Weekly Reads: The Vacationers

The Vacationers showed up on numerous "Beach Read" lists so I had to throw my name in to the hold list at the library. I got a chance to read it over the fourth of July weekend and I read it in a day. It had a fairly slow start, but it got interesting about 70 pages in to the book. It was a fairly quick and enjoyable read.

My rating: 3 stars.








Summary from goodreads:

An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca.

For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.

This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.

Weekly Reads: Matchmaker

The Matchmaker is the newest book from author Elin Hilderbrand. I received an e-ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. I enjoy Hilderbrand's books for light, vacation reading. I always want to book my next vacation in Nantucket while reading her books. The month of June I had a Beach Read display at the library and her books made up a bulk of the selection, and I couldn't keep the display stocked! They flew off the shelves. Yay successful display!

While her books are light reads, they tend to have more depth then just a regular chick lit read, do you know what I mean? This one was no different, and may be my favorite book of hers so far. There were a few sub-plots going on throughout the story, but they weren't distracting and really added to the story. I have a hard time reading books that have three best friend female characters, and each chapter is told from their individual perspective, BUT I CAN NEVER REMEMBER WHO IS WHO, because the stories aren't told in a way that makes me actually care. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this is a must read this summer.

My rating: 4 stars

Summary from goodreads:

A touching new novel from Elin Hilderbrand in which a dying woman sets out to find love for those closest to her - before it's too late

Dabney Kimball Beech, the 48-year-old fifth generation Nantucketer, has had a lifelong gift of matchmaking (52 couples still together to her credit). But when Dabney discovers she is dying of pancreatic cancer, she sets out to find matches for a few people very close to home: her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech; her lover journalist Clendenin Hughes; and her daughter, Agnes, who is engaged to be married to the wrong man. 

As time slips away from Dabney, she is determined to find matches for those she loves most - but at what cost to her own relationships? THE MATCHMAKER is the heartbreaking new novel from Elin Hilderbrand about losing and finding love, even as you're running out of time.