Weekly Reading Thread: October 28-Nov 3 (Sorry, typo)

I’ll start .... one for me.

BEFORE I LET YOU IN BY JENNIE BLACKHURST.
4/5 Stars for me.

Really good psychological thriller. Kept me guessing and trying to figure out what was going on.

Karen, Eleanor, and Bea have been best friends since childhood. Eleanor is a young wife and mother who is struggling to cope with her many responsibilities; Bea is happy being single—or so she lets people think; and Karen is a psychiatrist who, despite the secrets in her past, considers herself the anchor of the group. But when she takes on a new patient with issues she just can’t quite put her finger on, she begins to realize she may have put her dearest friends in danger.

I read two this week:

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott ... this was pretty good but not really memorable    3.5/5

Virtually Perfect by Paige Roberts ... a bit of chick lit that was better than most   3.5/5

I read The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain. 4.5/5

When Carly Sears, a young woman widowed by the Vietnam war, receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is 1970, and she is told that nothing can be done to help her child. But her brother-in-law, a physicist with a mysterious past, tells her that perhaps there is a way to save her baby. What he suggests is something that will shatter every preconceived notion that Carly has. Something that will require a kind of strength and courage she never knew existed. Something that will mean an unimaginable leap of faith on Carly's part.


I wasn't sure this book was going to suit me but it was excellent, totally engrossing and I highly recommend it. Thanks to the peas here who suggested it.

I just finished The President is Missing by James Patterson and Bill Clinton. It was a pretty good, although terrifying, thriller. At times I thought it got a little preachy for my tastes but overall it was a good read. It was on my tablet on loan from my library and I was racing to finish it before it disappeared!

Now I am reading very highbrow literature ~ Bachelor Nation, Inside the World of America's Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman. I barely started it so I don't know what juicy info she imparts.

Up next will be Karin Slaughter's Pieces of Her.

I'm still reading The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton. This book is long...almost 500 pages. Okay it does have really interesting stories but I want to find out the who did what and I'm getting impatient, lol. It takes place from the late 1800's to the present, so you have characters that lived through WWI and WWII. I'm hoping the reveal will be worth it.

After I finish this, I'm going to read a fluffy, light book. 

Loved this! The sequel is also wonderful.

I'm reading In Piecesby Sally Field. It's taking me a long time to read. Not because it isn't good, I love memoirs, especially Hollywood memoirs. I'm just so freakin' tired at night that I'll read for a few minutes and then fall asleep. Hopefully I'll finish soon!

I'll be interested to hear what you think about Bachelor Nation when you're done.  I thought it was really terrible.  Courtney Robertson's, I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends, book about her experience on the Bachelor I thought was really good though.

I don't know if you're aware but THE SPACE BETWEEN US is a movie as well. I really enjoyed it. 

Wait - are you talking about the movie set in space or one based on this book with the slums in India??

     I loved this book too. 

I read Anne of Avonlea. I bought the complete set on Amazon for Kindle a gazillion years ago and never read them. This year I met my Goodreads goal early and I decided to try and read them all before the end of the year. I liked this one (this is #2) and I can see why people love the series. After I finish, I'd like to go back and watch the TV series again (not the newest one- the one with Megan Followes).

I read The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming. (I watched the Amazon show 'The Romanovs' and it got me curious.) I wouldn't have finished it so quickly under normal circumstances but I was up most of the night making sure my sister's dog (who I have 3x a week) wasn't chewing on his tail. He had surgery last week and he's in the itchy stage. Poor thing.

I just got the new Stephen King book Elevation this afternoon. It's small, like Blockade Billy - so I expect to be done with it today or tomorrow, depending on long I can keep my eyes open. I wonder why he puts out these short stories in hardcover every so often. I know the easy answer is 'for the money' - but he doesn't need the money and doesn't seem to be that kind of author. He's done short stories for Kindle a few times- so why hardcover other times?

I borrowed The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish today after I returned The Famy Romanov. I can't wait to start that.

And my purse book is The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert. It's really intriguing and the author has a beautiful style of writing - homey and poetic and charming. Here's the description from Goodreads: Timothy Schaffert has created his most memorable character yet in Essie, an octogenarian obituary writer for her family's small-town newspaper. When a young country girl is reported to be missing, perhaps whisked away by an itinerant aerial photographer, Essie stumbles onto the story of her life. Or, it all could be simply a hoax, or a delusion, the child and child-thief invented from the desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn woman. Either way, the story of the girl reaches far and wide, igniting controversy, attracting curiosity-seekers and cult worshippers from all over the country to this dying rural town. And then it is revealed that the long-awaited final book of an infamous series of YA gothic novels is being secretly printed on the newspaper's presses.

The Coffins of Little Hope tells a feisty, energetic story of characters caught in the intricately woven webs of myth, legend and deception even as Schaffert explores with his typical exquisite care and sharp eye the fragility of childhood, the strength of family, the powerful rumor mills of rural America, and the sometimes dramatic effects of pop culture on the way we shape our world.