August book reviews (almost to goal)

I slowed down a bit reading in August but did read 6 books as reviewed below.  This puts my total books read for the year at 49.  I think I'll make the 50 books I challenged myself to read by the end of the year :)

Kitchen Yarns:  

This was a delightful book.  I think maybe Lori had mentioned it on her blog?  Ann Hood, the author, wrote mini essays (a chapter each) of foods she enjoyed from growing up to adulthood and beyond.  Foods her grandmother, mother, and father had made; foods she had made.  Recipes she had found and had adapted to be her own.  At the end of each chapter was the corresponding recipes for the foods she had talked about.  The essays aren't in any particular order.  Some from her childhood, then to being a young adult, a mom with young children, etc.  Always a life story along with the food impressionable to her at the time.  I really enjoyed this book and the recipes, for the most part, seemed simple and easy to put together.  I can't wait to try some of them, especially the blueberry muffins from her time as a Marsha Jordan girl. For an easy summer read or anytime of the year, I would highly recommend this book.  I give it 5 stars.

Three More Months:

Chloe is a busy pharmacist living in a different town than her mom.  She has been neglecting spending time with her mom due to being busy but plans to take a weekend soon to go visit her.  In the meantime, her mom dies.  Chloe now has to go home (about 3 hours from where she was currently living) to tend to the funeral arrangements with her brother, Andy.  Devastated with grief, they wonder how they'll get through life without their mom and Chloe also feels the guilt of not visiting her mom more.  By some miracle, she wakes up one morning before the funeral and sees she has gone back in time of about 2 months and her mom is still alive.  Over the course of the book, she tries to keep her mom alive through healthy food cooking class, exercising, and mindful meditation.  She is always anxious, wondering if something will again happen to her mom.  She plans a wonderful birthday surprise for her mom and a trip to a place her mom always wanted to go to.  They have a lovely vacation but then she wakes up again on another morning and her mom is now dead again.  She wasn't sure if she had dreamed the extra 3 months she had with her mom or if it was just a fluke in the universe but she was grateful for that time.  An interesting story.  I got a little tired of the continual writing of how much guilt Chloe had about not spending time with her mom and how she had to do everything to try to keep her mom alive, but the story was engaging and the book did wrap up at the end.  I'll give it 3 stars.

The House Across the Lake: 

This is the description of the book from Goodreads:  Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.  One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.  With his trademark blend of sharp characters, psychological suspense, and gasp-worthy surprises, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake unveils more than one twist that will shock readers until the very last page.

 

Sounded like an interesting thriller and it was up to a point, but BIG SPOILER ALERT.  Casey had discovered 14 months prior that her husband was a serial killer, killing 3 women in the area and dumping their bodies in the lake.  Her intent was to turn him into the police, but instead she kills him by giving him lots of antihistamines and then taking him out to the middle of the lake and pushing him out of the boat, drowning him.  She starts drinking a lot because she can't handle the guilt of killing him or knowing he killed 3 other women (though she did not turn him in because then it might have been suspicious with his death).  Meanwhile, she does rescue Katherine from drowning.  We find out that Katherine's husband, Tom, is poisoning her slowly but in the meantime when she was in the lake, potentially drowning, she became possessed with the spirit of Len.  Now this is when I should have stopped reading the book because I do not care for these particular plots but it was about 70% into the book and I had to see how it ended.  I won't give any more spoilers (gave enough) but the book does rap up, no loose ends, but there are not pleasant parts of the last few chapters until the last epilogue we will call it.  I would never have checked out the book if I knew the plot would develop like this. I give it a 1 star because of my not liking books like this.  It was a thriller for sure and nicely written.  But just definitely not my kind of book. 

The Summer Place:

The story involves the matriarch of the family, Ronnie, her twins (Sam and Sarah), Sarah's husband (Eli), Ruby (Eli's daughter), Gabe (Ruby's fiancee) and Rosa (Gabe's mom.  Ruby and Gabe are planning to be married in Cape Cod at the family summer place where Ronnie has been hanging out since the pandemic began . Now that life is getting back to more normal, the family is looking forward to the summer wedding though each of the main characters have secrets from the past that potentially could come and expose them during the wedding weekend.  It does somewhat end "happily ever after" but there are lots of different twists to the story and a bit of sadness along the way.  A good summer read.  I give it 4 stars.  

Malibu Rising:  

I believe Bijoux mentioned this book and I'm glad she did as it was truly a delightful story to read.  I got "lost" in it and had trouble putting it down.  It is  a fictional story of a famous singer who had 4 children but could not remain faithful to his wife.  The story is told in the then and now with the now being centered around a party that the oldest child, now 25 years old, holds yearly at her home in Malibu, and the closeness she and her 3 siblings have with each other and the reason for their close bond.  The story was well written and had a good ending.  Definitely a great summer read.  I give it 5 stars.  

Any Other Family:

Another book I truly enjoyed.  Three families adopt siblings who are biologically related and resolve to try to have the siblings remain close to each other though raised in separate homes.  The "family" get together for holidays, weekly dinners and other events.  The story centers around their first vacation taken as a family and the dynamics of that as well as the birth mom of the four siblings (a set of twins) is pregnant again and has decided not to raise this child so the family has to decide if one of them will adopt the baby or introduce another family into their family.  Interspersed within the story are profiles of the people who are working with the adoption agency who are looking for a child and their reasons to adopt (took me a few of these profiles to get what they were).  The book doesn't resolve who the family is who will adopt the new sibling but alludes that a family has been picked.  Since I have 2 adopted children, this topic was  of interest to me (though both of mine were closed adoptions). A great read.  I give it 5 stars.  

I can't believe we are in September already! We'll blink and it will be Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas! Wow!

August, a losing month

We lost one of our steak knives.  It was old, not fancy, one of three knives left from that set.  We have another set of eight, all those are accounted for.  But it is a bit disconcerting wondering what happened to this one.  I'm not sure how long it has been missing but I noticed it was gone today when I was unstacking the dishes from the dishwasher.  Our sharp knives are kept in another drawer away from the other utensils for safety purposes.  As I went to put the knives away, I put away the two that had been washed and there was not a third that should have been in the drawer.  I mentioned it to hubby who said when he had used one of the knives the other day for cooking, he noticed there were only two in the drawer and he had run the dishwasher and unstacked it that morning before he began cooking.  A mystery.  

August must be the month I lose things because I misplaced (lost) the key to a storage closet at work.  We get our termed employees from the divisions across the country in boxes like this.  

 There is only a small area in the office where we keep the files we are working on.  We usually open the boxes and take out the files, stack them in this little area, process them, and scan them.  If we get an overload of boxes and no room to unpack them, then we put them in an overflow room we fondly call "the closet".  For the past year I have had the key in my desk drawer when not needed.  When I need to go to the closet to drop off or pick up boxes, I usually keep the key in my pants pocket, open the door, get what I need, take the key out of the door, put it back in my pocket and then when I get back to the work area, I put the key back in the desk drawer.  The few times that I have forgotten to put the key back and saw that it was in my pocket at the end of the day after I had left work already, I usually put the key in my backpack in the zippered pouch where my license and debit card is kept, so that I know I'll have the key with me when I go to work the next day, in which case I take the key out of the backpack and put it back in the drawer.

But this past week when I went to look for the key to take some boxes to the closet, the key was not in the drawer.  It had been about a week since I had used it.  I scoured all the desk drawers to make sure I had not put it in another one.  I took apart my backpack three or four (or five or six) times to make sure it wasn't in there.  It wasn't.  I can see the key.  I can sort of remember the last time I used it but I can't place where it is.  I may have left it in the closet when I was retrieving boxes.  But I'm not 100% sure and it wasn't the normal pattern I do.  So it is a mystery. (No problem to get another one.  Facilities at work has been contacted and are working on replacing it).

I don't like losing things.  No one does.  I'm more concerned with the knife missing (we looked in the dishwasher).  Maybe it will surface.  Maybe it won't.  And if it doesn't, it will continue to be a mystery.  

And now I'm wondering if there will be a third item that comes up missing.  August still has ten more days to it.  

When was the last thing you lost? And did you ever find it? 

July book reviews

 July was a prolific reading month with my reading of 8 books.  It is probably because it is so hot here there is nothing much to do but read :)

Summer Island:  

Nora, now a successful radio talk host who gives sincere advice to those who call in to her program, but left her husband and children 11 years prior, has an affair exposed from her past and she is put on leave from her talk show.  Mortified at the events, she ends up drinking a little too much and getting into an accident.  The only one available to help her in her recovery is her daughter who has not spoken to her in 11 years and has returned all Christmas and birthday gifts during that time.  They go back to their summer house on the island and try to attempt to fix their relationship.  Intermingled with the plot are 2 brothers who were childhood friends of Ruby (the daughter) and her sister (Caroline) who is now married and the mother of 2 young children.  Kristin Hannah, the author, is a favorite of mine and I have read pretty much all her books.  I almost burnt down the house when reading Winter Garden as I forgot I had eggs and potatoes cooking to make potato salad.  Anyway, this is just as good as any of her other books.  Her recent novel, Four Winds, is also very good.  I read that probably the latter part of 2021.  Highly recommend anything by Kristin Hannah and would give this book 5 stars. 

Blood, Bones, and Butter:  

This is the memoir of Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of Prune, a very successful restaurant in New York City.  Lori had read it.  This was the month I decided to read out of my usual genre which included either a biography or a memoir so I decided to check this book out.  I had no idea who Gabrielle Hamilton was when I got the book but I so enjoyed reading her memoir.  She had a difficult childhood, young adulthood, career in the culinary industry including owning and running her restaurant.  She married an Italian man with whom she had 2 boys and spent the month of July every year in Italy with his large extended Italian family.  She wrote very well her experiences of her life.  Thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I was not familiar with her restaurant, so I googled it (what would we do without Google) and saw that it was temporarily closed.  She wrote a very extensive article, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html, for the New York Times about closing her restaurant during the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  I had seen some other articles that perhaps Prune would be reopening, but could find nothing that substantiated it.  I'll let the reader learn why the restaurant was called Prune.  I would give the book 5 stars. 

The Latecomer:  

This is the story of Johanna and Solomon (Salo) Oppenheimer.  Their courtship, marriage, attempt to start a family, their ability to have a family through the help of in vitro fertilization with the subsequent birth of triplets.  Then the book switches to the triplets in their last year of high school and their college years.  Oddly the triplets are not close and resent each other and are glad to be out of high school, forging their own lives.  There were four eggs harvested at the time of the triplets birth.  After the triplets graduate from high school, Johanna decides to have the fourth egg as the fourth child in the family, this time using a surrogate.  The second half of the book tells of the "latecomer" (the fourth child) in her senior year with some unusual twists to the story along the way.  This was probably in the top 5 of the best books I've read so far this year.  Highly recommend this story.  Very well written, thoroughly enjoyed it.  Would give it 5 stars.

French Braid:  

I have read books from the author before.  This was unique in that it told a story of a family (Mercy and Robin Garrett and their 3 children) but it told it in separate stories focusing on one aspect of their lives at a time in that individual story.  For instance, a chapter was devoted to a family vacation they took back in 1959 and then another chapter would be of an event that happened in 2010.  Once I got the gist of it going back and forth like that and each chapter was an individual story, it made reading it a little more sense but I was confused for a chapter or two (the chapters are long, at least 20 pages each).  Each chapter was interesting but on a whole I didn't enjoy the book because there wasn't a consistent flow through it if that makes sense. I'll give it a 3 stars.

Hanging Woman Creek:  

I told Jack that I would read a Western some time this year as he enjoys reading that genre.  I have to be honest.  I didn't know any Western authors so I googled "Western authors" and Louis L'Amour's name came up.  I had heard of him.  I looked at all the books our e-library offered of his (quite a collection) but settled on this one since it was based out of Montana and I used to live there.  It tells the story of Pike and his friend, Eddie, who were hired to watch over a rancher's cows during the winter months but trouble comes their way in rustlers trying to steal cows from not only that ranch but other ranchers around the area.  Gunfights ensue with lots of loss of life.  There is a love interest in the story for Pike and to coin a phrase from popular fairy tales "they all lived happily ever after" though there is also sadness with the deaths of some key characters in the book.  It was an interesting read.  I'll give it 4 stars.

Two Little Girls: 

 

Lizzie and Dan have 2 daughters, Portia and Becca.  The story begins with Lizzie and the daughters finishing up a mini vacation they had together on a school break.  As Lizzie is driving them back home, she gets into an auto accident where the car plunges into a lake and she can only save herself and one of her daughters.  It take a couple of chapters to reveal which daughter is saved.  The remainder of the book deals with the grief of losing their other daughter as well as a bit of a thriller with perhaps the accident wasn't truly an accident but intentional.  I don't want to give away too much more of the plot to spoil it for anyone who might decide to read it.  It held my interest, it wrapped up the story at the end of the book, so I give it 4 stars.

A Beautiful Terrible Thing:

This is a memoir detailing a relationship the author had with a man who eventually became her husband.  He basically worshiped her for the years they were together but suddenly became cold and distant and his social media and other records indicated he might be having an affair, something he vehemently denied for a long time.  She finally found an email from an apartment broker who was trying to help him and his girlfriend find a place together and she started putting the pieces of the puzzle together.  She had just given birth to their daughter when this all began to unravel.  The author, Jen Waite, of course is devastated and she is trying to figure out what went wrong with their relationship, etc.  She finally, through research, decided he was either a sociopath or a psychopath.  She tells the story in sections before and after.  How their life was before she found out about the affair, and then after she found out and how she was dealing with it and then her trying to pick up the pieces afterward.  She eventually gets to a place of healing with the help of a therapist, her parents, family and friends.  It was an interesting sad story.  I kept reading it  because I wanted to find out what next happened, kind of like you drive by an accident and are prone to want to slow down and stare at what is going on.  I give it 5 stars for her bravery to write something so personal but 3 stars overall with my "enjoyment" of it.  

Out of the Clear Blue Sky:  

From the first few paragraphs of this book, I was hooked and almost had trouble putting the book down.  It tells the story of Lilie who has been happily married for 19 years facing her husband having an affair with a "gold digger" and the husband wants to leave the marriage and marry that woman.  Lilie's and Brad's only child, Dylan, is graduating high school and going off to college in another state come fall.  It is a delightful story told over the next few months of her dealing with the breakup, of her work as a midwife, of the story of the "gold digger" who enticed her husband away from her.  I truly enjoyed this book very much.  A good summer read.  I rate it 5 stars.  

So far, I have read 43 books of the 50 I challenged myself to for the year.  I think I'll reach the goal by the end of December if not sooner :) 

As always, let me know if you have any good books you would recommend.  

The Lottery

By now, probably everyone has heard that someone won that huge MegaMillions jackpot of approximately 1.34 billion.  I didn't buy any tickets for it, did you? 

In the past, we have bought tickets for various lotteries when they have amounted to big payouts, but it's like throwing money out to the wind, lol.  When looking at the numbers on our "winning" numbers purchased against the "winning" numbers on the actual winning tickets, we barely matched one number, let alone the entirety of numbers needed to get the big payout.  I think over time we have learned to save our money and not buy any tickets.

It is fun to dream though of what we would do if we won such a lottery.  This morning I read this article about 10 people who had won the lottery but wished they hadn't in the long run.  The article also stated that the majority of people who win a lottery run through their winnings within 7 years, albeit it their winnings were not quite as big as last night's drawing. 

Every time we dream about what we would do with the money, our dreams have changed.  There are the usual things we would do.  Pay off all our debt (not much we have in the first place), remodel parts of the 2 houses we have, maybe buy a new car or two, take a vacation; that sort of thing.  We have included at times setting up foundations or charities for different causes we both support.  And then of course setting up trust accounts for the grand kids college funds.  This time around when we dreamt about what to do with all that money, I said it might be nice to buy 20 houses and then rent them out to those struggling to make rent here in Phoenix (which has gone up significantly in the last 2 years) and give them an incentive if they kept the place up nice, they would get a refund of their rent quarterly.  It could be a win-win situation.  We would get a steady source of income (not that we would need it if we would millions) but we might be helping others in the process.  

In the long run, though, I'm pretty content with all the blessings God has given me.  We have a nice place to live, plenty of food to eat, cars that drive us around safely, a variety of clothes to wear, and so much more.  It might be nice to have a cabin in the woods here to escape the summer heat.  But other than that, I don't really care to travel much and especially not by air (airplanes are not my friends).  Perhaps maybe a motorhome with a car to tow behind it to travel the states and Canada.  I enjoy a minimalistic lifestyle, so I can't imagine myself going crazy and buying a lot of clothes, household items, etc.  Besides, I couldn't take them with me when I pass and someone else would be left to deal with disposing them.  

I came to the conclusion a few months back that I'm glad I don't have a lot of money.  We have what we need and a little bit more.  And I trust God will provide my every need as His word clearly states He will.  

So, congrats to the person who won the MegaMillions. Congrats to other lottery winners past, present, and future.  

But for me, I'll save my money or go and buy yogurt or some other little treat with the money I would have spent on a ticket and sometimes think and talk about the "impossible dream" with what we would do if we won so much money.  But as they say, talk is cheap.  

(trying to) let go

There was a time when we watched grandson a lot more than we do these days.  When he was a newborn and through to his preschool days we pretty much watched him two or three days/evenings a week or he was over playing during that time.  So naturally we had toys for him to play with, appropriate ones for whatever age he was at the time.  He is now six years old and has outgrown some of the recent toys he used to play with.  The rattles and the baby toys have been donated or passed on a few years back and I need to donate/pass on some of the toys he played with as a preschooler because he has moved on from playing with them but I can't let them go because of the fun times we had with them.

We had a lot of the Little People toys.  Like this airplane.  We did many an adventure with it and a few crashes along the way.  When you put the pilot in the pilot's seat in the front, songs would play.  The Little People danced many a dance.  How can I part with this?

Or this fire truck? We put out so many fires with it and saved so many communities.

Or the circus train where we put all the Little People we had in there to escape from the lava, going back to rescue those we had left behind, making sure all were safe and secure.

And the Mega Block towers we built, trying to build them as high as we could without them falling over.

And the army men who we would set up to do battle against each other, only to have them all knocked down, to reset them again, time after time.

Some of the books we would read before bedtime when he would be picked up late in the night after a shift at the restaurant son worked at.

The puzzles built.

The shopping cart that he would fill up with toys to take from one room to another to play with.  The many miles traveled from room to room when he was just learning to walk.

And my personal all time favorite.  The bath toy penguins.  When he would be picked up late, we would bathe him and have him ready for bed.  He loved his baths.  These toys were the best.  Water squirted out of the hats of the penguins.  The rings floated with the penguins in them.  He would spend a good 45 minutes in the bathtub playing.  With schedule changes and the like, we stopped giving him baths a few years ago and now at age six, he takes showers and prefers his privacy now that he has matured :) 

And so many others on these shelves.  Most he hasn't played with in a little while or will pull them out and play with them for a little bit then put them back.  

Now he is into Legos (we do have a big bin of them) and games on my phone (a whole different post for another day) but so many of these toys are part of yesteryear.  I know it is time to sort through them and pass them on or pack them away for another generation as their family is complete, but I am having trouble parting with them.....

I'll eventually figure out what to do with them.  So many fun days of play.  So many fun days ahead with what interests he will continue to develop as he grows.  Thankful we can be such an integral part of his growing up times, even if it means the hot desert heat  four months of the year.

(Some of my long time readers who have been with me from previous blogs might remember some of these toys as I did a couple of blog posts about them being his favorite back on my "A Bench with a View" blog).  

(Note, we keep the pool toys inside just in case of a monsoon with the high winds we can get.  Before, when we kept them outside, they would blow all over the backyard.)

(Yes, this is the room where the treadmill is.  He had his toys in the den when he was a baby but as he became mobile, he somehow always wanted to play in the "treadmill room" as we call it.  So I eventually moved all his toys there and it is considered also his playroom).  

I had a helper when I was putting this post together.  

Enjoy each day that is given to you.  They truly do pass in the blink of an eye!

games corgis play

Not sure if all corgis play these games, but here are some of Winslow's favorite ones he enjoys playing (over and over and over again).

Most of you know that he enjoys playing fetch and most of you know that he is incredibly spoiled when it comes to things to fetch.  (Squeaky toys and tennis balls come to mind).  Now that it is so beastly hot outside, we play a lot of fetch inside the house.  He'll fetch a few balls or squeaky toys outside once the sun goes down and it cools down a degree or two. 

As part of fetch, he will actually involve both of us in his game.  I may be sitting by my computer and my husband at the kitchen table.  Separate rooms.  Winslow will bring something to fetch to me or my husband.  We will throw it to the next room and then Winslow will retrieve it and bring that toy to the person sitting in the other room.  Back and forth he will bring us the toys; interacting with the two of us.  I think that is clever, but maybe not? 

For breakfast, I usually rotate between oatmeal/hardboiled egg or yogurt/hard boiled egg.  I eat the oatmeal or yogurt first, then the egg.  I will save a few little pieces of the egg for Winslow.  (It is safe for him to eat).  I do not know how he knows when I am finishing up with the oatmeal or yogurt as he will be quietly sitting on the floor, but some inner sense or sound I make alerts him to the fact that I'm about to crack open the egg.  He will start circling around my feet like a shark circling in the water until he gets the few little bits in his food bowl.  One time a week (usually Sundays or perhaps Fridays) he gets his own hard boiled egg.  I will cut it up in his bowl.  He will eat it in 13 seconds or less.  Then he will look at me expecting to get some of my egg (which of course because he is spoiled, I will give him a bite or two).  They say a corgi never forgets a food source.  Winslow is living proof of that.

Now that it is beastly hot outside, my husband has been walking Winslow earlier in the morning, around 6 a.m.  At that time I'm on the treadmill, then I'll take a shower and get ready for work.  When they get home, we have breakfast, then I take off.  Winslow and me play hide and seek when he comes back from his walk.  I see them pulling up in the car (hubby drives to a local park to walk him) and I hide some place in the house.  After Winslow gets off his leash, my husband says "go find mom" and Winslow runs through the house looking for me.  He is good at finding me pretty quickly except when I am hiding in my bathroom.  I close the door just a little bit and hide behind it.  For some reason he won't come into the bathroom but will stand right by the door and bark if he thinks I'm in there.  Then I'll come out and he has found me.  

This may look like a weird picture like he is biting at my shoes.  He is not. 

Between my feet I am holding one of these chew toys that we get for him.  They start out this big but as he chews on them, they obviously get smaller.  He is so spoiled, we will actually hold it between our feet so he can chew on them more.  

Here, he is holding one himself.  You can see how much smaller than the original size.  

And a closer look.  

He has me wrapped around his little paw.  He will hear a noise outside and want to go to the back door to get outside to check it out.  He will run to the back door, bark at whatever he thinks he saw or heard, and if someone doesn't come to let him out, he will come to me (usually) and just stare at me with those adorable eyes he has until I get up and let him out.  Yes, he is spoiled.  You all know that. 

And those are some of the games that this corgi plays.  He definitely keeps us entertained and on our toes a lot.  I wouldn't have it any other way with him.  

June Books

I was surprised to see that I read 7 books in June.  I had some weekends where we didn't do much so I took advantage of reading a lot.  I guess that is why I got through 7 books.  And without further ado, here's June's review (a little rhyme lol)

The Lake of Dead Languages: 

Lori recommended this book.  It is written in the then and now.  The main character Jane is a Latin teacher at a girl's boarding school.  She had gone to that school when she was a teenager and had won a scholarship to it after a Latin competition.  Another student, Lucy, and her brother, Matt, befriend her and help her with Latin.  The story is told of their friendship and the school and the lake around it and then of her returning to the school as a teacher with a young daughter and that experience she has as a former student, now a teacher and her interactions with her students.  Lots of interesting twists with the story line and totally unexpected last few chapters.  Another very good read.  I give it 5 stars.  

The Last House on the Street:  

This was recommended by I think Jeanette.  It is again written in the then and now.  The then is back in about 1965 when a voting bill to get African American people registered was going to be signed.  The main character of the then, Ellie, volunteers to help get the info out to African Americans to register.  The story takes place in North Carolina.  The now's main character is Kayla, who is an architect and she and her husband build their dream house in an area of town that had once had a lot of woods around it.  Her husband had died at a tragic accident in the house but she and her young daughter still move in to to the house though she is reluctant to do so.  There is more of the story of events that happened in the woods back in the 1960s that come to light as the story goes on.  Very good read.  I give it 5 stars.

The Good Son:  

A teenage boy is convicted of killing his girlfriend though he doesn't remember doing it as he was on drugs at the time.  He is sentenced to a few years in prison.  The story begins with him getting out of prison and then trying to rebuild his life.  The story is told by his mom.  He is trying to redeem himself for what he did, at the same time the family is being stalked by someone who seems to imply there is more to the story of who actually killed his girlfriend.  This was a hardcover book I was reading at bed and I really had a hard time getting into it.  I should have put it aside but I kept reading it and finally made myself read so many pages nightly to finish it . I finished the last 70 pages one Saturday afternoon.  It was a strange twist to the story that I had not anticipated.  The story was well written and very thought provoking but hard for me to get into.  I give it 3 stars.  

The Love of My Life:  

The first half of this book was really hard to get into.  It tells the story of Emma who is married and has a 3 year old daughter, but there is some secrecy going on with her and her husband is trying to figure out if he truly does know the woman he has been married to for the past 10 years.  Then the second half of the book starts telling her story before she got married and it was very interesting from that point on.  A couple twists in the plot I didn't see coming.  All in all it was a good book if you get through the first about 45% of it.  I give it 4 stars.  

One True Loves: 

The main character is married to the love of her life who supposedly dies in a helicopter crash.  She recovers from her grief and a few years later falls in love with another man and they are planning to get married.  Then it is discovered that her husband did not die but had been on a deserted island for a few years before he got rescued.  She now has to decide if she will stay with her husband or go with her intended fiancée.  Good story told in the here and now and in the past.  Good ending that was realistic and believable.  I give it 5 stars for a good summer love story read.

Brand New Human Being:

I needed a book to read while I was waiting for some of my holds to be released so I found this book while looking at my e-library site.  It told the story of Logan, a stay at home dad raising his 4 year old son while his wife, a lawyer working on an important case, always seemed to be working and seemed a bit distant to him.  He is grieving his dad who died 4 months ago and has issues dealing with his dad's young wife, his step mom.  It was an interesting read but I'm not sure exactly what the plot was and it was one of those books that just kind of ends.  Not too much gets wrapped up.  It was a quick read (I read it over a weekend).  I'd give it 3 stars if you needed something to read and couldn't find anything else.

My Darling Husband:

This was a thriller.  The story basically took over about a 5 hour time span.  A young mom and her 2 children are involved in a home invasion/hostage type situation with a demand of ransom from the successful chef husband/father who owns 5 steak restaurants in the Atlanta area.  Over the period of time, the husband is desperate to try to collect the ransom money and get there in time to save his wife and children while the wife is desperate to keep her 2 children and herself alive.  As the story progresses we get glimpses of who the intruder is and why he is demanding the ransom, etc.  It was indeed a thriller of a story with the usual few unexpected twists.  It had one of those endings I'm not fond of where things aren't wrapped up.  Maybe a sequel?  I will give it as a summer read 4 stars.

As always, let me know what you are reading or have read that you would recommend.  And stay tune for August's review of July's books.  Doing a few things differently this month with what I'm reading. 

Happy Fourth of July!