Category: Everything Else

Jamie from book club recommended Code Name Verity to us. I sadly hadn’t quite finished it for book club last Wednesday night. My follow book nerds kindly didn’t spoil it for me & I will do my best to act on turn.

Code Name Verity is of the young adult genre {I’m turning into a bit of a #YAbooknerd right now}. But the subject matter & story aren’t of the cheesy YA variety. This historical fiction novel takes place mostly in the 1940s following two English/Scottish girls during WWII.

Their roles in the war & it being from a British perspective were new ones for me. I loved hearing a war story from a strong female perspective {actually two perspectives}. I loved the friendships. And I loved that the author really tried to be as authentic as possible & she even describes just how so in the afterward.

My book club has read a good deal of WWII novels. Code Name Verity is now up there as one of my favorites. {I say one of because the memoir Unbroken will be hard if not impossibly so to top.} I’m actually looking forward to re-reading this {& I never reread} to search out & understand more of the beginning & also discover foreshadowing I know I overlooked. Code Name Verity was really good. It was another quick read that I had a hard time putting down. I actually am thinking about the characters days later & missing reading their story. That’s a sign of a well written & enjoyed book.

Divergent by Veronica Roth has been recommended to me for a long time. I threw it on my library wish list a couple months ago & instagrammed recently when I picked it up. Over & over, friends said, you have to read it! NOW! {I should have listened to them sooner.}

I decided to bring it with me to OIB. And while I didn’t have much relaxing beach reading time {hello, babies’ first day at the beach & afternoon in a baby pool!}. Lucy & Zach chilled on the car trip home & napped at the house Monday long enough for me to finish Just One Day & start reading Divergent Monday night. Y’all, I had all 400+ pages finished by Wednesday night. It was too good to put down. And Insurgent better come quick from the library as I can’t wait to read more of Tris’ story!

Divergent is of the YA genre, so it’s an easy, quick read. It might remind you of Hunger Games & Matched in that it’s a story based in a future, dystopian North America {Chicago area}. There’s PG rated teenage romance that’s sweet & cute. And crazy drama & action that makes you glad to be living now.

Before I was finished, I saved the date {10/22/13 for those interested} when then third book, Allegiant comes out. If you’re looking for a cant-put-it-down, addicting read that isn’t “light” in the story but won’t make your brain explode from thinking too hard, find these novels.

Holy cow! I read Defending Jacob by William Landay quick. Sitting for hours awaiting potential jury duty helped me finish it & proved a great background for reading about a murder trial.

Defending Jacob reminded me a bit of a Jodi Picoult novel in the sense that it was told from past/present in first person. Also it left you hanging on your seat til the end. I’m looking forward to discussing it for my book club in a couple months. I think there are some great law, parenting & sociological themes developed in this novel.

This one I’d recommend to men & women alike. I think it’ll stick with me for a while & I can see why it was a best seller.

Bloom by Kelle Hampton has been on my wish list for a while. If I had room on my book shelf, I’d have purchased it if not for the photos alone. I’ve followed Kelle’s blog since shortly after Nella’s birth.

I am familiar with her story, yet I still enjoyed & got into the ugly cry reading her words of the unexpected joy & discovery made during Nella’s first year.

Any blog follower of Kelle, photography lover or parent of a special needs child would enjoy Bloom. But so would anyone who likes memiors or has had a dream that came true in a way there weren’t expecting. I found myself nodding along so many times as she described the first days & weeks & months of motherhood.

After enjoying Gayle Forman’s If I Stay & Where She Went last May while on bed rest, I was excited when her latest, Just One Day, became available for me at the library.

It was a wonderful beach read. Light YA lit about a girl about to go off to college who has an experience with a guy she just met in Europe that changes her future. 

Just One Day made me wish I’d traveled in Europe as a young adult. I liked it enough that I’ve already starred the sequal Just One Year on amazon to remind me of it’s Oct ’13 release.