Tag: family

TSM Book Club Book #23: Love at First by Kate Clayborn

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Started: June 2nd
Finished: June 11th
TSM Rating: 4/5

Love at First was such a sweet book about family, life, death, and learning how to allow yourself grace and love. Nora and Will are as charming as enemies as they are alluring as a couple. Their neighbors and friends — their found family — provide levity and perspective that helps elevate this from just another “enemies to lovers” story.

Both our protagonist are suffering from their own form of grief. Nora has taken on her Nonna’s apartment and responsibilities as the HOA president. While Ben has hardens himself to the long ago loss of his parents and the recent loss of his uncle, which is what brings him back into Nora’s world.

They are both hesitant, too, about love and loving each other. Nora, out of tightly-held loyalty to her grandmother, Will out of fear of dangerously losing himself in someone like his parents did.

Love at First is a great lesson in what different kinds of love look like and what love could be, of you give it a chance.

“Not every love you have is the kind like you had with your nonna. Or like the kind you have with me or Emily, or Jonah. Or anyone in this whole place, with the exception of that new man downstairs, I guess. Love can’t always be a sure thing from the start.”

Marian, page 237 (Kindle)

Reading as they navigate the rocky terrain of falling in love was quite beautiful. Unlike most enemies-to-lovers books, you never got the feeling that they actually didn’t like each and you knew if they just got out of their own way, it would be spectacular. And in the universe where this relationship continues, I like to think that it is.

“Nora Clarke, I loved you from the first time I didn’t see you, but I don’t think that matters half as much as the fact that I love you now. I don’t think it matters as much as the way I know I’m going to love you forever.”

Will, page 292 (Kindle)

TSM Book Club Book #22: The Direction of the Wind by Mansi Shah

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Started: May 22nd
Finished: June 2nd
TSM Rating: 4/5

It is only by pure coincidence that the last two books I picked up to the end of May featured protagonists struggling with mental health issues with varying degrees of severity. Both deal with heavy topics of suicide, depression, loss, drug abuse, and parental abandonment.

Direction of the Wind tells the story of Nita and Sophie Shah, a mother and daughter told twenty years apart. They both grew up in similar circumstances but with drastically different experiences.

The story opens with Sophie mourning the death of her beloved father. Losing him brings her back to her mother’s death as a child. When she overhears her aunts speaking of her mother leaving, not dying, it sets Sophie on a journey that is equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful.

Twenty years before Sophie’s journey, Nita takes one of her own. Overwhelmed by her community’s expectations of her as a wife and mother and driven by a growing desire to be an artist, she packs up as much as she can and leaves her marital home, and boards a plane to France.

While Mansi Shah doesn’t label what precisely is wrong with Nita, she is clearly suffering from depression and has been for most of her life. It seems that being forced into marriage and motherhood only exacerbates her condition, weighing her down in a way that feels inescapable.

After a while, though, she begins to feel the same trapped feeling in France as in India. Trapped by circumstance. Trapped by things beyond her control, and she can’t figure a way out.

She had felt trapped in her life in India, but now she was learning a new form of being trapped and wondered if people were always trapped by something, no matter what they did or where they were.

Direction of the Wind, page 88

As with Recipe for Persuasion, another woman struggles with motherhood, what it means to be a mother, and how to do what is best for her child. For Nita, it was leaving because she felt herself beginning to resent Sophie. She left to save her daughter from her “darkness,” as she put it.

They were the most serious thing that could happen in one’s life. Children highlighted every trait you lacked. And if you were not meant to be a parent, they stole your spirit in a way you could never get back.

Direction of the Wind, page 136

While it’s a story of family, it’s also a story about friends who become family to both Nita and Sophie. They both have strangers come into their lives when they need them the most. For Nita, it’s Dao. For Sophie, it’s Manoj and Naresh.

The words “I’m here for you” had a power in them that was greater than any other, even the phrase “I love you.” “I’m here for you” showed solidarity and acceptance and conveyed in the best way possible that one was not alone.

Direction of the Wind, page 222

Family is complicated. Expectations are complicated. Secrets are complicated. Mansi Shah weaves Sophie and Nita’s sorties together so well; each chapter picks up where the other left off, as Sophie follows right behind her mother, missing her by just a few steps rather than two decades. While the story has dark moments, there is always hope just around the corner.

TSM Book Club Book #21: Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

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Started: May 22nd
Finished: May 31st
TSM Rating: 4.5/5

It is only by pure coincidence that the last two books I picked up to the end of May featured protagonists struggling with mental health issues with varying degrees of severity. Both deal with heavy topics of suicide, depression, loss, drug abuse, and parental abandonment.

First up is Recipe for Persuasion, whose lead, Ashna Raje, spends her whole life doing what she can to make her father happy much to her own detriment. She also spends most of her life angry with her mother for abandoning her time after time.

On the brink of losing her restaurant, typically reserved Ashna, through some coaxing by her best friend and cousin, ends up a chef competing on a celebrity cooking show in order to win the money to save it. The show’s premise is to pair a professional chef with a celebrity, and much to her surprise, Ashna is paired with her high school sweetheart turned professional soccer player Rico Silva. For his part, Rico has his own struggles as he never really got over Ashna and the abrupt ending to their relationship. When we meet him, he has reached the point where he has to confront his past in order to move forward.

On top of all this, Ashna’s whirly-gig of a mother, Shobi has chosen this moment in Ashna’s life to come back and try to fix things with her. Ashna has spent her life building walls to protect herself from her mother bouncing in and out of her life. To protect herself from her parents’ fighting. Even when her father commits suicide, she builds walls around herself to keep herself protected from disappointment and disappointing.

Throughout the book, we see her struggle to maintain control over her life and struggle as she tries to be a stronger version of herself. She needs to be that version of herself as she confronts the past with Shobi and Rico.

Recipe… epitomizes the phrase, “Sometimes you have to go back to move forward.”

I loved it for how it examined mother-daughter relationships and even what it means to be a mother. Shobi’s struggle to find work-life balance and to reconcile her own feelings about being a mother and wife and what she was forced to give up to reclaim her independence.

This was the problem with motherhood, the part Shobhan didn’t understand — why did it have to be an all-or-nothing game? Weren’t mothers human?

Recipe for Persuasion, pg. 269-270

I also loved the depth of love Ashna and Rico have for each other, even after twelve years apart. Love, real love, can stand the test of time and distance. The word Dev uses over and over to describe how Ashna and Rico feel about each other is essential. I loved how perfectly and succinctly it sums up what they are to each other.

Sometimes when people leave you, you get so caught up in trying to convince yourself that you can cut them out of your life that you think you’ve actually figured it out. You keep moving. You ignore the feeling of being chased, even as you can’t stop running and running to get away. But then you realize that you haven’t moved on at all. Those who are essential to you have always been an absence. Even when you refused to acknowledge it, their void was always there.

Rico, Recipe for Persuasion, page 344

This was such a good read. Even with some of the darker themes, there was a lot of hope and love infused into the story. It should be noted that this is the second book in a series. I didn’t realize it until I started this one, but the stories are stand-alone. I’ve already added Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (the books are Sonali Dev’s reimagining of Jane Austen classics).

TSM Book Club Book #20: The Ones We Fight For by Katie Golightly

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Started: May 6th
Finished: May 21st
TSM Rating 4/5

This was my first time reading a book on Kindle. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s convenient to have a book at the tip of my fingers and the highlighting on demands clutch. On the other hand, it’s more time on my phone, and the page numbering is a little weird.

That being said, I really enjoyed this book. It was a slow-burn, friends-to-lovers story about two imperfect people — Walker Hartrick and Talia Cohen — doing their best to survive after their worlds are flipped upside down. Walker has just lost his brother and sister-in-law in a drunk driving accident. This leaves him as the guardian of his five nieces and nephews.

For Talia, she is dealing with the one-two punch of finding out that she is infertile and her engagement ending. On top of that, her estranged father was responsible for Walker’s loss.

The beauty of this story is how believable and relatable both their journeys are. In some ways, Walker is the poster child of toxic masculinity’s belief that seeking help is a sign of weakness and the only way he can be any good to his family is to be “strong.” Even as his body is physically breaking down with panic attacks, he continues pushing to be there for his family.

In her own way, Talia is white-knuckling life as well. She comes to town to take over her father’s grocery store and throws herself into work. She also leans into being good to everyone else, including Walker and his family. Leaning into it helped her rediscover her self-worth and slowly heal from all that was ailing her.

When Talia and Walker come together, magic happens. They learn from each other. Give each other support and lift each other up. They help each other through, and both come out stronger on the other side.

I like that Golightly takes her time with the story and doesn’t rush through their progression, notably Walker’s. There are a lot of conclusions that he has to come to on his own. He wasn’t going to take specific steps until he was ready.

This book is filled with lots of little nuggets of wisdom. My favorite is this one:

Her mother always said “time is the wisest counselor of all.”

The Ones We Fight For, Chapter 23, page 198 (Kindle)

It’s a nice story, but be warned, it covers many heavy topics, including death, alcoholism, and infertility, all of which can be triggering for some.

TSM Book Club Book #17: When In Rome by Sarah Adams

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Started: April 20th
Finished: April 25th
TSM Rating: 4/5

This was so cute. From Amelia and Noah’s meet-cute to their many attempts to keep their hands off each other to Amelia’s ongoing struggle to make the perfect pancake, I enjoyed When In Rome so much.

Sometimes romance novels can be a bit cringey with how the main characters behave. The sunshine character always comes off like an airhead who needs to be rescued. While Amelia did need rescuing initially, it was out of her control. When it comes to her relationship with Noah, she makes mature, adult decisions at every turn, making her one of the most relatable heroines that I’ve come across in a long while.

For his part as the grump, Noah fits the trope. Though, I would say he is more cautious and guarded than grumpy. He’s been burned by love before. He chose poorly in the past and is overcompensating by taking himself out of the game, even though he really, really wants to play.

I loved the dynamic between Noah and his sisters — Annie, Madison, and Emily. He is basically a lamb to the slaughter any time the four of them are together. They rule the Walker family, but you get the vibe that he would do anything for them. Practice Makes Perfect, the next book in the series, comes out next week, and I can’t wait to read Annie’s story and spend more time with the Walker clan.

TSM Book Club Book #16: The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

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Started: April 14th
Finished: April 19th
TSM Rating: 3/5

The Unhoneymooners follows Ethan and Olive as they travel to Maui on his brother and her twin sister’s honeymoon after the entire wedding party is infected with an awful case of food poisoning from seafood Olive and Ethan opted out of.

This was fun and frustrating all at once. Olive and Ethan are such a fun couple. Their banter is fun and sexy. It makes you wonder why they aren’t together in the first place, then you realize that through manipulation they’ve been kept apart.

While their banter is fun, their relationship frustrated the hell out of me. When push comes to shove, he doesn’t support her. He basically calls her a liar, while also making her complicit in his brother’s lies to her sister.

I’m all for flawed characters, but Ethan is so obtuse that he’s unwilling to trust Olive’s instincts about his brother and what she knows to be true about her sister. He isn’t even open to the possibility. Instead he calls her a liar and accuses her of being jealous.

*****SPOILER ALERT****

Then all of a sudden he fixes it with a public apology in front of her family that she doesn’t really had a choice but to accept. I felt uncomfortable reading her put on the spot like that. I’m not a fan of the public grand gesture.🤷🏽‍♀️

Overall, I liked the book. It wasn’t Love and Other Words, but it was a fun read. Christina Lauren wrote an audio original as a follow-up called The Honeymoon Crashers on August 1st, which I’ll listen to just because I want Ami — who was also a bit of an ass to Olive, although that is typical sibling behavior — to have her happy ending after her awful, short-lived marriage with Dane.😖