Meadowbrook Lane ReadsALot

  Another book I’d highly recommend. This takes place in Baltimore, and then later in Hickory, North Carolina in the early 1940’s as the polio epidemic is ravaging the country.   Tess, age 23, moves from Baltimore to NC after ending her engagement to the love of her life after agreeing to marry another man. Tess is also a nurse who plays a very important role in the polio treatment hospital.   Her marriage ends up being very strange and loveless.  Most of the people in the town treat her as an outsider. There is a fair amount of tragedy while she is there that she is wrapped up in and she is not happy there for quite some time —even with their husband being a very wealthy highly-esteemed prominent figure. The book also touches quite a bit on racial tensions of that time period and some big differences noted in the rich and the “common.”  Very interesting story about the life Tess is given to lead over this time period.   Now, this really isn’t the best desc...

  This is definitely a new favorite!  I’m putting it in my top 10!!  I looooved this book.  The beginning may be a little dark—it’s about a woman who basically has her life just falling apart. Nothing is going well. She really has no one significant in her life…it’s just…blah. She decides to take her own life by OD’ing on her antidepressants and alcohol.  The bulk of the book takes place in this in-between time where she is not really alive OR dead.  She’s in the “Midnight Library” where she not only can see and feel all of her past regrets but also the infinite possibilities of how her life could have gone by either changing one regret…or even making just the smallest different decision. She gets to “try out” these other parallel lives for herself in this space. I just adored this book and the themes that ran through it about how we can dwell on things we regret and oftentimes wonder what our lives would’ve been like if this or that decision would have bee...