February Book Review

I only read 3 books this month, but one of them was a 730 page book that I've been reading since the fall, so I feel accomplished that I finally finished it! Here's a look at what I read in February:

First up was Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. I read this book in middle school, but didn't remember it at all. I only know I read it cause my mom told me I did. 😂 It was SO GOOD!! I absolutely loved it and don't foresee forgetting it again anytime soon. It's set in the small fictional town of Cold Sassy, GA in the year 1906, and it's a coming of age story about a 14 year old boy named Will Tweedy. The story begins 3 weeks after Will's grandmother dies, when his grandfather announces his intentions to marry Love Simpson, the milliner at the store he owns. To make matters worse, Miss Simpson is a "damnyankee" and the same age as her new step-daughters, and no one in the town takes kindly to her except Will Tweedy. This story is not only heartwarming, but absolutely hilarious. Burns writes much of it in an old Southern dialect that is just spot on. I thoroughly enjoyed this one!

The second book I read was The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. Oh my....this mystery/thriller was GOOD!! This story did it for me more so than the 2 B.A. Paris novels I read last month. It was very suspenseful, a little spooky, and I was left guessing until the end. This book is about a travel journalist named Lo who gets sent on the maiden voyage of a small luxury yacht with only 9 or 10 other passengers. On the first afternoon of the cruise, she knocks on her neighbor's door (cabin 10) needing to borrow something, and speaks to a pretty young girl who is inhabiting the room. During the night, she's awakened by a thud and a splash, and looks outside to see what she believes is a body that's been thrown overboard. She calls security who checks cabin 10, and much to Lo's dismay, all of the girl's personal belongings have been removed, and the whole crew denies that anyone was ever even in that cabin. This is a classic "whodunit" mystery, and everyone on the boat is a suspect at some point. It was basically a big game of Clue, and I loved it!!

This last book was the monster that has taken me months to finish. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, the biography that inspired the play, was a challenge! I feel like my IQ has to have gone up after reading this, just because of the sheer amount of information that's packed into it's pages. It tells the unbelievable story of a boy born of illegitimate birth in the West Indies, who makes his way to America and essentially becomes the creator of the U.S. government we have today. There were definitely parts of this that were hard for me to get through (start talking lines of credit, national debt, trade and manufacturing laws, and my eyes will glaze over), but I know these things would probably interest someone with a greater mind than mine. 😊 Of equal importance to the subject of a biography is the writing of the biographer, and I can't say enough good things about the job that Ron Chernow did on this. He painted a vivid picture of Alexander Hamilton as a person, where some might have recorded rote facts. The amount of research required for this kind of project makes my head hurt, and I applaud him for such a success! I have a Chernow biography on George Washington that I started several years ago and never finished; I think I might have to pick that one back up soon! 

Thanks for reading along! If anyone reading this had read or reads any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think! 😊