read is The Fault In Our Stars which I absolutely loved. I wanted to read Paper Towns since the movie is coming out and I always love to read the book before the movie. Are you like that too?

Quintin has been loving the neighbor girl, Margo, since they were kids. Margo has never really paid attention to Quintin so when she unexpectedly opens his bedroom window one night, complete in Ninja-attire, he is stunned. That evening is an epic one of revenge against classmates that they embark on all night. The next day, Margo is gone, but Quintin realizes that Margo has left clues to where she has gone. With mixed dread that she may have committed suicide and a need to see the love of his life again, he takes his friends on an epic minivan road trip to find Margo on their graduation day.

Super cute and laugh-out-loud funny, this was a great escape. I would recommend it for fans of All the Bright Places as the road trip leads this crew on a fun adventure.

4 Out of 5 Stars

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett

Are you ready for another book that will be making my top ten of 2015? I can tell you right now that this book will be on the list. I have never read a survival story like it and I have thought about this book ever since I shut the pages. It was one of the most difficult reads I have ever read and I will never forget this memoir or how extraordinary Amanda’s journey was.

Amanda Lindhout lived in a violent home and escaped her life through her issues of National Geographic that she collected and dreamed of traveling to a life far better than her own. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.

Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.

It is impossible to read this book and not be moved by Amanda’s journey. Although it is frustrating to read how naive she is by throwing herself into places that she knows are dangerous to prove the world wrong (which she acknowledges in her story), her ability to transcend the brutality and exit her body is an extraordinary study in survival and her will to live.

If you loved (and could endure) survival stories like Unbroken, I think this one brings new perspective on how women are treated in Somalia every single day and you will be moved by Amanda’s story and what she now gives to Somalia since being held hostage.

This is graphic, brutally graphic. Amanda glosses over much of what she endured probably to save the reader from the imagery, but what she tells is so horrific that you will be thinking of this story long after you close the final pages.

5 Out of 5 Stars

Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

(currently available for pre-order, hits stores on June 16th!)

I had this book on my reading list for this summer so I was so excited to get an advanced reader from the publishing house the week before our trip. Mental illness books in the YA category seem to be a growing trend and I think it is a good thing. All the Bright Places, read and shared with you last month, tackled the issue of bipolar disorder and this book sheds light on the difficulties of being a teen with OCD. Stone illustrates our common misconceptions of OCD (the main character doesn’t even have a tidy room!) and tackles the harder stuff like what it would be like to be obsessive with something like the number 3 and not being able to drive your friends because your odometer must always have that number on it.

Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can’t turn off.

Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn’t help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she’d be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam’s weekly visits to her psychiatrist.

Caroline introduces Sam to Poet’s Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more “normal” than she ever has as part of the popular crowd . . . until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.

The camaraderie of friendship and group therapy through writing reminded me of the beautiful friendships in the The Fault In Our Stars.

The story is well-written and age-appropriate for teens (there is one sex scene), but I think it would be a great one to read and then talk about with your teens about the struggles of fitting in, how everyone struggles with something, and how important it is to be your own person. Samantha is a character that really blossoms on the page. YA fans who are moms will enjoy this one too as the book brings a satisfying twist at the end.