[4] The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
Fiction/Friendship, Hilderbrand I hadn’t read yet, audiobook

Synopsis: Hollis’s husband died in a car accident in December. It’s now summer on Nantucket and she’s still a mess. Hollis hears about a “five-star weekend” event that another widower hosted, and decides to do one herself to see if it’ll cheer her up or at least distract her. The gist is you invite a best friend from each era of your life and indulge and connect over a weekend. Hollis invites her best friend from growing up, her best friend from college, a friend from when she was raising her daughter, and a friend she’s become close to on her very popular lifestyle influencer website. She also invites her daughter, who is studying film, to capture the event on video. Of course, everyone has their own drama – including drama with each other – going on.

Review: Fun, messy, easy-to-follow drama from Hilderband. Basically, exactly what I expect/want from her!

Recommend? Yes

[5] The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros
Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, saw in Available Now section on Libby, audiobook

Synopsis: Georgia is fresh off of a very public divorce and just wants to escape to her hometown in Colorado, but finds her estranged mother in the home Georgia inherited from her great-grandmother Scarlett, attempting to sell the one manuscript Scarlett never published – the story of Scarlett’s life during WWI and her love for her first husband. How’s that for a confusing synopsis? We get the story of Georgia working with the (obviously) handsome male romance writer hired to finish the novel, and we get Scarlett’s story in the 40s in England as well.

Review: I think I should have read this with my eyes – the narrators weren’t doing it for me! This story kind of slogged along too. You know how when there’s two stories being told you sometimes have a favorite or love both? I loved neither. Ha. And the reading of the love letters between Scarlett and her boyfriend/husband were unbearably cheesy. The ending threw me for a loop and that was exciting. Not enough to redeem the whole book though.

Recommend? No

[6] Wellness by Nathan Hill
Fiction/Literary, Green Light from Knox on The Popcast, Kindle

Synopsis: Jack and Elizabeth meet in college in Chicago in the 90s and unite over escaping their upbringings and families to reinvent themselves. They quickly find their crew amongst subversive artists. Flash forward twenty years and all their friends – including themselves – have children and are escaping the city for the suburbs and the lifestyle they previously attempted to subvert. Jack and Elizabeth find themselves separately wondering who they are, and if they are living the lives they want.

Review: The writing in this book is absolutely beautiful. It’s not a book you skim. I wanted to take it all in – every thoughtful little detail. In that vein, this book is about a whole lot of things, and also, a whole lot of nothing. It’s a deep dive into the neurosis of Jack and Elizabeth (I keep wanting to write Jack and Diane, ha!) and it goes down some crazy (but mostly interesting!) rabbit holes – on the history of prairie art, social media algorithms, polyamory, placebo science, etc. And it’s somehow all connected. I loved reading it, but found the ending deeply unsatisfying. And gosh, it’s just so damn long.

Recommend? If beautifully written character driven novels are your thing, definitely yes! Otherwise no.