One thing I love even more than a good book is one that teaches me something. In addition to her heartfelt story of overcoming grief and moving on, author Abbi Waxman provides readers tips on how to grow their own gardens in her new book, The Garden of Small Beginnings (Berkley). When Lillian Girvan – a widowed mother of two who’s spent the last three years struggling with her husband’s death – is assigned to illustrate a vegetable book for a high-profile client, her boss signs her up for a gardening class. Though not expecting to get much out of the class – other than dirty – Lillian quickly learns that you can find family in unexpected places. Lillian, along with her emotionally unavailable sister and the rest of the hodgepodge mix of a class (including a handsome instructor), learn that with a little nurturing and sunlight, they have the ability to blossom and thrive – much like the vegetables and flowers they’ve planted in their gardens.

Jane Green is back and better than ever with her latest book, The Sunshine Sisters (Berkley), in which a family crisis forces a mother and her estranged daughters to confront their past mistakes. Though Ronni Sunshine was a beloved actress, she was not a good mother to Nell, Meredith and Lizzy, driving the girls apart as they grew older. Years of jealousy, resentment and anger have pitted the sisters against each other, and decades later, when Ronni has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, she summons her three estranged daughters to make things right. Regretful of how she raised her children, Ronni is hoping she can bring her daughters back together and help made amends so that they can lean on each other when she is gone. Green’s exceptional storytelling chronicles the journey of these four women as they try to overcome the past and discover their true selves and the real meaning of family.

Social media is king, and we are its willing servants. While older folk (30+) were introduced to social media sometime in their late teens, there is a generation of people growing up in which a life without social media doesn’t exist. In Donna Freitas’s latest book, The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (Oxford University Press), she examines what she dubs the “happiness effect” – the requirement to appear happy on social media regardless of what a person actually feels. While many might assume that millennials are self-centered and obsessed with posting their lives on social media, Freitas found that students don’t particularly enjoy the pressure of presenting the perfect version of themselves online. Some students spoke of a “chemical addiction” to getting “likes” and putting enormous amounts of effort into their posts in order to get attention; many students reluctantly found themselves basing their self-worth on their number of likes; and some said any negative feedback had the ability to “ruin their day.” Freitas’s book is an eye-opening piece of research that might cause you to reevaluate the role of social media in your life.

Kimberly Dunbar