Reading, Writing, and Me

Malibu Rising  by Taylor Jenkins Reid Overview: It's assumed that children of rockstars have their lives made. But that wasn't true for the Riva siblings. Their dad bounced in and out of the picture throughout their entire childhood, leaving their mom alone to care for four children on her single income from working at the family restaurant. The Riva kids grew up with plenty of love from their mother but a complete lack of a father and a shortage of money. Now adults, the Riva kids have leveraged the small bit of notoriety their last name gives them into careers modeling, surfing, and keeping the family restaurant on the Malibu coast afloat. To celebrate how far they've come, they throw an epic summer party every year, and this one is looking to be the biggest yet. Told in alternating timelines between flashbacks to their childhood and the hours before and during the party, the book ends with the stately home on the cliff going up in flames. Overall: 5  Characters: 5 As alw

I'm seriously debating not having a reading goal for the first time since I was 13. Seeing how every year I read fewer and fewer books, it almost feels like a more depressing exercise than just accepting however many books I read on my own. My goal used to be 100 books a year, which I often beat by a solid margin, and I've spent the last few years wondering what was wrong with me because I never come anywhere close anymore. After I missed my goal of 100 books for the first time in my first year of college, I lowered it to 50 books for this year. I still didn't manage to meet that, and I finished 40 books. 2021 was my biggest failure with reading ever, and while I don't feel great about it, I understand why it happened this way. For starters, 2021 was my first year back in in-person school since halfway through ninth grade, which makes a major impact. I had less time to slip in 15-30 minute reading breaks throughout the day with a longer walking commute and not always be