I want to tell you what reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones did to me: it blew the doors of my understanding of white privilege wide open. Those doors will never be shut again. I read An American Marriage in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. With a few exceptions, most of my reads are written by white women. This isn’t a purposeful decision, but it’s a trend I’ve noticed over the past few years, so I’ve decided to diversify...
Introverted bibliophiles, this one’s for you. Loveday Cardew from The Lost for Words Bookshop is your mascot, your spirit animal, your kindred spirit. She is all of us who prefer books to people, solitary reading time to in-person socialization. And, you will love her. Eventually. Loveday is a bit of a hedgehog -- she's prickly, bristly, and not at all what you would expect from a literary heroine. She’s defensive and surly, with a sense of...
It pains me to write this book review of The Friends We Keep. Many of you know that I’m a huge Jane Green fan; I’ve read all of her books, and I’ve recommended quite a few of them on the Tart. Whenever I hear she has a new book coming out, I immediately get on the waiting list for it at my local library. (And, there’s always a waiting list for her new books.) However…after reading The Friends We Keep, I have to finally acknowledge that...
Love's a funny thing. I’m a big fan of weird and difficult love stories. This is because real love is never easy, and I like to see that fact realistically portrayed. And, sure, while romantic love can be mind-boggling at times, I happen to think that familial love takes the cake. It's perhaps the most twisted, complicated form of love there is. On that thought-provoking note, let's move into my book review of The Mother-in-Law. I decided to...
Well, we made it to summer, everyone! If you’re like me, you're dreaming about what vacations you want to take. Warm weather always makes me think about jet-setting somewhere exotic -- or, really, to anywhere that’s different from what I see 24/7 in my daily routine. The past few years have yielded a lot more daycations than vacations for me, though, so I’ve been getting my vicarious vacation fix through books. Which brings me to this...
Goodreads and some other book bloggers tell me I’m in the minority on this one – but I just don’t care. The Last Romantics was a DNF for me. I requested the ARC of author Tara Conklin’s newest novel in a moment of optimism. I hadn’t been able to finish her debut novel, The House Girl; the premise had interested me, but the writing fell flat and refused to suck me into its story. Still, I had hoped that my encounter with The Last...
As so often happens, I started reading The Endless Beach on a grey, rainy, Saturday morning, snuggled up in bed between a husband and a cat. I had only gotten a little into the book when I had to wrench myself away in order to find some breakfast. Seriously, the only thing that could have made me stop reading this book at that moment was hunger. I was only about 15 pages in, and I was already lost in another world from which I didn’t want to...
Glory Road is the first book I was able to read after my concussion, and it was the perfect novel to reacquaint me with the pleasure of losing yourself in a story well-told. Go ahead and judge this book by its gorgeous cover. Glory Road is just as lovely and enchanting as first glance would lead you to believe. I first fell in love with Lauren K. Denton’s writing when I read The Hideaway, and her newest novel is full of the same easy, familiar...
The Perfect Nanny would not exist if Myriam and Paul Massé had just bought themselves some nanny cams from the French Home Depot. I'm serious, though I didn't have this realization until I was more than halfway done with the book. If these parents had been a little more invested in their children’s safety, so much could have been revealed, and therefore so much could have been prevented. But, that's part of the problem in this book, isn't...
I think I seriously missed out on a life experience by not rushing a Southern sorority. That's something I never thought I would say, since I pretty much mocked sororities every chance I got back in college. And, for a good halfway through Rush, I was feeling pretty darn smug about my decision to eschew all Greek life when I had the chance. By the end of this amazing book, though, author Lisa Patton had completely sold me on Southern sorority...
