1/50 This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change…and then change the world.
This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.
Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.
I love, love, love this book. One of the most beautiful stories I have ever read.
Ohhh, hope you will be feeling better soon!I haven't read alot this year because I almost died 1/19. I had to have major life saving surgery, 8 days in ICU. Now my pain is getting under control so I am starting to read again. Here is what I read so far this year.
1. Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie - Sweet story about friendship
2. Death Bee Comes Her by Nancy CoCo - cozy mystery
3. Merry and Bright by Jill Shalvis - Holiday novella collection
Thanks to this, my next book was This is How it Always is!#1-What Happens in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand
It’s book 2 in her new series. Really enjoyed the characters and setting. Ended on a cliffhanger ugh! Next one comes out in October. She is one of my all time favorite authors, so I know I will enjoy anything she writes.
#2-The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
A solid “sequel” to Handmaid’s Tale. I enjoyed getting to learn things from other perspectives. Very interesting and I love Atwood’s writing style.
#3-This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Amazing book. I could not put it down. 5 stars all around.
#4-Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate (currently reading)
Thanks to this, my next book was This is How it Always is!
13/75
and now moving on:
6. Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino.
He recently (last year) spoke to some folks I know at Disney about his work so it interested me. Both a personal memoir and a reflection on identity and how we as a society need to be more open to our true selves (and we need the law to support that). Good read.
7. The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands edited by Huw Lewis-Jones.
This is a beautiful book full of full color maps of imaginary and real places and with essays on the power of maps and map-making.
8. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph.D. (really written by Ridley Pearson).
This was the companion book to the 2001 tv miniseries by Stephen King called “Rose Red”. Presented as a “true” diary of her life at the mansion in Seattle (which becomes the haunted house of the series) the book is entertaining and a good read in its own.
Welcome! Never too late to join. Added you to the first post.If it’s not too late, I’d like to join. I have a goal of 24 books this year.