Book picks similar to
My Only Sunshine: A Story for Domestic Abuse Survivors by Shannon Jump
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Moondance
Diane Chandler - 2016
Happily married to Dom, but flying high as a political lobbyist, she dismisses his desire to start a family ... until she herself is ready.But what if it is then too late?Complex and selfish, intelligent and open, if she is to succeed in having that elusive child, Cat must battle through gruelling fertility treatment and the emotional strain it places on her marriage. By her side, Dom, easygoing and ever the optimist, finds that he too risks being run ragged by their journey.Both are forced to come to terms with their longing for a baby against the blitz on a relationship tested like never before.Bittersweet, at times funny, and always emotionally raw, this is by far the most moving and honest novel you'll ever read about IVF and its impact on a marriage.
All in Pieces
Suzanne Young - 2016
That’s why they sent her to Brooks Academy—an alternative high school that’s used as a temporary detention center.The days at Brooks are miserable, but at home, life is far more bleak. Savvy’s struggling to take care of her brother since her mom left years ago, and her alcoholic dad can’t be bothered. Life with Evan is a constant challenge, but he’s also the most important person in the world to Savvy.Then there’s Cameron, a new student at Brooks with issues of his own, a guy from a perfect family that Savvy thought only existed on TV. Cameron seems determined to break through every one of the walls Savvy’s built around herself—except if she lets herself trust him, it could make everything she’s worked so hard for fall apart in an instant.And with her aunt seeking custody of her brother and her ex-boyfriend seeking revenge, Savvy’s fighting to hold all the pieces together. But she’s not sure how much tighter she can be pulled before she breaks completely.
The Mixtape
Brittainy C. Cherry - 2021
Emery finds him first.Emery has never felt more alone. Raising her daughter is both her pleasure and her pain as she struggles to hold on to her job as a bartender and keep a roof over their heads. With no one to help them—no support system—any unexpected expense or late bill could turn their whole world upside down.Reeling from the death of his twin brother and bandmate, rock star Oliver Smith is trying to drink his problems away. Apparently he isn’t very good at it; they follow him wherever he goes. Also in hot pursuit are the paparazzi, who catch Oliver at his lowest low.He could have walked into any bar in California, but he walked into hers. Emery helps Oliver lose the crowd, and they find themselves alone: two people whose paths are marked with loss and pain. However, they hold an unshakable hope for healing. They find solace together, but can their love withstand the world?
Off Schedule
Andrea Buck - 2021
Ten days. One motorhome. What could go wrong?When Paula runs into the ex-love of her life, she believes it’s fate. When he introduces his new fiancée, Paula thinks fate should get fired. And when her ex has the nerve to ask what’s going on in her life, she does what any reasonable person would do, she lies.Her musician neighbor is willing to play the fake boyfriend. He just needs a tiny favor in return. Piece of cake, he tells her. Nothing to worry about.Paula sets off to deliver an antique instrument, but ends up stranded in the desert with a homeless dog, an impossible deadline, and ancient motorhome. Only a miracle could get her home. When the miracle shows up looking like a Greek god in a Levi’s ad, staying on schedule becomes the least of Paula’s problems.
For the Love of a Corporate Thug
N'Dia Rae - 2021
With lives vastly different from one another, they are connected by one single traumatic event that's changed their lives forever. While they are strangers to one another their lives become connected once Chloe sets out on a mission to find Chance. Chloe the daughter of a prominent attorney is now an assistant attorney to the DA's office. Her plate is filled with a life-threatening trial, a wayward brother and her blossoming relationship. Despite all that she's currently juggling she wants a relationship with her estranged half-sister. Unlike Chloe, Chance has no education and is regulated to a life as a stripper in a hole-in-the-wall club. Impoverished she is taxed with the tough job of raising a little girl. Chloe is doing her best but when she get's entangled in an accidental killing her life is turned upside down. Both women are connected to two real-estate developers; Hassan and Pharoah. Hassan is engaged to Chloe. While he's deeply in love with her, he's torn between being faithful. Hassan's being tempted by the Mayor of DC who holds the keys to prime land for his property. He and Pharoah are dying to get their hand on the land but it comes at a steep price. For the Love of a Corporate Thug is drenched in drama, secrets, and passion. This urban African American romance is dripping with excitement from page one to the end.
If You're Out There
Katy Loutzenhiser - 2019
Worse, Priya’s social media has turned into a stream of ungrammatical posts chronicling a sunny, vapid new life that doesn’t sound like her at all.Everyone tells Zan not to be an idiot: Let Priya do her reinvention thing and move on. But until Zan hears Priya say it, she won’t be able to admit that their friendship is finished.It’s only when she meets Logan, the compelling new guy in Spanish class, that Zan begins to open up about her sadness, her insecurity, her sense of total betrayal. And he’s just as willing as she is to throw himself into the investigation when everyone else thinks her suspicions are crazy.Then a clue hidden in Priya’s latest selfie introduces a new, deeply disturbing possibility:Maybe Priya isn’t just not answering Zan’s emails.Maybe she can’t.
Zen Queen
Kirsty McManus - 2011
Yet none of that matters, because professionally she’s living the dream, and has just scored a highly coveted assignment in Japan with the promise of a promotion on her return.But when she arrives in Japan, instead of the smooth integration she anticipated, Jess finds herself wrongfully fired, abandoned and broke in a country where she doesn’t speak the language.Now she must rebuild her life and clear her name. But the friendly locals and allure of the ex-pat lifestyle soon have her reconsidering her priorities and challenging her views on climbing the corporate ladder. With a new job as an English teacher and the temptation of her cute (but already attached) roommate, Jess discovers that although life doesn't always turn out as planned, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Happy Hour
Anne Mitchell - 2012
As soon as she arrives people look at her oddly, treat her like royalty and keep referring to her as Rosie Reynolds. She discovers that Rosie is the Big Apple’s favourite talk show host and after Rosie’s botched face-lift, Jane is offered the job of emergency stand-in on Happy Hour, the show that made Rosie famous. But here she meets Lou, a dangerously charming man who also happens to be Rosie’s husband...
Girl in the Walls
A.J. Gnuse - 2021
She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It’s home, after all. The home her parents made for her, before they were taken from her in a car crash. And home is where you stay, no matter what.Eddie is a teenager trying to forget about the girl he sometimes sees out of the corner of his eye. But when his hotheaded older brother senses her, too, they are faced with the question of how to get rid of someone they aren’t sure even exists. And as they try to cast her out, they unwittingly bring an unexpected and far more real threat to their doorstep. Written with grace and enormous heart, Girl in the Walls is a novel about carrying on through grief, forging unconventional friendships, and realizing, little by little, that we don’t need to fear what we do not understand.
Free
Lisa Litberg - 2014
Usually when I tell people that they laugh and ask me what my real name is. I just look them dead on and repeat, 'Free.' I left my old name behind with my old life; shed both of them like a useless layer of skin. When I stepped free of that world, I took the name Free. It is my real name. I picked it myself. What could be more real than that?"Since leaving home at the age of 18, Free has traveled the country searching for home. Her travels afford a variety of experiences, from following the Grateful Dead to waitressing in Chicago to selling jewelry in New Orleans' French Market, but nothing seems to quell her sense of unrest. All the while her estranged brother Alfie is in her thoughts. Once she finds him, perhaps she'll finally feel at home. But her world is filled with bad choices and unsavory characters, and she finds that freedom sometimes comes at a cost. The reader will feel as if they are traveling right alongside Free in this moving coming-of-age story.
5ive Speed
Charley Warady - 2011
Time to move up.When Donald was a kid in the late 60's on the South Side of Chicago, he had a Schwinn Sting Ray bike. Everyone did. But everyone else had a five-speed. Donald's was a three-speed. It was good enough, as was explained by his parents, just as their Ford Maverick wasn't the neighbor's Le Mans, but it was good enough. And that's the way Donald was taught to live his life. It was a three-speed life. It was good enough. He marries Emily because she's good enough. Emily marries Donald because that's what she had planned, and she is not going to experience divorce as did her parents. Donald opens a law practice with his two best friends and roommates from college because it's good enough.Then the Roths meet their son's future in-laws and everything changes. Donald wonders if, in fact, he could get that five-speed.In this hilarious and thought-provoking novel, the whole concept of morals and convention is turned inside out. Everything is perception. If you like Richard Russo, Tom Perotta, and Jonathan Franzen, you're going to love this book.
How to Make Friends with the Dark
Kathleen Glasgow - 2019
It’s dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart.That’s how it feels for Tiger. It’s always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger’s mother dies. And now it’s Tiger, alone.Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark.
My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell - 2020
Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
The Happiest Girl in the World: A Novel
Alena Dillon - 2021
It’s why she trains thirty hours a week, starves herself to under 100 pounds, and pops Advil like Tic Tacs.For her mother, Charlene, hungry for glory she never had, it’s why she rises before dawn to drive Sera to practice in a different state, and why the family scrimps, saves, and fractures. It’s why, when Sera’s best friend reports the gymnastics doctor to the authority who selects the Olympic Team, Sera denies what she knows about his treatments, thus preserving favor.Their friendship shatters. But Sera protected her dream—didn’t she?Sera doubles down, taping broken toes, numbing torn muscles, and pouring her family’s resources into the sport. Soon she isn’t training for the love of gymnastics. She’s training to make her disloyalty worthwhile. No matter the cost.The Happiest Girl in the World explores the dark history behind an athlete who stands on the world stage, biting gold. It's about the silence required of the exceptional, a tarnished friendship, and the sacrifices a parent will make for a child, even as a family is torn apart. It’s about the price of greatness.
The Oysterville Sewing Circle
Susan Wiggs - 2019
At the break of dawn, Caroline Shelby rolls into Oysterville, Washington, a tiny hamlet at the edge of the raging Pacific.She’s come home.Home to a place she thought she’d left forever, home of her heart and memories, but not her future. Ten years ago, Caroline launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows.And in the backseat of Caroline’s car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment—five-year-old Addie and six-year-old Flick. She’s now their legal guardian—a role she’s not sure she’s ready for. But the Oysterville she left behind has changed. Her siblings have their own complicated lives and her aging parents are hoping to pass on their thriving seafood restaurant to the next generation. And there’s Will Jensen, a decorated Navy SEAL who’s also returned home after being wounded overseas. Will and Caroline were forever friends as children, with the promise of something more . . . until he fell in love with Sierra, Caroline’s best friend and the most beautiful girl in town. With her modeling jobs drying up, Sierra, too, is on the cusp of reinventing herself.Caroline returns to her favorite place: the sewing shop owned by Mrs. Lindy Bloom, the woman who inspired her and taught her to sew. There she discovers that even in an idyllic beach town, there are women living with the deepest of secrets. Thus begins the Oysterville Sewing Circle—where women can join forces to support each other through the troubles they keep hidden. Yet just as Caroline regains her creativity and fighting spirit, and the children begin to heal from their loss, an unexpected challenge tests her courage and her heart. This time, though, Caroline is not going to run away. She’s going to stand and fight for everything—and everyone—she loves.