Why is it that returning from vacation leaves me happy, peaceful, and not in the mood to write book reviews? After a week in Hawaii, I’m still feeling mellow and relaxed, and not quite ready to return to real life craziness.

I read quite a bit — on the plane, by the pool, on the beach — and thought I’d share my quick takes on my vacation books. Here’s a look at what I read this past week — speculative fiction, a book that made me laugh, relatable moments, and a DNF. Read on if you want to know more!

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The Measure by Nikki Erlick: My book group’s pick for September. The Measure is speculative fiction in which everyone in the world receives a box containing a string — and the length of the string correlates to the length of each person’s life. Through the characters’ experiences, we see the impact of learning that they’re “short-stringers” or “long-stringers”, and also see how this knowledge becomes politicized and used as yet another way to treat people as “other”. The most powerful part for me was seeing how the characters react to the knowledge of their length of life, and how this knowledge creates connections and changes the decisions that characters may make. Great food for thought — if you received a box, would you open it? Would you want to know?

This book is totally absorbing and a fascinating read.

Rating:

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The Bright Side of Disaster by Katherine Center: I’ve loved this author’s more recent books, and was happy to stumble across her debut novel (from 2007), about a woman who gets dumped by her fiancé the day before she gives birth to their child. Jenny’s experiences with labor, delivery, and caring for a newborn are depicted more realistically than I remember ever seeing before in fiction — it’s all so relatable, and made me wish I’d had this book as a new mom myself, back when I was sure that everyone else had figured out the secret to success and I was the only one who was a total disaster. The story is told with humor, and I really loved Jenny, her friends, and her mother, and thoroughly enjoyed despising her loser of an ex. This is a quick read — and now I want to continue my way through Katherine Center’s backlist books.

Rating:

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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto: This might just be the most fun I’ve had between the pages of a book this year! Funny, silly, and full of heart, this murder romp starring a nosy, interfering 60-year-old Chinese widow with too much time on her hands is pure joy, start to finish. Vera is hilarious, and I love that this book is much more about found family than it is about the actual murder. I enjoyed this author’s Aunties books… but loved Vera’s story even more.

Rating:

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Marry Me By Midnight by Felicia Grossman: After seeing a few rave reviews, I just had to check out this romance set in the Jewish community of London in the 1830s. Not only is it a romance, but it’s also a gender-flipped Cinderella retelling — and it’s quite possible that there’s just too much going on here for it all to work.

I think I would have liked this story as historical fiction. The description of the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish communities’ efforts to ensure their place in London society and achieve some sort of security could be fascinating, and these aspects are what I enjoyed reading about.

Unfortunately, the romance tropes sank this book for me. Much too much about quickening pulses and unexpected tingles and admiration of manly chests. I just could not stick with it, and DNFd at 30%.

Note: Based on Goodreads comments, people seem to LOVE this book. Maybe I’ll convince myself to give it another try at some point…

Rating: DNF

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Apart from that one DNF, I really enjoyed my vacation reading this time around! I have more travel coming up next month… so now it’s time to start planning my next set of vacation books!

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