Here’s to a new year with new book reviews and recommendations. A book I reviewed this month is one of the BEST I’ve read (listened to) in a long time. I was smiling and laughing throughout the whole thing. I hope you find a great book to start off the year right with some pleasurable reading.

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People We Meet on Vacation

I liked People We Meet On Vacation a lot more than the author’s other popular book Beach Read but it’s still a bit ridiculous. I enjoy a good love story but prefer it to be slightly more plausible. Plus, the characters tend to act immature for their ages when it comes to communication or lack thereof.

A woman and a man meet in college and have very opposite personalities. The woman is vibrant and unsure of what she wants to do in life. The man wears khakis and has helped raise his younger brothers.

Despite their differences, the two become close friends who go on vacations together every year even if they are in relationships with other people.

But something happened on their last trip to cause a huge divide. Now the woman is desperate to get their friendship back on track. She plans a trip like they used to take but everything goes wrong from the start.

I will say the ending is very satisfying.

Taste: My Life Through Food

Wow, this book is superb. It is the best book I’ve read (actually listened to) in a long time. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook of Taste: My Life Through Food because Stanley Tucci’s voice is perfection.

Stanley Tucci’s memoir starts with his upbringing in an Italian family. He describes the meals they would eat and the lunches he would bring to school. Then he takes us through his young adulthood in New York City and some of the restaurants he would frequent.

From losing his first wife to cancer, to his second marriage and surviving the 2020 lockdown with all of his children under one roof – food is always the feature.

I laughed out loud and smiled throughout this fantastic book. Warning, you will get very hungry reading this book even if you have just eaten a large meal.

Rock Paper Scissors

Rock Paper Scissors is suspenseful and a little dark to say the least.  There are a number of huge plot twists that I didn’t see coming. 

A husband and wife are off to the Scottish Highlands for a weekend getaway. Both think this weekend will determine if their marriage is worth saving. The place they are staying at (won through a raffle at the wife’s work) is extremely secluded and something seems off.

Intertwined throughout the story are letters the wife wrote on each of their wedding anniversaries reflecting on the ups and downs of their year together.

Both spouses have been keeping secrets. A large part of this book is the fact that the husband has face blindness – which seems really strange but I guess it’s an actual thing.

The ending really threw me for a loop and I had to think back and reevaluate the story as a whole.

Winter in Paradise

During the most depressing month of the year this book made me want a beach vacation so bad. Winter in Paradise is the first book in a trilogy and I am excited to read the next two.

A woman is notified that her husband has passed away in a helicopter accident. He was supposed to be on a work trip but it becomes clear that he had been hiding a large part of his life from her.

The wife and two sons fly down to the island to pick up his ashes and discover he owned a large villa and had an entire life there they had no idea about.

Flirtations, family relationships, and the future are all up in the air as more is revealed throughout the story.

Bonus, Door County is briefly mentioned which made me like this book even more.

Want more book recommendations? Take a look at my Best Reads of 2021.