Cozy Mystery Book Club April Live Stream- Tomorrow at 7PM EST!

 

Join me in the comments tomorrow at 7PM EST with lots of other readers of Cozy Mysteries! 

This month's selection is A Brush With Murder by Bailee Abbott.  I had an ARC of this book from Net Galley back in 2021 and reviewed it here on my blog.  Here is a link to that review: 

A Brush With Murder

Each month people who comment in the live stream are entered to win books, so it's not only fun to comment, you can win a new book in the process!

Now on to a little food talk. I enjoy cooking, and a really enjoy eating good food, so about once a month I treat myself to a box from Blue Apron. This month one of the meals I picked was Oven-Baked Korean-Style Eggs & Rice. It was a meal that all you do is put together the ingredients and bake.  It was delicious and easy enough for me to make it myself in the future.  It's a good anytime of day meal. What do you think? Does it look good to you?

The Sunday Post Last Full Week of April is Upon Us!

 

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly, or for a monthly wrap-up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme 

HI! How are you?  I hope you had a nice week. I had an MRI of my foot which I hurt last month and found out that I need to wear a boot for another two weeks. The toe that has a stress fracture is not the toe the X-ray thought had a stress fracture. As you know I like to run, so being unable to run for over a month now, stinks!  I do tell myself, better to get this resolved so I can run again soon-ish than to wind up needing some kind of surgery. Sigh, still stinks though. 

The weather here this week is pretty blah, with highs in the 50s (10s in Celcius) and lows from 32 to about 38 (0 to 4 in Celcius) Below are books I'm working on for this week, and my poor foot.

I was thinking I'd have finished Wolfsong by now, but other stories got in the way, so I am working on finishing Wolfsong, which is very good, today. 

I have also downloaded the audio version of Flux by Jinwoo Chong, I am still determining where it will fall in my reading.  I attended a Zoom craft talk that Jinwoo Chong did and that was my inspiration to get Flux ASAP. 

Here is the back of the book blurb: 

A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering up a string of violent crimes.

Caged by Bella Matthews - Romance Sub Genres

 

I read this book for a book club.  This is the first book in the Defiant Kings series, but it's also the fourth book in Kingston Family books. Basically, I believe the way it works is Bella Matthews has three trilogies that are involving the siblings that make up the center family of the series. So this is and isn't the first book. If you read romance with any frequency you'll quickly understand that some of the brothers and sisters of Hudson (the male lead of this book) are living their best HEA lives so they must be the subjects of previous books. 

The family in this series are sporty billionaires.  Caged features Hudson who is an MMA fighter and Madison who is a very successful social media manager and yoga instructor.  There are also brothers who play pro football and hockey. If you are a fan of sports romance, this may be a big hit for you. If you prefer romance books where everyone is very well off, successful in their careers, and has great abs, this story checks those boxes. 

This story takes place in the 2020s and has all the trappings of the here and now but the story harkens back to the days of old.  (like 70s romance) Maddie is a virgin who doesn't like people to touch her and Hudson is a guy with a reputation.  But when Maddie is attacked Hudson stops the attack and then Maddie plays his nursemaid for a few days. Old school, friends to lovers. 

Here are a couple of lines from the book this is Maddie's brother talking to Hudson.  He-man- macho stuff, 

I think one of these characters had their book already 

A Fun Romance with a Clever Premise that Also Deals With Grief

 

I am here to recommend this audiobook, it's included with an audible membership and I loved the book's premise. In this story, Alice, a school teacher, has co-written and self-published a thriller that sold 73 copies.  One day a man comes to see her and he demands to know where she got the information disclosed in the story.  He looks and behaves just like her fictional secret agent main character!  

We quickly learn that Alice's book needs to be moved from the fiction section to the non-fiction section--and Alice has to figure out who to trust as she is taken on a wild adventure.  I wonder if Brynn Kelly wrote this in response to a "What if you met your book boyfriend?" prompt.  

The story is engaging, packed with action and romance, and a nice amount of humor--amusing references to writing. Important content warning: It has some heavy scenes that deal with the death of loved ones from cancer, and it is a fairly larger part of the book so take that into consideration.

4 stars.  Definitely worth a listen! 

An update on my lettuce container. At this time I don't know what are lettuce seeds beginning to sprout and what are weeds!  TBD! 

The Sunday Post for Mid April

 

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly, or for a monthly wrap-up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme 

Well, we had a wonderful preview of summer, and then today, back to mid-April reality.  Possible Flurries tonight. I am glad I put my lettuce seeds in a container that is easy to move into the house. Hopefully, we are almost done with freezing temperatures at night or the day.  Have you watched anything good on TV? We watched Transatlantic on Netflix. I liked that it didn't sugar-coat the American position of neutrality during WW2 prior to Pearl Harbor, especially the lack of American support for refugees. I also finished watching Unlock My Boss which was very enjoyable. 

This week I am working on reading and reviewing these books:

The Least Amount of Awful, Definitely Not an Awful Book!

 

If you asked me to describe this book in ten words or less I would say: "It's a Hallmark Movie with benefits."  We have a small town, we have a girl coming from the city in a fancy car, everyone is attractive and has a good job, Jake is a single dad with abs for days, Colbie owns a series of barre studios. Jake is quite rude to Colbie in the beginning, but it is overcome.  The angst level and pining is low in this book.

The main characters are great communicators and Jennifer Millikin is a very good writer, the sex scenes were picture perfect, the right amount of description and heat level. She also ties in the title of the book in a pivotal way throughout the story. 

Overall I enjoyed the book, I did feel that Jake and Emmett (Colbie's dad) were 'too perfect' for me, and Colbie's mom was unsympathetically awful.  But hey this is a romance, and the main story is quite well done. 

4 stars! 

Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases

I chose to read this book because it was included in my Audible subscription.  It's not a book that I would have spend my monthly credit on--those credits are like gold! So I save them for books I *really* want badly. Cook County ICU is a fairly short book and it reads like a collection of columns. As if Cory Franklin had a weekly column in the Chicago Tribune where he shared notable events and people at Cook County hospital-- a Mike Royko or Studs Terkel slice of hospital life column. 

I enjoyed his stories and seeing the perspective of a doctor as someone who has only hand medical experiences as a patient. My favorite stories in the book were when Dr. Franklin talked about the 1995 heat wave we had, I was very surprised to learn that Cook County Hospital didn't have central air in 1995--BONKERS! Can you even believe it?  My goodness. It was so hot that summer.  I need to go see if there is a good book or podcast covering the story of the heatwave. 

Secondly, there was a story about a nurse and I knew early on in the story that this was a case of Munchhausen. Munchhausen is something that fascinates me.  I get why a person might go to those lengths for attention. Now that being said, I don't understand Munchhausen by proxy, hurting someone else to get attention, ick. 

Overall 3.5 stars an interesting read! 

 

Crying in H Mart

 

I don't read many memoirs and have been of the opinion that people under 40 haven't lived enough life to truly write a memoir. Based on this book and I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, I've decided that was a ridiculous opinion. 

Crying in H Mart is a book about food, families, the immigrant experience, and how much cancer sucks.  It's a beautiful book and I'm so glad that Michelle Zauner wrote it. She has a beautiful writing style and it makes sense that she is a songwriter and musician.  I steered clear of this book for quite a while because I didn't want to read about someone dying of cancer. 

However, recently I felt ready to give it a go, and I wasn't super triggered over it. This is because the book is about a daughter who is with her mom as her mom undergoes cancer treatment which isn't successful. If I had lost my mom to cancer, I don't know if I could read this book.  

As I was reading the book Michelle's writing simultaneously made my mouth water with her descriptions of food and cooking, and moments later I was ready to cry with her because of how unfair so much of life can be from one day to the next. 

The story doesn't end with Michelle's mom's death, we see how Michelle works through the grieving process and then how she flourishes as a musician. In the last chapter of the book Michelle talks about a song her mother loved when she was young, and I had to look it up on YouTube.  It's a bop! Listen to it below: 

 

Happy Easter! The Sunday Post!

 

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly, or for a monthly wrap-up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme 

We are heading out to see youngest child at college today since she has to work, so I'm not cooking a tasty ham today.  Since I have tomorrow off, I'll be making an Easter Monday dinner. We also have eggs to decorate, which we will do tonight. 

 Me hanging out with the Easter Bunny last weekend

Baskets I made for the husband and the boys!

It's going to be nice and warm here this week so I am going to put some lettuce and kale seeds in a couple of containers, place them on the exposed Southern side of our house and cross my fingers. 

I'm in the midst of reading and listening to the books below and will be sharing my thoughts this week.

What are you up to this week?

Say Victoria, Why Did you Read Romancing the Beat?

That's a great question! For as long as I can remember I've wanted to write and when I was a child and a teen I did write, then life got in the way and I spend my 20s thinking I needed to have experiences worth writing about instead of writing. Then I got married and had kids and well, that was a lot. To be fair, I did some blogging and I wrote a bit, but mostly I didn't and then I thought should I go back to school and get an English Degree or study creative writing? Then I thought, how can I even consider spending money on going back to school when we have three kids to put through college? After thinking on that for a while, I decided maybe writing doesn't need to be me creating a best seller or the next great American novel, maybe I could write a cozy mystery.

So I did that, and right when I was getting something together and ready to be at the editing stage, then I found out I had cancer. Then when that was done and my brain was mush, then Covid happened. Oh sure that could have been a really good time to go back to writing, but as you can see I'm quite good at pushing off my dream to write stories other people want to read. 

So lately, I've been thinking about writing again and writing in the romance genre. This time around, my plan is to get to the point where I can self-publish via Kindle Unlimited. I've started listening to podcasts and following smaller successful romance writers who share how they do the business side and based on my past work experience, I think self-publishing would be something I could manage--once I have something to publish.  Plus I'll need to save up money to pay to have someone edit my book. Here is my process and timeline (I'm posting all this so I have some accountability for my writing dream)

Now thru end of May:

Listen to podcasts for writing and publishing romance. 

Work on a very detailed outline as well as character sheets 

June: 

Participate in the #1000wordsofsummer writing challenge and draft 1,000 words per day for the first two weeks of June. 

Then assess--ideally be in a writing groove and finish my round draft by end of summer - or fall. 

*****

I enjoyed reading Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, it's a short book that breaks down the plot points that make a good romance so good. For me, I need to plan to be creative, so this book is perfect for me to start with as I begin writing from an idea I had a few years ago!