Pain in the Back

The past two weeks I've been trying to get over a back injury. Well, more like a back tweak. I haven't been able to do much more than just get myself ready in the morning. Thankful I have a loving husband that made sure our house was in order and who plugged in my heating pad for me. Needless to say I am now super far behind on my garden! All those plants from the nursery, all those seedlings I grew, and all those dahlia tubers I divided are still waiting to be put into the ground! It's totally stressing me out, but the good news is that nature is behind this year as well. I am comforted by this quote:

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished"

So, I'm not going to hurry and risk hurting myself. I'm going to try to let some stuff go and just slow down. All of the things that are supposed to get done will get done eventually. It's not about my time, it's about God's timing and right now I'm apparently supposed to slow down.

How about a few little book reviews! I'm not sure if this is fair, but I'm going to review the sequel even though I never reviewed the first book.


After You- Jojo Moyes
It was painful getting through the second book. The cliches, the awkward story, and the forced relationships. I mean there was no part of me that believed these characters. Lou was the root of all her problems. Any connection I felt with her in the first book was nowhere to be found in the second. Basically, don't waste your time with this forced sequel.
Today Will Be Different - Maria Semple

After you is the sequel to... wait for it... Before you. They both take place in England and are about a woman named Lou. I don't really want to go into too much detail here because it would be spoiler alert city, but there were some controversial themes in the first book. I enjoyed parts of it well enough that I picked up the second book to see where they would go with the story.

Lately I have been giving myself some grace about finishing books that I'm not enjoying, but there have been a few sequels lately that I've just pushed through and Today Will Be Different is another one of those. Although it isn't technically a sequel, it takes place in the same world as Semple's other novel, Where'd You Go Bernadette? There is a moment where one of the characters recalls meeting Bernadette, and all of the readers rejoiced! Mostly because Where'd You Go Bernadette? had characters who were funny and enduring. 

I felt like through most of Today Will Be Different, Semple was trying to capture some of the magic from her other novel. The main characters share many of the same traits but they fall flat in this second attempt. They are neurotic and amusing, but never enduring. It was almost like the main character, Eleanor, knew how intolerable she was and just couldn't help herself. If you spend most of a book cringing instead of rooting for the main character, you have another book worth skipping.