Hot Dang!!! Wiley Cash is one fantastic storyteller, and I have loved all his books. He has changed things up a bit by adding a crime and mystery with When Ghosts Come Home and delivers us a gem of a tender, compassionate heart-tugging story about family, love, loss, community, duty, justice, and racial divides.
What I loved
The sense of time and place created in the story A rare hero with 63- year-old Sheriff Winston Barnes who is trying to find out who abandoned a cargo plane at a local airfield and killed a man whose body is found nearby. Easy to read, compelling, suspenseful story with many layers to it The memorable and shocking ending I am sure no one would see coming and left me questioning whether I like what happened or not.
Howdy Friends! I took an unintentional break, and I didn’t realize it’s been over a month since my last post. My reason for this unintentional break is this little sweetie.
Penny is now 15 weeks old, and even though she is adorable and we love her to pieces, she has been a bit more of a challenge than I expected. I have been spending quite a bit of time with her learning how to communicate and training her through sign language and positive reinforcement. We knew adding a deaf border collie to our family would add some interesting dynamics for us and that it has. I have to admit a little more than we expected. I was prepared for the challenge of her being deaf, a border collie in the city, but I thought somehow her being deaf would balance out some of that physical energy a border collie needs with more mental energy. While that has not been the case, Penny has more physical and mental energy than I even imagine. Her being deaf has not slowed her down at all. She learns bad behavior as fast as the good. We struggle a bit correcting the bad, so she understands the behavior we want, and we all can get frustrated, especially Penny. The problem comes with getting her attention and reinforcing the good, so she understands.
We all love to walk, so getting exercise is not a problem, but she is not fully vaccinated yet, so we worry about taking her places for walks.
The challenges we have are a few, but the best thing is how she has created those interesting dynamics for us, and I love the time we all spend with Penny. I love that she brings back great memories of our beloved Phoenix, who we all miss so much. It reminds us that while she is more of a challenge than expected, we will make great memories with her!
Don’t let this goofiness foul you. Yes she is goofy but sleeping isn’t something she likes to do!! LOL. We have a Penny pen for her and I must say it’s pretty sweet space in the house but Penny does not agree. She doesn’t like to stay in there by herself. We are trying to get her to nap in there on her own and that has been a long process. She is pretty much beside me when I am in the kitchen but she will not stay in there without barking and she has a high pitched bark. I didn’t think deaf dogs would bark that much but she sure does.
Back to reading
I have read 6 books in September and it was a good month for me. I loved three of them and do want to write reviews for them. I have taken notes on them and hope to find the time to pull a review together for them. It takes me so long to do that and I find myself avoiding writing them. I really need to come up with a format that takes less time to write them. I hope to share a review with you all soon.
What’s up with Lindsay
Lindsay has been reading and reviewing her books, but I have been neglectful of posting them. Sometimes because I haven’t written my review yet and I like to post them together. She is reading slower than usual due to life getting in the way.
Reading your blogs
I have been trying to pop on my feed and see what you all have been up to and are reading when I have a couple moments. Reading blog post is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to blogging and I hope to be able to get back to reading and liking your posts soon.
As always I appreciated all my friends who read and like my posts. It’s always nice to see you dropped by a post and said hi with a like!!!
Howdy, Friends!! It’s Back to school time, and we have our September book pick For Your Own Goodby Samantha Downing with the best teacher ever, Mr. Crutcher. You will wish you had him as a teacher!!!
Norma and my Mom have created three bookish theme kits to match For Your Own Goodand have added some fun homemade bookish goodies. Instead of discussion questions, I have added a personality quiz to the kit that I thought fit the book. Post to come with the quiz!! Not only is this a great back-to-school theme, but it’s also a great back-to-the-office theme. You won’t think about those coffee pods or milk the same way again, and you might be switching to tea!!!
Visit Norma’s Etsy shop to find our bookish kits. Click here
Grab your cup (I suggest drinking tea) and meet this year’s teacher of the year, Mr. Crutcher, in this exciting, fun, comical academic thriller.
Book Sleeve kit
What in the book sleeve kit
Our kindle bookish kit
What is in the kindle kit
Our book marker pouch kit
What’s in the book mark pouch kit
Visit Norma’s Etsy shop to find our bookish kits. Click here
Howdy friends!!! Today I want to introduce you to a new member of our blog. She doesn’t write reviews, but she makes for some adorable photos!!!
Meet Penny!! She is my youngest new best friend and hopefully my reading sister!!! We got her from my brother/sister-in-law, whose dogs had a litter of border collies puppies. Penny is deaf, and we thought she would make the perfect match for my son and our family.
I thought I would share my love of books with Penny, and this is the look she gave me!! I am sure she was saying to me, “Is that a treat?” It is for me and I think she thought so too! Even though she thought she had a new chew toy I didn’t let her chew my book. LOL
Penny is keeping us a little busy with her cuteness and naughtiness so I am going to do a quick review for The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck
What the book is about
The Invisible Woman is based on the remarkable true story of World War II heroine/spy Virginia Hall who helped liberate a nation. She is disguised as an old woman with a limp and invisible to the Nazis while she handles the wireless transmissions and airdrops that bring supplies, food, and weapons to the area she is working in. Projected to survive for six weeks, she is far from invisible, and she defies her odds and becomes one of the most respected spies. Virginia is haunted every day by the betrayal that devastated her first operation and is out to avenge the brave people she lost.
What I thought
In real life, Virginia mainly stayed invisible. A lot about her is unknown. I thought Erika Robuck did a great job weaving fiction with facts and shining a light on Virginia and the brave, resourceful women and men involved in the resistance. Erika Robuck creates a compelling and engaging portrait of Virginia with a realistic, vulnerable and strong side. Virginia is a complex character to connect with because she is tough, guarded, and distant like I would imagine her in real life. It didn’t entirely give me the emotional pull I was hoping for, and at times I did lose focus while reading. However, I love the different storyline here that focused on something a little different than I have read before and with an empowering woman like Virginia Hall! I highly recommend it!!
I have some conflicting thoughts here with Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens. I enjoyed it as much as I didn’t. I was drawn to the story because the fictional Cold Creek Highway is influenced by an actual highway stitching 724 km in BC where many women (mostly Indigenous) have disappeared or been found murdered called The Highway of tears.
Chevy Stevens has written her own story here while creating a fictional highway, town, mountainous terrain, and campground by the lake similar to ones in BC, Canada. She does a fantastic job of bringing that all to life, and I enjoyed the story of survival created here.
The story is broken into three parts, starting with Hailey, who calls Cold Creek home and has grown up with warnings and reminders to fear the Cold Creek Highway and never travel it alone. I loved the sense of dread, fear, and tension captured here with the isolated, rugged wilderness that becomes a prime hunting ground for a predator, the highway killer.
Part Two focuses on Beth, who comes to Cold Creek searching for answers to what happened to her sister one night on Cold Creek Highway. Hailey and Beth are connected by their loyalties to the people they care about, and I enjoyed the dynamics there.
In part three, Hailey and Beth’s stories begin to merge as the tension and suspense increase and the action and danger pick up to the final showdown with the characters. While this was exciting and entertaining, it didn’t go in the direction I was hoping for, and I didn’t find it as convincing as I would of liked.
This is where I am conflicted I thought Chevy Stevens created a complex, thrilling and entertaining thriller, but with using the backdrop as ambitious as The Highway of Tears I couldn’t help wondering about the real-life lost souls of women, their stories, and the secrets the highway holds. I was left feeling disappointed and thought she could have done a better job creating a more emotional realistic story that centred around the lost women. However she does mentioned out of respect she wanted to created her own story.
I received a copy from the publisher on NetGalley.
I met some dysfunctional families in the many books I read, and none are quite like the Lighthouses. They are by far not your typical, twisted family; they take twisted to a new level. They are morbidly eccentric, obsessed with true crime, and now find themselves in the middle of a true-crime themselves.
I loved the original premise here and found their obsession with true crime entertaining and creepy, and it complements the crime they find themselves in the middle of. Things become even more intriguing as secrets they keep from each other start to come out in those turns to the story. The plot is well crafted with layered clues, some good red herring that threw me off and kept me guessing. The twists to the story are exciting but not shocking. However, near the end, instead of the exciting ending I was hoping for it teeter on falling off the rails, and just too hard to buy into. I held in there, but it was just too much to buy into and I did plenty of eye rolling as I finished the book.
Sometimes I feel I am a little hard on thrillers/suspense, and maybe I expect too much. That just might have been the case here.
