Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elyssa Friedland.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Spanning generations, this fun, lighthearted book is about the Goldman and Weingold families, who ran the successful Catskills resort, the Golden Hotel.
But as years past and air travel picks up, the tourist traffic to the Golden winds down, and the two families gather for a week to discuss possibly selling their beloved hotel to people who want to convert it into a casino.
If you’re all about nostalgia and romanticizing your past like I am, this book is a perfect fit for you. It really takes you back to the era when the Catskills resorts thrived, when multiple families vacationed together all summer, before the era of internet.
It’s about respecting traditions while adapting to the modern climate, about the family you’re born to and the family you choose and the importance of legacy.
It was such a fun read & made me crave for a summer like the multiple ones the families had.
The Neighbor’s Secret by L. Alison Heller.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Set in the idyllic Cottonwood Estates neighborhood, this book is about a group of suburban moms, their kids and all the secrets brewing in their lives.
It’s a perfect fit for fans of Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere. I love stories like this, in seemingly perfect neighborhood as these women mix and mingle while something simmers under the surface, bubbling until it reaches a boiling point. For fans of such
books, this is a perfect fit. I totally enjoyed it and found it unputtdownable.
An epic space odyssey that influenced the science fiction genre for decades to come.
I love how vivid and real the world felt, the themes of climate change, fanaticism, good vs evil, amongst other things.
This is the first time I read a book in which each chapter actually went and back between different characters’ POV in the same scene! It took a bit of getting used to, but I think I still really enjoyed it.
The Bene Gesserict politics was easily the most fascinating thing, &
Lady Jessica was my favorite character. The second half of the book did move at a startlingly different pace than the first half did, and that did take some getting used to, but I still was fully immersed in the epic ness of it all.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
A scintillating, riveting final spooky book for October. I absolutely loved this book, and have read nothing like it before.
Set in 1950s Mexico, the book is about Noemi, a spunky, charming young woman who receives a harrowing letter from her cousin & travels to check in on her in her husband’s spooky, gothic house. As she spends more time there, she discovers that all is not how it appears.
The book is a slowburn, simmering until it comes to a full boil. The mystery is intriguing, it’s scary and kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time. And let me tell you…the actual revelation is much scarier & creepier than anything your mind might conjure up.
I nearly screamed in joy when I picked this up from the library!! Another Sally Rooney book, sounded like the perfect October/Fall read despite the lack of spookiness to it.
Like Normal People & Conversations with Friends, Beautiful World also follows a few millennials as they try to define love, sex, relationships and the world around them.
The book is centered around Alice and Eileen, long time best friends, and the slow
simmering love affairs they have with Felix and Simon respectively. Most of the book interchanges between Alice & Eileen, interspersed with long emails between the two best friends.
After a faculty member is accused of sexually assaulting an alumnae years ago, we see into the lives & perspectives of young girls in the Atwater Boarding school, as they face this news, & also contemplate their girlhood.
While this book is about sexual assault, imbalanced power dynamics between students and teachers and the establishments that fail to protect these young girls, it’s also really about girlhood. About being a teenage girl in a world that seems so much larger than her,
on the cusp of breaking into the real world, while also living when your emotions are most strong and raw and real. The uncertainty, the unbridled hope.