Comfort Read Bonanza

Having a rough time, and YA comfort reads are helping. My own personal version of a Read Easier Challenge (although Harder is not always harder; that book about Gettysburg turned out to be a page-turner). Most of these were well above average, too!

See You Yesterday (by Rachel Lynn Solomon)

About a girl who gets stuck in a time loop and the boy who's stuck in there with her: Groundhog Day meets Palm Springs meets adorable YA romance. I loved the characters and the plot and the writing. Amazing chemistry and just all around young adult romcom perfection.

Blaine for the Win (by Robbie Couch)

My least favorite of the four, it was pretty predictable and the romance lacked chemistry for me. Plus Blaine had two things he kept promising to do and then forgetting to do for other people, and this is a personal trigger for me and was so annoying that I wanted to throttle him.

Not My Problem (by Ciara Smyth)

The fact that this ended too soon was my only critique.  Smyth is an amazing writer, the setting (Ireland) is refreshing, the F/F chemistry is great, and it has emotional depth. Nothing is obvious or predictable and every character is well drawn.  I loved it so much that I immediately checked out her next one....

Falling in Love Montage (by Ciara Smyth)

Equally great! Not sure which one I liked better but this one is so good too.  Plays with the tropes of romcoms and has a beautiful, bittersweet, yet hopeful ending. I definitely cried at the end of this one and whatever Smyth writes next, I will immediately read.

The Killer Angels (by Michael Shaara)

I read this for the "read an award-winning book from the year you were born" category: The Killer Angels, an historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the year I was born.

Not sure how I landed on this book as I am not usually a person who reads war books or historical novels or books with only white men in them, plus this has a ton of battlefield description (and I hate descriptions of scenery) yet this was so compelling I couldn't put it down. It is written from the perspective of some of the key players at Gettysburg, both Union and Confederate, and is completely vivid and humanizing.  

I did have to look up the author's assertion that Robert E. Lee was "against slavery." He wasn't. There are some issues with how the author engages on the topic but "the South claims this war isn't about slavery but it's totally about slavery" is definitely articulated.  But Shaara is more interested in exploring the battle itself and the heroic actions of men on both sides and on those terms, it's a compelling story.

This is like, the opposite of a book I thought I would read and enjoy. And yet, I loved reading it.

Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office (by Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman)

This is a spinoff of Baumgartner's "The Office Deep Dive" podcast (available in the archives here) and pulls from interviews of the cast and crew of The Office to tell the story of the show. I haven't had time to listen to the podcast and I love oral histories, so this book was great.

I always want these oral histories to be even juicier, denser, longer, with more interviews. But that's just me being greedy - it's really good! 

Florida Vacation Reads

I had much less time for reading on this trip, but still managed a bunch on the flights (and one long layover).  Mostly fluff.

Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science) (by Brianna R. Shrum) 

Great Jewish representation with a charming main character. Jewish culture was important to both characters and this characterization felt very rich. Fun writing, sex-positive, kind of effortless-feeling and overall a delightful romcom.  Possibly my favorite of the YAs on this list.

Sorrow and Bliss (by Meg Mason)

It's not all YA on this list: this is literary fiction that was longlisted for the 2022 Woman's Prize in Fiction (and thus qualifies in that category for the Read Harder Challenge). I loved this.  Funny but also so emotional. (My notes read: "It's a JOURNEY.")  The main character is dealing with mental illness, complex family relationships, and the breakup of her marriage, yet it's still also somehow fun?  Not sure how Meg Mason did this but highly recommend.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler (by Casey McQuiston)

Possibly one of my most-anticipated books of the year and weirdly, the second book on this list with kissing in the title. Casey McQuiston's first YA and it's a F/F romance: my expectations were sky high. It has some great stuff, especially the side characters, but the third-person narration didn't work for me, the main character was just this side of unlikeable, and I appreciated the complexity of the love interest but ultimately I wasn't all that invested.  Not bad per se but I was super disappointed.

Loveless (by Alice Oseman) 

Recommended by reader S. as a possible better alternative for the asexual/aromantic category of the RHC, and it definitely was. (This aspect of the book is front and center.) It started out super slow, with the main character - despite being Very Online and super into Tumblr culture - not even having heard of asexuality and being extremely slow on the uptake about it.  I would absolutely have DNFed it at this point but I pushed through and it really picked up at the halfway mark.  I ended up loving the characters even if there were some unrealistic elements (like how many asexual people happened to be in her life). I think this is more for a younger audience than for me, but I ended up enjoying it, ultimately.

And They Lived… (by by Steven Salvator) 

I tried to mix it up a bit with some sci-fi but ended up DNFing the one I started because it wasn't great and I was super tired by this point, not sure if I'll pick it back up or not. The Kindle gods meant I had this on my phone on the airplane and it ended up being a really great, moving coming of age story that deals with both homophobia and body dysmorphia. Thumbs up on this one.