Reading.is.your.destiny

💙📖🤗BOOK REVIEW🤗📖💙

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🥰 Thank you so much to @randomhouse for the gifted ARC!

📖 Title: The Things We Never Say
✍️ Author: Elizabeth Strout
📅 Pub Date: May 5, 2026

💙 I am ashamed to say this is my first Elizabeth Strout book, but that’s only because I wanted to commit to reading her series start to finish and haven’t gotten around to it. So when I saw she had a new standalone coming out, I knew it was the perfect time for me to jump into her reading!

📖 This is one of those stories that I could tell within the first few pages would be one for me. I love character driven stories and this one was done so well. I felt as though I understood and was connected to the main character Artie Dam so quickly. The book is really about an average person going through a bit of an existential crisis. He’s a well-respected teacher, a good husband and father, but he finds himself pondering some of life’s deepest questions and struggling with his purpose in life.

🤗 The plot isn’t crazy, but the story of his life was beautifully average in a way that held my attention from the first to the last page. Beautifully average may sound like a contradiction, but this story shone light on how life events affect us all, and I think a lot of people will see some of themselves in Artie.

📖 This book was just over 200 pages and is the perfect read-in-one-sitting book that you’ll want to sit with for a while afterwards.

💙 I’ll definitely be going back and reading more from Elizabeth!

❓ Happy Wednesday! How’s your week going so far?