September was such a great reading month that I just didn’t want it to end. This month I read:

• The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard – I LOVE this author and will always read her new books! This one was a great, fast-paced mystery with multiple narrators, shifting timelines, and us trying to figure out what happened to the missing girls before another one goes missing. This one was engaging and so fun to read, despite the hard circumstances.
• Whirligig by Paul Fleischmann [audiobook] – My friend Lauren mentioned this book to me the other day and I couldn’t believe I had never read it. As a middle school English teacher I read and discussed many of Fleischman’s books with my students. This one seemed more appropriate for high school age students, which is why it might have gone under my radar back when it was published (in the 1990’s). Bret, a teenager, makes a terrible mistake and then has to pay for his mistake. As he does so, he learns what a whirligig is, how to make one, and how one person’s actions can have impact long after they are gone. This was an interesting story told in different times and locations.
• Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano – This was a beautiful, sad, touching family saga that follows four sisters throughout their lives. We first meet William, a young boy from a tortured family, who grows up very tall and loving basketball more than anything else. When William meets the Padavano family, he finds love shown in more ways than he has ever known. There are big swings of emotions, of sibling fighting, of good and bad choices, of losses and more, throughout this rich, beautifully-told story.
• Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music by David Remnick [audiobook] – My favorite member of the New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) is and has always been Joey McIntyre. Joey read this book some months ago and talked about it on Instagram and I was intrigued enough to look for the audio version in my library app. This is a collection of essays, most of which were previously publised in The New Yorker. Each essay profiles a famous musician. I enjoyed the behind the scenes look into the lives of people such as Paul McCartney, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen. This gave a little biography/ life story, a little musicl history, and a glimpse into the actual person behind the world famous music. I found it interesting.
• The Intern by Michele Campbell – I picked this from Book of the Month because I usually enjoy their thrillers. Madison is a Harvard Law student with a brother in trouble when her professor offers her an internship in her chambers. As Madison gets closer to the judge, both women are keeping secrets and trying to help their families. This was suspenseful and tense up until the very end.
• Where the Lockwood Grows by Olivia A. Cole [audiobook] – I found this audiobook from my library and am so happy I read it! Erie and Hurona, named after two Great Lakes, live in Prine in this Cli-Fi middle grades story. In this world, fires have burned most everything in America and a giant Lockwood tree chokes the town of Prine. Each day, children have to climb into the tree to cut back new vines so that the sunlight can hit the town’s solar panels for a few hours a day. Life is the same in Prine day in and day out. But when the sisters strike out to the big city, everything changes!
• Invisible Son by Kim Johnson [audiobook] – This was a beautiful, sad, hard-to-read book that needs to be read by more! We follow Andre, a young Black man on probation for a crime he didn’t comitt, in Portland Oregon at the start of the pandemic. As Andre tries to figure out who he can trust and what happened in his case, the world is shutting down, and the the nation is waking up to a racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd. This YA novel is full of Andre’s friends and family and a hard look at the life of a Black teenager in America. While it’s hard to remember this time in our not-so-distant past, the author does an incredible job making the story meanginful, authentic, and steeped in history and reality.
• On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good by Elise Loehnen – I read this for my book club, which is how I often read books that would’t otherwise be on my radar at all. As someone who is not religious, I didn’t have any interest in reading about the religious history of the seven deadly sins, yet the opening historical chapter was very interesting to me. I appreciated that each chapter then dissected a “sin” and how it shows up in our society today, making the patriarchy even stronger than we realize. The chapters on envy and gluttony were personally very interesting. The author shared a lot of personal stories about herself and her family, but I literally didn’t know who she was (she worked for goop for years). Our book club discussion made me reflect on HOW PERSONAL and not flattering many of her stories were, and it actually made me like the book a little less! Before our meeting I was rating this a 4 star read, and after I felt like it was a 3.5 for me.
• Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister [audiobook] – This was such a great thriller! The story starts with Jen witnessing her 18 year old son Todd using a knife to kill a stranger in front of their house. She is horrified and scared and has no idea what happened. When she wakes up the next day, she has gone back in time. The entire novel is a story of her going backwards in time, trying to piece together the mystery of who her son killed, why he killed him, and what’s really going on. This was so propulsive that I couldn’t wait to find out the final puzzle

Favorite Books

Fiction: Hello Beautiful & Wrong Place Wrong Time

Nonfiction: While I read two nonfiction books this month, neither were 4-5 star reads for me.