Book Review: The Girls Weekend

Title: The Girls Weekend
Author: Jody Gehrman
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: July 7, 2020
Pages: 311
Format Read: Ebook
Standalone or series: Standalone
Where I got the book: NetGalley
Date finished reading: June 11, 2020

Goodreads Description: Their reunion just became a crime scene . . .

June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie–and her husband, June’s former crush–but agrees to go.

The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone’s a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie’s husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.

A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise, this brooding, atmospheric novel will keep you guessing as each twist reveals a new possibility. It will remind you of friendships hidden in the depths of your own past, and make you wonder how well you really know the people you’ve loved the longest.

My Review: I had the pleasure of receiving an ARC of The Girls Weekend from NetGalley. A fun girls weekend with old friends turns into a nightmare when one of the five girls, Sadie, disappears one night leaving a trail of blood in her wake. Unfortunately, the friends’ recollection of what occurred that night is spotty. They all feel like they were drugged, because they only recall bits and pieces of what occurred that night (though for some reason none of them decided to go get a drug test). How do you figure out the truth when you can’t remember anything? How do you know who to trust?

I am usually not a fan of unreliable narrator stories, but this one more inventive than most. The friends had not spent time together in many years, and all of them had a motives to harm Sadie. To be honest, after reading how Sadie treated her friends, I don’t really understand why any of them would have agreed to go to her home for this girls weekend. However, this made for a lot of tension.

Spoiler alert: I actually thought that based on the type of person Sadie was portrayed as that she had faked her own death. I was wrong. Her body was discovered and the twists and turns really became to pick up.

This story is told through June Moody, who had plenty of motives to kill Sadie (Sadie is a more successful writer than June; is very wealthy; and is married to the man that proposed to June many years ago – Sadie basically has June’s life), and quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. She is determined to piece together what occurred that night based on her bits of memory and what others remember. Once the friends start to work together a bit, they develop a strong theory of what happened that night, which leads to the ultimate climax.

All the twists and turns kept me captivated. It was hard to put down. I did feel like the end was a bit anti-climactic, but it was an overall thrill-ride. The epilogue was nice but meh. I kept wishing that the author would tell us if June Moody took this girls weekend experience to finally become the successful writer she always wanted to be. I would have preferred that epilogue over the “who loves who” ending. I really enjoyed the book overall though, and it made me think twice about planning the girls weekend I want to do with my college roommates next year.

Note: Publication date was moved back and may be moved back even further.

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

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Book Review: Ghosts of Harvard

Title: Ghosts of Harvard
Author: Francesca Serritella
Genre: psychological thriller
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
Pages: 480
Format Read: Ebook
Standalone or series: Standalone
Where I got the book: NetGalley ARC
Date finished reading: May 30, 2020

Goodreads Description: A Harvard freshman becomes obsessed with her schizophrenic brother’s suicide. Then she starts hearing voices.

Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia took his own life there the year before. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers.

As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies—but what tipped him over the edge? With her suspicions mounting, Cady herself begins to hear voices, seemingly belonging to three ghosts who walked the university’s hallowed halls—or huddled in its slave quarters. Among them is a person whose name has been buried for centuries, and another whose name mankind will never forget.

Does she share Eric’s illness, or is she tapping into something else? Cady doesn’t know how or why these ghosts are contacting her, but as she is drawn deeper into their worlds, she believes they’re moving her closer to the truth about Eric, even as keeping them secret isolates her further. Will listening to these voices lead her to the one voice she craves—her brother’s—or will she follow them down a path to her own destruction?

My Review: I am grateful to have received an ARC of Ghosts of Harvard from NetGalley. This was an interesting read for sure. It was a mix of fiction and nonfiction. It was a psychological thriller and mystery with a supernatural side note.

As I formally lived in Boston, I was thrilled to experience the author’s vivid descriptions of the Harvard campus. However, I struggled with the pacing of this book. I felt that it was about 100 pages too long. The middle was too slow, but I was very invested in the main character, Cady, as she tried to find out the truth behind her brother’s suicide. I was also invested in finding out the truth of what Cady was going through from the Prologue at the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed the final quarter of the book. There were twists and turns, and I could not put it down.

I am not sure I understand the point of the main character being visited by ghosts. All I can come up with is that the author really wanted to create an unreliable main character, so the reader could not be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. I never truly believed that Cady was suffering from schizophrenia like her brother had. However, I appreciate this interesting twist the author provided and acknowledge that much of the interaction with the ghost were based on history facts.

This story is one that I continue to go over in my head as I attempt to understand some of the deeper meaning the author was trying to express. It is the kind of book that stays with you.

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ½

Book Review: The Tenant

Title: The Tenant
Author: Katrine Engberg
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Scout Press
Publication Date: January 14, 2020
Pages: 356
Format Read: Book
Standalone or series: Book #1 of Kørner/Werner series
Where I got the book: Goodreads Giveaway
Date finished reading: February 5, 2020

Goodreads Description: When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous.

But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.

My Review: I want to thank Scout Press and Goodreads for sending me this book. I haven’t won a Goodreads giveaway in a while and was really happy to receive this one.

I am thrilled with the setting of this story, as it takes place in Copenhagen and other areas of Denmark. I don’t believe I have read anything by a Danish author before. Plus, the timing is wonderful, as I hope to travel to that country this summer.

The Tenant is Katrine Engberg’s debut novel. She was a choreographer and dancer, and now I believe that she is a spectacular fiction crime writer. It was a very impressive first novel.

The plot was very well constructed and kept me entertained from beginning to end. This book contains so many twists and turns that you don’t know who the guilty party is – maybe they are all a little guilty. There are lots of interesting components to the murders that take place, including the fact that a fictional story that was written weeks before the murder describes the actual murder. There were so many wonderful pieces of the puzzle that were discovered bit by bit throughout the story, that it truly keeps the reader engaged.

I loved a lot of the supporting characters, especially those that lived in the apartment building where the original murder took place. Gregers and Ester de Laurenti were my favorite characters. The only thing that prevented me from absolutely loving this story was the fact that I didn’t care about the main characters at all – Detective Jeppe Korner and Detective Anette Werner. We learn much more about Detective Korner than Detective Werner in this story, but what was revealed did not interest me. They were a bit boring and just made all the supporting characters look that much more fascinating. I’m not quite sure those are good characters to base a series on.

However, I very much enjoyed the overall story and believe it to be very well written. I look forward to reading more by this author!

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Book Review: The Look-Alike

Title: The Look-Alike
Author: Erica Spindler
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: January 28, 2020
Pages: 320
Format Read: Ebook
Standalone or series: Standalone
Where I got the book: NetGalley ARC
Date finished reading: January 29, 2020

Goodreads Description: Sienna Scott grew up in the dark shadow of her mother’s paranoid delusions. Now, she’s returned home to confront her past and the unsolved murder that altered the course of her life.

In her mother’s shuttered house, an old fear that has haunted Sienna for years rears its ugly head —that it was she who had been the killer’s target that night. And now, with it, a new fear—that the killer not only intended to remedy his past mistake—he’s already begun. But are these fears any different from the ones that torment her mother?

As the walls close in, the line between truth and lie, reality and delusion disintegrate. Has Sienna’s worst nightmare come true? Or will she unmask a killer and finally prove she may be her mother’s look-alike, but she’s not her clone?

My Review: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. I really enjoyed the last thriller I read through NetGalley, so I was looking forward to keeping the momentum going.

This was a very quick read for me. The story flowed by and was a fun read. However, I had a few issues with The Look-Alike that made me far from love it.

First of all, we “maybe” have an unreliable narrator, which makes the main character a bit annoying at time. While Sienna Scott’s mother does suffer from paranoid personality disorder, this does not mean that Sienna herself has it, but every time something her mother says actually happens, Sienna thinks that she is suffering from the same disorder, which gets annoying. This thinking leads Sienna to hesitate in telling others about things that are happening, but then she doesn’t seem to hesitate to tell the stranger across the street that she just met. I guess the thinking is that a stranger may buy her possible delusions as facts more than a friend or relative would?

Second, since I just mentioned “friend”, Sienna does seem to have friends, who call and leave messages, but we really don’t meet any of these friends. Why are these “friends” not more a part of the story? Why does the main character not confide in her “friends” more?

Third, the potential buyers of The Wagon Wheel just happened to not be able to secure funding? Was this just to make the story have a completely happy ending?

Finally, I found that the plot and the mysteries were very predictable. I knew who the new neighbor, Jonathan, was right away. I also figured right from the start who the bad guy was, as he pretty much inserted himself in the Madison Robie murder right from the beginning. There weren’t any of the twists or turns that I normally enjoy in a good thriller.

I still enjoyed the movement of the story, and while the characters were not strong characters, they were still interesting, especially Sienna’s mother. I loved that character. Plus, I found it a bonus that this story takes place in my home state of Wisconsin. Overall, I liked The Look-Alike, but I did not love it.

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ½

Book Review: Trace of Evil

Title: Trace of Evil
Author: Alice Blanchard
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: December 3, 2019
Pages: 384
Format Read: Ebook
Standalone or series: Book #1 of Natalie Lockhark series
Where I got the book: NetGalley ARC
Date finished reading: January 25, 2020

Goodreads Description: A riveting mystery that introduces a bold and audacious rookie detective assigned to hunt for a killer who is haunted by the past in this gripping murder case…

Natalie Lockhart always knew she was going to be a cop. A rookie detective on the Burning Lake police force, she was raised on the wisdom of her chief-of-police father. These cases will haunt you if you let them. Grief doesn’t come with instructions.

But the one thing her father couldn’t teach her was how to handle loss. Natalie’s beloved sister was viciously murdered as a teenager, and she carries the scars deep in her heart. Although the killer was locked up, the trace evidence never added up, and Natalie can’t help wondering―is the past really behind her?

As the newest member on the force, Natalie is tasked with finding nine missing persons who’ve vanished off the face of the earth, dubbed “the Missing Nine.” One night, while following up on a new lead, she comes across a savage crime that will change everything.

Daisy Buckner―a popular schoolteacher, wife to a cop, and newly pregnant―lies dead on her kitchen floor. As Natalie hunts for Daisy’s killer in the wake of the town’s shock, her search leads to a string of strange clues―about the Missing Nine, about Daisy’s secret life, and reviving fresh doubts about her sister’s murder.

As the investigation deepens, Natalie’s every move risks far-reaching consequences―for the victims, for the town of Burning Lake, and for herself.

Spellbinding and gripping, Trace of Evil is a novel of twisting suspense that will leave you breathless.

My Review: I received a copy of Trace of Evil from NetGalley, and I could not be happier that I picked it up when I did. I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump since the beginning of 2020. I’m hoping that Trace of Evil has brought me out of that slump, because I wholeheartedly enjoyed this book.

It has been a while, since I have read a mystery/thriller that did not frustrate me (excluding any Agatha Christie book I’ve read recently). I think the concept of the unreliable narrator that drove the popularity of books like Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and Woman in Cabin 10 has been overdone now. It is a fun concept, but it was nice to read a mystery/thriller with a strong and reliable female main character.

Right from the beginning, you know that there will be a few different mysteries included in this story. Trace of Evil begins with Detective Natalie Lockhart visiting her murdered sister’s grave. This visit actually leads to a potential clue in the cold cases of nine missing individuals that she has been investigating. However, her investigation quickly gets shelved by a new investigation, when a fellow detective’s wife is found murdered. While investigating this murder, she uncovers lots of secrets in the town including her own niece’s involvement in occult activity.

What I loved about this book is that it contained so many mysteries, but that the plot still flowed smoothly and kept me riveted. Who killed Detective Buckner’s wife, Daisy? What happened to the “Missing Nine”? Is the right person serving time for Natalie’s sister’s murder? Is Natalie’s niece in danger? I never had a clue how the mysteries would be solved or who the bad guys were. There were so many interesting characters and many secrets being held by all.

I literally ignored my husband to sit and finish this book, because I just had to know how it ended. The last portion of the book was so gripping and ultimately surprising and fulfilling. I thought this was a fantastic read! I highly recommend it!

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Book Review: The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Title: The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 
Author: Stuart Turton
Genre: Mystery, Fantasy
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Publication Date: February 8, 2018
Pages: 432
Format Read: Ebook
Standalone or series: standalone
Where I got the book: Amazon Kindle
Date finished reading: January 14, 2020

Goodreads Description: “Gosford Park” meets “Groundhog Day” by way of Agatha Christie – the most inventive story you’ll read this year.

Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed… again.

It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.

But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath…

My Review: Note: This review may include some spoilers! This book was picked by a member of my book club for our group to read. It had been on my TBR for more than a year, so I was excited to finally pick it up.

7 ½ Deaths has a strong beginning. The reader is immediately thrown into an intense situation. A few members of my book club were disappointed that it started with the main character having amnesia, as the concept of an unreliable narrator seems to be overdone lately. However, what I found interesting about the main character having amnesia was that he didn’t just seem to not know the people or scene around him, but he didn’t even recognize his own body. That made me think that maybe it was not his own body. And that my friends was the first of a few twists and turns in this book. The main character is forced to relive the same day 8 times in 8 different bodies to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle.

This book definitely had an Agatha Christie feel (house full of suspicious characters where a murder takes place) mixed with a bit of the fantastical like in the Netflix series Black Mirror. If you read any interviews or bios about the author, he is a huge video gamer, and this book felt very much like video game, where you have 8 lives to complete the mission.

I desperately wanted the answers to all my many questions like: Why was the main character, Aidan, being forced to solve this mystery? Who is Aidan, since he is not any of the bodies that he inhabits? Who does murder Evelyn Hardcastle? Is she murdered? With this need to have my questions answered, I read through to the very end, but I cannot say that I enjoyed the trip. There were so many characters (most of them not very redeemable characters) and the time hopping got a bit frustrating at times. One book club member dislikes time travel in books due to causality issues. I feel that there were a few of those issues in this book. About halfway through the book I really stopped caring about what was happening. I just wanted to get to the end. Even Aidan, in one of the end scenes, states, “Everything is a clutter – too many days, too many conversations.” He is not wrong.

By the time I got to the end, I was not quite sure how I wanted the mystery to play out or if I even cared. There were some twists at the end that I did not see coming, but that did not make up for the effort it took to get there. This book while incredibly unique is very involved and was just felt very meh to me.

Those who have read this, how did you feel about this book? How did you feel about the ending – particularly about Anna and Aidan leaving the past in the past and deciding to have a future together?

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Book Review: She Lies in Wait

Title: She Lies in Wait
Author: Gytha Lodge
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: January 8, 2019
Pages: 368
Format Read: ebook
Standalone or series: Book 1 of the DCI Jonah Sheens series
Where I got the book: Netgalley ARC
Date finished reading: February 11, 2019

Goodreads Description: On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.

Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.

My Review: The setup of this mystery is fantastic. A body is found of a young girl, Aurora, who has been missing for 30 years. The night Aurora disappeared, she was camping with her sister, Topaz, and her sister’s friends: JoJo, Brett, Connor, Coralie and Benners. When Aurora’s body is found, this group of friends returns to Southampton and the scene of the disappearance. As the police team, led by DCI Jonah Sheens, starts piecing together what occurred that night that led to Aurora’s death, more questions and concerns arise. What role did drugs play in what occurred that night? What was Aurora’s relationship with her teacher, who had been conveniently camping near Aurora that night she disappeared? Did JoJo’s husband die from a climbing accident or was it murder?

Trigger warning for sexual assault. After analyzing Aurora’s body, it is discovered that she had been sexually assaulted. After interviewing a former childhood friend of Aurora’s, it was discovered that that friend had also been sexually assaulted just a few days before Aurora went missing.

There were so many pieces of this mystery, that by the end of the story, I had no clue what had actually happened to Aurora. The reader can also tell that this is the beginning of a series, because character side stories are mentioned that do not really support the movement of the plot. In some ways I think there may have been too many pieces of this story, but it definitely kept the mystery alive and the plot thrilling.

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

 

Book Review: The Silent Patient

Title: The Silent Patient
Author: Alex Michaelides
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Caledon Books
Publication Date: February 5, 2019
Pages: 336
Format Read: ARC Book
Standalone or series: Standalone
Where I got the book: Book Riot Giveaway
Date finished reading:  February 4, 2019

Goodreads Description: Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him….

My Review: I received this Advance Reader’s Copy from a Book Riot giveaway. The overall premise was fascinating – girl (Alicia Berenson) convicted of murdering her husband does not speak afterwards at all, and her psychotherapist (Theo Farber) works to get to the bottom of her silence. As more characters are introduced throughout the book, you begin to doubt that Alicia is actually guilty. However, I actually never really doubted it. While this was an enjoyable quick read, I still had a few issues about the plot and conclusion.

What I was confused about throughout much of the book was why Theo Faber cared so much about Alicia Berenson. He seemed a bit obsessed with her. Plus, the author kept focusing on Theo’s home life and his marriage, when I just couldn’t understand what that had to do with anything. All of that becomes clear in the conclusion of the book. That it is all connected. However, I don’t understand how the timeline matches. Theo goes to work, where he has sessions with Alicia, and then goes home and finds out that his wife is cheating on him, only that part had already happened in the past. How is the reader suppose to know that that was the past. This hiccup in the timeline made the ending less than satisfying for me. I’m sure it was suppose to be a clever attempt at tricking the reader, but I just found it disappointing. I give this read a meh.

My Rating: ♦ ♦ ♦

WWW Wednesdays – October 17, 2018

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Time for another WWW Wednesdays, which is brought to you by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. If you too want to participate, answer the above questions and post that link on Sam’s page.

I didn’t read much this week again, because I went on a mini holiday to visit family, but I am looking forward to catching up on all my NetGalleys, book club reads, and Fall Reading list this upcoming weekend during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. Due to my intense work schedule and the fact that my body does not like me to pull all-nighters anymore, I won’t be able to read the entire 24 hours, but I intend to read most of Saturday. I will be creating my pre-readathon post in the next day or two.

Currently Reading

Finished Reading

Out by Natsuo Kirino – book

Four women that work together at a factory outside of Tokyo, Japan conspire together to cover up a murder. This story follows these women and how the murder cover-up changes their lives and the lives of others that have connections to the women or to the murdered individual.

I read this book for an IRL mystery book club. While the story is disturbing (so many trigger warnings) and a bit depressing, I found that I still wanted to continue to read it to find out what happens to the four women and whether they really would get away with this crime. It may seem boring and tedious at points, but I believe those pages really help the reader understand the lives of the characters. No character is innocent, so you really don’t know who to root for. Another trigger warning – the end is just as disturbing (if not more so) as the beginning. It is a clever book and not like anything I have read before.

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan – audiobook

Ella Duran from the United States earns a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for a year toward a graduate degree. She is a very ambitious political activist for education but always wanted to study at Oxford so does not hesitate to accept the Rhodes scholarship. While at Oxford, she meets a group of animated characters and develops an attraction to one of her professors. She juggles her Oxford life and her US educational policy ambitions, but begins to realize that Oxford is starting to change her and her life goals.

As someone who studied abroad every opportunity I had and absolutely loved Oxford when I visited last year, I had to read this book. It starts by painting this amazing picture of Oxford, which is in fact a stunning place, and English culture. I found myself laughing at Ella’s interactions with her English classmates and some of the locals. I can’t believe I never noticed how my British friends use negative adjectives to describe something positive (ex. “that is terribly brilliant”). This story soon turned into a romantic story. I didn’t read the blurb that compares this story to a Nicholas Sparks or JoJo Moyes book, so I was a bit caught off guard when the story turned from mysterious to a bit sad. (I may have shed a few tears while listening to it at work). Normally I don’t gravitate to these types of books, however, by that point, I was so invested in all the lovely characters that I had to see the book all the way through. It was amazing. So many emotions, but I loved every moment of it.

Reading Next

I hope you all had a fantastic week of reading! Any thoughts on the books I’ve listed? What are y’all reading? If I haven’t already commented on your WWW post, please include it in the comments below and maybe some of you will be reading with me during the readathon this weekend.

HAPPY READING!!!

Halloween Movies 2017

my October book display at work

I’m continuing the tradition of watching Halloween-themed and scary movies in the month of October.  My list contains a wide variety of movies that I’m looking forward to.

• 28 Days Later – George Romero got me hooked on the zombie phenomenon. Someone recommended this movie as someone who enjoys zombie flicks.
• The Birds – Hitchcock should always make the list.
• Cabin in the Woods – I always enjoy this movie.
• The Conjuring – I’m most nervous about this one. I imagine I may be hiding under a blanket during most of this movie.
• Halloweentown High – Silly Halloween choice, but I’m a huge Debbie Reynolds fan.
• The Haunting – 1999 version
• House on Telegraph Hill – 1951 psychological thriller
• Rocky Horror Picture Show – I just found out that my husband has never seen this movie, so I have to rectify this.
• Zombieland

Prior to October, I did rewatch the original IT miniseries just in case I decided to go see the new version in the movie theater. Has anyone seen the new one? How is it? What are your other favorite movies to watch at this time of year?