When I was very young, my mother bought me a giant compendium of fairy tales. It was lushly illustrated, the pages were gold-edged and the cover was bright blue and a little poofy, you could mash on it a bit. It had lots of great stories, ranging from the classics to some of the ones less well-known, like The Steadfast Tin Soldier. But my most favorite, my beloved, was The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Twelve beautiful princesses sneaking out of the castle, going…
I had a love-hate relationship with Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway. It took over 75% of the book to really get good, but once it got there it really got there. I had a good feeling about The Turn of the Key, though, so I gave it a shot as my August Book of the Month book because I have a weakness for creepy kids in literature, and I am super glad I did. Rating: How I’d Describe This Book to…
Alex North is a pseudonym for an already-established crime author whose identity I very much wish I knew, because I have desperately got to get my hands on everything they’ve written. When Book of the Month included more than one thriller on August’s list, I picked The Turn of the Key but quickly regretted not nabbing The Whisper Man as an add-on, because I had heard nothing but amazing things. However I was able to snag a copy off someone on Facebook for…
If you follow me on social media, or at least run in the same circles as me, then you’ll know there was a point on Friday of this last week when I had made it about 100 pages into this book and plaintively asked on several Facebook groups, “does this shit ever pick up the pace?” – I said it more sweetly and very demure, of course. I’m a delicate, feminine flower. About half the people told me it would…
I expected to like The Gifted School just ‘okay,’ to be totally candid. It came to me as a Book of the Month offering, and I shrugged and selected it. Mostly because I had already received a copy of Lock Every Door, which was my #1 choice, from a wonderful blog tour group. So truth be told, if it hadn’t shown up on BotM, I probably would have never looked twice at The Gifted School. But let me just say right now: I…
First and foremost, I’d like to thank the team over at The Fantastic Flying Book Club for giving me a spot on the blog tour for one of my most anticipated reads of the year, Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door! I was so excited I squealed when I got the email – I had been in the process of preordering the book when it came through – and our buddies at Dutton were sweet enough to send a copy to me…
You probably saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith when you were younger, right? Sexy, kick-ass power couple that also just happens to be spies? If not you probably saw Spy Kids which was abhorrent, but the same sort of deal – a normal family, that is secretly spies. Only in this case, the kids have no idea mom and dad have a secret life. And that secret life is not related to being a secret agent – actually, mom and dad…
Guess who’s got two thumbs and finally has her blog back under her jurisdiction set up the way she likes? Take my advice, kids: don’t host with GoDaddy. Or if you do, and your site is set to expire but you can’t afford to pay the arm and a leg they are asking to renew it, know that when they say they’re going to take your site down they mean it. And that if you want it back, you’ll have…
It seems like my new schtick is waiting until days into a month before I write a wrap-up post for the month prior. Is this for any particular reason? No. Do I know why I continue to do this? Nope. What I do know, though, is that I read 4 books in February – a lot of books for the shortest month of the year, and probably what contributed to my amazingly huge reading slump at the tail end of the…
As you might have guessed by now, I read from pretty much two genres: young adult, and domestic thrillers. I bounce back and forth between the two with pretty regular dependability, and occasionally I read a young adult domestic thriller. But by and large I tend to not believe anyone when they say that XYZ Book is the thriller of the year, the latest and greatest, the … whatever, Becky, it’s about a husband and wife and one of them killed…