Annual Reading Challenge--2020

[chickapin parterre]

Band of Brothers....in honor of the weekend.

 

[tiggrbaby]

32: Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict. A novel about Winston Churchill’s wife. It wasn’t a bad book, but something about the writing style just didn’t do it for me. 3/5

33: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel: This was an engaging, suspenseful read, and overall I enjoyed reading it, but something was missing. 4/5

Agreed! I read Erik Larson's book first, and I enjoyed that much more. I think that I didn't really like either the mother or daughter in Rose Gold.

 

[bobbiwoz]

39/80 The Christmas Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke
It was an interesting book, with a story within a story. I liked it.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

I still haven't read much as I have not been feeling well but I am trying
4. Someone Like You by Karen Kingsbury Never read her before. Good story.
5. Stolen Secrets by Sherri Shackelford Quick read romantic suspense
6. The Rebel Bride by Shannon McNear Civil War story

 

[bobbiwoz]

I still haven't read much as I have not been feeling well but I am trying
4. Someone Like You by Karen Kingsbury Never read her before. Good story.
5. Stolen Secrets by Sherri Shackelford Quick read romantic suspense
6. The Rebel Bride by Shannon McNear Civil War story

Hope you feel better every day.

 

[bobbiwoz]

40/80. Lean on Me by Pat Simmons

It is a love story, and actually a good book to read to help you understand what it takes to be a caregiver for someone with dementia. I enjoyed it.

 

[monarchsfan16]

34: The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward. Overall I enjoyed this. It wasn’t quite as light as I maybe expected, which I suspect is why my rating is higher than Goodreads, but I liked it and overall I thought it was very good. 4/5

 

[willowsnn3]

#27 The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…

I really liked this one.

 

[tiggrbaby]

#27 The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…

I really liked this one.

Just put a request in for this - thanks!

 

[jen7233]

#7/20: In Pieces by Sally Field.
Continuing on to another biography, non-fiction type book. I do gravitate more towards these vs. fiction. Next books, I'll try to mix in some fiction. Anyway, about this particular book. Of course, written by actress Sally Field, is a story of her life and how she reconciled the different pieces of herself to become whole, and how it took most of her life to do that. I had absolutely no idea what her story was even about, I just happened to always like her as an actress in Gidget so I picked it up at the library before Covid and had it sitting still in the house and was not really planning to read it, then did.

Now about her story, though. As I began reading her story, which of course she starts with her life as a child, she discusses a struggle with an adult in her life, and as I read I felt some of those uneasy feelings in me rise up from mine. I didn't have her story so it's not comparable, but I know the feeling of experiencing a brokenness when a child from adults in your life. I also really liked the somewhat love letter to her mother also throughout the book, as that sits fairly close with me as I've spent the last few years reconciling a basic love letter with mine, too, but never got to share mine with my mother. On to some fiction for a bit I believe.

 

[OKW8297]

34. Murder at the Breakers by Alyssa Maxwell mystery set in Newport in 1895. Love the setting and era-I know Newport well. It was clever and I figured it out too!

 

[allenfane]

8/12 Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman.

 

[tiggrbaby]

34. Murder at the Breakers by Alyssa Maxwell mystery set in Newport in 1895. Love the setting and era-I know Newport well. It was clever and I figured it out too!

Put in a request for the library to purchase this!

 

[monarchsfan16]

35: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. This was a really eye opening and well written book. 5/5

 

[melk]

19/25 With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Emoni is a high school senior in Philly with a baby and a natural gift for cooking. This takes you through her senior year as she juggles motherhood, school, and a new transfer student.

This is a YA novel that I would probably never have picked on my own. But I read it as part of a book club and I liked it. The chapters move along quickly and I found myself totally involved in the story.

 

[bobbiwoz]

41/80 The Broken Road by Richard Paul Evans

I enjoyed this book, but It wasn’t about Route 66 which I thought was the subject. That was reason I had signed it out, I always liked the idea of traveling Route 66. It was about a life not well spent. I have learned that it’s a series, and The Forgotten Road is the next. This should be good!

Shucks, the next is not available on line, I have to wait until our library opens!

 

[FlightlessDuck]

Book 2 of 20: The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.

Read this for my work book club.

Eh. I felt it was slow for the first 2/3 of the book. There were three specific twists that didn't really affect the ending of the story, so I'm not sure what their point was. You spend 85% of the book waiting for the child to die, and once the child dies, it's somewhat obvious what happened.

3 stars. Maybe 2 1/2

 

[bobbiwoz]

42/80 The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans

A contract to be dates for the Christmas seasons turns into a marriage for life. Nice!

 

[willowsnn3]

41/80 The Broken Road by Richard Paul Evans

I enjoyed this book, but It wasn’t about Route 66 which I thought was the subject. That was reason I had signed it out, I always liked the idea of traveling Route 66. It was about a life not well spent. I have learned that it’s a series, and The Forgotten Road is the next. This should be good!

Shucks, the next is not available on line, I have to wait until our library opens!

I read all but the last of this series. Guess I should look it up and read it. I enjoyed it.

 

[willowsnn3]

#28. S is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Just after Independence Day in July 1953 Violet Sullivan, a local good time girl living in Serena Station Southern California, drives off in her brand new Chevy and is never seen again. Left behind is her young daughter, Daisy, and Violet's impetuous husband, Foley, who had been persuaded to buy his errant wife the car only days before . . .

Now, thirty-five years later, Daisy wants closure.

Reluctant to open such an old cold case Kinsey Millhone agrees to spend five days investigating, believing at first that Violet simply moved on to pastures new. But very soon it becomes clear that a lot of people shared a past with Violet, a past that some are still desperate to keep hidden. And in a town as close-knit as Serena there aren't many places to hide when things turn vicious . . .


Slowly working my way thru Sue Grafton's alphabet series.