Tag Archives: Book Review

What I’m Reading: The One and Only

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What I'm Reading

From Goodreads:
Thirty-three-year-old Shea Rigsby has spent her entire life in Walker, Texas—a small college town that lives and dies by football, a passion she unabashedly shares. Raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the daughter of Walker’s legendary head coach, Clive Carr, Shea was too devoted to her hometown team to leave. Instead she stayed in Walker for college, even taking a job in the university athletic department after graduation, where she has remained for more than a decade.

But when an unexpected tragedy strikes the tight-knit Walker community, Shea’s comfortable world is upended, and she begins to wonder if the life she’s chosen is really enough for her. As she finally gives up her safety net to set out on an unexpected path, Shea discovers unsettling truths about the people and things she has always trusted most—and is forced to confront her deepest desires, fears, and secrets.

Thoughtful, funny, and brilliantly observed, The One & Only is a luminous novel about finding your passion, following your heart, and, most of all, believing in something bigger than yourself . . . the one and only thing that truly makes life worth living.

My review:
The One and Only is definitely different from Emily Giffin’s other works, and so I had a hard time adjusting to it. Not that it was a bad book; I really enjoyed the main storyline and Shea’s battle to figure out what – and who – she really wants in life. What I didn’t like, and it totally doesn’t take away from how good the book is, was the football lingo and talk. I’m not a football fan in the very least, so a lot of the dialogue in that regard bored me a little.

But still, I found myself not able to put the book down and read it all within a week. (Not bad when you have a toddler!) I couldn’t wait to learn which path Shea decided to take, though it was a little obvious to me which one she would ultimately end up on in the end.

So, in the end, did I LOVE love this book? Well sadly, not really. But did I enjoy reading it? Of course! Overall, I give it 4 stars out of 5. I just couldn’t relate to all the football talk, especially at the college level, but it was still a good story.

What I’m Reading: The Storyteller

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What I'm Reading

From Goodreads.com:
Sage Singer befriends an old man who’s particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone’s favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses his darkest secret – he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.

What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who’s committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren’t the party who was wronged? And most of all – if Sage even considers his request – is it murder, or justice?

My review:
I don’t read much of Jodi Picoult’s work – My Sister’s Keeper was the only other work I’ve read by her. Regardless, I heard a lot about The Storyteller and the description sounded interesting. so I thought I’d give it a go. (I’m also a bit of a sucker for historical fiction, if there is such a genre.)

The Storyteller has a little bit of everything, and I really enjoyed reading every part of it. From Sage to Minka to Josef/Reiner to Leo … their stories were wonderful. Especially Minka and Josef’s. While the book itself is fiction, you know that their stories are probably very true in regards to the Holocaust.  I couldn’t pull myself away from reading what their lives were like during the war, as hard as it was sometimes.

Even the story within the story – the one of Ania and Aleks – was good to read.

I couldn’t help but like Sage. Between her trying to figure out what to do with Josef’s request, to figuring out what love really is, I couldn’t help but cheer for her.

I really don’t have too much else to say about The Storyteller other that it was really just great to read. I give it 5 stars out of 5!

What I’m Reading: The Husband’s Secret

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What I'm Reading

From Goodreads.com:
At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died…

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.

My review:
The Husband’s Secret was such a good read! I honestly had a hard time putting it down once I started reading. Between the chapters alternating between each character’s storyline, and the intense, “What is going to happen? What is she going to do?” feeling I had at the end of every chapter, I haven’t read a book so fast in a long time! And the ending! It’s always amazing how the innocent are the ones to suffer. (Vague reference there to avoid any spoilers ;))

My only wonder was how Tess’ character tied into everything. Really, I felt that if her character was omitted from the main story line, the plot of the story would still remain relatively the same. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy her story — I think there could be an entire novel based solely on her. (Although I’d say that Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed, has a slightly similar plot).

The whole point of The Husband’s Secret was to focus on all of the “what if’s” there are in life, as noted in the epilogue. After reading that, I really couldn’t help but think about some of my own “what if’s.” What if I didn’t do journalism? What if I went to a different university altogether? What if Kyle and I never started dating? There are so many of those questions that we’d never know the answer to.

Overall, I give The Husband’s Secret 4.5 stars out of 5.