Books I Read in May

 I had such a lousy start to my May reading with 5 books I didn't finish!  I have just reached the point where if I can't get into the story within just a few chapters then I put it aside and find something else to read.  With such a lousy start to my month, I didn't have high hopes for my reading... but I managed to squeeze in quite a few wonderful books this month despite my slow start.  I was so happy to reach my goal of 10 books a month! 

1.  The Restaurant by Pamela Kelley-- When sisters Jill, Mandy, and Emma inherit a restaurant they never even knew their grandmother owned they are thrown for a loop.  The will stipulates that to keep their shares of the restaurant all three sisters must have some part in the running of the restaurant for a year. I really enjoyed this story and at one point when two of the characters are touring the Nantucket whaling museum I had such wonderful reminders of our trip there! 

2.  West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge-- I thought his historical fiction novel was OK.  I had gotten it free as a Kindle First read and was interested in learning a bit of history I hadn't heard about before.  While it was a bit slow in parts I did enjoy reading about the first giraffes for the San Diego zoo and all that went into transporting them across the country. 

3. The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister-- I enjoyed this story so much.  It was a slow and gradual build and by the time I was mid-way through the story I just did not want to put it down.  Emmaline has grown up on an island isolated from everyone but her father.  Believing in magic and mermaids and learning to really hone her sense of smell, Emmaline feels betrayed when she realizes her father has been telling lies.  Tragedy strikes and she finds herself living on the main land struggling to fit in, she reinvents herself a time or two and keeps searching for ways to reconcile her past, her present, and her future.  A wonderful coming of age story that left me rooting for Emmaline. 

4.  The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship by Beth Harbison-- A super cute book about three ladies who lives intersect all because of a food club they join.  Margo is going through a divorce and is looking forward to making new friends, trying fatty, delicious recipes again, and putting her life back together while reinventing herself.  Trista has left her career in law behind to take over a bar and pub she used to work at when putting herself through law school.  She wants to find new recipes for the menu to combine her love of food with her desire not to go completely under.  Aja has no idea how to cook but wants to impress her current boyfriend and his mother with her skills in the kitchen.  Paired with some tasty recipes and lots of side stories it was a fun book to read. 

5. Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince by J.k. Rowling-- I have been reading the entire Harry Potter series aloud to all my boys over the past year (or maybe 2?) and we just love re-visiting one of our favorite series.  In the 6th book of the series, Harry is getting private lessons from Professor Dumbledore and learning more about Lord Voldemort's life in the hopes of finding a way to defeat him. With his new potion's teacher and Harry's handy version of the textbook with notes from the "half-blood prince" he's having a remarkably good year... until the end of the book when everything seems to go wrong all at once. 

6. The Salt House by Lisa Duffy-- This was such a heartbreaking and yet somehow hopeful book that I did really enjoy.  Set in a coastal town of Maine, the Kelly family have made it through a hellish year after the loss of their baby Maddie.  All 4 family members have dealt with their grief in different ways.  Jack, the dad, is a lobsterman and spends most of his time alone at sea unable to find the words to reach out to his wife and two daughters.  Hope, the mother, is crippled by grief and replays the day over and over wishing for any one of the small acts that could have totally changed the outcome.  Unable to work as a freelance writer or move forward in any way she's just happy to be getting out of bed once more.  Jess has her first crush on a boy but doesn't want her parents to know and Kat is baffled by the changes in her family while fearing that her parents are going to get a "deforest".

7. Red Velvet Revenge (Cupcake Bakery Mystery #4) by Jenn McKinlay-- Mel and Angie are trying to keep their business alive during the hot summer heat that seems to have driven all their customers away. They jump at the chance to sell cupcakes at the rodeo but when one bull rider turns up dead.. Mel and Angie start to investigate. 

8. The Newcomer by Mary Kay Andrews-- I thought this book was fabulous and fun and light and perfect for summer beach reading.  Letty flees her sister's house with her niece and a go bag of cash after finding her sister murdered.  Her sister had warned her that her ex-boyfriend Evan might do something awful and if that if anything ever happened to her Letty had to take her daughter Maya and flee... so Letty does.  She then becomes the prime suspect in her sister's murder.  On the run, tired, and scared Letty finally settles at an old motel in Florida right on the beach.  The owner takes pity on her and offers her a place to stay and a job without even knowing Letty's full story.  Only problem is that the owner's son is a police officer and Letty keeps toying with the idea of taking off even though both her and Maya fall a bit in love with Ava (the owner) and all the somewhat grouchy octogenarians staying in the hotel. 

9. Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow (Nevermoor book 2) by Jessica Townsend- I thought this second book in the series was just as delightful as the first.  In this book Morrigan has been inducted into the Wundrous society.  But when members of Nevermoor begin to go missing, everyone looks to Morrigan the only known Wundersmith since the dreaded & evil Ezra Squall.  

10.  Family Reunion by Nancy Thayer-- While this wasn't my favorite Nancy Thayer book, I did enjoy reading about this family.  Set on Nantucket, Eleanor is approaching her 70th birthday and decides to throw herself a small family party. But her children really want her to sell her big house on the cliff and move into an assisted living facility near them on the mainland.  Luckily Eleanor doesn't have to make any big decisions right away as her granddaughter Ari has plans to summer on Nantucket with her while working to save up money for a master's program after Ari's recent college graduation.  Ari and her grandmother have a wonderful summer going to parties, meeting new people, finding romance and even when they are thrown by some curveballs life has thrown at them, the two remain close. 

Did Not Finish

Layla by Colleen Hoover-- I love a good Colleen Hoover novel so I was feeling dejected when I got 1/2 way through the book and realized that I just didn't care about the outcome.  I wasn't invested in the characters and with ghosts/ paranormal activity I just realized rather suddenly one morning that I had no desire to finish the book. 

The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod by Cynthia Huntington--  I wanted to enjoy this book so much.  Having spent so many of our summer vacations on Cape Cod (and in Provincetown in particular) I thought this book was going to remind me of my own summers spent on and near the dunes but it was quite different and honestly I just didn't mesh well with the author's writing style.  I gave up after only 2 chapters. 

The Sound of Glass by Karen White Audiobook-- I think I would have really loved this story if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook.  I'm going to request it from our library and see if I enjoy it more that way.  I just realized party way through disk 1 that I had no idea which character was talking or who she was talking to.  I had lost all thread of the story.  I typically listen to audiobooks in the car with my boys but didn't realize how much I rely on them to fill me in when I have to tune out the book to pay attention to the road and then tune back in.  

Level 13: A Slacker Novel by Gordon Korman-- Evan and I picked up this book to read together on the days it's just him and I doing school work together.  Having really enjoyed Slacker we were excited for the second book in the series but it fell rather flat and by chapter 9 he was asking me if we could please be done.  He didn't really care if Cam and the Beaver became YouTube superstars and he was constantly rolling his eyes so we returned it to the library.

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelley-- I loved Lilac Girls and  but just could not get into Sunflower Sisters.  I think mostly because I am just not a civil war fan.  While I have always been fascinated about stories surrounding WWI & WWII but I am just not interested in the antebellum/ civil war era at all.  

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