I read the third book in the series early last month and since I enjoyed it, I figured I’d go back and read the first two.
Lowcountry Boil was pretty good. Not as good as book three but not bad. I’m still looking forward to the second book in the series.
TW got Lowcountry Boneyard from Erica at Wild Iris when we were in Gainesville in February. It’s an advance review copy so I’m guessing she had just gotten it at the bookstore conference thing she’d been at right before we came to visit.
It’s the third book in a mystery series set in Charleston (and also in Greenville, oddly enough.) I often find myself picking apart books based in Charleston because they get things wrong and it bugs me. I thought that was going to happen with this one because the protagonist lives on a fake island and that should have bugged me. Turns out, it was a smart move. I can’t pick apart fake islands, heh. And, she got the important things right about Charleston and then made up some other stuff and it all worked for me.
Even the ghost part.
I liked it enough that I reserved the first book in the series and am looking forward to reading it during #readathon in a couple of weeks.
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I would very much like to know how I found Hell on Wheels, since it’s like the 9th book in the series, it seems somewhat unlikely that I reserved it based on a series recommendation. Maybe I just picked it up from the new arrivals shelf? I don’t know but I loved it.
I really like Odelia Grey. I like the body positive female sleuth. I like her paraplegic husband. I like pretty much everything about it and will have to go back and read the whole series.
The Witch Hunter’s Tale is the third book in the Midwife Mysteries series and it was the best book of the series so far. That’s saying quite a lot since I love this series.
SO much happened and it kept me reading even when I was really tired and wanted to go to sleep. The ending was perfect. So much drama. I loved it.
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I finally found some time to read Joyland and I really enjoyed it. I liked the setting and the characters. I even liked the way it ended. Since this is a “crime” novel and not a horror novel, we didn’t get the really creepy Stephen King and that’s cool. Nice change from scary clowns with just enough creepyness to make it a fun read.
I reserved A Shot to Die For because it was set in Lake Geneva (and I may have mentioned we had a mini holiday planned for Lake Geneva?) — turns out it’s a whole series of mysteries set (mostly) in the north suburbs of Chicago. The main character lives off of a road just down the street from me.
So, kind of fun — not a great mystery but not truly horrible either. I might reserve another one.
I didn’t do a very good job of talking about most of the books I read during the #readathon, so I’m backtracking a bit.
Astronaut Wives Club — I liked it but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as I’d hoped. I see now why someone (Julie?) said she didn’t really like it very much. It was vague where I wanted more detail. I’m glad I read it but I wish it had been better.
Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate was really good — witchery popery popery witchery, it’s really much the same when you think about it, right?
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives — a book of short stories, very good short stories. That’s saying something since I’m not really a fan of short story compilations.
Lake Geneva: Life At the Water’s Edge was a really nice coffee table type book. Great photos. Interesting. Makes me a little sad that we cancelled our mini vacation in November. We’ll do it in the spring, instead, and I’m looking forward to it now more than ever.
Day Trips From Chicago was nothing special. I didn’t find anything unusual or extra interesting. Not a bad book of day trips it was just a little vanilla.
A Short History of Myth, I think I did write about this one a little yesterday. It was ok. Dry, as you’d expect. Something to think about (or to try not to think about?) as I read the other books in the Myth series in the months ahead.
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Book three, Pardonable Lies was not my favorite Maisie Dobbs and not just because the narrator changed between book two and three (we’re doing this series on audio, now.)
Maisie was… not herself, which is probably as it should be but it made for a less fun adventure and a more serious, thoughtful story. I want the fun adventure with only a little bit of serious and thoughtfulness.
I also flipped from #TeamDean to #TeamInspector, Andrew Dean bugged me a lot in this one.
On to book four!
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I enjoyed the first Maisie Dobbs so much that I immediately reserved the second book, Birds of a Feather. But, I accidentally reserved it in audio. Not intentional, definitely, because I have a lot of audio books on my reserve list and I try to keep it to less than three because otherwise they all come in at once and we don’t have enough time to listen to them before they have to back. I also wasn’t sure we’d like the English accents in audio — sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. This time — we did!
Another good story. I really like all of these characters (but I hope Maisie picks Dr Dean over Detective Stanton… jus sayin’.)
I’ve reserved the next book, in audio (sigh — all of my audios will probably come in next week and we’ll have to return some unread! I hate it when that happens…)
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There were a half dozen books on the library cart with an 8/18 due date. I knew I couldn’t read them all and none could be renewed – so I asked TW to tell me which ones she thought I should read.
Afterwards was one of those books.
Oy. One of those books that makes moms have nightmares. It was good, (good enough for me to stay up past midnight to finish it), even though I had mostly figured it all out long before the author let us in on who did it (or all of the its, since there were several things going on.) That’s probably the only problem I had with the book — too many issues going on with Jenny. Yea, that made it twisty but only a little twisty. The stalker bit just never really worked well for me, I guess.