3 Fantastically Awesome Books BJ Thinks You Need to Read: March 2026

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid Lauren and Ryan have been together since college and got married. The thing is, their marriage sucks. They are absolutely awful to each other, to the point where I was wincing every time they had a fight. They decide to separate for a year and see if they can figure out if they even want to still be married to each other. No talking. No contact. No nothing. They can see other people if they want. So the whole year Lauren is trying to figure out who she is aside from her marriage and whether she even wants to stay married to Ryan anymore, all while knowing she really really still loves him. It had a very hopeful ending which I loved. Over the course of the story she logs into his email and sees a draft email written to her. Then she gets obsessed with checking his email to see if he had written anything else, hoping that he'd never know she was reading it. Then she starts writing her own drafts, thinking he'll never see it. Over the unsent emails they learn a lot about how to be better partners to each other, should they decide to get back together at the end of the year. An interesting concept for sure.

The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis This is a memoir by a woman who left Orthodox Judaism. She was married and had 3 children and more and more had doubts about her faith, until one day she said to her husband that she didn’t want to do it anymore. It seems to me that this faith, like lots of other very strict religions, benefits the man more than the woman. She talked about how she wasn’t allowed to show her hair in public after getting married. So she either had to wear these very uncomfortable hats when they went places or she had to wear a wig to cover her mass of natural curls. It took over an hour to get the wig to look right before she would leave the house and left her frustrated. There were more rules about modesty for women, like having to go to the mikvah after her period ended every month to ensure that she would be clean for her husband. When she told her husband how she was losing her faith, he simply replied that she wasn’t trying enough without being at all sympathetic to the overbearing rules of their religion. She talks about what it was like to co-parent when one parent is in the religion and the other is not, and how breaking the rules after getting out of the religion was so hard because she’d lived with them her entire life. 

The Compound by Aisling Rawle I was obsessed with this book and burned through it. In the beginning Lily wakes up at a strange house. When she starts walking around through the house she finds other women there too. That’s when we, as the readers, realize that Lily and these women are in a reality show that takes place at a house in the desert. Soon enough the male cast mates show up and they have to partner up with these men, and then figure out how to live in this house. The producers of the show through challenges at them so they can earn things like more food, luxuries, etc. The goal of the show is to have one person remaining at the end who is the winner. There’s no violence allowed, of course, but the characters end up stabbing each other in the back to avoid banishment. Super interesting story the way it slowly revealed itself to me as the reader and the relationships the characters form to survive living in a house with strangers while trying to win the ultimate prize which is to live in the house and have literally anything you want deposited into the house. And then eventually the last person leaves and goes home and takes as much of the stuff as they can with them. A super interesting concept and fascinating book. Obsessed!