Hitting The Books-March 2025

This Month’s Featured Book Pairings…

This month’s read-a-likes are curated for the release of The American Housewife by Anita Abriel. A novel set in the 1950’s about a woman who gets her big break hosting a television baking show. All she has to do is be the ideal housewife, create luscious and delicious desserts and charm the men in charge. That plan might not work for her…

Books cast with strong and sassy women, here we come! Underestimate them at your own peril!

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY – BONNIE GARMUS

Elizabeth was resolute in her vision of where her life was going to go; PhD in Chemistry, a lauded position in her field, a career peppered with groundbreaking innovations; and absolutely, positively, no romance or children. You know what they say about best laid plans…Elizabeth is a woman in the 1960’s, trying to succeed in a field rife with misogyny. She is blunt, impatient with small talk and niceties and does not suffer fools well. She stays laser focused on her work until she has the temerity to fall in love with a fellow scientist. And then gets herself knocked up to boot! Laugh out loud funny, shrewdly observant and cast with characters so engaging that they jump off the page! I loved each and every one of them!

RECIPE FOR A PERFECT WIFE – KARMA BROWN

Alice leaves her publicity career to become a writer and follows her husband to the suburbs of New York. Learning to fill her days in a big, empty house, she comes across a vintage cookbook in the basement and discovers hidden notes left by the home's previous owner, Nellie, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As Alice cooks her way through Nellie's recipes, she stars to uncover clues about her life. Juxtaposing Alice's life against Nellie, this is a story of how everything has changed, but in some ways nothing has changed. Riveting!

SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO – TAYLOR JENKINS REID

Evelyn Hugo loved each and every one of her husbands. Known as a reclusive Hollywood icon, she is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. An unknown and ambitious reporter must be chosen to hear these confessions and encounters her own revelations along the way. With an emotional complexity and shrewd depth that ensure the reader doesn’t discount her as frivolous or vapid. Her story is one of overcoming adversity, racism and sexism to get to the top of her profession. Her failures as much as her triumphs will leave you riveted to the page! Gossipy, fascinating and poignant, this is my kind of summer read. And a delicious twist that will leave the reader utterly content as they turn the last page.

& So On…

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

Funeral Ladies Of Ellerie County – Claire Swinarski

By Her Own Design – Piper Huguley