More catching up...
#92/130 - Shadow Lover by Anne Stuart
#93 - Prince of Magic by Anne Stuart
Supernatural-ish romance, both enjoyable in the moment but not particularly memorable.
#94 - Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
I should have known better than to pick up a self-help book by a blogger/Instagram influencer, no matter how much buzz it has generated. This was just... insipid. Lots of rah-rah cliches and faux "fails" that are nevertheless perfectly comical and social-media friendly. I know a lot of women are raving about how inspiring and uplifting this was, and it was very positive and accepting in a sort of upper-middle-class "first world problems" sort of way, but it just came across as very shallow and meaningless to me. If nothing else, it does speak to the power of "recommended titles" - when it came up across all three ebook apps I use, I relented and borrowed it even though I knew full well that it was a genre I have almost no use for!
#95 - Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg
I'd almost forgotten I requested this from the library by the time I got to the top of the list, but I'm glad I did. Part autobiography, part campaign message, it was a really interesting look at one of the newcomers in the chase for the Democratic presidential nomination. Buttigieg does a good job of framing his political views in his personal experiences and midwestern upbringing, and he's clearly a very smart man with a real passion for what he does - he managed to make South Bend, Indiana sound like a place I'd like to visit, even though I've been there twice and didn't much care for it either time!
#96 & 97 - Hard Pack and Hard Flip by Alison Lindt
More ebook romance, these were enjoyable enough as pure escapist vacation reads but not so compelling that I remembered to pick up the next in the series when my Hoopla borrowing limit reset. Fun, but a little too alpha male/damsel in distress and with some pretty tired contemporary romance tropes like the one night stand/accidental pregnancy nonsense. Not terrible, but not great either.
#98 - The Words Between Us by Erin Bartels
I LOVED this one, so much so that I immediately went out and picked up her other novel as soon as I finished. Set in a part of Michigan where I spent a lot of my youth, the story was told in two timelines - the present, when the main character is scrambling to save her failing bookstore in a small riverfront town, and the past, when she was just a kid tossed into an unfamiliar place with a relative she'd never met after her parents both went to jail. As the story plays out in both past and present, the seemingly closed case of her parents' crimes comes back into question and she is forced to revisit things she thought she knew for sure and grapple with questions of when and how to forgive after a lifetime of anger and resentment.
#99 - We Hope For Better Things by Erin Bartels
Another winner, set in Detroit and in a rural town not far from where I live now, told again in multiple timelines and recounting historical events on a very human level. This one traced one family at three different points in time: a young bride left behind when her husband went to fight the Civil War, another young bride struggling with what it means to be in an interracial marriage during the tension before and during the Detroit riots of 1967, and a mid-career journalist at a crossroads after losing her job in Detroit and coming to live with a distant relative in rural Michigan. It was a really beautifully researched story that managed to bring each time to life through the eyes of the female main characters, and the three timelines come together to tell a story of racial prejudice, personal choices and social forces in a very relateable way. And it earned bonus points because the opening scene was set in one of my most favorite and uniquely Detroit restaurants.