Author: Tirzah Price

Poppy and Alex have been best friends since the end of their freshmen year of college, when they shared a ride back to their hometown. They’re total opposites: Poppy is outgoing, upbeat, always down for an adventure. Alex is quiet, reserved, prefers to stay home and read. The one big thing they have in common: They like to travel. They begin a tradition of taking a summer trip each year, and that becomes a touchstone for them as they move from their college days and head into their thirties…but they haven’t gone on a trip in two years, since the big fight. And now Poppy is desperate to mend their friendship by coaxing him on one more trip. But in doing so, she’ll have to confront the confusing tangle of emotions she has about the true nature of their relationship.

Emily Henry’s characters absolutely shine through in this book. They’re so smart, funny, and multi-faceted. I loved how she plumbed the depths of Poppy and Alex’s friendship, giving them a beautiful and complex backstory, so many inside jokes, and plenty of shared history that made them leap off the page. They felt like real people, and their connection was so genuine. I also loved that Henry takes readers on a series of vacations throughout the years, going from their broke college days to the swankier vacations they’re able to afford later thanks to Poppy’s job as a travel writer, showcasing a bunch of fun vacation and travel settings. Of course, these vacations are never just simple trips, but an opportunity for the characters to explore what they want out of life and what matters most to them, and each trip brings them closer to admitting their true feelings for each other. The varied experiences and funny mishaps are all very memorable, and make me want to pack a suitcase and go anywhere just for the sake of an adventure.

While the book is light on plot and heavy on character, Henry cleverly uses flashbacks to all their previous trips together to build to the moment where it all went wrong, interspersed with scenes from their present day awkward vacation where they’re tentatively finding their way back. The emotional heart and the humor are spot on, and you’ll be rooting for these friends-to-lovers to find their happily ever after. It’s a fun trip, as decadent as any getaway!

Teddy Crutcher is Teacher of the Year at Belmont Academy, and if you ask he’d say he’s motivated by his students. He wants to teach them about more than just English. He wants to see them succeed. What very, very few people realize is that Teddy’s tactic for teaching his students a lesson can be rather unconventional at times. But Teddy sees it as part of his job, going above and beyond to prepare his students for the real world, and well, the real world isn’t always fair or kind, so why should he be? The last thing Teddy expects is a series of mysterious deaths at Belmont to throw an uncomfortable spotlight on the school, which comes dangerously close to exposing his secrets.

This is a real rollercoaster ride of a book (and my first Downing book, as recommended to me by my All the Books co-hostess with the mostest book recs, Liberty Hardy!) and it kept you guessing. Teddy Crutcher is such a great villain because he totally and completely believes that he’s within his rights to mess with people’s lives and that he’s doing what’s best for the students, even if he’s actively ruining futures and hurting people along the way. We also get to see the viewpoints of other characters—teachers, students, former students—and their differing perceptions of Teddy and the events unfolding at the school, which offers a wild take on how a few small actions by one person can snowball into an epic mess. This is a thriller where I genuinely didn’t know where it would lead (and sometimes I didn’t even know who to root for) but it was so cleverly put together that I couldn’t stop reading. If you want to escape your life for a bit and read about some people behaving very badly (and sometimes getting what’s due to them, but not how you expect) and you want to be surprised, pick up this book.

Bonus: I listened to the audio, narrated by David Pittu, and it was great!

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Del likes Kiera—a lot. But she’s been dating someone else for most of high school, so he’s never had a shot with her…until now. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend, and Del has an in: She goes to the same church he and his mom have recently started attending. But when Del stands up for what he thinks is a youth volunteer opportunity to get closer to her, he’s horrified to realize that what he’s actually signed up for is a Purity Pledge. Unwilling to miss his chance with Kiera, he decides to go through with it in the hopes of winning her over, with some help from his new friend Jameer. But Jameer’s help comes at a price: He wants Del to find answers about sex from their school’s healthy living classes, which none of the Purity Pledgers are allowed to take. And when the church’s pastor catches wind of Del’s enrollment in that class, Del finds that navigating romance and sexuality isn’t so pure or simple.

This is a hilarious book with so many wonderful characters and fully developed friend groups. I felt like every character was a teen that I could have worked with or actually met, and I thought that Giles did such a great job showing the many facets of teen life: school, family, friendships, romantic relationships, work life, and church life. Del isn’t exactly joining the Purity Pledge on very noble grounds, and readers can anticipate that his plan isn’t going to work out the way he hopes, but his journey is a really compelling one as Del evolves from a person who pursues his own interests to opening his eyes to the way the world unfairly treats women, and how toxic purity culture can be when it prohibits access to information about sexual health and contraceptives.

I also thought that Giles did an amazing job at writing a character who deeply frustrated me (because Del doesn’t initially realize how entitled and wrong he is in trying to get in with Kiera, and many of his actions are the result of toxic masculinity in society) but at the same time, I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to know what Del would do next, and I wanted to see him grow and really think about his world and his actions. And that character growth was really gratifying. This is a messy novel, and you won’t really find any perfect solutions, but it’s a very real, heartfelt, and hilarious story with top-notch writing.

Bonus: The audiobook narrated by Korey Jackson was great!

Ann Patchett is a literary writer who has made her career in writing novels, memoir, and essays for various outlets. While most readers know her as a novelist who wrote Bel Canto and The Dutch House, she has also spent most of her career writing nonfiction on a wide range of subjects, and this book collects some of her best essays from the last eight or so years (catch This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage for earlier essays, which I also highly recommend). In this book, she talks about everything from the influence her three fathers had on her, how knitting saved her life, her husband’s adventures in aviation, the evolution of her book covers, reading Kate DiCamillo, how she met Tom Hanks, and how her blurbing Tom Hanks’ book led to a deep friendship with his assistant, artist Sooki Raphael.

I loved existing between the pages of these essays because Ann Patchett strikes me as a very insightful writer and human, and she’s also lived a very interesting life full of lots of interesting friendships and experiences. She’s warm-hearted, generous, sometimes self-deprecating, often humorous, and she knows how to cut to the heart of matters. While her previous essay collection was a fascinating journey through the early years of her career, this collection of essays is preoccupied with aging and reflection, and there’s a lot of room for that considering that a nice chunk of these essays were written during the pandemic. The title essay, “These Precious Days,” is an achingly beautiful account of her early days of the pandemic and her friendship with artist Sooki Raphael, who was fighting cancer and living with Ann at the time. It’s a story I won’t soon forget, and brought me to tears. Reading this book makes me feel as if I’ve met and chatted with Ann, and that she is someone I’d be happy to know. I think it’s rare that we get such a candid glimpse into the life of a successful working writer, and we’re all lucky to be able to read this book and feel connected to her and her work in this way.