Shannon

Seasonal Vibe: Summer! Takes place on June 20
This Night is Ours was a wonderful book about understanding yourself with friendship, some romance, and art. The characters and relationships feel very authentic. The book takes place all in 24 hours, on the Summer Solstice. It's a wonderful book I happily recommend for teens and up. 

Rewitched was a perfect October book. It literally took place in October, and had a wonderful combination of cozy magic with darker mysterious elements. There was a small amount of romance as well, but most of it was about personal development, family, and friendship. 

Seasonal Vibe: Fall (October specifically)
Travel Location: London
Historical Time: It doesn't specify this, but I feel like this book takes place in the 1990's because pagers are mentioned.

I saw the Rewitched special edition on the Waterstones website and was so taken with the cover and adorable cat on the edges. I preordered it along with the upcoming Percy Jackson book. This edition of Rewitched is so adorable, and it was fun to track my reading progress by how far into the edge cat I was. (I'm past the ears! Now I'm at the tail!)

Rewitched Features
Witches
A Bookstore
A Cat
Lots of coffee
A Magical Mystery
Family Secrets
Best Friends
London in the Fall
A bit of romance

Reading this book was like hanging out with a group of friends and exploring New York with them for the summer.    Seasonal Vibe: Summer  Starts with a high school graduation and takes place during the summer after graduation.  Travel Location: New York City    There is a romance, but mostly this is a story about a group of friends figuring out what they love and what they want to do next. There's also a really nice theme about books and writing, with the main two characters having bonded over a beloved(fictional) children's fantasy series as kids. This is realistic YA fiction that touches on how people can use fantasy stories to navigate the real world and their relationships. There was also a theme about coding and app development that I was surprised to discover.    I started reading The Getaway List on the perfect day for me. I had just been to my youngest daughter's preschool graduation and it was the last day of school for my older two kids, with my oldest daughter singing in the choir at the promotion for her middle school's 8th graders. It had a perfect vibe for the end of the school year and looking forward to summer, and was a nice easy read for my tired mom brain. 

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is one of those backlist classic books I've meant to read for years. I've loved the Anne of Green Gables book series since I was a young girl, but I haven't read many of her other books. I read this mostly from an actual paperback book.

I think The Blue Castle is as good a classic romance as a Jane Austen book, though it takes place about a hundred years later.  It's one of the few adult novels that L.M. Montgomery wrote.

This book has social commentary, humor, tears, romance, and a wonderfully written cast of characters. Plus cats! This is a cat-friendly book. The chapters are short. There are 45 chapters in this book that's about 250 pages long. If you're looking for short chapters, this book has them.

 “Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.”

I thought that the rose bush Valancy “attacked” at the beginning of the book would be blooming at the end, and it was.

I cried big tears at Cissy Gay's story of her baby's death, then for her own death a few pages later. 

The only problem with this romance is that Barney Snaith is perhaps the worst name for a romantic lead I've ever heard. 

I'm interested in how much detail is on the page compared to what we're supposed to understand is going on off-page. In my experience, intimacy is rarely mentioned in a book like this. A “respectable” book published in 1926. 

To “make love” means romantic speech or “sweet nothings” and seems to have no “bedroom” implications. I've read this in “older” books before, but it was especially noticeable here that this was still accurate. On the drive home after they get married, Valancy says she doesn't “want him to make love” to her, and suggests that she just wants him to talk to her like usual. 

But I wanted you to talk. I don't want you to make love to me, but I want you to act like an ordinary human being.

Then as soon as they get to the island, they have their first kiss. I think we are to understand from this first kiss, that they have an intimate physical relationship. 

Barney lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her first kiss. “Welcome home, dear,” Barney was saying.

And a bit later, this line.
And that little kissable dent just between your collar bones.

That sounds quite intimate to me. Interestingly, none of the “marriage of convenience” style tropes such as sleeping apart happened. That's not where the romance is. A sweet and wonderful relationship is described for them, from companionship to implied physical intimacy. The conflict comes from the unknowns in his past as well as her assumed quickly approaching death. 

All this, and still Valancy does not believe he loves her. She truly thinks he's just been pitying and humoring her. This is frustrating to the reader but is not unbelievable given her emotionally abusive upbringing.

Thankfully, they sort it all out in the end.

The hypocrisy of her family! Ugh!

My daughter's sixth grade class was reading Holes by Louis Sachar. I decided to read it too since I had never read the book, but liked the movie.    This is a really wonderful book. It touches on so many important themes in really accessible ways. It's easy to read, but still compelling. I love the way everything works together in each character's backstory for a really satisfying connection.    My daughter, who is usually an all-fantasy reader, really liked it too.    It occured to me that this book might be considered magical realism. It's mostly realistic fiction, with interspersed historical fiction, but the element of the “curse” could be a bit of magical realism.