What I Read in September
The Wedding Date | Jasmine Guillory
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist. On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend…. After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other…. They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century–or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want….
I am actually mad at myself for not reading this book sooner. I try no to pay for romcom style books sense there are so many free options on Kindle Unlimited. Some of them aren’t that great, which is probably why I don’t love most of them. After hearing about Jasmine Guillory’s books on two different podcasts I sucked it up and bought this book. It was exactly what I needed. Alexa is smart and secure but her ambitions and personal doubts made her feel specifically relatable for me. One of the podcasts brought up a scene
4 Stars
Sophia of Silicon Valley | Anna Yen
During the heady years of the tech boom, incorrigibly frank Sophia Young lucks into a job that puts her directly in the path of Scott Kraft, the eccentric CEO of Treehouse, a studio whose animated films are transforming movies forever. Overnight, Sophia becomes an unlikely nerd whisperer. Whether her success is due to dumb luck, savage assertiveness, insightful finesse (learned by dealing with her irrational Chinese immigrant mother), or a combination of all three, in her rarified position she finds she can truly shine. As Scott Kraft’s right-hand woman, whip-smart Sophia is in the eye of the storm, sometimes floundering, sometimes nearly losing relationships and her health, but ultimately learning what it means to take charge of her own future the way the men around her do. But when engineer/inventor Andre Stark hires her to run his company’s investor relations, Sophia discovers that the big paycheck and high-status career she’s created for herself may not be worth living in the toxic environment of a boys-club gone bad.
I actually read this book with my best friend. Although we haven’t discussed it yet, I’ve already given it a lot of thought. I honestly did not love Sophia, and by that I don’t feel like we would be friends. The more that I read, the more that I did grow to understand her though. That being said, I did appreciate her drive and it worked for her. Throughout this book you know exactly what the real companies are she’s referring to by codenames and who the people are she’s referencing as characters. I wasn’t expecting that it to be such a parallel to real life when I picked this book up, but most of the time Silicon Valley seems like something out of fiction to me anyway. One thing I really appreciated was how much this book depicted the importance of sponsorship. I can’t really say that Sophia had a mentor throughout this, but there were so many instances when she had a sponsor willing to go to bat for her and encouraging her. And they were all men. I think as women it’s easy to get stuck on the idea that a woman will be you mentor or that a woman will be your sponsor, but a man can do the job just as well. And it’s even more important to look for that in male-dominated spaces. This is a look at one career path in the tech industry, but I think it would resonate with anyone who feels like a career is a winding path. While I did enjoy the books, it wasn’t a favorite. I feel like It didn’t go deep enough, both in the character development, but also delving into her actual work. Overall it felt very surface and depended on people what “everyone” knows about Silicon Valley.
3 Stars
