Last week a friend of mine told me that she recently joined her first book club and said she would be coming to me for book recommendations when it’s her time to choose the selection. When I first started blogging, I wrote about the reasons why book clubs don’t necessarily appeal to me but I DO know that many of you love them! If I were to ever join a book club, the following are a handful of books I would choose to share as each of these books could lead to such interesting discussions!
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Young Jane Young {Gabrielle Zevin}
This book is such an easy and interesting read and could lead to fascinating discussions. I loved this book and I’m not sure why it isn’t more popular?
Synopsis:
Young Jane Young‘s heroine is Aviva Grossman, an ambitious Congressional intern in Florida who makes the life-changing mistake of having an affair with her boss‑‑who is beloved, admired, successful, and very married‑‑and blogging about it. When the affair comes to light, the Congressman doesn’t take the fall, but Aviva does, and her life is over before it hardly begins. She becomes a late‑night talk show punchline; she is slut‑shamed, labeled as fat and ugly, and considered a blight on politics in general.
How does one go on after this? In Aviva’s case, she sees no way out but to change her name and move to a remote town in Maine. She tries to start over as a wedding planner, to be smarter about her life, and to raise her daughter to be strong and confident. But when, at the urging of others, she decides to run for public office herself, that long‑ago mistake trails her via the Internet like a scarlet A. For in our age, Google guarantees that the past is never, ever, truly past, that everything you’ve done will live on for everyone to know about for all eternity. And it’s only a matter of time until Aviva/Jane’s daughter, Ruby, finds out who her mother was, and is, and must decide whether she can still respect her.
Read my review of Young Jane Young HERE.
Somebody’s Daughter {Rochelle B. Weinstein}
Everybody should read this book, especially f you are parenting teenagers or soon to be teenagers. So much to discuss with this one.
Synopsis:
Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community.
Then, on the night of the girls’ fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe’s heartbreaking mistake—a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking public scandal.
As the family’s core is shattered by disgrace, judgment, and retribution, the fallout takes its toll. But for Emma, the shame runs deeper. Her daughter’s reckless behavior has stirred memories of her own secrets that could break a marriage, a family, and friendships forever.
Read my review of Somebody’s Daughter HERE.
The Most Fun We Ever Had {Claire Lombardo}
The ONLY aspect of this book which might scare people off is it’s length. It’s LONG! If this is something that might not thrill the members of your book club, you might want to skip this one (although it PAINS me to say that because I truly think this is my favorite book of all time. It’s amazing. If your book club doesn’t want to read it…read it on your own time. Trust me.)
Synopsis:
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that’s to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she’s not sure she wants by a man she’s not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents’.
As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt–given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before–we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons’ past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.
Read my review of The Most Fun We Ever Had HERE.
Becoming {Michelle Obama}
Although I personally didn’t love this book, I do think Michelle Obama has led an interesting life full of interesting decisions.
Synopsis:
In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
Watch my VLOG of me sharing my review of Becoming HERE.
The Unbreakables {Lisa Barr}
Oh this book has so many aspects that a book club could spend hours discussing! Loved this book!
Synopsis:
The worst birthday ever might just be the gift of a lifetime…
It’s Sophie Bloom’s forty-second birthday, and she’s ready for a night of celebration with Gabe, her longtime, devoted husband, and her two besties and their spouses. Dinner is served with a side of delicious gossip, including which North Grove residents were caught with their pants down on Ashley Madison after the secret on-line dating site for married and committed couples was hacked. Thirty-two million cheaters worldwide have been exposed…including Sophie’s “perfect” husband. To add insult to injury, she learns Gabe is the top cheater in their town.
Humiliated and directionless, Sophie jumps into the unknown and flees to France to meet up with her teenage daughter who is studying abroad and nursing her own heartbreak. After a brief visit to Paris, Sophie heads out to the artist enclave of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. There, for the first time in a long time, Sophie acknowledges her own desires—not her husband’s, not her daughter’s—and rediscovers her essence with painful honesty and humor, reawakening both her sensuality and ambitions as a sculptor.
As she sheds her past and travels the obstacle-filled off beaten path, Sophie Bloom is determined to blossom. Allowing her true self to emerge in the postcard beauty of Provence, Sophie must decide what is broken forever…and what it means to be truly unbreakable.
Read my review of The Unbreakables HERE.
Have you read any of these books? What other books would you recommend for a book club? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Xo,
Jenny
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So today…let’s do it again!
Thanksgiving 2019 began exactly the same way every Thanksgiving of my entire life has began…watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv! Oh how I love watching the parade all warm and snuggly on my couch. I have memories of watching the parade with my parents when I was a little girl, alone when I was living in the city after I graduated from college, with Jon and our dog when we first got married, and now all snuggled up with Jon and our kids.
At one point during the night I was in the backyard with Jon (he was smoking a turkey and a prime rib) and I happened to look into my house through our back windows. The sight of my extended family together eating and laughing in my home made me instantly tear up! There’s something so profoundly beautiful about growing up going to holiday dinners at other family members’ houses and then one day being the adult hosting in your own home with your own family. So special.
Matching turkey necklaces for my kids and their cousin:
Aaaaaand my dinosaur obsessed son picked out….
Kevin and V’s house is actually 2 doors down!
Frogs for sale at the grocery store:
(<—- affiliate link)! I’ve been wanting it ever since my favorite YouTuber 
(affiliate)
Thankfully now it’s a new week and she’s feeling much better but I do think this nasty cough might be around for a while. Ugh.
The sights, the sounds, the smells, all the same. How can so much time have passed and yet it feels like just yesterday when we were wearing our sorority letters and Eddie Bauer backpacks while walking across campus? Wasn’t it just yesterday when I had a meeting with my astronomy teacher and told him that I didn’t understand cosmetology and he told me that word means makeup and the correct word was actually cosmology? Wasn’t it just yesterday when we were having class outside on a beautiful day and in the middle of a serious class discussion, I put my hand down on the grass and it landed straight into a pile of dog doodie? Wasn’t it just yesterday when the creative writing teacher said that the 4 of us should have our very own comedy sitcom because our friendship was so hilarious? How did all of this happen over 20 years ago?!?
We head to the bookstore where we are surrounded by Bradley love.
Avantis for lunch, One World for coffee. Avantis gondolas are what dreams are made of. And dream about them we have…for an entire year since we were here last.
Sigma Delta Tau. What if the 4 of us had joined 4 different sororities? The night we had to “pref” during the sorority rush process and write down our 1st choice sorority I actually wrote down a different sorority’s name! After I left and walked back to my dorm room, I was filled with the most unsettling feeling and walked all the way back across campus just to switch my first choice to Sigma Delta Tau. Somewhere deep in my heart I knew just where I belonged.
We leave SDT and walk through the alley to our off campus house where we lived senior year. We take our yearly picture on the front porch. Oh the memories we once made just behind that door! 
Our rent in that massive old house was only $190.00 a month each. I had never written a check that big (!) and wrote my very first month’s rent check for $1.90. Once he received my check, our landlord came straight over to the house and gave me a lesson on decimal points 🙂
Book Coffee Happy 