Book 139: The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings

 I just finished The Descendants and I give it 🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴.

This is a re-read--the book came out in 2007 and the George Clooney movie came out in 2007. I'm not sure when I first read it--maybe when we got back from Kauai?  Anyway--this is a great book even though it is very very sad. Matt's wife, Joanie, is in a horrific boating accident and is brain dead, and he has to lead his two daughters through the process of letting her go. At the same time, he has to decide who to sell a huge amount of property too--he is one of the original descendants of Hawaiian royalty and he and some family members own this hugely valuable land. Oh, and he finds out his wife was having an affair before she had the accident. It's about holding on and letting go and written with such beauty and humor. I love this book.

Book 138: Plays Well With Others by Sophie Brickman

 I just finished Plays Well With Others and I give it 🏫🏫🏫🏫 1/4.

This book is a lot of things: at one level, it's a book about trying to get your child into Kindergarten in Manhattan, at another it's about feeling lost as a mother and losing one's identity, at another it's a wicked take on the Prisoner's Dilemma (which was also featured on an episode of the Mole that we watched last night--I guess it's back in style?). It went on a tiny bit too long but all in all a good read. 

Book137: The Sirens by Emilia Hart

 I just finished The Sirens and I give it 🐠🐠🐠🐠🐠.

WOW! This book is amazing. I have not read anything by this author so I didn't know what to expect but it had so many great elements in it. Multiple narrators? Check. Multiple time periods? Check. A mystery? Check. A hint of fantasy (maybe)? Check. Strong female characters? Check check check check. Did I learn something about the world that I didn't know before? Check. Do I now believe in mermaids? Check. 

The writing is amazing, I truly felt transported. Parts of the story are hard to read, but there is so much hope in this book. Just wonderful. 

Book 136: The Engagements by J Courtney Sullivan

 I just finished The Engagements and I give it ♢♢♢♢.

This book is from Sullivan's back catalogue and I liked it, but there was a lot of depressing stuff in this novel.There are several stories intertwined, all connected by the story of the copywriter who wrote the line "A Diamond is Forever". It's about how diamonds came to symbolize love, and how very different marriages struggle to survive. It all gets wrapped up together in the end although I was wondering how it would. 

Book 135: The Wedding Sisters by Jamie Brennan

 I just finished The Wedding Sisters and I give it💒💒💒 3/4. 

This is a fun and pretty light story (with a few heavy parts) about five women:Mavis is the mom of three daughters, the next character is her mom, and finally the three daughters who all end up getting engaged about the same time (Meg, Amy and Jo). Of course, everyone has a secret, but the secrets weren't that bad and it was fun to see how three very different women might (or might not) be able to come together for their joint wedding. Pretty mindless fun.  

Book 134: Never Saw Me Coming by Tanya Smith

 I just finished Never Saw Me Coming and I give it ★★★1/2.

As a teenager, Tanya Smith figured out how to defraud banks by tapping into their 'reserves' and paying off friends' and neighbors' mortgates and bills. As she got older, she set up a system to continue defrauding banks, spurred in part by a law enforcement officer telling her she couldn't have done it since she was a young black woman. The first part of this memoir is fascinating, as she develops her 'business' while trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life.The second half devolves into bad relationships, poor decisions, and a lot of time in prison. It got a bit much. I

Book 133: The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

 I just finished The Knockoff and I give it 👠👠👠.

Mix "The Devil Wears Prada" with "All About Eve" and something about women in tech and you get this book. It was kind of interesting: Imogen returns to the magazine she edits after a rather long sabbatical due to a health problem only to find that her former assistant has been hired as her editorial partner and the assistant (Eve) is taking the magazine online to be only an app. Eve is a horrible bitch and Imogen feels like a dinosaur. Can she come out on top? I bet you can figure that out. Kind of long and not very intersting.

Book 132: All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield

 I just finished All That Glitters and I give it 🖌🖌🖌.

This is Whitfield's memoir of working in the art industry (love) and his friendship with Inigo Philbrick, another art dealer (confusing). Philbrick (this isn't a spoiler) gets convicted of an art crime, and this book is Whitfield trying to figure out how his friend turned so bad. Philbrick would basically buy a painting, and then sell 'shares' of the painting--the idea is that as the painting increased in value, so would the shares he sold. But his scam was he sold many more 'shares' than were available--so he sold a 50% share to 4 or 5 people. It's confusing and honestly not too interesting. So that's why it's only a 3 star (paintbrush) book.

Book 131: The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by HG Parry

 I just finished The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door and I give it 🪽🪽🪽🪽🪽.

I really liked this book. I would consider it a cross between The Magicians and Harry Potter (although heavier on the Magicians) and the 1920s setting evokes how countries survive and build back after a horrible event (e.g. WW1). I loved the character of Clover and the Camford school was vividly drawn. I'm not a huge fantasy person but this one was one of the most realistic fantasies I've ever read (and that is a huge positive). Highly recommend.

Book 130: The Year of Living Constitutionally by AJ Jacobs

 I just finished The Year of Living Constitutionally and I give it ★★★ 3/4.

I've read several other books by Jacobs--one where he lives according to the Bible for a year, one about puzzles, and I like his writing style and the way he researches his topics and reports back in a fun and accessible way. This book was fine, and I learned a lot about the Constitution and the current debates surrounding it, but the challenge is that it isn't that straightforward to live 'constitutionally'---basically because the Constitution tells you what you CAN do, not what you MUST do, and that's just not as interesting. But if you want a light book that will have you feel like you learned something at the end, this is a good choice. 

Book 129: The Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

 I just finished The Blue Sisters and I give it 🔹🔹🔹.

Three sisters reunite in New York City to go through the belongings of a fourth sister who has recently died from an (accidental? not sure) overdose. All the sisters have issues--Avery just cheated on her wife, Bonny just beat up a guy, Lucky is a trainwreck. Yeah, I get that much of this is due to grief from the loss of their sister, and reflecting on how messed up their upbringing was, but I found the characters unlikable and didn't want to spend any more time with them. 

Book 128: After Annie by Anna Quindlen

 I just finished After Annie and I give it ★★★★.

Wife and mother of four Annie has an aneurism and collapses and dies one dinnertime, leaving her husband Bill, her four children, and her best friend Annemarie to figure out their lives in the wake of this horrible event. Told from the perspectives of Bill, the oldest daughter Ali, and Annemarie, this book is very well written but oh so so so very sad. We all navigate grief in different ways, and this book is very illustrative of that, although the ending seemed too unrealistic for me. 

Book 127 The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris

 I just finished The Moonlight Market and I give it 🌓🌓🌓.

I have not read any Joanne Harris (she does what  guess is called 'urban fantasy' and she wrote the book from which the movie 'Chocolat' was made) but it sounded like this book was my cup of tea--a young man discovers a mysterious and magical market and falls in love with someone there. Well, friends, the magical market (which is what drew me in) gets very short shrift, and this book instead is about a war between two different groups of very mean but beautiful fairies, based on a long held grudge/issue, and it was a bit convoluted for me. I wanted it to be all market, all the time and the market was about 1/20 of the whole book. I really had to force myself to read it (it was pretty short which was the one thing that kept me going).

Book 126: The Summer We Started Over by Nancy Thayer

 I just finished The Summer We Started Over and I give it 🌤🌤🌤 1/2.

I had high hopes, because even though I think Nancy Thayer is a bit of an Elin H-light who is not as good by a mile (imho), this premise was good, of a family moving to Nantucket to open a boutique and a used book store but it was soooooo romancy. So romancy. Too romancy for this woman. YMMV.

Book 125: High Tea and the Low Down: An American's Unfiltered Life in the UK by Claire Craig Evans

 I just read High Tea and the Low Down, and I give it ♔♔♔. 

This is a short memoir from a woman who got married to a british guy and moved to the UK, and all the culture shock she dealt with. The first half was well written and interesting, about how they met and how they moved and how they found their house. The second half was a bunch of short--one page--'reflections' on something british and she tried to be snarky but it didn't work.