Title Talk 06.2025

Sweet readers, thank you for joining me for this edition of Title Talk 06.2025.  Happy to be sharing my current and recent reads with you in today’s post.

You might remember that I have signed up for a few book reading challenges.  The 52 Book Club 2025 Challenge for which I have read books for about 26 of the prompts.  The Historical Fiction Challenge 2025, which should be the easiest challenge for me but I am trying to branch out from reading only historical fiction.  Again this year, I am doing the Goodreads Challenge and upped my goal from last year’s 56 books (which I barely met) to a whopping 63 books for 2025.  Happily, I am one book ahead of schedule for my Goodreads Challenge.

Are you participating in any reading challenges this year?

 

 

Hey, are WE friends on Goodreads, yet?  Find me, here.  And you can find my book-related Pinterest boards, here and here.

Title Talk 06.2025

 

In this post, I am sharing my recent reads. You can find my last title talk post, here.  May was a slow reading month and June might be slower.  Although, I am beginning to get busy again and have completed a couple of books this past week.  My book club, Come Read with Me, will be voting on our July book of the month in a week.  If you would like to join the fun, holler!!

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Recent Reads

 

These are the books for which I have just turned the last page.  I should write my reflections immediately on closing the book because I struggle to remember what I have read, watched, done from one day to the next!!

“The Best of Us” by Joyce Maynard

4.50 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.18 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  available here on Goodreads

My thoughts:  I discovered author Joyce Maynard when I signed for her memoir writing course, here.  The class was helpful and enjoyable and immediately began researching to learn more about this author and her books.  I read The Bird Hotel first and became a big Maynard fan.  This book is a sequel to an earlier memoir, Count the Ways but would work as a standalone autobiography, too.

At long last, Maynard has found true love after a number of false starts including her relationship as a college coed with a much older JD Salinger.  Jim is a successful lawyer, has his ducks in a row and completely adores Joyce from the start.  After a whirlwind romance both set aside their reluctance to ever marry again and speak their vows before friends and family.  But their bliss is shortlived as Jim is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just after their first anniversary.  Maynard writes about all of the emotions, the hopes and hopes dashed, Jim’s incredible battle with cancer and the ways they squeezed as much living as possible into the time they had.  This book was a joy to read in places and heart-wrenching in others.  A true testimony to love.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Quote:  “Not all at once, but gradually, over the months, another revelation came to me: None of that other stuff, much as I’d loved it, was what made a marriage. Not restaurant dinners or romantic vacations. Not walks on the beach or visits to wine country in the Boxster. Not oysters and martinis or moonlight over the Bay Bridge.”
“This was a marriage. As uncomfortable and inconvenient and devastating as it might be to live as we did now, we inhabited this place together.”
― Joyce Maynard, The Best of Us

 

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

4.40 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.04 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  available here on Goodreads.

My thoughts:  This was a book club pick.  Of course, as the book club ‘boss’ or organizer, I put together the consideration list of 5-6 titles from which we vote each month.  So I put this book on the list and the club members selected it for our May read.  I had read another book by Emily Henry, Beach Read, and enjoyed it so felt optimistic for this title and what I thought would be a light little rom-com.

Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson are both on Little Crescent Island for the same purpose.  They are writers there to interview 80-year-old Margaret Ives with the hope that she will select one or the other of them to write the biography of Ives’ amazing life.  Naturally in the midst of everything, Alice and Hayden meet, become friends and then more than friends despite the fact that they are jockeying for the same opportunity of a lifetime.  In discussing their time with Margaret Ives, the two writers come to realize that she is stringing both of them along.  A number of twists and turns occur that make this more than just a sweet love story.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Quote:  “I find myself thinking that maybe every bit of heartbreak in life can be rearranged and used for something beautiful, that it doesn’t really matter whether I chose this path or I was born onto it, so long as I stop and appreciate the path itself.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

 

Heartwood by Amity Gaige

4.30 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.00 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  available here on Goodreads

My thoughts:  This book kept me going.  I stayed up several nights reading Heartwood after PC had turned out the light and fallen asleep reading.  It is the story of a middle-aged nurse who is struggling with burnout after the Covid crisis.  She goes missing while hiking the Appalachian Trail as a way of finding herself again.  Her husband meets her at agreed locations along her way to provide his wife with supplies and to bolster her spirits.  But one afternoon Valerie doesn’t show up to meet her husband.

This is the story of the search for Valerie Gillis.  I found the efforts of the rescue team and community very interesting.  But the story takes a rather bizarre turn or series of turns and then comes to a rapid conclusion as if the author’s pen ran out of ink.  I gave it 4 stars originally because I was caught up for much of the story.  But now, thinking back on the whole thing I am deducting a star.  On Goodreads, readers seem to really like or really dislike this book.  I was just disappointed in the ending. ⭐⭐⭐

Quote:  “The world and its people are too much for me.  I am crushed between empathy and impotence.  I don’t think I’m important. Not at all!  In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial.  Then why was I given this heart?  It is so much more than I need.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

 

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

4.60 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.25 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  available here on Goodreads

My thoughts:  Thankful to my blogging friend, Donna at Retirement Reflections review this young adult novel recently and I immediately requested it from my library.  Should be required reading for all middle-schoolers, in my opinion.  Fifteen-year old Will uncovers his brother’s hidden gun and heads out to revenge his brother’s death by killing the kid who shot Shawn.

On the elevator down from his projects apartment to find his brother’s killer, Will encounters dead family and friends, someone different as the elevator stops on each floor.  Each one with details about his brother’s murder of which Will was unaware.  Will comes to realize maybe he didn’t have the whole picture.  Now what does he do?  Does he step off the elevator and take matters into his own hands?  A book that will stay with me for some time.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction

Quote:  “Buck laughed, and

laughter,

when it’s loud
and heavy
and aimed
at you,

I think
can feel just
as bad as
a bullet’s

bang.”
-Will”
― Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down

 

What Happened to the McCrays by Tracy Lange

4.20 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.10 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  Available here on Goodreads.

My thoughts:  Contemporary family fiction, this is another book from a recent consideration list for my online book club.  This wasn’t the book the group selected on that particular month but several members read it, so I did, too.  The story was fairly but happily, contentedly predictable.  As I have said before, I am not a big fan of romance but this romance is imperfect and has real-life struggles.  After losing their teenaged son, Kyle and Casey’s relationship falls apart and Kyle disappears for several years returning home only when his aged father suffers a stroke.  Everywhere he looks, Kyle sees the affects abandoning his family, his job and his little town have left on the people he cared about most.

Lange examines a number of relationships in this book: parent/child, spouses, colleagues/lifelong friends, even that between siblings.  And she does a good job of it.  Perhaps the story and all the subplots are tidily wrapped up with a bow by the end of the book but sometimes that can feel like a good thing.  Not necessarily realistic but optimistic.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Quote:  “As they grew up they would hear all the platitudes: sometimes you have to know when to quit; when things are out of your control you have to let go and move on; doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity … But he wasn’t going to be the one to say those things, force them to grow up any faster than they had to. So, instead, he offered something a little simpler and hoped it made sense. “Sometimes you’ve taken all the shots you can,” he said. “And then it’s time to let someone else carry the puck for a while.”
― Tracey Lange, What Happened to the McCrays?

 

Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe

4.60 out of 5 stars on Amazon

4.41 out of 5 stars on Goodreads

Synopsis:  available here on Goodreads

My thoughts:  I really liked, almost loved this book.  Historical fiction – what’s better??  A southern family saga that spans generations.  Female characters who are strong from childhood at a time when girls and women were often sentenced to the shadows and relegated to the wings.  With her 90th birthday fast approaching, Eliza, the matriarch of the Rivers/DeLancey is examining her life and making decisions to ensure future of her land and her family.  She is looking for the next strong woman to hold the banner and carry on the family legacy.

The story is set upon the marshy South Carolina lowlands and unfolds with glimpses back in time.  When I selected this book for Come Read with Me’s June consideration list, I didn’t realize this is part one of a 2 volume series. The book was selected for our June read but now part two is not out yet!!  Waaaaa. My club members are in mutiny!!  We all very much enjoyed this book but hope we don’t have to wait too long for the sequel.  This book could almost have been a 5 star but not thrilled about waiting for part 2.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Quotes:  “I do not own the land. The land owns me.  I am merely the caretaker for my generation.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, Where the Rivers Merge

Currently Reading

 

Started reading Horse by Geraldine Brooks when the Forever Fierce Book Club on FB chose it as their book of the month for May.  The book had been on my radar as I had added it to a consideration list for Come Read with Me earlier in the year but it wasn’t the book the group chose to read.  I think my dad might have enjoyed this story.  Based on the true story of champion thoroughbred, Horse combines historical fiction and art appreciation while bouncing from 1850, 1954 and 2019 and back again.

 

I am happy to call the author of the next book a blogger buddy.  You can follow Joanne on her blog at And Anyways and on Substack, here.  Purchased Philly Barker Investigates on Amazon a couple of months ago and started reading it recently.  Philly is a delightful character and I am thoroughly enjoying this story.

 

Just downloaded/uploaded the novella, Ruby Madison, onto my Kindle written by another blogger buddy of mine, Suzy Turner.  You can find Suzy at The Grey Brunette and on YouTube, here.

 

On My Radar

 

My online book club is about to start voting on its July read.  I am putting together the consideration list of books from which we will vote right now.  These are some of the books I am looking at for the group’s consideration.  Most of these are available at my library so I may try to do a video on YouTube summarizing the books we are voting from for July.  You can find some of my earlier videos on my YouTube channel, here.

 

Your Turn

 

Geez, it takes me so long to get a blog post finished.  Have been working on my photo post for weeks!!  This post took days!!  And it is almost a new month, which means time to start all over again on the posts like Sentence a Day.  Where do the hours go each day??

What are you guys reading??  I am always excited to read book review posts, to learn what everyone else is reading.  Please let me know in a comment below.

Thank you for taking a little time to pop in and say hi.  Enjoy your week!!  Here comes July.

Hugs and kisses,