title: Nine Month Contract author: Amy Daws publisher: Canary Street Press publication date: March 18, 2025 pages: 416 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: bad parenting (in the past) summary: Trista has just been turned down as a potential surrogate at an agency because she hasn’t ever had a baby and weighs too much. When…
“Why”…Wednesdays
323. Why Adults are Like Babies
I took the photo above when a family of three deer ran by our campus house. The fawn’s spots give it away as a baby even to the untrained eye. Okay, you caught me; the photo really doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of my post except that I’ve been thinking about babies’…
NetGalley Review of My Big Fat Fake Marriage
title: My Big Fat Fake Marriage author: Charlotte Stein publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin publication date: March 11, 2025 pages: 304 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: none summary: Connie/Hazel has had extraordinarily bad luck with dating, so much so that she doesn’t trust any nice men she meets, including her new neighbor Beck. He’s not just nice,…
NetGalley Review of Dream Count
title: Dream Count author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie publisher: Knopf publication date: March 4, 2025 pages: 416 peppers: 1 (on this scale) warnings: none summary: The book follows four women in their quests to find love, have families, and figure out what makes them happy. tropes: Since this book isn’t a romance, it isn’t trope-heavy. what…
322. Why Cheaters Lose
There was a morning in the fall when I woke up not in the mood to go for a jog, but I went anyway…and saw the view above and the one below. The real reward from the run wasn’t the sunrise or the rainbow, but the way I felt for having completed the run. At…
NetGalley Review of Promise Me Sunshine
title: Promise Me Sunshine author: Cara Bastone publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback publication date: March 4, 2025 pages: 416 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: lots of talk of death and grieving summary: Lenny (Helen) is barely getting through since her best friend Lou died six months ago. She can’t sleep, eat, or focus, except on the…
321. Why Day One
I’m a big fan of Peloton’s workouts. One of my favorite strength instructors is Logan Aldridge, whose photo above is a link to his website for those who want to learn more about him. On August 5, 2024, he taught a class that I took at a later time. (I almost never take the classes…
320. Why Love Future You
With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought I’d write about one of the most important and complicated kinds of love. The idea was inspired by a different episode of Dr. Laurie Santos’ The Happiness Lab from the one I based the last five posts on. This episode is called “Does the You of Today Hate…
NetGalley Review of Never Planned on You
title: Never Planned on You author: Lindsay Hameroff publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin publication date: February 18, 2025 pages: 320 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: vomit, tattoos, drinking, hospital scare summary: During her semester abroad, Ali and Graham meet, tie in a bet, and get matching, worlds-worst tattoos. When they run into each other ten years later,…
319. Why Contemplate Your Death
The last topic in this five-part series based on Dr. Laurie Santos’ “The Happiness Lab: How Talking to a Friend Helps” (linked in the photo above) podcast is the most complicated one to broach. I would guess that Dr. Santos and I aren’t the only people who’d prefer to think about ourselves as eternal. I’m…