You're Attending a Giant Family Dinner

Are looking for a new series to binge or are cooking with your mom this week

Hi friends,

Happy almost Thanksgiving! I’m celebrating with my parents and some family friends and hope your festivities are filled with joy.

I’m thankful for all of you. What To Read If turned three last week (!) and I’m so grateful each of you join me each week.

And, now, what to read if …

You’re Planning a Big Family Dinner

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

My Thanksgiving dinner will be a little quiet, but Christmas Eve (complete with kids from one to 92) will be boisterous. If you’re attending a giant family celebration this weekend — or wish you were — you’ll want to read Elizabeth Acevedo’s Family Lore, a magical realist family saga about sisters, cousins, aunts and nieces.

Since she was a child, Flor Marte has had a special ability to predict the day someone will die. So, when she invites her family and friends to a giant living wake — a party celebrating her life — her loved ones are concerned. Flor refuses to explain why she’s insisting on the wake, even as she plans a menu, buys her grown daughter a party dress and obtains a giant throne-like chair to sit in at the event. Flor’s sisters and nieces — who also have magical gifts — are keeping secrets too. And as the event grows nearer, their earlier lives in Santa Domingo and hidden truths can no longer be ignored.

I adored Elizabeth Acevedos’ previous YA books and was excited to dive into her adult debut. I wasn’t disappointed. Her writing remains lyrical and memorable (take this line “Maybe that is the original definition of nightmare? A dream that gallops through, dragging the dreamer from one haunting to the next.” as proof) and the Marte women will stay with me for a long time. As we enter the holiday season, its reminder to embrace life and our loved ones feels extra poignant.

Reminder rec: The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova, another magical realist family saga, is one of my faves of the past few years. 

You Want to Devour a Series with Your Leftovers

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn

My mom (hi mom!) and I take Thanksgiving leftovers very seriously. I think we might like our turkey sandwiches drenched in gravy more than the main meal itself? (Please leave your leftovers #hottake in the comments.) If you want to pair your turkey sandwich with a mystery series, look no further than Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell books, set in Victorian-era London.

Butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell loves adventure and far-off travel. After burying the spinster aunt who raised her, she plans to set off on a globe-trotting journey until she escapes a kidnapping attempt with the help of Baron von Stauffenbach. The mysterious baron, who tells Veronica he can offer her information about her unknown parentage, brings her to his friend Stoker for hiding and protection. But when Baron von Stauffenbach is found dead before he can explain who is chasing her, Veronica and Stoker, a bad-tempered naturalist, fear imprisonment and go on the run.

For years, friends had told me to read the Veronica Speedwell books and I was saving them for some sort of “break-glass” situation because I knew I would love them. I finally broke into the emergency stash this spring when I was in a reading slump and the audiobooks, narrated by the fabulous Angele Masters, helped me find my way back to reading. The rat-a-tat-tat banter and slow-burn romance between Veronica and Stoker is chef’s-kiss perfection and the mysteries are well-plotted. What keeps me coming back, though, is Veronica, a fierce and fearless heroine that I try to channel when I need some extra bravery. I haven’t finished the series yet — I’m about halfway — because I want to know I have more books to turn to when I need them.

You’re Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner with Your Mom

So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park

If you ran into me last week, there’s a good chance I started pushing So We Meet Again on you or loudly declared that I have entered my Suzanne-Park era. So We Meet Again, the story of 29-year-old Jessie who moves back in with her meddling mom after getting laid off from her Wall Street job, is one of those books I could not wait to share with you all.

As she’s running out of the bank following her firing, Jessie overhears former coworkers explain why she was let go: “she's already being overpaid anyway for a woman” and “Asians are worker bees, not someone who can drum up new deals.” Depressed and low on funds, she moves home to Nashville, where she runs into her childhood nemesis Daniel at the Asian grocery store while running errands for her mom. Daniel seems to be the golden boy he always was — complete with a $100K car — but Jessie reluctantly accepts his help launching her new business focused on cooking hacks. Jessie’s attempts to scale her company grow more complicated when her mom takes a surprise starring role in her YouTube cooking videos and her feelings for Daniel shift from rivalry to something more.

I squealed with delight on a sidewalk while listening to So We Meet Again last week. It brought me so much joy and features not one, but two of the funniest meet-cute scenes I’ve ever read (one with Daniel, one with a new friend Jessie makes). And while there’s a romantic arc, it was the story about Jessie and her mom that kept me reading. I’ll give my mom an extra hug while we’re prepping dressing this week.

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Thanks, as always, for reading. You can catch up on last week’s recs here and my Q&A with Nicole Chung here. Next week, I’ll be back with my best-of list/gift guide.

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