Do you ever go through your reading list for the month and think, “I read that this month? It seems like forever ago”? That’s how I felt when reviewing my reading list for May. I guess May just felt like a long month. But it still was a pretty solid reading month.
My Favorite Books of May 2023
I read 16 books in May. Of those, I gave five books perfect grades. Those books consisted of four fiction and one nonfiction.
Crucial Conversations
I went into Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High with my hopes high. A student recommended the book to me. And honestly, students don’t recommend books that often, probably because they only have time to read what’s assigned for class and nothing more.
Not only did this student recommend a book that highly impacted him, but he wrote down every book I mentioned in class. I recognize another reader, and I love it!
Crucial Conversations didn’t disappoint. I think my favorite part of the book was where it talked about removing your emotions and, therefore, assumptions from conversations. Because when you bring emotions into a conversation, you automatically assume another person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions. These assumptions are often wrong and lead to emotionally-charged and ineffective communication.
As I was reading the book, I kept thinking about the therapeutic phrase, “What also may be true?” It’s about recognizing your personal narrative and how it frames how you perceive people’s intentions.
I also enjoyed how the book shared real stories of applying the concepts to crucial conversations in the workplace and beyond. I found it practical and helpful.
All the Dangerous Things
Isabelle Drake hasn’t slept in a year. You wouldn’t either if your toddler sone disappeared from his crib in the middle of the night while you slept next door. Now Isabelle is divorced from her husband and working the true crime circuit to try to find Mason. She feels like the police haven’t done enough, and someone, somewhere, holds the key to where her son is.
When Isabelle agrees to be interviewed by a true crime podcaster who has become interested in Mason’s case, she starts to wonder if her suspicions of neighbors and guests at her public presentations might actually be a bit too widespread. Maybe she needs to look closer to home to find out what happened to Mason. Perhaps she even needs to consider herself.
Happy Place
Emily Henry has done it again! I wasn’t sure she could top my adoration of Book Lovers, so I went into this book with relatively low expectations. I didn’t love it as much as Book Lovers, which was one of my favorite books of 2022, but it was fabulous.
Happy Place is about a group of college best friends who spend time each summer in one friend’s family cottage in Maine. Only this year’s get-together is different. One group is engaged. Another couple plans to get married in a surprise wedding while they’re there. Everyone seems to be moving on their lives, and this vacation will be their last at their beloved cottage, which is being sold. But the biggest secret of all is that the engaged couple that makes them all think continued friendship and love are possible has secretly split up. When will they tell their friends? Can the group’s friendship survive?
Emily Henry’s writing is just so full of little treasures. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.”
“She loops an arm around my shoulders and turns me toward the car, a cloud of Chanel No. 5 following us. It’s been her signature scent since we were eighteen, and I was still sporting a Bath & Body Works concoction that smelled like vodka-soaked cotton candy.”
“I retrieve my suitcase from the dinky airport’s baggage carousel and emerge through the front doors feeling like a woman in a tampon commercial: overjoyed, gorgeous, and impossibly comfortable—ready for any highly physical activity, including but not limited to bowling with friends or getting a piggyback ride from the unobtrusively handsome guy hired by central casting to play my boyfriend. All that to say, I am happy.”
“What can you feel? Sunlight, everywhere. Not just on my bare shoulders or the crown of my head but inside me too, the irresistible warmth that comes only from being in the exact right place with the exact right people.”
“My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Do you ever read a book and think, “Why did I wait so long?” That’s how I felt when I finished Taylor Jenkins Reid’s book, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I’d heard people raving about the book for a while, but it just didn’t seem like something that would interest me. Boy, was I wrong!
Movie star Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell her life story. But no one really understands why she’s chosen Monique Grant, an unknown magazine reporter, to share it with.
Monique knows an opportunity when she sees one, so she spends time with Hugo, listening to her tell the story of her life in the spotlight and her marriages to her seven husbands. In the end, Monique discovers that Evelyn truly does everything for a reason, and she had more than one for choosing the young woman to give her story.
What Lies in the Woods
What started as a game of imagination among three girls resulted in one of them being repeatedly stabbed and almost murdered. The friends testified against the man they said stabbed their friend — a serial killer responsible for murdering six women.
But even after putting a killer behind bars, the girls were still haunted by a secret of their own. More than 20 years later, it’s tired of being buried.
Happy Reading!
There they are! My favorite books of May. These books were so good that I enjoyed re-experiencing them while writing my reviews. I hope you find something on the list to read and love. As always, happy reading
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