Talking about books, food, and life in general…
I had a good reading month in May. 5 books … which was much better than the 2 I managed in April 🙂 Even better was that I reviewed all these books here on the blog! Go me!! Here’s a quick visual of what I read in May …. clicking on the image will take you to my review.
Pray for Silence
by Linda Castillo
Copyright:Â 2010
Pages: 322
Read: May 28 – 31, 2016
Rating: 4/5
Source:Â Paperbackswap
Blurb: The Planks moved from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to the small Amish community of Painters Mill hoping to resume the comforts of the Plain Life in Ohio. Less than one year later, the family of seven is found dead – slaughtered on their own farm.
Police Chief Kate Burkholder and her small force have few clues, no motive, and no suspect. But when the diary belonging to the rebellious teenager Mary Plank turns up, Kate is surprised to find a murder suspect: the charismatic stranger who stole Mary’s heart. Then there’s Mary’s brother, Aaron, who’s been shunned by his family and the rest of the Amish community.
Formerly Amish herself, Kate becomes immersed in the case, and as her obsession grows, so does her resolve to bring the killer to justice – even if it means putting herself in to the line of fire…
Review: I read the first book in this series back in March and just absolutely fell in love with it. So I was more than anxious to read the second one. What’s surprising is that I didn’t follow my normal routine and wait 3 years before reading the second book in a series. Thank goodness I didn’t, because this was another great book!
Just a warning – this book is really gruesome. It’s pretty graphic in places. But that sure didn’t stop me from reading and enjoying it.
I did enjoy this book, but I will admit that I think the first book was better than this one. I felt like Kate made some stupid decisions based on her emotions that the case brought forward from her past. I could understand why she did those things, but it didn’t make it any smarter.
Overall, a good book that I enjoyed and I definitely recommend it.
Swimming to Catalina
by Stuart Woods
Copyright:Â 1998
Pages: 391
Read: May 24 – 27, 2016
Rating: 3/5
Source:Â Paperbackswap
Blurb: Stone Barrington thought he’d heard the last of former girlfriend Arrington after she’d left him to marry Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder. Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.
In a town where the sharks drive Bentleys and no one can be trusted, Stone soon discovers he’s drowning in a sea of empty clues that take him from Bel Air to Malibu to Rodeo Drive. Running out of time and leads, he needs to keep his head above water and find Arrington fast, or end up swimming with the fishes himself.
Review: This is the 4th in the Stone Barrington series. I’m not entirely sure why I keep coming back to these books, but I do. You see, Stone’s character irritates me. It seems to me he does nothing but jump into bed with every woman who crosses his path (two in this book alone…). I just don’t like that trait. I will say, though, that this particular installment didn’t have nearly as much sex as the previous book, Dead in the Water. This book dialed it back a notch and left me wanting to actually continue on with this series.
I personally felt like the storyline of this book was especially good. I found it much more interesting than the first three books. It was a fast paced book that I read in a few days’ time. I think what keeps drawing me to this series is really that they’re just fun, fast reads.
Overall, not a bad book and I look forward to continuing on with this series after this one.
Pretty Girls
by Karin Slaughter
Copyright:Â 2015
Pages: 573
Read: May 15 – 23, 2016
Rating: 5/5
Source:Â Publicist for Review
Blurb: It’s been more than twenty years since Claire and Lydia last spoke. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire; Lydia, a single mother dating an ex-con, struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the disappearance of their sister Julia two decades earlier – and the shocking murder of Claire’s husband brings the horror and heartbreak of the past roaring back into their lives.
The vanishing of a teenage girl and the killing of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: What could connect them? As they form a wary truce, the surviving sisters unearth the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago … and find the astonishing truth where they least expected it.
Review:Â Oh for the love of everything holy, this book is one hell of a ride! I read Julia’s story, Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes last year and loved it. So when I was given the opportunity to read this one, I knew I had to know what happened to Julia!
Let me just preface this with the fact that this book is gruesome. I mean, gruesome. It’s not for the faint of heart. That being said, I loved every deliciously disgusting moment of it! It sucked me in and spit me back out at the end. It was one heck of a ride. And can I just say that I was chugging along nicely and about the halfway mark the reader is thrown a curve ball that I never saw coming and hit me like a Mack truck. From that moment on I had to know what happened. I had to know how this ended up. It was just that good!
The characters are enjoyable, and some of them will surprise you in the end. You see a lot of growth in them throughout the book. You see a family torn apart come together. You see what a madman can do to one family. The plot is so intricate it’s amazing. Everything is woven together so perfectly. One little thing mentioned could mean something big later on in the book. It’s not a book to skim through, it’s one to devour. It’s just such a great book I don’t know how much more gushing I can possibly do.
This book will definitely be one of the best ones I read all year long. It was that good in my opinion.
Read. This. Book. Now!
**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.
Guilt by Association
by Marcia Clark
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 397
Read: May 4 – 14, 2016
Rating: 4/5
Source:Â Purchased new
Blurb: Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight is a tenacious, wisecracking, and fiercely intelligent prosecutor in the city’s most elite division. When her colleague Jake is found dead at a grisly crime scene, Rachel is shaken to the core. She must take over his toughest case: the assault on a young woman from a prominent family.
But Rachel can’t stop herself from also digging deeper into Jake’s death, a decision that will have her risking her reputation – and her life – to find the truth.
Thoughts: I first read Marcia Clark when I read The Competition a couple of years ago. That was in 2014 – why on earth did I wait two years before picking up the first Rachel Knight book?! I wish I had a decent answer for that question. But I don’t.
This book really hits the ground running. It sucked me in almost immediately and I found myself reading 50 pages in the blink of an eye. It was a really fun, interesting book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like Rachel’s character. She’s so down-to-earth and relatable. Rachel and Bailey are like two peas in a pod – they just mesh together so well as partners.
Being a backlist book, there’s not much I can say about this one that you haven’t read before. So – if you haven’t read anything by Marcia Clark yet, definitely give her a try! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I highly recommend this one!
Dark Angel
by Ron Felber
Copyright: 2016
Pages: 316
Read: April 29 – May 4, 2016
Rating: 3/5
Source: Publicist for review
Blurb:Â Set on Princeton University Campus in a world where money is measured in billions and success by the control one wields over entire nations, readers will encounter a Nazi geneticist, a renegade CIA operative, a trans-human serial killer, and a Hollywood starlet as deadly as she is beautiful; all gathered together for a horrifying project: the creation of the Fourth Reich.
Review: When I was first pitched this book I was first really excited and then kind of unsure. Excited because I have read and enjoyed the earlier Jack Madson books, A Man of Indeterminate Value and The Kafka Society, and was really looking forward to the final book in the trilogy. Unsure because the description didn’t necessarily grab my attention. But I prefer closure when reading series books, so I took a chance on this one.
Overall I’m a little unsure how to approach this review. The book, while not bad in any way, shape, or form, was not what I felt like was a good fit for me as a reader. I found a lot of the subject matter nearly impossible to follow. I have a history degree and have a pretty good background in the historical aspects of the Hitler era. However, science is not my strong suit at all, and I struggled with a lot of the science aspects involved in this book. I found myself completely skipping over entire sections because it was almost incomprehensible for me and honestly, just not all that interesting to me.
There were a lot of good aspects to the book that kept me reading, though. Jack’s character is a tough one to describe. He has a lot of problems, but he also has a lot of heart. So while his constant drug and alcohol use is not a positive character trait, his dedication to justice makes me keep reading. He’s also given a love interest which adds another positive aspect to his character in this book – underneath everything, he’s got a big heart.
The book moves at a great pace, and honestly if it weren’t for the science aspects that I struggled with so much, this book would have been really great. However, if you’re a science and history junkie, I think you’ll enjoy this book. There’s definitely an audience out there for this book, unfortunately it just isn’t really me. However, I am glad that I read it and finished out the trilogy. (Although I felt like the ending kind of left it open for more Jack Madson…)
Bottom Line: A decent book, one with a character who may be flawed, but is a good man underneath all his issues, but I just didn’t feel like I was the target audience for this one.
**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.
I’m still here. I’m still reading – verrrrrrrryyyyyy slooooooowly…. I’m not really in a slump, I just have a lot of other things on my plate. Planning Katelyn’s first birthday (when did that happen?!), Garrett started tball, I’ve been doing the 21 day fix (I’m down 13lb, with 4 more days left in this round), Nathan’s summer hours are kicking in and I’m responsible for the kids by myself more… And at the end of the day, sheer exhaustion takes hold and I’m lucky to read 10 pages.
I’m really starting to mourn the loss of my “baby”. When Garrett was staring that first birthday in the eyes, I was ecstatic. I didn’t have a very good first year with him. I was inexperienced, unconfident, and he was just a tough baby. The second go around with Katelyn has been a breeze in comparison. She’s a totally different baby and I felt like I had more of a handle on things. So now that we are really facing that one year mark (in 2 weeks…), I’m really struggling with it. But goodness knows I do not have baby fever, I’m pretty sure a third is not in the cards for us, I don’t like pregnancy enough, I would have to give up my office/library for another baby, and honestly the last thing I really want to do is go through another round of newborning. It’s not my favorite stage at all. I like my babies when they sleep and can eat just about anything and potty trained is even better, ha!
May is an insane month for us with both kids’ birthdays and our anniversary so life isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon, ha! But I am still here and I need to be better about updating a little bit. Today we’re off to my parents house to celebrate my aunts birthday. I’d like to say we’ll have a nice relaxing evening at home, but we have two kids – I’ve forgotten what that feels like….
Hopefully soon I’ll get a book finished so I can have a review to post. Until then, happy reading!!
The Girl From Home
by Adam Mitzner
Copyright: 2016
Pages: 321
Read: April 1 – 11, 2016
Rating: 4/5
Source: Publicist for review
Blurb: Jonathan Caine is a true master of the universe – a currency wizard with a trophy wife, a penthouse condo with a view of the Statue of Liberty, and the desire for more -when his world comes crashing down. In the midst of this spiral, Jonathan returns to his hometown to care for his ailing father and attend his twenty-fifth high-school reunion, where he becomes reacquainted with former prom queen Jacqueline Williams. Back in the day, Jackie didn’t even know Jonathan existed, but now she is intrigued by the man he has become. Yet their budding relationship has problems, not the least of which is that Jackie doesn’t know the full truth about Jonathan, and she’s married to a jealous and abusive man. Jonathan is determined to learn from his mistakes, but is he capable of complete transformation? Or will a shocking temptation test his desire for redemption beyond anything he could have imagined?
Review: It was the pitch of this book that really brought me back to my blog. Having been given the opportunity to read Mr. Mitzner’s previous two books (A Case of Redemption and Losing Faith) I knew that I would not want to miss this one, so I accepted it for review and decided to come back to my blog 🙂
So what did I think about this book? Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, having absolutely no background in the financial world, I did have a little bit of trouble keeping up with what Jonathan was doing in the beginning. I’m sure Mr. Mitzner did  a lot of research to get it all right, but I was just a tad bit confused at times with the different aspects of that whole storyline.
 At first I didn’t like Jonathan’s character. In the beginning he’s just too superficial and completely obsessed with money. It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. And his wife, Natasha – she was even worse! Yuck! But as the book goes on and Jonathan comes home to take care of his father we definitely see a change in Jonathan’s character. Thankfully it’s a change for the better.
As the story progresses, we see Jonathan and Jackie reacquaint and you have to wonder how this is all going to turn out. The reader is given the sense that it’s definitely not going to work out as well as one would hope. And sure enough, that prediction is true. But it’s what happens in the last 20 or so pages that was really surprising to me. A twist came that I wasn’t expecting and that honestly, kind of upset me until the very last two pages when I realized exactly what was going on.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s just one more reason why I love Mr. Mitzner’s books so much. They are such fun, enjoyable reads! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.
Last year I participated in this event hosted by Trish. You can find that post here.  I knew that this year’s post would be much different for me – since we’ve added Katelyn to our family 🙂 Anyway, I recorded March 15, 2016. Here goes…
1:21am – Katelyn wakes …. gooooood morning. *Groan* Go in, give her a paci and tell her good night.
1:31am – She’s still crying. Go back in, put her paci back in her mouth and tell her goodnight. Again.
1:39am – she *finally* settles back in.
To be completely honest, my kids are rockstar sleepers. Garrett slept through the night at 8 weeks; Katelyn at 6 weeks (I give you permission to hate me now). But one word with Katelyn right now: teething. It has been affecting everything lately. Last round she got 4 teeth at once (that sucked) and now I suspect she’s got 2 more coming in – hence the poor sleeping – womp womp 😦
6:25am – Katelyn up. This is normal wake up time. I get up and get dressed. Make a bottle, dress and feed Katelyn.
7:06am – today is election day in Illinois. So I’m out the door to go vote. I didn’t really want to take the kids with me, so I left Nathan at home with them while I ran real quick – we live super close to the polling place.
7:30am – back home. Nathan goes to work.
7:32am – Find Garrett in our bed. I put our morning Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the TV.
7:45am – Diaper bag packed. Social media checked. Bullet journaled a few things.
8:20am – finally pulling out of the driveway. It was not a smooth exit from the house. Garrett balked at getting dressed and going to school. Then the garage door didn’t want to go down. So we’re about 20 minutes later than we normally are leaving the house. Boy it’s a good thing my job hours are extremely flexible – I’m never on time anywhere anymore.
8:38am – drop off at Garrett’s school done – and it went smoothly. Sometimes he walks right in like he owns the place. Other times he clings on to me for dear life. I never know which day I’m going to get. It’s really frustrating. He claims it’s because his buddy Liam is not there when he gets dropped off – I’m terrified to know what’s going to happen next year when he moves up to Pre-K and Liam doesn’t because he won’t make the age cut off ..
9:22am – Katelyn dropped off at my grandma’s house. It sure will be nice when they both go to the same daycare and I only have one drop off location … at least for one year, because then Garrett will start kindergarten and I’ll be back to two drop offs.
9:28am – at work.
9:47am – no really, I will work today (PUT THE PHONE AWAY TARA!!!)
11:45am – go get lunch and take it to my grandma’s.
1:00pm – back at work.
4:00pm – back to my grandma’s to get Katelyn. Drive back to Marion.
4:45pm – pick up Garrett.
5:00pm – home.
5:40pm – Nathan home.
6:15pm – dinner time – fettuccine alfredo tonight – this is one of Garrett’s favorites! He even asked for a second helping tonight (YES!!)
7:00pm – bath time. We decided to change things up tonight and put both kids in the bath together. It didn’t go over very well and probably won’t happen on a regular basis. Garrett loves the bath and is like a fish. Katelyn hates the bath and doesn’t want to be splashed or messed with by Garrett.
8:00pm – Katelyn bottle and bed.
8:29pm – Katelyn asleep … let’s hope that’s for the night!
8:34pm – coaxing Garrett into one Mickey Mouse Clubhouse before bed. (I’m ashamed to admit that after being very strict with screen time for Garrett his first two years of life we have done a complete 360 and now don’t restrict it at all. I know I should. But I just can’t seem to make myself do it … it’s out of hand. Judge me if you want, I’m beyond caring. )
9:13pm – three books read to Garrett and he’s tucked in for the night. He’s really a hoot because he wants three books read to him every single night since he’s three years old. Thank goodness none of his books are very long. But I’m not looking forward to this trend continuing when he’s 4, 5, 6,7…etc. I’m very happy that he loves books though 🙂 Oh and this is an excellent night for bedtime … if Garrett is in bed by 9:30 I consider it a success. Stubborn little night owl!
9:15-10:45pm – Read. Watch news. Check social media. Then lights out.
Just another boring old day in my life. Nothing much ever changes. Nothing much ever happens. But it’s a pretty good life we have. Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to read your day in the life 🙂
Diane over at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts this meme.
I have gone kind of crazy and joined a bazillion Goodreads Challenges lately. I picked this book up because (1) I’ve wanted to try this series forever and (2) it fits a bunch of different challenges tasks… But what I wasn’t expecting was this intro! It hooked me immediately. I know this is not a new book (remember, I’m trying to focus on my own books…) and you’ve probably already read this one, but I’m curious if others were drawn by this intro like I was 🙂
 She hadn’t believed in monsters since she was six years old, back when her mom would check the closet and look beneath her bed at night. But at the age of twenty-one, bound and brutalized and lying naked on a concrete floor that was as cold as lake ice, she believed.
Tales of a Book Addict 