Over the last few years, I’ve been working hard to shut off the TV and and stop scrolling. I find that habits are easier to replace than quit, and reading is a long-time love too-often set aside in the years with small children and a full life. Most of my reads come off the waitlist at the library, in both paper and digital forms. When I look at the list, seems like hope is the theme for the summer of 2024! And there’s still time this summer for a few more reads. I hope you’ll find something to add to your reading list in these fabulous book recommendations.

Book Review #1: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Lucy and Christopher have a dream to be a family that seems impossible. Their favourite author of children’s books holds a contest on his private (magical) island – and they just might have a chance. This book is about the ways that stories carry us through hardship, offering us a fictional world more fantastic than our own. It is about the way those stories return us to reality with more perspective and greater hope. And, it is about how loving those stories connects the people who read and write them. The book is a light and easy read that left my inner child brimming with joy…

Book Review #2: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

An Indigenous family from Canada heads down to Maine to pick blueberries every summer in the 1960s. One summer, their youngest daughter Ruthie disappears. The book alternates between her journey away and then home again and the family members who wait for her against all odds. In her debut novel, Amanda Peters delicately balances the heartache and trauma with hope and healing. For the last few years, I have looked for Indigenous reads that are both honest about intergenerational trauma and possible to read without absolutely shattering my heart with the suffering. This one is a stunning first read.

Book Review #3: Still I Cannot Save You by Kelly S Thompson

Every year I seek out a couple of reads on grief to continue my own healing and to share. Still I Cannot Save You traces the journey of reconnecting with a sister who faced addictions only to walk her through a destructive relationship and terminal cancer journey. The book explores the complexity of family love, forgiveness and trust, and how we surrender what we cannot control. It is so vulnerable without feeling raw, so beautifully written to hold laughter and suffering in the pages, so achingly real.

Book Review #4: Held by Anne Michaels

When I first started university, one of my professors put Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces on the reading list and her first book stole my heart. Five stars. Last year, she released her newest book, Held. It is about how human beings continue to travel through time and inhabit the earth in the memories and remembering of those who love them. It is about the way that connection and love transform and change us and how the love of people in families transcends generations. This one is literature. The language is poetry and the ends are not neatly tied up – and it had me transfixed with awe and longing and wonder all the way through. She weaves science and poetry and the unexplained mysteries of belief in ways I can only dream of. *The paperback is being released in September. You can get the hardcover and kindle editions now.

Book Review #5: This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley

I need to read this memoir in small doses, savouring the language and holding space for the deep insight and wisdom of life lived in a body that knows present and historical pain. The book captures embodied spirituality and kinship with precision and wonder at the same time. The book is about the stories that are built around us, that inhabit us, and how we shape the stories that heal us. It is part sacred and part matter, if I can describe a book that way. I will be coming back to it over and over again, probably for the rest of my life.

Full disclosure: I am working to grow my business. One of the ways I can do that is as an Amazon Affiliate, where my book recommendations earn a commission if you buy the books from the links within 24 hours. That said, I hope you order the book from a local bookstore or support a library. If you do plan to order online (in any format), you can test out the links for me! Thank you for following my writing, and for any purchases you might make with the book recommendations.