Summer Reading Celebration

4.5 I liked that. Interesting but it didn't dwell on boring things. It knew exactly what we were in for. I needed a book about dinosaurs and got a manifest destiny, stupid boy goes on a ride of a life time for some dinosaur bones and I ate it up!

I was obsessed! Theo, Winter, and Viv have my heart!!! This is by far my favorite of the series. Can’t wait to read Bailey and Beau’s story.

Well written historical novel that portrayals what it might have been like for a woman in the medical profession in England in the 1800's.

ARC read. I love Tarah DeWitt. Love the content warnings, Loved everything. How beautiful and sad and unexpectedly spicy.

I have no words. This book was amazing!

Everything about Henrietta Lacks and her family was heartbreaking. Henrietta was lost to history and not even a footnote in her own story. Her genes were used over, and over again. Her DNA was used in so many breakthroughs in science and not even a mention. What a harrowing life. Henrietta's story was tragic, dying young of cancer and so riddled with tumors that pain was her only companion. What was more tragic was her children's mistreatment, malnuroshment and torture at the hands of the people that should have protected and sheltered them in their time of grief. Circumstances were just not on the Lacks family side. Most of the children were dead or imcarcerated before the book was even published. The author, Rebecca Skloot did so much research and talked to the family extensively even when said family was very against even that for a long time. This book was good and very interesting but oh so devastating. Please read this story, if not to hear this family's story but to get the true behind the immortal genes and where they really came from.

I can see where the appeal is but I didn't much care for it. Girl meets girl, girl falls in love with girl and is forced apart by disapproving family. The historical significance of such a story, based on stories of lesbians in the Asian American community are important too and should be told I just didn't really care for this one. The main character Lily only showed strength of character once she found something she was passionate about and that was the sciences and Kath. Lily's friend Cheryl was not a very good friend and I personally dislike her from the get go but she was helpful in making her opinion, which was socially acceptable, very clear when it came to roles of women and what they should and shouldn't be doing. I appreciated what this book stands for and wh9 it was written for and it just wasnt for me.

Wonderful journey through difficult relationships featuring love, forgiveness, understanding, betrayal and redemption. Kristin Hannah creates characters that seem to come alive right off the pages. She did a good job with creating Summer Island as well, so good that I have to Google it to see if these islands really exist off the Washington coast. This is a story of an estranged mother and daughter. Nora, the successful mom, hosts a radio call in show giving stellar advice and upheld as a model of morality. Her daughter, Ruby, thinks otherwise, and rightfully so. Ruby carries a huge chip on her shoulders and is unable to connect with others at any level of depth. She ends up having to spend a week caring for her mother at their childhood home on Summer Island. She is offered a huge sum to write a tell all story about her mom just before she makes the decision to go. What follows is the packed week, an old boyfriend and the untangling of many emotions, learned behaviors and walls.

I loved this book. Set during WWII in London during the year of the Blitz, this book shares so much more than a ring side seat to the Blitz. This was a fresh take on telling the story of the Blitz. Two friends are forced to set off for London when one is ousted from her place of rest (unfairly). In London they stay with the best friend of the ousted girls deceased mother, Mrs. Weatherford. Mrs. Weatherford is a kind soul and she gets Grace a temporary job in a bookstore with a cratchedy owner. Grace is great in business, but she isn't a reader. Enter a patron who introduces her to reading just before he goes off to eat. Grace falls in love with reading and the bookshop turns around under her able hand, as does the owner. But then begins the Blitz, and we follow this bookshop and the others in London throughout that harrowing experience.

This was a somewhat disturbing book. Disturbing in that if you don't happen to be a person if color, you learn what it is like to live in their world. That it would be so bad you would want to "cross over" is telling of the world I do not know. The fictitious story is set in a small town of very light skinned blacks. They pride themselves on their lightness. Some even have red hair and could be mistaken as being white. But as the author notes, even the boy who looks white is not allowed the same privileges that an actual white person would have. The story follows 2twin sisters born in this town. Their daddy dies young and their mothers struggles to support the family. The girls have to chip in and life is very hard for all of them. One of the twins "crosses over" in order to get a job that pays better so she and her sister can afford to live in the city they have run away to. Eventually her white boss falls in love with her. Will she tell him? What happens to the other sister? There are some rough parts in this book, but I appreciated the over all message it told.