Welcome to a new year with more book recommendations!!  I have been getting so much reading in (thank you breastfeeding and my Kindle!).  For this year I will use a rating system because not all the books I read are worth picking up if you have limited free time.  Hope you enjoy!

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The Glass Castle

This memoir is about a girl and her three siblings growing up in poverty with their eccentric parents.  You follow the family’s story through many moves, with them often taking off in the middle of the night, allowing the children to bring only one treasured possession.  The father always declares that someday the family will be wealthy and he will build them all a glass castle, but it’s always someone else’s fault that he never gets his big break.  As the dad becomes an alcoholic, the family becomes more dysfunctional than ever.  The children learn to provide for themselves, even resorting to stealing food out of garbage cans.  The book ends with the girl becoming a very successful woman with her parents choosing to be homeless. I haven’t seen the movie so I can’t comment on that.

Little Fires Everywhere

A book about two families; one headed by a “Stepford” mother and the other by a single artistic mom.  The two families become very intertwined as the kids begin hanging out together.  When the town separates into two sides over a controversial custody battle the mothers are pitted against one another.

The Marriage Pact

Newlyweds are given an invitation as a wedding gift to join an ultra-exclusive and extremely secretive group (think Fight Club).  The club emphasizes that if you follow its rules your marriage will be successful.  The perks of joining the group are enticing but the couple soon discovers the consequences for breaking the rules are all too real.  The book is a little strange and the ending is weird but it’s a good book if you need something new in your reading mix.

Hurricane Sisters

Your basic plane or beach-read that has less romance/sex than you would prefer, this book focuses on a family with three generations of women.  Each of these women is currently having problems in her life.  The mom is working very hard to establish safe shelters for battered women but no one in the family is taking her work seriously.  Plus, her marriage is definitely in a slump.  The daughter is working at an art gallery pawning off her parents so she can continue to work on her art.  She starts dating a local (slightly older) politician and some of her friends are having concerns about the relationship.  Lastly, the grandma is in love with a younger man and tends to share her many opinions a little too freely.

Want more good books to read? Check out what I recommended in December.