What I Read on My Weekend Away

This past weekend, thanks to the generosity of my parents who came to my house to stay with my kids, Dan and I had a lovely long weekend away without kids!  People seemed to enjoy my post about what I read on my winter vacation, so I thought you all might also be interested in hearing about what I read on this mini-vacation.  Amazingly, I read (most of) 3 books from Thursday-Sunday!  Luckily for me, I am married to someone who has a compatible idea of what vacation should entail - pretty much minimal activity and total chillaxing.  ;)  Sure, we also swam in the pool, did a little walking around the resort property, got massages, had some great meals, etc. - but we also spent lots of time just reading!

Just one bookshelf in the Library cottage at Winvian

All the rooms at the resort where we were staying are themed.  I'm sure it does not come as a surprise to you that we stayed in the Library cottage!  The picture here is the view from the living area to the bedroom - and that's just one of many bookcases in the room.  The books were certainly an odd assortment.  Most of them seemed to be quite old books, many from the 1930s and 40s - I'm assuming that they were sold/bought in giant lots just for the purpose of decorating.  Interspersed throughout were more recent books that were presumably left behind by previous guests.  I noticed several I have previously read myself  - "All the Missing Girls" by Megan Miranda (enjoyable thriller); "The Address" by Fiona Davis (enjoyable historical fiction); "Fates and Furies" by Lauren Groff (overrated literary fiction); "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith (even more overrated literary fiction).  There was also lots of old Agatha Christie which I had read back in my teenage years.  And a 1947 Bowdoin College yearbook, randomly enough!



Anyway, onwards to the books I read while I was away!

Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman - I started this book before we went away, but read the bulk of it while we were there.  And I loved it!  A really enjoyable novel about four families who live on the same block. There are just so many great lines about parenthood and marriage in this book - a bunch that made me laugh out loud, a few that made me tear up a little, and others that just had me exclaiming “so true” in my head.  Abbi Waxman’s first book, “The Garden of Small Beginnings,” was one of my 10 favorite books of 2017 (and maybe was even my most favorite), so she is definitely joining my list of favorite authors who I will read everything they write. The only weakness of this book is that maybe there were just a few too many POV characters, some which we barely heard from.  But I still absolutely adored it and highly recommend. 4.5 stars, maybe even 4.75.

The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy - This book is getting a lot of buzz as one of the big thrillers of the summer, and my hold on it at the library came in just before our trip, so thought it would be a fun vacation read.  Unfortunately, for me, this book was WAY overhyped - though judging from Goodreads, I’m apparently in the minority with this opinion. The set up sounds great - members of a Brooklyn new mommies group are out for their first child-free outing from their newborns, when one of the mother’s babies is kidnapped. It certainly was a quick read, but all the characters were annoying, unrealistic, and did not feel fully developed, even though they all had their own secrets.  In fact, even though I read this in about 24 hours, I had trouble remembering which character was which.  And the ending was surprising but came totally out of left field and therefore was not satisfying.  2.5 stars.

Still Me by Jojo Moyes - Most people I know read "Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes, a book that did not quite make my 10 favorites list the year I read it, but still a book I loved and always recommend.  "Still Me" is the second sequel to "Me Before You," following the first sequel, "After You."  In this one, Louisa Clark moves to NYC to be the assistant to a rich second wife on 5th Avenue and has various adventures in New York both literal and emotional.  Louisa remains an endearing and lovable character, and this book, like its two predecessors, is a deeply enjoyable and charming novel.  Fun read and while of course not as sob-inducing as "Me Before You," it definitely coaxed some tears out of me as well.  There is probably no real need for Jojo Moyes to continue to write books about Louisa, but as long as she does, I'll keep reading them!  4 stars and definitely recommended to those who read the two previous books (don't start with this one, you have to start from the beginning).  I didn't quite finish this one while we were away, but after we arrived home yesterday, I managed to finish it.

And if anyone is wondering what Dan read, years after I first recommended it to him, he finally read Wool by Hugh Howey, which I also mentioned on my post on dystopian fiction.  It's an atmospheric and interesting dystopian novel about a group of people in an unspecified future living underground in a giant 150 level bunker due to an unspecified disaster.  Despite originally being self-published in 5 installments, this book features good writing, interesting characters, and a good sense of creepiness/mystery.  It's a long book, so I think I had finished the first two books above before Dan finished this one.  He enjoyed it so much that as soon as he finished, he started reading the sequel, Shift.

So that's all for now - stay tuned later this summer for my report on what I read on my upcoming Cape Cod vacation!