I’m back dating this post to Friday, January 10, but truth be told I completely forgot to write it. This is crunch time as far as working on the musical goes (we’re three and a half weeks away!), and my brain is not at full functioning capacity at the moment (unless you need me to identify whose shirt is who from a pile of exactly matching shirts).

December was the month of Lisa Jewell. I read not one, but FOUR of her books throughout the course of the month. I was furiously trying to get to my goal of fifty books (sadly I fell three short despite my best efforts), and was just on a kick after reading a few of her books in November.

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I began with The House We Grew Up In which was, I think, my favorite of the bunch. It told the story of a family who comes together after their matriarch, a terrible hoarder, passes away. The novel goes back and forth between the past and present, telling the story of how a tragic event caused the family came to fall apart before the death of their mother bring the siblings back together. I really enjoyed the overall plot line of this one, though I admit that I was hoping for more of a mystery after reading Jewell’s other books. This one had a very small little mystery to it, but it wasn’t really a page turning one.

I found this to be true with the other Jewell books I read as well. This experiment in her novels has taught me that I definitely like her newer novels to her older stuff, however I do enjoy both styles. It all comes down to the specific plot line.

I enjoyed the plot lines of The Making of Us and The Third Wife more than I did for Before I Met You. This all came down to my interest level in the characters. I liked reading about the journey of the fictional people in the first two books, but I felt like the main character of Before I Met You was making a series of questionable decisions, and some of the various plot lines seemed unnecessary to the overall story. Despite this, however, I found them all to be quick, fun reads.

I’m definitely going to keep making my way through Jewell’s works, but I have a lot of other books to get through too. I’ve got a backlog of Book of the Month Club books piling up on my nightstand!

Currently I’m trying to decide if I want to set a goal for a certain amount of books for 2020. In some ways it helps to have the goal, and in other ways its detrimental. In any case, I doubt I’ll be making much headway with reading either way in January. If I manage one book, I’ll feel accomplished!