November 2020 Reads

 It's my last book post of the year, wow! And what a year it's been, huh?

My goal for 2020 was to read 100 books. I'm now at 93, with 8 of these coming in November. I'm excited that I'll be able to make my goal this year!

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall - My mother-in-law loaned me this book, and it was really good. It's told from the POV of a 9-year-old white girl, Starla, living with her grandmother in the south in the 1960s. She runs away from home and hitchhikes with a black woman, Eula. It was simplistic in its story-telling {since a 9-year-old is our storyteller} with such great lessons and insights as Starla learns about life, love, racism, family. I felt like it could have felt forced or hokey but it wasn't. I was really engaged and invested in the story and thought it was a winner.

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan - Holy geez. This one gave me all the feels and then some. Ella is a Rhodes scholar spending a year at Oxford and has strong expectations for how her year will go. All of that is turned upside down when she has a confrontation with Jamie...who turns out to be one of her teachers. I thought this was going to be a 'typical' chick-lit romance and it was NOT AT ALL. It took a minute for Ella to grow on me, but once she did, I was all in. I read this in 2 days, staying up super late to finish, was bawling at the end, and then re-read about half of it before it was due. There is a huge reveal about halfway through that totally changed the story I was expecting, and it was so, so good.

Still Mine by Amy Stuart - I think I finally figured out why I don't love thrillers. I value connections, and love to get to know the characters really well in a book. In a thriller, there is always so much mystery about the characters, so much hidden, so much slowly being uncovered. I feel like I never connect with the characters or it takes a really long time, and since I value connections so much, I end up feeling like something is lacking. The other issue I can have is when the main character is a bad person - it's a similar issue, but when I don't like the person I'm following, that is also a challenge for me! This was a thriller about an investigation of a missing girl in a coal mining community dying after a mine explosion killed miners and closed the mine. The mystery was interesting, and I thought the resolution was pretty unique. If you like thrillers, this one was pretty good. If you feel like me...meh ha. This is a trilogy, which intrigues me a little, so we'll see if I read anymore of them.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert - Last year, I read Get a Life, Chloe Brown and really enjoyed it. This was the 2nd of 3 books about the Brown sisters. This one follows Dani, who doesn't have relationships, and Zafir, who is all about romance and finding his happy ending, and what happens when they are 'fake' dating to gain support for Zaf's charity. Pretty predictable in some ways, but I like this author and her writing style and really liked the characters of Dani and Zaf. This is definitely R-rated.

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede - Another winner! I chose this for the Blog Friends Book Club, and it was fantastic. I had this book on my TBR list after seeing Come From Away in February. {Remember when we could go to a theater and see a play? SOB.} I thought this would be a great book for our book club because this is a story of 7,000 passengers from flights all over the world that were stranded in Gander, Newfoundland after the 9/11 terror attacks, and we have 3 Americans {from different parts of the US} and a Canadian. We had a really great time discussing it and all shared our 'where we were on 9/11' stories. 

Life Will Be the Death of Me...and You Too! by Chelsea Handler - My BFF, Kristen, gave me this book {along with Still Mine} and I had no idea what to expect. I've never read anything by Chelsea Handler and only know her personality through her TV show. Well this was surprisingly good! This is her 5th book I think and I think they are all memoirs, but this one focused on her experiences in therapy and especially around her healing from her brother's death. It was a really touching book, and I came away with a lot more respect for Chelsea. It was also really well written, and I want to read some of her other books now!

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson - Holy smokes. This book was phenomenal. This subject, the Great Migration, was an undertaking, and I am in awe of Isabel Wilkerson. She specifically tells the story of 3 Black people who migrated from the South in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s - to Chicago, New York, and California. The amount of work that went into this book is mind-boggling - she was so thorough in telling these stories - and so engaging, it honestly felt like fiction it was so well-written! She also tells a lot of the history of the South during the Jim Crow era and the struggles faced by Black people during that period. It was hard to read but SO WORTH IT. I learned so much and am now extremely excited for her 2020 book, Caste. I'm on 149 on the wait list, so I'm sure I'll get it any day now. {grin}

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine - I definitely ended the month on a high-note with this one! Ignore everything I said about thrillers above because this one knocked my socks off. Reading a book like this is why I keep coming back to thrillers - if they were all like this, I'd never stop! I think most people read this book 3 years ago, ha, but I'm so glad I finally got around to it. This story follows Amber, who befriends Daphne only to get close to Daphne's family and eventually Daphne's extremely wealthy husband. The first half of the book is Amber's side of the story and the second half is Daphne's. It is wicked and diabolical and delicious, I ate it up!!

And that was my November! I had my 3rd tie for favorite book of the month between My Oxford Year and The Warmth of Other Suns. They both really got to me - in vastly different ways - this month, and I loved them both!

Trent has pretty much stopped reading with me, but he has started reading the Artemis Fowl series on his own and is really into it! He lost interest in The Vanderbeekers book we started last month, but I want to see how it ends, so I might just finish it on my own ha.

Drew and I just started The Never Girls series - I'm kind of annoyed because it's something I want to get her for Christmas and she randomly picked 2 of them at the library {and not the first ones in the series ha}, but I want to increase her interest in reading, so I'm willing to read whatever she wants!

Now onto all things Christmas!!