It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundayPost #SundaySalon

The It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? meme is hosted at BookDate

I’m also linking to The Sunday Post @ Caffeinated Reviewer

And the Sunday Salon @ ReaderBuzz

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Life…

So I bought a new mattress this week, it is being delivered later today and I’m nervous. We were in desperate need, our current mattress is 16 years old, springs have started making their way through the padding, and there are crater-like impressions from our years of sloth. But choosing a new mattress (on a small budget) has been unexpectedly anxiety inducing. Hubby said he didn’t care and left it to me so I’ve been obsessively reading reviews for months in advance of our tax return. In the end I made what amounts to an impulse purchase yesterday after lying on it for about five minutes, mostly because it was a discounted floor model, and I had been awake for around 35 hours.
What if we hate it?

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

 

Croc Country by Kerry McGinnis

Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees

Deadman’s Track by Sarah Barrie

In the Clearing by J.P. Pomare

 

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New Posts…

 

Review: Croc Country by Kerry McGinnis ★★★1/2

Review: Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees ★★★★

Review: Deadman’s Track by Sarah Barrie ★★★★1/2

Review: In the Clearing by J.P. Pomare ★★★★★

 

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What I’m Reading This Week…

 

A chilling murder in a prestigious prep school is at the heart of this riveting new novel from acclaimed author Charlie Donlea, featuring forensic reconstructionist Rory Moore and her psychologist partner, Lane Phillips.

Inside the walls of Indiana’s elite Westmont Preparatory High School, expectations run high and rules are strictly enforced. But in the woods beyond the manicured campus and playing fields sits an abandoned boarding house that is infamous among Westmont’s students as a late-night hangout. Here, only one rule applies: don’t let your candle go out–unless you want the Man in the Mirror to find you. . . .

One year ago, two students were killed there in a grisly slaughter. The case has since become the focus of a hit podcast, The Suicide House. Though a teacher was convicted of the murders, mysteries and questions remain. The most urgent among them is why so many students who survived that horrific night have returned to the boarding house–to kill themselves.

Rory, an expert in reconstructing cold cases, is working on The Suicide House podcast with Lane, recreating the night of the killings in order to find answers that have eluded the school, the town, and the police. But the more they learn about the troubled students, the chillingly stoic culprit, and a dangerous game gone tragically wrong, the more convinced they become that something sinister is still happening. Inside Westmont Prep, the game hasn’t ended. It thrives on secrecy and silence. And for its players, there may be no way to win–or to survive. . . .

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Pete Riley answers the door one morning to a parent’s worst nightmare. On his doorstep is a stranger, Miles Lambert, who breaks the devastating news that Pete’s two-year-old, Theo, isn’t his biological child after all – he is Miles’s, switched with the Lamberts’ baby at birth by an understaffed hospital.

Reeling from shock, Peter and his partner Maddie agree that, rather than swap the children back, it’s better to stay as they are but to involve the other family in their children’s lives. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about just what happened on the day the babies were switched.

And when Theo is thrown out of nursery for hitting other children, Maddie and Pete have to ask themselves: how far do they want this arrangement to go? What are the secrets hidden behind the Lamberts’ smart front door? And how much can they trust the real parents of their child – or even each other?

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Chris Flood – a married father of two with plummeting self-esteem and questionable guitar skills – suddenly finds himself in the depths of polyamory after years of a near-sexless marriage. His wife, Sarah – a lover of the arts, avid quoter of Rumi, and always oozing confidence – wants to rediscover her sexuality after years of deadening domesticity.

Their new life of polyamory features late nights, love affairs and rotating childcare duties. While Sarah enjoys flings with handsome men, Chris, much to his astonishment, falls for a polydactylous actor and musician, Biddy.

Then there’s Zac Batista. When Chris and Sarah welcome the Uruguayan child prodigy and successful twenty-two-year-old into their lives they gratefully hand over school pick-up and babysitting duties. But as tensions grow between family and lovers, Chris begins to wonder if it’s just jealousy, or something more sinister brewing…

A searing and utterly engrossing debut, Poly is a raw, hilarious, and moving portrait of contemporary relationships in all their diversity, and an intimate exploration of the fragility of love and identity.

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Peggy Orenstein broke ground with her bestselling Girls & Sex, exploring young women’s right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. Now she turns her focus to boys with an examination of how young men are navigating sexual culture in these changing times – and what we need to do help them.

Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects ‘locker room talk’; pornography as the new sex education; the role of empathy; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault.

By presenting young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein unravels the hidden truths, hard lessons and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

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Thanks for stopping by!