A beautiful sunny day is the perfect type of day to start on your Spring and Summer reading lists.
In “The Great Believers”, we alternate between a 1980s America at the peak of the AIDS epidemic when fear and misinformation were rife and the 2010s. The 1980s setting was much more interesting and the characters leap off the pages. This book is well worth the read.
You may need that sunshine and kleenex to get you through these books. “Girl in the Blue Coat” by Monica Hesse is a sad tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and redemption in Nazi Germany as a young woman searches for a missing Jewish girl.
I really enjoyed this book. It was well written. I appreciated how the author showed the complexities of trying to protect someone without inhibiting their independence and how this constant struggle to maintain an equilibrium can be exhausting. The subtlety the author used in explaining how we lash out or thoughtlessly hurt others and how we might forgive and be forgiven was lovely. I liked the overall message of accepting people as they are….the metaphor with the leaves was superb.
It is entirely rude to take someone’s picture first thing in the morning and use it on a book cover without their explicit permission; however, since the story and illustrations of this grumpy monkey and his friends are adorable, I suppose I will forgive them. “Grumpy Monkey” by Suzanne Lang.