TryBeing Gr8t's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Fabulous, Fabulous, Fabulous!!! 🎉 👏🏽
My favorite book of the year.
His ability to create characters with depth is wonderful.
I'm officially in aww of Frederick Backman's writing! It is.....chef's kiss perfect..🌟

I am so happy that there is a sequel!! 🎉🎉🎉
Vera is fabulous and this book didn't disappoint. I adore found family stories and Vera's way of caring for people and finding family is really sweet. You know how there are the 5 Love Languages? Well Vera shows love by "taking ownership of people". 🤣 It's incredibly adorable. I want Vera to adopt me!

This was a feel good book because of how Vera works so hard to care for everyone around her. Winafred is definitely one of my new favorite characters, she just won't stop talking about those kimchi croissants.. 😆

I think after Covid it has been harder to make new friends and to speak to strangers, but there are also a lot more lonely people. I miss the 90's and early 00's, before social media, when it was so much easier to connect with people.

I would love to one day see "Vera's Found Family Groups" that meet all over the country at restaurants and coffee shops. I can just see a bunch of random people together and following Vera's guide to life:
1. Feed people
2. Make friends with strangers
3. Feed people
4. Make sure your family is fed
5. Make sure your neighbors are fed
6. Did I mention feeding people??
7. Respect and listen to your elders
8. Drink tea (the good stuff!)
9. Feed people
I'm sure there's more...but I think I need to start cooking...🍲🥘

**Trigger Warning: there are sad/traumatic parts of this story. I don't want to spoil the mystery so I'm not going to list them here. I felt like Jesse Q. Sutanto did a great job addressing sensitive topics with compassion and grace.

Pre-review commentary:
People say they wish they could visit Vera's Tea Shop and I absolutely agree. ☕🍵
I bet she would have some hilarious recommendations for each customer who comes in 😆. Vera could be a Life Coach and have people come to her tea shop for advice. Oh wait she already does that for free. 😉

This book is like talking to your best friend over coffee and hearing about her family drama and gasping at all the twists and turns.

If you told me this book was a true story I would believe it. It reads like reality.

Rebecca Kaufman is a master storyteller and her characters have depth and complexity.
This is my first experience reading this author's work and I'm very impressed. I want to read it again so I can understand the characters better. This is a book where you aren't pushed to hate every character except for one. This book shows the duality of human nature very well. The characters are all flawed but they also have positive characteristics as well that are showcased.

Rather than read, character X did something and it was bad, you are told character X did an action and you learn the WHY. Why does character X act the way they do? One character for example has a disability and at first if you don't know his background his action seems horrible but once you understand his disability his action makes sense. Then you start to think about all the actions of everyone around him.
I have more thoughts but they are still simmering in my mental crock pot.

TL:DR
Wow. This book has great storytelling, feels very real, and has fantastic character development.