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The Nest by Cynthia D’aprix Sweeny

My rating: 4/5 stars

Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss.

Life has a funny way of working out in the end. Everything happens for a reason. What’s meant to be will be. 

Those are all common phrases people often use when they’re anxious about the future or unsure about their present. It certainly felt like the overall theme of this book. 

The Nest is a story about four siblings: Leo, Jack, Bea and Melody Plumb. It centers on how one particular event starts a chain of reactions that ultimately changes the rest of their lives forever. As this slippery slope continues, we experience the Plumbs’ anxiety and stress about the future. Their initial struggle to relate to one another. 

The secondary characters in this story are amazing: Stephanie, Matilda, Vinnie, Paul and more . The roles they play in the reconstruction of our main characters lives is more significant than you might initially think. 

At the end of the day, everything unfolded as it would have and as it should have; leaving us with a perfectly flawed loving big family. 

Becoming by Michelle Obama

My rating: 5/5 stars

Michelle Obama is an extraordinary woman and I feel so honoured to have gotten to know her better through these 421 pages of Becoming. 

There were so many things I took away from & loved about this book. I couldn’t possibly list them all but I’m going to try to highlight a few:

1. Michelle Obama, throughout this book, really emphasizes the importance of a good support system and how having someone who believes in you cam really change your life. She tries to be this person to everyone she meets, in every role she takes on. I LOVE that she stayed in contact with every group of kids she had participating in projects. From inviting the same set of kids who helped her plant the garden in the White House; to taking the group of girls she met at a high school on her first official visit to England many years later to university tours; to starting an ongoing mentorship program for girls at her kids high school. Her love for the youth is genuine and wholesome and evident in everything she does.

2. It was so fascinating learning about life in the White House. From how many rooms there are; to secret service protocols; to the lengths required in order to maintain privacy; to the loneliness and inconvenience of it all. Things that I thought were exaggerated in movies turned out to infact be true or even maybe not exaggerated enough.

3. I LOVED getting to know the Michelle that existed before Obama. Michelle LavVaughn Robinson was already an extraordinary woman before she met Barack Obama. The determination and confidence that she exhibited from such a young age is just so admirable and it was just really interesting learning more about the home she grew up in, her schools, her friends, her relationship with her brother, mom, dad and extended family.

4. Lastly, this book made me realize just how much Michelle Obama accomplished during her tenure as First Lady.

– Through her work on Joining Forces with Jill Biden, she helped persuade businesses to hire or train more than 1.5 million veterans and military spouses.
– More than 2800 Peace Corps volunteered were trained to implement programs for girls internationally. 
– She helped more young people sign up for federal student aid, supported school counsellors, and elevated College Signing Day to a national level. 
– & SO MUCH MORE!

So many of us go through life with our stories hidden, feeling ashamed or afraid when our whole truth doesn’t live up to some established ideal…..That if our skin is dark or our hips are wide, if we don’t experience love in a particular way, if we speak another language or come from another country, then we don’t belong. That is, until someone dares to start telling that story differently.

Thank you Michelle Obama for telling that story differently. Thank you for reminding us that we belong. Thank you for inspiring us to continue Becoming the people we are meant to be.