November Wrap Up

Freshly out of a book slump, I read three books in November. Here are my thoughts.

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

The first book I finished was Morning Star by Pierce Brown, the final installment in the first trilogy of the Red Rising series.

The synopsis reads:“I think of all my people bound in darkness, of all the colors on all the worlds shackled and chained so that Gold might rule, and I feel the rage burn across the hollow they have carved into my soul. This is not how it ends. Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. So he fights back. To win, Darrow must inspire his people to break their chains and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.”

This series has been getting a lot of love lately, and I completely understand why. The story follows a male main character, Darrow, who is fighting for the underdog—essentially his entire civilization. He infiltrates the highest level of society, the Golds, and outsmarts them even though they believe they are superior to everyone else.

There are real losses in this book, blurred moral lines, and high-stakes decisions. I’m really looking forward to continuing the series, even though I’m a little nervous. I do know that a seventh book is supposedly coming out this summer, so I guess I’ll keep reading as long as Pierce Brown keeps writing.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

The next book I finished was Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I read Station Eleven in college, and now having read this book as well, I can confidently say I’m a fan of her writing.

Her work has a strong sense of surrealism, suspended reality, and layered world-building that I absolutely love. The synopsis is as follows:

Edwin St. Andrew is 18 years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite English society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the sound of a violin echoing from an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later, Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. While she’s traveling all over Earth, her home is actually the second moon colony, a place of white stone towers and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays a violin for spare change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal, while trees from a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a hotel detective in the night city, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a chain of lives upended across time.

This book is beautifully written, with multiple storylines that intertwine in a way that constantly shifts and reshapes the plot. I was fully pulled into the world Mandel created, and I absolutely plan on reading more of her work.

Last House by Jessica Shattuck

The final book that I read in November was Last House by Jessica Shattuck.

The synopsis reads:It’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, a World War II veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. He takes the train into the city for work and returns each evening to the peaceful streets of the suburbs, to his wife Beth—a former codebreaker turned housewife—and their two children, Catherine and Harry.

Nick comes from humble origins, but thanks to his work for American oil, he can provide every comfort for his family, including Last House, a secluded country escape deep in the Vermont mountains. There, the Taylors are free from the stresses of modern life. Beth doesn’t have to worry about the Russian H-bombs that haunt her dreams, and the children roam freely in the woods. Last House feels like a place that could survive the end of the world.

It’s 1968, and America is on the brink of change. Protesters flood the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War to racism in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, as well as the country’s reliance on big oil. As Catherine makes her first forays into adult life, she’s caught in the current of the time and struggles to reconcile her ideals with the stable, privileged childhood her Greatest Generation parents worked so hard to provide.

But when the movement shifts in a more radical direction, each member of the Taylor family is forced to reckon with the consequences of the choices they’ve made and the causes they believed in.

This book explores varying family dynamics during a period of national turmoil that slowly becomes turmoil within the family itself. It’s also a story about love, connection, and learning to look past differences. While many historical events unfold throughout the novel, the family always remains at the center.

This was a three-star read for me—not because it was poorly written, but because it falls into realistic historical fiction, which isn’t my favorite genre. I would still recommend it to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction.

I hope at least one of these books sounds appealing to you. If you end up reading any of them, let me know over on my Instagram.