Simone and Her Books

I always love the beginning of the month because that means I’ll be picking out and sharing my reads from Book of the Month. As everyone knows, I’m a huge fan of this subscription. Even though I’m pretty broke lately, I’m still picking out books for my Book of the Month. I shouldn’t even be buying more books, if I admit.

But I’ve got my latest box and I can’t wait to read both of these books. Here’s a little more about each.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

This novel was just announced as Oprah’s official February pick for the Oprah Book Club. If Oprah is approving it, then I’m definitely reading it. However, I picked the book before the announcement was made, so maybe I just have the same taste as Oprah does. Here’s more about it:

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

I’ve been a fan of Kristin Hannah’s ever since I read The Nightingale a few years ago. That book was an incredible read about two sisters fighting their own battles throughout World War II. The ending made me sob like a baby while I was sitting on the subway. You have to give a book props for making me cry. I don’t cry easy.

Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world, it is also a story of young and enduring love.

Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt, a recently-returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war, uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter Leni to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, The Great Alone offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America. With her trademark combination of elegant prose and deeply drawn characters, Kristin Hannah has delivered an enormously powerful story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable and enduring strength of women. About the highest stakes a family can face and the bonds that can tear a community apart, this is a novel as spectacular and powerful as Alaska itself. It is the finest example of Kristin Hannah’s ability to weave together the deeply personal with the universal. 

What did you get this month in your Book of the Month Club box?