What I'm Reading | July + August

Educated: A Memoir  |  Tara Westover

[goodreads excerpt]:  An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, intentionally kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

This is easily the best memoir I've read. It kept me totally engaged until the very end and was incredibly fascinating. Tara was raised in the mountains in a Mormon survivalist family, and she spends her childhood preparing for the end of the world + working in the junkyard with her father or helping her herbalist/midwife mother. She doesn't enter a classroom until the age of 17 and finds out about events such as the Holocaust for the first time in a college classroom. It's a story that keeps you thinking, "Wow" the entire time and Tara has a way with words and a gift of storytelling.

5/5 stars

The Hazel Wood  |  Melissa Albert

[goodreads excerpt]:  Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

This book was such a fun read. If you like a mix of fairy tales, real world, interesting relationships, secrets, and darkness, this is for you. I really enjoyed the spin off of the traditional fantasy novels and am looking forward to reading book 2!

4.5/5 stars

Us Against You (Beartown #2)  |  Fredrik Backman

[goodreads excerpt]:  After everything that the citizens of Beartown have gone through, they are struck yet another blow when they hear that their beloved local hockey team will soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in Hed, take in that fact. Amidst the mounting tension between the two rivals, a surprising newcomer is handpicked to be Beartown’s new hockey coach. As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.

I LOVED the first book in this 2-novel series, Beartown, so I knew I'd love the second. I am not a hockey fan, but the author has an amazing gift of writing that pulls you in from the first sentence of the first page. I love sequels and getting to relive the stories of familiar characters again. These two novels cover big topics that make you think, and Backman is simply an amazing writer.

4.5/5 stars