With the holidays coming up you may find yourself needing gift ideas for yourself or others.  You might also have a little extra time for reading with all the impending holiday travel.  Check out my recommendations and reviews of the following books and you may find something you like.

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An American Marriage

Everyone raves about this book and is reading it in their book clubs but it wasn’t my favorite.  The story has a good concept and is easy to follow but moves slowly and I thought the end was weird.  The premise of the book is that a young black couple gets separated after a year of marriage when the husband is wrongfully sent to jail.  Will the marriage survive incarceration?  Would the marriage have survived had he not gone to jail?  The story touches on relationships with parents, in-laws, and opposite gender friends.

Crazy Rich Asians

I really liked this book and am looking forward to seeing the movie at some point.  My only regret is that I didn’t create some type of family tree when starting the book to help me keep track of all the names and relationships.  At times it was hard to remember how certain characters were related.  The story is about the ultra-rich in Singapore.  A son (considered the catch of the country) is bringing home his girlfriend from America and she does not understand the world she is walking into.  The family travels in private planes, lives in homes not found on Google Maps, and has special Indian bodyguards for protection.  Will his family and friends accept her?

Summer Wives

 Taking place on an island in New England, locals and the wealthy “summer people” are very protective of their own from outsiders.  A famous actress is coming back to the island after a long time away to hide from her estranged husband but learns an old love has escaped jail. The story is told through three generations and takes a while to unfold including a few surprise twists.  There are unwanted pregnancies, broken hearts, called-off engagements, and many complex relationships.  I enjoyed how the book wasn’t predictable for me until about halfway through and how new details kept emerging throughout the story to keep the reader engaged.

The Girl With the Red Balloon

Another popular book club read I couldn’t fully get behind.  I found the concept of balloons physically transporting people through time ridiculous.  Also, how would the police not catch on to seeing the balloons all the time?  The plot is that a secret group has factions all over the world which helps people escape horrible situations.  The book switches between current time to 1980s Germany to a Jewish ghetto in Poland during WWII.  A girl gets pulled back in time to the 1980s when something goes wrong with one of the balloons.  The group can’t figure why or how it happened.  Then people with balloons start dying.  The group needs to fix the problem fast before they are caught.

Check out what I read last month in my October Book Reads post.