Do you ever feel like you’re surrounded by mountains?
Mountains of laundry.
Mountains of books (guilty 🙋♀️).
The mountain that is… well, your life.
Same.
There’s family to care for, work to do, workouts to squeeze in, dishes in the sink, dust on the shelves. One thing after another after another. (Let’s not look in the closets or the garage.)
But here’s a little question I keep asking myself lately…
What if we could climb all of those mountains… and feel better about ourselves in the process?
What if, instead of feeling buried and overwhelmed, we felt capable?
What if we felt confident in our ability to handle the day, even if that confidence is tiny and wobbly at first?
Think about the last time you felt truly care-free and confident.
Maybe it was yesterday (yay! I’m cheering for you!).
Or maybe it’s been a minute.
Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I love reading so much. Most stories follow the same arc, someone starts in a hard place… and ends up somewhere better, wiser, happier.
There’s so much power in watching someone grow.
And that’s exactly why I chose our September book club pick.
The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
This book exploded on TikTok and has over 100,000 reviews on Goodreads (for good reason). It’s short. It’s powerful. And honestly… it hits hard in all the best ways.
I’d love to read it with you.
If you’re new here, our book club is completely chat-based right here in the Substack app ,which means it’s perfect for busy people who want to keep learning, growing, and taking small intentional steps toward who they want to become.
Want to join us? Just hit subscribe for $5/month and you’ll get access to all of our book club chats.
We start in September — I can’t wait to dive in together. 💛
Grab your copy HERE.
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Are you still feeling the back to school vibes? I am!
Feel the vibes with these 3 recs this week…
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
This has been on my shelf for way too long. Help influence me that I need to read this book!
Check it out HERE.
Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.
Check it out HERE.
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.
When big, brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and former rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact to him, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Suddenly, half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?
Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf is secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs.
The easy lay Dani dreamed of is now more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?
Check it out HERE.
Happy reading,
Melissa
Reminder, upgraded subscribers can join our read along chat of Attitudes of Gratitude this month. Unsure of where to find that chat? Just send me a reply and I’m happy to help.
As a community we have now donated 17 books to women who need them.💝
For every membership upgraded to $5, we donate a historical fiction or romance book to a local women’s shelter.
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Yes, I really have to work on that gratitude thing myself, and should probably read the book you recommended for your club's first month.