I finished off 10 books in January, some of them great, some of them meh-okay-ish. I also did not finish 3 books that I got a good bit into before deciding to give up because I just wasn’t that into them. I’m a big believer in not wasting time reading books that you’re not enjoying, to me it ruins the experience and puts me in an anti-reading rut, when reading is meant to be a pleasure! Here are the books I most enjoyed in January.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

This was by far the best book I read in January, and one of the most moving books I’ve read in awhile. Kalanithi was a young neurosurgeon when he was given a terminal cancer diagnosis, he decided to spend the time he had left reflecting on his ambitious life and the experience of dying, writing this beautiful memoir. (Non Fiction)

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment. – Paul Kalanithi

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi

Maddy is a devoted wife and loving mother, who seems to have everything she could want, when she suddenly kills herself, jumping off the roof of a nearby library. Her husband Brady and daughter Eve are devastated and struggle to understand; even Maddy chimes in from the afterlife trying to help them make sense of her suicide and its aftermath. This is a beautiful book on being a wife and mother, as well as mother-daughter relationships, I couldn’t put it down, trying to find out where it all went wrong and how Brady and Eve survived their very painful loss. (Fiction)

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The title says it all: this book is all about two sisters, Koreda the narrator, and Ayoola, a beautiful young woman who just cannot stop murdering the men she dates. Koreda is trapped between protecting her sister and trying to prevent more men from meeting their end at the tip of Ayoola’s sharp blade. Darkly humorous, this book is very complex and was a fairly quick read, I couldn’t wait to find out who came up okay in the end!

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

After all of my raving last year over Center’s How to Walk Away, the moment I was able to get my hands on an ARC of Things You Save in a Fire (to be published August 2019) I finished it in just over 24 hours. This book is just my style of sappy, heartwarming, and fun: firefighter Cassie is tough as leather after experiencing a lifetime of disappointments and abandonment, but is suddenly forced to move across the country to care for her sick, estranged mother. She is only able to find a job in a station where she is the first female firefighter among a group of mostly misogynistic males, and must constantly prove herself. Center’s books tend to have a life-lesson (you know I love life-lessons!), this one’s being: “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need.” (Fiction)

Happy Fancy Friday! I’m onto my February 2019 reads!