Planning on what books to read during your fall break this year? All four of the books that I read this month will bring out the emotions of even the most stoic of readers. The first novel of the month is author Beth Kander’s first adult novel. It blurs the lines of fiction of folklore, and if you like books that are the very opposite of the typical rom-com, you’re going to love this one.
Next, we have Sophia Kinsella’s (Confessions of a Shopaholic) semi-autobiographical, What Does It Feel Like? The heroine of this novel, a successful novel, finds herself waking up one morning with no memories of what has just happened to her, including the fact that she’s just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
The third book of the month is The Night We Lost Him by author Laura Dave. It’s filled with family secrets including a death that looks more and more like a murder versus what the police are claiming as a suicide.
Lastly, we have one of my favorite releases of the month, The Borrowed Life of Fredrick Fife. This book is about hope, healing, and the fact that family is everything. I truly a heartwarming read that you won’t regret giving a read.
I Made It Out of Clay | Beth Kander
This was a ‘darkly funny’ read, as the synopsis suggests, but I enjoyed reading about Eve, a 40-something who has to create her date for her sister’s wedding. After losing her father a year ago, Eve feels like she is alone in grief, she barely manages to get a few words out when she runs into her next-door neighbor aka Hot Josh, let alone ask him to be her date to the wedding. So what’s a girl to do? She creates what, until then, had only existed in stores her grandmother told her, a golem. At first she enjoys having a protector by her side, but she soon realizes making a golem might not have been the best idea.
In this darkly funny and surprisingly sweet novel, a woman creates a golem in a desperate attempt to pretend her life is a rom-com rather than a disaster.
Nothing’s going well for Eve: she’s single, turning forty, stressed at work and anxious about a recent series of increasingly creepy incidents. Most devastatingly, her beloved father died last year, and her family still won’t acknowledge their sorrow.
With her younger sister’s wedding rapidly approaching, Eve is on the verge of panic. She can’t bear to attend the event alone. That’s when she recalls a strange story her Yiddish grandmother once told her, about a protector forged of desperation…and Eve, to her own shock, manages to create a golem.
At first, everything seems great. The golem is indeed protective—and also attractive. But when they head out to a rural summer camp for the family wedding, Eve’s lighthearted rom-com fantasy swiftly mudslides into something much darker.
With moments of moodiness, fierce love and unexpected laughter, I Made It Out of Clay will make you see monsters everywhere.
Rating: A
What Does It Feel Like? | Sophie Kinsella
When a successful novelist wakes up in a hospital bed (on heels of publishing one of her most successful novels to date) she has absolutely no memory of how she got there. As she has to learn how to do many of the tasks she did before all over again (including walking) her husband has the heartbreaking job of reminding her that she had a cancerous tumor removed from her brain.
This novel, as I later found out, mirrors author Sophie Kinsella’s own story. She too had a cancerous brain tumor removed, and like Eve she is also living through all of the treatments and scans that go along with it. This is a story of resilience and hope.
A shorter novel that we might expect from Kinsella, but very much worth the read. (I suggest catching up with The Burnout from last year, if you haven’t read it yet.)
“What Does It Feel Like? is fiction, but it is my most autobiographical work to date. Eve’s story is my story.”—Sophie Kinsella
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.
As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.
Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.
Rating: A
The Night We Lost Him | Laura Dave
After the death of their father, a man who was still very much a mystery to his children, two estranged siblings begin to wonder if his death wasn’t quite so accidental. Nora and Sam have never been close, their father like to keep his families separate, but they form a tenuous alliance to discover the family secret that no one wants to tell them. Along the way they begin to wonder, if they are doomed to repeat their father’s mistakes, or if they find their way back to the lives they were meant to lead.
The story moves back and forth between the past and present, weaving together a tale that will keep you guessing right up the final page.
Liam Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-
made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar – notably a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast from which he fell to his death.The authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past—and uncover a family secret that changes everything.
With Laura Dave’s trademark combination of soulful suspense and evocative family drama, The Night We Lost Him is a riveting page-turner with a heartbreaking final twist that you will never see coming.
Rating: A+
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife | Anna Johnston
The Borrowed Life of Fredrick Fife has joined my list of favorite books. It is an endearing story about Fredrick Fife who finds himself mistaken for someone else. With nowhere to go, he decides to borrow the life and walk in Mr. Bernard’s shoes for awhile. Everywhere he goes in the care home where Bernard Greer made his home, he spreads joy and happiness. He even reconnects with Bernard’s estranged daughter, working to earn forgiveness her late father was never able to receive.
I just LOVED this book! Keep an eye out for the Q&A coming next month.
“Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I’ll take excellent care of it.” — Fredrick Fife
Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head—as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.
Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard’s facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter’s health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.
As Fred walks in Bernard’s shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise’s suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.
Bittersweet and remarkably perceptive, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a hilarious, feel-good, clever novel about grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family.
Rating: A+
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