Author: valeriejs17

Book One:

💖 Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 💖

Book Synopsis:

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost- but not quite- dying, she’s come up with seven directives to helper “get a life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The Next Items?

Book Two:

♠️ The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell ♠️

Book Synopsis:

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She learns not only the identity of her parents but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood. The home, even in this dilapidated states, is worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. What she doesn’t know is that others have been waiting for this day as well- and although they’ve been hiding, they are heading her way.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old safe and sound in the upstairs bedroom. In the kitchen, three dead bodies, all dressed in black, were seemingly post next to a hastily scrawled note. The four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

In The Family Upstairs, the bestselling author of Then She was Gone delivers a powerful and propulsive story of two families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.

Book Three:

🌟 The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes 🌟

Book Synopsis:

Set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of love extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennet Von Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out foe a team of women to believer books as apart of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice sign enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the packhorse Librarian of Kentucky. What happens to them- and to the men they love- becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is a times breathtakingly beautiful, at other brutal, they’re committed to their job; bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.

Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled In its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic- a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

My October Book of the Month subscription picks!

This month selections weren’t really my favorite. I was debating whether I wanted to skip this month or not. But at the last minute, I decided to keep it, and give one of the books a try. This month I got a total of three books: My October pick and than two add-ons.

Lately I have been getting my add-ons from the months’ selection, but since this month wasn’t really my choose of preference, I was able to get two completely different books.

My October pick:

🍃 The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys 🍃

Synopsis:

~ Madrid, 1957 ~

UNDER THE OPPRESSIVE DICTATORSHIP of General Francisco Franco, Spain is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, tourist and foreign businessmen flood into Spain under the welcoming promise of sunshine and wine. Among them is eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of an oil tycoon, who arrives in Madrid with his parents hoping to connect with the country of his mother’s birth through the lens of his camera. Photography- and fate-introduce him to Ana, whose family’s interweaving obstacles reveal the lingering grasp of the Spanish Civil War, as weak as chilling definitions of fortune and fear. Daniel’s photographs leave him with uncomfortable questions amidst shadows of danger. He is backed into a corner of difficult decisions to protect those he loves. Loves and hearts collide, revealing an incredibly dark side to the sunny Spanish city.

Master Storyteller Ruta Sepetys once again shines light into one of history’s darkest corners in this epic, heart-wrenching novel about identity, unforgettable love, repercussions of war, and the hidden violence of silence-inspired bu the true postwar struggles of Spain

🌿 Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur 🌿

Synopsis:

A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity

On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me.

Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and form then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into precarious marriage of her own and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life -and her mother – on her own terms.

Wild Game is brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and about the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us

My Second Add-on:

🍁 All That You Leave Behind by Erin Lee Carr 🍁

Synopsis:

A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence-1,936 items in total- in search of comfort and support.

What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation : Did her father’s writing contain the answers to the question of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting whose mentorship meant everything not just to her but to the many who served alongside him?

All That You Leave Behind is a poignant coming-of-age story that offers a raw and honest glimpse into the multilayered relationship between a daughter and a father. Through the lens, Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, and relationship fails. While daughter and father bond over their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, it is their powerful sense of work and family that comes to ultimately define them.

This unique combination of Erin Lee Carr’s earnest prose and her father’s meaningful words offers a compelling read that shows us what it means to be vulnerable and lost, supported and found. It is a window into love, with all of its fierceness, and frustrations.