May 2025 Books

Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar Goshen -  We did this one for book group, and the discussion was really wonderful. This was a hard book to read - there were a lot of unlikeable characters in it, but the story and the writing and the messages were all really interesting, which made it readable. I do recommend this one!

The Sirens by Emilia Hart - Hmm. I am not sure what this book wanted to be, and I do not think I liked it. I preferred the historical timeline to the modern one. 

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry - Enjoyable while reading but mostly forgettable.

The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore - Okay, so I read this book because I was stuck without my kindle and I went to Libby, and this one came up as "immediately available" and I basically know why. It was FINE but not anything to write home about.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult - I really liked this one! I was drawn more to the historical timeline, and I'm not enough of a Shakespeare buff to have gotten what I think were a lot of references, but I liked the character and her story was compelling. The mordern story was interesting, but a little more predictable. 

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune - it was fun to revisit Charlie Florek and it was a good way to start my summer reading!

Previously....

April Books
March Books
February 2025 Books
January 2025 Books

April 2025 Books

 

Shadows of Tokyo by Matthew Legare - This is the opening of a detective series, and I didn't love it. A little too bloody for me. Interesting look at Japan in this time period (1931), though, and so that made it worth reading. 

We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein - wonderful book about the Warsaw Ghetto, in particular the Oyneg Shabbes group that documented life in the ghetto. I had the privilege of visiting the archives this week...and the author had said that "every document could be its own novel" and she was right. 

The Judgement of Yoyo Gold by Isaac Blum - interesting look at an Orthodox Jewish community and how the kids and adults interact with the outside world. How can you be both inside and outside a community at the same time? The ending was a little abrupt but I'm not sure how else it could have gone....

Just Right Jillian by Nicole Collier - A fifth grader recommended this to me and it was sweet and heartfelt, and I loved it. A really good insight into the mind of a fifth grader, too.

The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins - I love the Dove Pond series, it's a sweet blend of Gilmore Girls, Sweet Magnolias, with a magical twist. Totally fluffy but perfect. 

Say You'll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez - a little heavier than some of her other romance novels, but a good happily-ever-after ending! 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon - Everyone was recommending this to me but I thought it would be scary! (maybe it was the cover) and so I avoided it. But I am so glad I read it - what a wonderful book with incredible historical insights. Loved this one, don't skip it. 

The Museum of Lost Quilts by Jennifer Chiaverini - I have read all the books in this series before and while the ending seemed quite obvious to me, I enjoyed the ride. 

The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner - such a good book! She writes beautifully about sister dynamics and I really liked the story. 

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake - did not love this book... it was basically a magical version of Succession. It was a little too much for me.

Previously....

March Books
February 2025 Books
January 2025 Books

March 2025 Books #mylifeinbooks

 Hello, March and some serious Spring Break reading....

We Would Never by Tova Mirvis - Okay, I'm not a "true crime" gal, so maybe that's why I didn't love this story of basically all unlikeable characters.

Till there Was You by Lindsay Hameroff - a sweet and cute book about a chef and a rock star...and their love story. I appreciated the lowkey Jewish character and the matzah ball soup...(even though the spelling of "till" in the title really annoys me)

One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe by Dara Horn and Theo Ellsworth - hmm...I might not have been the target audience for this strange book, but I'm trying to figure out who that audience actually is. I found it a little bit hard to follow, so maybe someone out there can explain it to me? 

Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff - I appreciated the two lesser known stories of World War 2 - the British delivering Red Cross packages (it also just fueled my current anger at the ICRC for their lack of assistance then (Holocaust) as now with the hostages in Gaza) and the prisoners in a Paris department store. A little bland but readable!

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins - The hard part of a prequel is that you kinda already know the ending but this one still held me on the edge of my seat. And now I'm loving the tiktok theories, the online speculation, and all the ways that the fan base is taking this one really hard. I like it even more upon later reflection on the complexity of the story. Did she know all this backstory when she wrote the original trilogy!? 

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza - This was on a lot of "top" lists last year and for some reason I didn't think I'd like it...and I only sortof liked it. I liked the historical story more than the contemporary one.

Never Planned on You by Lindsay Hameroff - a companion to the book by this author that I read earlier in the month, it's a sweet romance. The Jewish representation was a little less low-key, but still incidental and also felt really authentic. 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - I don't know how I missed this one when it first came out but to be honest, it was almost too close to home. I read it through squinting eyes hoping not to see the next terrible thing. But I think she's a great writer and it was compelling and hard and also a little odd...

Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld - I really don't like short story collections. Either the stories all feel too similar, or they end too quickly, or it's too uneve of an experience. I felt all of that as I read these. I liked a few of the stories better than others, but I kept getting annoyed at having to start a new story just when I was figuring the previous one out. I'm sticking to novels. 

Previously....

February 2025 Books
January 2025 Books

February 2025 Books

Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser by Amy Wilson - This was different from my usual fiction, but I enjoyed this collection of essays about a woman who is a "people pleaser" and how perhaps...that's not always great.

Rachel Weiss's Group Chat by Lauren Appelbaum - Um....meh? I think this was supposed to be a take on Pride and Prejudice, but it didn't work for me.

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray - a very complex family system and how a family rallies around each other even when there's a lot of dysfunction. I'm still not exactly sure how the crisis exactly happened, but it did make for a compelling read!

Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore - loved this one! It's about a queer Jewish person who has no issues with either of those two identities! The issues were related to how he can see ghosts, which is a silly and fun part of the story. Anyway, don't skip this one. 

Across Seward Park by Gail Lehrman - I like a good family saga....this one didn't really disappoint! A solid story about a family living through the turmoil of America from the early 1900s up through to the 1950s. 

Previously....

January 2025 Books

January 2025 Books

 

Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali - This is a wonderful book following two young women in Iran and how they live through the revolution and beyond. It was on so many "favorite lists" from last year, but I didn't realize I had read the author's earlier book and enjoyed that as well. Highly recommend.

I Made it Out of Clay by Beth Kander - a fun Chanukah + Golem story that had a lot of good parts (loved the Chicago elements and the camp-themed wedding) but overall didn't totally work for me. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach - Goodness, this was probably the most polarizing book of 2024. Some people loved this one and some hated it. Since I read it knowing that, I was able to see both sides. I definitely didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. I kept waiting for something to really happen, and I felt annoyed by the characters a lot of the time. 

The Convert by Stefan Hertmans - This is a fascinating look at the Middle Ages, a Christian teenager who converts to Judaism because she meets a Jewish boy...and a crazy saga that ensues. It's speculative, but based on a few genizah fragments so there might actually have been a real story here. But the book could have been a novella, without the author's own drama and research. 

Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski - Apparently I like "cozy fantasy" and this one qualified. I loved the house, which is an other character in the book, and overall enjoyed this one but it was a little too long and draggy by the end. 

The Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors - I wanted to love this book but found it to be a little bit lacking. I'm usually a sucker for a good sister story, but I found this one hard to hold onto. 

On Her Own by Lihi Lapid - I really liked this one - the themes of motherhood and self-worth, about what makes Israeli society, and a little of its underbelly too. A little bit of intrigue, drama, suspense...I look forward to the discussion about this one with our book group!