I'm going to start out here and be really honest: I haven't read anything in a couple of months that I've just been raving about. Not since Loving Frank and What Alice Forgot (posts about those here and here). I cannot tell if my taste is off or what, but my paperwhite and I are just working through it, one book at a time.
I picked up Beautiful Ruins at a quaint little book store in our lake house town, and I mostly bought it because I loved the cover. In the back of my mind somewhere I had it on my To Read list, but it was the cool cover that really sold me. Covers matter. Don't ever let someone tell you they shouldn't be judged.
I liked it fine. It was clever and the ending threw me a bit. My favorite parts were not those set in Italy mid-century, but the current Hollywood scenes between the assistant and her boss. I thought those were funny, and true, and full of industry jokes about getting a project made in this town.
I downloaded The Silent Wife because I read a quote somewhere by Anne Lamott calling it this year's Gone Girl. And since I loved (really loved) Gone Girl, I didn't need much more endorsement. The Silent Wife is not this year's Gone Girl. I read it very quickly and thought it was entertaining in an airplane-read kind of way. Wasn't deeply invested, but it passed the time.
The Husband's Secret was one that I had been looking forward to because I liked What Alice Forgot so much. I just enjoy Liane Moriarty's writing style. Her books are like the Hunger Games for 30-something housewives. The chapters are short, you can't stop reading them, and you connect to characters that should be wholly unconnectable.
The Husband's Secret wasn't as good (for me) as What Alice Forgot, but only because it's less of a thinker. I applied scenarios from What Alice Forgot to my life for weeks after reading it. But The Husband's Secret is highly entertaining and I lost hours of sleep to read "just one more chapter."
When I look back over my reading list for the last couple of years, it's glaringly obvious that I haven't read much on the intellectual scale in a while. Usually I'm fine with this. I did lots and lots of more intellectual reading from about 16 to about, say, 29. Now I read for pleasure and with small children my brain capacity is less than what it used to be. Time is much too short to force myself through something I don't want to read. But maybe a challenge is exactly what I need to get me out of my current slump.
Just as soon as I finish Happy, Happy, Happy.
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