What I'm Reading: Vol. 132
Hello darlings,
I've just tumbled back into real life after the most gloriously chaotic trip to Paris with my extended family. There were eleven of us all together, which meant our days were full, noisy, and absolutely wonderful.
We soaked in art at Musée de l'Orangerie and Musée d'Orsay, losing track of time in front of Monet's water lilies and the dreamy soft light of so many Impressionist paintings. At Versailles and Musée Carnavalet, we walked through layers of French history, from gilded ceilings to the quiet corners that hint at how real people once lived. Evenings were for sparkle and spectacle: the exuberant show at Cabaret Paradis Latin, and live music at Le Duc des Lombards that kept us out later than we intended, every single time.
We craned our necks at the stained glass in Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, watching colored light spill across stone like jewels scattered on the floor. We wandered along the Seine and strolled the Champs-Élysées, lingering over pastries, coffee, and anything else that could be eaten. Truly, we ate everything, everywhere, almost all of the time.
Now I'm back home: exhausted, happy, and staring down a mountainous pile of laundry. Outside, both our cherry and pear trees are blossoming, their petals a soft, fragrant welcome party that is as beautiful as it is allergy-inducing. Keep an eye on my Instagram if you like Parisian moments: I'll be sharing photos, gluten-free pastry discoveries, and, of course, a few jewelry-shopping gems from the trip.
In the midst of all this travel and general 2026 chaos, my nervous system has been permanently set to "high alert," so my reading list has leaned toward the comforting and absorbing. This month's selections are heavy on cozy fantasy, twisty family drama, and shiny, fascinating tidbits from the jewelry world.
xoxo,
Becky
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The Spellshop Series by Sarah Beth Durst
These books arrived in my life like a warm cup of tea and a soft blanket. My year has felt loud and jagged, and this series turned out to be exactly the kind of quiet magic my frazzled brain needed. Whoever recommended these to me: I am eternally grateful, even though my goldfish memory has misplaced your name.
So far there are two novels in the Spellshop universe, and both center around women who have run for their lives from a fallen empire. They've spent their entire adult years working in the bustling imperial capital when a violent revolution tears everything apart. While the overthrow itself is a background event, not a gore-filled spectacle on the page, its consequences shape every choice the characters make. The one on-page moment of true danger comes when the protagonist of the first book realizes the library where she works is on fire and must flee with whatever she can carry.
Each book follows one of these women as she slowly builds a new existence far from the metropolis that defined her. One heroine establishes a spell shop using the magical tomes she managed to salvage from the burning imperial library. Her story is about learning to trust her talents, building a business grounded in enchantment and ethics, and discovering that community can be chosen rather than assigned by birth or duty.
The other protagonist finds herself working as a caretaker in a mysterious enchanted greenhouse, where plants have opinions, secrets, and sometimes more agency than the humans. Her journey is less about escape and more about growth: unlearning the rigid expectations of her former life, accepting help, and settling into a rhythm that finally fits who she really is.
Both novels share the same emotional backbone: found family, second chances, and the radical act of creating a gentle life in the ruins of something terrifying. There are subtle, sweet romances that feel like a natural extension of the characters' healing, rather than the central point of the narrative. Expect whimsical magic systems, quirky side characters, and world-building that feels lush without ever being exhausting.
What I loved most is how low-stakes the plots feel on the surface-no dark lords, no looming apocalypses-yet how deeply they land on an emotional level. The tension is rooted in questions like: Who are you when your job is gone? What happens when you're no longer defined by your usefulness to an empire? How do you start again when you've lost everything and everyone expects you to fail?
If your heart needs something kind, immersive, and hopeful, this series is pure comfort reading.
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These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
Sarah MacLean is one of my all-time favorite historical romance authors, so I was wildly curious to see what she'd do with a contemporary setting. These Summer Storms delivers all the emotional punch, sharp dialogue, and tightly wound tension I expect from her, just dressed in modern clothes and tech wealth instead of corsets and carriage rides.
The novel follows a woman returning to her childhood home after the sudden death of her father, a titan of the tech world whose influence and money have shaped every facet of the family's existence. From the first chapters, we're dropped into her grief, confusion, and complicated memories. The Storm family is rich, messy, and riddled with old wounds, and the book slowly peels back the layers of their dynamic.
Just when you think you have the story figured out-a fractured family reckoning with their loss and their legacy-a mysterious man appears with a briefcase and an ultimatum. Each family member must complete a specific assignment to earn their share of the massive inheritance. These tasks are more than errands; they're carefully designed challenges that force each character to confront the ugliest truths they've been avoiding.
If you love fiction about wealthy families with buried secrets, this is a delicious entry in that niche. The characters feel genuinely complex: no perfect saints, no cartoon villains, just people who have been taught that power and money can shield them from consequences. The secrets, when they emerge, are hard to predict and satisfyingly tangled. Naturally, there's also a simmering, eventually spicy love story threaded through it all, giving the narrative warmth and heat amid the corporate intrigue and emotional fallout.
Longtime fans of MacLean's historical romances will also spot a clever Easter egg tucked into the story-a little nod that connects her different fictional worlds. It's subtle enough not to distract new readers, but delightful if you're already in her fan club.
These Summer Storms scratches the itch for glamorous settings, inheritance drama, and characters who must decide who they want to be when the old rules of their lives are shattered.
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Reading for Nervous Systems on Edge
Both the Spellshop series and These Summer Storms landed at exactly the right time for me. When the world feels loud and unstable, I gravitate toward books with strong emotional arcs and satisfying resolutions, but not too much brutality on the page. I want to feel invested, not devastated.
Cozy fantasy, in particular, has become a balm: stories where magic exists but is more likely to help you run a shop, tend a garden, or feed a town than to annihilate a kingdom. There's space for joy, rest, and healing in these narratives. They're a reminder that survival is not the end of the story; you're allowed to build something tender not just after the storm, but because of it.
At the same time, I love pairing gentler reads with something a bit more intense-like a wealthy family saga-so that my brain has different emotional textures to bounce between. It's a way of acknowledging that life contains both: soft new beginnings and sharp-edged reckonings.
If your own nervous system has been on high alert this year, try building your reading stack with this balance in mind: one book that feels like a warm hug, one that lets you safely explore messier emotions from a distance, and maybe a nonfiction title that satisfies your curiosity without overwhelming you.
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Jewelry on the Brain: Trends on the Rise
It wouldn't be me if there weren't at least a little jewelry talk mixed in with the books. While I've been reading, I've also been tracking the way 2026 is reshaping jewelry style.
Minimalism, once the reigning aesthetic, is quietly stepping aside. In its place: sculptural pieces, bold silhouettes, and a joyful embrace of mixed metals. Instead of choosing between yellow gold, white gold, or silver, more designers are merging them into a single piece-rings with interlocking bands of different hues, necklaces where warm and cool tones play off each other, bracelets that layer metals like brushstrokes.
This shift feels like a visual reflection of how many of us are dressing now. We're less interested in everything matching perfectly and more interested in pieces that tell a story, pieces that feel lived-in and expressive. A mixed-metal stack can bridge the gap between old favorites and new acquisitions, making heirlooms and modern designs feel like they belong together.
Sculptural jewelry-rings that twist in unexpected ways, earrings that look like tiny pieces of architecture-also pairs beautifully with the more imaginative, whimsical books I've been reading. There's a shared spirit between enchanted greenhouses, spellbooks, and a pair of earrings that curve like a ribbon mid-twirl.
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Lab-Grown Diamonds: From Curiosity to Dominance
Another huge shift: lab-grown diamonds are no longer a niche curiosity. They now make up about 61% of new engagement rings, which is a seismic change for an industry that long insisted that only mined stones were "real" diamonds.
The appeal is obvious. Lab-grown diamonds are chemically and visually identical to mined stones, but they typically cost significantly less. That price difference gives couples more flexibility: larger carat sizes, more intricate settings, or extra budget for wedding expenses and life plans beyond the ring. For many buyers, this isn't just about money, but control-choosing how to allocate their resources rather than feeling boxed in by traditional price structures.
There's also a growing awareness around sourcing. While no product is impact-free, the idea of a diamond grown in a controlled environment is appealing to people who are concerned about the opaque histories of some mined stones. As technology improves and more information becomes available, shoppers are asking more questions and demanding clearer answers.
What fascinates me is how quickly lab-grown stones have moved from "trend" to "new normal." When a majority of new engagement rings contain lab-grown diamonds, we're not just talking about a passing moment-we're watching a fundamental redefinition of what a "classic" engagement ring can be.
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Trend Forecasting and Imagination
Trend reports for 2026 point to jewelry that's bolder, more playful, and more personal. Minimalist stacks are giving way to expressive, almost editorial-looking pieces worn in everyday life. Think asymmetrical earrings, oversized signet rings, and statement cuffs that look like they belong in a gallery as much as on a wrist.
There's a common thread between these jewelry directions and the books I've been loving: a move toward self-definition. Just as the women in the Spellshop series are rewriting their identities after the collapse of their old world, and the Storm family must decide who they are without the gravitational pull of their patriarch, many of us are rewriting our aesthetic identities. We're less interested in rules and more interested in what feels authentic-whether that's a lab-grown diamond solitaire or a stack of mixed-metal rings that jangle when you gesture.
Trend predictions aren't mandates, of course; they're more like a mood board of what's possible. Use them as inspiration, not instruction, both in what you wear and what you read.
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High-Flying Geology and the View from Above
On the nonfiction side, one of the most intriguing pieces I came across examined how aerial photography during the World Wars transformed geology as a discipline. Before planes and high-altitude cameras became standard tools, geologists had to rely on ground-level observations and limited maps to deduce what lay beneath the earth's surface.
Once photographs from above entered the picture-first as military reconnaissance, then as scientific resource-geologists could see patterns and structures that were previously invisible: fault lines traced like scars across the land, river systems carving new pathways, ancient formations stretching far beyond what you can glimpse from a hillside. War, in this case, accidentally handed science a powerful new lens.
It's a reminder of how much perspective matters. A single landscape can tell wildly different stories depending on how we look at it: close up, from a distance, or from the sky. The same is true of narrative-whether it's a grieving family in These Summer Storms or a woman starting over in a spell shop, a shift in viewpoint can turn chaos into clarity.
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Tudor Jewels, Prehistoric Bracelets, and Cosmic Origins
My reading rabbit hole also took a glittering detour into historical jewelry. One article explored how to approach buying Tudor-inspired jewels: think bodkins (ornamental hair pins that double as tiny weapons of style), rich pearl earrings, and badges that once served as portable symbols of loyalty or power. These pieces weren't just decoration in their time; they functioned as a kind of wearable language, communicating status, allegiance, and even political alignment.
Another study examined prehistoric jewelry from a museum collection in Częstochowa and found meteoric iron in three ancient bracelets. Yes, you read that correctly: people were wearing pieces of fallen stars thousands of years ago. Long before marketing departments dreamed up "cosmic" branding, craftspeople were literally shaping meteorites into adornment.
There is something profoundly moving about that. Jewelry made from meteoritic iron collapses the distance between the human body and the universe. It turns an orbiting chunk of space debris into a personal, intimate object. When we talk about jewelry as having "cosmic" beauty, we're echoing a very old impulse: to anchor the incomprehensible vastness of the sky into something we can touch.
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Marie Curie and the Cost of Discovery
In the realm of science history, I revisited accounts of Marie Curie's work, and they're still jaw-dropping. She handled radioactive materials with her bare hands, often storing glowing samples in her desk as if they were curiosities rather than hazards. More than a century later, the notebooks she used are still so radioactive they are kept in special containers, a haunting physical reminder of how much she sacrificed for knowledge.
Curie's story is a stark contrast to the glossy world of high jewelry and the comforting embrace of cozy fantasy, but it fits into a larger pattern: people pushing into unknown territory, often at immense personal cost. Whether it's mapping geology from the air, threading meteorites into bracelets, or revolutionizing our understanding of radioactivity, human curiosity keeps colliding with the material world in ways that change us forever.
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Books, Bling, and the Stories We Carry
This month's reading has felt like a tapestry: gentle fantasy, sharp family drama, science seen from above, jewels stitched through history, and diamonds grown in labs. On the surface, they're wildly different subjects, but underneath, they share a preoccupation with transformation.
Women reinvent themselves after empires fall. Families renegotiate who holds power after a patriarch dies. Diamonds shift from mines to labs. War photography turns into a tool for understanding the earth. Meteorites become bracelets. A scientist's notebooks become relics of both brilliance and danger.
Stories-whether bound between covers or set in metal and stone-help us make sense of these transformations. We wear them, read them, pass them on. And in doing so, we quietly reshape who we are.
Wherever you are this spring, I hope you're finding books that hold you gently and adornments that make you feel a little more like yourself, whether that's a simple band, a riot of mixed metals, or something with a bit of cosmic stardust in its history.
