This year I decided that the reading challenge that I would set for myself would be… no challenge. Life is challenging enough, I absolutely will not be engaging in “challenge” for fun in 2024 and that’s my one resolution.

Anyway! Here’s everything I read this month (all five stars in my book). Reminder, any purchases made from the links on this page go to support our bookstore, Twice Told Tales in McPherson KS!

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Come & Get It by Kiley Reid
Download the audiobook here.
Get the hardcover here or stop in to Twice Told Tales

This book took me back to my college days—in a really good way. Early adulthood is such a special time of life where we are stressing about the decisions that we need to make that will affect us for the rest of our lives—but sometimes it’s the decisions we don’t know we’re even making that stick with us the longest.

This story primarily takes place in a dorm on the University of Arkansas campus where Millie is an RA. We get to know Millie and the students who live on her floor—particularly a group of suite-mates who live next door to her.

I really like Kiley Reid’s storytelling style (if you read her last book, Such a Fun Age, you know what I’m talking about) and the way that this book got me thinking about who I was when I was younger.

Family Family by Laurie Frankel
Download the audiobook here.
Buy the hardcover here or stop into Twice Told Tales.

I have loved every single one of Laurie Frankel’s books that I’ve read. In that way that when you finish the last page, you close the book and hug it to your chest. The same way I feel when I finish a Barbara Kingsolver book. The families in Laurie Frankel’s stories are so real. And sometimes when people use words like “honest” and “real” when they’re talking about books they mean “trauma filled” and “mean”. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. There’s trauma in this book in the same way that there’s no family out there that hasn’t experienced it–but what makes it honest is the way that Frankel shows her characters putting one foot in front of another to get through it and when you’re trying your best sometimes you fuck up in such a stupid way and on your very best day you’re able to laugh about it.

In this book, India is a famous actor who has two kids and just put out a movie about adoption. This movie focuses on the traumas of adoption and, as can be expected, the public isn’t wild about it. So when she’s asked for a comment, she’s honest that she thinks her movie missed the mark. Now the studios are mad at her, people on the internet are mad at her (because people on the internet are always mad). Her past life is becoming very public very fast and as she’s trying to mitigate this disaster her family gets even more complicated. We get to see India and her two kids juggle a public life, a private life, a past life, and what’s coming tomorrow all against the backdrop of “crisis mode”. In my opinion, they all flail their way through it with grit and grace and colossal fuckups.

The Fury by Alex Michaelides
Listen to the audiobook here.
Get the hardcover here or at Twice Told Tales.

This is the second book by Alex Michaelides that I’ve read and I’m starting to sense that writing from an unreliable narrator’s perspective is his sweet spot. Though I’m still not 100% sure that this narrator was unreliable. It’s been a week and I’m still thinking about this book.

It’s a quick mystery taking place on a tiny, private Greek island. A former movie star (big time–like, Marilyn Monroe but in 2024) grabs her friends and family and whisks them off to her island for an impromptu weekend away. Someone dies. That’s literally all I can tell you.

I love the locked-room, Agatha Christie vibes of this story. I also just realized that I read two books about movie stars this month.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Listen to the audiobook here.
Order the book here or stop in to Twice Told Tales next week to pick it up on Pub Day.

I have been so excited to write about how much I loved this book. I’ll try not to spoil anything.

Ricki Wilde has extricated herself from her very rich, very controlling family in Atlanta and has moved to Harlem to open her dream floral shop. She found the perfect spot in a building that hasn’t been touched since the 1920’s–the height of the Harlem Renaissance. She meets a very sexy stranger and for reasons she can’t understand she is drawn to him like a magnet.

Now, I love a romance because sometimes I just want a predictable fluffy book to read. That’s not what this is! It’s sweet but it’s got some salt too and I didn’t find it predictable in that genre-reading kind of way. In general I had no idea where we were going with this book and I loved that. While most of this book takes place in 2024 (February of 2024 to be exact–the leap day plays a part in this story!), there are some flashbacks to the Harlem Renaissance so we get to catch glimpses of folks like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Josaphine Baker, etc. This book was excellent. And now I’m going to be on the hunt for Seven Days in June and every other book that Tia Williams will ever write.