A Bunch of Books

So I fell behind.....really behind. I blame the pandemic, year end, Christmas, and well let's be honest here, laziness! So here is a round up of the books I didn't write about in 2020.

The Garden of Small Beginnings - Abbi Waxman - This was a cute book. It follows Lilian Girvan and her new normal of raising two daughters alone after her husband died in an accident. She is an illustrator and gets a job illustrating a gardening book. She takes a gardening class with her sister and daughters to prepare and she meets a potential new love. This is kind of a prequel to The Bookish Life of Nina Hill as characters cross paths in both books.

Things in Jars - Jess Kidd - a fairy tale type book with a mystery to solve. This was not really my usual style of book, but I do enjoy a mystery. There were lots of weird characters, a ghost, a giant woman, a mermaid type girl. And all set in 1800's England. Good if you like fantasy mixed with historical fiction!

Oona Out of Order - Margarita Montimore - a good read. When Oona turns 18 on New Year's Day, she suddenly jumps to an older version of herself. It turns out that each New Year's this happens and she jumps either forward or backwards in her life and has to figure out what she doesn't know and how to get through the year. She takes full advantage of her knowledge of the future to grow her fortune and give it to charity. An interesting way to tell someone's life story.

If I Never Met You - Mhairi McFarlane - I liked this one. Laurie is a lawyer and works at the same law firm as her partner. One day he ends the relationship and now Laurie needs to deal with seeing him daily at work. She meets Jamie Carter at work where he has quite the ladies man reputation. They come up with a plan to make her ex jealous and it turns into something more interesting.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows - Balli Kaur Jaswal - This was a fun book with some very erotic stories here and there. Niki signs up to teach a writing course at the community centre in a Punjabi community in London. She soon learns that the women expect to learn English, not to learn to write stories. But the women find the class boring and to spice it up, they decide to tell erotic stories instead. Niki is surprised by these older women and wants to help them find their voices. But there is some danger in breaking away from moral standards.

Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune - Roselle Lim - a good book, I didn't want to put this one down. Natalie Tan gets a call that her mother has died, so she returns to her childhood home and decides to open up her grandmother's recipe. There is a bit of magic throughout the book, her grandmother's recipes have interesting effects on people if cooked correctly.

Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens - I listened to this one on Audible (this was one of my two free books before I cancelled...the library has all these books for free!). It took a long time to get through this, but it was a great story about a girl growing up alone in the marsh. And it has a nice twist at the end. I think I would have preferred reading it instead of listening to it though.

The Last Story of Mina Lee - Nancy Jooyoun Kim - Margot Lee travels to LA with a friend and stops in to see her mother, only to find her dead in her apartment. The story flips between Margot's story and Mina's story. Mina moves to America to escape her past and we see her struggles during her first year in LA. Margot has been trying to fit in her whole life and finally learns more about her mother's past. I would recommend this one!