October Book Review! - Loving Our Messy

I’m talking books today! I read four books this month and liked all of them but really LOVED one of them.

The Royal We

I heard a lot of hype about the Royal We before I read it and it had been on my ‘to read’ list forever! Even if you look at the Amazon reviews, you can see that some people call it their favorite book of all time. So I went into this one with huge expectations! But you know how they say ‘expectation leads to disappointment’ and maybe that was my problem with The Royal We. I just expected too much! I enjoyed it but I didn’t looovee it like I thought I would.

Overall the storyline was the perfect book for me. It’s about an American girl that goes to college at Oxford in England. In fairytale fashion, she meets and falls in love with the future King of England. It had a clear ‘Will and Kate’ vibe (complete with a Prince Harry character!) and all of that I loved. The story follows their relationship over several years and the difficulties of having a private relationship in the public eye. There were parts that I just really loved about the book and flew through. And then there were parts of this 496-page book that were much slower and difficult to get through. There were a lot of characters introduced as their friends that were difficult to keep straight and truthfully, I just didn’t care enough about their side stories.

I loved the American becoming a princess story and I loved all the parts about their relationship. It was clear that the authors did a ton of research into royal life and British customs. That part was super interesting to read about! It was a cute book and the last quarter of the book brought quite a twist that I did not see coming. It’s worth a read if you are a fan of the royals like I am, but just keep your expectations in check. 😉

The Cinderella Pact

Truthfully, I chose this book by accident but it was the best accident! We had stopped at the library to grab some books for the kids to read in the car on a road trip and I was looking for a different one for myself that happened to be checked out. I was running out of time so I grabbed the first one on the shelf that caught my eye. I was super lucky because The Cinderella Pact was a light, fun read that I absolutely enjoyed.

The story is about a fashion magazine editor struggling with her weight and generally unhappy with her life. She’s single, her little sister is getting married, and her job is tedious and boring. She makes a ‘Cinderella Pact’ with two of her friends with similar struggles to finally lose weight and transform their lives. When she is unable to get promoted at her job because of assumed weight discrimination, she decides to pose as a British writer from London to write an advice column for her magazine. She uses a little Photoshop on an old high school photo, a fake British accent and a lot of little white lies to secretly land the job and earn a second income. As you can imagine, the lie takes on a life of its own and snowballs into a big complicated, hysterical mess when she is asked to appear in person to meet with the magazine’s owner.

I thought this book was adorable and written in a way that was completely relatable and full of humor! I wanted a book that wasn’t super serious and this was just that. Fun, cute and I would absolutely recommend.

Summer House

Hands down, the best book I read this month. This was my first Nancy Thayer book and no way will it be my last. I absolutely loved it.

It told 3 separate stories of women from different generations from the same family. It follows Charlotte, a single woman in her twenties looking for her own path, her mother (who is struggling in her marriage and finding her way now that her kids are grown) and Charlotte’s 90-year-old grandmother looking back on the life she has lived. They all belong to a giant family that has always spent their summers together at the family home in Nantucket. As always when you get a bunch of family together, their summer is full of secrets, miscommunications, and lots of complicated family issues.

I loved this book! At first, I thought it was going to be a predictable story but I was happily surprised! As the author switched between the stories of the 3 women, I kept getting wrapped up and wanting more of each! It’s a cute, quick read that was totally worth it!

The Power of Habit

I should say that I went into this book thinking that it was about how to create/change habits in a step-by-step kind of way. I thought it was going to tell me why my habits were bad and give clear instructions on how to change them. That was not exactly what this book was about even though I ended up really enjoying it.

The book was written more like a textbook – citing studies and examining data to explain how habits are formed and the golden rule of how they can be changed. They used real-life examples like Starbucks, Target, Tony Dungy (coach of the Indianapolis Colts) and Michael Phelps which I found completely fascinating. It was easy to read and I really did learn so much about habits which has made me look at everything differently. The book explains the basic idea of how habits need to be changed and it’s up to you to examine your own life and see if you can dissect your own habits and apply these things to change them.

If you haven’t read it – I definitely recommend it. It has changed the way I look at my routines and daily life!

These 4 books on the bottom are in my ‘waiting to read’ stack and I’m excited to dive in!