Looking Back: Books

The year is half over now and it is time for another book check in! Since I posted in February about the handful of good books that I had read so far, I have found a few more good ones! Without further ado, here are a few more of my favorites so far this year. 

All The Broken Places by John Boyne: I know I am not the first person to suggest this book, so I will not go into too much detail. It is about an elderly woman living in London. When a new family moves in downstairs from her, it brings up some memories of the past, which are mostly surrounding her escape from Nazi Germany at age 12 and the fact that her father was the commandant of one of the concentration camps during the war. It goes back and forth between the two time periods, weaving a story of guilt, complicity, grief and remorse and in the end, she has to decide whether or not to reveal some of her long kept secrets. 

Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen: Although I work in the finance industry, I enjoyed this book because it is written in a simple manner that anyone can understand. Shen talks about growing up in China where her family lived on pennies per day, to moving to the US where she learned how to invest so that she could quit work early and travel the world. Her plan is pretty simple and you may have heard it before but it is still a nice reminder that we can live more simply than we do and perhaps spend more time enjoying our lives now rather than always working so hard to make more money for the future. 

In Love by Amy Bloom: Get your tissues out for this one. This is not a spoiler, but this book is about a woman whose husband gets diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and he decides to die with dignity rather than living out his life with the disease. Obviously this is not an easy decision and Bloom goes through some of the struggles that they face as they work through the plan. 

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys: Although this is a YA book, it touches on something that we sometimes forget about here in the US, and that is the fact that as late as 1989, people in Romania were still under communist rule. The main character is a teenager who has normal teenage dreams but is held back by the government oppression and has to decide whether to do nothing or to fight back and risk the lives of his family. 

Kindred by Octavia Butler: This book took me by surprise. The author was recommended to me by a client who is very involved in minorities in the arts, and she said that Butler was the first published African American science fiction writer. I am not big into science fiction, but I thought I would give this book, written in 1979, a whirl, and I really enjoyed it. Yes, it involves time travel, but it is about a modern day African American woman who keeps getting sent back in time to the slavery days, and how she handles the differences between the two time periods. Apparently there is also a TV show, but I have not yet seen it. 

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks: I am a sucker for a thriller and this one was a fun one. A couple comes into therapy due to infidelity and the therapist has some unconventional ways to try to get them to work through their problems. In trying to get them to do so, she uncovers some secrets that she did not expect. I listened to this while backpacking and it kept me entertained over many miles. 

Some others that I gave four stars on Goodreads include: Hello Beautiful by Janet Napolitano, I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, I Will Find You by Harlan Coben, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, A Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell, and many more. You can find my entire list of 2023 books read and reviewed here on Goodreads. 

Have you read any of the above books? If so, what did you think? What has been your favorite book so far this year?