February in books

To continue on with my book reviews for 2022 and to keep track of books read in 2022, here are the books I read in February (okay the last one I finished March 2, 2022).  I set 50 books as my goal for 2022 and have read 8 so far, so I think I'm on track.

This was the first book I read in February.  Briefly, it is a story about a young woman who is addicted to alcohol.  She has a young boy she is raising as a single mom.  Because there are concerns by her family and neighbor about her inability to raise the child when she is intoxicated, she is given the option of going to rehab or having the authorities called on her.  She enters rehab and does become clean (sort of).  My take.  It was an okay book.  It was written in first person and there is a lot of imagery in it.  It lacked something in the writing and I have to say she had some weird mothering practices. I'm glad the main character was not my mom.  It also ended abruptly with a lot of loose edges that were not resolved.  

My second book read has been around for a long time.  If I remember correctly what I read, this was the first book picked by Oprah for her book club.  I don't know why I hadn't read it before.  I believe it was written in 1995.  1995 was a busy year raising kids so I probably wasn't doing as much reading as I've done in later years.  The story involved a family with 3 children and one of the children goes missing at 3 years of age.  No spoilers here but it sort of worked out okay in the end of the book, but there was the obvious grief of not knowing where your child was for many years and trying to live a life without them.  It was good writing and I enjoyed the book.

The third book was the sequel to The Deep End of the Ocean.  I usually don't read sequels but this one kind of got my curiosity wondering where the story would go.  The events that take place in this book happened 23 years after the child had gone missing with the children all grown up, pursuing their different careers, etc.  It was about half the size of the first book so it was a quick read.  It lacked a lot of substance and not the best story line.  I was glad it was a short book.  My advice.  Read the first and skip the second.

This was the last book I read in February.  Actually I was reading it simultaneously throughout the month with the other books as this was the hardcover book I read before bed most nights.  I have read a lot of Danielle Steel's books over the years and she pretty much has the same theme covered in every book and within pages you can figure out where the book is going.  Recently after I've read some of her books, I would say "okay I'm not reading any more" and then a new one would come out and I would read it.  I don't think her recent books are as good as her first books.  She's been writing forever so maybe she's reached the end of creativity? This book was different than her usual ones.  It covered 6 nurses who during WW2 would fly on planes that were designed to pick up the wounded, leaving England and flying to battle fields to transport the wounded back to England.  It covered the lives of the 6, how they got into nursing, their families, etc.  It was an interesting read as it wasn't predictable like some of her other ones and ended on a pretty upbeat note.  If you have some free time and don't have anything else to read, I would recommend it as a quick read.  

And that's it for February.  Let's see what books March has in store to be read.