I’m sharing some of the books that I’ve really enjoyed reading over the last few months.
I usually share what I’m reading on Instagram (follow me here) or in Friday Favorites posts, but I thought I would put together a post with some of the books that I’ve been enjoying over the last few months.
For the last few years I’ve been reading a lot more than I have before thanks to ebooks from my local library. I get emails when my holds are ready and they’re automatically downloaded to my phone using the Libby app. When they’re due they’re deleted from my phone automatically and there’s nothing else that I have to do – I don’t even have to even set foot into the library building. Have you embraced ebooks or do you like reading physical ones?
The Banker’s Wife
Thrillers typically aren’t my go to genre of books, but I ended up really liking The Banker’s Wife (affiliate link) by Cristina Alger. It help my interest throughout the book and the twists and turns it took me on to the very end. Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
On an early morning in November, a couple boards a private plane bound for Geneva, flying into a storm. Soon after, it simply drops off the radar, and its wreckage is later uncovered in the Alps. Among the disappeared is Matthew Werner, a banking insider at Swiss United, a powerful offshore bank. His young widow, Annabel, is left grappling with the secrets he left behind, including an encrypted laptop and a shady client list. As she begins a desperate search for answers, she determines that Matthew’s death was no accident, and that she is now in the crosshairs of his powerful enemies.
Meanwhile, ambitious society journalist Marina Tourneau has finally landed at the top. Now that she’s engaged to Grant Ellis, she will stop writing about powerful families and finally be a part of one. Her entry into the upper echelons of New York’s social scene is more appealing than any article could ever be, but, after the death of her mentor, she agrees to dig into one more story. While looking into Swiss United, Marina uncovers information that implicates some of the most powerful men in the financial world, including a few who are too close to home. The story could also be the answer to Annabel’s heartbreaking search–if Marina chooses to publish it.
The Women in the Castle
I’m a huge fan of historical fiction – it’s probably my favorite thing to read – so when I saw that The Women in the Castle (affiliate link) by Jessica Shattuck was recommended, I knew I wanted to read it. I put it on hold at the library and a few months later I got an email that it was available.
I thought that this book was a bit different from most of the ones I’ve read set in Germany. The Women in the Castle takes place after the end of the war and how the war changed the lives of many Germans.
Here’s the description from Amazon:
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
The German Midwife
Speaking of historical fiction books that are set during WWII in Germany, I also recently finished reading The German Midwife (affiliate link) by Mandy Robotham.
I really liked this book though it was hard to read at times because it was so depressing. It really brought home to be how absolutely terrible and miserable it was to be a pregnant woman in a concentration camp.
It follows the main character who is a midwife before the war. She’s chosen to help Eva Braun deliver her baby. Obviously that didn’t actually happen, but it was definitely interesting to think about what would have happened if it did.
Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:
Germany, 1944. A prisoner in the camps, Anke Hoff is doing what she can to keep her pregnant campmates and their newborns alive.
But when Anke’s work is noticed, she is chosen for a task more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. Eva Braun is pregnant with the Führer’s child, and Anke is assigned as her midwife.
Before long, Anke is faced with an impossible choice. Does she serve the Reich she loathes and keep the baby alive? Or does she sacrifice an innocent child for the good of a broken world?
Good in Bed
I’ve head a few of Jennifer Weiner’s books so far and I liked this one as much as her other ones. It was a great chick lit book to read during the summer when I didn’t want something too heavy to read. Even though she wrote about some potentially tough topics like break ups and grief, she did so in a light hearted way and didn’t take itself too seriously. Good in Bed (affiliate link) is definitely one of those books that would be great to read on the beach.
Here’s the summary from Amazon:
For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She’s even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body.
But the day she opens up a national women’s magazine and sees the words “Loving a Larger Woman” above her ex-boyfriend’s byline, Cannie is plunged into misery…and the most amazing year of her life. From Philadelphia to Hollywood and back home again, she charts a new course for herself: mourning her losses, facing her past, and figuring out who she is and who she can become.
What have you been reading lately that you’ve really enjoyed? I love to find out what books other people are reading.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting my blog, I appreciate it!