Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this audiobook. It was such a unique storyline, about Cassie, a female firefighter who is trying to integrate into a new, old-school male-only firehouse. I really enjoyed this different perspective and storyline... sometimes it feels like all contemporary fiction runs together and all of the romances are the same. All the girls are writers or working in an office somewhere, and they meet guys at work or at the gym or someplace... but this book was totally different. The environment of the firehouse was so different and fun, and the stories about what they did were fascinating. I'd never really pictured what working as a firefighter was like, and particularly what it was like being a female firefighter. Cassie was a really different narrator and she was dealing with her own abandonment issues from when her mom left her when she was a teenager, and it made her a really tough and hard person, and part of the story was how she began to thaw and change and become more open to love and new experiences. I loved Cassie as a character and was just rooting for her as she developed. I got so into the story that once the climax started happening, I had to borrow this as an e-book so I could read it super fast instead of listening to it more slowly as an audiobook. I had to know what happened RIGHT THEN and couldn't wait. This was VERY good and I loved it.

Savvy by Ingrid Law

I have been meaning to read this book for years, but never gotten around to it. I read some super-amazing reviews of it a few years ago, and kept remembering it, because the premise sounded pretty great: every member of this family gets a special power on the day they turn 13, and Mississippi (or Mibs) is about to turn 13 and find out what her special power is. I thought that sounded really fun. But her dad gets in a car accident right before her birthday, and is in the hospital, so everything gets turned upside down, and she doesn't have any idea what is going to happen to her. After a few things that happen on her birthday morning, she decides that she thinks her power is waking things up, and realizes she has to get to the hospital to wake up her dad from his coma. So she, and her brothers and a few friends, stow away on a Bible salesman's bus to catch a ride to the hospital, and end up on this road trip adventure to get there. I really liked the beginning and LOVED the ending of the book (I may have cried), but some of the road trip adventures dragged for me in the middle. (I guess I don't love road trip stories.) But it was a great, great story and I think it would be a huge favorite for the middle-grade crowd. This is one I would like to have on our shelves.

Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan

After listening to Jeannie Gaffigan's book, it made me want to listen to some more Jim Gaffigan. So I got this audiobook from the library, and listened to it in basically one day (lots of nursing going on here). I feel like none of this was basically new information--if you've watched any of his comedy specials on Netflix, you've definitely heard all of his jokes before. I personally liked Dad is Fat better, because I love the parenting jokes and I love him making fun of big families and all of the funny stuff that goes along with it. But the food jokes were great and I definitely laughed out loud tons of times while listening to this. It was like a nine-hour comedy special (although let's be honest, the comedy specials on Netflix are better because of the timing and such, which doesn't always translate exactly to an audiobook version).

When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan

I have liked Jim Gaffigan for years, and we went to his live show in the fall. And I've liked him even more as I've gotten to know about his wife and how the two of them are a writing team and how they do everything together, and how they canceled their successful TV show after realizing they couldn't both be doing that and be available to raise their kids. I think they both just seem like stand-up people (haha, get it?). In his show in the fall, Jim talked about his wife's brain tumor, and made a few jokes about it, and I'd read about it in the news back when it was happening as well. But this is a memoir that she wrote about her experience finding out that she had a massive, pear-shaped brain tumor in her brainstem, and then having to spend weeks and months recuperating after contracting pneumonia in the hospital. It was a fascinating story, and Jeannie is just as funny as her husband--she did a great job writing about her experiences without coming across as too depressing or sad, and being honest about it while still making you laugh. I thought it was a really fun book to listen to, and I came out of it liking her even more than her husband.

Also, this was the first audiobook I've listened to in months because with nursing, all of a sudden it's harder for me to read and I need something to be able to listen to while sitting there. This was a great book to get back into it.

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

This is the second book in the Truly Devious series, and I blew through it just as quickly as I did the first one. Stevie is continuing her investigation of the Ellingham murders, but another student has disappeared and she has to figure out what happened to her as well. It all sounds so mysterious, and almost too coincidental, when you describe it that way, but when you read the story, it all makes total sense and works great. I was surprised at the end of the first book that there were no answers to the mystery in that one, that this book just continued Stevie's investigation, but I loved all of her discoveries and all the information you get from the author as you go. Johnson does an amazing job of dropping little pieces of data and documents from the past into her story, to give you, as the reader, more and more puzzle pieces as you figure things out along with Stevie. My main complaints about this book were minor--I still hated her love interest, and didn't get why she felt any responsibility or interest in him at all, and I really didn't like how she referred to one of the characters as "them." I feel like so many YA novels have to have a gay best friend (see Tweet Cute as well), which is great, but this is the first one I've seen with a character that is non-binary and uses a "them" pronoun, which is TERRIBLE to read. This character "wrapped themselves around" someone else, and "locked their eyes" on something, and I was so confused every time I read it and it took so long to make sense of what was being written. I understand wanting to be diverse, but I hate reading things that are so imprecise and difficult to read. I am not a fan of that grammatical change at all. So yes, a very minor quibble, but one that definitely stuck with me.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

I really, really enjoyed this YA murder mystery. I had no idea what it was about, but a friend had recommended it to me several times, and I decided to check it out while we were in the hospital with our baby girl. I couldn't put it down and blew through it and the sequel in just a day each--and then I found out I have to wait for FOUR WEEKS for the final book in the trilogy from the library, without finding out the solution! Ahhh! I wish I'd requested that one sooner; I had no idea this book was going to suck me in like it did.

The book is about Stevie, a girl starting at Ellingham Academy, this school for super smart and super quirky kids that all have their own interests and pursuits. It's secluded on a mountain in Vermont, and is really well-known for a pair of unsolved murders during the first year it was founded in the 1930s. Stevie's passion is solving mysteries and researching crime, and she is determined to solve the Ellingham murders and to find out what really happened while she is at the school. And then--there's another murder at the school, and Stevie begins to try and solve that one too, and all sorts of things start to happen...

I really liked how readable this book was. It was fast and quick and there were all sorts of quips and references to things that weren't explained or drawn out--it was clearly written for YA, and fits in for that audience perfectly. I thought the characters were really fun and believable... I liked Stevie and her quirks, and I loved her friends Janelle and super-grumpy Nate. The one character I really disliked was her eventual love interest, who I could not at all understand and who seems like a terrible person. I hate when characters like people who suck. But the story itself was so well done, and I loved how Johnson incorporated both the older, 1930s mystery, and the contemporary murder, and had Stevie working to solve them both at the same time. She did a great job putting them both together and giving out a little bit of information at a time to keep you interested as you went. I really loved this book.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

I thought the premise of this book sounded adorable, and I wanted to read it while recuperating after having the baby--but I didn't end up wanting to wait until the baby was born to read it. This book is about Pepper, whose parents run a burger restaurant-turned international chain, and Jack, whose parents run a deli on the East Side of New York City--and they also go to the same school in New York City. They both end up being put in charge of their respective restaurants' Twitter accounts and get into a Twitter war with each other (without knowing it)--and their relationship progresses from there. I thought this was a very well done YA romance; it was exciting, fun, easy to read, not overly dramatic, and pretty believable. I loved the two main characters of Pepper and Jack, and I thought their hang-ups about each other and the conflicts they experienced were believable enough. I was kind of surprised by a twist at the ending, which was fun. I blew through this book in just this afternoon and evening because I didn't want to stop reading--it was the perfect distracting book to read while I wait for this baby to come.