Oh dear, I have to put this book down now

why I'm 3/4 of the way through 3 books...

You know the moment when you get to that certain point in the book—past the midpoint, rolling fast toward the moment of no return, when everything is about to fall apart and you HAVE to stick around to see it all get put back together again?

I’m a fast reader, so typically when I get to that point, I’m going to stick around to the end in one reading session. But I’m not THAT fast, so if it’s bedtime, and I need to just read for a few minutes before I settle in, these are not for that.

Which is why, although I am wholeheartedly enjoying them, they have/have had to sit until I have the time and emotional energy to enjoy the ride. You KNOW I don’t usually recommend books until I’ve finished them, but I do feel ready to give you the full scoop on these—one because last night I had an hour and hopped back in to get to the end, and the other two because you are in ROCK solid hands with those authors. They’ll deliver on their promise (although one’s promise is a sniffling reconning with the inevitable finitude of life). Oh and in the DL;DR slot, head down to the end for a book I could NOT put down and accidentally stayed up all night to finish, on a vacation, not at all a good idea except of course that the book was hitting on all cylinders and I guess a vacation is the time to do it? But then I got food poisoning.

Here’s what I’ve got: First up, because it’s the one I think you should absolutely pop on the library list, is We All Live Here (Jojo Moyes). One v. English mum of a teen and a younger is left by her cheating scumbag of a husband weeks after her book about keeping your marriage alive is published, and finds herself living with her stiff-upper-lip stepfather and her bio dad, a low-rent William Shatner, after her mother is hit by a bus. (Moyes really leaned in on the hooks, there.) I haven’t finished this. I’m a little concerned that our heroine is going to take the hight road rather than enacting the brilliant revenge she has lined up against the cheating ex, and honestly the whole thing is a little (gloriously) much, which is why I’m kind of hesitating to encourage you to drop $30 on it, although I’m seeing lots of spiffy discounts around, and it’s a nice hefty book that’s delivering on its promise—I have complete faith the ending won’t disappoint.

Next, The Match (Sarah Adams). This is the one I finished last night. It was fun, I enjoyed it, who could resist a romance starring a protagonist with an epilepsy detection pup, who runs a business/non-profit supplying such support pups to others, and the handsome father of an adorable pre-teen moppet in need of just such a dog? It’s cute, cute, cute. It’s also the trad-pubb’d version of the early indie work of a now very professional and accomplished author, and the secondary characters, particularly those in the villain roles, are… under-supported. But the main characters are rich and full and wonderful. And the ending is lovely! And everyone gets nicer! And you will not experience one single moment of stress while reading this, which is so much more than I can say about, say, The New York Times. (I wanted to call this book a wonderful muffin, and then I felt like I was dismissing a genre I adore and actually, if I’m honest, cannot seem to write in myself and I am VERY VERY aware that easy reading is hard writing. But also it is a muffin? In the very very best muffin way.)

Finally… not sure WHEN i will be able to finish this one: What Does It Feel Like (Sophie Kinsella). This is a very slim novella of what are really vignettes from the story of an author of a smash hit book that becomes a movie and leads to many other smash hits, who, as a relatively young woman and mother of young children, is diagnosed with what will (probably) eventually be terminal brain cancer. It’s fiction. But also… Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series and many others, is a relatively young woman and mother… who has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Other than the book, there’s not a not a lot to be found about that in the way of details, not that I’ve particularly poked. I don’t know why I got this, other than that I love Kinsella’s work, and I want to support her not just by buying her work, but by being present for it, I guess. And it’s—of course—the kind of addictively voicey reading you can’t put down. I’m going to finish it, and I’m not going to speculate about how really fictional it is. I’m going to take it for what it is. And I’m probably going to cry. So not picking that one up again until I’ve steeled myself.

FINALLY: I should have stopped this one 2/3 of the way through like a good person who needs her sleep. But I didn’t.

I read Jane and Dan at the End of the World (Colleen Oakley) in two sittings, one of which was several hours too long, and then I wrote a blurb which did not end up on the book and I do not even care: “I’m on chapter 17. It’s 3 am and I can’t stop reading. I love Jane, I love Dan, I love this book and I think you will too.”

It was a very honest blurb but maybe not the juiciest, and also the authors whose recommendations were highlighted are probably more on point for this particular book, which is very hard to describe but think Die Hard with the internal voice of Catherine Newman’s Sandwich, and which—against incredible odds—really sticks the landing, bringing together a terrorist plot and a parenting dilemma and somehow tying them up with a bright red bow. You know how I usually say, if this sounds good, read it, it’s exactly what it says on the tin?

This… isn’t. Don’t read the flap copy, ignore the hook and the what-it’s-about. Open this up. Read a page. If you want to keep going—and I think you will—then do. It’s not what you think it is. It’s better.

And then tell me if you liked it!

Okay, am I the only one who does this thing with the partially finished books hanging about waiting for their close-up? Or are you with me?