Some Recent Reads
Hi!! Do you know what I'm going to bring back? A round up of what I've been reading lately!
If you've followed my blog for a while you know that I used to do a monthly blog post called READS where I'd share the books I read every month. It brought me SO much joy to make sure I read about 4-6 books every month and chat about them on the blog.
While I no longer have the time to read that many books, the habit really became a habit and my lifelong love of reading is still going strong. (Still happy I made it my goal to read 100 books in a year all those years ago...it created a routine that really stuck and re-ignited my love of literature!)
So I've been pretty consistent with about 2-3 books each month over the past few years. I took a break from tracking them on Goodreads because it was making me too obsessed with hitting a certain number of books each year instead of just enjoying reading.
But I recently started tracking them again as a way to remember what I've read and also make sure I'm getting a balance of fiction/non-fiction. If I don't pay attention I'll read book after book of personal development, and I'm trying really hard to read more fiction!
Here are a few books I've read and enjoyed lately:
Mystery Novel (?!)
Starting off with a little teaser and I WISH I could share more about this one!! I got to read an early draft of an upcoming novel from someone I know and love dearly.
It's good.
Like, really really good!
I kept leaving my desk and taking little mid-day "breaks" so I could read a few more pages.
This book is going to be on all sorts of best-seller lists.
I'm predicting it right now.
I am so, so, so excited for this book to be published so you can read it too.Â
I seriously with I could share the details, but I promise that I'll share more when I can.
Fun For The Whole Family
Fun for the Whole Family: A Novel by Jennifer E. Smith was a bit of a random find for me. It came out in summer 2025 so it's new-ish, but the author has written lots of YA novels. (This one is not young adult, fyi! It's for adults.)
If you come from a large family and have multiple siblings, I have a feeling you will LOVE this one! It's light-ish and really fun and easy to read, but it has the emotional intensity that you only experience with big families...
It's about 4 adult siblings who have become estranged, until one day one of the siblings randomly texts the others and says she wants to meet up in a small town in North Dakota for a weekend together.
I won't give spoilers, but fair warning that it's less of a fluff/pure happiness/beach read and has a bit more depth to it.
It's funny. It's relatable. It's a little sad. There are lots of layers.
I loved this book so much that I immediately got the author's other adult book! (Which I'll talk about next.)
The Unsinkable Greta James
The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith...two for two with this author! I loooooved this book! She only has two adult novels (everything else is YA) and I'm not gonna lie: I was really sad when this one was over because now I don't have any of her books left to read! (I'm not typically a big YA fan.)
The Unsinkable Greta James is kind of along the same lines as Fun For The Whole Family: lots of real life family dynamics, complicated relationships, and love stories.
It's about a professional indie musician/guitarist named Greta who gets roped into going on an Alaskan cruise with her father shortly after her mother's death. It's a cruise her parents planned to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and Greta doesn't want her dad to go alone.
But his disapproval of her career choice (and other life choices) paired with the high stakes of her upcoming album release create the perfect storm for self discovery, re-hashing old stories, and learning to love new versions of one another.
I don't know, y'all...there was something about this book that was the perfect combo of happy/sad, light-hearted and full of depth, steamy romance/real life parent and sibling relationships...it just felt perfect for an easy summer read that still has some substance to it. Highly recommend!
Leave The World Behind
Apocalyptic thriller.
Now a Netflix movie staring Julia Roberts.
Produced by the Obamas.
A Read With Jenna! book club pick.
Haha. Y'all, all signs pointed to me loving Leave The World Behind by Rumen Alam...
...and I HATED it! Not the book for me.
Why am I sharing a book that I hated? Well, I guess so you can know the "types" of books I like and don't like so you can decide if you even want to follow any of my book recs.
And also because I actually finished this one. I've gotten really good at not finishing books. And I'm proud of that! I used to feel like I just had to power through and force my way to the end, but then I realized the joy of not finishing a book that I don't like, and it freed me. I don't finish books all the time.
This one? It was juuuust intriguing enough that I kept thinking, "maybe it's about to get really good so I'll just keep going!" So I kept reading "just one more chapter" hoping it would get better.
Spoiler: it did not get better.
It's not really an apocalyptic thriller in the way you might be thinking. It's more of a conversation-stirring type of book with a lot of recurring themes and analogies and NO REAL ENDING. It drove me crazy!
Is the movie any better? If you've seen it, let me know.
I'll share a few more book review posts this summer because I'm on a reading kick right now!
Also, a note to all the mamas to young ones: you eventually get more free time! The boys are 4 and 6 now, and I'm amazed at how much more easily I can sit down an read a book for 30 minutes than I could even a year ago.
They're growing, bit by bit, and I'm getting tiny glimpses of their independence. They play or swim or practice piano and I get to read a few pages of my book. It's really nice (and it's been missed!).
All that to say:
Just keep going, ok? You're doing a good job.