Tag: love

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The world right now is uncertain. I find myself longing for times when family and friends could get together without care or worries. In an effort to feel more of that carefree spirit(without actually getting close to people), I have been searching for more books to read about families. Cue: literary generational fiction.

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz tells the story of Ellie and Brick. In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are growing up in Clayton Valley, Ohio. Ellie wants to marry Brick McGinty. She wants to go to nursing school. It seems Ellie has finally figured out how she can get what she wants, even if her grandparents don’t approve.

Brick may be a basketball star at his high school, but he has big plans to go to college on a scholarship to play basketball. That is his chance to escape his abusive father, to be the first in his family to attend college, and to become a man that he can be proud of. Ellie and Brick are determined to succeed together and start a new life in a new place.

Their plans fall apart when Ellie finds out she is pregnant. Realizing that their big dreams will have to be put on hold, the two switch gears and begin to build their family. Ellie and Brick quickly discover that this new life is full of ups and downs. They have to rely on each other and work together to provide a stable and loving home for everyone. Just as they seem to settle back into a rhythm, someone knocks on their front door and delivers news that has the power to destroy their lives.

The Daughters of Erietown follows the evolution of women’s lives over fifty years. While each person in this story may have their own secrets, others have the power to reach out and destroy the precious balance that they have created. This novel discusses the known and the unknown, the whispers that may be true or not, and how you choose to deal with them.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Book Club @ Night – ‘A Very Large Expanse of Sea’ by Tahereh Mafi on November 18

- Stephanie Leave a comment

It’s time for a new book club! On the second Wednesday of the month through December 2020, Book Club @ Night is meeting at 6:30pm to talk about young adult books!

The November meeting will not take place on November 11 as the library is closed on that day in observance of Veterans Day. The November program will meet instead on November 18.

On Wednesday, November 18th, Book Club @ Night will be discussing A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi. Information about how to join is below.

Using GoTo Meeting, patrons will be able to meet to talk about a new book with one of our librarians. Book club books available at the Eastern Avenue Library.

Curious what A Very Large Expanse of Sea is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:

It’s 2002, a year after 9/11. It’s an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She’s tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments–even the physical violence–she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she’s built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her–they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds–and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Book Club @ Night
Wed, Nov 18, 2020 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM (CST)

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/188604317

You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (408) 650-3123

Access Code: 188-604-317

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/188604317

Book Club @ Night – ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ on September 9th

- Stephanie Leave a comment

It’s time for a new book club! On the second Wednesday of the month through December 2020, Book Club @ Night is meeting at 6:30pm to talk about young adult books!

On Wednesday, September 9th, at 6:30pm central, Book Club @ Night will be discussing The Way You Make Me Feel by Maureen Goo. Information about how to join is below.

Using GoTo Meeting, patrons will be able to meet to talk about a new book with one of our librarians. Book club books available at the Eastern Avenue Library.

Curious what The Way You Make Me Feel  is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:

Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn’t so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad’s business. What if taking this summer seriously means that Clara has to leave her old self behind?

This book is also available in the following formats:

The November meeting will not take place on November 11 as the library is closed on that day in observance of Veterans Day. The November program will meet instead on November 18.

Book Club @ Night
Wed, Sep 9, 2020 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM (CDT)

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/433493381

You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (872) 240-3212

Access Code: 433-493-381

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/433493381

No Judgments by Meg Cabot

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Meg Cabot has long been a favorite author of mine for a number of years ever since she released her Princess Diaries series in the early 2000’s. She released a new book in the fall of 2019 called No Judgments that peeked my interest from the swirly cover and the main character’s pink hair on the cover.

No Judgments by Meg Cabot is the first book in the Little Bridge Island series. Bree Beckham moved to Little Bridge Island to escape her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend only to find herself in the path of a massive hurricane. Not believing all the hype, Bree doesn’t think that this hurricane is going to be as bad as everyone says it will be. Working at the local diner, Bree is privy to all the happenings of the locals and the news talking about the hurricane. While the locals are boarding up their homes and businesses, Bree is busy dodging calls from her famous worried mother and her intrusive ex-boyfriend.

When the hurricane lands and Little Bridge Island loses all power and cell service, as well as its connection to the mainland, the little peace that Bree made for herself begins to unravel. Not able to get back into her place, Bree’s mind wanders and when she realizes just how many islanders are now stranded off the island with no way to get back to their pets, she has to help. She can’t leave those pets to suffer in the heat with no food or water until their owners come back. She has to do something.

As Bree begins to make a plan, she has no choice but to accept that she needs help. Enter Drew Hartwell, her boss’s seriously sexy nephew. As the two travel across Little Bridge Island looking for lost pets, Bree finds herself falling for Drew. Are her feelings real? Is this island fling the result of them being thrust together by the hurricane? Could Bree and Drew last past the cleanup of the hurricane and the power being turned back on or is it just a stormy relationship meant to kill time? Bree isn’t sure what to believe in, but she knows that those pets need her help.

This book is also available in the following formats:

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Sometimes I am overcome with the urge to walk the shelves and immerse myself in books. It centers me, lets me interact more with patrons, and also check the condition of books. With the recent closure of the Library to patrons, I found myself searching for books that I remembered patrons telling me to read. Up popped The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. Thorne was mentioned to me by a regular who thought I would enjoy a contemporary romance. She was right!

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne tells the story of two publishing companies, Gamin Publishing and Bexley Books, that are forced to merge in order to survive, as well as the people affected by this merger. Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeton find themselves squaring off a daily basis as a direct result of this. Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants to the co-CEOs of the newly merged publishing company. The two are not friends, to put it nicely. They may have similar jobs, but that doesn’t mean they have to like each other. In fact, Lucy and Joshua hate each other and they aren’t shy about saying so. They show their feelings through passive aggressive games they play throughout the day, constantly working to frustrate and intimidate each other.

This status quo of hate and frustration continues on until their bosses announce a new job opening in the company. Lucy and Joshua are both put up for the promotion that will result in one being the other’s boss. Things couldn’t get worse. Even more consumed with beating the other, tensions rise until their dynamic abruptly shifts with an unexpected kiss. Both up for promotion, this high-stakes game of professional sabotage ratchets up as the two struggle with whether or not the feelings they have for each other are real or if this is instead another game.

I found The Hating Game to be serious, sharp, funny, full of happiness, and chock full of delicious chemistry and tender moments. This office romance about two sworn enemies had me hooked from the beginning and hoping that the two would end up together. Give this book a read (or a listen) and let me know what you thought about it in the comments below.

According to author Sally Thorne’s website, The Hating Game is being made into a movie starring Lucy Hale, Robbie Amell, and Gina Torres as revealed in 2019. Hopefully that comes to fruition!

This book is also available in the following formats:

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Sophie Kinsella was one of my favorite authors in high school. I stopped reading her when I went away to college, but recently started reading her books again when I discovered her newest book, I Owe You One.

I Owe You One tells the story of Fixie Farr. For as long as she can remember, Fixie has felt the urgent need to put things right. If a friend needs help, if a shelf is stained, if a picture is crooked, Fixie has to fix it. She starts to fidget, bouncing and moving around until things are back to normal.

This trait is something that her friends and family members often take advantage of, but Fixie has trouble acknowledging this. Ever since her father died, Fixie started to take his motto: ‘Family First’ even more to heart. If any family member asks for help, she is always willing to help for anything.

Stopping at a coffee shop on her way home, a handsome stranger asks her to watch his laptop so he can step out to take a call. Fixie agrees and actually ends up saving the laptop from destruction. As a result, the grateful owner Sebastian writes an IOU on a coffee sleeve, attaches his business card to it, and tells Fixie that he owes her and to let him know how he can help her. Fixie does not believe that this was genuine and laughs off his offer. She would never accept an IOU from a complete stranger.

When she arrives back home, her childhood crush Ryan shows up unexpectedly. Ryan is having a hard time getting a job, believing that he deserves much more than a mediocre job since he used to work in Hollywood. Learning that Seb owes Fixie a favor, they decide to ask Seb to give Ryan a job.

Seb and Fixie begin to have a relationship as IOUs flow back and forth between the two. These range from small insignificant and life-changing ones. Throughout all of these interactions, Fixie finds herself wanting to leave her current ‘family first’ focused life to find a life that makes herself happier. As tensions come to a head and her mother’s return home from a long vacation looms closer, Fixie realizes that she must make a change if she wants her family to start taking her seriously.

I enjoyed listening to this book. Watching Fixie grow throughout this book and seeing her character develop had me rooting that she would get the life that she wanted. Give this a read and let me know what you think.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Have you ever been to a renaissance faire? I spent quite a few summers growing up going to the local faire with my family. I was fascinated that there were people who made this their life for the whole summer, but had other lives outside of the faire. Faires serve as ways to experience the past, but with the knowledge that you can go back to your regular present life!

Well Met by Jen DeLuca takes the concept of past vs. present and runs with it. Willow Creek, Maryland is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Trying to keep anything quiet can be pretty difficult, but there are charms to living in such a small area. Emily is having a hard time seeing the positives, but she’s working on it. Emily moved her entire life to Willow Creek to help her sister recover from a bad accident. Being dropped into this new life, she works hard to alleviate any stress on her sister by making lists to navigate her new life. Instead of working two jobs, Emily spends her days running her sister to appointments and chauffeuring her niece around.

Driving her niece to the high school one day, Emily soon finds herself volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire so that her niece can participate. Emily bumps into Simon, an irritating schoolteacher who is in charge of the volunteers. While they don’t initially get along, Emily is forced to keep working with Simon since the faire is a huge part of his family. The faire is very important to Simon and Emily’s joking approach to the whole experience, plus her insistence that some aspects of faire should change, only further work to irk and anger Simon.

Once faire begins however, Simon slips into a new persona. Gone is the stuffy English teacher and in his place lives a completely new, and likeable, person. This new Simon flirts openly with Emily as she works at the tavern in her revealing wench outfit. The drastic difference between the two confuses Emily. Is the attraction she’s feeling towards Simon at the faire real? Or is it just part of their characters, the part of faire that Simon is always telling them that they need to portray?

Emily is more confused than ever as she works to figure out what she is going to do after the summer is over and her sister has recovered from her accident. She was only supposed to stay in Willow Creek until her sister recovered, but the more time she spends in the community, and the more she gets to know Simon, the more Emily is thinking that she might want to make a permanent home in Willow Creek. But should she? What about Simon? Where will she stay? Will everyone in Willow Creek grow to accept her?

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Romance novels usually contain elements of real life that readers can relate to. The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez discusses the difficulties of infertility, how to navigate new relationships, and how to handle varying degrees of loss.

The Friend Zone  by Abby Jimenez is a heartwarming romantic comedy that at times delves into deep and sensitive topics. Kristen Petersen hates drama. She is blunt, to the point, and knows what she wants. While she doesn’t have many close family members or friends, Kristen will do anything for the ones that she does have. Her straightforwardness means that Kristen is very quick to dismiss guys who don’t understand her or those that she just doesn’t like. While she is quite frank, there is a major secret that she is keeping from everyone: Kristen has been experiencing major medical issues for years and in order to find some relief, she has chosen to go through a medical procedure that will result in her not being able to have children.

This secret is tearing her up on the inside. Kristen’s best friend is going to be married soon. Helping her to plan the wedding has left Kristen feeling unsure and angry because of how her life is turning out. Her sadness deepens when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. Josh is everything that she ever wanted. He’s funny, sexy, her dog loves him, and he seems to be able to read her mind. Josh ends up working for Kristen which allows the two to learn more about each other. Several circumstances converge to keep the two apart however. The biggest one: Kristen has a boyfriend. Another one: Josh wants a big family someday. He mentions it to her several different times.

Kristen decides that she needs to keep Josh away from her. She knows that she won’t be able to give him what he wants and that he would be much better off with someone else. The more she pushes him away, the closer they get though.  Kristen isn’t sure what else to do, while Josh isn’t sure why she’s pushing him away.

This book had me cringing at moments wondering why the two just didn’t take time to talk to each other, but also had me recognizing that since I have never gone through any fertility issues, I was unable to fully understand what was happening. All in all, I enjoyed the twists and turns of this book. Check it out and let me know what you think of it in the comments below!

The Marriage Clock by Zara Raheem

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The Marriage Clock by Zara Raheem is a perfect light and get-your-mind-distracted read to help you get ready for summer and for wedding season(or to just take a break from life). Even though summer is over, I still found this book to be a delightfully fresh debut from a new author.

The Marriage Clock is Raheem’s discussion of traditional vs. modern marriage customs in Indian families told as one woman’s struggle to keep everyone in her life happy. 26-year-old Leila Abid has always imagined getting married. Her parents want her to get married too and the fact that Leila isn’t married yet is something that they find very concerning. You see, as an East Indian/East Euro-Asian woman, Leila’s parents believe that marriage is half of their religious duty. Arranged marriages happen all the time, but growing up in America, Leila has slightly more give in terms of how early she was married.

At her 26th birthday party, Leila’s parents sit her down and tell her that she has three months to find a husband before they will arrange a marriage for her. Shocked and not happy with this news, Leila agrees as long as her mother backs off from the set-ups. Leila goes on blind dates, online dates, speed dates, ambush dates, and other dates in those three months, but sadly no great love comes to sweep her off her feet.

Leila has great expectations for love. She has always imagined a Bollywood romance with seven pages of what she’s expecting from her future husband. One of her biggest requests: she wants real love before she’s married. This deviates from the norm as with most traditional Indian arranged marriages, love does not happen until after marriage. Leila knows she doesn’t want that.

As her three month deadline looms closer, Leila finds herself wondering what her parents have in store for her. The longer she searches for a husband, the more Leila realizes that an arranged marriage is not for her. But if she doesn’t go through with one, how will her parents ever forgive her? Leila must find a solution that will keep her parents happy and will let her find a man to fall in love with.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The cover of this book caught my eye. Flipping through the book, I realized that it revolves around the New York City theater world during the 1940s. I looked into the author and discovered that this Elizabeth Gilbert was the same author who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, among other fiction and non-fiction titles.

City of Girls  by Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of Vivian Morris. After receiving a letter from a male friend’s daughter asking for Vivian to finally explain to her what her relationship really was to her father, Vivian uses City of Girls as a long-form letter to the woman. Ninety-five-year-old Vivian looks back on her youth with a mix of sadness, regret, pleasure, and passion. Through this book, Vivian learns about her body, sexuality, and female promiscuity. She learns how to heal from various wrongs done to her and wrongs that she has committed.

In the summer of 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris arrives in New York to live with her aunt. Having been kicked out of Vassar College, Vivian, along with her suitcase and sewing machine, is relegated to New York by her parents who just don’t know what to do with her. Luckily for Vivian, she soon finds lodging and employment at her Aunt Peg’s dilapidated theatre, the Lily Playhouse, as the seamstress. Vivian learned how to sew from her grandmother and is good at making something out of nothing. By just looking at someone’s body type or looking at an outfit/type of fabric, Vivian can figure out what is wrong, what needs to be changed, and what would look best on someone.

Vivian quickly becomes the talk of the showgirl community as word circulates that she can make glamorous costumes out of seemingly nothing. The longer she stays at the Lily Playhouse, the more interesting characters she meets. Vivian meets showgirls, sexy actors, a famous actress, a disgruntled writer, and her aunt’s friend who serves as the stage manager trying to keep the Lily Playhouse alive. Vivian’s new life brings another new and exciting chapter of discovery: sex. Vivian discovers what makes her happy and that she has the power to make herself happy no matter what other people think.

When Vivian makes a personal mistake that threatens to ruin both her personal and professional lives, she is forced to start a new life again. The consequences of her actions will take her years to unravel and understand. The new life she makes for herself will lead her down a path she never imagined for herself: a life where she understands what she actually wants and how she has to behave/act/live in order to have it. Vivian also meets the love of her life while she is making a new name for herself. This love is completely different than anything else she has experienced before, but it proves to change her the most.

City of Girls is a glittery and glamorous look at ninety-five years of life. Vivian is able to look back at her life and acknowledge how the actions that she made changed the course of her life forever. Her life would have shifted to a more traditional role and been completely different if she had chosen one different path. Vivian was never afraid of what life threw at her. She was able to live an autonomous life that was not available to many women who grew up during the same time period as her.

This book is also available in the following formats: