Sarah

2025 Book Reviews: A Mid-Year Roundup of everything I’ve read so far

Life lately has included things like a fairly major surgery, family activities, and a realignment of priorities, and it feels good to get back into the swing of things here! Monday of this week I rounded up all my 2024 books and today I’m catching up on everything I’ve read in the first half of the year. There are some really good ones here – a few that are even going on my top recommendations list! – and it has been such a satisfying stretch of reading for me.

Let’s get started!

This is Not a Holiday Romance by Camilla Isley (2/5 stars)

Tristan is Nina’s older brother’s best friend, and for years they have been enemies, never hesitating to try to outdo one another in a never-ending prank war. When Tristan gets invited to Nina’s family’s Christmas, tempers flare and pranks ensue until a snowed-in truce is called and they realize that beneath all the animosity, there is something else simmering.

I love holiday romcoms and an enemies-to-lovers trope, so I went into this book expecting to love it but unfortunately . . . did not. The prank wars and tantrums thrown feel extremely childish and I was not into it. I didn’t love the (underdeveloped) main characters and thought there was way too much immaturity all around so the chemistry isn’t particularly believable. Suffice to say, this one just wasn’t for me!

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (5/5 stars!)

In August 1975, Barbara Van Laar goes missing from Camp Emerson. To make matters more complicated, she is not only the daughter of the wealthy camp owners but her older brother also went missing from this same place 14 years ago, never to be found. As a search ensues to find Barbara, questions resurface about what might have really happened to her brother all those years ago. Woven across decades and told through multiple point of views, this novel intricately layers events and perspectives about what has happened within the camp, the Van Laar family, and the greater community over time.

I could not put this book down! It has a really great historical fiction-meets-camp thriller-meets-murder mystery vibe and I could so clearly visualize the camp and characters. I do have to throw in a disclaimer that by the halfway point, I couldn’t decide if I absolutely loved it or if it was an absolutely maddening read. The classism and sexism was so frustrating to read and I was getting so annoyed! That being said, I think the fact I felt that way is truly a sign of a well-written book. It was incredibly immersive and I was so invested, it got my emotions, good and bad, involved too. I’m glad I stuck with it because by the end of the book, I was putting on a movie for my kids because I just HAD to finish it. It is long and there are several characters and timelines to keep track of, so if that’s not your thing you probably won’t enjoy it. For me, I loved the pacing, I loved the varying character perspectives and timeline shifts, and I loved seeing all the breadcrumbs and clues connecting as I read. Ultimately I found it to be a very satisfying read – it’s going on my top recommendations list!

An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson (3/5 stars)

Lennon Carter has no idea Drayton College exists until she receives a mysterious phone call inviting her to apply for acceptance. Driven by curiosity and the need for direction in her life, she accepts the invitation and learns that Drayton is a school of magic that has been concealed deep within Savannah, Georgia. Everyone at this school has the gift of persuasion and it soon becomes clear that Lennon is one of the most gifted of all. Amidst the highly competitive atmosphere of Drayton, she starts to discover more of this new world she inhabits and just how important it is that she learns to harness and control her own power.

The setting wants to be the college version of Hogwarts, and in some ways, it nails it. I loved the concept of persuasion as magic and the overall idea of the school and thought the plot started out strong. That being said, I just did not personally enjoy the actual writing style, and I had a very hard time with the main character. She was inexperienced but gifted and often came across as entitled, needing to know more and include herself in every situation that came up. There is a relationship that I feel was underdeveloped and lacked chemistry, and the side characters don’t add much depth either (I couldn’t even keep them straight, they all blended together). It was definitely dark academia, emphasis on dark with several violent actions and overall this book just didn’t hit for me.

The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren (4/5 stars)

Fizzy Chen is a highly successful romance author who has lost her spark, both professionally and romantically. Connor Prince is a documentary filmmaker who has been tasked with coming up with a new reality dating show. A chance encounter has him inspired and he approaches Fizzy about starring as the lead in his TV show, which plans to bring some new spins to a familiar format. This show could be the answer to both of their problems . . . as long as they can ignore any attraction they may feel towards one another as production begins.

I enjoy Christina Lauren’s books so I went into this book hoping for an entertaining, flirty romcom and that’s exactly what I got. It’s a standalone novel but is also a follow-up to The Soulmate Equation in which Fizzy was a side character. I thought all the overlap in characters and plotline from The Soulmate Equation made this book extra enjoyable and would recommend reading them both in order. This book felt fresh and fun with relatable and likeable characters. I totally bought into the chemistry between Fizzy and Connor and loved watching their relationship unfold; it was easy to root for them the whole time! And while I haven’t watched The Bachelor for five+ years now, I was a longtime watcher in my 20s and really enjoyed this author’s twist on a similar reality show dating scenario. The banter is great, the relationship feels realistic, and it’s just a perfect read for when you want something engaging and easy, entertaining and romantic. It does have steamy scenes and language, and because of Fizzy’s zingy, unfiltered wit it definitely has some raunchier lingo than other Christina Lauren books I’ve read so if that’s not your thing, you wanna skip this one. I do want to also emphasize: if you think romance is cheesy, this is probably not going to be the book for you. The dedication is written to fans of the romance genre, and it leans into that throughout the plotline. The authors wove in specific things that are meant to be appreciated by lovers (no pun intended) of romance novels so if you fall into that category I feel like you would especially love this one.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (5/5 stars!)

As a boardinghouse for women tucked in 1950’s Washington D.C., Briarwood House has seen quite a bit over the years. Most recently, it bears witness to the weekly dinner parties hosted in the attic by the newest resident: Grace Marsh. Grace is a beautiful, somewhat mysterious widow and prior to her arrival, each resident kept mostly to herself. Now, Grace has slowly drawn each resident into her weekly dinners, joining the eclectic bunch of women from various backgrounds and stages of life together in community and friendship. But that friendship is about to be tested, because there is one more thing the house has recently borne witness to: a shocking murder on Thanksgiving Day.

I absolutely LOVED this one! I loved the structure, with a different character’s perspective in each chapter and a shifting timeline. The characterization is incredible; I loved the mix of personalities and their dynamics. I loved the Briarwood House setting, and that the house itself felt a bit like a character. I loved the era. It feels like a huge majority of historical fiction leans into the WWII era (don’t get me wrong, I love those too!) so it felt refreshing and fascinating to get this imagining of what it was like living in Washington D.C. during the years of McCarthy and his Red Scare. The pace is great, the plot is spellbinding, and it’s one I wish I could read again for the first time to enjoy all over again. I read it for my book club and it received ALL 4 and 5 stars, even from those who typically don’t enjoy historical fiction so it definitely appeals to a wide range of readers. I can’t recommend it enough, this is going to be a top read of the year for me for sure!

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (3/5 stars)

Millie Calloway can’t seem to escape her past and find and keep a job to support herself. When Nina Winchester offers her not only a job as housemaid but also a place to stay inside her gorgeous mansion, Millie cannot believe her luck has finally changed. That is, until she actually starts working for Nina and realizes the job is less of a dream come true, more of a nightmare, cleaning up disgusting messes and navigating erratic instructions. The pay is too good to turn down though, so Millie persists, getting to know the unpredictable Nina, her impudent teenage daughter CeCe, and her handsome but often absent husband Andrew. What exactly is going on in the Winchester house? And what has Millie gotten herself into?

This is a bit of a different review than I normally give, but it was an unusual reading situation. A friend of mine absolutely loved this book and lent it to me to read so I went in excited for a domestic thriller. I was hooked for the first 75-100 pages but the more I read, the more I realized I could predict all the twists because it is as if two other domestic thrillers I have read had a book baby. The vibes are so so similar to those other books that I could guess what happened and was not surprised by anything. It was like book deja vu! When I mentioned this to my friend, we realized she hadn’t read either of those two books so she was surprised by all the twists and loved this one. If you have read one or both of those books, you probably won’t be impressed by this one. And if you haven’t read them, you will likely enjoy this one (although I do have questions about how this book could be so similar to the other two). Personally, I would recommend the others over this one – they are so well written and original! PS – If you want to know the books it reminded me of, click here and here. I didn’t include the titles in this post to avoid spoilers for those who still want to read this one.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (5/5 stars)

“The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.” (summary from Goodreads)

Wow. This memoir was incredibly compelling and nearly impossible to put down. The author has a very unique way of sharing truths about her childhood – the neglect, the struggle, and the persistence – that paints an honest yet compassionate portrait of her family. There is a deep sense of loyalty woven throughout, even as she acknowledges the hardships she experienced due to neglect, erratic behavior, addiction, and dysfunction from her parents. It’s often difficult to read about her experience, and the author doesn’t hold back from or sugarcoat some truly desperate times in her childhood; however, it also manages to demonstrate resilience and hope amidst heartbreaking circumstances. I found it to be engrossing and impactful in a way that lets me know I’ll remember it for years to come. Highly recommend.

There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids by Linda Akeson McGurk (4/5 stars)

Part memoir, part self-help, this nonfiction read was a (pun intended) breath of fresh air. After an entire childhood spent in her native Sweden, Linda Akeson McGurk is now living in Indiana, raising two daughters with her American husband. Despite her best efforts to encourage outdoor play and exploration in nature, she’s noticing the barriers and difficulties with getting outside: everything from deserted playgrounds to getting fined for letting her children play in a stream. When her father becomes ill, she decides to take her daughters to Sweden for an extended period of time. They move into a small rental near the author’s parents, enroll in school, and spend the next six months embracing Swedish culture, particularly in prioritizing time spent outdoors.

This book gives practical advice and gentle encouragement to change our thinking about the outdoors and the importance of playing, exploring, and having unstructured time outside for children. As a mom of three young children, I found it to be both refreshing and inspiring. It validates so much of what I sense deep in my bones – that my kids need to be spending unstructured time outdoors and not just 20 minutes at recess time. I wouldn’t say there is anything particularly groundbreaking in this book, but it offers advice, solidarity, and inspiration along with charming anecdotes and interesting reflections on the author’s experience and life. My one critique is I wish there had been more time spent reflecting on how to create a more “Swedish” outdoor mindset while actually living in the United States. I loved reading about their time in Sweden and how different it was, but when the culture changes and you move back to a less-outdoor-loving society, how can you keep it up? She touches on it a bit, I guess I just wish there was more. Overall, I enjoyed this read and would recommend to parents who want to get outside more and who enjoy travel and different cultures, as this was a lovely peek into Swedish daily life as well.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (5/5 stars)

In this revealing memoir, Trevor Noah is not a rich and famous celebrity. He’s not yet a famous comedian, host of The Daily Show and multiple Grammy awards. Instead he is a scrappy child growing up under intense poverty in apartheid (and then, post-apartheid) South Africa where his very existence as the son of a white man and black woman was legally considered a crime. Told with a structure that gives both a history and explanation of South Africa and a very vulnerable look into his own life and experiences, this memoir is both horrifying and humorous. Perhaps it doesn’t seem like those two words belong together, but that seems fitting for a story about a young boy who, according to his country’s government, was born from parents who shouldn’t belong together either.

I cannot in any way relate to growing up under poverty, violence, intense political and racial unrest, or any number of things Trevor experienced, yet he shares the truths about his childhood in ways that are both eye-opening and still somehow relatable to the shared human experience. We read of his relationships with his family, his peers, and the broader community and even though it is often heartbreaking, he never shares in a way that seeks pity. He is just being real about his life and experiences and his likeability captures the reader’s attention from the start. He manages to weave both wit and warmth into his stories, even when they are about incredibly heavy topics. I learned so much about the complicated dynamics of South Africa along with his life and it’s a book that I will be thinking about for a long, long time. I highly recommend, and I don’t often say this, but I do wish I had listened to the audiobook instead of a physical copy. I think it would have had an even bigger impact on me hearing these stories from his actual voice!

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez (4/5 stars)

After a fairly disastrous first impression, Xavier and Samantha have the chance to start over and proceed to have the best first date of their lives. It’s so epic in fact, that they both know this could really be something . . . if only Samantha wasn’t moving 2,000 miles away to take care of her mother. Continuing the relationship is impossible so she tells Xavier to forget about her as they both move forward in their separate lives, but knowing you should forget someone and actually doing it are two very different things.

It was a little hard to buy in initially because the attraction between Samantha and Xavier is so abrupt and has practically no build up, although I was willing to look past that and just go with it. I’m glad I did because other than the insta-love component, the development of their relationship was fun to follow along with. This book has heart; I loved the dynamics of Samantha’s family and how the author navigated us through their shared experience. I enjoyed rooting for Samantha and Xavier and appreciated that we felt their chemistry but also saw their realistic ups and downs. There are just enough side plots and characters to give the story some weight without it being too much to keep track of. It does venture into slightly cheesy territory a couple times and makes a few too many references to current pop culture but overall I enjoyed the escape. There is language and some spice, but if spice isn’t your thing I do feel like this one has less than other books by this author (and stays quick and mostly closed door so it’s skippable if you want). I like Abby Jimenez books because I know I’ll read chemistry that feels natural and the plot will give me beach-read-with-substance quality and that’s what I got here. It’s not my favorite book from this author but I did enjoy it and would recommend!

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (4.5/5 stars)

Evelyn Hardcastle will die at 11:00 pm tonight, in the middle of a party. And she will die again tomorrow night at the exact same time, in the exact same way. She will continue to die every night at 11:00 pm until Aiden Bishop can figure out who her killer is, because her death is not what it seems. For the next eight days, Aiden will relive the day of the party over and over, waking up each morning in the body of a different guest at the party. Each guest is very different, and each has secrets and talents he can use, but he must make the most of his time in each host in order to find the killer and escape the cycle.

I read this book while on vacation and it actually made for a fantastic vacation read because my understanding of the plot benefitted from having long stretches of uninterrupted reading. I can understand that this book is not for everyone. It’s incredibly complex and gets dark at times, but it is also so cleverly written. It’s an original, creative concept, a engrossing mystery, and it had me guessing until the very end. I actually read it twice in a row! Once I finished it, I immediately felt the need to read it again and take notes to see how everything worked together. The second read caused me to bump up my rating for the book; it made me realize just how brilliantly everything is all woven together. I would give it 4.5 out of 5 stars; I can’t give it the full five because it is long, it took me a while to feel invested (though once I was, I was hooked!), and I think that any time a plot involves bending time my brain gets stuck around some of the logistics that don’t quite add up. Despite all that, I really enjoyed the journey with this one and would highly recommend if you’re in the mood for a thrilling mystery.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green (5/5 stars)

After an encounter with a young man suffering from tuberculosis in Sierra Leone, John Green became interested in learning more about the infection and how it has pervaded through centuries and continues to affect millions of lives around the globe. What he learned astounded him: effective diagnostic tools, treatments, and even cures exist for tuberculosis. But the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not, so millions of people continue to die from it each year. This book is a non-fiction deep dive into what tuberculosis is, how society’s perception of it has shifted over generations, and how we still live in a world where this is a massive global health problem.

John Green made a name for himself writing young adult fiction, and he is gifted with the art of storytelling. This book may be nonfiction, but it reads like a novel in many ways and makes learning about a disease not only informative but even riveting. He infuses facts with his own anecdotes and brings a personal touch to a disease that feels far away for those living in countries where tuberculosis is not a large threat. It opened my eyes to a disease I knew very little about and also the upsetting injustices that surround its presence in our global society. It’s insightful, informative, thought-provoking, and inspiring – you will read it and want to take action! (And good news: there are ways you can take action!) Green is clearly a passionate global health advocate and has used his gifts and talents to spread a message towards better access to screening and treatments in the most vulnerable communities. I highly, highly recommend this read!

Here’s to more great reading in July!

2024 Book Reviews

Hello, hello!

It’s been a while since I posted book reviews and wow, I have missed it. I love reading and sharing my thoughts on books and then hearing from others on what they’re reading and enjoying! I thought for quite a while about whether I wanted to catch up on all the books I’ve read over the past 18 months or just start back in with what I’m reading now…turns out I just couldn’t leave all of last year’s books behind. And thankfully, even though I wasn’t publishing blog posts, I was still drafting reviews on most of them throughout the year so I decided to bring them all together into one massive catch-up post. Today’s post is a big round up of all my 2024 books, although to be fair, it’s the fewest amount of books I’ve read in a year by a long shot so don’t be too intimidated 😉 Let’s do this!

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue (3/5 stars)

While supporting herself through college by working in a bookstore, Rachel befriends her super-charismatic coworker James, and the two soon become best friends and roommates. When Rachel confesses to James that she is in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, she and James concoct a plan for him to come into the bookstore to do a reading. What starts out as an attempt for Rachel to seduce Fred ends up completely changing the lives of Rachel, James, and Fred as they navigate increasingly complex relationships and the consequences of their own decisions over the course of the year and beyond.

So here’s the thing. I flew through this book. I was hooked by 30 pages in and compulsively read the rest of it in less than two days. I loved the author’s style of writing and will absolutely be interested in reading other books of hers in the future. But! Did I actually enjoy this book? I don’t think so. And that’s such a strange thing to feel when I liked so much, but I think it all hinges on what I did not like, which unfortunately was: Rachel. It was hard to find her endearing or want to root for her when she felt like a chaotic, immature hot mess making terrible decision after terrible decision for the majority of the book. Now my friend read this book at the same time but primarily listened to it as an audiobook and she did not feel this same way, so our theory is that perhaps the audiobook narrator’s delivery made you feel differently towards Rachel. For me, it was not a win but I will still read another book by this same author in the future (hopefully with a main character I can actually like). I’ll note that it isn’t steamy or very graphic, but does include a lot of mentions of sex, drugs, and language, and I would give it an R-rating. This book isn’t for everyone, myself included, but I do think it finds it’s audience with people who crave a provocative story of a young woman trying to find her way in life.

Dear Henry, Love Edith by Becca Kinzer (3/5 stars)

Recently widowed Edith Sherman has decided to forget about love and lean into a life of adventure by using her nursing skills on a humanitarian trip to South Africa. Since she can’t go until the paperwork is finalized, she accepts a short-term nursing position in a small Midwestern town. Her contact there suggests an unusual housing situation: her Uncle Henry works days and Edith works nights, so would Edith be willing to share his house and essentially switch off living there? Edith agrees, but does not actually meet Henry in person. He knows she’s a widow and assumes she’s elderly. She doesn’t realize he’s close in age to his niece and also assumes he’s a (somewhat grumpy) old man. When they keep missing each other in person, they begin exchanging notes―short messages at first, then longer letters, sharing increasingly personal parts of their lives…and then, one day they finally meet.

This is a Christian rom-com, so it’s pretty squeaky-clean other than one very quick mention of a teen pregnancy (which actually felt pretty out of place in the story). There are mentions of God and church, but it doesn’t dig into any of the character’s faiths so it’s not one you have to be religious to enjoy. It’s Hallmark-esque but felt more sweet than cheesy. It’s not a standout, but it’s also a nice, easy, happy read and sometimes you’re just in the mood for that. I loved that Henry and Edith both thought they were writing letters to someone in another generation as they shared parts of their lives in writing. I actually wish that had gone on a bit longer; I wanted to see a little more development through letters and the flirtations in person before they found out who the other person was. That being said, as a whole I thought the book was way too long – it’s 370+ pages and could easily have been 100 pages shorter. There’s a lot of extra fluff and some pretty over-the-top situations with the townsfolk and side characters that are meant to be charming and quirky but feel a bit overdone and unnecessary. I couldn’t keep all the side characters straight and so much time was devoted to them that I feel like the actual main plot was underdeveloped. The premise reminded me a lot of The Flatshare, which I loved and thought was executed better than this one, but if you’re specifically wanting a fun, sweet, clean rom-com, this would be a good one to choose.

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark (4/5 stars)

Meg Williams…or should I say Maggie Littleton…or should I say Melody Wilde? All three names point to the same person – a cunning con artist who upended Kat Robert’s life 10 years ago. Kat has been waiting all this time for Meg to return so she can uncover her secrets and it looks like she finally got her wish. Meg is back in town and Kat is determined to get close enough to expose her. In a riveting back-and-forth, we see Meg and Kat grow closer but as they do, Kat starts to realize that she may not understand Meg’s motivations and targets as well as she thought.

There is a scene in the TV show Friends where certain characters are learning about a big secret and trying not to reveal their knowledge and this line is said: “They don’t know that we know they know we know!” This book felt exactly like that line. There are so many layers of deception and trickery between the two main characters and it definitely keeps the reader on their toes. What is real? What is a lie? Wanting an answer to those questions had me picking this up again and again to keep reading more. Because there is so much deception with the two main characters, I appreciated that there weren’t a ton of side characters or plots; pretty much everything gravitated around Meg’s cons and Kat’s desire to expose her, though we did have some time jumps within those. I went back and forth with which protagonist I wanted to see “win” their objective: sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither, sometimes both. It’s not really a twisty or shocking read, but it is clever and interesting to see how the characters try to manipulate each other as they work towards their goals. Ultimately I found this book to be riveting and satisfying. I will say, I absolutely loved The Last Flight by this same author and would probably put this one a smidge below that one, but it’s still a great domestic thriller I would definitely recommend!

A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting by Sophie Irwin (3.5/5 stars)

With younger sisters to provide for and only twelve weeks to pay off her father’s massive debts, Kitty Talbot is getting desperate. She needs a husband, a rich husband, and she needs one now or her sisters will lose their home. She boldly decides to enter the London season despite having limited resources and connections and uses every ounce of her cunning and scheming abilities to present herself as a lady and snag herself a rich husband. Being in love, at least on her end, is not a requirement. Her plan seems to be working on everyone except Lord Radcliffe, who sees through her ruse to snag his brother and is determined to thwart her every attempt. An agreement is reached that she’ll lay off his brother if he helps her find someone else and thus begins a season full of Kitty and Radcliffe sparring with one another in one event after another.

It’s not often that I want to start off a book by skimming, but in this case, I did. It took me a long time to get into the storyline and I wasn’t even sure I could commit to actually finishing the book, but then about 25% of the way in things picked up and I finally became interested. Kitty somehow manages to remain likeable despite all of her scheming, and I did enjoy the banter she had with Radcliffe. It took me WAY too long to realize this is a spin on Pride and Prejudice (like, embarrassingly long!) but I actually like that it wasn’t an obvious re-telling. It felt like a fresh version that hasn’t been done before. It’s very clean, with no language or steam but has a nice slow burn romance. It was a pleasant enough read with enough fun banter and charming and satisfying moments later on to redeem the earlier skimming.

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks (3/5 stars)

Tom Hanks is the voice of my childhood, and he’s one of those celebrities that has just become more cherished as time goes one. I happened to see this book of short stories on the shelf at my local library and just seeing his name as the author made me want to read it. I wanted to love it because I love him as an actor and human, and I was charmed by the use of typewriters woven throughout all the stories, but I wanted to love the compilation of stories as a whole more than I actually did. I do think short stories are hard to write since they have to be compelling and interesting in just a few pages and I think he wrote them fairly well; however, if it didn’t have his name attached to it and someone just gave me the book and told me to read it without my knowing the author, I would’ve just thought it was an okay read.

Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge That Proves Less Really Is So Much More by Courtney Carver (2.5/5 stars)

The challenge is simple: streamline your wardrobe down to just 33 items for 3 months. By paring down your wardrobe, you can significantly reduce the number of daily decisions about what to wear, de-clutter your closet, and save money on shopping for new items you likely won’t wear very often. This book sets out to inspire and equip you to live with less in your wardrobe and enjoy life more.

I thought this book would be right in my wheelhouse because it aligns with my values, but I think the problem is it’s written more for people who want to get to the point of a streamlined wardrobe and minimal living than for people who have already started. I already have a pretty simplified closet and a strong interest in living minimally (though I’m still always looking for tips and ideas for other way to pare down!) so I felt like I had already gathered much of this inspiration from other sources on my journey. It also felt like it might have been better as a magazine article or blog post than an entire book and I found myself skimming a lot. I did appreciate that she referenced other people in the minimalism movement, as it gave me a few inspiring people to follow for inspiration, but this specific 333 formula didn’t particularly motivate me. If you’re already interested and versed in living with less, it might not hold much new information for you, but if you’re interested in paring down your wardrobe and don’t know where to start, you might like it!

Cheap Old Houses by Elizabeth & Ethan Finkelstein (4/5 stars)

Welcome to the magical world of Cheap Old Houses, where the new American dream comes with zero mortgage and an affordable lifestyle fit for a storybook. Ethan and Elizabeth Finkelstein have scoured the country to find homes in desperate need of saving—including a $45,000 Victorian in Mississippi, a $25,000 mansion in Indiana, an $82,000 recreational camp in Maine, and more. Cheap Old Houses features the stories of how these homes were acquired and lovingly restored. (summary taken from Goodreads)

This is probably a niche pick for a book to read, but I loved flipping through the pages and reading stories of homeowners who saw these diamonds in the rough. They could look past things that other potential buyers saw as dealbreakers and pour a lot of TLC to create beautiful, cozy, inspiring homes for themselves. I personally love seeing how people actually live in spaces; that is so much more inspiring to me than picture-perfect showhouses. I gained inspiration and also just enjoyed getting immersed in a variety of homes so different than one another and from my own home. This book is perfect for anyone who loves HGTV and seeing old homes given new life.

Small Space Style: Because You Don’t Need to Live Large to Live Beautifully by Whitney Leigh Morris (4/5 stars)

Whitney Leigh Morris has demonstrated through her blog and popular Instagram account that living in small spaces can be stylish, beautiful, functional, and enjoyable. Her tiny family of three (plus two dogs!) lives in 362 square feet and while her cottage is charming and inspiring in and of itself, she also shares a variety of spaces and creative solutions for minimal living in other settings. With tons of pictures and hundreds of practical tips, she makes living minimally both approachable and manageable.

Now this is the kind of minimal living book I really love. Honestly, I was blown away by the sheer volume of practical tips – it’s not like a 10-step solution, there are over two hundred ideas for ways to live more minimally within your own home. Some ideas are big, some are small. Some literally take a few seconds to implement and make a difference. It allows the reader to pick and choose ideas that will work for them without feeling guilty for not doing everything. I also really love that Whitney lives in the intersection of minimalism and environmentalism. She shows how you can live beautifully while still being mindful of and gentler on the planet. She encourages working with simple things you already have or items you can find secondhand. She reuses things, she repurposes things, and she generally does not encourage buying new things. I appreciated the wisdom and grace with which she guides the reader to try to view your space with fresh eyes and find solutions for living more simply. She’s also an inspiring Instagram follow and I’ll end this review with something she said there: “we usually don’t need more space, we just need to explore the full potential of the space we have.” Loved it!

Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle (3/5 stars)

Over the past twenty years, every time Daphne meets a new potential partner, she mysteriously receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it revealing the amount of time they will be a couple. Every romance she has experienced has had an expiration date, and every paper she’s received has been exactly correct. Then one day, she receives a paper with just a name: Jake. Does this mean she has finally found the man she is supposed to be with for the rest of her life? And does she like him because there’s no expiration or is there no expiration because she likes him?

I was intrigued by the unique concept of this book and was excited to read it, despite not really liking In Five Years by this same author. You do have to suspend some realism with the prophetic slips of papers, but I knew that going in and had no problem just going with the premise. The author takes you on a journey between Daphne’s present-day relationship with Jake and all the past relationships that came with expiration dates. It’s interesting enough, but I wish there was a little more character development and didn’t love Daphne. Also, around 2/3 of the way through I found myself so tired of reading about the past relationships and solely wanted to know about her present day situation; I was invested enough in the story to need to know what happened and how things resolved but just didn’t care about the past anymore. I definitely liked it more than In Five Years, and while it’s not a new favorite of mine, I found it to be an overall satisfying read.

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez (4/5 stars)

Thanks to a viral reddit post, Emma and Justin learn that they have one very unusual thing in common: every person they date goes on to find his or her soulmate right after they break up. If they’re both cursed with being the person before the soulmate, how will they ever find true love for themselves? A DM is sent and a plan is formed – date each other and then break up. They would both be destined to find their soulmate immediately after, right? It seems worth a shot, and with Emma’s travel nursing job and Justin’s major family transitions it can only be just for the summer anyways, so what’s the harm in trying?

This is an example of a book that, for me, got stronger as it went on. I admit, it started off a little hard to get into. It felt similar to the start of The Happy Ever After Playlist, except not quite as convincingly done as that one. The whole break-the-dating-curse premise is very over the top and the dating formula they come up with seemed so silly to me but I decided for the sake of enjoying the book I needed to just overlook that. I needed to suspend beliefs in the reality of two people actually trying this plan in real life and just accept it and go with it. I’m glad I did because with that set aside, this was a really fun little escape! Justin and Emma are both likeable and their chemistry is entertaining. I loved the side characters and I enjoyed that there was some depth woven in through some harder storylines. It felt like a beach read with some weight to it and that’s the sweet spot for me. There is language and some steam, although easy to skip over the spicy parts if you prefer since it’s not written as open-door as other Abby Jimenez books. There are both fleeting and significant references to characters in every other book she has written and I got a little thrill every time I spotted one dropped in throughout the story (one in particular caught me so off guard in the best way). Overall, I really enjoyed it and would recommend!

The Opt-Out Family: How to Give Your Kids what Technology Can’t by Erin Loechner (4.5/5 stars)

Erin Loechner was among the first people to become a social media influencer, way back before we even had a name for the job. She started writing online in 2001, joined all the social media platforms as they rose to popularity, headlined conferences, hosted workshops, and even had her own HGTV.com renovation show. She amassed a following of 1.4 million followers . . . and then walked away from it all. She now has no social media and is raising her children in an “opt-out family” which she defines as “an intentional home environment, group, or household unit in which the role of technology is greatly minimized as a result of evidence-based research on the developmental harms attributed to screens, social media, and digital use.” This book works as a kind of playbook to help you do the same with your family. Honestly, sign. me. up!

I found this book to be incredibly validating; it gives voice to many things I have been feeling myself but wasn’t sure how to put into words. I enjoy writing on this blog and sharing parts of my life, particularly my home projects, on social media – but I’m “bad” at it (meaning, anyone working at a tech company would say I’m not doing the things needed to grow my audience and they’re right, I’m purposefully not) because quite frankly, I also want to minimize technology in my life. When I look at my children and my family as a whole, I want less technology, not more. This book dives into a ton of research and stories that question the narrative we’ve been fed over the years – do we really need this? Do we even want this? Or can we opt-out? I thought this book did a great job of staying hopeful and inspiring while giving practical, realistic advice for use in your family. Don’t get me wrong, the facts are daunting and can feel scary, but the author is determined to equip parents with applicable strategies to choose a different path forward. In this book, she takes her experience as an influencer and her knowledge of the tech world’s playbook and flips the script to reveal approachable ways to resist the pull of tech and choose differently for your family. I appreciate that she isn’t anti-all-screens-all-the-time; some families, like my own, are going to continue to have TV, smartphones, laptops, etc. in some capacity and this book is so helpful for finding ways to minimize technology’s grip on our lives. Highly recommend!

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren

Lily Wilder, daughter of the famous treasure hunter Duke Wilder, is using her father’s hand-drawn notes and maps to guide adventurous tourists on fake treasure hunts to try and earn the money to buy back the family ranch he sold years ago. She is shocked to find out that one of the tourists coming on her next tour is none other than Leo Grady, who broke her heart a decade ago and has no idea that she is the guide assigned with taking him and his friends into the Utah desert. Miscommunications ensue but a second chance may be on the table for Lily and Leo, all while their motley crew of adventurers learn that the treasure they seek in the desert might not be so fake after all.

I’ll keep this one short: I’ve enjoyed Christina Lauren books in the past but this one just fell pretty flat for me. It’s supposed to be a riddle-filled, Wild West, treasure-seeking epic adventure but it ended up being too over the top for my liking. The treasure hunt took precedence in the plot over the development of the romance so once Lily and Leo got together it seemed really sudden and kind of forced. It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t a fave for me and ended up being somewhat forgettable.

The Women by Kristin Hannah (5/5 stars!)

In 1965, Frankie McGrath follows in a long line of family tradition and enlists in the Army, but the difference from all other family members is that Frankie is a woman. As part of the Army Nurse Corps, she serves in Vietnam and is immediately thrown into the immense chaos and destruction of the war. Despite the atrocious horrors she faces daily, Frankie perseveres and is one of the lucky ones to come home – but the world she comes home to is different than she expected and her struggles are far from over.

This was HANDS DOWN the best book I read all year! This is phenomenally written historical fiction. It is so evident to the reader that Kristin Hannah doesn’t just pull things from her imagination – she heavily researches the subject matter to make her work of nonfiction feel incredibly realistic. The characters are so well thought out and the events are so vividly described that it doesn’t feel like fiction at all. Before I read this book I knew very little about the Vietnam War and this was such a compelling look into the women who served. I love that while we only got Frankie’s firsthand perspective, we also saw the different paths other women who served with her took to move forward after returning from the war. It’s heartbreaking, it’s redemptive, it’s captivating, and it’s thought-provoking. It will make you want to do a deep dive and learn more about the Vietnam War and the real-life women who served there. It’s honestly the most engrossing book I’ve read in a long time and I absolutely loved it. HIGHLY recommend!

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Daphne’s world is rocked when her fiancé, Peter, realizes he is in love with his childhood best friend, Petra, and breaks off their wedding. Heartbroken and now kicked out of the house they shared, Daphne turns to the one person who might understand just how much this situation hurts: Petra’s ex, Miles. Daphne and Miles have very little in common, but do share a need for a place to live and a person who understands their pain so they decide to become roommates. After receiving a wedding invite for Peter and Petra, Miles and Daphne decide to get their revenge by pretending to now be in love with one another to make their exes jealous. They’re so opposite from one another it’ll be hard to be convincing in love, but they’re up for the challenge.

Here’s the thing. Every other book on this 2024 list, I either had a review already drafted after reading or I could easily remember how I felt reading the book. For this book…I genuinely can’t remember. I think I liked it, but did I love it? I have no idea. What exactly happened? I can’t recall. A few minutes on Goodreads and I was able to refresh my memory a bit based on other reviews, but I can remember only vague details for myself. So honestly, I need to re-read this one. And maybe that in and of itself means it was only okay? It clearly didn’t leave a super lasting impression, but I also don’t think I disliked it. It definitely doesn’t top the list of Emily Henry books for me, but it also didn’t crash and burn for me because I would’ve remembered if it either of those things. So…TBD on this one. It’s bothering me that I can’t recall it well enough to review so it needs to go back on my 2025 reading list.

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center (3/5 stars)

Sadie is a struggling artist who finally caught her big break by landing in a prestigious portrait competition, only to have a nonconvulsive seizure in the middle of the road on the way to her celebratory party. Saved by a Good Samaritan, she winds up in the hospital where she learns she needs brain surgery. The surgery is successful except for one side effect: Sadie now has a condition where she can’t recognize faces. Struggling to cope with this face blindness and navigate a path forward with the portrait competition deadline looming, Sadie also meets two totally different men and unexpectedly falls for both of them. Will she be able to pull off the most important portrait of her career? And will she be able to find someone to love, even if she can’t see his face?

Katherine Center is a reliable author for me when I want to read a light, happy rom-com and this one fit the ticket. Sadie was likeable. Oliver and Joe, the two men vying for Sadie’s heart, were also likeable. The premise is a little farfetched and silly at times, but I was willing to go with it. However, even when I want a predictably happy romance, this felt too predictable and the beginning was so slow. I wanted cozy romance, but the plot focused on on family drama, her new diagnosis, and her struggles to paint for too long. Things picked up once she actually started interacting with Oliver and Joe, and I breezed right through the rest of it. While it was not my favorite Katherine Center book, it was ultimately a light and happy read.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center (4/5 stars)

Emma Wheeler is a struggling screenwriter and full-time caretaker for her medically-fragile father when she receives the opportunity of a lifetime: ghostwriting a romcom screenplay with the legendary Charlie Yates. She will fly to LA and spend six weeks writing her favorite type of script with her favorite screenwriter and get paid an absurd amount of money to do it. It seems like an offer too good to be true . . . and it turns out, it is because Charlie does not actually want to write this romcom, does not even like romcoms, and above all, does not want Emma’s help. What he wants is to have his Mafia movie script picked up, but the only way that will happen is if he finishes a romcom for the studio first. Begrudgingly, he allows Emma to stay and she has her work cut out for her in not only making Charlie see how romcoms are meaningful, but also how they can actually write a good one together.

This one is for lovers of romcoms, of which I am one. If you’re in the mood for a romcom, you want fun, you want spark, you want to swoon, you want to laugh, and you want a satisfying, predictably happy ending. As Emma herself put it: “The fun is in how we get there.” This book delivers on all counts! It’s a little bit cheesy at times, but it’s worth it. Emma was a fun lead to root for (although I will say there were a few times she felt a touch too desperate and naive, but it’s something I could look past and still enjoy her character). I loved Emma and Charlie’s chemistry and enjoyed seeing their dynamics change and relationship unfold as they spent more and more time together. I also loved that it showed them falling into a slow kind of love – a quiet, cozy, just-living-our-daily-lives kind of love. So relatable and refreshing! I also appreciate when a plot has one or two meaningful side plots happening, and Emma’s family situation provided an extra layer of depth and heart to the story. I put this one up there as one of my favorite Katherine Center books so far, along with The Bodyguard (which had a couple cameos in this one!) and Things You Save in a Fire. It’s a clean romance (nothing spicy, just a couple kisses) but it does have language so if you’re looking for totally squeaky clean this isn’t quite it. I enjoyed it!

None of This is True by Lisa Jewell (4/5 stars)

Alix Summer and Josie Fair cross paths for the first time in a pub on what they find out is their shared 45th birthday. When they cross paths again, and Josie learns that Alix hosts a popular podcast sharing other people’s stories, Josie offers to share hers. Alix is intrigued enough to welcome Josie into not only her her podcast but also gradually into her life, and before long, Josie has intertwined herself into Alix’s home and family in irreversible ways.

Lisa Jewell knows how to write an absolutely riveting psychological thriller and this one is no different. I found it to be binge-worthy and flew through it. I really enjoyed that the author switched up narrator points of views and also interspersed documentary interview clips throughout. That format kept things pretty fast paced and full of suspense. There are definitely some very dark themes along with well written, creepy, and unreliable characters. It’s addictive and unsettling and a good choice if you’re in the mood for a domestic thriller.

Whew!! We made it! Now on to 2025 reads!

Getting Back into DIY Mode with 3 Simple Home Updates

It finally feels like spring is here. Trees are blooming, weather is warming, and I feel like I am coming out of a hibernation of sorts. Lately I’ve been feeling the urge to get back into DIY projects around the house – my inspiration to create is coming back! There was a time where I was cranking out project after project, room after room. It wasn’t a sustainable pace, and my desire to tackle projects around our house dipped. I chose to focus on other things within our family and with other commitments in our school, church, and community and now I feel like I have a good balance and am ready to add projects back into the mix.

I decided to jump back into things with three quick and easy projects. A couple of them are so quick and easy that project may even be too big a term. Call them updates, call them tasks – whatever they are, they’re simple to do yet make a big impact and were the perfect things to get my momentum rolling back into DIY around the house so today I’m going to share them with you.

A Sweet and Simple Vanity

My five year old daughter loves to dress up. She loves doing her hair and putting on simple make-up (which at this point is basically just lip balm) and she loves to accessorize. She had created her own little “vanity” area using a chair and a jewelry box with a mirror but it was spilling out and taking over a ton of floor space. Since she shares the room with her older brother, we really needed to find a better solution. I wanted low-budget and small footprint because this is a shared space and relatively short-term; she will eventually be moving into her own room, currently the nursery, and the boys will eventually share this room.

I grabbed a 2 x 4, approximately 27.5 inches long, from our stash of scrap wood to create a little vanity shelf. It was already stained, so I could eliminate that step. I also pulled out two L-brackets and some screws (we already had all these on hand, but they’re all simple, inexpensive supplies to pick up at a home-improvement store). I didn’t want to mess with using anchors, so I used our stud finder to locate the studs and screwed the brackets directly into them.

I shopped my house and collected a small mirror (originally thrifted for $1!) to hang with command strips and a few little trays and containers to see what would fit on the shelf. I tinkered around a bit until I settled on a combination that felt cute, functional, and easy for a five-year-old to maintain.

This was the perfect little project to jump back into DIY: quick, simple, and thanks to using all supplies we had on hand, zero dollars!

My daughter LOVES her new little vanity and uses it every day to get ready!

Faux Plants + Brass Planters

When I hung this collection of vintage brass wall planters in my son’s nursery, I attempted to plant a few live plants. And it looked great . . . at first.

I tried to pick low-maintenance plants with a tolerance for low light, but the reality is the room is dim. It’s nearly impossible to photograph accurately in natural light. It’s north-facing, there’s a ton of trees in our backyard, there’s only one window, and it just doesn’t bring in enough light for plants. After cycling through a few different plant attempts and all of them dying, I finally gave up and decided to go all faux.

I was able to shop my house for 4 different faux plants, but was stuck on the largest planter. I didn’t have anything that worked for it but also didn’t want to buy something brand new. I’m really trying to have a more conscious, smaller consumer footprint when I can and so I wanted to thrift and give new, well, life to a discarded faux plant. It took a couple months on my thrift list before I finally came across a plant that would work, but it was worth the wait (and staring at the dead plant for months, ha!)

Bonus: I was able to snip a few branches off to use in my planter and it didn’t impact the overall look of the original plant so I was able to re-donate it and hopefully someone else will also find use for it!

Picture Grid in the Hallway

We had our foyer and hallway painted in December 2023 and ever since, I have wanted to get some family photos up in the hallway. I often do a mixed-material gallery wall but this time I wanted to do a black and white grid of frames.

And so began a 16+ month “project” that really could’ve been done in one day. I had been brainstorming since December 2023, used painters tape to tape off grid ideas in February 2024, then in April 2024 I cut packaging paper into squares and hung up different configurations of sizes and number of frames to visualize.

These papers hung in my hallway for four months until I finally bought frames in August 2024, and those frames sat propped against the wall in my hallway until April 2025. I’m glad I took the time to really think and plan what I wanted rather than just throwing something up on the walls – this was a good reminder that sometimes it takes time to figure out exactly what you want and that’s okay. But also…once I figured it out and bought the supplies, I definitely procrastinated. I was intimidated to hang a grid knowing the precision needed is different than my normal method, and also it took me a while to choose the pictures I wanted to use.

I finally made myself carve out the time to do the last few steps and surprise surprise, it didn’t actually take that long to install. I used a laser level and that was such a game changer. This is key: I did not align the laser level with the top of the frame! Instead I held the frame where I wanted it, then brought one side away from the wall to see where the sawtooth hangers were and aligned the laser level line with them.

It did take me a while to measure and mark out where every single nail hole was going to go, but it was well worth the effort to check and double-check measurements. It then took no time at all to actually hammer in the nails and hang the frames and thanks to all that measuring, they aligned perfectly!

I’m so glad this task is checked off my list and I love seeing the frames in the hallway! Maybe this can be your sign that the thing you’re putting off might not actually be that bad or take that long, so just do it! 😉

Each of these three projects is pretty small on their own, but they make a big impact in their individual spaces. And bonus – they are all basically next to one another in the house so the overall impact of seeing the three together packs a big punch!

It’s just what I needed to get back into the swing of things and now I’m looking forward to some bigger projects.

Coming Up in May…

A few of the projects I’m going to tackle this month:

1 – Last year we did a huge patio renovation and this month we’re going to continue to upgrade the space.

2 – Finish the living room. This is another space that has been a long time coming and I finally have the inspiration and motivation to finish it up!

3 – Start our biggest renovation to date. This has been years in the making. It’s multi-room. It’s a full gut job. We’re hiring out a lot of the work because of the scope of the job. It’s so exciting for Justin and I and is going to hugely improve functionality for our family. I’m keeping it a tiny bit secretive for now but a hint for long-time followers is it involves a couple rooms that I did surface-level updates to several years ago (one in the very early days of my DIY home projects) to tide us over until full renovations could occur. Plans are almost finalized and I can’t wait to share, but until then I’d love to hear your guesses 🙂

We Updated Our Outdoor Area and I’m in Love

Back in May, our outdoor area got a huge upgrade and we have been enjoying it all summer long!

Our family of five loves spending time together outside. During the summer we spend hours outside each day, and while some of those hours are spent playing at the park or riding bikes in our driveway, a huge percentage of our outdoor time happens between our patio and pond. Even now that school has started back up, when LJ gets home from school and Justin gets home from work we often find ourselves heading outside to chase the last few warm hours of the day with a family swim.

We also entertain frequently because opening up our home to gather others together is a core value of our family. We truly love hosting at all times of the year, but there is something extra special about having friends and family over for long sunny days full of grilling, swimming, yard games, and just lounging by our pond. Our outdoor space is an extension of our home; it feels like an extra room we gain from May-October!

We have spent the last five summers here building traditions, making memories, and enjoying the space as it was, all the while dreaming up ways we could update it to better accommodate all the things we want to use it for. Because we highly prioritize both spending time together as a family and hosting friends and family outside, we knew this is a space we were willing to invest in. We planned and saved and this year we hired a local company to make our dreams for the space a reality!

Upper Patio

Before

After

The previous owners had installed a stamped concrete patio adjacent to our home’s small concrete porch. It was a good size and worked well for our family of five. We could comfortably fit up to eight people around the table, but we frequently entertain more than that. Whether it is another family or two or a larger group – just this summer we had four different occasions with around 20-30 people here! – we often need multiple tables and seating options to accommodate everyone.

We thought about adding on to the existing patio, but there wasn’t a way to do it without it seeming like a patched job, so we decided to take out the old patio and pour a entirely new one that is roughly triple the size. I wanted it to feel aligned with the surrounding nature so we chose a wavy edge and no stain, only sealer. We chose a stamped concrete pattern that feels like natural rock. We originally planned to stain the border, but once the edge was etched I decided I preferred the clean, simple line. I want eyes to be drawn to nature, not a dark stained border. I’m so happy with how it turned out!

For right now, we continue to use the same table and chairs we got off Facebook Marketplace eight years ago, and we pull out a folding table and chairs when we need to accommodate more people. Eventually our plan is to either get two tables or just one substantially larger table, but this year the budget was spent on other things – just a reminder here that home takes time! 😉

We also use the extra patio space as a place we can set up for the youngest kids who come over with a little kiddie pool, water table, and playset.

Pond Patio

Before

After

When we bought the property, we were newbies to the pond life. We both grew up swimming occasionally in friend’s ponds, but we didn’t really ever envision owning one ourselves. I think Justin and I were both surprised by how much we love it though – it’s so fun to swim, float, lounge, and use our diving board and rope swing and it is where so many of our summer days are spent. Whether we jump in for a quick cool off or spend hours swimming and floating, it’s our main gathering spot outdoors!

The previous owners created a sandy beach area about 14 feet by 31 feet. A small concrete wall kept it separate from the rest of the yard. This little beach has always been a huge hit with both our kids and all the kids who come over to play. We love it! The sand has washed out slowly over the years so we added four tons of sand last year and three more this year and should be good for a while. I don’t actually mind that it washes out over time; the benefit is that the bottom of the pond in our swimming area is nice and soft and sandy! Next to the beach was a small wooden deck where we kept two lounge chairs and my DIY umbrella table. We used this space as much as we could, but the boards were starting to warp, crack, and break apart. It also could only accommodate 2-3 people without feeling cramped so we wanted make it much larger.

The contractor we hired removed the old deck and created a huge lounge space surrounding the existing beach area. We used the same stamped concrete pattern on both patios and I love how cohesive that makes them.

Because the ground slopes down to the pond, we needed to have a retaining wall behind this patio and we chose to include a limestone cap on top. We chose to do three large steps in the middle of the patio with pillars on each side and I’m very happy with how this turned out! The limestone ledge is the perfect height for additional seating and has been put to good use often this summer.

Much as I loved our DIY umbrella stand, I had no desire or time to make more this summer so I moved that to the upper patio to provide extra shade and purchased new umbrella tables from Frontgate during their Memorial Day sale. Our lounge chairs were an unexpected score at Costco and our umbrellas are from Lowe’s. Whether it’s adults lounging and talking and watching kids play and swim or kids coming to take a break in the shade and grab a snack or drink, we love having more chairs and umbrellas and space for everyone to use now.

My one regret is I don’t love the combination of the limestone cap with the stair-step end of the retaining wall. Initially, we were going to just have the wall end with a clean, straight edge, but due to a series of events (cliff notes: we asked the mason to pull up the last brick to end the wall a little sooner, it left glue reside, and when they tried to power wash the glue off it took a chunk out of the concrete so we needed to extend the wall anyways to cover it) we considered all our options and decided to do a stair-step finish. I liked the stair step, but I don’t love the way it looks with the limestone cap. My plan for next summer is to come up with some type of planter to have here with a plant trailing down the stair step to disguise this portion (and discourage kids from climbing the “stairs” because they do love to do that!) For now, I can live with the look.

You may have noticed the asymmetry of the lounge chairs. Originally I thought I would do three on each side, but I wanted each chair next to a table so keeping them in pairs worked better. Plus the two sides of the patio aren’t the same width – the one by the dock narrows more to fit the width of the dock. I didn’t want to have chairs in the path to get to the dock since it’s a favorite place for kids to run and jump into the water. Next summer the plan is to find a round lounge chair to fit the empty space and balance the asymmetry.

Playset

One more addition we made to our outdoor space was adding a playset. Our kids have been begging for a playset for a couple years now, and one set of their grandparents very generously offered to gift them one. After considering what felt like endless possibilities, we landed on this set. How fun is that crow’s nest!?

After a couple weekends of assembling (we estimate it took about 23 hands-on hours) it was ready to go and our kids have had an absolute blast playing on it this summer! It’s situated away from the pond and patio, but in full view of both so we can monitor them playing from anywhere in this outdoor area.

Now reveal posts are fun, but my favorite pictures of these space aren’t the neat and clean “finished” pictures, but the snaps of the spaces actually in use over the summer. It shows why we did this and it makes my heart happy to see towels, sunscreen, snacks, and drinks everywhere because that means fun is being had and memories are being made. Here are a few little peeks into our summer adventures:

We feel so lucky to be able to live here, with space and privacy and what feels like our own outdoor oasis, and we are so thankful to be able to gather friends and family here to make lots of memories. All the planning, effort, and resources feel worth it seeing everything come together. It’s been so fun to enjoy this space even more this summer and we can’t wait to make many more memories here in the years to come!

Reflections on my Unplanned Hiatus

Hello hello!

The last time I posted it was January and now somehow it’s June. I didn’t set out to take a five month hiatus from the blog and basically just stumbled accidentally into it. It started with getting behind on my posts and feeling very little motivation to sit down and write. Thoughts like “eh, I’ll do it tomorrow” turned into “maybe next week, or maybe even the start of next month” and before I knew it, I was thinking . . .

. . .what if I just set this down entirely for a while?

The thought made me a little nervous. I’ve had this blog for 11 years now, and it’s been a consistent hobby of mine for the past six years. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had some things I really needed to take the time to assess in my life. Today, I want to share some of those here. This post is going to be a little lengthy and probably not very polished, but there are some things I feel are important to put out there before jumping back in to regular blog posts.

What is my goal here?

This blog started out as a pure hobby, a creative outlet for me after Justin and I got married and moved to a new town where I knew no one. I did it just for me and didn’t share it with any of my friends or family for a long time. In fact, I remember the first time an acquaintance found it and started following – I was so embarrassed! It hadn’t felt silly for strangers to follow along but suddenly there was someone I knew watching and it felt different. It took a while to analyze, but ultimately I realized that I felt silly because I thought if people who knew me knew about my blog, they would wonder why I had it. Why is she doing this? Why would anybody be interested in this?

And that’s an interesting question, right? Why do it? What is my why here?

Back in 2013-14, this blog was a creative outlet I enjoyed but did basically in secret. Then after a years-long hiatus, I came back to it in 2018 as a young mom where it became an outlet to share more publicly about motherhood (I actually told my friends and family this time, ha!) Sharing my experiences was fun and somewhat therapeutic, and I also thought maybe I could offer encouragement or solidarity to another mom or two from my little corner of the internet. Once we moved to our new home in 2019, I started sharing our home projects as well and discovered a huge passion for it. I love documenting our DIY projects and transformations both big and small, and while I still share things like a day in our family’s life or reviews of the books I’ve read, I have mostly focused on sharing our home ever since.

Around the time I shifted to sharing my home projects, the culture around social media was changing. Suddenly, everything was monetized and all these accounts that started for fun were now growing into huge money-makers. For a while, I also entertained thoughts of growth and monetization. Wouldn’t it be great if this hobby of blogging and sharing our home projects actually made me some money? It sounded like a dream situation, and I did have a few opportunities where I either got paid for my photos or received a free product in exchange for promotion. I quickly learned the reality that monetization turns my fun hobby into a job, and jobs come with a level of demand that hobbies do not. On the one hand yes, the compensation was nice, but on the other, the pressure to perform well, even on this very small scale, took quite a bit of the joy out of my hobby and replaced it with stress. Stress to perform well, stress to prove myself, stress to keep up with everyone else. And stress to grow, which meant I had to play the game of the algorithm, posting better and better things more and more often.

Ultimately, having monetization and growth as goals made me shift my daily focus off of my family and onto the work of maintaining the blog and social media (even on an extremely small scale, being a content creator truly is work!) It was exhausting and unsustainable for the life I want to lead. It’s not why I became a stay at home mom and it’s not what I want this chapter of my life to be focused on. I enjoy social media, but I want my life offline to be WAY more vibrant and fulfilling. To find some type of balance, I have fully embraced the fact that my goal is not to monetize or grow but continue writing this blog and sharing home projects simply because I enjoy it. And once I made that decision, social media became fun again 🙂

Just one more thought I had through this process: I had to examine why I had monetization as a goal in the first place. Why did I feel the need to make this into something more when I was already enjoying it as is? I realized, I think we are fed so many stories in our capitalistic society about monetization of hobbies that we just think it’s the natural progression and goal. How many times do we see a hobby turn into something like an Etsy business or social media empire? We watch shows like Shark Tank and see how someone’s side hustle, hobby, or passion grew into a bigger, more successful thing. But what is success? Are we only successful if we’re making money? I realized I did have this subconscious feeling of guilt that if I’m spending my time and energy on something, there should be a reason. A value. A type of compensation, maybe not monetarily, but a tangible reason to show others why I’m doing this. Why can’t that reason just be that I enjoy it? Can we allow ourselves to just get pleasure from our hobbies? (Let me be clear: I think it’s awesome when people turn their passions into business. This is amazing and wonderful for so many people!! But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for every hobby and every person.) I’ve come to understand I prefer my hobbies to stay hobbies for pure enjoyment and that is enough. It’s satisfying to have this thing just because I enjoy it.

The weight of the world

I also want to address that a huge reason I haven’t been posting as much lately is because it’s really hard to know how to show up online when the world feels heavy, and it’s been feeling incredibly heavy for a long time now. For me, the constant access to information is a paralyzing thing – I recognize the importance of knowing what is going on in the world, but it can also feel so so overwhelming to process a constant stream of difficult news. I fully recognize there is privilege in even having the option to post or not post about something, to be able to control the access of information I have. It’s not everyone’s reality and that isn’t fair. I wish it were different.

Even now, it’s very hard for me to get my swirling thoughts figured out enough to write something that makes sense and feels right, but I’ll try to explain with a specific experience from Memorial Day. We spent the day with at a friend’s house and they have a pool. I was listening to my kids laughing and splashing, enjoying a carefree day in a carefree childhood. It was peaceful and beautiful and fun and my heart was happy watching them. But also. I had this gut wrenching feeling of despair at the exact same time. I felt the strange mix of being happy and unsettled simultaneously, something I’ve become very familiar with lately. I knew as I sat in peace, surrounded by plenty of food and fun, another mother on the other side of the world is experiencing horrors. Another mother just like me is experiencing war, violence, loss of her home and her family. Another mother who fiercely loves her children and wants the same things for them: peace, safety, comfort. For months and months I have been filled with the tension of holding space for the enjoyment of my life and my family and the knowledge that the world is a cruel place for so many humans. There is so much suffering and despair, and my words are inadequate.

So I struggle with how to post online. When my heart is heavy with news, it feels trivial to post about a home project. It’s hard to jump in with something light and breezy when your heart is also broken for others. But the reality is, my life is bigger than an Instagram story. I am writing a blog post and writing to a senator. I am making a donation to a relief organization and making cookies with my kids. I am working on a home project and working to make a difference in my community and the world. I’m doing what I can with the resources I have and finding a creative outlet to help keep my mental health and wellness strong, which makes me a better mom, wife, friend, and human.

Like so many others, I’m just trying to do the best I can each day, and I know I get it wrong just as much, if not more, than I get it right. It’s hard to show up online and post something about my life when it feels so silly and small in the face of the rest of the word. But these small things are also my reality and do bring me joy to share. It’s still hard. Both things are true. I guess I just feel like I can’t get back into blogging without acknowledging this tension: I post things that are true for my life, and at the same time, I recognize the world is bigger than my life and I’m trying my best to make that a little bit better too.

At the end of the day, this blog (and social media) will continue to be a creative outlet for me, a place I can share and reflect about our life and home. But I guess the point of this entire post is to say 1) it doesn’t tell the whole story of my life, thoughts, and efforts, 2) it’s going to be done on my time, in a way that’s sustainable to also have a full and vibrant life offline, and 3) I still enjoy this, and if you want to follow along, I’m happy you’re here. ❤

I’m Converting the Dining Room to an Art Space for the Kids

Back in May 2021, I carved out a little arts and craft space for my kids in the corner of our kitchen. It was simple but super functional for two small children and served both LJ and Vi well as they developed their loves of creating.

Flash forward almost three years, and they have outgrown the small desk. They are both very creative and love working on various art projects, and despite my best efforts to keep things organized, the space was overflowing with coloring books, bins of paper, markers, crayons, paint supplies, stickers, play doh, stamps and ink pads, and much more. It got to the point where the “art desk” was just a dumping ground for all the supplies, but they actually needed to do the creating somewhere else because there was no space at the desk. (I’m cringing at this photo!!)

The dining room table is where things naturally gravitated. We really only use it for meals if we have company over (and even then, we’re often hosting in our basement) so the kids started using it as a space for their projects. The table had the advantage of space for both of them to work at once, as opposed to the single-person art desk, and before long the room was taken over with supplies and finished projects. I decided to embrace this season of life: we’re not using a dining room right now, so let’s just turn it into an art room for the kids! But if we were going to do this, I did not want to have another disheveled mess in the dining room, which is what was happening. Exhibit A: (cringing again!)

The biggest need was very clear: storage. Things really got out of hand with the art desk and were heading the same direction in the dining room; I wanted to keep better organization in the new space. I needed it to be very kid-friendly and preferably inexpensive, but also nice enough to fit in with the flow of the rest of the house since the dining room is open to the rest of the main floor. I found the perfect solution at Ikea with their Kallax system.

I love that Ikea sells the basic 8-cube shelf and allows you to customize it with extras and inserts. I chose to elevate the shelf on the black iron legs to make it a little easier to access for the kids. I also chose to use 4 drawer inserts, giving us 8 drawers to categorize and store supplies. The drawers seem small but they can hold a lot! I also chose a few divider inserts and used two horizontally to create additional shelves and two vertically to create slots for storing various activity books. It fits everything that was piled on and in the art desk but with a LOT more organization.

I also snagged this desk organizer at Ikea and a few little pencil cups to keep the most commonly used utensils handy on top. The kids can just take the cup they need over to the table to work. It’s been working great so far! I’ve had this cute lamp for several months now – I originally intended for it to be in the living room but I don’t currently have a place for it there out of toddler reach. I had the idea to try it here for now and I actually love it! It creates a nice warm glow when we just need a little light and not the full overhead lighting.

The only other thing I want to do with this room right now is address the large white wall. I want to add a bunch of frames to the wall to display finished artwork, and I am also debating adding a corkboard over the shelf for a place to dry painting projects. It’ll be a pretty simple but impactful transformation and it really makes our house feel more like us as it works to fit the needs of our family in this stage.

2023 Projects + 2024 Goals

We may be a week into January, but this feels like my New Year’s Day. We traveled to visit family over the last week in December, and then had a nasty little sickness work its way through our family last week, so we didn’t exactly have that Fresh New Year Energy going for us. Then last night, I did a huge cleaning of our main floor and got us reset for the week. All my family members are getting back to feeling better, we’re back in school, and it feels like now we are ready for 2024 to begin.

Every year I like to set some goals for our house projects. Today I wanted to recap how I did on my 2023 goals and map out my hopes for this year. I always hold these plans a little loosely, as I know a lot can change over the course of a year. Looking at last year’s list, I completed some goals, partially finished others, and also did a few things I wasn’t planning for at all. I’m excited to see what this year has in store! First, let’s look at how the projects of 2023:

Bedroom Mountain Mural

I kicked off the year with free-handing a mountain mural in my kids’ shared bedroom. The other three walls are a white and blue color block, so this was a fun addition and a nice nod to Justin and my shared history of living out East among the mountains. It’s colorful and playful and the kids loved it!

DIY Lego Table

As LJ became more and more interested, I was in desperate need of storage. I couldn’t find a ready-made solution that I liked, so Justin and I decided to DIY a Lego table from scratch. This project was able to be completed in a weekend and I am so glad that we made a nice, solid top for when the table is not in use. It’s perfect for keeping baby hands away from the Lego stash and I love that it doubles as a regular table for kids when we have company over!

Kids’ Dresser

Justin and I scored this midcentury dresser off Facebook marketplace approximately 8 years ago (for $30!!) At the time, I hadn’t done much DIY and the dresser was a bit scratched so I thought the easiest thing to do was just paint it. We painted it a soft neutral blue and put it in the nursery for LJ and he’s been using it ever since. Once I painted the mountain mural, the painted dresser placed in front of it just felt like too much . . . paint. I needed more natural tones on the wall! I decided to strip off the paint, sand it down, and re-stain it to its original look. I also used rub n buff to make the legs appear metal to match the drawer pulls, which are original. I LOVE the end result!

Living Room Upgrades

My goal this year was to finish the living room phase one, and while I didn’t get totally finished, I did make progress! The living room has been by far the slowest renovation I’ve ever done. It started with painting the walls and the ceiling last year. We also swapped out the old ceiling fan for a large light fixture. Then this year we hired an electrician to add sconces – we went from zero permanent light fixtures in the room to three and it has made such a difference! I also added a large framed print and freshened up the pillows this year. Then just a few weeks ago, we hired painters to paint the foyer and they also painted the windows black. We’re content with this *very* slow and steady approach to the room and are happy with the progress this year.

Patio Furniture Refresh

My goal was to update the patio – we didn’t end up making any changes to the space itself but I did decide to give our furniture set a little glow up. We’ve had our patio set for several years and it was looking pretty rough, so I spent some time this summer refreshing it with teak oil. I’ve never done anything like this before so it took a bit of trial and error to figure out a good process but I’m really happy with how it turned out!

DIY Bookbag Personalization

LJ started kindergarten this year and requested a Sonic backpack. I’m all about kids having some autonomy and choosing what they like, but for me a backpack is an investment piece. I do not plan to buy a new one each year and I knew his interest in Sonic would fade. We compromised with an iron-on Sonic patch on his backpack and were both super happy with the result! And whenever he’s done with Sonic, we can just remove the patch and put something else on 🙂 Win win!

Kids’ Closet

When we got new carpet in the kids room last year, we had to remove the existing closet shelves because the shelves were installed underneath the carpet. We made things work with a couple rods and shelves and tubs, but it wasn’t an ideal or efficient storage setup. This year we used The Container Store to maximize storage in the space and it has been SO great to have tons of accessible storage again. I decided to paint the walls dark to match the dark colored rods and I love the monochromatic look it created. The closet is also set up in a way that the kids can easily get what they need which has been so helpful.

Guest Room Stencil Wall

After years of having the guest room partially stenciled, I finally finished the faux wallpaper stencil this year! It took many hours, and I worked on different walls at different times, but it was such great feeling to finally finish and having a fully “wallpapered” guest room. I haven’t made a post with the finished process yet because I still want to repaint the all the trim, but just having the walls done was such a good step.

Replace the Basement Carpet

This one felt SO good to finally take care of. It took me several weeks and many many carpet samples, but I finally chose a carpet from a local flooring company and they installed it late this summer. It’s soft and cozy and makes the space feel so fresh and nice! In an effort to keep it nice longer, I added a rug under the dining table to catch any food spills.

DIY Birthday Pinata

This project was a spur-of-the-moment, incredibly last minute DIY that I did on the morning of LJ’s 6th birthday party. We didn’t lean strongly into a theme but he wanted a monster truck cake and the night before the party, as I was picking up a few more party supplies, I saw a fun monster truck pinata. I was immediately inspired to make a dupe and LJ was thrilled with it! I definitely think I’ll do this again for future birthdays.

Foyer Painted . . . FINALLY!

After two and a half years of staring at a half-painted foyer, I finally hired painters to come and finish the job! Of course, I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner. The space seems so much brighter and bigger now (unfortunately, the only photo I had was very dim because it was an overcast day, but just trust me, in person, it’s lighter and brighter!) They also painted the upstairs hallway and the trim work and doors upstairs so the space really feels so much more cohesive with the rest of the home now.

Better Garage Storage

Back in May, I talked about plans for updating our garage. I shared some of the progress on Instagram, but this was all happening as I began to taper off sharing on Instagram over the summer. Life got busy – we had trips planned and a lot of other things happening so we never finished the garage and I never even shared what we were able to accomplish. Oops! The storage we did create around the freezer has been so functional for us and I’m so glad we at least finished that part in 2023.

Whew! Looking at that list, I’m proud of all I was able to accomplish this year, even if it wasn’t quite everything I planned to do. Looking ahead at this year, I’m trying to keep things attainable with a mix of bigger and smaller projects. Life isn’t slowing down anytime soon, and I want to enjoy our family life as much as I can, so we’ll see what all I’m able to get to with our house this year. Here’s what I’m hoping for:

2024 Home Project Goals

Window Trim in the Living Room

The painters who did the foyer also painted all the living room windows, so really the big thing left is to replace the trim to match the rest of the windows in the house and I’d like to tackle that this year. Eventually, I also want to get new flooring and possibly add a small fireplace insert. I’m also kicking around the idea of planking the ceiling! And we need to get a drywall company out here to take a look at a few issues with the walls. So suffice to say, the living room won’t be finished this year, but we’ll keep moving the needle a bit 🙂

Create a Workout Room

This is a goal that got bumped from my list last year. We want to convert this little room in between the garage and basement – we call it the utility room but it’s really just storage – into a workout space. Last year we did clear out a significant amount of the stuff stored inside, but we need to keep chipping away at it this year. Once it’s cleared out, I want to paint, swap out the lighting, add some mirrors, and move in our stationary bike, weights, mats, etc so we have a dedicated space to workout.

Finish Garage Storage

While we were able to create some functional storage in our garage last year, this spring my goal is to finish our plans to make it a fully functional space for our family’s needs!

Updates in Entryway + Hall

Now that the foyer and upstairs hallway are painted, I am inspired to make a few other small updates to the space. The chandelier in the foyer is very dated and I’ve never been a fan, so I’m looking forward to swapping it out for something else. I also want to add artwork and family photos to the hallway walls upstairs, and we need to swap out the can lights and fire alarm.

Convert Dining Room to Art Space

My kids love art. They love drawing and painting and play doh and stickers and modeling clay and color by numbers and really anything creative and crafty. Because of this, we have quickly outgrown the small art station in the kitchen and all their projects have spilled over into the dining room. Since we rarely use the dining room and prefer to eat our meals in the kitchen, I’m going to just embrace this stage of life and convert the dining room into their art space, complete with storage and a place to hang all their creations. I already started this just a bit over Christmas but I’m excited to make this space into something they love and use every day!

Leveling Up the Basement

The basement has had so much progress over the years, but there are just a few smaller projects I want to finish this year. Now that the guest room stencil is done, I want to repaint the trim to match and possibly repaint the guest bathroom, depending on how it flows together. I also need to address the painted tile (spoiler alert: it hasn’t held up as well as I had hoped) and create better storage for all our outdoor things in the entryway. I would love to also paint the windows and swap out the baseboards for the chunkier version we’re using throughout the house, but I’m not sure if that will happen this year or not. We’ll see!

As for personal goals this year, I have two. I want to walk “24 in 24” (24 minutes a day, every day) because we have a big trip planned for summer that will involve a lot of walking, and for our family, we are trying the “1000 hours outside” challenge where we, you guessed it, spend 1000 hours outside in one year. Movement and fresh air are the big goals for us this year.

Bring on 2024!

December 2023 Book Reviews

Hello hello and happy 2024! I enjoyed a very fun and full holiday season with my family and definitely enjoyed cozying up with a blanket next to the Christmas tree to read. In December I read seven books of various genres. It was interesting to me that the full-fledged “Christmas” books I read I didn’t love, but a few of the non-Christmasy ones gave me the perfect cozy holiday feels. Others weren’t even remotely cozy or Christmas-y and yet I still enjoyed them sprinkled in among the other books this month. The variety this month was great! But I digress…

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

A powerful hurricane is headed to Florida, and thanks to the state’s slowly crumbling infrastructure and rapidly deteriorating weather patterns, Hurricane Wanda is going to wreak havoc and usher in a new era for society and survival. For one family in particular, the hurricane brings both devastation and new life, as their baby girl is born right in the middle of the storm. Named after the hurricane itself, curious and unusual Wanda grows up in a society that seems to be unraveling more and more with each passing year.

I read this story for a book club and it was an excellent choice for reading with others, as there was so much to discuss. The story is broken up into four parts: power, water, light, and time. Through alternating perspective chapters, we follow Wanda and her family as they navigate both the unprecedented hurricane and the devastating aftermath. This story was unlike anything I’ve read before! It was essentially the author imagining a potential future for our planet given our current context of climate change, and I found the whole concept to be really thought-provoking. I was captivated by the hurricane saga and intrigued with the imagining of the deteriorating world afterwards. I was able to read it pretty quickly; although there was a section in the middle where things got pretty slow for a while, it thankfully picked up again for me as I read on. There was also one piece of the plot that brought in a bit of fantasy and I wish that hadn’t been included, as it took away from how realistic the rest of the plotline felt. Other than those issues, I enjoyed the storytelling overall and I enjoyed that we saw different character’s perspectives as the world around them drastically changed. Bottom line: I was intrigued and challenged by the ideas in this story and I absolutely know I will be thinking about it for a long time so for those reasons, I do recommend it!

A Knights Bridge Christmas by Carla Neggers

Single mom Clare has just moved with her young son Owen to a cute little small town called Knights Bridge where she now works as a librarian. It’s there that she meets Logan, a busy ER doctor who lives in the city but has come back to Knights Bridge to help his grandmother Daisy as she transitions to assisted living. Daisy has moved out of her beloved Victorian house in town and makes a request to Logan: could he please decorate it for Christmas one last time? Unsure of how to do the grand old home justice, Logan turns to Clare for help and offers a chance to look through Daisy’s book collection for donations to the library in return. As the house comes to life under their hard work decorating, they discover an unexpected and growing attraction…but will they be brave enough to allow themselves to fall in love this Christmas?

I wanted a cute, easy, festive, Hallmark-y read and thought this would fit the bill. When I’m searching for a book using that criteria, I know there will likely be predictability and not a whole lot of deep character development, but this one felt a bit too easy for me. The characters had too little depth and the storyline was too repetitive and predictable. I wasn’t ultimately very invested or interested and I ended up mostly just skimming along. There were a few storylines I expected the author to dig deeper into and was disappointed that they just kind of got glossed over. All that being said, it’s still a pleasant, fairly clean read (a few swear words but no steamy scenes) and has a LOT of festive elements like Christmas decorations and ice skating and hot cocoa. It was also evident that this author has a series set in this town, as there were a lot of references to other couples that I’m sure are the main characters in other books, so if you’re a fan of this author and series, you’ll likely enjoy this book! It just didn’t quite hit for me and my Christmas-y mood.

Never Fall For Your Fiancée by Virginia Heath

Hugh Standish is in trouble. His lie to his mother about having a fiancée seemed innocent enough; after all, she lives in America, he lives in England, and his letters about “Minerva” have gotten her off his back about settling down. But now, she is on her way to visit and fully expects to meet his beloved Minerva. Hugh knows he is going to get caught in a lie, but when he steps in to help a beautiful young woman on the street and learns her name is actually Minerva, he gets another idea. He makes an offer too good to pass up for Minerva, who has been struggling to provide for herself and her two younger sisters. Getting paid to spend a few weeks pretending to be in love in a stunning English manor can’t be that hard, right? But as the charade goes on and High and Minerva spend more and more time together pretending to be in love, it stops feeling like an act and starts feeling like the real thing.

This book gives some Jane Austen-meets-Bridgerton vibes and was about what I expected. Hugh and Minerva are pretty likeable, and the overall storyline is predictably cute (leaning heavily into the fake dating and miscommunication troupes), but it also got pretty repetitive. Hugh is highly motivated by this one specific character quality he believes he inherited, and that gets old in the storyline and ultimately feels silly in the end. The setting is fun, some of the banter is enjoyable, the side characters bring a playful and interesting dynamic, and it feels slightly Christmas-y because it is set around Christmas time. I believe it is part of a series with each book centered around another sister’s romance but I don’t anticipate that I’ll read the rest of the series. There is one steamy scene, but it’s very easy to see coming and skip over if you prefer not to read those. Overall, this book was fine, a middle-of-the-road level read for me.

The Hike by Lucy Clarke

Liz, Maggie, Helena, and Joni have been friends for years. Though life has taken them all in very different directions, they still reunite for getaways together when they can. This year, it was Liz’s turn to pick a destination; since she’s currently stressed out by life and the state of her crumbling marriage, she suggests something different than their typical beach holiday: hiking in the remote mountains of Norway. Despite their hesitations, the others agree to come along and the group sets off for camping and hiking in the wilderness. What they don’t know is that there are secrets lurking everywhere along their journey and if they’re not careful, they may not make it out of the wilderness alive.

This book is a destination thriller that leans survivalist at times and I loved that it was such an escapist read. I felt like I had been transported to Norway and it made me want to travel and experience this gorgeous country for myself. I binged the entire thing in less than 24 hours – I couldn’t put it down! It’s not a twisty and jumpy thriller, but it is a compulsive, must-find-out-what-is-going-on page-turner. The characters all felt authentic and layered, each with likeable and dislikable qualities; I love that we see their own thoughts and feelings alongside their actions and can compare those to how they each perceive one another. The premise is interesting, the plot moves along at a good pace without feeling rushed, and it is satisfyingly dramatic without being scary. I didn’t quite love how everything wrapped up at the end, but I’m willing to overlook that because of how much I enjoyed the suspenseful ride throughout. Overall, it’s a solid thriller that I do recommend!

Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

“On a snowy evening in March, thirty-something Noelle Butterby is on her way back from an event at her old college when disaster strikes. With a blizzard closing off roads, she finds herself stranded, alone in her car, without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone. All seems lost until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together, until morning arrives and the roads finally clear. The two strangers part, positive they’ll never see each other again but fate, it seems, has a different plan. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence.”

This isn’t a Christmas read at all, but since it initially started in a blizzard it felt wintery and perfect for my cozy reading mood this month. It’s a sweet rom com with a bit of a Hallmark-y feel but I didn’t find it to be cheesy or cringey; I thought it was a fun read! I loved the premise and enjoyed Sam and Noelle’s characters and was absolutely rooting for them to get together. There are just enough side plots layered in to keep things interesting without distracting from the main storyline, and it does pull in some weightier topics like death, loss, and life’s challenges. I will say I had to give some leeway in the fate/realism department – there are a lot of coincidences with Sam and Noelle continuing to run into one another in some fairly far-fetched circumstances, but if you can accommodate that, it’s an enjoyable, feel-good read! I found it to be delightfully heartwarming and exactly what I was in the mood for snuggled up by the Christmas tree. It’s also pretty wholesome – it does have a bit of language but no steamy scenes. I definitely recommend if you want a lighthearted read with a bit of depth to it!

Christmas from the Heart by Sheila Roberts

Olivia’s passion is running her nonprofit, Christmas From the Heart, and she relies heavily on the generosity of donors to be able to provide relief and comfort to struggling families in her area. When she learns her charity lost a large and long-standing donor, she is furious. Guy Hightower feels he did what needed to be done; his company may be large, but prior mismanagement has meant that they need to try to cut what they can and save the company from crumbling. He never expects to meet the woman who sent him all the angry emails after he cut off her funding, but when his car breaks down as he passes by her small town, the beautiful Good Samaritan who rescues him from the side of the road is none other than Olivia. He quickly gives himself a fake identity, and as he’s stuck in town for a few days, Guy gets a first hand look at Livi’s life and charitable work, and Livi gets to know “Joe”, a good-hearted, thoughtful stranger who she finds herself falling for. But when the truth about him is revealed, will they be able to continue their growing feelings for one another?

This is another one I thought would be perfect for curling up by the tree and getting in the Christmas spirit. The potential with the storyline was there! But the execution was off for me. Unfortunately I did not connect with the characters or their romance. I think the biggest problem was I didn’t find the main character to be likeable. Livi was meant to come across as a kind, generous do-gooder but in actuality I thought she came across as entitled, gold-digging, and even rude at times. I could not fit her behavior after being turned down by one donor with how someone who actually runs a charitable nonprofit would act. Plus the lie with Guy’s true identity went a little too long, and the subsequent chapters after that revelation felt really disjointed. Despite all the lies and personality shortcomings, I was being told how the romance was unfolding and the characters were falling for one another, but as the reader I wasn’t actually feeling it at all. I wanted to like this one, but it just fell flat for me and I skimmed just to finish. Bummer!

One Last Gift by Emily Stone

Ever since she was a young girl, Cassie has been given a special Christmas gift from her older brother Tom: a scavenger hunt created just for her. This year, he has promised her it will be the best one yet, but then he tragically dies right before Christmas. Lost for months in her deep grief, Cassie struggles to just make it through her days until one day, she is given an envelope with Tom’s handwriting on it. She knows it is the start to the scavenger hunt and her last communication from her beloved brother. In order to complete the hunt, she will need to rely on her closest friends, and that includes Tom’s best friend Sam. Though Sam is hardly recognizable from the younger version of himself she once loved, he is the only other person who feels Tom’s loss like she does. As Cassie works her way through Tom’s last scavenger hunt, she also begins to work up the courage needed to accept the final gift he has left for her.

Oooph, this book got me good! It’s hard to describe because it deals with such a heavy plotline but somehow isn’t a distressing read. Granted, I have not lost a close family member like Cassie has, so perhaps those who have would find it harder to read, but I thought the author did a great job navigating loss and giving space for the heartbreak while balancing other aspects of life. Obviously, grief is a huge part of the book, but I think it’s done in a way that manages to not be completely heart wrenching and sad. You feel the sorrow, you empathize with the characters, but you also feel joy and hope with them. I loved seeing Cassie’s confidence grow throughout and I was always rooting for Sam to get his act together. I will say, it’s partially a (closed door) romance but not a banter-y, laugh out loud rom com. Instead it’s a touching story of growth, friendship, support, love, and showing up for one another through all of life’s challenges. It is centered around the scavenger hunt, which is a Christmas gift, but the rest of the book is not Christmas-y at all. Even so, it was a perfect choice as a deeper holiday read. It tugs on your heart, it makes you smile, it just brings out emotions and ultimately is uplifting. I loved it!

Whew! That’s it for last month, now bring on all the 2024 reads! As always, if you have any great recommendations, send them my way!

November 2023 Book Review

Happy December 1! It is officially my favorite time of year!

Last month, I expected to finish more books but ended up with only one read. The reason for that: it’s been a while since it took me this long to finish a book! Today I’m going to chat a bit about both the book and whether or not the slow build was worth it.

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

“Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to a coastal island in Maine when their neighbor Morgan Baines is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie. But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.” (Synopsis taken from Amazon)

I saw this book recommended on another account from someone who historically has similar reading preferences to me. I’ll be honest, for the first third of the book, I kept thinking “why on earth did she hype this up so much?” I just could not get into it – the characters were all unlikeable and the plot felt extremely slow and veered into some territory I wasn’t excited about. It also might have just been the wrong choice for me right now, since I was getting into the light, happy, festive mood and a murder thriller didn’t quite fit that. So all that being said, it took me many days to even make it 1/3 of the way through, just chipping away a short chapter at a time. I wanted to quit or at least jump to another book and (maybe) come back to this one later. I stuck with it though and around the 1/3 mark I had a revelation: I believed I had figured out the twist. Suddenly my motivation exploded – I had to know if I was correct and the more I read, the more convinced I became. I doubt it was the author’s intention for the reader to do this, but in this instance knowing actually helped the story seem so much more compelling. By the time I got to the last third, I could not put this book down!

Now in terms of recommending, I don’t know! After like 9 days of slowly reading a bit at a time, I compulsively read the last 2/3 of this book in like 24 hours and loved it. There were still things I DID NOT see coming at all and I had a major jaw drop towards the end. But that being said, if I hadn’t guessed that one particular aspect of the plot at the time I did, I would’ve struggled to keep reading. For me, the book was 1/3 slow, 1/3 compulsive reading to prove my theory, 1/3 shocking twists and reveals in the end. It could have been 2/3 slow build and 1/3 twists and reveals and I just don’t think I would recommend that, you know? So if this long-winded review has you curious or you think you could also figure it out early, I say go for it! But if you don’t typically guess things in advance, you may find this a little too much of a slow build. For me, things picked up early enough that I still loved the book overall.

Do you keep reading books you’re not into? Or do you have a threshold where you’ll quit? My threshold is really high but I have quit books before – this one I’m glad I stuck with!

A DIY Birthday Pinata for LJ

Last night, we celebrated LJ’s sixth birthday! This was the first year we did a big party with friends and he invited six buddies to come celebrate with him. There were many fun parts of the evening, but one of the highlights was this last-minute pinata!

I don’t typically lean hard into a themed birthday party and prefer to get decorations and supplies I can reuse over and over again in future years, but I do usually have a themed dessert based on the child’s interests. This year, LJ surprised my by requesting a monster truck ice cream cake. Even he admitted he’s not typically interested in monster trucks, but that’s what he wanted on his cake so we rolled with it. Then the night before the party, I was picking up a few last minute supplies and I stumbled across this.

I immediately thought how fun a pinata would be at the party, and that it’d be fun to surprise LJ with a monster truck one. I did not love the $20 price tag of this one though, so I got a burst of inspiration to try making my own DIY version of a pinata. It turned out great so I thought I’d share the tutorial today – I had most of the supplies on hand so it ended up costing me just over $5 and took about an hour of active work time.

Supplies

-thick cardboard (I used a diaper box)

-thin cardboard (I used a cereal box)

-painter’s tape (masking tape would work too)

-tissue paper

-scissors

-pen

-glue stick

-candy to fill it!

I decided to keep the shape simple so I used a round fruit bowl to trace two circles onto the diaper box cardboard. The edges weren’t perfectly smooth after cutting but I knew tape would be going over top so I didn’t worry about it.

I cut the two narrow sides off the Cheerios box, and when I realized that wouldn’t quite be enough to go all around the large circles I used one as a template to cut one more strip off the box.

I used painter’s tape to attach the Cheerios strip to one large round circle, then the other. I left one little flap un-taped so there would be a slot to add candy.

Once the structure was finished, it was time for the tissue paper. I stacked a few sheets of tissue paper and cut them into roughly two inch strips.

I stacked the strips and then cut the fringe about halfway into the strip. I didn’t worry about perfection – the strips and fringe were all a little different!

I swiped a glue stick in a line across the bottom and stuck the first piece of tissue paper on. Right above the top of the tissue paper, I swiped another line of glue and stuck another piece on. I repeated this process from the bottom to the top and then cut the excess tissue paper around the edge of the pinata.

I flipped the pinata over and repeated the process on the other large round side, then did the same thing on the narrow side. There was a little adjusting here and there as I glued the edges and trimmed off excess. I did put tissue paper over the candy flap, but did not close it yet.

Just one quick note: The fringe was irregular, but since the tissue paper was all one color it didn’t matter to me. If I was doing a multicolored pinata I would probably have wanted to keep things a little more consistent so the stripes would look more cohesive.

For hanging the pinata, I took a piece of black pipe cleaner and poked two small holes in the top. It was too hard to document this, but I stuck my hand through the candy slot to twist the ends together inside, then I used painter’s tape to stick the twisted ends to the top of the pinata. This felt sturdy enough to withstand a beating from six year old boys!

Lastly, I filled it with candy, and carefully stuck painter’s tape inside the candy slot, adhesive side sticking to the sides and covering the hole as best I could, so that I could press down the flap onto the tape. (In hindsight, I should have taped the flap from the outside and then covered it up again with fringe to give better durability).

I bought a monster truck digital download on Etsy and had it printed at my local FedEx on cardstock. I cut a circle around the truck, glued it to the front, and voila! A monster truck pinata for a total of $5.18.

We used rope to hang it from a broomstick, which Justin held. It was a hit with the boys and lasted about 12 solid hits before bursting open, which was good enough for me (but it burst from the candy flap side and I think if I had taped that closed just a little bit better it would’ve lasted a little longer). LJ loved it and told me I was “the best maker birthday mom ever” which I will take! 😉