My birthday month has been a good one for reading, especially nonfiction! I feel like I’m back in my zone. This month I read:

• Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang -I picked this for a Book of the Month choice because the premise sounded interesting. A man is a “Rental Stranger”, who people can buy time with to escort them to weddings, funerals, dates, or just for company. He flits from job to job, serving the needs of his clients. Then we see the dark side of his unattached life, and who it impacts. This sounded fluffy but was actually dark and a bit sad.
• Poppy by Avi – I saw a 4th grade class reading this and I wanted to check it out, since I’ve loved other Avi middle grade stories. This one is set in the woods, and Poppy, the mouse, is the main character. After a big mistake, Poppy has to save her mouse familly and deal with their mortal enemy, a mean owl. She braves the wilderness, finds other friends, and learns a lot along the way. This is a cute story!
• Happy Place by Emily Henry – I have read and loved many of Emily Henry’s chic lit books, and this one was a perfect summer beach read.Harriet and her two college best friends have spent many summers at Sabrina’s father’s summer home. This summer, their whole gang is getting together one last time before the house is sold, only no one knows that Harriet and her fiancee Wyn have broken up. So they have to pretend, to keep the group happy for a special week. As is typical rom com style, hijinx ensue, lies abound, and silliness is interspered with fond memories of found family. I enjoyed this entire group and their love for one another.
• The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean – After Elizabeth from Currently Reading said this book was good, I chose it from Book of the Month. I loved this propulsive thriller! When Ellie Black, a girl who had been missing for two years, suddenly returns out of nowhere, the Dectective on her case, Chelsey, is thrown back into the mystery of her disappearance as well as the disappearance of her own sister years before. This book kept adding twists, and new charactesr, and new trauma, to a fast-paced conclusion that surprised me!
• What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack [audiobook] – I LOVED The West Wing when it was on TV, and again in reruns, and again when I listened to the entire West Wing Weekly podcast and saw a cast reunion live for the taping of the final podcast episode. When my friend got us tickets to see the authors of this book, along with some of the WW cast, I was so excited. We heard the authors and the cast share some of their memories from the years filming the West Wing, and how the authors began this book during COVID so they did Zoom interviews with the cast and crew. Aaron Sorkin, the creator, was such a gifted writer, and hearing him share some of his memories was amazing. This book is a beautiful tribute to the entire show, the cast and crew, and their memories, along with a through line about service. Each actor is explored and each actor shares when and how they have shown up for causes and charities that matter to them. The stories of service were new to me, and it gave such a great glimpse into the lives and passions of each actor. I have a hard copy of the book from the event we attended, which include fun pictures, but I actually listented to the audiobook which was narrated by the two authors, who are also actors from the show. I enjoyed every moment!
• Baby X by Kira Peikoff – I loved this wild thriller/ dystopian sci-fi story! Sometime in the future, babies are made from human’s DNA and then implanted, through IGV, a futuristic version of IVF where parents can choose the best embryo for health, genetic, personality and talent reasons. Meanwhile, celebreties like rockstar Thorne, must protect their DNA at all costs, so strangers can’t steal it to make their own baby with his genes. As Thorne hires Ember to protect him, we follow the crazy steps of multiple characters in this creepy future full of twists and turns, some of which surprised me a lot!
• Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg [audiobook]- This was such an amazing discovery and I’m so glad I read/listened to it. Duhigg uses engaging stories in each chapter to model was supercommunicators do well; these are people who excel at communicating and putting others at ease, especially in conversations about challenging topics. His examples included The Big Bang Theory’s original script, a doctor wanting to help patients understand vaccines, Netflix and the rocky road they took through management and racial upheaval, and more. Some of the key takeaways for me was the importance of listening, asking questions, and feedback looping. Feedback looping is a way to show you are listening. After someone shares something important with you, you can repeat back in your own words what you heard and ask if you got it right. The speaker has a chance to clarify and make sure you understood their points. This is especially important when the speaker and the listener may come from philosophically differing opinions, such as when a gun owner and an activist who wanted to expand gun control limits came together to speak. The supercommunicators studied in the book make people feel heard, feel safe, and ask questions for curiosity, not judgment.
• Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate – I read and LOVED Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours, so I knew I would like this one. She has a gift of creating likeable children characters who are surviving in complex, challenging, and often grueling situations, and then helping them come together as found family to save themselves and teach us a lesson about history. In Shelterwood, we follow Ollie and Nessa after they escape their home to avoid their stepfather and his evil plans. Nessa is a Chocktaw orphan, and we are in Oklahoma in the 1930’s when Indigenous children are being kidnapped, married off to white men, and sold in order to steal their land. While they try to survive in the wild, we flash forward to the same woods in the 1990’s when Valier becomes a new park ranger and finds the bones of little girls in a hiddle shelter. These two timelines are full of mysteries, evil men, and strong girls and women, and a dose of history mixed in. This was a beautiful story.

Favorite Books

Fiction: The Return of Ellie Black

Nonfiction: What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service and Supercommunicators