I started this month by pulling one of the books off my shelf that has been sitting there for YEARS! For real, I purchased this book at one of my favorite bookstores in the world (grassroots books, I love you!) in Nevada back in 2016. Then I continued on to a much-anticipated read by Taylor Reid, and finished the month with a legend.

Book #1 – The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs.

This book was a cute, quick, feel-good hallmark type book, which is not my typical read, but made for a good weekend read.

Georgia Walker (the main character of the book) got pregnant at a very young age and has been working her ass off to raise her daughter, alone, in New York City. She owns a knitting store where sells high-quality yarns, and items she’s created. She has a small shop with only a few employees, but they’re all very close and treat each other like family. Georgia is very good at what she does and as her daughter gets older and she finds herself with more time, she ventures to make new things and eventually gets noticed. A group of women started coming to her shop regularly to ask knitting questions and get Georgia’s advice on how to make/fix items they’re working on and eventually this little group turned officially into the Friday Night Knitting Club.
This club becomes a staple in Georgia’s life and even her daughter gets involved. In the middle of the book a fancy, obviously very posh women walks in and asks Georgia to create something immaculate for her and she’s willing to pay top dollar. Georgia finds out that this woman was her ex-best friend whom she had bad blood with from a past transgression.
The rest of the book is about Georgia dealing with the emotional turmoil of letting her ex-best friend back into her life, her daughter getting older and wanting to fly the nest, and the eventual return of her baby-daddy, whom she finds she’s still in love with.
The main themes of this book are love, friendship, trust, and forgiveness.

Although it’s a cute read, it was entirely predictable and I don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend it to anyone, but I’m not sad about spending time reading it.

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Book #2 – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Reid.

The second book I read this month was by far MY FAVORITE! I received my copy of the book from a friend in part of an annual book exchange two years ago and I’ve just now got around to reading it. When this book came out it was all the craze and everyone was talking about it. I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it then so I missed out on that excitement but I’m glad I never gave up on it because WOW! It was so good.

Evelyn Hugo was one of the most famous Hollywood actresses of all time, she was beautiful, talented, famous, and as the title of the book announces – married SEVEN times.

Evelyn specifically reaches out to Monique Grant, a non-so-well-known writer to write her biography, and throughout the book we’re trying to figure out why Monique?!

Monique of course accepts the job as it’s a huge honor to be working with Evelyn and they begin their journey through Evelyn’s memories reconstructing her life for her autobiography.

Evelyn shares her rise to fame, her successes and failures in marriage, her career development, and her never-before-talked-about, very personal, very private life including challenges, regrets, and hardships. As she tells her story, you can’t help but keep reading. The character development of Evelyn is fantastic and you never stop learning about who she is and what she’s capable of.

This book is 100% on my recommended to friends list! If you missed the craze and want to buy a copy for yourself, find it on my Amazon Book list.

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Book #3 – Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown

Daring Greatly is another book that has been on my “to-read” list for years! I first heard about this book while I was in grad school, I went to the library to borrow it and it had a waitlist of around 30 people (and if you’ve read my other posts, or know me at all, I refuse to buy books I haven’t read for sustainability reasons, there are 100’s of other books to get from the library instead). Nonetheless, 5 years later, I was able to add this to my “read” list.

Brene Brown has always been a little bit of a life coach for me so I have to say, I started out with an already formed opinion that I was going to like this one, or at least learn something from it, and my assumption was accurate.

Brene Brown is a vulnerability researcher and in this book, she attempts to debunk the stigma that vulnerability is a weakness. She conducted over 10 years of research on vulnerability in the lives of both men and women (although she admits, she left men out of her research to begin with and once she started researching men’s views/stigmas, and thoughts on vulnerability, she realized how important it was to include men in her research).

If you want to be a critic, you could technically say that the whole book could be summed up to say that both men and women admire vulnerability in others, the most impactful relationship builders and shakers were moments of vulnerability, and we all want vulnerability but we (as a whole) stigmatize it so that we tend to hide despite what we all say we want.

Each chapter, each participant’s story, and each revelation about how someone’s vulnerability opened doors for them at work, at home, with friends, or even just toward loving themselves more was a little lesson to practice more vulnerability in my life. There’s time for self-reflection, time for situation analysis, and time for personal growth while reading this book.

I don’t tend to rate self-help books or research books too often, but I personally got a lot out of it and would recommend it to my friends who are maybe struggling with being vulnerable or who are maybe being a barrier to others being vulnerable.

To see what I else I’ve been reading, check out my Book Reviews page.