Have you had a good week? I think fall is finally here. It felt cold yesterday, but it might just be the dampness. A little chilly for me. I haven’t turned on the heat, but I did turn on my fireplace.
Linda and I are heading out of town Sunday afternoon just for an overnight trip. We’re going to see Celtic Thunder. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen them perform, and I’m ready for a concert. I’ve seen them at least ten times, but that’s been since 2010, so that isn’t so bad. However, I saw them three times the first year I went to see them. The group has changed, but I still enjoy the music and humor. And, Kevin even changed the dinner time to noon on Sunday so we could eat before we go.
As to reading, I’ll be honest here. There are so many books coming out next Tuesday, Sept. 29, that I’m just feeling overwhelmed. Many of them are Christmas books, mysteries and romances. I’m so overwhelmed that I look at the book jackets and titles, and turn to my phone to read Facebook instead.
I’m halfway through Cleo Coyle’s The Ghost and the Dead Librarian. Coyle is best known for the Coffeehouse Mysteries, but I’ve always been partial to the Haunted Bookshop stories. I’ve been a fan of the ghost of hard-boiled detective Jack Shepard for years. I’ll admit this book is dragging for me, but I’ll save my comments for tomorrow’s review.
What about you, weather and your life? And, of course, what are you reading this week?
I remember Lesa mentioning that she’d been to see the move Practical Magic 2. I had never seen the original movie so David and I watched it last night. What a strange movie. I’d been expecting something light and amusing but it was actually quite dark and disturbing. Maybe that was the point.
Nothing much of interest to share from over here. We did babysit Evelyn one evening. I’ve decided that this little 9-year-old might just know more than I do about many things. She loves when I bring my iPad so she can play the NY Times game called Tiles. I barely understand the rules but she just clicks away and gets a perfect score, and it’s not like she plays it every day. She only plays it when she’s with me, which isn’t all that often.
Oh, and our 16-year-old grandson was mountain biking with a friend, and ended up breaking his wrist! He’s seen a surgeon and was told that the way the bone broke will require an operation where they will re-break it and line the bones up more precisely so that it will ultimately heal properly and not cause problems later on in his life.
This week I read:
SPELLBOUND BY MURDER by Stacie Ramey
This was a book I thought would be terrific – very appealing cover, small-town murder mystery, magical bookstore, mother-daughter duo crime solving, with a grandmother added to the mix. Saved it specially for when I wanted to read a cozy feel-good mystery. But I was disappointed in it.
When Veronica Blackthorne’s beloved grandmother has a bad fall and asks for help running the bookstore, Veronica doesn’t hesitate to move herself and her teenage daughter back to Mystic Hollow to help out. She finds the store in rough shape and under threat from another bookstore. When the keynote speaker for the town’s annual literary festival cancels, Veronica enlists the help of Adam – a famous author she knows. He says yes, and the festival is a go, and it all seems on track to be a success. But then Adam is murdered and Veronica becomes the sheriff’s prime suspect. With the help of her daughter, they work to clear her name, while her grandmother reveals that a love spell gone wrong is what started the whole thing.
The premise was good but the execution didn’t work for me. Much was made of magic in the town and yet it had almost no presence in the book. There was a LOT of banter between the characters that was supposedly witty or funny but wasn’t, and the story got lost. Veronica herself was highly irritating, not in any way behaving like the mother of a teenager, while said teenager displayed much more maturity than did Veronica. The story seemed disjointed, scattered, confusing and hard to follow. Or maybe I didn’t care enough about any of the cardboard characters to put in the effort.
What a harsh review. But for me anyway, there were no redeeming qualities!
GET LOST by Justin Halpern
For some reason I enjoyed this book so much I’ve bestowed one of my coveted stars on it (although no one of import knows I’ve given out a star, so how coveted can they be?). I don’t rate the books I read, but if the story makes an unexpected impression on me or entertains me more than usual, it will earn a star.
Lila Dixon (prickly, jaded) receives a phone call – her mother Mattie is missing. This in itself is not that unusual since it’s been a regular occurrence throughout her life. The difference this time is that Lila’s estranged father John Dixon (one-time baseball star, well-liked locally, a charmer but not a great father) is the prime suspect in his ex-wife Mattie’s disappearance. Reluctantly, he and Lila sort of team up to figure out what’s really going on and they discover that a very sizable amount of money was deposited into Mattie’s bank account. Then Lila receives a threatening note, there are Russian thugs, a shady business, angry citizens, guns, danger and suspense, entwined with action, humour and heart.
On the surface of it this should not be a book I like, given its overly frequent use of the ‘f’ word although that tapers off in the second half, some violence, and such things, and yet I was hooked by page 3. The dialogue is funny, the mystery is interesting, and besides that it’s a story about the relationship between father and daughter, which adds humanity, gives us people to care about, and makes the book so much more than it otherwise would have been. A fast-paced, fun read.