The Help Meet Wife

I picked up Women are Scary: The Totally Awkward Adventure of Finding Mom Friends by Melanie Dale because I'm at a stage in my life where I find myself lonely and virtually friend-less after all of my close friends moved away to various locales (I mean, I have acquaintances, but not those real soul friends that you can hang out with, call up whenever, and really have a deep relationship with). I also struggle with social anxiety and have difficulty making friends in the first place, so that definitely exacerbates the problem! Anyhow, I hoped this book would help me out with finding some new friends. The back cover reads: "Let's see...this is the part where I convince you that you need this book. This book will massage your feet. This book will bring you a fuzzy blanket at the end of a long day of parenting your tiny little insanazoids. I promise to make you snort laugh at least once. After reading this book, you'll rock jazz hands, be able to sing on-key, and never,...

Reservations For Two: A Novel of Fresh Flavors and New Horizons by Hillary Manton Lodge is the much-awaited second book in her Two Blue Doors series. I read book one, A Table By The Window: A Novel of Family Secrets and Heirloom Recipes, back when it first came out, and have been eagerly anticipated the release of book two. I was so impressed by her first book, which ended on a complete cliffhanger, that I just couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. The book's description reads: "A culinary concoction of taking chances and finding love in the most delectable places Food writer-turned-restaurateur Juliette D’Alisa has more than enough on her plate. While her trip to Provence might have unlocked new answers to her grandmother’s past, it’s also provided new complications in the form of Neil McLaren, the man she can’t give up. Juliette and Neil find romance simple as they travel through Provence and Tuscany together, but life back home presents a different set ...

I decided to pick up Rachel Held Evans' new book, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church because I've heard about her previous books and had been intrigued by what I'd heard. I've never read any of her books or her blog prior to this, so I had no idea what to expect, other than what the description implied: "From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans comes a book that is both a heartfelt ode to the past and hopeful gaze into the future of what it means to be a part of the Church. Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn't want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she set out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it. Centered around seven sacraments, Evans' quest takes rea...

I've always been interested in the medical field, so as soon as I saw The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year by Matt McCarthy, I knew it was a book I'd want to read right away. The book touts itself as being an inside look at an intern's first year at a busy hospital in New York. For some reason I was expecting a much smaller book, so I was surprised (but definitely not disappointed!) to receive a big, fat, hardcover. The book description reads: "In medical school, Matt McCarthy dreamed of being a different kind of doctor—the sort of mythical, unflappable physician who could reach unreachable patients. But when a new admission to the critical care unit almost died his first night on call, he found himself scrambling. Visions of mastery quickly gave way to hopes of simply surviving hospital life, where confidence was hard to come by and no amount of med school training could dispel the terror of facing actual patients. This funny, candid...

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson is one of those books that you pick up and read the back and think "okay, this is probably a dry history lesson". That was my first thought when I first saw it, but something about it piqued my interest, so I read several reviews of it. The reviews convinced me that this book was a must-read, and I wasn't disappointed. The book description reads: "On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous fa...

On Shifting Sand by Allison Pittman was one of the best historical fiction books I've read in quite some time. The first person narration of Nola is haunting, compelling, and ultimately beautiful. This book is set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which was an extremely interesting time period to learn and read about. The book description reads: "Long before anyone would christen it “The Dust Bowl,” Nola Merrill senses the destruction. She’s been drying up bit by bit since the day her mother died, leaving her to be raised by a father who withholds his affection the way God keeps a grip on the Oklahoma rain. A hasty marriage to Russ, a young preacher, didn’t bring the escape she desired. Now, twelve years later with two children to raise, new seeds of dissatisfaction take root. When Jim, a mysterious drifter and long-lost friend from her husband’s past, takes refuge in their home, Nola slowly springs to life under his attentions until a single, reckless encounter brings h...