Fiction Read – The Husband’s Secret
A few months ago, I was contacted by She Reads and asked to be part of their blogger network. They have a book of the month and they offered to send me copies of new books in exchange for my reviews. Hot diggety dog! Free books? I’m in!
I was super excited about the first selection, The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty. I had recently read her book What Alice Forgot and I really enjoyed it. It was thought provoking, heart breaking, and feel good all at the same time.
The Husband’s Secret was just as good. It’s about three women, each with her own struggles and pain. The mystery of the husband’s secret kept me turning the pages, until in the very middle of the book I actually gasped out loud. I love when a book surprises me. And then I kept reading to find out how it would all resolve as more of the truth comes out.
The subtitle is The Trouble with Truth is It Can Change Everything. But the truly heart breaking thing about this book is that the truth just doesn’t come out in a way that it could change everything. The epilogue lists the truths that the characters never learn. I found myself pondering some larger questions about the pain we sometimes live with and inflict on ourselves just because we aren’t aware of the full truth.
The one thing I did not like about this book was the language. I can overlook the occasional curse word, but I don’t like when ugly words get used repeatedly. I think it’s lazy of the author to do that. There are other ways to show that a character is angry, other than having them use the same four letter word. And in this book, the author doesn’t resort to a lot of language until later in the book, as if she was getting tired of writing and it was just easier to have the characters cuss to show their anger.
That said, I still recommend the book. The bad language was not enough to deter the story for me. (I did recently abandon a book because of the same four letter word being used in the first few pages. No thanks.)
Non-Fiction Read – All the Money in the World
I also recently finished Laura Vanderkam’s book, All the Money in the World. I really enjoyed her other books in her What Most Successful People Do… series. I do admit to scanning through some of the middle chapters of the book, but there were some really thought provoking and even fun things she brings up for consideration.
Things like planning your own perfect weekend. Not a big trip or outlandishly expensive weekend. Something more doable. It’s fun to think about the things that we really enjoy doing. And then to realize that with just a little planning, we could do those things a lot more often than we do. Like getting together with friends. Or taking in a local concert.
At the back of the book there are a lot of questions about how you view and spend money. I brought up the first question at the breakfast table one morning. Our answers were pretty interesting.
If you had all the money in the world – not literally, but all you wanted – how would you change your life? Personal pet peeves you might resolve. Personal aspirations you’d attempt. Broader goals you’d support.
Our 15 year old son was the first to answer. He said he would invent a Mini Wheat cereal that had icing that did not dissolve in milk. Yep. A very good idea.
Jim’s answer was that he would get socks that wouldn’t get mixed up with our son’s socks. (We think big around here!) We quickly realized that this could be solved for less than $10. He’s now the proud owner of gray socks, never to be confused with our son’s white socks.
And my first thought was that I would make sure the car was always washed. Again, this is easily solved for less than $10. A quick drive through the car wash was all it took.
As part of this conversation, we did realize a big goal that we’d written off as too expensive just might be possible. And some more research into it over the last week has been pretty fun too. Time will tell whether it comes to happen, but at least we realized that it’s a lot more possible than we believed before.
Music
I don’t listen to music at home very often. And I have trouble listening while I write. But I decided to listen to Pandora one day while editing photos. I set up a station for Rend Collective Experiment and it’s been my favorite Pandora station ever. I’ve liked nearly everything they play. There’s been some Need to Breathe, Gungor, David Crowder, J.J. Heller, Andrew Peterson and more. And, of course Rend Collective too.
What have you been listening to and reading?
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
I read What Alice Forgot based on your recommendation and loved it! I’m on the wait list at the library for The Husband’s Secret and can’t wait until it is available. Thanks for the recommendation!
My husband is not going to like you! He thinks I buy too many books, and now I’ve added two more to my list of books to read. LOL. Everyone keeps talking about Pandora, but I still haven’t checked it out. Maybe one of these days, but I’m one of those people who prefers complete silence.
I loved The Husband’s Secret and don’t even remember the cursing getting bad since I was caught up in the story! The epilogue was fun and thought provoking.
I enjoyed reading your review. I enjoyed the Husband’s Secret as well.
I actually don’t even remember what cursing went on towards the end of the book, but I think I probably found it believable. That was definitely one of my favorite things about the book anyway – the characters dealt with experiences I couldn’t imagine going through but I felt like the author gave them such believable reactions. The characters just felt so real to me!
I loved All The Money in the World! I think it gives such great, actionable advice. I love that you’ve tried making some changes already and think it’s great that you talked about the book as a family. Very cool! I haven’t read her What Most Successful People Do series, but it’s something I’d really like to get to 🙂