Best Books for Mother’s Day Gifts
I love including books when I give gifts to people…There’s a perfect one out there for everyone, they don’t take up much room, and they can pass them on when they’re finished and not add to the “stuff” problem. With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, I put together a list of some books that would make great gifts for the mother-figure in your life. Some of them I’ve reviewed here before, and some are books I’ve enjoyed before I started this blog.
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One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker
Out in the middle of nowhere on the Wyoming frontier, Cora has an affair with Nettie Mae’s husband. One husband ends up dead, and the other is sent to prison. As much as the women don’t get along, they’re going to have to figure out how to work together if they want their children to survive the brutal landscape they live in.
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The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
Germany, 1941, and Hanni Kohn is left to care for her invalid mother and her 12-year-old daughter Lea after her husband is killed by the Nazis and it’s looking like they’re all going to follow him. But, Hanni won’t let anything happen to her daughter, and she convinces the Rabbi’s daughter Ettie, to help create a golem, a Jewish mystical creature, to fiercely protect her daughter no matter what. This is a book I couldn’t put down, and found it to be a beautiful book about what a parent will do to save their child.
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Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland
A bittersweet story about Esther’s two daughters — Fanny and Florence — and what Esther will do to protect her Fanny’s high-risk pregnancy after Florence dies in a freak accident.
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Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams
Very enjoyable historical fiction with a slightly happier theme than the previous books on this list. When photojournalist Janey Everett finds and confronts a long assumed missing pilot, Irene Lindquist, hiding in Hawaii, wanting to ask her questions about the man who taught her how to fly, Sam Mallory, we find ourselves in the story of Irene and Sam and the secrets Janey uncovers.
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The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Jack and Mabel arrive in Alaska in 1920, to set up a homestead. As Jack struggles to succeed as a farmer, Mabel is crushed by loneliness. When the first snowfall of the season arrives, the couple rush outside and build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snowman has disappeared, but instead, they find a young, blonde child running through the treas. Jack and Mabel love her like their own daughter, but nothing is as it appears, and it will change them forever. If your mom is a fan of magical realism, definitely get this one for her.
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The Last of the Moon Girls by Barbara Davis
Lizzy Moon rejects everything that comes with her parentage — the magick and pressure to birth a daughter to continue the legacy — to escape to New York. But when Moon Girl Farm is bequeathed to her after her grandmother’s death, she returns to the town she grew up in, and undertakes her own investigation to the murder of two girls decades earlier, which her grandmother was blamed for.
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Save Me The Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
If your mom likes to cook, this is a good one. It focuses on the rebranding and unfortunate downfall of Gourmet magazine through the eyes of Ruth Reichl, former editor, and draws you in so you feel like you were part of the publication — or at least makes you wish you were. Ruth Reichl’s unpretentious writing style, coupled with a handful of recipes interspersed through the chapters, makes this a must read.
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The Last Flight by Julie Clark
If your mom likes thrillers, this was a fun one. When Claire makes a plan to flee her abusive and very wealthy husband, she takes a chance on switching identities with another woman she meets at the airport bar. When her original flight crashes, she thinks she might have really gotten away, until she realizes that she doesn’t really know the person whose life she just took over.
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The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult
While this book is very different from most of Jodi Picoult’s earlier books, I really enjoyed it. After surviving a plane crash, Dawn Edelstein’s story splits into one where she immediately flies to Egypt (where she once was an Egyptologist) to find her first love. and another where she flies back home to her career as a death doula and her husband and daughter in Boston.
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Mother Land by Leah FranquiA book about the struggle between a traditional mother-in-law and modern daughter-in-law, set in India. The development of the women’s relationship and their own personal growth through the book makes this a good one to gift.
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