What I Read in July : Dinah

I have been tearing through books this summer, which is good because since we started this blog, my reading list has grown to insane levels! This month definitely had a mixed bag - I somehow ended up reading a few heavier books that weren’t exactly the beach reads I was craving. I also finally got Malibu Rising from the library! I’m not going to do a full write up on here, but I loved it and recommend Eloise’s amazing post on all of our Taylor Jenkins Reid favorites.

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What I Read in July : Dinah

Eliza Starts a Rumor

Is “small town moms missing their city lives find themselves in the middle of a scandal” a genre of literature yet? If it was, this would be a strong contender. While there are no mysterious deaths, our main character, Eliza, the moderator of a Hudson Valley mom’s Facebook group, does start an anonymous rumor about an affair that has huge repercussions. Add in her high school BFF, who has fled LA on the heels of her husbands #MeToo situation and two young moms, one with a perfect husband and the other with a politically minded, but uninvolved baby daddy, and you get all the pieces of a low stakes, but highly entertaining drama.

This was such a fun book, I read it in about two days and while I was excited to see how all of the scandals came together and what happened, I wasn’t stressed out about it, like I can be with very suspenseful books. I was rooting for all four main characters, and was surprised by the big twist! I also love a book with a hopeful/happy ending and this delivered on that front.

Impostor Syndrome

Spy novel meets Elizabeth Holmes in Bad Blood, when Russian operative Julia gets pulled out of poverty and assigned to work in Silicon Valley. She becomes the COO of a Facebook equivalent, and just when she is feeling settled and successful in her life, her handler comes knocking with bigger and bigger asks. Julia has to decide between protecting her life and family in America and serving the larger purpose that she is supposed to be supporting for her native country - all while fending off professional competition and a low level employee that is starting to have suspicions.

I loved this book in part because it felt so rooted in reality - making the case that these kind of operatives live among us, look and act like us and are even sometimes the people we imagine most. I also like how they used the Silicon Valley background and the conversation around privacy and data that these big companies struggle with to drive th e plot.

People We Meet on Vacation

Poppy and Alex had been best friends since college, and through all the years stayed close by taking an annual trip together. Now that Poppy has converted her budget travel blog into a full time gig as a luxury travel writer, she misses their friendship, which ended after a trip three years before, and has lost her passion for travel. She concocts a plan to get Alex to join her on a trip to Palm Springs, and hopefully get back her best friend. The book flashes from the present day back to the annual trips in sequential order, revealing just what drove the two best friends apart as they try to come back together.

I loved this book so much - the characters were likeable, and as someone who has worked extensively in the travel industry, the issues on their trip rang so true to me! It was a genuinely funny story without being cringey and was also pretty sweet and sentimental. The characters grew without it being too heavy handed or sappy, and I really enjoyed my time in their world.

How to Murder Your Life

I had heard about Cat Marnell as one of those infamous NYC media-world personalities, so I was excited when my friend Julia loaned me her book as part of a stack she had pulled for me as part of her move. Her memoir focuses mainly on how she became an addict - starting in high school with two psychiatrist parents, through the peak of her media career working at Glamour and xoJane. Her party girl persona had almost seemed a little bit contrived from the outside, but wooo boy I was wrong about that!

Fair warning, her description of her drug use and partying is pretty disturbing at point, and she writes it in such a compelling and chaotic way, that it really takes you along on the experience with her. At times I was internally screaming at her to just stop and make a better choice, but was also totally wrapped up in it. Her sense of remorse about so many of her actions, the other NYC personalities mixed in and wondering just how far she would push her luck kept me reading. I think she gave a very real look at the toll it took on her life, and how she is still working on restoring some order to her life after years of terrible choices.

Leda and the Swan

I came extremely close to not finishing this book (Eloise gave up on it), due to the intense level of completely irrelevant detail that did not paint a scene, but rather distracted from it, and the heaviness of the plot. Leda is a college student who struggles to navigate the social dynamics of her sorority, dating and drinking. One Halloween, she makes a series of dubious choices resulting in a blackout that leaves her questioning what happened with the guy she is interested in, and if it was consensual. Meanwhile, a girl she had spoken to at a party that night goes missing and Leda gets drawn into trying to figure out what happened to her, while her disappearance becomes a campus-wide cause.

I finished this mainly to find out what the resolution of the mystery would be, and was honestly very dissatisfied with it. The murkiness around consent, Leda’s drinking and the sheer cattiness of her friendships was wildly unappealing. I think that may have been the point of the book, but it did not make it a fun or even very interesting read. The story was way too bogged down in descriptive language and Leda making wildly terrible decisions.

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