Books I'm Looking Forward To This Month: May Edition

Will the world open back up this month? Will it be next month? Will I be able to get a haircut this summer? Questions that nobody can answer right now. So let’s just start finding joy in new books to read! Shall we? Here are my three that I can’t wait to get my hands on. If you read them, let me know your thoughts! Wouldn’t it be fun to figure out how to run an online book club??

THE LOVE STORY OF MISSY CARMICHAEL

By: Beth Morrey

“The world has changed around seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, aka Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife's native Australia, taking Missy's beloved only grandchild half-a-world away. She spends her days sipping sherry, avoiding people, and rattling around in her oversized, under-decorated house waiting for...what exactly?”

First of all, I’m sucker for librarians as main characters. Duh. But, this one strikes a chord for me as I have a curious fascination with what happens when everyone leaves the nest and it’s just you? Do we go through a reinvention so to speak as women? How do we shift our daily priorities, goals, and expectations?

IN FIVE YEARS

By: Rebecca Serle

“She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.”

This one hits the “What If” button…..the fork in the road. How different would your life be if you had made a different choice, picked a different street or restaurant? Think Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors….one of my all time favorite movies! I can’t wait to find out if this one goes that route.

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS

By: Sue Monk Kidd

“Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her.”

I love, love, loved Kidd’s novel Invention of Wings. She’s so fabulous at the detail that historical fiction requires. This one is fascinating—rewrite of the New Testament?? How much imagination does it take to create this alternate life for Jesus? I can’t wait to read this perspective and see if Ana is as powerful a female character as was Sarah Grimke in the Invention of Wings.