Welcome to Susie’s Friday Book Club for October! It has been a busy month since our last Book Club Friday for my reading and also Jayne’s and my Book Club Book too.
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This was Jayne’s pick for our Book Club for September. When we went for lunch Jayne was telling me that it took her a while to get into the book but when she did she loved it and the ending and she liked all the characters. I completely disappointed her by my review; I absolutely hated it!!!! She was mortified but I said no this is the whole point of a book club, you are not going to like every choice and she may not like my Choice for October!
I started to read this but found it heavy going from the start, so I swapped to listening to it but still found it heavy going. I did not get into the characters at all and in fact did not like them very much either. The fact that she was left completely on her own as a young child to fend for herself and then when she made some money with her drawings into books and finally got back with the man who, as a boy, had helped her and then she died! No not my cup of tea at all. I did think this when it was first published but I did finish it for Jayne, but is it not a book I would pick for myself.
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I also read this in September, “The Countdown Killer”. A killer is tracking people down and killing them and making a DVD about it, one of which finds its way into the hands of DCI Cara Elliott. The murdered man is found and they work out that there is 48 hours between the time of abduction and the death and so far the victims have gotten away with various crimes by being found not guilty in court, so is this revenge? When the killer finds out he is being investigated he kidnaps a police officer on the team, who now have to race the 48 hours to find him and get him back and find the killer before he kills again.
The story was good, but the ending was a little flat! I read and listened to this but the audio, the Narrator was doing all the voices and the men came across as either sounding like they had a heavy cold or stupid, which really put me off the audio! In the end I gave this three stars!
This is my next book I have just started to read. I love books about books or bookshops or anything to do with books so this was definitely coming home with me!
It is a fantasy book where Evar has been trapped within the vast library which is older than Empires and larger than cities. Livina has always lived in a tiny settlement on the Dust but both their lives collide in the Library where Evar thinks he will never be free and Liv wants to be there forever! Can they make it work?
I have read the first 50 pages and it has been a slow start although now that Liv is at the Library it is picking up a bit. This is the first of three books so it may be that Mr Lawrence is building the characters and stories, but I will wait and see how I feel when I have finished this book!
Finally this was my Pick for September for Jayne’s and ,my Book Club book and I will tell you all about it next Friday after Jayne and I have had lunch on Tuesday!
I hope you have had a great week, good weekend to come and you can find some time to read, whatever else you are up to.
Waterstones, Piccadilly – Europe’s Largest Bookstore.
Since we have been back from holiday I have managed to still get some reading in despite cathing up on work and home jobs!! Our holiday seems like a lifetime ago now but being in September we are definitely feeling the Autumn weather making itself known now with cooler evenings and of course it is getting dark earlier and earlier. I do love this time of year though and I also think I tend to read more as the nights draw in.
During our holiday I did start three books which I ended up DNFing for various reasons. They were:
“The Housekeepers” by Alex Hay / “The Village Library Demon Hunting Society” by C.W. Waggoner / “A Winter’s Murder” by Simon Brew.
The Housekeepers was a good idea set in the 1920’s England and they get together to rob their employers. However the writing and style did not come across at all well, so after 50 pages I DNF’d it!
The Village Library Demon Hunting Society was again a good idea except again the writing was not good and the demon appearing was not Stephen King inspired at all! DNF
Finally A Winter’s Murder was a story where you decide what direction it will take and you jump around pages with the decisions and I took about four turns and then I was out as I had made the wrong decisions! I could not be bothered to go back and start again! DNF
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Finally “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang I read and listened to this and got half way through the book and I just got to the point where I did not like any of the characters at all and would have quite happily slapped them all! The whole premise of the book, one character stealing the unpublished book of her dead friend and passing it off as her own and then the person who discovers the deception being equally immoral. Because of this I DND’d it also!
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Finally I read this and gave it five stars! Small town life has lots of secrets especially at the school gates. Newly divorced Mom Jude is drawn to Widower Will especially when their daughters become friends but she is warned off him by the other Moms because his wife died in mysterious circumstances and his partner has been missing for a few years! Can Jude prove them wrong or will she be next?
This was well written. You get to follow Jude in her quest along with other mysteries surrounding the Mom’s at the school gates and their stressful lives even when they appear organised and happy! A very good book and a good ending.
*****
Karin Slaughter is one of my favourite Authors and I have read several of her books already. This one was published in June this year and I began it whilst on holiday. North Falls is a small town and everyone knows everyone’s business and a lot of the time actually related to each other. On 4th of July cook out and fireworks for the town, Deputy Sherriff Emmy Clifton is asked by her best friend if she will talk to her step-daughter, Madison, who has become very withdrawn to see if Emmy can find out what is wrong. Before she has chance Madison and her best friend Cheyenne go mising and Emmy throws herself into finding the girls, but she is not ready for all the secrets that are going to be revealed.
The characters in the book are very well crafted and the interactions of them with each other whilst trying to find out what happened to the two teenagers is well done. There is a twist near the end which I did see coming but it did not detract from the book. It is a thriller but also about how human these people are. I really enjoyed it.
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Finally for this month is “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden. This is where I will perhaps lose people with my opinion on this book! Earlier in the year I listened to “The Tenant” by Ms McFadden on audiobook, the first of her books I read/listened to and my Review was in July 2025. I gave it two stars! As you can imagine I went into this with a bit of trepidation and I was right!
Millie is desperate for a job so she does not have to live in her car anymore. The problem is that very few people want to give you a job after they know you have been in prison. However she sees this job for a live in Housemaid in a very nice area on Long Island and she applies. Mrs Nina Winchester interviews her and offers her the job to begin immediately and Millie is so relieved.
Her room is in th attic and is small, cramped and the window does not open and to make matters worse there is a lock but on the outside of the door which makes her suspecious. However the room has a bed, its own bathroom and it is going into winter. Mr Andrew Winchester is very handsome and helps Millie to settle in and navigate Nina’s unstable outbursts and their daughters rude behaviour but she will have to be careful not to get too involved or attached she needs the job. The longer she is at the house the longer Millie realises that things are not right with the Winchesters, but she has to stay, however how long can she last in this deeply disfunctional home?
Now don’t get me wrong the book is okay but having read The Tennant I quickly realised that it and The Housemaid are the same plat with slight tweeks here and there. It has a similar twist and a flat ending again, just like The Tenant! However it did not have as many “ick” moments in as The Tenant does, hence three starts for this but only two starts for The Tenant!
I have found this problem with some other authors, where they find a formula and so every book is written in the same way and for me that gets boring. Ms MCFadden’s books are not long and it does move quickly but if all of her books are the same I won’t be reading them. I have one more of her books on my TBR shelf and I will read that but if it is the same then I am afraid she will not become a favourite of mine. I know there are a lot of thriller book readers out there who aboslutely love her books, but I don’t think I am going to be one of them!
I have read one more book which was for Jayne’s and my Book Club book for September and I will tell you about that next week as I am seeing Jayne for lunch on Tuesday!
I hope you lovely lot have a wonderful weekend, find some time to read, whatever you are up to and I shall see you all back here on Monday.
On Tuesday of this week, Jayne and I were Ladies Who Lunch! We went to a Restaurant at Alfreton in Derbyshire called “Pesto” which is an Italian Restaurant but they do things a little differently. They have three menus each priced £1 more than the previous one. If you go for the most expensive one you are able to pick dishes from all three menus but if you have the middle priced menu you can only pick from that or the cheaper one and if you have the cheapest then you can only have dishes from that one. You then get to pick three dishes.
There are many different authentic Italian dishes and the last time we went which was in February in the snow, I didn’t quite get the combination of dishes right! However this time I did. I had a small piece of lasagne, some rice balls with beef and cheese in them and a house salad. Jayne had the lasagne, pasta with smoked salmon and chicken wings and she shared my salad. It was really good.
We had a lovely time and we caught up on all the news and also discussed our Book Club book which we read in August which was this :
It was my choice and something that I would not normally choose but it was a really good read. Very easy to read and the story was great and I will definitely be getting Emily Henry’s other books. This is what I love about Jayne’s and my book club, trying different styles of books. So far, when we began in April, we have done really well with the books we have chosen.
The story is about Daphne who is going to marry Peter but just before the big day he calls the wedding off because he has realised that he actually loves his best friend since they were little Petra. Not only is the wedding cancelled but Daphne has to move out of the home she was sharing with Peter as he owns that. She bumps into Miles who was living with Petra and who is equally devastated at the betrayal and to help Daphne out offers her his tiny spare room which she takes. After a drunken night drowning their sorrows they decide to put on social media that they are an item and take a loved up picture which has the desired effect on Peter and Petra, disbelief that their exes are together! Slowly as the weeks go by Daphne and Miles become friends, however Peter & Petra are detemined to break them apart! Can they get over the betrayal and make a new life for themselves?
As I say a really easy read but good fun and well written. This is our book for September :
I obviously saw this book when it came out but was not too sure as to whether I would enjoy it but it is Jayne’s pick for this month and as I said it is all about trying new books that I would perhaps not normally pick for me. I will be starting it this weekend.
Tonight we are at Youngest’s and Fiancé’s home as DH is helping Youngest with his truck and I am with Fiancé and no doubt we will get a Takeaway for dinner, well it is Friday night.
DH and I managed to get some jobs done in the garden in between showers and me doing the washing as well. A Box bush that has been in the garden for about twenty years that we did put in when we first moved here has developed Box Blight which affects Box plants and is a fungal disease. Once the plant has it you cannot get rid of it and just have to dig them up and replace it with something else. It is in the front bed on the right and is quite big so we have decided to put mulch and compost down and perhas plant some spring bulbs in the area that has been left and then next spring re-do the area and put some new plants in then.
Over the weekend it is due to be raining so it will be inside jobs to do and there is always plenty of them! Hopefully Sunday is going to be okay and we can finish the garden. Have a wonderful weekend whatever you lovely lot are up to and I will see you back here on Monday.
Above are the books I have brought with me on Holiday. As those who follow me know that along with Quilting, Reading is my other passion. One of my Aims at the beginning of the year was to do more reading and I have certainly tried, along with also doing our Little Book Club with Jayne and also listening to Boots when I am at Eldest’s working. So far I have been getting through more books and this has encouraged me to read more physical books as well.
However at the end of June I went for my annual eye test and my old Optician had retured and the new one said I needed an uptick in my perscription. However he felt I would benefit from some new lenses which help those who work al day on a computer and then with reading. They are in fact like a graduated lense. I decided to given them a try although I was a little apprehensive. Well I have given them a month and I am not getting on very well with them at all. Of course there is nothing I can do whilst I am in Scotland but have an appointment when I get back to sort them out!
This has meant that I have not done as much reading as I would have liked due to these goasses. However I have read Jayne’s and My’s Book Club Book this month which I chose:
Jayne reads my Blog so I will have to not give the game away too much with I loved it! I chose it as it is definitely something I wold not normally pick up but I wanted to be fair about choosing the books to not always have the same genre which I know we can fall into. My only stiputlation from my point of view when Jayne and I were sorting our Litte Book Club out wa that I would not read any deep or meaningful books such as “The Kite Runner” or “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”! I am sure they are tremendous books but I read books to escape and that style of book I would not want to read. This is why I have never joined a book club because whenever I have spoken to anyone in the Club they end up always readinf this type of book!
Anyway back to ” Funny Story” Daphne is getting married to Peter and they have moved back to his home town, where his parents live and all his old friends, including his best friend from Kindergarton, Petra. Petra is living with Milkes. Just before Daphne’s wedding Peter says he cannot marry her as he has realised that he loves Petra and she loves him. That night he leaves to go on holiday with Petra and asks Daphne to move out of the home they share! Daphne loses her home and her Fiancé! She does however meet Miles who offers her his spare room and they both are miserable together. One drunken evening they decided to take a picture together and post it on Social media and make out that they are now a couple to get back at their horrendous ex’s. Of course trouble begins going down this path.
It is a great summer read. Very easy but well written and I will now be buying Ms Henry’s other books!
When we are home I will go through all my other books I brought away because I also missed World Book Lovers Day on August 9th!
Well I can honestly say we are having some very strange weather at the moment. We woke up on Tuesday to thick fog! Not mist thick fog! You could not see past the end of our garden and this was the view out of the front of our home. Normally we can see across the valley to the hill and all the trees but as you can see nothing! It soon burned off and I think it was after all the rain we had had and it was still warm, it was just a bit of a shock!
Little Man loves the garden, but he is only allowed out once the sun has gone off the garden, he is also very keen on water play.
I got all of Eldest’s work done yesterday and the cleaning for him and then DH and I had dinner with them and Little Man as we will not see them for a fortnight. Today I have been working all day. I was planning on getting home jobs done today but I have moved that to tomorrow now, along with the ironing, packing and a quick tidy of the garden!
I will be taking my sewing machine away with me to try and get the bed quilt finished! I also have a selection of books going with me too. The first week we are on our own so I think we are going to have a chill week as it has been so busy over the last few months for us. Of course last year I was ill the second week of the holiday so I am keeping everything crossed that I am fine this year!
Youngest, Fiancé, Gordon & Blaze are arriving tomorrow night for house and dog sitting and then the Animals will all be going to the kennels for the week whilst Youngest & Fiance are with us. Then they will be back home when they get back for our final week, when Eldest and crew are with us. Once we are all back we have a few other things happening and also the last Bank Holiday of the year at the end of August when we have a very busy weekend. More about that later.
These were my books last year!
I will try and show you my book pile that I am taking away with me and I also have Book Club Friday whilst we are away too which I will be doing. Have a wonderful Friday.
Welcome to Book Club Friday! I have been keeping up with my Aims for the year and been reading more and I have also discovered audio books now, especially when I am working. Also Jayne’s and my Book Club is making me read more as well. To that end I have finished two books and several audio books in June!
This is Jayne’s & My Book Club Book for July. I am on Page 229 out of 424 and am really enjoying it. Nancy is trying to rebuild her life after her mother & step-father were murdered by her step-brother and to help her heal she heads to her Grandmother’s home, Tall Chimneys, in Cornwall. However the press find her wanting to know what really happened on the night in question and Nancy just wants to forget but Tall Chimneys has its own dark legacy from the last War and someone knows all about it and about the night of the murders and they have nothing left to lose. Can Nancy keep all the secrets hidden?
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This is my book I am reading at the moment and you know, for those who have followed me for a while, that Clive Cussler is my go to Author for escapism! This book brings together the original book by Mr Cussler “Raise The Titanic” a Dirk Pitt Adventure with the Isaac Bell Adventures set in 1911. Bell is tasked with explaining the deaths of nine miners in a mine in Colorado but it was not an ordinary mine and they were trying to locate a rare element which eventually takes Bell to Europe. Dirk Pitt when he raised the Titanic was looking for the very same rare element, how are these two cases linked?
I have only just started this but know it will be a great story.
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I am still not convinced about audio books! There I said it! I have out of the fifteen I have listened to over the last few months only found three that I have given Five Stars to! Twelve of them have ranged from one star to three stars! I get to the end of the book I am listening to with a quite deflated view of the book, the author or both!
This one, “The Book Seller” looked quite promising but! It is about Helen who has been released from prison on Licence after killing her Boyfriend who was abusive to her. She has decided that instead of going back to her civil service job she wants to own a book store selling second hand books and with some money she has inherited is using that to set up the shop. However from the start things go wrong with a break in at the shop and her home, neighbours at the shop she is worried are trying to get her out of her shop so they can take over and a Parole Officer who is obnoxious! She gets some good luck with buying second hand books for her store and is given a vast collection of books by an elderly lady as she is downsizing her home. Helen is ready to open until someone else comes in and trashes all the work she has done so far! Can she sort it out before her opening day and will she be able to succeed?
The premise was good but very slow in places repeating the same sort of day over and over again before we actually got further into the story. The ending was predicatable having been led there right at the end of the book in all a rush to finish it! I would not read or listen to this again and I only gave it Three Stars.
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I have seen a lot of books around Bookstagram and reviews for Freida McFadden’s work and have her most popular book “The Housemaid” in paperback on my TBR shelf. So when I saw this on the Must Listen To section I downloaded it! I really wished I hadn’t! If this book is anything to go by I may not like “The Housemaid” either! I gave this book only Two Stars!
Blake Porter has been made VP of Marketing in the company he has been at for ten years in Manhatten. He has just bought a lovely old Brownstone and he is engaged to a wonderful woman who bakes!! In the space of a week his world collapses when he is fired from his job, his wages of which are paying for the mortgage on his home. The only way out is to rent one of the bedrooms to someone whilst he looks for a new job and enter Whitney who is down to earth, charming and willing to pay what he asks for the room. After the first week things begin to go wrong, Blake’s food is going missing, his neighbour is upset with him, he wakes in the middle of the night to hear strange noises coming from their Tenant’s room. Blake begins to think he has done the wrong thing renting the room out but then his business life begins to have problems again does Whitney know more about him than he thinks?
I will give you a trigger warning for this book some of the descriptive bits are very yuck! Very, very yuck! By the time you get to near the end of the book, again, you see the twist and admittedly it is a good twist but by the Epilogue you really don’t like any of the characters and the conclusion you are left with a bit of a well it happened but no explanation of how it was resolved sort of thing!
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I think this is my problem with audio books I start off with high hopes of the book being good and then, for whatever reason, by the end of it I think if I had been reading it I would have probably DNF it! It does while away the hours whilst I am working to be able to listen to something as I find I cannot listen to music in my ears whilst I am working! Don’t ask me why?! So will continue to listen to the books but I do think as a bit of a palate cleanser I will listen to a few of my most favourite books, to help with these books that I really don’t like!
I will let you know how I get on with “The Housemaid” when I eventually read it!
I hope you are all having a wonderful Friday and you find time to read and a great weekend to come.
Thursday again, they do seem to come round very quickly! I suppose it is because it is home jobs day! It has been very warm here today again so I have decided I will not do the ironing today and will fit it in when it is cooler.
I have had some new lenses in my glasses and collected them on Monday and am now trying to get used to them. They are a new type of lens especially made for the work I do, computer work and then when I am reading. I only use them for reading as my distance sight is fine, but it is taking a little while to get used to the gradient in them.
As it is #TBT I thought I would show you these pictures from 2012 when we went to The Harry Potter Studio Tour. It was the first week that it opened and we thoroughly enjoyed the visit to see where it was filmed and all the props. The Boys and DH were not very keen on the Butter Beer though!
Here we are in “The Mirror of Erised” which shows the viewer their deepest desire which, for me, is DH and My Boys. Eldest was 16 and Youngest was 12.
It was a great day and something we said we would do again, especially as they have added more things onto the tour now, like the train.
You can walk down Diagon Alley and here I am outside Flourish and Blotts
The Boys getting their Wands at Ollivanders!
I am sure that, if we are all honest, we would all love to get our letter inviting us to attend Hogwarts by owl!
When I was at Primary School I devoured the “Malory Towers” books by Enid Blyton about Darrell Rivers who begins her First Year at Malory Towers Boarding School. I would have loved to have gone to Boarding School and had all the adventurs that Darrell had with her friends. My best friend at the time was called Judith and she and I read these books together (I still have my set). Judith had a sister, Glynnis who was quite a bit older than she was, so Judith was like an only child like me. Her room was the smallest in the house as her sister had the larger room and Judith’s bed fit between the two walls and above her bed she had bookshelves with her books on them and I loved her room. Her bed was like a reading nook and you could look out of the window which was at the base of the bed. I was lucky to have a bigger room but I really liked her room as it was cosy. We were about eight at the time. We then moved on to reading The Narnia stories, again I still have the set!
Anyway this is all leading up to tomorrow which is Book Club Day! I have quite a few to discuss with you. Happy Thursday.
I have been reading Jayne’s & My Book Club Books as well but I read this between two of our books. This is the first Colleen Hoover book I have read and it was well written. The story is contracted into a few weeks and you are kept guessing as to who is responsible.
Verity is a famous author who has had success with her novels. However she was involved in a bad accident which has left her unable to do anything and is basically in a living coma. Lowen is also an author but not so successful and is, in fact, really struggling financially until Jeremy Crawford, Verity’s husband, proposes that Lowen finishes the last three novels in Verity’s series. Lowen is not sure if she can do this but Jeremy persuades her to come to the family home and go through Verity’s notes and then decide.
Lowen gets there to find Verity’s office in a mess and she needs to go through everything before even being able to write an outline for the first of the three books. What she does find is an autobiography by Verity and as she starts to read it, family secrets come out including the death of Verity’s two daughters. How can Lowen write the books now knowing what she does?
I did sort of enjoy the book although some of it I did skip due to it being repetitive with some of the chapters. At the end there is a twist and I don’t know whether I agree with how it ended! I don’t want to give the ending away but on this basis and what I have heard about her other novel, which is now a controversial film, I don’t think I will be reading any other of her novels. I gave it four stars in the end.
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I have managed to find a great App for my phone called BootBeat. You get a trial period of 20 hours of listening or reading, after which it is £6.99 per month and you can cancel at any time. There is a Standard package for £10.99 a month and the final Premium package which is £17.99 a month, this is for 100 hours a month which is the one I went for after my trial period. The range of books is amazing, especially in the Crime & Thriller section, which is the one I use most. I have managed to find some new authors, some are successful and some not so much. I tend to listen to them when I am at Eldest’s working or when I am doing my home jobs.
This was really good and of course is available in paperback as well as audio. The narration is very good.
Jess Pendle is sat in A&E with her partner on New Year’s Eve. She has a black eye and her arm is hurting and she has to tell the Doctor and Nurses that she fell down the stairs because if she doesn’t Liam will hurt her even more when they get home. A kind Doctor asks Jess if she needs help and after all the months of abuse she says she does. She reports the assault to the Police who take notes but Jess does not feel that they are taking much notice of her. The Doctor also gives her information of a support group and she goes and meets other women who are in the same situation. As she gets to know some of these women she is told about the underground group, who are more pro-active than just talking!
I really liked this audiobook and I gave it four stars because of the ending which left you a bit high and dry. I have since found out that there is a Book 2 coming out next year to carry on the story which now makes sense! I will be getting it either in book form or on audio!
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To show you that the audiobooks are not all old this book was published in March this year. It is really good and it was my first Five star audiobook!
Verity has been married to Linden Lockwood for five years and they have a perfect marriage. Albeit Verity is the one earning the money in the family, Linden is an author but has not written anything for a while. When Verity returns from a business trip she finds Linden in their home murdered in a robbery! Her world tips and she feels that she is unable to move on from this terrible event. Whilst clearing out Linden’s things she finds a set of letters from a woman and it is obvious he was having an affair but who with? Verity sets off to find out who it is but then is attacked herself. Will she be the next victim?
There is a very good twist at the end of this book which you do not see coming!
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This is my second Five star audiobook.
One in three marriages end in divorce but this one ends in murder! Andrew Page was married to Louise but left her, and their two children, for Caroline just one month after his son was born. He marries Caroline and they go on to have their own son but the past five years have been difficult co-parenting Louise’s children. The more contact the two women have, the more they begin to fight and then they begin to run each other down to Andrew. As each wife comes up with a ploy to make the other one seem useless Andrew is firmly in the middle of all the fighting. Then to add fuel to the fire Louise’s parents invite Andrew to their 50th Wedding Anniversary party along with Caroline and their son. Louise is mad, Caroline does not want to go but Andrew is loving every minute of it. In the weeks before the party lies are told and found out and the arguments increase. It all comes to a head when Andrew is murdered on the evening before the party but who did it?
The narration was very good and there was a twist right at the end that you will not see coming! A very good book.
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Hopefully you will find something you like in these books. I will be doing a new page of Jayne’s and my Book Club Books so that you will be able to see what we have been reading. They have been very varied.
Have a wonderful weekend and I hope that whatever you are up to you find time to read.
Have you ever listened to an Audio Book? I have been, over the last few months, when I have been at Eldest’s work and about two have been successful the others not so much! Quite a few have ended and I thought well the author didn’t know how to end that and one I actually did not finish!!!! I have started a new one this week and I am hoping that this one will be better. However I have been finding with actual books the same problem with them, the story goes along quite well and we get to the end of it is rushed as if they did not know what to do!
Anyway I have done well with reading this month not only a book from my TBR shelf but Jayne’s and my Book Club Book as well!
I have read quite a few of Karen Rose’s books and loved them. This is the second book about Kit McKittrick Homicide Detective in San Diego where she is called to a dead body at The Shady Oaks Retirement Home. The body turns out to be retired Detective Frank Flynn and Kit wonders if he was investigating something, then the head of security is also found dead, will Kit be able to find out who the Murderer is before anyone else dies?
It is a good old mystery book and well written.
This was Jayne’s pick for our Book Club for April. I have read a few of Harlan Coben’s books before and enjoyed them and quite a few have been made into mini dramas on Netflix. I read this along with the book above and did manage to keep both stories separate! “Six Years” begins with a wedding of Natalie to Todd attended by Jake Fisher. Natalie is the love of Jake’s life and he is heartbroken watching her marry Todd. After the wedding Nataliie approaches him and tells him not to look for her or try and contact her ever again, Jake promises but six year’s later he sees an Obituary for Todd and feels that he should now contact Natalie and offer his condolences. He turns up at the funeral only to find a different woman and two children at the grave side and it is not Natalie! Where is she and why is she not here? Thus begins a search for Natalie which leads Jake down a very dark road, will he survive and find her?
I did enjoy it and it had a good ending which was a relief after quite a few stories which did not!!!
This is my choice for Jayne and my May Book Club book. It is another murder mystery but a historical one this time. The book is set in 1901 and Gabriel Ward, Barrister, steps out of his Chambers on a sunny May morning to find the Lord Chief Justice of England dead on the doorstep. He is dressed in evening wear but has no shoes on and there is a large sterling silver carving knife in his chest. The Police have no powers in The Temple so it is up to Gabriel to investigate but how difficult can it be, he knows what to do from his cases in Court but it turns out to be a lot harder and a lot of secrets start to spill out?
I think I will enjoy this and hopefully it will have a good ending and not too waffling!! I also hope that Jayne will enjoy it. I am loving our new Book Club and it is definitely making me read.
In other crafts I am still quilting although I did not get any done last weekend. We were all at Eldest’s on Saturday for family day. The weather was amazing and we sat outside and had a really lovely day. Sunday not so good as DH was poorly. Little Man has not been well so we don’t know whether DH has caught what he has had, but then the MD at the company we work with in Nottingham has not been well all weekend too and DH was with him all day Thursday, so he could have caught it from him! So we had a quiet Sunday.
Speaking of quilting I have to get on with the Baby quilt as the Baby has arrived, a month early! So in my defence he is a little early but I will get on with it this weekend. He is very well even though he is early but they are staying in hospital just to make sure. I will not be seeing him for a while yet but have been able to see a photograph of him on WhatsApp and he looks very settled. DH is out both days this weekend at a swimming event, so I will have time then to get things done.
Spring Cleaning has been happening. I got two jobs done in one when we did the painting of Eldest & Youngest’s rooms. They look great and as we put the furniture back I cleaned and tided it. We also painted the main Bathroom but I just need to clean the tiles in there. At the end of the month is another long weekend and our room and dressing room will be painted and again I will clean everything as it goes back. Then that will be the upstairs done. It won’t take long to do the sitting, dining rooms and our Den. The kitchen is always the worst as there are so many nooks to get into to clean, but it will only take a day to do. Hopefully by the end of May it will all be done.
DH has been mowing the lawn every week but we need to get in and do some tidying there and also re-do the pots with the spring/summer flowers. I want to wash them before re-doing them. We sorted the shed out at the end of last year and that is still tidy and I want to paint all the outside furniture, my grow house and the shed which will be done on another sunny warm day. I also need to put new compost in my vegetable bed and I am going to plant some salad leaves in there with tomatoes and I am going to try a cucumber as well. I also want to put some seeds in for next year too. I am still decluttering and now the weather is getting better, I will be in the garage sorting out the boxes that are in there now. I could really do with an extra few days in the week!!!!
This week I need to get our business ready for its new year on June 1st but that usually doesn’t take me long!!! There is a box of shredding I need to do but I can watch something on TV whilst I am doing that!
I hope you all lhad a great weekend and a good week to come.
I honestly don’t know where the days go to! We start the week off fairly quiet and normal and by Friday it is chaos and mayhem!! Friday Coco had her Spa Day, I had my hair cut too and we went to see Partner and Little Man. Saturday we saw Youngest & Fiancé and go some jobs done and Sunday we were going to finish those jobs and the day got away from us. This week is supposed to be quiet but Easter long weekend we are going to get the spare room decorated so we can then furnish it and the garden done and I am having the whole family for dinner on Easter Sunday! Just another quiet time!!!!!
Anywho I did not get Book Club Friday done in time, so here it is today :
This is Jayne’s and my first Book Club Book between us. I ended up at Christmas with two copies of it, so thought it would be a good idea to be our first book.
Hazel runs the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore in Dream Harbor and she begins to find books defaced, mainly in the Romance section. The books have various phrases underlined and then the page corner turned down! She cannot understand who is doing it but the phrases start to connect in her brain. Noah, the local trip fisherman, comes in every week and buys a new book and finds Hazel with one of the defaced books in her hand. He decides to help her find out who the culprit is and what it means because he really likes her and wants to spend time with her. Hazel really likes him too but does not think he would want to go out with her, this almost thirty year old spinster book nerd. Can they find love in Dream Harbor?
I did like it, but thought that it could have ended 10 chapters earlier!!! There was a bit of going backwards and forwards with the characters which were a bit uncessary but it was an easy read.
Jayne and I are being Ladies who Lunch tomorrow and we can discuss the book then and also catch up as we haven’t seen each other for quite a few weeks. It is also Jayne’s turn to choose the book. We are going to a large bookstore in Derbyshire, The High Peak Booskstore near Buxton, so we can have some lunch in their cafe and get the new book. The building used to be a garage and when it closed the current owner’s parents bought it and turned it into the Bookstore and she has now taken over since they retired. I will try and get some pictures.
As you know for those that read Book Club posts, I have also been listening to books on my iPod and Phone when I am at Eldest’s or when I am working at home. The above was the latest I listened to and it was good.
A serial killer is stalking the suburbs of London and young women are terrified. Midnight Jones works at a forward thinking tech company who provide profiles for their clients to ensure the right people are employed or on the correct university courses. As much as the company is lauded for their new working methods, actually working there is very hard. Midnight also looks after her disabled twin sister and so needs her job to pay for her sister, Dawn’s, carers. One day Midnight is reviewing a file and it brings up a problem and is classified as a Profile-K, when she looks at it she is horrified at what she sees and reports it to her boss thinking that this person could quite easily be the serial killer. The company sweep it under the rug and Midnight is re-assigned to another department but not before they and the serial killer know what has happened and he is now on her tail.
I did like the story and it did move along at quite a quick pace and finished well. So if you like thrillers then this one is for you.
One thing I have been finding with books and films is that it is good and you are enjoying it and then you get to the end and it is a damp squib! Almost like the author/director does not know how to end the book or film especially with the books, it is almost as if they run out of steam and it fizzles out. That was definitely the case with the previous audio book I listened to, “The Crime Writer” by Diane Jeffrey. The ending really spoilt the rest of the book which was very good.
I have just started this book. I have read several of Karen Rose’s books and always liked them so I will let you know how I get on with this one. I hope you have a wonderful week and will see you here tomorrow.
Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx
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