Stacking the Shelves is a weekly book meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews, The Sunday Post is another great site hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. The Sunday Salon is a Facebook page where great readers share what they've read this week and Mailbox Monday is a weekly roundup of the new books people have received.
This has been a long, long week. Between reading about the nurse held hostage at Delnor Hospital, the baby who was gnawed on by 100 rats while her parents lay sleeping, and Chris Cornell's suicide, it felt like the world was just an ugly, sad place this week.
I have such great respect for artists in any form. Painters, authors, musicians. That type of talent is just so foreign to me - my brain just isn't wired that way, I'm way too logical. So when I listen to interviews with singers about how they just hear music in their head, I can't even imagine what that feels like. I always wonder if that's how authors work too, do they just hear the story in their head?
I think Cornell's death hit me hard for another reason. I've always been a huge fan, and he came to town about a year and a half ago. I really wanted to go, but the tickets were like $140 each. I hemmed and hawed, but I just couldn't justify the expense. Why? I don't know. I could easily have bought the ticket but it just didn't feel like my wants were a good enough reason to go.
That's what being a mom does to you. It's a lifetime of putting your own needs second and by the time your nest is empty, to do something for yourself seems frivolous or selfish, and you aren't even really sure what you like to do anymore.
Even with blogging, i sometimes read what's coming up for publishing and putting a book I'm dying to read on the back burner. It's like deprivation becomes second nature and to do what you actually want to do becomes close to impossible.
Enough of these depressing thoughts! I did add two new books that I am excited to read.
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak...A warm, wry, sharply observed
It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter—who is usually off saving the world—will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is only coming home because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family.
For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity—and even decent Wi-Fi—and forced into each other’s orbits. Younger, unabashedly frivolous daughter Phoebe is fixated on her upcoming wedding, while her older sister, Olivia, deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems.
Their father, Andrew, sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent. But his wife, Emma, is hiding a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.
In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…
He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly....In the summer of 1999, Kit and Laura
travel to a festival in Cornwall to see a total eclipse of the sun. Kit is an eclipse chaser; Laura has never seen one before. Young and in love, they are certain this will be the first of many they’ll share.
But in the hushed moments after the shadow passes, Laura interrupts a man and a woman. She knows that she saw something terrible. The man denies it. It is her word against his.
The victim seems grateful. Months later, she turns up on their doorstep like a lonely stray. But as her gratitude takes a twisted turn, Laura begins to wonder—did she trust the wrong person?
15 years later, Kit and Laura married are living under new names and completely off the digital grid: no Facebook, only rudimentary cell phones, not in any directories. But as the truth catches up to them, they realize they can no longer keep the past in the past.
From Erin Kelly, queen of the killer twist, He Said/She Said is a gripping tale of the lies we tell to save ourselves, the truths we cannot admit, and how far we will go to make others believe our side of the story.
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