Book review time! 🙂

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Y’all this book was long and tedious. Over 600 pages of just verbiage. It was hard for me to get through this book to be honest with you and I skipped a lot of pages. I loved the storyline but the characters were nauseating and the writing was cumbersome. I feel like this author could have cut the word count in half, and still would have been able to get her point across. It was disappointing because I really enjoyed Quinn’s The Huntress, but c la vie.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

I loved this book so much! The Thursday Murder Club revolves around a group who meet each Thursday to discuss unsolved crimes, only to have a real life murder fall into their laps which they are determined to solve. Did I mention the group that meets each Thursday lives in a retirement community in England? This book was a fantastic read!!

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I decided last year that I wanted to reread some books from my childhood and this was one of them. Passed the time just fine.

A is For Alibi by Sue Grafton

I love me some Kinsey Millhone! If you have not yet read one of the beloved “alphabet mysteries”, you are missing out! I have read all of them before, but I am starting over again with rereading this one.

That’s it from me! What did you read this past month? 🙂

Book review time!

Night by Elie Wiesel

Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor & this is his true story of survival in a concentration camp. This is normally a book I would not read because stories like this affect me deeply & I am usually a sobbing mess (I am an empath. If you know, you know). This book was so sad & a huge reminder to #neverforget. I absolutely recommend everyone to read this.

Lord Edgeware Dies by Agatha Christie

I am participating in the book of the month challenge on Instagram for Agatha Christie books put on each month by her estate. This was the book for March.

A Fatal Lie by Charles Todd

This was the latest entry in this 1920’s Scotland Yard series featuring Detective Ian Rutledge. If you like your mysteries without the benefit of technology, check out this series!

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

I don’t even know where to start with this book. It. Was. So. Depressing. Don’t get me wrong, it was an excellently written book and well-researched. Hannah delved into the 1930’s depression and The Great Dust Bowl like no one’s business. But my goodness, the heartstrings were tugged and then some. This was my first book that I’ve read by this author so I am not sure if this is her M.O. or not in terms of just the mountains and mountains of despair. Good book but be forewarned, you’ll probably need some tissues handy.

That’s it from me! What did you read this month? 🙂

Book review time! Here we go…

Bag Man by Rachel Maddow

In 2019, Rachel Maddow had a podcast series about former Vice President Spiro Agnew and how he almost went to jail for bribery, corruption, and tax evasion. The man literally took pay-offs while vice president, and I know in today’s times, this might seem low key, but he is the only vice president to ever resign, and he did this in order to avoid jail time! This book is based on the podcast and they both are well worth the read and the listen.

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

This is a contemporary mystery that takes places in Switzerland. A former sanatorium has now been turned into a swanky modern hotel and after all the guests arrive for an engagement party, a snowstorm/avalanche happens and all the guests are snowed in and people start dying and they realize they are trapped there with a murderer and there is no way out.

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. It was definitely creepy and the author gets an A plus for delivering on the whole atmosphere thing, I mean who the heck would stay in a former sanatorium? But where my frustration started to grow is with the cop investigating the crime. I am tired of these stories lately that seem to be written where the female cop investigating had something traumatic happen to her in her recent past and now she has PTSD and somehow doesn’t know her head from her behind, but somehow pulls through and solves the crime. This kind of trope is what bothered me about Tessa Wegert’s novel Death in the Family. Like, how is this person even a police officer if they are constantly questioning themselves and asking others what they should do? So annoying.

Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

I have mentioned before that I am a presidential history nerd, and this book has been on my TBR for awhile so I dived in and in and in and in… This book took me almost three weeks to finish which is unheard of because I am a fast reader but there was soooo much information, you just could not speed read through this. IT WAS SO GOOD! 5 starts all around! Did you know that the president is supposed to formally ask Congress for a formal declaration of war against another country (separation of powers and all that) and the last president to do that was Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 when he asked Congress to go to war against Japan and Germany? The U.S. has since fought against Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and none of these wars had a formal “declaration”. Fascinating…

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Awful, awful book. Total DNF.As of this writing, it has over 465 1-star reviews on Goodreads. Read some of them. They can better explain than me, why this book is detestable.

That’s it from me! What did you read this past month 🙂