Fitness Update After 10,000 Steps Challenge

The Making of Us – This one was ok. There were several main characters that kept the story interesting, but it felt like things were tied up a little too neatly at the end. From the synopsis: Lydia, Dean, and Robyn don’t know one another…yet. Each is facing difficult challenges: Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood. Wealthy and successful, she leads a lonely and disjointed existence. Dean is a young, unemployed, single dad whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is 18. Gorgeous, popular, and intelligent, she entered her first year of college confident about her dream to become a pediatrician. Now she’s failing her classes. Now she’s falling in love for the first time. Lydia, Dean, and Robyn live very different lives, but each of them, independently, has always felt that something was missing. What they don’t know is that a letter is about to arrive that will turn their lives upside down. It’s a letter containing a secret – one that will bind them together and show them what love and family and friendship really mean.

Eliza Starts a Rumor – This was a quick listen. A bit contrived, but easy going for early mornings. From the synopsis: It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. When Eliza Hunt created the Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board 15 years ago, she was happily entrenched in her picture-perfect suburban life with her husband and twin preschoolers. Now, with an empty nest and a crippling case of agoraphobia, the once-fun hobby has become her lifeline. So, when a rival parenting forum threatens the site’s existence, she doesn’t think twice before fabricating a salacious rumor to spark things up a bit. It doesn’t take long before that spark becomes a flame. Across town, new mom and site devotee Olivia York is thrown into a tailspin by what she reads on the Bulletin Board. Allison Le is making cyber friends with a woman who isn’t quite who she says she is. And Amanda Cole, Eliza’s childhood friend, may just hold the key to unearthing why Eliza can’t step out of her front door. In all this chaos, one thing is for sure…. Hudson Valley will never be the same.

Clock Dance – This one was a bit morose, a bit plodding. It’s by Anne Tyler so I figured it would be a really good read. The end didn’t really feel like anything got resolved, the synopsis says that it’s a novel of self-discovery (which wouldn’t really need much of a plot) and I guess maybe it was? From the synopsis: Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother’s sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn’t sure she ever will be. Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to look after a young woman she’s never met, her nine-year-old daughter, and their dog, Airplane. This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory – surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope and transformation.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January – This one was another one I enjoyed. It was rather fantastical, so keep that in mind. It was a bit long, but as the pieces of the mystery of it all fell into place, it kept me engrossed. From the synopsis: In the early 1900s, in a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

The Witch’s Kind – This one was good, although not quite as magical/mysterious as I first thought given the title. It felt a bit plodding at times, bit in a steady way not annoying way. Loose ends got tied up pretty neatly, but it was a good early morning listen. From the synopsis: Barrie Anne Blythe and her aunt Charlotte have always known that the other residents of their small coastal community find them peculiar – two women living alone on the outskirts of town. It is the price of concealing their strange and dangerous family secret. But two events threaten to upend their lives forever. The first is the arrival of a mysterious abandoned baby with a hint of power like their own. The second is the sudden reappearance of Barrie Anne’s long-lost husband – who is not quite the man she thought she married. Together, Barrie Anne and Charlotte must decide how far they are willing to go to protect themselves – and the child they think of as their own.

The Kiss Quotient – This one was cute, definitely chick lit. It was definitely a MA kind of novel, but there was a nice story to it too. From the synopsis: Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases – a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with as well as way less experience in the dating department than the average 30-year-old. It doesn’t help that she has Asperger’s and that French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. She decides that she needs lots of practice – with a professional – which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese-Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and he agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan – from foreplay to more-than-missionary position… Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses but also to crave all of the other things he’s making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges convinces Stella that love is the best kind of logic…