The first was The Room on Rue Amelie by Kristin Harmel because I was craving my go-to genre of WWII historical fiction. Amelie follows Ruby, an American newlywed in 1939 Paris. Ruby forms a friendship with her young Jewish neighbor, Charlotte, and they are both quietly drawn into the resistance when they find that Ruby's husband is harboring RAF downed pilots and helping them return home to continue fighting. I learned afterward that Ruby's character is based on the real-life story of Virgina d'Albert-Lake. I never tire of the stories of acts of bravery, small and large, in the face of danger and cruelty that lurked aroud every corner at that time.
The second was Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life. Life follows Alice, a writer who is wooing the legendary Margaret Ives to finally tell her side of her infamous family's story. Problem is another writer, Hayden Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, is trying to do the same. The novel splits its attention across three threads: Margaret’s “poor little rich girl” past, Alice’s sense of being slightly out of place, and the slow-burn rivalry-turned-romance between Alice and Hayden. Of the three, Margaret’s storyline has the most promise, but it never quite meets the mark. Her chapters feel like they’re straining to justify their importance. Alice’s personal arc is the one I found most interesting — her insecurity, her hunger to be taken seriously — but even that felt underdeveloped. Instead, the romance takes center stage, and while Alice and Hayden have chemistry, their relationship unfolds with a convenience that undercuts the tension the story sets up. It’s charming, but it’s also predictable in a way that makes the stakes feel low. The big reveal near the end is genuinely intriguing, but the fallout doesn’t quite deliver. It’s as if the book gathers all the right ingredients but never quite cooks them into something satisfying.
I started The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, but I just could not get into it. The premise is that a woman staying at her family's summer beach house has a decision to make in 24 hours - stay with the husband she loves or pursue her childhood love, whom she had sex with for the first time just the night before. I'm not a prude, but the main character failed to capture me early on as a compelling woman of depth and I kept waiting for an early hook to keep me engaged. Maybe I'll pick it up again later.
I'm about halfway through The Lion Women of Tehran and my book club pick of the month is The Washwoman' at the River's End. The latter book isn't available on audio so I will be actually reading via the Kindle app for the first time in a very long time.
