April 26, 2025 marks the first time I’ve missed being a bookstore owner since we sold the shop back in September. It was Independent Bookstore Day and I kept remembering the dramatics of how that day felt. You’re so excited so you make big plans! Like stuffing give-away bags or bringing in musicians or pop-up shops or planning an extra special story time–and then the day before you find a way to convince yourself that there’s no way anyone’s showing up and you’ve just wasted a ton of money on things no one will use and you won’t be able to pay rent and then you’ll have to close your store and the world will end and then and then and then…

And then inevitably–the whole community shows up and buys you clean out of everything. Which is both a blessing and a curse. Such is life as a small business owner!

Anyway, I promoted the hell out of different indie bookstores across the country to my dozens of followers on instagram and it felt really good. I feel like I have a unique perspective as someone who has a lot of insight into the world of bookselling and small business ownership but no longer has to keep a customer-service personality at all times. I feel like I have a lot to say in that regard but I have no idea what people want to know. I’m really good at answering questions or chatting about a topic presented to me–not so good at coming up with the topic myself. Which is why this blog has had one singular theme for the past… 4? years?

April also marks another first since I sold the store–I read an audiobook!! 😀 I’m back, baby!! Anyway–let’s get into what we’ve been reading.

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Out of the Woods by Hannah Bonam-Young

One of my dear internet friends, Jackie, had an HBY author event at her store in Florida. When it was over, she sent me a signed copy of this ARC because she knew how much I loved the last book in this series. Jackie and I didn’t even meet through being booksellers! I love the internet even more than I hate it.

Anyway I ADORED this book! Oh, I related to this main character so much. She and her husband have been married for 10 years and she is in kind of an “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life” sort of space right now. Sound like someone else you know (points at self)? She even had a parent die just after she graduated from high school (just like me). Uncanny.

Anyway–she and her husband are feeling a little… stagnant in their marriage and decide that they need to go on a week-long couples’ camping trip in the wilderness. Even though neither of them have ever gone camping before. So fun.

I liked this book because of the way that Hannah Bonam-Young can take romance (a genre that can, let’s be honest, get kind of repetitive at times) and turn it into something that we’ve never seen before. I mean I, at least, have never read a contemporary romance about a married couple! Usually once they get married, they become supporting characters in other stories within the series but they’re done. They lived happily ever after, after all right? Well… maybe not.

Anyway–because of her ability to spin this genre on its head while keeping what we love about it, I’m a loyalty reader of HBY from now on.

Now, onto something completely different…

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

I found myself at Red Fern Booksellers in Salina KS and while I was there I saw the cover of this book and I was drawn in. First of all–something about reading books that take place in the south is almost a guaranteed yes for me. I don’t know why. And I had no idea what I was looking at with this cover but I loved it. But finally, I saw this was written by T. Kingfisher–an author that most of my friends are obsessed with. The only other thing I’ve ever read by her was a middle grade book about a baking wizard who has a sourdough starter as a familiar and a gingerbread man that sits on her shoulder everywhere she goes. Highly recommend, btw.

But generally speaking I’m not that into middle-grade OR fantasy. So that was kind of a one-off for me. But this was a horror book–and I’ve been trying to get myself out of my contemporary romance rut. So I snagged this. And DAMN IT WAS SO GOOD!

Look, I can’t tell you what this book is about but I can tell you that it’s hilarious. So even when it’s scary–the tension relaxes a lot with the narrator’s side-track rants or little jokes. Which is what I need in my horror, tbh. The rest that I can give you is just a list of words and phrases and hope it’s enough to convince you to read it: grandma’s house, rose. garden. filled with. thorns, suburbia, buried family secrets (literally), and… VULTURES.

Oh! And then I read an audiobook in two days. Finally. I’ve missed plowing through books and that’s basically the only way that I can do that.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

This is one of those that I keep hearing about everywhere–everyone saying it’s so good. And I gotta agree. I loved this one!

At first I worried that it was just going to be a typical sad-girl-book (which used to be my bread and butter but I just can not abide these days, personally). And, sure, there’s a sad girl. But… nah. You know, plot-wise it’s a LITTLE like A Man Called Ove. LOL!

Our main character goes to a really fancy hotel to… how do people on the internet say this? Unalive herself. But then she runs into a bride who is hosting her wedding in this hotel this week and she begs her not to ruin her wedding by making everyone look at a corpse being wheeled through the lobby in the morning. A fair ask, I think. Despite the bummer-sounding opening, this book was really funny and really endearing. I can see it being turned into an excellent dark rom-com starring Allison Brie as Phoebe and Julia Garner as Lila. (I do want to say that in addition to suicide there’s an infertility and divorce theme running through as well.)

Anyway–I love the way that books have these somewhat kooky premisses so that they can really dig into something a lot bigger. Like, this book is ultimately about the way that it’s so hard to ask for what you need. Or even recognize it, sometimes. And A House With Good Bones has to do with generational trauma and also about how sometimes the people who hurt us the most have a lot of hurt inside of them, too.

All of these were five star reads for me! And I’m excited about the books I’ve snagged to read in May, too!

Yeah, I skipped a month. I didn’t read anything in August at all. And I’ve read hardly anything (relatively speaking) in September. There’s a lot of change happening in my life right now and, I’ll be honest, the adjustment period is far longer than I expected it to be.

First of all, I sold our bookstore! We had been planning to do this for well over a year at this point, so I’m kind of shocked that I can say that we did it. The new owner took over last month and it’s been so fun to see the way that she’s changing things and making it her own! She jumped in and made changes that I’d been thinking of but too tired to do for years, now. I’m really excited for the fresh energy that has been injected into this store and I’m thrilled that our local, indie bookstore is still around for our community! Small towns NEED indie bookstores. In my humble opinion.

That being said, I worked in the bookstore since 2016 and as a result, my reading life was weird. I read a lot–but almost never just for the sheer pleasure of it all. I didn’t read anything without wondering how I would sell it, who I might sell it to, how I would write a catchy review about it… If you look back at my previous blog posts, you’ll see that I was reading almost exclusively books that hadn’t been released yet or books that just came out. If a book was more than a few weeks old, I didn’t even bother reading it. I had newer things I needed to be on top of so that I could stock the store with good things that I was intimately familiar with. And that was fun! Getting books before anyone else did was fun. It was also kind of lonely, honestly, because I didn’t have anyone to talk books with. No one had ever read the books I was reading.

And I was also so busy that I hardly ever read physical books. It was all audiobooks all the time. Well, let me tell you, that sure has flipped! I haven’t listened to an audiobook since July–and here it is October (well, tomorrow it will be October). The effects of burnout are far-reaching, turns out. And not quickly healed. I can’t focus on an audiobook at this time. I can focus on thirty minute podcast episodes. I can focus on the new Sabrina Carpenter album. That’s what I can focus on.

That being said, I have finished 2 books (and sadly DNF’d a book) this month! The two books I finished were so good and I got wrapped up in them so quickly. They were also romances. I don’t want my entire book-personality to be just romances. But for right now, those are what are grabbing me. And that’s just fine. I’m going easy on myself.

Wild Love by Elsie Silver

I picked this up because I completely misunderstood and thought that Elsie Silver wrote western romances. And I wanted to challenge myself by reading outside of my usual genre by picking up a western. But instead, I tricked myself into reading my go-to genre instead–a contemporary romance about a billionaire with a heart of gold.

I’ve never read a 500 page book this fast before. I would have thought that 500 pages was excessive for a romance (and generally it is) but the pacing of this book was excellent. At no point did it feel like it was dragging or anything like that.

This is exactly how you do “grumpy meets sunshine” in a way that doesn’t feel forced. The 3rd act “break up” scene is absolutely believable (this will make or break a book for me) and the reunion is just as believable, which is hard to do!

I am not a series reader but I’ll read the entire Rose Hill series, I’m sure of it!

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

God, I love everything Tia Williams writes. She is a master at incorporating the reality of our life and showing the way that we can fit love and wholeness alongside the hurt that we’ve experienced, too. There’s room for all of it.

Eva and Shane fell into a tumultuous and acute love affair when they were both severely traumatized teenagers. When they meet up again as adults, they’re faced with the question of whether or not they are capable of functioning relationship as healed grown-ups. It’s such a powerful conversation and not one you see very often in the romance genre.

I liked both of these books because of how real they felt. A lot of times romance can just feel like mostly silly make believe–and to be clear I also love that when I need it! But as someone who’s hoping to get back into my love of literary fiction. Or, as one friend put it, Sad Bastard Fiction, this was a good first step in that direction.

Now, the book it broke my heart to DNF. This is definitely an It’s Not You, It’s Me situation.

Ever since I started thinking about what I’d read after I sold the store and could read backlist titles again, I’ve been wanting to read Still Life by Louise Penny. She was the author that everyone wanted at the used bookstore and the author that no one ever sold us. She’s so beloved that everyone who buys her books keep them forever and ever–at least that’s how it goes in our town.

So many people whose literature tastes’ mirror my own have gushed to me about Louise Penny. So I went to the library and grabbed the first book in the Inspector Gamache series. I love a small town murder mystery! I love getting to know everyone who lives in the town. And I really loved these characters, too. But it just took me two weeks of regular reading to get even to the half-way mark. I think my brain just isn’t ready for something this beautifully written if I’m being honest. I’ll try to pick it up again next year and I think I’ll love it at that point.

That’s the thing about books–even if they’re not for you right now, it doesn’t mean they’ll never be for you.