Well…it’s been a month, y’all. I’ve never been so happy to see September 1.
First, all three of us (me, hubs, and the 13 year old) got symptomatic Covid at the start of the month. (All of us were fully vaccinated.) Hubs had it the worst, ending up with double pneumonia, but none of us had to go to the hospital—though we did make lots of visits to Urgent Care *waves at Beverly*. I’m so glad things didn’t get serious, but getting Covid did wipe out all the exciting things we had planned for August—vacations, a Foo Fighters concert, Brenda Novak coming to visit in person to interview me for her book club, my husband’s band’s first show since Covid started, and kidlet’s first few days of school. But we’re okay and that’s what counts. We’re all doing much better now.
Then this week hit. Many of y’all know I’m originally from Louisiana. Well, most of my family still lives there, and my parents live in Laplace. If you’ve watched the news at all, you’ve probably seen Laplace on all the news stations as they took a direct hit from Hurricane Ida. (My husband’s hometown of Houma was also directly hit.) My parents still live in Laplace and thankfully evacuated, but their house is in one of those neighborhoods they keep showing on TV with all the flooding and roof damage. They can’t get back yet to assess. So, August has been a rough go.
However, while convalescing from Covid and taking care of the fam, I did get some time to read, watch, and listen to things. That’s the beauty of stories, right? We can escape into them for a little while when reality is stressful. So I’m here to tell you my favorites of the month.
Read
In My Dreams, I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
About the book:
Six friends.
One college reunion.
One unsolved murder.Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to her southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent. Not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather Shelby's murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she'd been closest to since freshman year.
But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather's murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years' worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden.
Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won't be able to put down.
My thoughts:
This was my favorite read of the month. Y’all know that I’m a huge fan of campus novels—particularly ones with a dark edge—so this hit that sweet spot. (Want more campus novel recs? Check out this list.)
This novel was everything I wanted it to be. Even though I’m prone to like a campus novel, I'm pretty picky about mysteries. I need them to be at least somewhat character-driven and not plot only. This one had both. It's not an easy thing to have a cast of seven important characters and make them all feel distinct. I didn't have to flip back once to see--wait, which character is this again? And I loved the dual timelines of their years in college and then ten years later at homecoming. It kept me turning the pages and trying to figure out who the killer was. I didn't guess. There were lots of red herrings that worked.
If you need your characters lovable, then this might not be for you. These characters were all flawed, but the author did a good job of showing why they were the way they were and that made them (most of them) sympathetic. (And as someone who was salutatorian twice--both in middle school and high school--I resonated with Jessica's salutatorian "always second place" frustration, lol.) Also, there's a tiny bit of a love story mixed in, which did my romance writer heart good.
I don't give out 5 star ratings easily, but this one was an easy one to rate. :) My one caveat is if the opening chapters (before the flashback to the past starts) don’t capture you, keep reading. I wasn’t sure when I first started reading if it was going to be for me, but once I hit those flashback chapters, I was in.
Disclosure: I was provided an ARC by Sourcebooks for an honest review and Sourcebooks is my publisher.
Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach
About the book:
Jenny Rosenstrach, and her husband, Andy, regularly, some might say pathologically, cook dinner for their family every night. Even when they work long days. Even when their kids' schedules pull them in eighteen different directions. They are not superhuman. They are not from another planet.
With simple strategies and common sense, Jenny figured out how to break down dinner—the food, the timing, the anxiety, from prep to cleanup—so that her family could enjoy good food, time to unwind, and simply be together.
Using the same straight-up, inspiring voice that readers of her award-winning blog, Dinner: A Love Story, have come to count on, Jenny never judges and never preaches. Every meal she dishes up is a real meal, one that has been cooked and eaten and enjoyed at least a half dozen times by someone in Jenny's house. With inspiration and game plans for any home cook at any level, Dinner: A Love Story is as much for the novice who doesn't know where to start as it is for the gourmand who doesn't know how to start over when she finds herself feeding an intractable toddler or for the person who never thought about home-cooked meals until he or she became a parent. This book is, in fact, for anyone interested in learning how to make a meal to be shared with someone they love, and about how so many good, happy things happen when we do.
My thoughts:
I picked this one up on a complete whim. It’s on Hoopla, so if your library has that, you can grab it there. Food memoirs are comfort reads for me, so when I was recovering from Covid (and had lost all smell and most of my taste, so couldn’t enjoy anything but kale salads and fruit), reading about this author’s dinner evolution somehow helped.
This is an easy read and technically listed as a cookbook, but I felt like this was much more memoir than cookbook. I loved reading about the author’s journey through making dinner from her early years when she was first married and then through motherhood. A lot of it mirrored my own journey, and it felt nostalgic to read about those days when she was first married and learning to cook.
I came into my marriage knowing how to cook three things—red beans & rice (like a good New Orleans girl), beef roast in a crock pot, and French bread pizza. Now, I own literally hundreds of cookbooks and consider myself a pretty savvy and adventurous cook. And I can look at my cookbook collection and see my own evolution from newlywed, to new mom, to mom of a foodie teen. I didn’t have the picky eater issue Rosentrach talked about when her kids were little, but everything else in the book felt like I’d been there too.
So, if you’re looking for an easy comfort read about food, this one might hit the spot. Plus, there are lots of recipes if you’re looking for that.
Watch
Modern Family (Hulu)
I know I am sooooo late to the boat on this one. When this premiered, my kiddo wasn’t even two yet. I didn’t have much time to watch grownup TV—or you know, brush my hair—so this one flew by me. I’d heard great things and had put it on my “one day” list, but when I was looking for a new show for my whole family to watch together, I decided to see if this one would be a good fit.
I’ve discovered that it is VERY hard to find a show that will entertain both me and the hubs AND also the 13-year old AND be age-appropriate for a young teen. Things are either too silly/kiddie or they jump to full out dirty humor. Not as much falls into the space in between. * puts on my Gen X back-in-my-day hat for a second * Back when I was growing up, sitcoms (and movies) were really good at innuendo that would entertain parents but went over kids heads and still had humor that kids could enjoy too. Those are so much harder to find now. * takes off hat * So I’m so thrilled to have found this one.
Yes, Modern Family has some sexual references, but they handle it in a way that I don’t feel awkward watching it with my 13 year old and he doesn’t feel awkward watching with us. And the show is SO FUNNY. We all regularly belly laugh to the point of losing our breath (which was a bit of a problem when we were still wheezy from Covid!) and it’s just straight up fun to watch. I don’t laugh aloud all that easily, but this one gets me on a regular basis. And it’s just a joy to hear both my husband and kiddo laughing just as hard. Family fun for all.
I’m already sad that we will one day get to the end and we’re only in the second season.
This is Pop (Netflix)
We are a music-loving family over here, so when I saw the description for this show, we decided to try it out. Each episode is a standalone documentary about a particular thing in pop music. For instance, there’s an episode about Boyz II Men, an episode about the rise of autotune, one on how Sweden played a huge role in pop music, another on the Brill Building.
The whole thing was fascinating and I learned so much. For instance, I now can’t NOT hear when a singer is autotuned—and realize that it’s kind of ruined pop music in a lot of ways. I also now can’t stop noticing nonsense lyrics from 90s/00s pop songs—lyrics I’ve sang over and over and never thought, “what does that even mean?” I want it that way. What way? What it do you want? The Backstreet Boys don’t even know. Lol.
The fam enjoyed the episodes too. You can hop around and don’t have to watch them in order if one topic interest you more than another. If you like music, I highly recommend checking these out—but be prepared to have the curtain peeled back on a few things.
Listen
Open Book by Jessica Simpson
About the book:
Jessica reveals for the first time her inner monologue and most intimate struggles. Guided by the journals she's kept since age 15, and brimming with her unique humor and down-to-earth humanity, Open Book is as inspiring as it is entertaining.
This was supposed to be a very different book. Five years ago, Jessica Simpson was approached to write a motivational guide to living your best life. She walked away from the offer, and nobody understood why. The truth is that she didn’t want to lie.
Jessica couldn’t be authentic with her listeners if she wasn’t fully honest with herself first.
Now, America’s Sweetheart, preacher’s daughter, pop phenomenon, reality TV pioneer, and the billion-dollar fashion mogul invites listeners on a remarkable journey, examining a life that blessed her with the compassion to help others but also burdened her with an almost crippling need to please. Open Book is Jessica Simpson using her voice, heart, soul, and humor to share things she’s never shared before.
First celebrated for her voice, she became one of the most talked-about women in the world, whether for music and fashion, her relationship struggles, or as a walking blonde joke. But now, instead of being talked about, Jessica is doing the talking. Her audiobook shares the wisdom and inspirations she’s learned and shows the real woman behind all the pop-culture clichés - "chicken or fish", "Daisy Duke", "football jinx", "mom jeans", "sexual napalm..." and more. Open Book is an opportunity to laugh and cry with a close friend, one that will inspire you to live your best, most authentic life, now that she is finally living hers.
My thoughts:
If y’all haven’t caught on to the pattern yet, I love a celebrity memoir audiobook narrated by the celebrity. This one took me a little longer to get through than Busy Phillips’ memoir that I read (and loved) in July. I think maybe because this one had less humor and tackled a number of heavy topics (TW: sexual abuse, alcoholism.) However, it was a good listen and I really did feel like she was being very open and vulnerable.
My favorite parts were when she was describing the years of trying out for the Mickey Mouse Club at the same time as Britney, Justin, Ryan Gosling, and Christina, and how not being part of that group kind of followed her (being the outsider.) I also enjoyed hearing the behind the scenes stuff about her and Nick Lachey’s reality show Newlyweds—which I most definitely watched every episode of when it was on, lol. (We’re close in age so I was only two years into my marriage when the show was on.)
She talks a lot about her faith and growing up with a pastor father. She gives dirt on people—looking at you, John Mayer. And unlike a lot of memoirs that feel very “I’ve been through these things and now I’m on the other side and have all this distance and perspective”, I feel like she’s still living through a lot of things. So, she has perspective on some but is still working through others.
And I had no idea that she was billionaire—yes, with a B—mogul because of her fashion company. Go on, Jessica.
Overall, a worthwhile listen but beware the heavy parts. Not one to listen to while your kids are in the car.
Alright, that’s it for this month’s round-up! What have you read/watched/listened to this month that was great?
