Last Updated on January 28, 2024 by alli
A subject that’s close to my heart is reading because it comes with so many benefits. It’s not just a fantastic way to reduce stress from our hectic lives, but it’s also a great form of self-care.
In the last two decades, I’ve read many books. Some were average, some were good and then there were those that were unforgettable!
When I truly love a book, I recommend it to family and friends because I want them to experience it and be swept away by the story the way I was.
I started to enjoy reading when I was in my teens, and I still remember the book that introduced me to the love of reading. It was called “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean M. Auel. It had me hooked and enthralled the whole way through. After that book, I became an avid reader.
This post is not just for mums who enjoy reading but particularly for those who would love to give reading a go. The books on my must-read list are so good, they can turn any non-reader into a bookworm! They’ll make you want to make time to read every day. I promise.
We all have our preferences, but my favourite genres are modern fiction and historical fiction. Sorry, there are no Science Fiction or Murder Mystery novels on my list. The list is in no particular order, I love them all for different reasons!
Here are my 20 must-read books for mums that need a break!
1. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
Book Summary: “Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled existence. Except, sometimes, everything… One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.
2. Love at First Flight – Tess Woods
Book Summary: “Mel is living the dream. She’s a successful GP, married to a charming anaesthetist and raising a beautiful family in their plush home in Perth. But when she boards a flight to Melbourne, her picture-perfect life unravels. Seated on the plane she meets Matt, and for the first time ever she falls turbulently in love. What begins as a flirty conversation quickly develops into a hot and obsessive affair, with consequences that Mel and Matt seem incapable of facing.
3. It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover
Book Summary: “Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up – she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.”
4. Me Before You – Jojo Moyes
Book Summary: “Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.”
5. The Giver of Stars – Jojo Moyes
Book Summary: “England, late 1930s, and Alice Wright makes an impulsive decision to marry wealthy American Bennett Van. But stuffy Baileyville, Kentucky, where her husband favours his work and overbearing father, is not what she had hoped for. Then she meets Margery O’Hare, troublesome daughter of a notorious felon. Margery’s on a mission to spread the wonder of books and she needs Alice’s help. Trekking through mountain forests under big open skies, Alice, Margery and their fellow sisters of the trail discover freedom and friendship. But when the town turns against them, will their belief in one another and the written word be enough to save them?”
6. If I Can’t Have You – Charlotte Levin
Book Summary: “Samuel, the day we met I knew I’d finally found what I’d been waiting for. You. Happiness, at last. Then you left me. And now I am alone. Everyone I love leaves in the end. But not this time. I’m not giving up on us. I’m not giving up on you. When you love someone, you never let them go. That’s why for me, this is just beginning.“
7. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Book Summary: “Reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship and a great forbidden love.”
8. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Book Summary: “Afghanistan, 1975- Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him- redemption.”
9. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
Book Summary: “Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.”
10. The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah
Book Summary: “Despite their differences, sisters Viann and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight and Viann finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her. As the war progresses, the sisters’ relationship and strength are tested.”
11. The Great Alone – Kristin Hannah
Book Summary: “Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt, a recently-returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war, uproot their 13-year-old daughter Leni to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.”
12. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
Book Summary: “Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance at salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja’s salvation is just the beginning of her story.”
13. The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne
Book Summary: “Forced to flee the scandal brewing in her hometown, Catherine Goggin finds herself pregnant and alone, in search of a new life at just sixteen. She knows she has no choice but to believe that the nun she entrusts her child to will find him a better life. Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or so his parents are constantly reminding him. Adopted as a baby, he’s never quite felt at home with the family that treats him more as a curious pet than a son. But it is all he has ever known. And so begins one man’s desperate search to find his place in the world.”
14. The Bronze Horseman – Paullina Simons
Book Summary: “Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose palaces and avenues speak of a different age when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg. Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. The routine of their hard impoverished life is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanov family, for Leningrad and particularly for Tatiana, life will never be the same again. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young man named Alexander.”
15. Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
Book Summary: “In northern Iceland, in 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. Agnes is sent to wait on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson and his family, who are horrified and avoid Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the summer months fall away to winter, Agnes’s story begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn’t she?”
16. Little Fires Everywhere
Book Summary: “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.”
17. The things We Cannot Say – Kelly Rimmer
Book Summary: “2019. Life changed beyond recognition for Alice when her son, Eddie, was born with an autism spectrum disorder. She must do everything to support him, but at what cost to her family? When her cherished grandmother is hospitalised, a hidden box of mementoes reveals a tattered photo of a young man, a tiny leather shoe and a letter. Her grandmother begs Alice to return to Poland to see what became of those she held dearest.”
18. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Book Summary: “It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier and will become busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up an object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.”
19. The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
Book Summary: “At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the ‘mundane, middle class existence’ she had always craved. In her apartment, overlooked by ‘a portrait of someone else’s ancestor’ she recounts poignant remembered images of star watching with her father, juxtaposed with recollections of irregular meals, accidents and police car chases and reveals her complex feelings of shame, guilt, pity and pride toward her parents.”
20. Orphan Train – Christina Baker Kline
Book Summary: “Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude? As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.”
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