This year I decided to read a book set in each state. And I did! Here is the genre breakdown:
My selection process was not especially intense. I mainly searched the library catalog for the state and chose from what was available, heavily biased towards ebooks I could download to my phone. I tried to only read fiction, but ended up with memoirs twice (Hawaii and Utah) when they seemed like the best option by far. Here’s my Goodreads rating breakdown:
It definitely skews lower than my overall Goodreads ratings. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t have read the vast majority of these books if not for this project. In the list below I include the average rating on Goodreads in parentheses next to my reading. As you can see, I didn’t like the romance novels as much as the majority of their other readers. The book descriptions are straight publisher’s copy so don’t blame me for how cheesy some of them sound. I’m also including whatever review I wrote on Goodreads at the time, primarily because I’ve forgotten a lot about some of the duller books I read towards the beginning. Unfortunately, I tend not to write detailed reviews unless I really hated something! Here are the books, in alphabetic order by state:
Alabama
Book: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 4 (4.28)
Description: It’s first the story of two women in the 1980s, of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women—of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I really liked this: the way it was written, the way it was structured, and the characters were all really engaging. Definitely not what I was expecting, in a good way!
Alaska
Book: Alaskan Holiday by Debbie Macomber
Genre: Romance
Rating: 2 (3.58)
Description: Before beginning her new job as sous chef at one of Seattle’s finest restaurants, Josie Stewart takes on a six-month position cooking at a lodge in an Alaskan lake town. It’s only temporary–or so she thinks, as she becomes a valued part of the local community, falling in love with the people who call the Klutina Lake home. But one man, in particular, stands out among Josie’s new friends: Palmer Saxon, a quiet, intense sword craftsman, whose very existence forces her to question whether her heart wants to return to Washington at all.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I don’t know, maybe I’ve read so many of these for this project that my standards have changed, but this didn’t seem AS ridiculous as I was hoping from the premise.
Arizona
Book: Breathless (Old West #2) by Beverly Jenkins
Genre: Romance
Rating: 3 (4.15)
Description: A strong-willed beauty finds herself in the arms of the handsome drifter from her past, in this second book in the sizzling series set in the Old West, from USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I thought the pacing of this was a little weird, but I really liked the intersectional feminism.
Arkansas
Book: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 4 (4.09)
Description: Every first Sunday in June, members of the Moses clan gather for an annual reunion at “the old home place,” a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. And every year, Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed young preacher, brings his beloved wife, Willadee Moses, and their three children back for the festivities. The children embrace the reunion as a welcome escape from the prying eyes of their father’s congregation; for Willadee it’s a precious opportunity to spend time with her mother and father, Calla and John. But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core: John’s untimely death and, soon after, the loss of Samuel’s parish, which set the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would from reading the description. It was well-written, and even though it was set in rural Arkansas, certain parts definitely reminded me of visiting my own grandparents in rural Tennessee.
California
Book: Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2 (3.52)
Description: For fans of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It comes an irresistible novel of a woman losing herself . . . and finding herself again . . . in the middle of her life.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I liked the unconventional format of this, but I saw the twist coming from the very beginning so the supposed suspense seemed tiresome. Plus, I kind of loathed the main character.
Colorado
Book: Angel’s Rest (Eternity Springs #1) by Emily March
Genre: Romance
Rating: 1 (4.03)
Description: Gabriel Callahan has lost everything that mattered. All he wants is solitude on an isolated mountain estate. Instead, he gets a neighbor. Vibrant, no-nonsense Nic Sullivan is Eternity Springs’ veterinarian, and she has an uncanny plan to lure this talented architect back to the world of the living. First with a dog, next with a renovation project, and, finally, with a night of passion that ends with a surprise.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: At first I was pleasantly surprised that this book decided to deal with PTSD a little more realistically than typical romance novels, in that sex didn’t ~magically~ cure it. But realistic trauma recovery is not really what I’m looking for in a romance novel, so it wasn’t enjoyable at all. Also, the hero is a huge asshole who uses his mental health as an excuse to treat everyone around him like crap. Not hot.
Connecticut
Book: The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 (2.91)
Description: Betty Weissmann has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by her husband’s mistress, she and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. In Schine’s playful and devoted homage to Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the impulsive sister is Miranda, a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This book was fine, but forgettable.
Delaware
Book: Hope Never Dies (Obama Biden Mysteries #1) by Andrew Shaffer
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4 (3.51)
Description: Part noir thriller and part bromance novel, Hope Never Dies is essentially the first published work of Obama/Biden fanfiction
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This was a quick read, and pretty funny. It delivered on the promise of its cover.
Florida
Book: Florida by Lauren Goff
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2 (3.78)
Description: The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This book let me down hard. A better title would be “Stories that are tangentially related to Florida”. A few of them reminded me of home, and a few descriptions were really on point, but mostly I was bored and wondering why so many of them were set in France. Read the rest of this entry »