It's Monday 10/30! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

We're back! We just got home last night from a week-long vacation camping in Virginia. It was very relaxing, the weather was perfect, and the fall foliage was absolutely stunning! And, of course, we read a lot, too (both campgrounds even had Little Free Libraries). We first camped for three nights at Hungry Mother State Park in southwestern Virginia, in the mountains. It's a beautiful campground, and our site was right along a creek. Since it was midweek, it was very quiet and peaceful. We enjoyed crisp fall weather, with nice days and 40 degree nights, so we ran the furnace in  our camper and bundled up in heavy fleece, hats, and gloves.

Kayaking in Hungry Mother Lake

Vibrant fall foliage

Stunning views while hiking along the lakeshore

Beautiful campsite along the creek

Then, we drove north to Bear Creek Lake State Park in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains for another three nights. We stayed there in April, but it was even more beautiful in the fall. Though it didn't feel like fall--highs were in the 80's, and we were wearing shorts! Quite a change.

Colorful reflections

Hiking in Bear Creek Lake

Lots of turtles sunning on logs on this warm day!

My husband paddling through the reflections

Another beautiful campsite

Still glass-like lake

My happy place: out on the water!

I have hundreds of photos--each view was more vibrant than the last--but I tried to pick some of the best to share here. I'll be posting a vacation vlog with more photos and videos on my YouTube channel tomorrow!

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On the Blog

 I wrote a couple of reviews before we left:

TV Tuesday: Who Is Erin Carter? - this Netflix thriller series was full of surprises!

Fiction Review: When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash - I enjoyed this small-town murder mystery with in-depth characters (reminded me a bit of William Kent Krueger's standalones)

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On Video

Friday Reads 10-20-23 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading & listening to, with a Halloween twist!

End of the Year Book Tag - a short video about my reading plans between now and the end of the year

Short: Kayaking in Bear Creek Lake State Park - a 1-min glimpse of our vacation

Short: Hiking in Bear Creek Lake State Park - a 1-min glimpse of our vacation

(Tomorrow, I'll be posting a full vacation vlog on my YouTube channel.)

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 What We're Reading

I'm still enjoying the R.I.P. Challenge - finishing my spooky season reading! I am already missing all the extra reading time I had while camping.

 

I finished reading Dangerous Lies by Becca Fitzpatrick. This is a YA novel about the Witness Protection (WITSEC) program, a topic I always find intriguing (if you do, too, check out the TV show In Plain Sight). Way back in 2009, I enjoyed another novel by this author, Hush, Hush. That was paranormal romance, but this novel is firmly set in the real world. Estella witnessed a horrible murder by a dangerous criminal and has been taken into WITSEC to keep her safe so that she can testify against him when he goes to trial. There's a whole criminal organization behind him, so her life is truly at risk. The federal marshals give her a new name, Stella Gordon, and resettle her in Thunder Basin, Nebraska, which is very different from her home in Philadelphia. Her mom is an addict, so Estella is used to being on her own and has trouble adjusting to the rules of the ex-cop posing as her foster mother. She begins to find some positives in small town rural life, in spite of herself, but she is still in danger. This was excellent!

Next, I read When She Woke by Hillary Jordan, author of the award-winning novel Mudbound. This was an entirely different kind of novel, set in a dystopian future where a criminal's skin is dyed a color to match their crime, as a way of easing prison overcrowding. Hannah lives in Texas and has been brought up with a strict moral code in her ultra-religious community, but as the novel begins, she wakes up dyed red, the color for murder, after having an abortion. She refused to tell authorities the name of the father or the name of the doctor, so her sentence is extra-long. The novel is a riff on The Scarlet Letter, with hints of A Handmaid's Tale. The story digs deep into Hannah's experiences, with lots of unexpected twists. Chillingly, this dystopian novel that was published in 2011 includes some details that have come true in our real world.

Now, I am reading Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley, an author I always enjoy. I read the first book of his Easy Rawlins mystery series, Devil in a Blue Dress, and absolutely loved The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, a moving, powerful novel about memory and family. This novel is a mystery/thriller about an ex-cop named Joe King Oliver who, ten years ago, was falsely accused of sexual assault and removed from the NYPD. The 90 days he spent in Rikers Prison forever changed him, but time with his daughter and working cases as a PI is helping him to heal, slowly. When a letter from his past arrives and he gets a new case possibly exposing recent police corruption, his past and the present begin to come together. He might even have a chance to clear his name. It's excellent so far.

On audio, I listened to Coraline by Neil Gaiman, a middle-grade modern spooky classic! How did I miss it for so long? It's about a young girl, Coraline, who goes through a mysterious door in her home to find an alternate universe, with an alternative mother and father just like her own ... except for their button eyes. It was a wonderful novel, super-spooky and perfect for the season!

 

While on our trip, my husband and I listened to Nine Lives by Peter Swanson, a creepy thriller. Two years ago, we enjoyed his Eight Perfect Murders during another road trip. In this novel, nine people around the U.S. receive a list of names in the mail, including their own. As the FBI investigates, the people on the list begin getting murdered, one at a time. Who wrote the list, how are the people on it related, and how can they stop the killings? This tense suspense novel kept us entertained during long hours in the car. We just have a couple of chapters left to finish before the R.I.P. Challenge ends tomorrow.

And I am also trying to finish another middle-grade audio before tomorrow night, The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy. Four friends in the 1980's encounter strange happenings in their quiet seaside Oregon town. Even their parents seem different, as an ancient, long-buried evil is unleashed. I'm loving this suspenseful horror thriller that has Goonies and Stranger Things vibes.

My husband, Ken, finished reading Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and then read World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters, the third and final book in The Last Policeman trilogy, which we have both enjoyed. I can't wait to read it, too! That was a gift I gave him for his birthday, and now he's moved onto another book from his birthday stack, November Road by Lou Berney, a road trip thriller set in the 1960's around Kennedy's assassination. It starts in New Orleans (where we used to live) and Stephen King gave it a rave review, so I knew Ken would enjoy it.

 

 

Our son, 29, finished reading The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington, book one of the Licanius trilogy. Now he is reading The Helm of Midnight by Marina Holstetter, book one in The Five Penalties series, another epic fantasy he is loving! For his birthday last year, I signed him up for Brandon Sanderson's big Kickstarter, so he just received the fourth book from that, The Sunlight Man, which he is very much looking forward to.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.  

What are you and your family reading this week? 

Fiction Review: When Ghosts Come Home

For a while now, I've been hearing good things about author Wiley Cash, and I finally had a chance to read one of his novels. For this fall's R.I.P. Challenge, I listened to When Ghosts Come Home, a unique and intriguing mystery with plenty of emotional depth.

In 1984, Sheriff Winston Barnes and his wife, Marie, are woken from sleep by the roar of a low-flying plane in the wee hours of the morning. He gets up to investigate the small nearby airfield that services their community on an island off the coast of North Carolina. What he finds there is shocking: a small, private plane sitting sideways on the runway and a man dead from a gunshot lying nearby. Winston recognizes the victim as Rodney, a local Black man whom Winston knows to be a good, law-abiding man with a new baby at home. It appears the small plane was involved in the drug trade, but what was Rodney doing out there in the middle of the night? The next day, as Winston scrambles to secure the crime scene, his grown daughter, Colleen, shows up unexpectedly from Texas. Colleen and her husband recently lost their baby, and she has come home looking for comfort and escape from her all-encompassing sorrow. Winston goes to visit Rodney's widow, a young woman named Janelle. Janelle has a newborn baby to care for, and her fourteen-year-old brother, Jay, has been staying with them after getting in some minor trouble at home in Atlanta. She says Rodney had gone out to buy diapers, and she doesn't know why he was at the airfield. As Winston tries to untangle the mystery of Rodney's murder, the FBI sends someone to handle the drug side of the crime. All of this is fuel to the fire of racial tensions rising in the town, as a known white supremacist is running against Winston in the upcoming election for sheriff and is also attempting to buy up land owned by Black citizens in order to raze their middle-class homes and build expensive houses near the beach. Winston has to contend with all of these things at once, as he tries to solve the mystery and hold back the growing violence in his community.

While there is a mystery at the heart of this story, it is much more than a straightforward suspense novel. Cash provides in-depth characters, with narration from different perspectives, and plenty of emotional complexity. He explores the racial tensions in the community and how they affect everything that is happening. This thoughtful focus on characters and intricate issues with a mystery at its center reminded me of William Kent Krueger's standalone novels. The audio production, read by J.D. Jackson, was excellent and kept me engrossed, right up to the surprising ending. I enjoyed this thoughtful mystery and would definitely read other novels by Wiley Cash.

320 pages, William Morrow Paperbacks

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Diversity Reading Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - North Carolina

R.I.P. Challenge

 

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, from the start of the novel, and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (also includes an audio sample).

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 
  

TV Tuesday: Who Is Erin Carter?

My husband and I recently watched the Netflix limited series Who Is Erin Carter? This fast-paced, suspenseful thriller has a unique premise and kept us rapt for its seven intense episodes.

Erin Carter, played by Evan Ahmad, is a British teacher working in Spain and living with her daughter, Harper (played by Indica Watson), and her husband, Jordi (played by Sean Teale). They seem to be an ordinary, happy family until one day, armed robbers attack a supermarket while Erin and Harper are shopping. Erin displays some unusual skills for a wife/mom/teacher to help thwart the robbers, but one of them recognizes her. Her heroism at the grocery store--and the attention it brings--sets off a chain reaction of events that put Erin and her family in great danger. She gets dragged into helping their next-door neighbor, Emilio (played by Pep Ambros), who is a police officer and her husband's friend, with some nasty criminals. In each episode, things get more dangerous, and Erin shows more unusual aptitudes. It is clear she is a survivor and will stop at nothing to protect her family, but where did she learn all of these things? Who is Erin Carter?

The action begins in that first episode and continues at a breakneck pace here, with Erin getting involved deeper and deeper in the local criminal world, against her will, while trying to protect her family. There is ample suspense, as the mysteries surrounding Erin grow, plus figuring out what Emilio is involved in. We are not usually bingers, typically watching two episodes of TV each evening, of two different shows (old-school), but there were times when we finished an episode of this show and immediately watched another because the tension and stakes were so high. The truth of who Erin is and where she comes from was revealed about halfway through, but there was still plenty of suspense as Erin's past intrudes on her present-day life. We were both thoroughly entertained by this original, nail-biting thriller.

Who Is Erin Carter? is a Netflix original so is only available on Netflix.

It's Monday 10/16! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

After such a flurry of trips and family things the past month, last week was a much-needed quiet week at home! I took my elderly Book Buddy (a program through our local library) out for lunch on Thursday. Last time I visited her, she mentioned she's been very isolated and rarely leaves the house (she can't drive anymore), so I thought she could use an outing. We sat on the outdoor patio of a local restaurant on a beautiful day, and we both enjoyed it!

In fact, we had a whole week of beautiful fall days--low 70's and sunny every day--so I spent some time on our deck every afternoon. I know I will be longing for the chance to do that in another month! And, for the 4th or 5th weekend in a row, it rained on Saturday. My husband and I were lazy bums and just had a down day at home, which we both needed. Oh, and we booked one last vacation for the fall: campsites in two beautiful state parks in the mountains of Virginia next week. Sunday was household catch-up day, and I did some weeding, dusted upstairs (I can't do much cleaning, so I dust and my husband does the rest), and got our Halloween decorations up. All of that was probably too much for me, but so far, I am still doing OK this morning.

Writing reviews on the deck

My book cover matched the view Saturday!

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On the Blog

 Fiction Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch - outstanding sci fi thriller with a chilling premise, great characters, and nonstop action & suspense

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On Video

 The King of Horror Stephen King Tag - while I rarely read horror, I greatly enjoy King's non-horror novels and have a long family history with his books and movies, so I enjoyed this theme--perfect for the season!

 

Friday Reads 10-13-23 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading and listening to each weekend. 

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 What We're Reading

I'm still enjoying the R.I.P. Challenge!

 

I finished reading The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld, a sequel to her earlier novel, The Child Finder, which my husband and I both enjoyed. Naomi is an investigator who specializes in finding missing children. She herself was abducted as a child, but her memories begin with her escape from her captor. Naomi's younger sister was abducted with her and is still missing, after all these years, and Naomi has promised herself that the next person she finds will be her sister. She heads to Portland, Oregon, where young girls have been going missing in recent months, with six of them turning up dead in the river. Despite her determination to focus only on her sister, Naomi can't help noticing 12-year-old Celia who is living on the streets to escape an abusive stepfather and addicted mother. The novel was excellent, with the same suspense, attention to detail, and in-depth characters as the earlier novel. And the ending was not only satisfying but happy!

 

Now I am reading another book for the R.I.P. Challenge: Dangerous Lies by Becca Fitzpatrick. This is a YA novel about the Witness Protection (WITSEC) program, a topic I always find intriguing (if you do, too, check out the TV show In Plain Sight). Way back in 2009, I enjoyed another novel by this author, Hush, Hush. That was paranormal romance, but this novel is firmly set in the real world. Estella witnessed a horrible murder by a dangerous criminal and has been taken into WITSEC to keep her safe and so that she can testify against him when he goes to trial. There's a whole criminal organization behind him, so her life is truly at risk. The federal marshals give her a new name, Stella Gordon, and resettle her in Thunder Basin, Nebraska, which is very different from her home in Philadelphia. Her mom is an addict, so Estella is used to being on her own and has trouble adjusting to the rules of the ex-cop posing as her foster mother. She begins to find some positives in small town rural life, in spite of herself, but she is still in danger. I'm loving this novel so far!

 

I finished listening to When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash. It's a mystery set in coastal North Carolina. Sheriff Winston Barnes is awakened one night by a loud noise and goes out to investigate. On the small airfield near his house, he finds a private plane crashed on the runway, and a man who's been killed by a gun lying nearby. The man is a local, Rodney, who's always been a law-abiding citizen. Other perspectives are woven into the narrative, including Winston's daughter, Colleen, who is severely depressed after losing her baby, and Jay, Rodney's wife's younger brother, who's been sent to stay with them after getting in trouble at home in Atlanta. This was my first Wiley Cash novel, and the writing was just as good as I'd heard, and it was excellent on audio. In addition to the mystery, there is deep characterization here, along with emotional complexity and issues of race, crime, and class. The ending ... well, let's just say it was one of those endings that makes you go, "Wait, what?"

 

My husband, Ken, is still reading Kidnapped, a classic by Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island was a favorite at our house when our kids were young. He says that so far, the writing and time period reminds him a bit of Great Expectations (which he read earlier this year on my recommendation), though the story is darker. He had his flu and COVID vaccines yesterday, so he's lying on the couch under a comfy blanket reading this now!

 

Our son, 29, read the first book in a new sequel series to Art of the Adept by Michael G. Manning, Wrath of the Stormking, and finished book one, Wizard in Exile. Now, he is reading The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington, book one of the Licanius trilogy.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.  

What are you and your family reading this week?