I believe January is the best month of the year. It is not only a moment for new beginnings and/or a life refresh, but also my birthday month. As a gift to myself I started reading multiple books at the same time, and finished three of them. Other three are still on my nightstand.

The three books I managed to finished this month were ok, but any of them made me feel attached to the characters. And I will explain why a bit later. But first I want to say that this year I want to be very honest about my opinions when it comes to fashion, literature or whatever I decide to talk without offending other people.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Conversations with Friends is the second novel by Sally Rooney, a young Irish author. It tells the story of Frances and Bobbi, 21-year-old students, creative partners, best friends and ex-girlfriends. One day they are noticed by Melissa, a famous photographer and journalist type person, who decides to write an article about them. Melissa is not very happily married to Nick, a very traditionally beautiful and not very successful actor. As part one goes, Bobbi develops a crush for Melissa and Frances starts having an affair with Nick.

In general, this book was really nice to read. The plot develops, it isn’t too long and I loved the way Sally wrote it. For me one of the highlights was how she mixed text, phone and in person conversations in a way that felt natural and non-confusing.

There is a review on Goodreads that I loved. It says “Conversations with Friends is another one of those books about not particularly nice people entangled in awkward relationships,” and I think this phrase perfectly sums up this book. But I did like it, and I recommend reading if you want something fast and fun.

Louis Vuitton: The Spirit of Travel by Patrick Mauriès

As the title suggests, this book talks about Louis Vuitton. The difference between it and the brand’s Wikipedia page is that 1) tells the story through the traveling and innovative tradition of the maison and 2) has archive photos. And that’s it.

As everything from luxury brands, this is quite an expensive book. I got mine on a sale, 90% off because the cover was in a very bad shape. If it wasn’t for the price, I wouldn’t have bought it. Nonetheless I do think this can be a great generic gift for someone who likes luxury fashion or traveling. It also works great as a coffee table book.

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

The Female Persuasion tells the story of Greer Kadetsky, a brilliant young woman. It follows Greer from being a high school student obsessed with two great Janes (Eyre and Austen), college, becoming a feminist, that void called life after college, first job, first heartbreak, first big deception, reaching her happily ever after.

Well, this all happened in theory, because around part 3 I wasn’t so sure any more about who was the main character. This book gave me mixed feelings. I liked what the idea was, but not how it was executed. But I’ll go deeper into it on another post. I feel like this is also another case of very high expectations not being met. On the front cover of the edition I own has a good review from none other than Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. On the back there are good reviews by Lena Dunham (for the New York Times Book Review), Time, Guardian and Bustle. This book also won the Goodreads 2018 Award for Fiction. After seeing all this praise, I can’t stop but wonder if I know nothing about literature and have 0 taste, or if it the story was just lacking a strong plotline?

• I’ll be writing a post dedicated to each of this books, so if you want to know more about my opinion about it, it is coming soon…