July's Reads: Contemporary Fiction

At the end of every month, as I look toward the next month's reading genre (you can find out about the reading challenge I'm doing here), I always scan my physical and Kindle bookshelves to see what I already own that fits that genre. For July, I was supposed to read contemporary fiction. The first thing I hit on was my Karen Kingsbury section of books. From there, I finished a series I started a while ago, read a couple new books, and revisited a beloved series from my teenage years. 

I started July reading Where Yesterday Lives by Karen Kingsbury. 

(From Karen's website)

Ellen Barrett, thirty-one, is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist with an uncertain marriage, a forgotten faith, and haunting memories of her picturesque hometown and the love she left behind. The eldest of five siblings, Ellen longs for the time, long ago, when they were happy—when they were a family. 

Then tragedy strikes. Now Ellen’s beloved father is dead, and she must leave Miami and return to her childhood home on the shores of Little Traverse Bay in Petoskey, Michigan. 

As she returns to a world that was, an avalanche of memories is unleashed. And so Ellen’s quest begins—a quest to make peace with the people who still live there, with the losses and changes that time has wrought, and with the future God has set before her.

I had bought this one a while back but hadn't read it yet. And, to be honest, it wasn't my favorite. I've read a decent number of Karen Kingsbury books, and I generally enjoy them. I didn't not enjoy this - I just didn't have that full feeling when I finished it that comes after reading a really good book. That being said, this isn't a bad book. It's got interesting characters and focuses on the really difficult task of dealing with grief and learning to let go of the past. In the end, I think it has a lot of good things to say; it just wasn't my particular cup of tea this go around.

From that standalone book, I jumped back into Kingsbury's Redemption Series. If you are familiar with her books at all (and she has written an incredible number of them!), this is the original Baxter Family series. I have read the first book, Redemption, but I don't own it. Since I remembered it well enough, I jumped into the one I do own, Remember. 

(From Karen's website)

Convinced she could make it on her own, Ashley Baxter has kept the most important people in her life at a distance--her family, the man who loves her, and the God she is sure can never forgive her.

Now, just as she begins to open her heart, the events of September 11 rip into Ashley's world and she is led to heartbreaking and hope-filled decisions that will forever change her life.

I'll be honest: I cannot read or watch anything about the September 11th terrorist attacks without getting emotional. I'm just incapable of it. Kingsbury has another series of books more specifically about that, and those books absolutely wrecked me.

This book does coalesce around September 11th; it's a huge part of the story, and it is devastating. I forgot that I had read this one before as well, so I was getting little snippets of deja vu constantly. I went on to get the other books in the series from the library, which I had not done the last time around. So, Return, Rejoice, and Reunion were all new to me. Each one of these books, like much of Kingsbury's fiction, deals with tragic, painful circumstances, and they can be really emotionally gripping. Her characters - the now-iconic Baxter family - each deal with struggle and have to come to grips with their faith in different ways. Rejoice was the hardest for me to deal with, but its message is in some ways the most incredible. I always get on Kingsbury kicks when I read her books, so I'm eager to move on to the next Baxter Family series, which I have read the first book of but haven't finished. 

After reading Remember but while waiting on the rest of the books, I re-read Robin Jones Gunn's series Christy and Todd: The College Years. I first started reading her original Christy Miller series when I was 14, just a year or so younger than Christy is in that first book. And I absolutely loved those books when I was in high school. I own The College Years and one of the other collections, so I decided to dive back in. And they are every bit as good as I remember. 

The plot descriptions of these books - Until Tomorrow, As You Wish, and I Promise - are slightly spoilery, since it's not really the beginning of the series. So I'll just say this. The Christy Miller series documents the life of a young woman as she moves to California from the Midwest, meeting God, navigating highschool, and making lifelong friends along the way. Christy is one of the most relatable young adult characters I have ever read, and all of the other characters are really fun, too. And the lessons learned along the way sink deep as you read. I highly recommend these books. I'm also sensing some investment into more books in the future, because the library is kind of spotty on the rest of the books in this series and the related ones about Christy's friends. Which is quite terrible, as I've got to finish them!

I finished the month off by finishing the series I read in February - the Bradford Sisters books by Becky Wade. There are a couple of novellas in this series that I didn't know about, so I'll have to get around to those at some point. But the last main book is Sweet on You. 

(From Becky's website)

Britt Bradford and Zander Ford have been the best of friends since they met thirteen years ago. Unbeknown to Britt, Zander has been in love with her for just as long.

Independent and adventurous Britt channels her talent into creating chocolates at her hometown shop. Zander is a bestselling author who’s spent the past eighteen months traveling the world. He’s achieved a great deal but still lacks the only thing that ever truly mattered to him–Britt’s heart.

When Zander’s uncle dies of mysterious causes, he returns to Merryweather, Washington, to investigate, and Britt is immediately there to help. Although this throws them into close proximity, both understand that an attempt at romance could jeopardize their once-in-a-lifetime friendship. But while Britt is determined to resist any change in their relationship, Zander finds it increasingly difficult to keep his feelings hidden.

As they work together to uncover his uncle’s tangled past, will the truth of what lies between them also, finally, come to light?

Like the previous two books, this one was such fun! It's got a great mystery at its heart and characters that you get attached to quickly. Britt is very different from her sisters in her determination to keep it all together for everyone else's sake, and it has stunted her emotionally. That plays a very important part in this book, and I think it's a valuable arc. I absolutely loved this finale to the series and highly recommend! 

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So, those are my reads from July. Have you read any of these books? What have you been reading lately? I'd love to talk about it in the comments!