Okay, let me get this off my chest straightaway. Beach Read, the title, the cover, totally misleading! I knew from reading the summaries that Emily Henry's Beach Read was about two writers, each suffering from writer's block. That's why I picked up the book. I thought the fact that the setting was a beach was going to be a bonus. I love the beach. I love reading about the beach. This novel had so few references to the beach and almost no scenes that took place on the beach. Like I said, totally misleading.

I'm not a romance reader, typically, unless the romance is between a divorced mother of three or an older woman. But Beach Read was the right book for  the right time for me. Just how many tell all political books can one person read in a row. I enjoyed the snarking repartee between January and Augustus. I enjoyed the friendship between January and Shadi. I wouldn't say I really cared about the characters, but I was curious about them and how they ended up where they were at the start of the story. This was an easy, comfortable read.

Now I can get back to reading something a bit more serious. 

Rage

I had no desire to read yet another book about the trump presidency. Plus I figured I'd heard all the key points in this narrative by journalist Bob Woodward by just watching TV. For awhile, it seemed that every day a new tape was released or that Woodward was being interviewed somewhere. But, my older daughter had requested this book from her library and when it became available, it was in e-Pub format (which she knows is my preference) and not Kindle format (which is hers). So I read it.

As expected, there were no real surprises. So much of trump's interviews had already been broadcast... and I'd already wondered why the heck trump would submit to the interviews and then answer in ways that were less than flattering and in many cases idiotic? I guess that's another book that Mary Trump might  want to write.

What will really stick with me, though, after reading Rage, is that my long held suspicion that things were undisciplined in the White House from day one was 100% spot on. 

Bob Woodward will need to write a follow-up book or update the epilogue or in some way update this book once we are looking at trump through the rear window. It's very current. Reaffirms things I'd already been thinking but until this nightmare of a presidency is over, the story cannot be fully told.

And now, for now, I am putting the trump book club on pause! With just a little over a week left until "Election Day" (whatever that exactly means this year), I just can't take anymore.

Melania and Me

 

I gave Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's memoir tell-all, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady 3 stars on goodreads. It didn't give me much insight into Melania. She is pretty much the shallow person that I thought she might be. But when I read this a story of an uneven friendship that eventually exploded, that's where it held some interest to me.

Unlike Wolkoff, I was in a friendship where I gave much more than I got. Not nearly as extreme or high-profile as this situation. Plus I never felt as used as Wolkoff, nor was I thrown under the bus like Wolkoff. But I gave more than I got. And eventually I was forced to walk away from the friendship. 

Most of the "juicy" bits about Melania had already been shared on TV so I really didn't need to read them here. I also felt my eyes glaze over as Wolkoff went into the finer details of some of the inaugural stuff. I really didn't care then, I don't care now, and I doubt that I will ever care.

If you're curious, it's a pretty quick read. But that's about it.

Squeeze Me

I am normally a huge Carl Hiaasen fan and I am really not a fan of the current occupant of the White House. That made me think this novel about a wildlife wrangler based in Palm Beach dealing with an influx of pythons in Palm Beach, the location of the "Winter White House" would be right up my alley. There were some laugh-out-loud moments in the novel. After all, Hiaasen can be really funny. But the overall novel just  fell flat with me. 

In addition to being really smart-aleck funny, Hiaasen tends to focus on environmental issues and there just wasn't enough of  that in this novel. I tend to think that's what was missing for me.

A socialite in the POTUS fan club gets swallowed by a burmese python. The plot follows Angie, the wildlife wrangler, trying to figure out what's going on with the chief of  police and Secret Service. At a point, I really didn't care what was going on.

It was also unclear when this novel was supposed to be taking place. There were several references to the pandemic, but was the pandemic over? It didn't seem as though any virus mitigation efforts were in effect. So that was confusing and made me feel like this novel was rushed to print.

I hardly ever say this, usually giving a qualified recommendation, but you can give this one a miss. The blurb about the book was probably the best part.

 

Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

I seem to be reading all the trashier tell-all books about trump. Michael Cohen’s memoir, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, was the latest.

If you’ve ever heard Michael Cohen speak, well, that’s exactly how he writes. Doesn’t appear to be any ghost writer here! In my opinion, he seems sincere. He’s sincere about coming to the realization that sticking with trump was cultish. This book also seems like a sincere attempt at getting back at trump in some way. And I’m totally fine with this. I took what he said with a grain of salt, but even if only half of it is totally accurate, that’s a lot of bad stuff.

Because Mary Trump is a psychotherapist, I expected to find her book, Too Much and Never Enough, the most insightful regarding trump’s mental health. I actually found Cohen’s book more revealing. I definitely have a better understanding of trump’s behaviors after reading this book.

It’s a sad story. Yes, Michael Cohen was thrilled to be in trump’s orbit. However, he really paid a price with his family, even before he spent time in prison. And the story of trump makes me feel sad for any involved in his wrongdoings who just kind of got sucked in.

Next up in the tell-all book club… Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. This e-book checked out of the library just as I started Disloyal. No way could I read these two back-to-back.

I started Moonglow by Michael Chabon right after finishing Disloyal. I thought that would be a big change. It was. Unfortunately, Moonglow was a bit too heavy for me to read right now. I need lightness. I dropped Moonglow and am now reading Squeeze Me. It’s never a bad time to read Carl Hiaasen.

28 Summers

I’m still very conflicted over my thoughts regarding Elin Hilderbrand’s latest novel, 28 Summers more than 24 hours after I finished reading it.

It was an easy, pleasant quick read. It was a romance. Perhaps it was a beach read, but I’m not really sure.

The writing in this novel evoked the beach far more than Summerof ’69, which I read earlier this summer. In fact, the beach felt like a character in 28 Summers. As a beach lover, I appreciated that.

Each chapter was a year between 1993 and 2020. She started each chapter with a recap of news highlights from that year. Being a current events junky, I did particularly like that. I especially love what she wrote for 2001. I’m not going to copy the entire thing, but after recollections of 

“A Tuesday morning with a crystalline sky…” she writes, “If there’d been anything else we cared about that year before this happened, it was now debris. It became part of what we lost.”

Now for what I didn’t like. First my small issue. I’m not sure why Hilderbrand thought it was necessary to let us know that Mallory dies at the end of the book right at the very beginning.

My bigger issue was the fact that this was a story about adultery (I hope I’m not laying out a spoiler). The story line revolves around the old movie,"Same Time Next Year." An even bigger issue was that there rarely seemed to be any guilt about the cheating. Won’t go into more detail here, but I found that disheartening.

Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this beachy novel, but if adultery is not your thing, steer clear.