A Cup of Silver Linings

This is the second in a magical series set in North Carolina outside of Asheville. It’s sweet and delightful and the perfect amount of magical realism for my taste.

The Dove Sisters have powers around tea and books (two of my favorite things)! The books are each about someone else in town needing them while also sharing so much about the Dove Sisters.

The mother/daughter relationships in the story were so well written. Also the sisters and friends!! Can’t wait for the next installment!!

“We can’t always fix what we break. Sometimes we just have to accept the consequences and let time heal things as well as it can.”

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Falling

I’ve had this on hold forever and then put off listening for some reason … I’m glad I started it Friday when I had a few hours in the car because it was fantastic!

I love reading books that give an insight into how the crew and pilot operate on a plane. I really appreciate the extra information about flight crews and this book delivered.

It also reminded me about how important flight attendants are to the safety of the airplane. Giving drinks is their side job so we don’t all get bored waiting for a safety issue to happen that honestly, we don’t never happen.

Which means that us passengers need to treat the flight attendants as the pilot’s representative in the main cabin as they are. The author writes that their six weeks of training included ONE day on service!!

Really loved this book. Heads up it’s about a terrorist taking over a plane, so if that’s not something you’re up for, take a pass.

“Navigate. Aviate. Communicate.”

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Love and Other Words

“A book you can read in a day” is one of my favorite genres. And two good ones in a row!!

Macy and Elliot met when they were 13 and promptly fell in love, but wouldn’t admit it until years later. Now, after 11 years apart, he shows up at a random coffee shop. And the world shifts on its axis. Everything changes.

It’s a delightful read about first loves that last. The dialogue is fantastic. The dad is just perfect.

“When we love, we love for good.”

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To Sir, With Love

“You’ve Got Mail” retellings are my favorite kind of retellings!! This one involved a champagne store, an artist, an entrepreneur, and a dating app.

It was lovely. It was a great airplane ride home slash waiting for laundry to get done read.

There’s nothing not to love!!

“Not the life I imagined, but it is a good life. And I’d be lying if I didn’t take a lot of pride in what I think of as my personal superpower: the ability to accept and embrace things as they are, not as I wish they could be.”

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Not So Pure And Simple

Anne Bogel recommended this recently and I was intrigued. It’s a book about purity culture from a teenage boy’s perspective, not one you often get. There’s a lot of examples of toxic masculinity and femininity and church culture.

It was intriguing and an insightful view into a world I have zero experience it: the mind of a Black teenage boy.

The only thing is he seemed to just “get it” all of a sudden and only because of an experience his sister had, like no one else’s lived experience would serve as an example – true to life, but also annoying

This would be interesting to talk about with young people in the Church to see what aligns with their experience and how they’d propose to fix it.

“It’s okay if you’re scared about anything in your life. It’s not okay to lie and manipulate to hide those fears.”

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Ink and Shadows

This is the fourth installment in a delightful series. Nora owns a bookshop in small town North Carolina and solves murders on the side. She’s near an inordinate number of murders actually.

We get to see some bibliotherapy, an old friend from her past, a peek into a potential new love interest, and more from the ladies in the society. Oh and soon there’s going to be a new book club at the store, which I’m sure will show up in the next book in the series.

“If I live to be a hundred, it won’t be long enough. There will still be too many new things to learn about books. Too many books I’ll still want to read. I’ll have to be buried in one of those big mausoleums so I can take all the unread books with me. Just in case I can read in the afterlife.”

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Eight Perfect Murders

I need to read more thrillers like this one. A book about murders that are based on a series of fiction murders than end up being about another book of murders.

Make sense?

It’s a memoir, but fiction. And the author reveals different portions throughout about what really happened. It’s fascinating.

“We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths.”

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The Bookshop by the Sea

This is a sweet delight. I’ve forgotten how much I love Denise Hunter!! The audio was good, but had to listen at 1.25x because the narrator was a bit slow speaking.

Sophie gives and gives, but when it comes time for people to serve her, it’s her neighbors and ex, Aiden, who step up rather than her family.

I found myself yelling at her family, but I loved this story. Also there’s an epilogue which is one of my favorite things in a romance novel!!

I love how books can transport you to another place. You get caught up in the character’s lives, and they become your friends.

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Heartbreak for Hire

I stayed up way too late reading this book I didn’t really like all that much.

Brinkley had it all going for her except she was dating a guy who thought little of her. They call him an Ego in the book but I think it was a narcissist and borderline emotionally abusive. There was a public breakup and this woman Margo finds her and invites Brinkley to work at her company Heartbreaks for Hire. A group of four woman who will take that man who had too big of an Ego, Cheated, was a Player, or a Grifter.

One of her targets becomes her coworker, but they’re both using each other while they fall in love. It’s a case of everyone doing what they think others expect of them, not what would make them happy. Also Margo believes giving Brinkley this job will help her get over Aiden, but what she needs is therapy, not revenge. I very much disliked the Margo character. I thought she was more “master manipulator” than friend or boss.

“I handled the Egos, men in the workplace who needed to be taken down a notch, and I was generally hired by women who knew them in a professional level and hated them with the scorching rage of a thousand suns.”

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The Madness of Crowds

Reading the latest Louise Penny has become the best fall tradition. I’m so glad a friend introduced me to this series, that unfortunate for you if you’ve never read MUST be read in order. There are story lines that span multiple books.

More than a murder mystery, it’s about human nature. This installment is in a post-pandemic world with a few liberties taken. At least I hope. I want nothing of what happened when Armand walked into the nursing home or Abigail’s study to exist in the real world.

When I read the first chapter and saw this was a post-pandemic book I almost abandoned it and this series I’ve invested so much in on the spot. I still don’t think I’m ready to read Covid-19 books but I trust Louise Penny and I’m glad I kept reading.

Who is Chief Inspector Armand Gamache? “While not classically handsome, there was something compelling about him.”

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