This months books took me from present day Newport, Rhode Island where two families prepare for the Wedding of the Season, to modern-day London where two very different women spend time in Someone Else’s Shoes, then back to the 1800s where we meet three very strong Daughters of Nantucket and finally, we venture into a world of family secrets in I Love It When You Lie.
Wedding of the Season
Lauren Edmondson
Wedding of the season is the kind of book you want to dig into over a long weekend. Filled with family secrets, new money vs old money, and the chance for a romance to be rekindled, the story surrounding the union of the Coventry-Gilfords and Utterbacks brings all the drama you’re hoping for (and some you don’t expect.)
“It’s the wedding of the season and all of Newport is abuzz in this funny, joyous, whip-smart novel about two modern-day society families and the summer wedding that has the whole town talking…
Despite its beauty, Newport is a place Cass Coventry would prefer to forget. But after an extended absence, she’s back in her hometown to celebrate her sister’s engagement—even if she’s marrying into the family that famously stole the Gilded Age Coventry mansion out from under them a decade ago.
The moment Cass pulls up to the estate, she’s in for one surprise after another. The bride-to-be is hiding a big secret. Her mother has royal-wedding aspirations. And, when the date is set for only three months away, a local gossip blog makes the two families it’s new favorite subject.
It’s not long before Cass’s weekend in town becomes a full summer of frenzied wedding planning and society drama—but also idyllic sails, starry nights, and a former love. As the grand affair arrives, along with new truths about her family, Cass must finally face her own thorny past in Newport and decide how to honor the Coventry legacy in all its chaotic glory.”
Someone Else’s Shoes
Jojo Moyes
As a longtime fan of Jojo Moyes’s work (especially the series surrounding one of my all-time favorite literary characters, Louisa Clark) I was so excited to have the opportunity to read Someone Else’s Shoes before its release. I immediately found myself connecting with the two main characters, Sam and Nisha, so much so that I finished reading the book cover to cover in just two days. Very satisfying ending (and one worth waiting to get to!)
“Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?
Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope–she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.
That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag–she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself.
Full of Jojo Moyes’ signature humor, brilliant storytelling, and warmth, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.”
Daughters of Nantucket
Julie Gerstenblatt
Daughters of Nantucket centers around three strong women, Eliza Macy who finds herself in dire financial straights after her husband sends word that his ship we delayed yet again, Maria Mitchell an astronomer by night who runs the Antheneum by day and Meg Wright, a free Black woman who along with her husband is attempting to purchase a storefront on Main Street on an island filled with old prejudices.
Set both before and after the Great Fire of 1846 that nearly wiped out the entire island, the women must learn to put aside their differences and work together when everything around them burns.
“Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear…
Nantucket in 1846 is an island set apart not just by its geography but by its unique circumstances. With their menfolk away at sea, often for years at a time, women here know a rare independence—and the challenges that go with it.
Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street. Meanwhile, astronomer Maria Mitchell loves running Nantucket’s Atheneum and spending her nights observing the stars, yet she fears revealing the secret wishes of her heart.
On a sweltering July night, a massive fire breaks out in town, quickly kindled by the densely packed wooden buildings. With everything they possess now threatened, these three very different women are forced to reevaluate their priorities and decide what to save, what to let go and what kind of life to rebuild from the ashes of the past.”
“A memorable story of friendship and courage.” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
Releases on 3/14
I Love It When You Lie
Kristen Bird
This is one of those books that you get to the final sentence and you can’t wait to tell everyone that this is THE BOOK that they need to read next. I Love It When You Lie ties for first place for this month’s reads along with Someone Else’s Shoes. The story goes between the lives of the three Williams sisters and their sister-in-law Stephanie, both before and following the passing of the beloved Gran who raised them. The sheriff of their small town in the Appalachian foothills had always been after Gran following the death of her husband, and now that another man in their lives has gone missing, his interest turns their way once again.
The Williams women don’t just keep secrets…
They bury them.
The three Williams girls are as close as sisters can be, and they also share one special trait in common: each of them have a man in their lives that they could do without.
Tara, the pastor’s wife, has been stealing money from the church and would prefer that her husband stay out of it. Then there’s June, who would do anything to have a baby of her own, even if her husband is dead set against it. Clementine, the youngest, is entangled in an affair with her professor, a man whose behavior she’s starting to seriously question. Their sister-in-law Stephanie, an outsider, knows all the family dirt and is watching the three of them—and the men in their lives—closely.
When the woman who raised them, their beloved Gran, dies on the eve of her eightieth birthday, the Williams sisters return home to the Appalachian foothills to bury her. But their grandmother won’t be the only one they’ll put in a grave this weekend…because now someone has gone missing in the dark Appalachian woods.
And if Gran has taught them anything, it’s how to get rid of a good-for-nothin’ man.
Releases on 3/14
**I received advanced copies of these books (with the exception of Someone Else’s Shoes) for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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