If you’re a Baton Rouge mom looking for great book recommendations, we have you covered. Whether you are taking a quick road trip with kids from Baton Rouge or headed to a nearby beach for just a day, many of us love to bring a good book in our bag. Whether it’s the one book you should stop what you’re doing to read, or a list of the best beach books we’ve devoured recently … we love to talk literature! And psssst. Most of our book recommendations are affiliate links.
My Summer Was Lit :: 3 Books I Couldn’t Put Down
I have been obsessed with reading since before I can remember. Whenever I was a young girl, my grandmother loved to remark that “I’d sleep with my books if I could” (and I literally did, pun intended). I love all genres and I am THAT person you know that never has an answer to the question, “What kind of books do you read?”. I mean, I’m the lady that will browse the entire bookstore or library before making my selections. Needless to say, I can almost always recommend a title to anyone that asks! I am the proudest bibliophile you’ll ever meet and love to share my love of reading. Here are three books I devoured over the summer months for anyone who may be wanting to curl up with something good:
If you love to talk books, here is a great list of the best books from 2020 (a good read is always a good read), as well highly recommended summer reading for moms.
1.) Recursion by Blake Crouch
I am a member of Book of the Month Club thanks to my loving boyfriend who knew this would be the perfect Christmas gift for me. Whenever I saw there was a new book by Blake Crouch, it was automatically my July choice. His book Dark Matter was such a page-turner and I had to see if this one could compare. I think its even better! I don’t want to call this book “Sci-fi” because I think Crouch’s books should be a genre of their very own, and I don’t want to turn anyone off who may not read those types of books-so I’ll say it is an amazing book with a little “Sci-Fi seasoning.” It begins with NYPD Detective Barry Sutton attempting to talk a woman “off the ledge,” a woman who has been infected with False Memory Syndrome. The woman has discovered that her lifelong memories as she knows them are “false” and feels that her real life (in which she suddenly becomes aware of that very day due to a natural disaster) is unbearable. Barry immediately dives into a quest to discover everything about this “syndrome” and what it would mean if our “deja vu” was indeed another reality altogether. The book begins with a bang and never ceases in action. In fact, it’s addicting and I COULDN’T stop reading, not even on the beach whenever I’d promised myself a sand nap. It’s thought-provoking, it has romance, it has mystery, it’s a thriller, and invoked enough emotion in me to cry. Do yourself a favor and READ THIS BOOK, you will not regret it! I hear it is being adapted into a mini-series for a streaming service and I hope that that is not just a rumor, because I’ll be there to watch.
2.) Ghosted by Rosie Walsh
This book is a Liane Moriarty novel mixed with Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, and if you are a fan of either, then this book is for you. I downloaded this on my phone from the library – I’d read on Goodreads that it was a lighthearted read and since I was bed-ridden from surgery in June, I needed something that would keep me scrolling through something other than newsfeeds. I definitely needed rest but ended up pulling an all-nighter with this gem of a book. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a romantic read that begins as a mystery with a surprising plot twist! It follows Sarah who has a “love at first sight” connection with a man she’s just met believing him to be “Mr. Right” who suddenly disappears and leaves her wondering what happened. I’m typically great at guessing plot twists before they happen, but the twist in Ghosted fooled me and that made me love it even more! You may have to suspend reality a bit with this one, I found some of the characters’ actions to be extremely far-fetched. If you are anything like me and read to escape reality anyway, then this book is for you!
3.) The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
We are in the Psychological and Domestic Thriller Era of Books for certain. After the success of the twisty Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, I’ve seen these types flooding the shelves. Now that the market for thrillers is saturated, finding one that lives up to the hype (I’m not looking at you, Girl on the Train) is like finding a needle in a haystack. Immediately after reading Silent’s very first sentence, “Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband,” I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed. In this thriller, we know “whodunit” – Alicia, a famous artist who hasn’t spoken a word to anyone since the murder. What we don’t know is the “why” which is exactly what Theo (her therapist and in whose narrative the book is written) becomes obsessed with discovering. He heads to work at The Grove, the psychiatric hospital where Alicia resides, to discover the truth. This book is an eerie, complex maze with well-crafted characters that reads like a Greek tragedy. I found myself obsessing over Alicia’s motives along with Theo and wondering just how much power there is in silence. I know it’s been at the top of bestseller lists for weeks now but if you haven’t read this yet – by all means, you can borrow my copy!
