June Book Review

 

Book #1: "Meant to Be" by Emily Giffin

I was super excited to start the month of June with reading this book! This novel by Emily Giffin was released on May 31st and has all of the elements of the Emily Giffin books I love: romance, a little bit of steam, and an intriguing storyline from multiple perspectives. This book follows the romance of Cate and Joe. Joe comes from a very prominent family (think Kennedy family), and Cate was raised seeing pictures of Joe on magazine covers and has an interesting family dynamic. Everything seemed perfect in their relationship (so much so that I wondered how I was only 67% finished when the book) until a secret from Cate's past is unearthed and challenges her. Joe struggles with his identity as well, but is absolutely smitten with Cate, and determined to make their relationship succeed. This was an excellent book that was a little deeper than her novels typically go, but I really enjoyed it. It's very different from her novels "Something Borrowed" and "Something Blue." This book would be wonderful to read poolside or beachside this summer!

Book #2: "The Book of Lost Names" by Kristin Harmel

I really loved this book. It is another piece of World War II fiction, but much lighter than the novel "The Lilac Girls" that I read last night. It describes the journey of a young girl who accidentally discovers her artistic abilities and uses them to help refugees safely evacuate into Switzerland. It's set in a picturesque town in Paris and has some components of a love story and action. I stayed up late several nights reading it, because it truly was not predictable at all. I loved this one!

Book #3: "Thirty Chic Days" by Fiona Ferris 

I really love reading French lifestyle books because they are just very happy to me. They are generally very light and easy to read and make you feel inspired to go on a walk, purge a drawer, or make a salad. This book was divided into thirty chapters, which made it very easy to read a chapter each day. I'd generally read a chapter each morning during my quiet time after my workout. Each chapter held some ideas of how to become more "chic" in a particular area, such as entertaining, exercise, meal preparation, or self care. I really loved this book, and was super excited to discover this author. She has lots of similarly written books and I just downloaded several more to my Kindle. :) 

Book #4: "The Hotel Nantucket" by Elin Hilderbrand

I ended the month reading "The Hotel Nantucket" by Elin Hilderbrand. This was her newest novel released just this month, and it was another typical Elin Hilderbrand novel. It included all of the normal characteristics: set on Nantucket, a cute romance, and lots of summer-y references throughout. The book followed new hotel manager Lizbet, as she attempted to unlock "5 Keys," or a superior rating for a mysterious hotel critic. The story followed several characters who were all employed by the hotel. One character just really didn't make sense, or contribute much to the storyline. That character was...a ghost. This ghost had died in the hotel when it was set on fire decades ago. I think the ghost was there to help us follow the storyline of the other characters? I'm not entirely sure, but it didn't feel necessary. All in all, I did think this was a great summer read!

On to the next month...I can't hardly believe it is July already!