Another month down means it’s time for another monthly reading wrap-up! Since I only read two books in April (GASP), I decided to combine the wrap-ups for April and May.

I don’t do monthly TBRs because I’m ridiculously spontaneous when it comes to picking which books to read next. Sometimes it takes me three or four tries to settle on one book versus another. So my monthly wrap-ups should be as much of a surprise to my readers as they are to me!

My ratings are on a five-star scale with one being the worst and five being the best.

⭐: Either the book was awful or I didn’t finish it

⭐⭐: I finished it, but wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to others

⭐⭐⭐: It was ok and I would consider recommending it to others under certain circumstances

⭐⭐⭐⭐: I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to others

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: I loved it and it has become a favorite book, or at least one I think everyone should read. I would consider reading it more than once.

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Title: American Phoenix: John Quincy and Louisa Adams, the War Of 1812, and the Exile That Saved American Independence

Author: Jane Hampton Cook

Genre: Historical nonfiction

Published: 2013

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Despite some incessantly annoying tropes by the author, I loved this book. (Refering to “Adams and his Eve” and their inadequate American clothing in imperial Russia as “fig leaves” might work once, but not almost two dozen times in sixty pages.) I knew very little about John Quincy Adams except that he was the eldest son of America’s 2nd president, John Adams, and was himself America’s 6th president. After essentially committing political suicide in 1808 by resigning from the US Senate after crossing party lines to support President Jefferson’s Embargo Act, John Quincy was appointed minister plenipotentiary to imperial Russia. This was described as an “honorable exile.” At this time in history, in the eyes of the world, America was a country in name only. John Quincy and his wife, Louisa, endured incredible hardship not only on their long journey to St. Petersburg, but also as the first Americans to attempt to establish free trade with Russia. During this time, they were separated from their two oldest sons for six years, had to deal with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and ultimately end the War of 1812 between America and Great Britain with the Treaty of Ghent. Now America had truly secured her independence.

Title: Those Who Save Us

Author: Jenna Blum

Genre: Historical fiction

Published: 2004

Rating: ⭐

I’m not sure I have adequate words to describe how awful this book was. It was supposed to be a gritty World War II historical fiction novel about a German woman who unwillingly becomes a mistress to a Nazi officer, as well as the efforts her daughter goes through in the mid-1990s to discover why her mother won’t talk about the war. It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure the author is something of a sex addict. She could not get through a single section of the book without some completely unnecessary mention of bodily fluids, body parts, or sexual acts. This book read as a cheap, trashy romance novel.

Title: Common Sense

Author: Thomas Paine

Genre: Essay

Published: 1776

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’m not sure how I got through all my schooling without having to read this. I won’t deny it’s a bit of a challenge to get through due to the 18th century language, which was very windy and flowery. But having now read multiple books about the American Revolution, I can definitely see why this pamphlet had such an electric effect on the colonies and played a significant role in bringing more colonists around to the idea of independence. (Did you know that very few people were even considering independence prior to 1776?) As an American, this pamphlet is full of, there’s no other word for it…common sense. Had I been on the fence in 1776, this would have brought me without reservation to the Patriot side.

Title: Nathanael Greene

Author: Gerald M. Carbone

Genre: Biography, Historical nonfiction

Published: 2008

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Nathanael Greene is my favorite Revolutionary War person. An asthmatic Quaker with a limp, he was voted against being an officer in his own militia because his limp was so obvious. A year later, he was the youngest brigadier general in the Continental Army and everything he knew about warfare he’d read in a book. He became the Savior of the South. If only they hadn’t lost his bones for 115 years. (Don’t worry, they found him in 1901.) As far as the book itself goes, there was almost nothing I hadn’t read before. The author wrote in the introduction about having “tightened up the narrative,” but I think it was a bit too tight. Although I’m familiar with the historical events, the book would have benefitted from a few more sentences of explanation here and there. And it could have used a better editor. It’s evident that it was once broken up into a series of newspaper articles, as the flow between passages isn’t as smooth as it could be, with some facts being repeated unnecessarily. There were also a few historical errors. And some parts of the narrative really needed to be flushed out a bit more. Overall, it was a decent book about a general who never really got his due.