Its Monday! What Are You Reading?

The Its Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life…

It’s been a busy week for me, I’ve had sick children at home during the week, got to meet and share a coffee with author Karly Lane when she came to speak at my library and over the weekend and I took my friends three children, for whom I provide respite care, whale watching! Unfortunately the juvenile humpback whales were a little shy and the weather was a bit dicey, but we did get a glimpse or two, as you can see below.

Such a full week (and a book that was quite a slog) meant I fell a little behind  in my schedule, so I will have to work hard to catch up this week!

What I Read Last Week

Midwinter Blood by Mons Kallentoft ★★

Dead Time by Anne Cassidy ★★1/2

My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson ★★★1/2

Jilted By Rachael Johns ★★★★

Impractical Jokes by Charlie Pickering ★★★

Reviews Posted

(click the titles to read  my reviews) 

The Namesake by Conor Fitzgerald ★★★1/2

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn ★★★★★

Midwinter Blood by Mons Kallentoft ★★

My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson (Part 1) ★★★1/2

Dead Time by Anne Cassidy ★★1/2

**AWW Feature: Nicole Trope**

What I Am Reading Today

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

I’m putting the drill back in the safe when my fingers touch something unexpected—paper. An envelope. I take it out. Where an address should be, my name is written in Gus’s unmistakable, back-slanting hand.
Meet Logan Pyle, a lapsed grad student and stay-at-home dad who’s holding it together by a thread. His father, Gus, has died; his wife, Julie, has grown distant; his four-year-old son has gone back to drinking from a bottle. When he finds Julie kissing another man on a pile of coats at a party, the thread snaps. Logan packs a bag, buckles his son into his car seat, and heads north with a 1930s Lousville Slugger in the back of his truck, a maxed-out credit card in his wallet, and revenge in his heart. After some bad decisions and worse luck, he lands at his father’s old A-frame cabin, where his father’s young widow, Bennie, now lives. She has every reason to turn Logan away, but when she doesn’t, she opens the door to unexpected redemption—for both of them.

What I Plan To Read This Week

It isn’t often you receive a letter from the dead. When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop. But Vianne is completely unprepared for what she finds there. Women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea, and there, on the bank of the river Tannes, facing the square little tower of the church of Saint-Jerome like a piece on a chessboard – slender, bone-white and crowned with a silver crescent moon – a minaret. Nor is it only the incomers from North Africa that have brought big changes to the community. Father Reynaud, Vianne’s erstwhile adversary, is now disgraced and under threat. Could it be that Vianne is the only one who can save him?

Glory is from a family of witches and lives beyond the law. She is desperate to develop her powers and become a witch herself. Lucas is the son of the Chief Prosecutor for the Inquisition—the witches’ mortal enemy—and his privileged life is very different to the forbidden world that he lives alongside. And then on the same day, it hits them both. Glory and Lucas develop the Fae—the mark of the witch. In one fell stroke, their lives are inextricably bound together, whether they like it or not . .

In this episode, Brenner—forced out of the police force—tries to get away from detective work by taking a job as the personal chauffeur for two-year-old Helena, the daughter of a Munich construction giant and a Viennese abortion doctor. One day, while Brenner’s attention is turned to picking out a chocolate bar for Helena at a gas station, Helena gets snatched from the car. Abruptly out of a job, Brenner decides to investigate her disappearance on his own. With both parents in the public eye, there’s no scarcity of leads—the father’s latest development project has spurred public protest, and the mother’s clinic has been targeted by the zealous leader of an anti-abortion group.

At 42, Madeleine Hutchinson is in a rut. Newly arrived in Australia from America, she is struggling to cope with 2 children, a flagging marriage and an overwhelming sense of invisibility. One winter evening while trying to get her sick son to a GP, she glimpses couples dancing, touching and laughing in a warmly lit studio. Attracted to this new world and reminded of her younger self, she decides to join a Latin American dance class. Maddy starts reclaiming her identity on the dance floor – facing choices that threaten her marriage and temptations that could see her lose everything

“Windfall Nights” tells a story of coming of age and redemption. Following a devastating car accident, Julian returns to college a semester behind. Now a fifth year senior, he struggles to make ends meet. To help finance his final semester, he applies for a job as a night bellman at a second-rate hotel. There he meets a cast ofinteresting characters and Thomas, the man who would change Julian’s life forever. Thomas is the hotel handyman and Julian soon learns that a dark secret haunts his new friend. Thomas, once a college football star, dropped outof sight at the height of his sports career. There are mutterings of academic fraud and trouble with women but Thomas conceals his past. Bondingover shared vulnerabilities, the two young men become close friends. While their friendship grows, Julian begins to understand Thomas’ remarkable gifts as well as the terrible demons he carries. The peace of his world is broken as Julian approaches his college graduation. Although Julian and Thomas move apart, they eventually meet again on the streets of Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, Julian pursues his career as a journalist and Thomas follows his destiny in a way that Julian will need a lifetime to understand.

While you are here…

Catch up with my ABEA posts

This week don’t miss…

A guest post from Rachael Johns, author of Jilted

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll be along to visit you shortly!