What have you been reading?

I’ve spent a lot of time on planes and airports lately. An upside of this has been more time to read. Yay!

I finally finished listening to Leigh Bardugo’s duo, Six of Crows and The Crooked Kingdom. I’d not read Bardugo before and, whoa, have I missed out. (I’m now listening to the Shadow and Bone trilogy.) Bardugo’s Grishaverse is one of the best worlds I’ve ever read. Her imagination rivals Rowling’s and her characters are indelible. I adored both books and am now determined to read everything in this series. It’s just so good.

I’d put down Louise Candlish’s Our House about 65% way through and am not sure why. On my most recent flight, I read the rest. I liked it, but not as much as I do The Heights. I found the ending of Our House remarkably abrupt. Like the kind of abrupt that I wondered if my eARC was missing pages. I’ll happily read more Candlish, however. Her mysteries, all which feature people caught in a cascade of poor decisions, are mesmerizing. There’s little violence in her book and you’ll find yourself filled with dread, even as you can’t stop reading, as you marvel at how horribly life can go for those who have bargained poorly with fate.

I also enjoyed Dervla McTiernan’s latest mystery, a stand-alone titled The Murder Rule. McTiernan, who grew up in Ireland and now resides in Perth, set this thriller in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia and I’m not sure why. To be fair, not everyone would be so irked by an airbnb host offering her guests sweet ice tea. In the South, tea is sweet. No one ever puts sweet before it—if you don’t want wince-inducting sugary ice tea, you’d order unsweetened tea. She also got several pieces of geography wrong. It’s a shame I noticed these lapses and was distracted because, overall, this is a gripping novel.

I loved both of Trish Dollar’s books—she’s really been the bright spot in my romance reading in the past month. I was less wowed by Samanthe Beck’s first two Captivity in Alaska books—she’s funny but her world and her characters don’t seem connected enough to, you know, reality, to work for me.

Lastly, I read the advanced release copy of Julie Anne Long’s You Were Made to Be Mine which comes out in June. The usual cast of characters from the Palace of Rogues are all here as are two new characters, a hardened 35 year old spy and a 21 year old on the run. I’ll be interested to see what readers think about it!

How about you? What have you read lately?

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