WWW Wednesday 11.30.22

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

What are you currently reading?

I’m so close to finishing The Moonstone (85%) and I’m loving this mystery. It was first written for a weekly periodical and I can imagine how much fun it was to read back when it was coming out in the late 1800’s. It is a mystery mixed with a slice of life narration that I absolutely love. Now that the mystery is starting to be revealed I can definitely see myself going back and rereading this to pick up on all the stuff that I missed the first time.

I got Five Survive in the mail yesterday since I preordered it and I immediately started it. I’m only a few pages in because I’m so close to finishing my other two reads but I’m looking forward to being sucked into the story.

I missed the book club meeting where we were talking about the end of The Island of Sea Women because I was out of town getting my infusion. I wasn’t feeling the best before I got the infusion so I never picked it up to read it since I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk about it with everyone. Once I finished our November book I decided to pick this back up and I only have half an hour left in the book. This is a really great historical fiction novel about a culture that I knew nothing about.

What have you recently finished reading?

A Dash of Murder, Wedded Blintz, and Thanksgiving Dinner Death were all three star reads. They were ok cozy mysteries but the mysteries were either weak or they were filled with unnecessary drama that I didn’t really care for. Also, I don’t understand why Thanksgiving Dinner Death is part of a holiday themed cozy mystery series and the books that have been released so far have hardly any holiday in them.

The Silence of the Girls was a 2 star read. I don’t understand why it is called The Silence of the GIRLS when we only have one female perspective and it feels like half the book is told from Achilles perspective. Beyond that the writing was flat and inconsistent. This is one I probably would have DNF’d if it hadn’t been for my book club.

Homicide and Halo-Halo was four star read. I would consider this more of a mystery than a cozy mystery since those are light and fluffy and this definitely wasn’t. The author was very up front about how the pandemic affected her mental health and that in turn affected her main character which I completely understand.

My standout book of the week was easily A Match Made for Thanksgiving. This was a steamy and fun novella that had all the Thanksgiving content I was looking for. I actually read this and Thanksgiving Dinner Death during the six hour round trip drive my family and I had on turkey day. So I was obviously in the mood for the festive feelings and this book more than delivered. I’m looking forward to reading the Christmas themed sequel soon.

I DNF’d all three of these books the past week. For one reason or another I couldn’t get into the story or I found myself annoyed by the main character.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.