I have wanted to start a book list for a while now and I am very excited to finally get it together. I’ve always been a book nerd and I love talking about books. I am also always on the hunt for something new. If you have read something you absolutely loved please let me know in the comments below. I’m hoping to have a list about every month or so depending on how much I read. My usual genres are fiction, historical fiction, thrillers, and the occasional biography. So here it is, Roxbury Place Book List Volume 1.
Daisy Jones and the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid
In the last few weeks I read five books and this one was one of my favorites. It’s about a rock band called The Six and their lead singer Daisy Jones . It details their rise to fame and subsequent break up during the 70’s. It’s got everything you think it would. Sex, drugs, rock and roll as well as love and loss. The story unfolds through a series of interviews with the band members and the people who were part of their inner circle at the time. It’s like a VH1 Behind the Music in book form. I highly recommend it.
Daisy Jones and the Six
The Vintage Affair – Isabel Wolff
This was my second favorite book out of the bunch. It’s about a woman named Phoebe who, after spending ten years organizing auctions at Sotheby’s, quits her job to open a vintage clothing shop. Not any ordinary vintage shop, but one that sells only the best vintage designer clothes . After receiving a call from an elderly woman who wants to sell her impressive clothing collections, Phoebe befriends the woman and learns about her painful past the heartbreaking choices she made during WWII. This book was definitely one of my favorites. Not only did I love the story, but also all the references to the fabulous vintage clothes. The Vintage Affair
Watching You – Lisa Jewell
If you like thrillers, this is a great read! It revolves around a group people living in a London suburb who are all connected in one way or another to the new Headmaster at the local school. Tom Fitzwilliams is charming, charismatic and well liked, not only by his students but their families as well. However, something isn’t quite right about the new Headmaster. One of his students, Jenna Tripp, is convinced he is having an affair with her best friend Bess . Tom’s son Freddie can’t shake the strange feeling that his dad is involved in the death of one of his former student’s years ago, and his newly married new neighbor is completely infatuated with him. When one of the characters is murdered, you are left with an ending you didn’t see coming! Watching You
A Day in December – Josie Silver
This was not one of my favorites. I was intrigued because it was one of Reese Witherspoon’s pick for her monthly book club. However, I wasn’t impressed. It was very predictable and the characters were not very likable. One day in December, (hence the title) Laurie, a 20 something girl on a bus, locks eyes with a boy on the street and is convinced his is “the one”. She spends the next year looking for his with no luck. Sure enough a few months later Sarah her best friend and roommate shows up with her new boyfriend Jack, and, you guessed it he is the guy from the bus. Jack recognizes Laurie the first time he meets her and pretends he doesn’t know her.The book covers the next ten years of all three of their lives, and it’s a very sad love triangle. No matter how much of an ass Jack is to Laurie, and he is really horrible to her a few times in the book, she still remains friends with him. This made me not like Laurie’s character at all. It made her seem kind of pathetic. She is constantly putting everyone else’s feeling before her own. In my opinion, not worth your time. A Day in December
Transcription – Kate Atkinson
I was pretty meh about this book too. It got my attention at the beginning, but it started to drag halfway through, and the ending was sort of anticlimactic even though I didn’t see it coming. It’s about a woman named Juliette who is recruited to transcribe recorded conversations with potential Nazi sympathizers in London during WWII. Ten years later the work she did during the war comes back to haunt her and she is forced to make a decision that will change her life forever. I love a good spy novel, especially a WWII spy novel, but unfortunately, this one just didn’t deliver. Transcription
Stay tuned for next month’s list. It includes a self help book and a memoir, neither of which are my first choice of genes, as well as some other fun fiction.
Thanks for reading. Hope you’re off to a good week.
Photos by Chloejane Photo + Film