I didn’t do a wrap-up last week. Well, no, I did. However, I wasn’t able to publish it for some reason. (Thanks, Blogger!)

So, here’s what’s been going on in my reading life since the new year began.

Reviews:

Love Water Memory by Jennie Shortridge

The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar

Read:

The Wife, The Maid, and The Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Belle Cora by Phillip Margulies

Currently Reading:

Upcoming:

Beats me! Reading whatever I want, whenever I want, is absolutely DELIGHTFUL! Here are two of the books that are in the running:

Other Business:

I dropped my Goodreads goal from 200 to 150. (I’m behind schedule, already!) I had forgotten that I’m going back to school. I don’t know what that’s going to do to my reading time but I’m assuming I won’t have as much of it!

Nice start.

You have read 5 of 150 books

2 books behind schedule

Happy Reading

Have a great week, everyone!

Though only thirty-eight, Lena finds herself in the grips of a midlife crisis. She feels lost in her adoptive country, her career is at a dead end, and her marriage has tumbled into a spiral of apathy and distrust—it seems impossible she will ever find happiness again. But then she strikes up a precarious friendship with Ben, a failed artist turned reluctant academic, who is just as lost as she is. They soon surprise themselves by embarking on an impulsive weekend adventure, uncharacteristically leaving their middle-aged responsibilities behind. On the way to Ben’s remote cabin in Maine, Lena begins to talk, for the first time in her life, about the tumultuous summer she spent as a counselor in a Soviet children’s camp twenty years earlier, when she was just discovering romance and her own sexuality. 

As Lena opens up to Ben about secrets she has long kept hidden, they begin to discover together not only the striking truths buried in her puzzling past, but also more immediate, passionate truths about the urgency of this short, stolen time they have together.

My Thoughts: 

I very much enjoyed the character of Lena. Her past was intriguing and her relationship with Ben was interesting. Lena’s friend Inka was also quite alluring. 

The Scent of Pine contained great characters, great settings, and great writing. Unfortunately, those things didn’t add up a great story. 

I kept waiting for the big reveal from Lena’s past. There was a secret that shaped her whole life. It was going to be good. It was going to be shocking. It was…a bust. 

The Scent of Pine had such wonderful potential. Much of the book was engaging. Sadly, I felt that I was promised something that wasn’t delivered.

With that said, I would read other books by Lara Vapnyar. She has a style that draws me in.