Welcome to Litsy!

Sweet romance between a widowed, single father hockey player & a woman recovering from the physical & emotional ravages of trying to make it as a professional ballet dancer. It dealt with some heavy topics while being both realistic & positive about them. I loved that the hero was explicit about coming to understand the burden of the family‘s emotional labour that his wife had borne for him. While sex happens & is talked about it‘s not graphic.

Getting my February #BookSpin list out early for once. 💐💝

No audiobook at the moment but I wanted to share this project anyway 😊 going to be a birthday gift to my brother-in-law 🪡

she was contintaily eating food like crackers and cheese for breakfast,dinner, and lunch

I really enjoyed this contemporary MG novel about a boy running a family greenhouse with his older brother after the death of their parents. His teacher assigns a project in which he must relate events & tasks in his own life to the 12 labors of Hercules. There‘s a lot of mythological information and an amazing setting on Cape Cod alongside a story of the importance of found family (including pets) and community connection.

#TRS2024 #MiddleGrade

Read in 2024. Super short book about the author‘s loss of her father during the pandemic. “Grief is a cruel kind of education.” “It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not: grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present.”
“It does not matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed.”

Read in 2024. After my dad‘s sudden death last year I read some grief related books to see if it would help pull me out of my reading funk. This one was a low pick for me (probably because I wasn‘t in the right headspace). I can get her trying to make sense when someone you love passes unexpectedly. TW: because she does speak at length about the suicide of her close friend, as she‘s grappling with her experience.

Crosley experiences loss upon loss within the same few months, the most devastating being the death of her best friend. Crosley‘s dexterity with language and phrasing is remarkable. She writes with wit and precision and depth about grief in a way that makes it more tangible, easier to grasp where she finds herself emotionally. She‘s honest, angry, isolated, and trying to piece together what brought her to such a standstill. It‘s riveting reading.