This weekly meme is hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. All you need to do to participate is answer the following three questions.

What are you currently reading?

I picked up Homicide and Halo-Halo yesterday for the start of The Final Book Support Group. It has been a surprisingly slow start but I’m hoping that once the murder part happens that the story picks up. Manansala was upfront before the story started that the book is quite heavy for a cozy mystery and I appreciated the heads up.

I saw A Dash of Murder on a list of Thanksgiving or Autumn reads and while this is a quick and fun cozy mystery it is definitely not giving any of those vibes. A Dash of Murder is the 19th book in the Myrtle Clover series and the first one that I have read. If I was a longtime reader of Craig’s series I’m sure I would like that no backstory is given but I would have appreciated a few sentences to get my bearings when starting this. The best part of this mystery is that our protagonist is an older lady (I think she’s in her 80’s?) and she is so blunt with everyone. I have an idea who the killer is and I’m only forty pages from the end and I’m looking forward to finding out if I’m right or not.

I’m now more than half way through The Moonstone and I’m absolutely loving it. They mystery is a great one and I love the humor each character brings to the story. I love that we get the story in so many different perspectives and that we had the official investigation and are still following the story to hopefully get the full picture of what exactly happened and why. I’m listening to the audiobook on Audible as well as reading along and the narrator is doing an amazing job. It’s just one narrator doing all the different perspectives and his voice work is superb.

What have you recently finished reading?

The only book I finished is a really short story by Belle Bailey. Pumpkin Spice is set in Bailey’s Sugar Maple series but I can’t seem to find this book anymore or any image of it. I gave this story three stars because it was cute story about a professional baker and a home baker that need to team up for the pumpkin pie baking competition. They had just met that day and had a budding friendship with some attraction and I didn’t love that they randomly kissed at the end. Hopefully Bailey is/has expounded on this story since the premise is so cute.

I ended up DNF’ing Notes on a Silencing at page 99. This is an important topic but Crawford is meandering around and there is no linear timeline. And she also is adding in a lot of unnecessary stories about people and places that were just taking away from the overall theme of the book. I think if I hadn’t just read Blair Braveman’s memoir that does the exact some thing I would have pushed forward with this one.

What do you think you’ll read next?

WANTED – Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life’s finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply.

A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power, in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching.
Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid.

Though she knows little about the far north–where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service–Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery–and at the center of it all is her.

Countess Lisavet, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. She takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She’ll need to learn the rules of her new home–and fast–or its halls will soon become her grave.