Some books are such a joyful escape. Other books are excellent brain exercise, like lifting weights with my mind. Even though I read far more relaxing escapes than muscle-building non-fiction, I appreciate both. The non-fiction books ground me and take work to read; the fluffy fiction provide rest, recovery, and fun. It feels good to alternate between the two. The way I do that is I read a little non-fiction every day, always before any fiction, usually while I eat lunch. Feed the body, feed the mind!
In May I came across another clever independent author, and I immersed myself in Emma St. Clair's witty worlds of words. She writes romantic comedies, some with Christian themes. I don't think she's a member of my church, but I liked how she inserted goodness into her more Christian-ish books. Her way of infusing religion into her fiction is very delicately done--no heavy-handed moralizing or force-feeding doctrine from Emma St. Clair! Another free trial of Kindle Unlimited made it easy for me to read a dozen or so of her books. Emma St. Clair easily won my award for my favorite author-find of the month. If I had to pick a favorite from her body of work, I'd have to go with two: Falling for your Fake Fiancé and The Billionaire's Masquerade Ball. Cheesy titles, yes, but enjoyable escapes nonetheless! I haven't read all of her books yet, because one series isn't available on Kindle Unlimited, but the other dozen or so were delightful and blessedly reliably clean.
Fiction
- The Recluse of Wolfeton House by Kasey Stockton (book 4 in the Ladies of Devon series: a little slow but super sweet)
- Something Old by Rebecca Connolly
- Half Hitch by Sophia Summers
- Dating Mr. Darcy by Kate O'Keefe: meh. Reality TV show based on The Bachelor, but with a Jane Austen theme. The characters were kind of underdeveloped and therefore not lovable, plus there was too much angst and arguing for my liking. I didn't care to read the next two books in this series.
- -*Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception by WVD
[and the rest of my fictional reading in May was by Emma St. Clair...] - Falling for your Best Friend's Twin by Emma St. Clair: book 1 in the Love Clichés series. A little overwhelming at first, being thrown into a lunch date with five long-time best friends in chapter one with not enough introductions from the author, but once the lunch was over and the story focused on just one of the friends, it was fun. Super quirky cute computer coding heroine, falling in love with a buttoned-up businessman twin brother of her best friend. All five of the books in this series were FUN. I resisted reading them for a while because the titles seemed lame, but the stories were not lame.
- Falling for Your Boss by Emma St. Clair: title is self-explanatory, but I liked the characters. They were human enough to make their love story darling.
- Falling for your Fake Fiancé by Emma St. Clair: this one was oddly unbelievable yet believable and also very sweet. I don't know why I like stories with dogs, but the massive dog in this one was just dumb enough to be real but the beast also pulled off some hilarious dog antics that made the story more fun.
- The Twelve Holidates by Emma St. Clair (a novella): same adjective, different story: SWEET.
- Falling for Your Best Friend by Emma St. Clair: always my favorite love story trope. This one had an intriguing twist with a neurodivergent heroine (aka on the autism spectrum), which added a new element to her love story.
- Marrying Her Dream Groom by Emma St. Clair (Hometown Heartthrobs series book 1): Again with the lame embarrassing titles, Emma! Seriously! Maybe she titles her books with a tongue-in-cheek attitude? In spite of their awful titles, the hometown hearthrob series was enjoyable, with light Christian themes. The characters are very flawed, but they find peace and help through Christianity in a very human normal way. The morals were not heavy-handed or awkward; just a real part of the journey. In this one, the B&B owning heroine's unrequited high school crush reserves a room at the B&B, and realizes that he loves the heroine, not her older sister like he thought. It is a much sweeter story than my summary, haha.
- Forgiving Her First Love by Emma St. Clair: girl confined to a wheelchair after a high school car wreck that happened while she was driving "her first love" home. He comes back to town 6 years later to apologize, etc. I loved this different type of love story, between an able bodied man and a woman who is paralyzed. Way to tackle a tough one, Emma!
- Loving Her Cowboy by Emma St. Clair: the cowboy part didn't really come into play very much, but the girl is upset with her longtime guy-friend for hosting fights in his barn with illegal betting. She tells him off right in front of a police officer and gets him arrested. His sentence is house arrest. Another very different kind of love story.
- Trusting Her Cowboy Poet by Emma St. Clair: Texas country veterinarian falls in love with a quiet cowboy who is eaten up with a terrible secret. Oooh, that was a moody little teaser! haha.
- The Billionaire Love Match by Emma St. Clair: a fun take on the bachelor reality tv show romance.
- The Billionaire Benefactor by Emma St. Clair: pro football player falls in love with a widow (with two kids) whom he meets through his charity organization.
- The Billionaire Land Baron by Emma St. Clair: wealthy land developer attempts to build a resort in tiny town Texas, falls in love, and gives it all up. Hallmark movie cliché? Yes. Sweet and funny? Also yes. This one was funny and sweet, with a delightful dose of southern humor.
- The Billionaire's Masquerade Ball by Emma St. Clair: clever modern take on the Cinderella story with a ball and mystery woman. She works at the company catering the ball but changes into a fancy gown in the bathroom, attends the ball, meets the aloof billionaire, and doesn't tell him her name because she doesn't want to get fired from her catering job.
- The Billionaire's Secret Heir by Emma St. Clair: girl falls in love with wealthy man who she thinks is the father of her orphaned niece. That was a terrible summary for a sweet story full of hope and positive change.
Maid for the Billionaire by Emma St. Clair: a cute novella about a shy Billionaire who falls in love with a maid at a resort. Novella romances rarely have quite enough story development to make them believable, and that held true for this one, although it was still sweet.
My favorite non-fiction read of the month was The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. She has a PhD and has done extensive research on shame and vulnerability. She used this research to write the most personable, personal book about living wholeheartedly. I loved what she had to say so much that after I listened to the audiobook, I read the printed book to review. Spoiler alert: courage, compassion, and connection are the gifts of imperfection because when we embrace the vulnerability caused by our imperfections, we use and cultivate courage, compassion, and connection to make it through. As the mother of a perfectionist daughter, I really appreciated Brene's words on defining and dismantling perfectionism. I have already used what I learned to soothe that daughter during a piano practice meltdown I told her:
"Your worth is separate from your abilities: nothing you do or don't do can change your worth or your worthiness of love. All of the talents and skills you have are completely separate from your worth, so your piano playing does not add or take away from your worth or how much I love you!"
I don't know if it all made sense to her, but she did seem to calm down maybe faster than usual? I'll credit Brene Brown's psychological prowess with that win!
Non-fiction
- -As You Wish by Cary Elwes: A memoir of the making of the movie The Princess Bride. The audiobook was read by Westly himself, Carey Elwes. It was awesome to hear him tell all of the behind the scenes stories because The Princess Bride has been one of my favorite movies for my whole life.
- You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience. Edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown: A raw, honest, and enriching look at the many different experiences of Black women. This book is a collection of essays written by different Black women, mostly about their experiences with vulnerability and shame resilience. I have resisted reading Brene Brown books for years because I thought it was all fluffy self-help nonsense, but she helped edit this book (and she has a Ph.d, and the references to her work in this collection inspired me to pick up one of her books.
- -The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown: YES to all of it. This book is full of such valuable ideas about the importance of leaning into vulnerability rather than submitting to shame. Joy is vulnerable. Pain is vulnerable. Embracing both is key to living a wholehearted life. It was so gratifying to read about intentional lifestyle choices that we've made (slow down, make time for play and downtime, etc.) are actual advisable techniques for a wholehearted authentic life.
Favorite Quotes
From The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown:
"Wholehearted living is about engaging in our loves from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging."
"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy--the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light."
"Practicing courage, compassion, and connection in our daily lives is how we cultivate worthiness. The key word is practice."
"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity...the heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become."
"Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are."
"Faith and reason are not natural enemies. It's our human need for certainty and our need to "be right" that have pitted faith and reason against each other in an almost reckless way. We force ourselves to choose and defend one way of knowing the world at the expense of the other...Amy Lamott: 'The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.'"
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From You Are Your Best Thing, edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown:
"Shame is also the way that oppression becomes internalized. It is an emotional ritual for the marginalized. It is a practice necessary to maintain our already conditional belonging here." --You Are Your Best Thing (When I highlighted passages from this book of essays, my Kindle didn't save the author of the essay. So I don't have the specific person who wrote these words. Major bibliographical faux-pas, but these lines are located on page 44 of the book!)
"Church folks' unwillingness to surrender our certitude often becomes a driver for the shaming that happens in the church. We have to be right. About the tenets of our faith. About the way God shows up. About the rules and regulations we wield to keep the "flock" in line. Because what does it mean to not know for sure? Can we still believe if we lean into the mystery of God and accept that maybe there is more than one way to embrace faith? ...We are too deeply invested in certainty as a marker of our faith. Ironic, since, by definition, faith requires a relinquishing of certainty." --page 59-60
"I imagine a world where everyone has the kind of space they need to know their joy. A world where they can safely share their hearts. A world where their emotional needs can be met... As long as we are not living in our full humanity, we cannot create a world for humanity." --page 77
"Through the lens of white supremacy, being Black is shame. And how we struggle to love ourselves and move through that shame is synonymous with how we battle white supremacy." --page 156
"White people who understand and own their privilege and the inequality it can yield are easier to be vulnerable with. This should translate into greater self-awareness and therefore showing up differently. Showing up differently includes the white person...recognizing impact over intention." --page 189
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Quotes from Emma St. Clair:
"The paintings are those modern kind with just a few broad strokes of color. I always feel like this kind of art is a cosmic joke. There's a preschooler in some basement with a paintbrush, while his parents laugh all the way to the bank." --Falling for Your Boss
"Just saying the words makes me feel a little braver than I actually am." --Falling for Your Boss
"Lived-in. That's the thing I love most about this house, what it says from the porch to the flour-dusted kitchen floors. It's like a beating heart, alive and warm." --Falling for Your Fake Fiancé
"I'll move on. Somehow. In intense pain and suffering, but whatever." --Falling for Your Best Friend
"Chocolate wouldn't dull the pain. But it would be a nice reward for making it through." --Marrying Her Dream Groom
"Best friends have to be a little bit evil. Or we wouldn't be doing our jobs." --one of the Billionaire books
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Ok, that was a lot of quotes to share, but they all struck chords in me, whether it was a more serious paragraph or the witty one-liners from Emma St. Clair's rom-com books. The variety of passages I underlined leaves me in awe of how many different ways authors wield language to express thoughts, feelings, stories, and experiences. Woohoo for words!
Kindle reading pictures don't have quite as book-ish of a vibe, but I am kind of devoted to Kindle reading, so there it is.
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