Jenna Evans Welch's second novel, Love & Luck, is an adventurous book filled with spontaneous decisions and discussions of relatable heartbreak. The story follows a young woman, Addie, who travels with her family to Ireland for a destination wedding. Things take a turn when Addie and her closest brother, Ian, are destined to travel to Italy with each other in hopes to reconcile their construed relationship. The novel holds a good amount of underlying emotion and frustrations between the two siblings, but things are hashed out more towards the middle and end of the novel. Unfortunately, plans for Italy halt when Addie discovered Ian attempting a getaway with an Irish native, Rowan. Ian plans on touring around Ireland with Rowan in hopes to uncover information about his favorite band, Titletrack, and inevitably attend their final concert. Addie tags along in hopes to keep her brother out of trouble and maybe even force him into changing his mind, however, she is accompanying the two young men with a well-written acquaintance--a travel guide for the brokenhearted visiting Ireland. There are references to this guide throughout the novel, filled with advice and helpful thoughts on how to get through current heartbreak that someone could be encountering. Turns out, it isn't just Addie who acquires help from this acquaintance, but Rowan and Ian as well. The story has numerous introductions of historical sites throughout Ireland and it makes me want to visit there even more so than I already hoped to. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in adventuring, following their dreams, or in need of a little encouragement in making a difficult decision.
Not the usual suspense-thriller synopsis I've become accustomed to when reading Lisa Jewell's novels, however, I was entranced by this novel from the get-co. The House We Grew Up In centers around a mother and her four children over the span of a decade. The mother, Lorelei, has an extensive hobby of collecting items that harbor a memory of time spent with her loved ones. Each and every memory-- meaning each and every item she just happens to come across. Lorelei is in fact a hoarder and it does not get better with time. It gets worse. In addition to Lorelei's intense and overbearing lifestyle, her children forego their relationship with their mother and each other in order to gain a sense of normalcy within their individual lives. One of Lorelei's children committed suicide at a ripe age of sixteen and her other three were simultaneously impacted by the act tremendously. Her other son took to finding a thrilling lifestyle in all the wrong places...

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