Category: First chapter

This week I’m featuring a book that surprised me. It’s the May selection in the Modern Mrs. Darcy online book club:

Seven hundred and thirty-three days after my mom died, forty-five days after my dad eloped with a stranger he met on the Internet, thirty days after we then up and moved to California, and only seven days after starting as a junior at a brand-new school where I know approximately no one, an email arrives. Which would be weird, an anonymous letter just popping up like that in my in-box, signed with the bizarre alias Somebody Nobody, no less, except my life has become so unrecognizable lately that nothing feels shocking anymore. It took until now – seven hundreds and thirty-three whole days in which I’ve felt the opposite of normal – for me to discover this one important life lesson: turns out you can grow immune to weird.

I really thought this was an interesting intro. It definitely made me want to continue on and see what Somebody Nobody had to say and how things would end up for Jessie in her new school. I sure hope you come back on Thursday to see my final thoughts on this book!

This week I’m featuring a review book I’ve got coming up:

The two couples met at a neighborhood block party, the third Saturday in September.

I know this introduction doesn’t tell the reader much. But having recently finished this book I really want to say that I feel like the less you go in knowing about this book … the better! I sure hope you’ll come back next week and see my final thoughts when my review posts on March 7th!

This week I’m featuring the January selection for the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club. Again, WAY outside of my normal reading zone, but I’m definitely looking forward to digging into this one!

The memorial service for Beth, Harry Crane’s wife of fourteen years, was held in the Leiper Friends Meeting House in Waverly, just outside Philadelphia. The large, unadorned room was packed with relatives, friends, neighbors and coworkers. A woman’s whisper rose from their midst. “Oh, look at him. Poor Harry.” Grief-haunted and pale in his rumpled blue suit, Harry sat in the front row propped between his imposing older brother, Wolf, and Beth’s father, Stan.

Like I said above, this book is way outside my normal reading. But that intro works for me… it definitely makes me want to know how Beth died. I hope you come back in a few weeks when I get my review posted 🙂

This week I’m featuring a book that I picked up last week on a whim.

Ten minutes before it happened, four-year-old Laurie Kenyon was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den rearranging the furniture in her dollhouse. She was tired of playing alone and wanted to go in the pool. From the dining room she could hear the voices of Mommy and the ladies who used to go to school with her in New York. They were talking and laughing while they ate lunch.

That’s the first paragraph and it caught me immediately. The entire book had me totally engrossed! I loved it and sure hope you’ll stop back by later this week for my review!

This week I’m featuring a book that was in the stack of books my grandma recently gave me. I originally picked it up because it started with “O” and fits a Goodreads challenge I’m terribly behind on.

Chris Brennan was applying for a teaching job at Central Valley High School, but he was a fraud. His resume was fake, and his identity completely phony. So far he’d fooled the personnel director, the assistant principal, and the chairperson of the Social Studies Department. This morning was his final interview, with the principal, Dr. Wendy McElroy. It was make-or-break.

Not going to lie … this one grabbed me immediately! I was sucked in and read the first 100 pages that first day I picked it up!

This week I’m featuring a book that I have had my eye on since it was featured as a BOTM selection back in February. I was hesitant to pick it as my selection so I ultimately passed on it, but I kept it in the back of my mind. Over the months I kept seeing it and was still interested – but not enough to want to purchase it. So when I saw it available at my library I figured it was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who leave home, and those who don’t. I’m a proud member of the first category. My wife, Celestial, used to say that I’m a country boy at the core, but I never cared for that designation. For one, I’m not from the country per se. Eloe, Louisiana, is a small town. When you hear “country,” you think raising crops, baling hay, and milking cows. Never in my life have I picked a single cotton ball, although my daddy did. I have never touched a horse, goat, or pig, nor have I any desire to. Celestial used to laugh, clarifying that she’s not saying I’m a farmer, just country. She is from Atlanta, and there was a case to be made that she is country, too. But let her tell it, she’s a “southern woman,” not to be confused with a “southern belle.” For some reason”Georgia peach” is all right with her, and it’s all right with me, so there you have it.

For me the intro was wordy, but interesting. I sure do hope you come back next week to see my review on this one!

This week I’m featuring a book that I was really looking forward to! It was one of my July BOTM selections. I had read and LOVED Final Girls earlier this year and was eagerly anticipating this one coming out, so I was absolutely thrilled to see that it was a BOTM selection!

This is how it begins.

You wake to sunlight whispering through the trees just outside the window. It’s a faint light, weak and gray at the edges. Dawn still shedding the skin of night. Yet it’s bright enough to make you roll over and face the wall, the mattress creaking beneath you. Within that roll is a moment of disorientation, a split second when you don’t know where you are. It happens sometimes after a deep, dreamless slumber. A temporary amnesia. You see the fine grains of the pine-plank wall, smell the traces of campfire smoke in your hair, and know exactly where you are.

Camp Nightingale.

I took this book on my plane ride to Vegas and I was immediately hooked! I’m now about 3/4 of the way through and I can’t wait to get to the ending to see what happened! Look for my review of this one next week!

This week I’m featuring one of my BOTM picks from 2017. I have let it sit on my shelves for more than a year … crazy!!

“Can you come into my office?”

I look around at the desks beside me and then back at Frankie, trying to confirm to whom, exactly, she’s talking. I point to myself. “Do you mean me?”

Frankie has very little patience. “Yes, Monique, you. That’s why I said, ‘Monique, can you come into my office?”

“Sorry, I just heard the last part.”

Frankie turns. I grab my notepad and follow her.

When I first read that I was quite eager to find out what Monique was walking into 🙂 I sure hope that you come back next week to read my review of this one!