October 2021 Book Reviews and Recommendations

Spoiler – all four of the books I read for this month received four stars. Four stars!! I don’t think I’ve ever had a month in which I have really enjoyed each of the books this much. I hope one of my book reviews below sparks your interest.

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The Four Winds

The Four Winds is a great book, I read it quite quickly.  A few of my friends said they weren’t able to finish it because it is so depressing but I loved it. 

A woman grows up receiving no love from her family.  Luckily, she gains a great family through her husband.  Their life together is pretty good working his family’s farm until the Dust Bowl hits. There’s no water, crops are dying, there isn’t enough food. Many people are leaving Texas to try to find work elsewhere.

Eventually, an event happens that forces the family to move to California in search of jobs. They end up living in squalor, picking cotton to put food in the children’s bellies. The wealthy crop growers’ greed and prejudice threaten the family’s will to live. Then a communist who wants to get the workers to strike for a livable wage enters their lives.

It’s a powerful story about struggle, separation, and hope but mostly of a mother’s love for her kids.

License to Parent

This book has interesting and unique parenting advice from a married couple with 5 kids – both are former CIA spies. 

In License to Parent, the authors explain how they take specific skills they learned during their time in the CIA and how they apply those same skills to parenting their children. Everything from preparing “go bags” to riding motorcycles. The importance of learning how to read maps and how to get off the “x”.

I found this book had a lot of great suggestions you don’t get from other parenting books. I agree with many of the points about teaching children how to be independent. A few of the specifics I found a little drastic but overall this book definitely includes skills I want my children to learn.

American Royals

I read American Royals and immediately downloaded Majesty to my Kindle. At first, I was embarrassed by how much I liked this book. It’s a little silly and cheesy. But now I’m just irate there is not a third book. I want a third book and I want it NOW!!

The books are based around the idea that the U.S. became a monarchy and George Washington was its first king. Now the current royal family has three young adult children. Beatrice is the first female heir to the throne and she has spent her whole life preparing for her fate. While her younger twin siblings are known for their partying ways.

A number of dramatic events take place mostly involving the siblings’ love lives.

I’m shocked by how swept up into these books I became.

The Last Thing He Told Me

The ending of The Last Thing He Told Me was not what I was expecting. But that’s good! I often enjoy it when I predict a book’s ending wrong. It means the story kept me on my toes.

One day, out of the blue, a woman’s husband vanishes when the company he works for starts being investigated by the SEC.  FBI and U.S. Marshals show up questioning where her husband is.  Then her teenage step-daughter comes home with a duffel bag of cash left to her by her father.

The wife and step-daughter want answers. Where is her husband and why did he run? The more they dig into his past, the larger number of secrets are revealed. Major life decisions will need to be made.

This story had interesting twists.  At times it got a little long and had too much detail but that’s probably because I listened to the audiobook.   The book makes you wonder what you would do in a similar situation. 

Check out my book reviews from September for more recommendations!