Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. This week’s prompt is Books I Enjoyed, but Have Never Mentioned On My Blog.

Hello Readers! I hope you’re all well and safe! Here we are again at the beginning of a new month, and I’m scrambling to catch up on reviews, monthly wrap-ups, hauls, and new month TBRs. When will I ever learn not to wait until the last minute?? 😃🤦‍♀️

Today, I’ll be looking at the ten most recent books I read and enjoyed but may not have mentioned on the blog. I did have to search back pretty far, to pre-blogging days for some of these, which is only about 2 1/2 years.

Let’s see what I may not have shared!

1

Save the Date by Morgan Matson

Synopsis:

Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.

The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster. There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.

There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo. Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractedly cute.

Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “I enjoyed so much about this book. It made me smile. Great characters with a story that could have fallen flat. Matson created an entertaining family, and I only wished she would have dived a little deeper.” (I recently read the holiday short story, We Grant You a Merry Christmas, which continues the Grant family story, and I enjoyed it, as well!)

2

How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper

Synopsis:

Now the acclaimed author of The Book of Joe and Everything Changes tackles love, lust, and lost in the suburbs—in a stunning novel that is by turns heartfelt and riotously funny.

Doug Parker is a widower at age twenty-nine, and in his quiet town, that makes him the object of sympathy, curiosity, and in some cases unbridled desire. But Doug has more urgent things on his mind, such as his sixteen year-old stepson, Russ, a once-sweet kid who now is getting into increasingly serious trouble. As Doug starts dipping his toes into the shark-infested waters of the second-time around dating scene, it isn’t long before his new life is spinning hopelessly out of control, cutting a harrowing and often hilarious swath of sexual missteps and escalating chaos across the suburban landscape.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “I’m a big fan of Jonathan Tropper. He makes me laugh-out-loud and feel all fuzzy inside at the same time. And he knows how to write dysfunctional families like nobody else.”

3

Lies by T.M. Logan

Synopsis:

WHAT IF YOUR WHOLE LIFE WAS BASED ON LIES?
When Joe Lynch stumbles across his wife driving into a hotel car park while she’s supposed to be at work, he’s intrigued enough to follow her in.

And when he witnesses her in an angry altercation with family friend Ben, he knows he ought to intervene.

But just as the confrontation between the two men turns violent, and Ben is knocked unconscious, Joe’s young son has an asthma attack – and Joe must flee in order to help him.

When he returns, desperate to make sure Ben is OK, Joe is horrified to find that Ben has disappeared.

And that’s when Joe receives the first message . . . 

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “So I read this in under 24 hours. I couldn’t put it down. What a thrill ride! It will have you doubting your friends, doubting your spouse, and deleting your Facebook account.”

4

Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir by Jean Guerrero

Synopsis:

A daughter’s quest to find, understand, and save her charismatic, troubled, and elusive father, a self-mythologizing Mexican immigrant who travels across continents–and across the borders between imagination and reality; and spirituality and insanity–fleeing real and invented persecutors.

n the tradition of parent-child memoirs, Enrique’s Journey meets The Glass Castle, here is the haunting story of a daughter’s quest to understand her father, to save him from his own demons and to save herself from following his self-destructive path. Marco Antonio was born in Mexico but as a teenager migrated with his large family north to California, where he met Jean’s mother, a young Puerto Rican woman just out of med school. Marco was a self-taught genius at fixing and creating things–including a mythology about himself as a shaman, a dreamcaster, and an animal whisperer, rather than the failed father, husband, and son he feared he was. Before long Marco goes on the run from his family and responsibilities–to Asia, to Europe, and eventually back to Mexico–with long crack and whiskey binges, suffering from what he claimed were CIA mind control experiments. As soon as she’s old enough, Jean follows.

Using her skills as a journalist, and her lifelong obsessions with the fuzzy lines between truth and fantasy, Jean searches for explanations for her father’s behavior other than schizophrenia, the diagnosis her mother whispered to Jean when she was still a child. She takes his wildest claims seriously and investigates them. She interviews cousins and grandparents and discovers a chain of fabulists and mystics, going back to her great great grandmother, a clairvoyant curandera who was paid to summon forth voices and visions from the afterlife. She begins mirroring her father’s self-destructive behavior in her own wild experiements with sex and drugs and her flirtations with death in jungles and the middle of the sea. She risks everything in her quest to understand and redeem her father from the underworld of his obsessions and delusions and self-destruction — to bring him back to the world of the living.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “Jean Guerrero writes with a lyric complexity that lulls the reader into her tortured tale, leaving one unsure of the destination and helplessly along for the ride. Her cross-border journey is reflective of the current strife between Mexico and los Estados Unidos to define where borders should begin and end—and maybe not even exist.”

5

Before and Again by Barbara Delinsky

Synopsis:

Mackenzie Cooper took her eyes off the road for just a moment but the resulting collision was enough to rob her not only of her beloved daughter but ultimately of her marriage, family, and friends―and thanks to the nonstop media coverage, even her privacy. Now she lives in Vermont under the name Maggie Reid, in a small house with her cats and dog. She’s thankful for the new friends she’s made―though she can’t risk telling them too much. And she takes satisfaction in working as a makeup artist at the luxurious local spa, helping clients hide the visible outward signs of their weariness, illnesses, and injuries. Covering up scars is a skill she has mastered.

Her only goal is to stay under the radar and make it through her remaining probation. But she isn’t the only one in this peaceful town with secrets. When a friend’s teenage son is thrust into the national spotlight, accused of hacking a powerful man’s Twitter account, Maggie is torn between pulling away and protecting herself―or stepping into the glare to be at their side. As the stunning truth behind their case is slowly revealed, Maggie’s own carefully constructed story begins to unravel as well. She knows all too well that what we need from each other in this difficult world is comfort. But to provide it, sometimes we need to travel far outside our comfort zones. 

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “Before and Again is one of those get-lost-in-a-book reads. Perfect for vacation, commuting—any tune out the world moment. The characters are believably flawed and the story is current and fresh. And while I started this one convinced I knew how it would play out, the story still held surprises. It’s entertaining, but also a realistic reminder that our lives can change in the blink of an eye.”

6

See All the Stars by Kit Frick

Synopsis:

“A gripping and atmospheric contemporary thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Complex, captivating, and gorgeously written.” —Karen M. McManus, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying

We Were Liars meets Goodbye Days in this thrilling debut novel that sweeps readers away as they try to solve the mystery of what happened then to make Ellory so broken now.

It’s hard to find the truth beneath the lies you tell yourself.

Then: They were four—Bex, Jenni, Ellory, Ret. (Venus. Earth. Moon. Sun.) Electric, headstrong young women; Ellory’s whole solar system.

Now: Ellory is alone, her once inseparable group of friends torn apart by secrets, deception, and a shocking incident that changed their lives forever.

Then: Lazy summer days. A party. A beautiful boy. Ellory met Matthias and fell into the beginning of a spectacular, bright love.

Now: Ellory returns to Pine Brook to navigate senior year after a two-month suspension and summer away—no boyfriend, no friends. No going back. Tormented by some and sought out by others, troubled by a mysterious note-writer who won’t let Ellory forget, and consumed by guilt over her not entirely innocent role in everything and everyone she’s lost, Ellory finds that even in the present, the past is everywhere.

The path forward isn’t a straight line. And moving on will mean sorting the truth from the lies—the lies Ellory has been telling herself.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “I almost skipped over this one because of my growing tbr list, but I decided to just read the first few pages and see what I thought. I’m so glad I did. I couldn’t read this one fast enough.”

7

All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

Synopsis:

In the riveting new novel from the #1 New York Timesbestselling author of First Comes Love and Something Borrowed, three very different people must choose between their family and their values.

Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she’s strayed from the person she once was.

Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school.

Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn’t always fit in—and her overprotective father doesn’t help—but in most ways, she’s a typical teenage girl, happy and thriving.

Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarized, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.

At the heart of the lies and scandal, Tom, Nina, and Lyla are forced together—all questioning their closest relationships, asking themselves who they really are, and searching for the courage to live a life of true meaning. 

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: (3.75 stars rounded up) “My first Emily Giffin book, I was intrigued from the very beginning. The characters were flawed and interesting, and the story began to unfold like a train wreck you can’t look away from. I would categorize this as a “beach read”, perfect for those times when you want to get lost in a book.”

8

Little Do We Know by Tamara Ireland Stone

Synopsis:

Lifelong best friends and next-door neighbors Hannah and Emory have never gone a single day without talking. But now its senior year and they haven’t spoken in three months. Not since the fight, where they each said things they couldn’t take back. They’re aching to break the silence, but those thirty-six steps between their bedroom windows feel more like thirty-six miles.

Then one fateful night, Emory’s boyfriend, Luke, almost dies. And Hannah is the one who finds him and saves his life.

As Luke tries to make sense of his near-death experience, he secretly turns to Hannah, who becomes his biggest confidante. In Luke, Hannah finds someone she can finally talk to about all the questions she’s grappling with. Emory just wants everything to go back to normal–the way it was before the accident. She has no idea why her relationship is spiraling out of control. But when the horrifying reason behind Hannah and Emory’s argument ultimately comes to light, all three of them will be forced work together to protect the one with the biggest secret of all.

In the follow-up to her New York Times bestseller, Every Last Word, Tamara Ireland Stone crafts a deeply moving, unforgettable story about love, betrayal, and the power of friendship.

* 2019 NCIBA Golden Poppy Award Winner * Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year *

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “There were so many things about this book that were refreshing: the main characters had flaws but grow and change, the religious aspects of the novel were balanced without being too preachy, and in the end it was a story about friendship.”

9

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

Synopsis:

An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood—“gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled”—and from Stephen King—“The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny.”

It’s 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “Kushner does a good job of drumming up sympathy for her prisoners, for the hopelessness of their situations and the lack of resources available to them. I’ve read reviews by others who didn’t like her style of jumping from one character to another, but I thought it served the story well—building the tension and giving an alternate view.”

10

I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman

Synopsis:

A powerful story of empathy and friendship from the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of If I Stay.

Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from everyone he has ever loved, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City with a backpack, a desperate plan, and nothing left to lose. When a fateful accident draws these three strangers together, their secrets start to unravel as they begin to understand that the way out of their own loss might just lie in help­ing the others out of theirs. 

An emotionally cathartic story of losing love, finding love, and discovering the person you are meant to be, I Have Lost My Way is best­selling author Gayle Forman at her finest.

Goodreads

From my Goodreads review: “Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel were all interesting characters, and I found myself engaged in each one of their stories. I liked that they were flawed, but capable of change—all three becoming fully fleshed out by the end of the book.”

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Have you read any of these? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!