Lots of time to read this weekend? I have ideas…

These types of weekends are usually time for me to catch up with friends but also, being the bookish introvert that I am, I need lots of time to curl up and read.  If you find yourself with some time for the latter here are some reads I have really enjoyed lately. They might be good ones to add to that pile on that table right next to you (you know the pile).

1. “The Little French Bistro” by Nina George – this book is just lovely, not amazing, not a pulitzer, but really a tribute to many middle-aged women, that either by choice or by circumstance, have to reinvent their lives.  After forty years of marriage, Marianne gets up from a dinner in Paris with her self-absorbed husband and walks out.  She finds herself, after a few misadventures, in Brittany. There is the quirky cast of characters, the beautiful setting and great food.  This is a quick read that leaves you wanting to go to Brittany but I settled and had a glass of wine while I read it instead.
2. “The Girls” by Emma Cline – For quite some time I have been weirdly fascinated by the Mason Clan and cults in general.  I don’t mean that I am fascinated with the bloodshed part but more about that thing in a person that has to be broken for them to end up in a cult. It has to be the right mix of brokenness, masterminding, and timing – and it oddly happens so frequently.  Cline in “The Girls” tries her hand at a fictional telling of something similar to what happened with Mason and his followers.  It was truly well done, though disturbing.  And I may have accidentally read it in a day and a half.
3. “Red Queen” by Victoria Aveyard-  I landed on this book because my friend suggested I read the “Red Queen” and I got the wrong book.  That said my accidental science fiction young adult reading was pretty fun.  This is really a new twist on the whole the main character is a strong young woman who thinks she is ordinary but she isn’t thing that we all have become very familiar with.  It is simple, quick and fun.  My one warning is it leads you into reading the next book which is absolutely awful. So just be prepared to either not really know what happens to the characters or know you will have to go on to read a really terrible book. You have been warned.
4. If you are looking for a good suspense book I have a few I have liked recently – “The Perfect Stranger” by Megan Miranda, “The Child” by Fiona Barton, “The Marsh King’s Daughter” by Karen Dione.  The last one being my favorite, Dione’s first book is really well crafted.

On my reading list this weekend,  I need to finish “The Sinner” by Petra Hammesfahr (which is pretty bizarre so far) so I can somehow excuse buying Karin Slaughter’s new book. I guess I really should read the other 50 books I have on my “to read” stack already but what’s the fun in that?

Happy Labor Day weekend my fellow readers!