Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi

I had literally zero idea what this book was about, but my friend Amanda recommended it to me so I checked it out and started listening to it without reading any sort of summaries or anything. And oh, my goodness... I loved it. I wonder if I loved it more because I didn't have any expectations or idea of what was coming. It's about a girl from Afghanistan who lives through a revolution there in the 1970s, and her whole family is killed before her eyes. She ends up being taken in by an American diplomat living in Kabul at the time, and then they eventually escape and she is adopted by the diplomat. Then the rest of her life is spent trying to escape from her past but also reconcile her current life with it, until she realizes that she needs to find closure and find her family if she can. I feel like this summary doesn't really encapsulate the beauty of the story or the beauty of the country and the culture that Hashimi described so well. It was such a poignant story, but it was paced well and just felt very real. I loved this book so, so much. I was so happy at the ending as well. It's been really awful reading about everything that's been happening in Afghanistan for the last two weeks after I felt a kind of connection to it after listening to this book. The people there are in such danger, just like after what happened in this book--and I just wish there was anything anyone could do to help them. 

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

I've heard about this book for years and have always meant to read it. I got it on audiobook from Audible and I listened to it while we drove from Utah to California this summer. I thought it was super interesting learning about Obama's background and family and his desire to connect his roots and his story with the different branches of his family tree. I really respect Obama and the type of person he is, and how he tried to be true to himself and to his family who raised him. (I next want to get to his presidential memoir, but it is super, super long, and this one was way shorter, so who knows when I'll get to that one.)

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

This book is about a woman who is in a coma in the hospital and can't remember what has happened to her. The book alternates between the present-day story, where Amber is in the coma and trying to piece together what happened based on what she can hear from the people around her talking, and flashbacks to Amber's childhood through diary entries from several decades ago. You can tell that something super creepy and traumatizing happened at some point, and that something is super wrong. Plus, the very first thing you learn is that she's probably lying to us in her retelling of what happened. The book has a huge twist that affects everything you know about the characters, and then the ending was super surprising to me as well. This was a totally creepy, suspenseful read (listen) and it was a great one to listen to while driving across the country for our long road trip. 

The River by Peter Heller

I kept seeing this referenced and recommended on Modern Mrs. Darcy so when we flew to Philadelphia in May I thought I'd finally read it. I read 2/3 of it on the plane on the way there, but then I could just tell that bad things were coming and I lost momentum. It sat on my bedside stand for the next two months until I could finally work up the nerve to skim the last few chapters to find out what happened. I didn't even want to read the end fully because I knew something bad was coming. And I just wasn't in the mood for super sad and bad stuff. For a quick summary: the story is about two best friends from college who are spending several weeks paddling up a river in northern Canada and roughing it on the land, and the things that happen to them while they're out there. I wish I'd just finished it when I started it, but I didn't. It was spectacularly written--so beautiful, such amazing descriptions, and the setting was fantastic. I just didn't have the heart to rip off that band-aid to finish it.