Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther. Elizabeth Esther is a fellow blogger and I knew enough about her story that I wanted to read this book before it even released. Her childhood in a fundamentalist Christian sect with her grandfather at the helm was just as fascinating as I thought it would be.
At a dinner party I attended several years ago, Elizabeth Esther was telling us about what it feels like to grow up thinking the world was going to end every day. The panic that threads through a life with that belief. We were talking about it in terms of the pressure to SEIZE EVERY MOMENT, but her thoughts on the subject stayed with me.
I flew through this faith memoir, could hardly believe Elizabeth's family lived not too far from Los Angeles, and her reflections at the end (after she has her own family, and has severed ties to that church) gave me a lot to think about.
The Last Anniversary and also The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty. Ever since I absorbed What Alice Forgot last summer, Liane Moriarty has become one of my favorite beach-read novelists. Not that I've actually read a single one of her books on the beach, but you know what I mean. Entertaining, light-but-not-too-light, easy on the eyes but still good sentence structure.
I liked The Hypnotist's Love Story much better than The Last Anniversary, although the latter had a really interesting premise. The Hypnotist's Love Story followed the mind and actions of a stalker, and it was sort of a different take on the circumstances that put us where we are. The Last Anniversary has more of a family dynamic, and now that I think back on it, maybe I enjoyed it more than I remember.
Of all the Liane Moriarty books (I've also read The Husband's Secret), What Alice Forgot is still my favorite. But they're all fun, easy reads that I have no problem recommending.
Some Girls by Jillian Lauren. A friend mentioned this memoir to me when I confessed my Weezer fandom (author Jillian Lauren is married to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner) and I downloaded it immediately. This is the story of how a Jersey teenager ends up in a harem in Brunei. On the surface this seems so shocking, but reading it somehow you're relating to the author's absolutely unique situation. That's the mark of a good story, right?
I wish I'd read Some Girls for book club or with a friend, because it's one I want to discuss for hours.
We Were Liars by e. lockhart. This is one of the books I purchased after asking the HH facebook page which novels I should add to my memoir-heavy reading list. I bought it for my kindle without reading much about it (my preferred way to do things) but it might have helped if I'd known it was young adult. I don't mind reading YA - and in the best books it doesn't matter - but I think I might have felt differently about the plot if I'd known the target audience.
Translation: I figured out the twist pretty early on. So then I spent the rest of the story waiting for the reveal. Besides that, I liked We Were Liars. It was a quick read, maybe a little more sad than I was anticipating.
An Altar In The World by Barbara Brown Taylor. I bought this after I read (and loved, and haven't stopped thinking about) Leaving Church. (I wrote about it here.) Brown Taylor is easily one of my favorite voices in the faith community and I can't get enough of her simple prose and her wise perspective. I'll be picking up her latest called Learning To Walk in the Dark to read in the next few months, because her influence on me is deep.
Soon I'll be posting what's on my bedside to read the rest of the summer. What have you been reading lately?
