I said I was going to take a break from reading for fun for the upcoming months because I REALLY need to focus on my studies, but here are my January Book(s) of the Month for 2024. I don’t think I’m able to stop reading for fun. 🤣

Book #1 – Didn’t See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart – by Rachel Hollis

I read the synopsis for this book, liked it, and added it to my to-read list. I didn’t realize the book was written by Rachel Hollis, who also wrote “Girl Wash Your Face” which was a book I DID NOT enjoy. Thankfully I had a different experience this time.

The focus of this book is getting back up after you’ve been knocked down. Rachel Hollis writes about the “hard seasons” or those times in life when you’re hit with something that cracks your world wide open. She shares her story of how her divorce was one of those “hard seasons” she had to accept and overcome.

She writes in a get-up and brush-the-dirt-off kind of way. A little tough love. She shares the importance of taking time to grieve but also taking the time to recover and pull yourself together.

Hollis hopes that by sharing her story she can help others reframe their thoughts, guilt, blame, and negativity into something beautiful that will allow each person to come out of it better than before.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book were:

“Take care of yourself today so you can be stronger tomorrow.” She says this when referring to taking care of your individual mind, body, and soul. Get enough sleep, drink enough water, and see a therapist if that will help you become your best self, but don’t put it off. Do it today.

“If someone tries to hurt you by saying “you’ve changed”, you should say thank you.” If you’re truly taking the time to self-analyze, assist yourself in the ways you need to be assisted, and reaching for better every day, then you should be changing. You’re getting better, stronger, and feeding more into what makes you happy in life, and there’s no shame in that.

Overall, I did like this one a lot better than her last one. She had some good tips in here about going through the “hard seasons” and coming out on top.

Book #2 – Without Merit- by Colleen Hoover

I selected “Without Merit” simply because it was an available audiobook when I logged into my Libby app. I didn’t even read the synopsis, just saw it was available and by Colleen Hoover so I went for it.

Without Merit is a story of a family (the Voss family) who has secrets that are eating them alive. Merit, the main character of the story, is a teenager just trying to find clarity in a world that is anything but “normal”.

She (Merit) begins withdrawing from life because she isn’t really sure how to deal with, or even put words to what she’s going through. She drops out of school and spends most of her time alone. In being alone, she spends a lot of time thinking about the shame her family has brought upon themselves and the secrets hiding within the walls of her home. It all quickly becomes too much for Merit to process and she eventually breaks. She spills all the beans on every family member she’s been keeping secrets for and then attempts to take her own life.

I think Hoover wrote this book at the perfect pace. It wasn’t too slow getting started and it didn’t rush through the ending. You simply get to know each character day by day and are eventually, and unknowingly, completely invested in each of their individual stories.

Hoover did not leave one stone unturned in this book addressing an array of issues from the challenge of figuring out your sexuality as a teen, family hereditary health issues, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, sexual misconduct, infidelity, and so much more. I was shocked by how much emotion, trauma, and healing she packed into this book.

Merit may have been the main character, but she’s a relatable, everyday teen, who is struggling to find her identity, communicate her feelings, forgive those who have wronged her, and figure out her value in the world around her. She was a strong character and I cared for her.

I think this book has huge potential to make any teen feel understood and seen in their time of growth and turmoil.

Book #3 – If He Had Been with Me – by Laura Nowlin

I guess I’m on a teen-angst streak here, but this was also a good story of teenage struggle and adversity.

A friend recommended this book to me and it was one of the free Amazon downloads which is how it ended up in my ‘to-read’ pile.

The main character in this book is a high school girl named August. She shares her childhood as she remembers it and we follow her through her high school years as she builds and breaks friendships, deals with the divorce of her parents, falls in love and out of love, and is trying to figure out her place in the world.

For teens, this book would be very relatable as that is a crucial time of your life when things are developing, and changing, and life goes on no matter what decisions are made. Sometimes things that feel so big end up being so small later.

I liked all the characters in the book and I liked how real the challenges August was facing in each stage of her life. I did NOT like the ending of the book.

I felt the ending was incredibly rushed and that disappointed me. Throughout the book, I never felt that it was too slow or too fast. It was written in a way in which you’re progressing with the characters, feeling what they’re feeling, analyzing what they’re going through and you have time to process. Then you get to the last 15 pages of the book and it’s zero to one hundred and you have no time to process what’s happening, form an emotional attachment to the struggles being faced OR to even feel included in what’s happening.

It’s not that I don’t like books that have open-ended, abrupt, or negative endings, but this one just didn’t feel right. It didn’t match the progression of emotion that was created throughout the course of the book and left me feeling like something was just not right.

---

*You can check out my Book Reviews page or my goodreads page to see what else I’ve been reading this year if you missed any of my previous posts*