Five years ago, Geeta’s drunk and abusive husband disappeared and no one has heard from him since. The rumor in her village is that Geeta killed him and that she is a witch. Geeta doesn’t mind the solitude that these rumors provide—until other women start asking for her help to off their husbands as well, and they won’t take no for an answer.

This book was delightful. It was laugh out loud funny and full of action and suspense. It’s very much a character driven story. The book focus on a small group of women in rural India seeking to improve their circumstances, but is also sprinkled with incredible anecdotes of feminism, friendships, and revenge. Some of the humor is a bit dark but I really enjoyed it and thought it was a necessary balance to the violence the women endured. Great read!

A quote I loved: “Never send a god to do a goddess’s job.”

In The Light We Carry, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares advice, wisdom, and strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in a chaotic and uncertain world. Sprinkled with anecdotes from her personal life and relationships, Michelle Obama provides habits and principles she has adopted to overcome adversity and adapt to change, all with her usual compassion, realness, and humor.

This is a Michelle Obama fan account and I will read anything she puts out. I just love how real she comes across in all of her writing and I love that she tells it how she sees it without sugarcoating anything. I loved hearing her talk about her friendships and sharing examples from her own life, and how she encourages us to embrace the power of being true to yourself and shining your unique light on the world. I also listened to this on Audible and loved that she read this book!

Pineapple Street focuses on three women of the wealthy, elitist Stockton family: Sasha, who married into the family and frequently feels like an outsider; Georgiana, a young adult who falls in love with the wrong man and must discover what kind of person she wants to be; and Darley, who rejected her family fortune to marry the love of her life and ended up sacrificing more than she realized in the process. The novel navigates the relationships between these women and their other family members, and explores the differences that obscene amounts of money can make in a person’s life.

I was excited about this book, but it didn’t stand out as much as I expected it to. There were a lot of funny moments and great character development that I enjoyed; however the plot was a little bland and there didn’t really seem to be a point to all of the wealthy characters’ entitlement and ridiculousness. The majority of the characters lacked depth. I’m not really sure what point the author was trying to make about old money and trust fund babies. This book was well written and has lots of great humor but overall missed the mark for me.

I LOVE a good family drama. This book was unique in its approach to exploring the intricacies of a complex, wealthy family, whose youngest son has been accused of rape by his on again off again girlfriend. As the trial proceeds, more and more of the family’s secrets are revealed, and the dark twists that come to light lead each member of family to explore their own complicity and victimhood in their family history.

This book was really thought provoking; I finished it over two weeks ago and it’s still on my mind. The approach of showing a rape trial from the side of the accused was a bit unsettling at first, but the book did a wonderful job of diving into so much more than just focusing on an accused privileged white boy. The book deeply explored themes of guilt, victimhood, betrayal of trust, and unbalanced power dynamics in relationships. While the subject matter was at times difficult to read, this book really challenged me to consider who was truly to blame for everything that happened.