Quick Lit May 2022 Archives

Confessions of an Alleged Good Girl

by Joya Goffney

From the publisher: "Monique is a preacher’s daughter who detests the impossible rules of her religion. Everyone expects her to wait until marriage, so she has no one to turn to when she discovers that she physically can’t have sex. After two years of trying and failing, her boyfriend breaks up with her. To win him back, Monique teams up with straight-laced church girl Sasha—who is surprisingly knowledgeable about Monique’s condition—as well as Reggie, the misunderstood bad boy who always makes a ruckus at church, and together they embark upon a top-secret search for the cure. While on their quest, Monique discovers the value of a true friend and the wonders of a love that accepts her for who she is. Despite everyone’s opinions about her virtue, she learns to live for herself, inspiring us all to reclaim our bodies and unapologetically love ourselves."

The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

by Charles Fishman

I put this nonfiction book on my reading list years ago, after a friend told me she thought about it every single day after reading it herself. In it Fishman argues that in many parts of the world, including here in the United States, we're at the end of our hundred-year "golden age" of water during which it's seemed to be easy and free to access—but really it's anything but. We're facing very real water problems, and if we don't fix our relationship to water soon, the consequences will be dire. The problem, he says, is that most of us simply don't understand how our relationship to water works, or should work. While Fishman brings plenty of stats to the text, I especially enjoyed the stories he tells about people who work in the water business (for it is definitely a business), and the way he demolishes common misconceptions about wise and wasteful use.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

From the publisher: "For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy—until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his."

The Golden Couple

by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen

This twisty thriller is jointly voiced by favorites Karissa Vacker and Marin Ireland. The story revolves around a seemingly perfect D.C. area couple who are keeping a closetful of secrets from each other and their "therapist," who can't truly claim that title anymore because she lost her professional license due to an ethics violation. She hasn't let that loss stop her—in fact, she believes she can better help her clients with the unorthodox methods she's fully embraced since she was censured. This was a fun and engrossing listen, with an over-the-top ending that scores low on believability but high on entertainment value—because it made me walk the literal extra mile so I could find out what would happen!

Fault Lines

by Emily Itami

A quiet yet vivid story set against the backdrop of Tokyo in springtime. When Andrea at Main Street Books said she'd loved this literary novel with echoes of Madame Bovary and a forty-ish female protagonist rethinking her whole life, I snapped it right up. The story is about Mizuki, an affluent Japanese singer-turned housewife who loves her workaholic husband and two beautiful children but has grown lonely and bored with her life. When she catches the interest of a handsome restaurateur, she is unable to resist the advances of a man who actually "thought about the answers to the questions I asked him and looked right at me when he replied."

This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

When Emily Henry came on What Should I Read Next, she raved about this book, describing it as a poignant, time-travel(!!) tale of a father-daughter relationship. I picked it up that night and finished it the very next day. Alice is 40, living on the Upper West Side, and not unhappy, except for the fact that her beloved father is dying. After a disastrous birthday dinner, she falls asleep drunk at 3am and when she wakes up, she's 16 again. Her father made his fortune writing a blockbuster time travel novel, so she KNOWS she shouldn't try to alter the future—but she can't resist trying to engineer an outcome that gives her father a longer life. I loved it.

Quick Lit May 2022

Confessions of an Alleged Good Girl

The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

The Golden Couple

Fault Lines

This Time Tomorrow

a gateway

to reliable joy this summer

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th