What We’re Reading February 2019

January felt like such a fresh slate in so many areas for me, especially reading. No matter if I felt behind on my reading pile in December, the new year offered a chance to catch up and jump right back in. Last month I attacked my reading pile with a vengeance. Maybe it’s the fresh stack of books – who knows!

And February – well, I’m feeling like I’m on a roll and need to keep the momentum going. I’ve already started on several books and am hoping to take another big chunk out of my 2019 Reading List. Already I am hearing of more and more new books releasing that I had no idea about, so I’m just going to have to squeeze them in somewhere!

If you have any suggestions to add to my list for this year, I’d love to hear! (or maybe I shouldn’t listen…)

Feed readers can click here to see my books for February. 

*all links are referral links

• It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst
• Girls’ Club by Sally Clarkson
• Cozy Home Minimalist by Myquillyn Smith
• The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure
• The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beart
• The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart
• The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

What the Kids are Reading

Kaleb has been continuing his reading of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. He took a brief pause to read Who Is Bill Gates and will be working on another Who Was book this month as well. Zachary has been reading through the Harry Potter series (and says they are the best books ever), sometimes staying up late into the night to read (and I won’t complain about that!). 

• Laurianna – all boring school stuff (ha!)
• McKenna – Great Expectations
• Zachary – Harry Potter series – book 2&3
• Kaleb – Who Was Thomas Alva Edison? by Margaret Frith and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series book 3

What I Read Last Month (and Quick Thoughts)

One thing that seems to be happening lately – there’s a lot of WW2 fiction floating around and somehow it’s all getting thrown into my reading pile. It isn’t necessarily a problem, unless I really love one book and then another has trouble measuring up. Late at night too it does get a little hard to remember which book I’m reading (because I like to read multiple books at once!). 

Here are the books I read in January along with a more detailed look at two of them – one that I loved and one that I wanted to love, but really struggled.

• Grace is Greater by Kyle Idlema
• The Cry for Spiritual Mothers and Fathers by Larry Kreider (carryover from last year)
• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• Lilac Girls by Martha Kelly
• The Lieutenant’s Bargain by Regina Jennings
• A Daring Venture by Elizabeth Camden

Grace is Greaterby Kyle Idleman – one of my favorite things about Idleman is the natural humor he interjects into his writing via little footnotes throughout the book and just telling it like it is. He has such a practical way of explaining principles that help the reader better understand. This book definitely offered some great food for thought, review, and application. (5/5 rating)

Lilac Girls by Martha Kelly – I truly wanted to give this book a higher rating and will try to explain a bit more as to why I couldn’t. Overall, I loved the story since it gave me some great insight into various aspects of WW2 I hadn’t fully been aware of and made me dig deeper (the experiments on some prisoners at Ravensbruk, etc).  Here’s where I struggled. Two of the characters in the story are REAL people and yet both characters didn’t line up with the person in real life (Caroline had a married boyfriend?) and then the characters essentially fell flat. So much more could have been developed in each of them. At times you catch the start of some growth…and then nothing. This could have been a PHENOMENAL book, and yet it just barely skimmed the surface and in the process, failed greatly. (3/5 rating)

You can follow along with me via the Goodreads app where I share my reviews and additional thoughts. What have YOU been reading this month?