Winter Solstice, the final book in the Quinn family quartet, is Elin Hilderbrand at her best. Her novels have long been among my bookish summer staples — taking a day or two to dip into the sandy shores of Hilderbrand’s Nantucket is a delightful retreat during the warm summer months. I was late getting into her Winter series (I started in Book 3 of 4), but that in no way diminished the emotional impact of Winter Solstice’s bittersweet tone.

As the book begins, Quinn family patriarch Kelly has stopped his cancer treatments, and is living out the remainder of his days listening to Danielle Steele novels on his phone. (I love this detail. There’s a great line where Kelly considers reading all the classics he never made time for before, only to realize he really has no interest in ever reading Moby Dick, and Danielle Steele audiobooks are much more worth his time.) Youngest son Bart is home from being a prisoner in Afghanistan. I love how Hilderbrand portrays his PTSD, particularly his trauma over chicken (there’s a rather horrifying reason behind it), and I love how he unexpectedly falls in love. Kelly’s wife Mitzi has made the difficult decision to sell the inn, and makes the most of her time left with her husband by throwing one large family gathering after another. Youngest daughter Ava has to deal with her boyfriend Potter’s son hating her, and Potter himself being unable to connect with the boy. Kelly’s first wife Margaret decides to retire from her illustrious broadcasting career to spend more time with her family. Fast Eddie hits the jackpot with a newly wealthy couple looking to buy property — one of them potentially interested in the Quinn’s inn. And much like in the previous book Winter Storms, Kelly and Mitzi’s daughter-in-law Jennifer has one of my favourite storylines: here, she confronts her pill addiction and tries to forge a new career.

If Winter Storms was an uplifting, heartwarming holiday read, Winter Solstice is a bittersweet reminder that nothing lasts forever. Childhood homes get sold, people move on, and the Nantucket that has been your home for decades will be forever changed. It’s a lovely, moving final moment with the Quinns, and a fitting fond farewell to the characters who have grown so much, and forged such a bond with us, over the past few books.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

When seventh grader Maddie spills her pumpkin spice latte all over a cute boy at a local cafe, she is mortified. Luckily, Jacob is as funny and understanding as he is cute, and Maddie quickly realizes she has her first ever actual crush!

Unfortunately, before she can tell her BFF Jana all about it, she learns that Jana has a major crush of her own — on their new classmate Jacob! Thanks to the unwritten BFF girl code, Maddie knows she can no longer pursue Jacob herself, and she reluctantly steps back to give Jana her full support.

But when Jacob and Maddie end up on the same debate team, and Jacob appears to like Maddie back, things get far more complicated than Maddie realizes.

I absolutely love Pumpkin Spice Secrets. It’s the kind of book that would’ve gotten me all emotional as a tween, and even as an adult, I couldn’t help but get swept away in Maddie’s story. I remember how important friendship, and particularly BFF-ship, was as a tween, and how sacrosanct the BFF code was. I can imagine, on a visceral level, how torn up Maddie was over her feelings for Jacob, and the guilt she felt at keeping such a traitorous secret from Jana. I could very much relate to the arguments Maddie and Jana had, and how heartbreaking the slightest snub could be. I admit to being somewhat confused by the debate rules, and I laughed at how clueless the teacher was, but I could also very easily imagine a debate showdown like Homzie wrote, where the words were ostensibly about the topic but lots of hurt feelings couldn’t help but surface.

Beyond the romance and BFF story, Pumpkin Spice Secrets is also about finding your voice and building your self-confidence. I loved seeing Maddie develop from a really timid girl stuck in the shadow of her more gregarious best friend to a girl who has a clearer understanding of her own potential. I could relate to Maddie’s utter fear at the idea of speaking in front of her debate class, and I loved seeing how she dealt with it, and particularly how dealing with debate gave her confidence in other areas of her life.

Pumpkin Spice Secrets is such a sweet, moving story that tweens (and tweens at heart!) are sure to love. I highly recommend it.

Drink Pairing: Chocoholic’s Delight

Some nights I want nothing more than to treat myself to a sweet read and a cup of something hot, sweet and creamy. Below is a recipe for my favourite hot drink.

Treat yourself to this book, mix yourself some Chocoholic’s Delight and indulge!

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Thank you to Thomas Allen & Son for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you as well for the card design of my favourite drink recipe!

I’m a huge space geek. I remember being a child and meeting a family friend who worked at NASA. I no longer remember exactly what he did, but I do remember demanding he tell me everything about his job. He showed me a photo of a space shuttle before he left, and I wanted nothing more than to work in NASA someday. My love for space eventually found its outlet in science fiction, thanks to a high school Biology teacher who was a super-nerd for Star Trek’s Mr. Spock and introduced our class to the series. But real-life astronauts and real-life space missions have always held a fascination for me.

I’ve heard of Scott Kelly because of the Twin Project, which studied the effects of space on the human body. Scott and his twin brother Mark, both astronauts, presented an incredible opportunity to science when Scott was assigned to spent a year in the space station while Mark stayed here on Earth. I was fascinated by this study, and to be honest, had originally thought Endurance would have a lot more information about the project and its findings, so was somewhat disappointed that it didn’t. Kelly does mention in the book that findings are still being studied by NASA scientists, so likely we’ll learn a lot more about the results years down the road.

In the meantime, Endurance is a wonderfully quotidian glimpse into life in space. Kelly talks about his fellow astronauts and how their lives on the space station differ from here on Earth. He writes about learning some Russian, since he and other American astronauts will be working alongside their Russian counterparts, but mostly their experiments and studies appear to be fairly independent.

Kelly has a light-hearted humour that at times belies the potential seriousness of what he says. For example, he jokes about why their supplies include an equal amount of chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch pudding when science clearly dictates that the chocolate ones will run out much quicker than the other flavours. A lack of chocolate is a minor inconvenience on Earth, but beneath his jocular tone is a reminder of how dependent the astronauts are on supplies from home. Poignantly, another scene shows him and other astronauts chatting about the food they miss most from Earth — Kelly mentions a beer he barely enjoys on Earth yet inexplicably misses in space. More seriously, Kelly later talks about a couple of supply shuttles from Earth being delayed, often because they were destroyed en route. Suddenly, we are reminded that it’s not just chocolate pudding in limited supply, but all their food and equipment needed to keep the space shuttle running and habitable. Kelly talks about the challenges they face mostly in passing — the water purifier needed repair, they made a mistake disposing of a piece of equipment because the shuttle bringing the replacement was destroyed, etc. He acknowledges the risk, but responds so immediately with practical action that it’s alarmingly easy to forget at times that most of these challenges have life or death consequences.

Kelly talks as well about the challenge of being so far away from your loved ones. He writes about how he and Mark try to stagger their space flights, so that if anything happens to them in space, or to one of their loved ones on Earth, the twin on Earth can step in to provide support. He also talks about using video conferencing to talk to his family. In probably one of the most relatable scenes, he and his partner Amiko get into an argument when Kelly tries to instruct her on how to fix the pool and she clearly wants to leave the pool for another time. The connection breaks abruptly, and Kelly realizes that if something happens to either of them, their last memory of the other would be an on-screen image frozen in a look of annoyance.

Endurance is a fascinating glimpse into the life of Scott Kelly and his time at the Space Station. I personally found Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth more engaging and better at capturing the absolute wonder and awe of being in space. Hadfield as well is a bit clearer at explaining the structure of life in space, and the way in which astronauts must train their minds to solve multiple complex problems practically by rote. So Kelly’s book was a bit of a letdown in comparison. But it’s still a strong book, and a fascinating glimpse into a life very few of us will ever get to experience.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.