Category Archives: Books

show us your books! – december 2020 reads

Note before I start: I’m equal parts enraged and exhausted by the attempted coup last week. The images of white supremacists and alt-right extremists storming our Capitol, at the urging of our president, armed with Confederate flags and zip ties, made me sick to my stomach. Yet for anyone who has kept their eyes open about Trump and his followers, they are no surprise. I can only pray that now that he is deprived of some oxygen, days from his departure from a position of official political power, that his deplorable supporters sink back into the woodwork where they belong. PS – it wasn’t Antifa. It was Trump and his trolls. Own the violence, own the inflammatory rhetoric from the Trumps and Giuliani that exacerbated and urged it moments before it exploded, and punish it accordingly.

And now onto the books, eh?

As always I am joining our hosts Steph and Jana for this monthly linkup.

I didn’t read that much in December – too much else going on at work and at home. But I did get a few books under my belt and one “definite recommend”.

The Girl in Cabin 13 (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery #1) by A.J. Rivers was a Kindle Unlimited selection. (I’ve since unsubscribed from Kindle Unlimited since once my library reopened for at least curbside pickup, I can pretty much get anything I want that way, and the Kindle Unlimited selections weren’t consistently appealing for me.) Anyway, this was a quick read, introducing Emma as an FBI agent undercover in a small town to investigate several deaths / disappearances. I would read more of this series, but in general I’d say if you’re looking for books about strong female law enforcement, there are better selections out there (including the one I discuss below).
Where the Lost Wander, by Amy Harmon, was another Kindle Unlimited. The story of a family setting off on the Oregon Trail mixed with a love story. I love historical fiction but on occasion find it culturally problematic…This one seemed to acknowledge those pitfalls and avoid most of them. My biggest beef was that a major incident occurs within the first 1/4 of the story, and immediately afterwards, the author backtracks to fill in the narrative up to that point. The reader then has to wait until the last 1/4 of the book to find out the resolution of the aforementioned major incident. I know that the author probably thought that dropping the bombshell early and then withdrawing would draw readers on, wanting to find out the resolution, but for me it essentially rendered the entire midsection moot. I don’t care what they packed or what she drew or her relationships with her kid brothers after that, especially when some / all of the characters that the author is laboriously filling me in on may not survive Major Incident. So I ended up speed-reading and skipping large chunks just to get to the resolution. Which didn’t make it an especially enjoyable read.
Death in the Family (Shana Merchant #1) by Tessa Wegert is a much better example of the genre I reference in book 1 above. It’s an Agatha Christie-esque family whodunnit featuring a murder on a remote, storm-tossed island and a gallery of plausible related suspects in a sprawling manor house. Shana has her own demons and has to battle those throughout and the narratives mesh and play off each other nicely. Hugely atmospheric, fast-paced, and kept me hanging on until the last. Highly recommend.
A Rose for her Grave by Ann Rule – another Kindle Unlimited (can you tell that my library closed down in December because of a Covid surge?). True crime queen Ann Rule tells the story of a Blackbeard-type murderer who marries, takes out life insurance policies on his unwitting brides, and dispatches them one after another. If you like true crime, her books are classics.

friday five – imported olives edition

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Brandon’s mom got me a gift certificate for a knitting shop and I finally got around to using it. Stitch In Time in Howell, MI is about 30 minutes from where I live and it is just the coolest place. It occupies the first floor of an old converted house and is full of creaky wood floors, polished paneling, old windows and YARN. I had the BEST time browsing and the staff was super helpful and kind. Highly recommend if you are knitters or crocheters and anywhere near Howell. I need more sock yarn like I need a hole in the head, but I could NOT resist the Uneek self-striping and the WSK (Western Sky Knits) Christmas 2020 colorway. I also picked up a skein of Malabrigo for a knitted beanie.

2. Christmas is the season of giving so I ended up purchasing myself an early present. I’ve wanted a pair of Doc Marten ankle boots for awhile (I still kick myself for giving away my Docs from college) and these were the ones I picked – the Flora in patent. I love them and made sure they were roomy enough for knitted socks underneath.

3. Brandon is visiting his parents this week so Miss L and I have been enjoying a girls’ week – dropping little gifts off to her Secret Santa buddy from Scouts, eating comfort food (hello tuna casserole) and watching some festive Netflix. We picked ‘Dash and Lily’, a charming little YA romance featuring two predictably precocious New Yorker teens falling in love via scavenger hunt. The soundtrack is hipster and the cast diverse and the episodes are short and fast-paced. It’s been a good choice. We are also working our way through Dolly Parton’s ‘Christmas in the Square’ which is admittedly a bit of a hate watch. I love Dolly but this is so atrocious that we sincerely and enjoyably loathe it. We watch five minutes a night and that’s usually more than enough. 🙂

4. I usually try to save my books for Show Us Your Books, but I have to share this. I started the week off on the wrong foot by staying up super late to finish ‘Death in the Family’, an Agatha Christie type whodunnit by Tessa Wegert. I couldn’t put it down. I was a bit grumpy the next day (I need my eight straight) but getting a comment from the author on my IG made it worth it. I’m totally fangirling. 🙂

5. For the first time in several years, Widget Central sent out holiday baskets. This brought back fond memories of a previous boss who always sent fruit baskets for the holiday with amazing pears, and we ate them on Christmas Eve with baked Brie. Miss L painstakingly unpacked everything and examined it closely and was thrilled with the contents. She gave me a huge hug and said, ‘You must have done a great job this year, Mom!’ Of course the basket was not specific to me or my performance this year but I was so gratified by her excitement that I didn’t spoil it for her. 😉 “MOM! MILK CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES MOM! AND THE OLIVES – THEY’RE IMPORTED!!!’

I hope you are all well and safe on this Friday morning, looking forward to a short workday and a long peaceful weekend. xoxo

show us your books – november 2020 reads

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Happy December my friends and welcome to my first SUYB in months. It really seemed like I’d kept up better with this but blog archives prove me wrong so here I am with increased vim.

As always I am joining our hosts Steph and Jana… you can find the link to join up at the bottom of this post.

It wasn’t a super productive reading month – I only finished 4 books and one of them was quite fluffy. However, these were mostly new or more recent books as our library was open for a millisecond (before shutting back down again during the recent spike). Honestly I doubt December will be much better but here’s hoping!

1. Cosy – the British Art of Comfort by Laura Weir – apparently “cosy” is the British answer to “hygge” and this book goes to great lengths to prove its superiority. This is a charming and very quick read and has a lot of hot beverages and blankets and other creature comforts. A good read if you’re drowsing by the fire with that second (or third) glass of wine and can’t focus on anything with a plot (also might make a good stocking stuffer for that Anglophile in your life).

2. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James – I read a previous book by St James – The Broken Girls – which was a thriller set in a 1950s girl’s boarding school – and enjoyed it. But this one fell flat for me. A young woman sets out to uncover the mystery of her runaway aunt, who went missing while working as a night clerk at a creepy motel. There are ghosts and a serial killer and a twist at the end but I just could not get engaged or interested.

3. Katheryn Howard, The Scandalous Queen – I’ve read many of Alison Weir’s nonfiction accounts of the British monarchy and also enjoy her fictional accounts of the six wives of Henry VIII. I’m a sucker for good Tudor historical fiction and this one, about perhaps the most naive and careless of his wives, didn’t disappoint. Howard, the monarch’s fifth wife, is young, beautiful, and not particularly shrewd. She doesn’t protect her chastity or good reputation when it comes to men either before or during her marriage to the King Hypocrite and as such is the second of his wives to lose their heads.

4. The Tenant by Katrine Engberg – I recently started following a new IG account called Crime By the Book (she has a blog as well) with some fantastic “Nordic noir” selections. I love Scandinavian mysteries and now my “to be read” list is full. The Tenant was one of her suggestions and I really enjoyed it. A pair of Copenhagen police detectives investigate the grisly murder of a young woman in her own apartment. The mystery begins to coalesce around the landlady of the apartment building and a dinner party which brought an ill-fated cast of characters together. There’s a newish follow up featuring the same pair of detectives called “The Butterfly House” and I immediately put it on my library request list.

So that’s all for this month – I hope you have a wonderful month of good books and cozy (cosy) times leading up to the holiday season!

friday five

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Getting the majority of the griping out of the way up front (although I can’t guarantee there won’t be more), I’ve been super tired and unmotivated this week. I didn’t run, I barely accomplished the most critical items on my ‘to-do’ list, and I felt like I was in a state of torpor until midway through Thursday. It may be the weather (much cooler at night) but I just feel like I could sleep for hours.

2. Brandon, however, has NOT been feeling tired – he’s still furloughed but he is up every day a bit before seven, watching the Tour de France on his streaming subscription, then hitting up the local skateboard park for a couple of hours with the old thrashers. He’s also been repainting our hallway, foyer, and stairwell, which is leading to a complete revamp of that area. We are swapping out some older pieces of furniture for a bench to go next to the door and I ordered a new foyer light fixture from Pottery Barn. I’m looking at new rugs. And we made the decision to paint our stairs, which is no small undertaking. We’re going for this kind of vibe.

But of course on a much smaller scale because I only have a few feet of exposed stairway rail and no wainscoting. I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes!

3. I read a super inspiring book this week (YAY for our libraries being open!) and although I should wait to share this for SUYB, I have to mention it because if you’re a maker, it’s worth checking out. It celebrates all different kinds of artists who work with their hands, on everything from dyeing to stencilling to metalwork to fiber arts to glass to ceramics to fashion – EVERYTHING. I liked it so much I put the picture on IG and, in a bit of a fangirl moment, the AUTHOR HERSELF Melanie Falick commented on it. So cool. Every time I opened it to read another essay, I found new inspiration and new IG accounts to follow. Highly recommend!

4. I tried out a new recipe last week and it got two major thumbs up from Brandon. This chicken caprese skillet from Skinnytaste was definitely a hit. It reminded me of my favorite summer salad, with tomatoes and basil and balsamic and fresh mozzarella, didn’t take very long in my cast iron skillet, and I served it with orzo and garlic bread.

5. This is worth more than a friday five mention, but the passing of RBG hit me hard, and this subsequent week in politics has been particularly arduous. I have tried to simply keep gratitude for the amazing work she did for equal rights and not get overly emotionally embroiled (any more so than I am right now) in the repugnant response from the right, but it’s hard. Don’t even get me started on what a completely unredeemable and non-value-added human being Mitch McConnell is. And to top it off with Donald Trump giving the impression that he would be the first American president not to respect the peaceful transfer of power and throw our country into a violent, unsettled constitutional crisis is beyond egregious. And should be considered sedition. I cannot believe that even the most ardent Republican could be unaware of what this represents and the absolute Pandora’s box of true anarchy (TRUE anarchy – not the fascist, racist conservativism complaints about BLM and other protesters exercising their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to assembly that Trumpsters CLAIM to be anarchy – I guess they only care about the parts of the Constitution that THEY want to defend, such as the right to bear arms, hypocrites) they would allow to be opened if they do not speak out against this. Do they really want a Dictator for Life?

On that dismayed and sour note, I apologize and wish you a happy weekend. I may be curating my social media, I will be exploring my “maker” side, I will be eating a big messy burger from the Rolling Stoves, drinking some wine, and I will hopefully be getting my running mojo back a bit. Be well and enjoy. xoxo

show us your books! august reads.

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Linking up with hosts Steph and Jana for another month of bookish show and tell.

It was a doozy of a month so I’d better just jump right in.

The First Mrs Rothschild by Sara Aharoni was a Kindle Unlimited rec for me – not my fave, it dragged in parts but provided an eye-opening look at life as a Jewish woman in the Frankfurt ghetto. This was more interesting to me than the financial machinations of the Rothschild family.

A Cold Trail, Robert Dugoni (Tracy Crosswhite #7) brings me up to date with the Crosswhite series and I am eagerly awaiting #8. In this offering, Tracy, her husband Dan and baby Dani are back in the small town where they grew up. Tracy is dealing with being a new mom and making decisions about her career and in the meantime, investigating the unsolved murder of a teenage girl years before. I love Tracy.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton – A murder / suicide at a grand old decrepit British mansion during a weekend party? Yes please. But not straightforward, as this story unfolds in a Groundhog Day sort of way, with the protagonist being placed in different characters as the day repeats. I liked this, and I liked the characters and the mystery, but the plot grew increasingly outlandish. Extra points for an ominous Plague Doctor making creepy appearances.

Abandon by Blake Crouch was also hard for me to put down. A journalist attaches herself to a group of hikers (including her long-distant father) striking out to explore the ruins of a gold mining ghost town in the mountains. What caused all the inhabitants of this town to disappear without a trace? The supernatural elements build with questions and atmosphere. I liked where this story was going and was totally hooked when Crouch did the bait-and-switch. (No spoilers.) I didn’t love where the story went as much as I could have if it had continued to develop a more supernatural / ghostly explanation but I tore through it, on the edge of my seat throughout.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata was a quick read and a good breather from more tense books. Keiko is an outsider in her Tokyo culture, and can only find a place for herself, a sense of self-esteem and purpose through her job at a convenience store. Her family and friends do not understand her lack of interest in marriage and children and her contentment in what is considered to be a lowly, dead-end job (not a “career”). This is a bit sad but also funny and daring for a Japanese female writer who shrugs her shoulders at traditional expectations & expressions of female sexuality and independence. Interesting to me as I have been to Japan and work in a Japanese company, so have seen some elements of the culture that are described here.

Verity by Colleen Hoover was another suspenseful read. An introverted writer takes the seemingly-golden opportunity to step in for a very successful author and finish her popular series after she is badly injured. She quickly becomes embroiled with the author’s sexy husband and with the author’s hidden journal, full of horrifying secrets. I didn’t like the ending, which felt like a ripoff, and although I was fully absorbed, it loses points when I don’t like any of the characters and can’t find a sympathetic viewpoint.

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol – Miss L likes graphic novels so I bought her a handful of them for her birthday. I picked this up after she was done with it and thought it was well-done – a teenage girl from an immigrant family struggling to find her place in her private school becomes involved with a ghost who seems pathetic and eager to please, but quickly turns Anya’s life upside down. I liked the overall messages in this book (being true to yourself, the traps of popularity, loyalty to friends, etc) and enjoyed discussing it with Miss L when we were done.

Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang was recommended by a bestie and it was my favorite read of the month (saying a lot in a month of overall great reads). In turn-of-the-century New York society, Tillie Pembroke’s older sister has wealth, beauty, heart, and an excellent match – and then she turns up dead with two puncture wounds in her neck. Tillie – younger, more headstrong, always in her sister’s shadow – sets out to find the killer, using Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” as a guidebook. Along the way, she develops addictions to heroin and morphine, and, at a cost, breaks all the molds that her family and society have set for her, finds love and a purpose in life. I liked this book so much – the characters, the atmosphere, the mystery, the setting, and definitely plan on reading much more of Kang’s work.

The Sound of Rain by Gregg Olson is Nicole Foster Thriller #1 and another absorbing, suspenseful read. Nicole Foster is a former homicide detective who’s hit bottom – thanks to her terrible taste in men and a rampant gambling addiction, she’s lost her home, her dog, and her job on the force. She’s also haunted by the case of a murdered child and a terrible family life, starring a vicious and narcissistic younger sister. Nicole has to go all the way down (which is hard to read) in order to fight her way back and work through the case – which has crazy ties to her problematic personal life. It’s always hard to read a book where none of the characters are appealing and Nicole is certainly a very ambivalent protagonist. It’s hard to root for her until about 3/4 through and even then, her choices are really not good. But she claws her way out and it’s quite a ride with an absolutely bananas ending (that seemed a little “huh” to me). But I’ll read the second Nicole Foster and hope she’s in a better place.

I hope your reading month was as excellent as mine was!

show us your books – july 2020 reads

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As always, linking up with my hosts Steph and Jana for Show Us Your Books!

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I’m going to get the big one out of the way first even if it wasn’t chronologically the first one I read.

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel was essentially my July reading project. It tipped the scales at 882 pages and every page was well worth it. This book rounds out Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, which started with Wolf Hall. The whole trilogy is simply excellent and mind boggling in its ability to bring these people – Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour – to vivid life. No doubt my best read for 2020 as of yet and I would also recommend the PBS miniseries “Wolf Hall” which is actually a mashup of the first 2 books in the trilogy. It stars Mark Rylance as Cromwell, Damien Lewis as Henry, and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

The Closers by Michael Connelly. An 882 page hardcover was just not going to happen for a “beach read” due to sheer size and lack of portability, so for my up-north outdoor reading I took along a battered Harry Bosch paperback and thoroughly enjoyed the change of gears from Cromwell. In this contribution to the Bosch franchise, Harry has returned to the Cold Case Unit after his short-lived retirement from the police force and tackles the unsolved case of a fifteen-year old girl abducted from her home and shot.

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler tells two stories that join up at the end – the first, of a struggling librarian / researcher trying to keep his family home from sliding into the sea (literally) and a traveling carnival from the 1880’s. Aforementioned young librarian (aptly named ‘Simon’) comes to own a mysterious antique book about this circus inscribed with his grandmother’s name. Hopefully this book can help Simon unravel why women in his family are prone to drowning. I thought the premise was great but the execution missed the mark; it left me a little disappointed. Still, it passed the time just fine.

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have the Answer To When You Work in the White House by Alyssa Mastromonaco. Mastromonaco worked for Obama during his time as a Senator and also during his much-missed White House tenure. This book details her almost-magical entry into politics and in its chatty, breezy way tells you everything you need to know if you’re a privileged young female working in the White House. If I sound jealous I’m not really, although it would have been my dream during my senior year in college. I guess that’s why it’s a good thing you don’t get everything you want – I would NOT have been well suited for politics (I’m barely presentable for widgets). Anyway I enjoyed this book and it made me almost weep for missing Obama. My only criticisms are her fondness for the word “stoked” and that she is very prone to telling the reader all of the nicknames of the people she worked with and that got super name-droppy and cringy after awhile. (Sample: “The next day I assembled the SkedAdv team to deliver the news to them. Emmett, Dey, Jess, Big Liz, Astri, JoeJoe, Pho, Chaseh, Tedders, Nool, Teal, Q, Levitt, Donny, and Little Kate the intern.” I swear I almost stopped reading.)

Hope you all had some great summer reads and I look forward to catching up next month! xo

show us your books – june 2020 reads

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Another month joining up with our hosts Steph and Jana for SUYB!

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Looking back at June, I actually did a LOT of reading – it just didn’t really feel like it because a few of my reads just felt “meh”. I apologize in advance for my dour reception of several of these undoubtedly fine works.

Without further ado:

The Splendor Before the Dark (Nero, #2) was not as good as the first one in Margaret George’s Nero pair, “Confessions of Young Nero”. I love Margaret George and have her books about Cleopatra, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I on my shelf and bought this one in hardcover. I’m happy to own it but I was disappointed that even the burning of Rome seemed a little dull. It’s also tough to get my head around a sympathetic portrayal of Nero, although that didn’t bother me in the first novel, so who knows.

A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand is the rare book about food and wine that did not make me hungry. Jim Harrison is a Michigan writer who we ultimately had to share with Montana by way of Hollywood (“Legends of the Fall”) and he’s apparently quite the libertine when it comes to food and wine. There is a LOT of drinking in this book of essays and the fact that it’s expensive French wine didn’t ease my feeling that I was getting a hangover by osmosis, absorbed through my fingertips through the pages. Also a lot of big eating of very heavy meats (lotta pig here, folks) and game and several Mario Batali name-drops. He’s such an amazing, lyrical writer that I’ll just forgive him this one.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier – I loved “Rebecca” but this one was not what I expected. Although it is set in Cornwall and it was kind of exciting to see some of the town names that I’ve heard mentioned watching “Poldark”. Kind of a gloomy gothic number and while the heroine has her fair share of pluck, I honestly didn’t much care about anyone else.

(Wow – I’m already coming across as quite the disgruntled reader this month, aren’t I? Buckle up, the worst is yet to come.)

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams was a Kindle Unlimited recommendation and I feel like it perfectly fit in with two other Kindle recs that are upcoming in that they were stridently mediocre. This one was perhaps the least palatable of the three, telling the story of a strange 1930’s love triangle between New York socialites that comes to a heady climax during a seaside summer in a posh oceanfront enclave. There is flippancy, red lipstick, cigarettes and martinis, unrequited love, anti-Semitism, someone named “Budgie” and misunderstandings rife throughout. Just when you can’t take any more of this, a hurricane sweeps through like a wonderful deus ex machina to wipe the slate clean and resolve all angst. Sigh. I guess if you like beach reads plus light historical romance this would be a good pick.

A Steep Price, by Robert Dugoni (Tracy Crosswhite #6) – thank God for Robert Dugoni and Tracy who saved my June reading from the crapper. This one wasn’t my favorite in the series but it’s still a solid page turner that features a bit more from Tracy’s colleagues and supporting players in the police department as she navigates the early stages of her pregnancy and investigates the intersection between a missing persons case and the body of a young Indian woman found in a well.

This Won’t End Well – Camille Pagan’s writing belongs, I’ll say right off the bat, to a genre that I’m not super into. Historical fiction and mysteries, psychological and supernatural thrillers and some YA & literary fiction are solidly in my wheelhouse but lighthearted chick lit with witty romance and navel gazing thrown in are not my cups of tea. That said, I blew through this in a couple of days and can’t say anything really bad about it except that it’s just not a genre that I enjoy much. But it is light, funny, and easy to like with a suitably cute and neurotic heroine in a bit of a life tailspin thanks to a recent firing, a case of sexual harassment in the workplace, a mysterious new neighbor, and her fiance’s completely unexpected and unexplained departure for Paris. You’ll probably like it better than I did but don’t blame me if you don’t.

The Price of Paradise by Susana Lopez Rubio was my final June Kindle rec and the one I enjoyed the most. Set in Cuba in the 1940’s, the main character is a young immigrant from Spain seeking his fortune in Havana. He works his way up at an exclusive department store and runs afoul of the local gangster when he falls in love with his wife. Again, not my favorite genre but this was better than the Pagan or the hurricane book.

I also did a lot of running during the month of June and most of my time on my feet was spent listening to Stephen King’s latest book of novellas, If It Bleeds, which I got on Audible. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and when he’s good, he’s brilliant (The Stand, The Shining) and when he’s not so good he’s still better than most anything else out there. I enjoyed this listen more on the strength of King’s masterful ability to unwind a story with patience, to put you into the skin of the character, and invest you in something that seems so outlandish. The titular novella was my favorite, due mostly to Holly Gibney – she is a great female detective character (I will always picture her as portrayed by Cynthia Erivo in the wonderful HBO miniseries featuring her, “The Outsider”). All the narrators are wonderful but particularly Will Patton, who narrates many of King’s works (as well as James Lee Burke, another favorite writer).

show us your books! april 2020 reads

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My reading choices have been rather varied this month and are mostly based on what’s available with no library to avail myself of. Last summer my father gave me a couple of paper sacks full of books that he’d finished with, and when I rearranged my bookshelves recently I got sucked into the Lucas Davenports that I’ve inherited from him. I read Naked Prey (#14) and Night Prey (#6) and since he gave me about fifteen of them, I’ll probably be picking them up periodically from now until the end of the year. I find John Sandford very reliable and comforting (much the same as Steve Hamilton).

Otherwise, I’ve been picking up Kindle deals as I see them, and getting some long-held reserves from my local library’s online lending library. Including:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I went through an Atwood phase just before we moved to Australia years ago, and I’m sure I read this then; anything Atwood reminds me of Melbourne in the winter. I don’t think this is her best, but even marginal Atwood is head and shoulders above almost anything else you can find to read.

Sorcery & Cecilia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede – I think I started reading this over a year ago and just finished it. Think Jane Austen mixed with twee magic and wizards, written entirely in the form of letters back and forth between cousins – one in London for her Season and the other stuck in her family’s countryside estate – and you’ll have it. I loved this at first, and found it funny and charming, and then it just dragged on, and on, and on. And on. Unfortunately the Kindle deal I got was for the trilogy so I’m in it to win it with the next two in the series, as well, but only after a good long break.

The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4) by Robert Dugoni – Gosh I’m enjoying this series. I picked it up after a recommendation from our host Steph and this was a Kindle deal, I think, so best of both worlds. Looking forward to hunting down the next installment.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou was another Kindle deal. It had been on my list for a long time but after listening to a podcast series and watching the HBO documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos craziness, I pretty much knew everything I was reading and there were no new insights. I will say that everything I find out about Elizabeth Holmes reinforces what a nut job and despicable human being she is and how insane it was that she snowed so many respectable older men (I’m not going to speculate how that transpired for fear of sounding cynical).

Hard Rain / Skoenlapper (S-boek Reeks #1) by Irma Ventner was part of an offer by Amazon to read international authors; Ventner is a South African novelist and this translation of a thriller featuring the romance of a photographer and a newspaper reporter was interesting if not a total page turner. I enjoyed it, and burned through it quickly, and would likely check out others in the series if they’re translated and available at reduced prices via some sort of Kindle deal or from the library.

The Dry by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk #1) was the best book I read this month, hands down – another Kindle deal. When he visits his hometown in Australia to attend a funeral, a long-dormant death & scandal comes back to haunt Aaron Falk. Falk, a Melbourne police investigator, soon begins to wonder if the deaths, though spread over decades, are somehow connected. Set during a punishing drought, the story is atmospheric and tense, rife with bits of Australia that made me remember my all-too-brief time there. Can’t wait to pick up the sequel.

So there are my reads – thanks as always to our hosts Steph and Jana for the virtual linkup; I look forward to seeing what other bloggers are reading.

And as a postscript, one of my favorite authors Tana French will be releasing her next book in October! Here’s the article.

Be well and stay safe. Until next month, xoxo

show us your books! march reads (quarantine edition)

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As always, joining up with our hosts Life According to Steph and Jana Says for this link up!

Before the Stay Home Stay Safe order came down, I rushed to the library to stock up on books. There was a reserve waiting for me, but nothing I wanted in New Arrivals (it was my first experience with a shelf picked bare due to quarantine) so I stormed the Mystery section and pulled several titles off the shelves. Fortunately, I enjoyed all of them, and I present:

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow – a young girl in the early 1900’s embarks on a fantastic journey via a strange book and a series of magical doors to find her family and her own identity. Despite the promising premise, I would say this just passed the time for me. It had some shiny moments but ultimately fell flat.

The Return (Inspector Van Veeteren #3) by Hakan Nesser. (modeled by Sarge in the pic above.) Love a good gloomy Nordic mystery. When kids find a headless, legless, footless corpse (always a great set up), Inspector Van Veeteren, scheduled for surgery, becomes embroiled. Told in many flashbacks as the Inspector comes to suspect that a notorious double murderer may actually have been innocent. Not the best Van Veeteren I’ve read but it was solid.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. A girl seeking a new opportunity answers an ad for a live-in nanny position. Suspense ensues. Gah. I can usually tolerate Ruth Ware but this one felt like a slog. The twist felt completely unbelievable and the ending was irritating.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1) by Alan Bradley. In the summer of 1950, precocious chemist and amateur investigator Flavia de Luce – age 11 – stumbles across a series of alarming events, including a man breathing his last in the cucumber patch. Flavia sets out to solve the crime and vindicate her father AND torment her older sisters. Although this series could get overly saccharine, I liked this book a lot and found it a great antidote to quarantine. I’d love to see Flavia as a young adult.

A Bitter Truth and A Casualty of War (Bess Crawfords #3 and #9), by Charles Todd – I’m reviewing these together because no need to go into a lot of detail on the plot points. A WWI nurse from a good family solves crimes against the backdrop of the war. Enjoyed – I like Bess as a heroine and that time period is very interesting to me, the plots were a little more forgettable.

The Ship of Brides by JoJo Moyes. Now that I’ve plowed through the library hoard, I’m falling back on Kindle deals. Never read anything by JoJo Moyes but got sucked into this one, set in 1946, about a bunch of Australian brides sailing to England on a decommissioned war ship to meet the men they wed in wartime. I liked the characters and the descriptions of them taking over the war ship like a raging bunch of old-timey sorority girls.

And that’s my offering for this April Tuesday, still in quarantine. Take what you’d like and leave the rest. I look forward to seeing what you’ve all been reading during this crazy month. Be well and see you next month. xo