Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

Embark on a guided tour of 30 of the most dangerous and mysterious locations that we simply cannot stay away from.

Have you ever visited a forest or an abandoned building and gotten a bad vibe? There are places that are rife with rumors of hauntings, monsters, and sinister phenomena that can’t be explained. And there are just as many sites that are the confirmed home of disasters, murders, and man-made mistakes. Everyone’s heard about the Bermuda Triangle, but do you know these chilling sites?

There’s a lake tucked high in the frozen Himalayan Mountains . . . and it’s full of skeletons.Mount This mysterious mountain in California inspired the I AM cult and is said to host UFOs, bigfoots, and lizard people.Nahanni National Called the “Valley of the Headless Men,” this national park in northern Canada is famous for legends of a hidden gold mine . . . and a series of decapitated miners.Pine Best known as the home of the Jersey Devil, this desolate pine forest has also hosted pirates, the mafia, and moonshiners.Ciudad This fabled pre-Columbian “Lost City of the Monkey God” in Honduras doesn’t want to be found, and explorers seeking it have met violent ends.

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

When the Girls accept a very strange invitation to a lavish party on a remote island estate, they find that murder has a way of ruining even the most glamorous of evenings.

The invite delivered to 6151 Richmond Street was short on details, only promising to celebrate “the greatest artist of the century” and accompanied by a jewel-encrusted brooch—the whole package a brand of mysterious opulence that another Saturday night of gin rummy just can’t match.

Blanche Devereaux’s passionate dalliances are as plentiful as hot Southern nights, and surely one can’t be expected to remember all of one’s suitors. But when the Girls disembark the party’s ferry at a small Biscayne Bay island and meet their secretive host, the memories come flooding she a Radio City Rockette in her twenties, he the poor artist who could offer her nothing but his love. Fate drove them apart, but Declan, now a famous artist El Toro, professes that Blanche has always been his muse.

Featured prominently in his artworks and central to El Toro’s return to the apex of the art world, Blanche is thrilled to have been such an inspiring figure to this man. But looking around at a party filled with those who have made their livings off the artist’s fame—his assistant, his art dealer, his greatest critic, and more—Dorothy isn’t so sure they’re welcome on the island after all.

When a tropical storm knocks power out across the island, an optimistic Blanche proclaims that everyone looks better by candlelight anyway. But when Declan is found dead the next morning, all eyes are on her, his supposed muse of thirty-plus years. Trapped at the estate with the other guests—suspects all—the Girls must band together to find the true killer and get back to pleasant evenings of card games and cheesecake.

HAPPY READING!!

May Wrap Up

I think this might be my best reading month, full stop. It is very unlikely that I'll manage this many books again in a single month.  Mostly because I have some bigger books on my Summer TBR, and I'm a pretty slow reader, and this month I had a lot of smaller reads lined up. The upside is that I'm so far ahead on my 2026 goals that if my summer gets busy with this or that, a low reading month might just even me out. Then again, I do have MCR tickets for September that I should be saving up for. So maybe I just read all summer at my apartment pool, in the park, and at other random places. Not the worst plan. 

Anyway, on to the May stats:

Books Read: 11
BINGO Books: 1

Pages Read: 1625

Only one single square knocked off my BINGO board this month. Though it was absolutely adorable, and I'm glad I stumbled upon Papaya Salad thanks to my library. So that's my Set in Thailand square crossed off. I also crossed off another square on my Spooky BINGO. My Novella is finished, thanks to Pale House Devil. 

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

       

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to take a closer look at a book. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

The Greers built their fortune on alligator bones.

Dartrine Beaumont believes her mother’s sudden death has left her alone in the world—until she learns of long-lost wealthy relatives living in Florida. Confused but delighted by the possibility of extended family, Dart travels to her grandmother’s stately Gilded Age mansion on Amelia Island for answers, just in time to stake a claim on an unusual inheritance: an alligator farming empire.

Her arrival at Greer House isn’t everything she hoped. Without warning, Dart finds herself in fierce competition with her grandmother’s arrogant heir-apparent, and tensions rise as threatening acts of vandalism escalate on one of the farms. More unsettling is her hostile grandmother’s fanatical belief that the danger stems from a curse; according to legend, a larger-than-life alligator hunted down by a bloodthirsty ancestor still haunts the family. Yet Dart can’t deny that the farm’s placid alligators hiss only at Greers, or that a shadowy figure creeps through the mansion’s halls, plaguing her with suspicions that the mythical alligator and monstrous, long-dead matriarch may have unfinished business.

As Dart uncovers the truth about her violent birthright, she faces a terrible accept her place in her family’s grim legacy or forge a new path by slaying a different beast entirely.

HAPPY READING!!

June Reading Challenge

 Okay, first, I have a question. Why does that shelf need a ladder like that? It's not that tall. Wouldn't a step ladder be the better option, or your tiptoes? I feel like it's not much bigger than my current shelf. Longer and way cooler than my shelf, but the same height... Anyway, that's not why we're here. Maybe you don't know why you are here, because you wandered here by other means. In that case, hello, welcome. Please note that I have a short attention span, and sometimes these posts go sideways for a bit.

Back to the post! While I love my local library to pieces. I set up there all the time to work on this blog, read there in the winter while I wait on the bus, sometimes I even go in the summer because I need a bit of AC. Plus the books! Between my Kindle, my basket, and my roommate, there are always library books in our house. I also have my own personal library that I need to read. It's a lot, like I don't want to count them because I don't actually want to know how many it is exactly.

So to combat that, for the entire month of June, I'm only reading books I own. All the library books have been sent back to the library, put on a list for later, because that's the joy of the library. I can always check them out again. For those wondering, if you're out there, no, I don't have a TBR. I am a mood reader by nature, so I do not have a set reading list. I have a summer TBR and a BINGO TBR, both of which have great books. I also have three, no four, shelves to choose from. I also have a full Kindle of books that need some reading!

Will this put a huge dent in my physical TBR? Probably not, it's a large TBR, but it will put some sort of dent in it. Plus, it'll make me feel better. To knock four to seven books off my list, it's nothing. I might even do it well into July. I've still got a couple of library books to get through. I'm partway through two, and the other two are graphic novels. So I might extend this into July, I do have some ongoing series I'd like to keep up via the library. 

HAPPY READING!!

June Reading Club

Hi, it's me again! Reminding everyone I've teamed up with Edway Taphouse to host a Reading Club every Tuesday in June, except for June 30th, because I'll be out of town. It's a super low-stress evening filled with quiet mindling with other book lovers, and working on 'to be read' pile. All you have to do is bring yourself and the book that you're currently reading. We'll kick off reading at 6:30 pm to give everyone time to get settled, grab a drink, or even food at the Trio Food Truck. After an hour of reading, we'll wrap things up for the night. You can stay and drink and mingle, and take part in the book stack photo of what we read that night. 

I hope to see some butts in seats next Tuesday. If you have any questions about the Reading Club or Edway Taphouse, feel free to drop me a comment. Or, you can pop over to Instagram and DM at @bookish_whispers. 

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

SUMMER 1983. A blood-soaked summer camp counselor is found staggering down a country road. The sole survivor of a horrific massacre, Mary tells a nightmare of a masked maniac wielding an old skinning knife. Arriving too late to help, her boyfriend Tom Bailey is plagued by guilt.

SUMMER 1992. The camp reopens as Camp Summer Fun. Now a sheriff’s deputy, Tom doubts this is a good idea, but the camp has been refurbished, the counselors hired, and the little campers are on the way. Responding to reports of a blood-curdling howl near the camp, he again arrives too late to save anyone except a single brutalized teen. The killer nowhere to be found.

Hoping to catch the killer and finally right his mistakes, Tom reconnects with Mary. She's convinced that the killer is not human but instead a rural legend known as the Hungry Hare.

The sheriff wants the case closed, but refuses to believe in folklore. Mary dreams of revenge for her friends. And Tom hunts for any traces of the real or fictional. But the murderer could be closer to home than anyone expects.

The Hare is coming and is so, so hungry…

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

This is a fun little series. Seigi is adorable with the best intentions, even if his mouth kind of runs ahead of his brain a little. Though I'm with him, I think we all want to know a little bit more about Richard. We're three books into this series, and I feel like I know Seigi inside and out. The only thing I know about Richard is where he's from, and that's good at what he does. I also liked the info dump on each of the gems in the books. I don't know much about precious stones, but I'm learning something new with each book. 

OMG! I shouldn't feel bad for Lewellyn because he had killed people. Then again, they were bad people, and he is kind of the creature they created. So there's that. Also, I can't decide if I want Shavonne to get his memories back or not. On the one hand, I think something terrible happened to him, and that's why he forgot. On the other hand, I want him to remember Lewellyn. But also, I need Lewellyn to get into that man's house because I do not trust him. He's a problem, and he's going to touch something that doesn't belong to him. I'm not happy to wait the handful of weeks until the next volume comes out. Because I'm so invested in these two little weirdos.

When I tell you I became obsessed with this book, it was almost instantaneous. I picked this up because the live action has popped up on my Instagram FYP, and I wanted to read before watching either that or the anime. I devoured this book. DEVOURED! I've already put the second volume on hold at the library, and honestly, if it wasn't for my end-of-month budget, I'd buy the whole series. Because, just this. Do I know this book is going to rip my heart? Yes, I can already see how much this book will heart, but both of these two are so cute, and I just need more, right now.

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

       

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to take a closer look at a book. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

Lucy isn’t a normal girl. Ghost. Victim. Killer. She’s a doll on a mission—to find the man who killed her and return the favor.

Lucy McQuinn has been murdered, but she’s not about to go quietly.

If she doesn’t get to keep breathing, then neither does Kyle, her killer. Possessing the body of an antique doll, she sets out on a quest for revenge. But it’s hard when you’re eighteen inches tall and made of porcelain.

For help, she turns to Nicola, a human and fellow outsider with her own reasons to hate Kyle. But in their small idyllic town, no one wants to hear the truth, especially not about such a promising young man. If they can’t expose his crimes, Lucy will have to roll up her lacy little sleeves and teach him a lesson the old-fashioned way—as slowly and painfully as possible.

HAPPY READING!!

June Edmonds SBC

I'm so bummed I missed this month's Silent Book Club, but I know Michelle is a wonderful hostess! I will be back next month for the June SBC. As always, we'll be meeting at 7 pm at Leftcraft! Come a little early and grab something to eat and drink. I can't wait to see all the photos of what everyone was reading on Wednesday, and I can't wait to see what everyone is kicking off their summer reading!

A few things to remember about the Edmonds SBC. We are totally kid-friendly. Leftcraft not only has a kids' menu but also root beer on tap! The restaurant is open while we read, so feel free to bring headphones if needed. If you're listening to audiobooks and want to work, they also have public wifi! Lastly, I'll have a few fun announcements next month that I'm still ironing out the details of! So hopefully I'll see everyone next month!!

HAPPY READING!!