My Life As A Mood Reader

An unconventional reading roundup, or so I hope.

Jun 18, 2024

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I am an extreme mood reader. This can mean slightly different things to different people but how it plays out in my life is as follows: I collect book recommendations like dog hair on a cream cashmere sweater; I add said recommendations to my unlimited number of holds on Libby; the holds come in, I am not in the mood to read the book; I let the hold go to the next person in line; and I buy a book that I am in the mood to read. And the cycle continues.

This is both grossly inefficient and expensive. What I have always sought but not always found is someone, often a friend, to tell me what a book feels like—the mood or atmosphere or headspace you need to be in to enjoy the book. Storygraph can help in this regard. As can searching Goodreads reviews. So can certain of my favorite bookish podcasts.

But I think we collectively need more resources for mood reading. Even the most type-A among us, are subject to whimsy in our reading life. We all alternately want to be challenged, comforted, confronted, coddled. And sometimes we want all of that in a single day!

At the same time, I firmly believe most books are worthy of readers. It is just about finding the perfect match, or moment. I hope my reading roundups will help with that.

Can someone explain how it's already mid-June!? Somehow, May felt like the longest and shortest month all at once. Looking back at what I read, it feels like some of these books were from ages ago. But despite the time warp, I read some fantastic books this month. Let's discuss! So without further ado, let’s dig into my May reading.

Better By Far by Hazel Hayes ☆☆☆☆☆ — Filled with nostalgia and the sting of losing someone you love who is still alive. A genre-bending story about love and loss, hope and heartbreak, and the healing to be found in life's little limbos, those in-between spaces where you're no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be. A modern novel unlike anything you have ever read, and yet at its core it is a story we all deeply understand. A story of love and liminality, and the ways in which grief grips us all. Prepare to laugh and cry; Hazel Hayes will break your heart, but then she'll mend it for you.

Worry by Alexandra Tanner ☆☆☆☆ — Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment. It's March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold--anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed--has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she'd marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren ☆☆☆☆ — Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam "West" Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she'd signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There's just one catch…

The Bodyguard by Katherine Center ☆☆☆☆ — As funny and sweet as all the very best nineties rom-coms, but with Center's signature heart-tugging depth. I wish I could erase it from my mind just to read it again for the first time. A shot of pure joy. Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she's an Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker. Hannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it's easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That's the hardest thing she's ever done.

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This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune ☆☆☆☆ — Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn't know he's her best friend's younger brother. Lucy and Felix's chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again. It's easier said than done. If Lucy can't help being drawn to Felix, at least she's always kept her heart out of it. When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she's never been able to. But Felix's sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy's beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.

Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home by Jessa Hastings ☆☆☆☆ — It's been nearly a year since everything happened between Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine on the steps of the Mandarin Oriental, and since then it seems like everything has changed. But when they both wind up back in London and are thrust together once again, they find themselves asking their age-old question: How many loves do you actually get in a lifetime, and, most important--are they each other's?