Okay so November was unexpectedly a bad reading month for me. I started off strong with two five star books but unfortunately, slid down into a reading slump that led to two DNFs back to back. I haven’t picked up a book since and am trying to motivate myself to get back into the swing of things and into the holiday spirit with some holiday themed short stories. I just have to pick up my Kindle now and just get reading! That said, here’s my reading recap for November:
The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood – check out my full review here!
Lightning In Her Hands by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland – Lightning In Her Hands is the second book in Gilliland’s series for the Flores sisters, following her first book Witch of Wild Things (read my review here!). As a lover of magical realism, and having loved the first book, I was more than ready to jump in when this one was released this year. Lightning In Her Hands follows the middle Flores sister, Teal, who has always struggled with managing her emotions. This would be relatively normal for anyone else, except that Teal’s emotions control the weather. Aside from her lifelong quest to figure out how to manage her gift, Teal is on a redemption tour of sorts to make amends with her sisters and her former best friend Carter Velasquez. She devises a plan to ask him to be her date to her ex’s wedding, in hopes that they can reconnect and things will go back to how they used to be. He accepts her invitation under one condition: marry him to help him get his inheritance.
Without spoiling too much, Teal goes on a journey to manage her emotions, her gift, and mental health, realizing that to really get a handle on both, she’ll need to find her long lost mother. I loved reading through Teal’s journey from a seemingly angry girl to one who finally is at peace with who she is. Through that journey, she realizes that her sisters will always have her back, and that she and Carter never really stopped being friends. There’s so much more to discuss about Teal but I will hold off to remain spoiler free 🙂 I will say that there are mentions of domestic violence in Teal’s story so if you’re sensitive to those themes, please proceed with caution. That said, I am ready for Sky’s story to complete the trilogy – whenever that finally gets released!
Elevator Pitch by Evelyn Leigh – DNF @ 12% – I was really excited to read this after seeing so many positive comments on Instagram. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. I struggled to stay captivated by the story and felt like there was a lot of internal dialogue and repetition going and not much showing. The book just wasn’t for me.
Happy Medium by Sarah Adler – DNF @ 28% – This one has been on my list as there’s magical realism involved but I had to put it down. The con artist angle with the chatty ghost wasn’t working enough for me to want to keep reading. Another book that unfortunately was not for me.
