Waiting on Wednesday

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to 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 at Breaking the Spine.

A ghost-hunting reality TV crew gain unprecedented access to an abandoned and supposedly haunted mansion, which promises a groundbreaking thirteenth episode, but as they uncover the secret history of the house, they learn that “reality” TV might be all too real — in Bram Stoker Award nominated author Craig DiLouie's latest heart pounding novel of horror and psychological suspense.

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. It’s led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin and features a dedicated crew of ghost-hunting experts.
 
Episode Thirteen takes them to Matt's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This crumbling, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about the bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also, undoubtably, haunted, and Matt hopes to use their scientific techniques and high tech gear to prove it. 

But, as the house begins to slowly reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. 
  
A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, correspondence, and research files, this is the story of Episode Thirteen — and how everything went horribly wrong. 

Why I'm Waiting: I really liked books told in the found footage form. So I'm excited to see how Craig DiLouie wrote Episode Thirteen in that style.

HAPPY READING!!

Book Haul

I've been going to the thrift store about once a week to look through their book selection. The downside to it being on my way home, the upside is I haven't found anything. Well, nothing in the book aisle, I did find some household treasure. I just like the thrift store, okay! Over the weekend, however, I got lucky. As soon as I walked in found some gems!

I really liked the first Remember Me, so I was pumped to find the sequel. The cover is a little busted, but that just gives it a bit of character.  So that is on the top of my 2023 TBR. Because there is no way I'll get to it this month! Point Horror is a 90s collection I just discovered, despite growing up in the '90s. I blame my tiny little library for not having enough funding back then. Anyway, I'm making up for lost time by collecting and slowly reading what I can find. And, I found a Christopher Pike book from this collection. Which I'm excited about.

Technically, I was trying not to buy any books over the next two months. Mostly because work is slowing down, which means my hours will shrink. So I'm trying to be responsible. Then again these are thrift books! 

Has anyone else snagged any books this last week?

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

   

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes it's the cover that originally catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon!

When Charlie was eleven, she created a monster…

In the seaside town of Hithechurch, England, eleven-year-old Charlotte meets Emily, a clever and secretive girl her own age with a dark family history. In an attempt to get rid of Emily’s abusive father, Charlie and Emily perform a ritual to try and summon the spirit of a Hithechurch girl of urban legend—named Stitch Face Sue by Charlie—who was killed by pirates and supposedly haunts the town in a quest for revenge. When it appears that the macabre game they've invented is working, Emily becomes obsessed with Stitch Face Sue, and ropes in another girl—but the game goes tragically wrong when the new girl is killed. Charlie and Emily are caught trying to hide the body, and both are carted away to institutions.

Past meets present when Charlie returns to Hithechurch as an adult to research a book on the folklore of the area, but is drawn into the cases of several girls who have mysteriously vanished. And she has other motives for coming back as well. Emily has published a bestselling memoir on the fateful incident from their childhoods, one that lays the blame squarely at Charlie’s feet. Outraged, Charlie scours the town for evidence to back up her side of the story—and in doing so exposes an older, even darker tale.

Charlie is set on discovering the truth about the girls’ disappearances, but someone is watching, and her own past is nipping at her heels. In a town haunted by tragic disappearances and unrelenting urban legends, Charlie's determination for truth is laced with secrets buried deep in Hithechurch's past.

HAPPY READING!!

Book Mail

Massive shout out to Quirk Books for sending me some adorable book mail. I had my fingers crossed that I'd be able to snag an early release of this because it sounded absolutely cute, and reading isn't my only passion. I love being in a kitchen. So a book that is built around cooking was right up my alley. Add on the fact the recipes in the story also appear in the book. I love a challenge in the kitchen. So I cannot wait to read this book and maybe try a few new recipes!

A Spoonful of Time is set to be released on April 11, 2023! You can find more information about the book here, add it to your Goodreads, or pre-order it wherever you get your books! 

HAPPY READING!!

Most Anticipated Reads 2023 pt 1

 

My 2023 shelf is already huge and it's only December. I usually want this list to include the first six months of the year, and it does for the most part. Some of the books are currently set to be leased toward the middle of the year. But, most of these books are hitting shelves in the first three to four months. So be on the look for a summer edition for some of my anticipated reads of the coming year. 

To no one's shock or surprise, Last year I was good about buying the books I was really excited. I was not as good about reading them. And, while I'm sitting here swearing that 2023 is going to be different. That year I'll read the books on this list, not just read them. Part of me, most of me, knows I'll be really good about buying them. Probably not so good about reading them. Good thing book buying and book reading are two completely different hobbies!

That's the list! These are just fifteen books I'm really excited to add to my collection in the coming months. But this is just a small amount. So many good books are getting ready to hit shelves. On the day my TBR is going to crush me, and that's just the physical one. The one I have online on Goodreads has reached the thousands. 

What are some of the books that ya'll are excited to get your hands on?

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to 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 at Breaking the Spine.

Your past and your family can haunt you like nothing else… A hilarious and terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group.

Every childhood home is haunted, and each of us are possessed by our parents.

When their parents die at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic, Louise and Mark Joyner are devastated but nothing can prepare them for how bad things are about to get. The two siblings are almost totally estranged, and couldn’t be more different. Now, however, they don’t have a choice but to get along. The virus has passed, and both of them are facing bank accounts ravaged by the economic meltdown. Their one asset? Their childhood home. They need to get it on the market as soon as possible because they need the money. Yet before her parents died they taped newspaper over the mirrors and nailed shut the attic door.

Sometimes we feel like puppets, controlled by our upbringing and our genes. Sometimes we feel like our parents treat us like toys, or playthings, or even dolls. The past can ground us, teach us, and keep us safe. It can also trap us, and bind us, and suffocate the life out of us. As disturbing events stack up in the house, Louise and Mark have to learn that sometimes the only way to break away from the past, sometimes the only way to sell a haunted house, is to burn it all down.

 

Why I'm Waiting: I read my first Grady Hendrix book this year, loved it, and I cannot wait for his next book to come out!

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

Fall is bursting out all over Vermont, and while the rest of the Congress enjoys its recess, Senator Bernie Sanders has returned to his beloved home state for a weekend of events in Eagle Creek, “America’s #1 Leaf Peeping Destination.” It’s up to intern and Eagle Creek native Crash Robertson to keep the senator on schedule—and out of trouble.

Crash’s hopes for a quiet homecoming are dashed, however, when the lifeless body of a community banker with ties to “Big Maple” is found in Lake Champlain. While the sheriff’s department closes the case as an accident, a leaked autopsy indicates foul play…with a trail of syrup leading directly to one of the senator’s oldest friends. Bernie, taking a page from the cozy mysteries he’s addicted to, enlists Crash in a quest to uncover the killer’s true identity.

If Crash allows the senator to go too far off-script, it will be the end of her yet-to-begin political career. But as the suspect list grows to include a tech bro set on “disrupting” the maple syrup industry, struggling small-business owners, and even Crash’s own family, she realizes there’s more on the line than her own future. If the unlikely duo can’t solve the mystery of the Maple Murderer before they strike again, Bernie’s life-long fight for justice may come to an unplanned end.

HAPPY READING!!

2023 Book BINGO

It doesn't feel like it should be anywhere close to time to start thinking about any sort of reading goals for 2023. However, the end of the year is only a few weeks away. So there seems to be no better than right now!

A new year means another year of Reading BINGO! I have to say I'm pretty proud of what I managed to cross off this year's list. While not my best year, it was a good year. 

I also doubt I'll ever have a year of reading as I did in 2020. That was one of the few upsides to that year. 

 So here is the card we use every year. We don't play with a Free Space anymore, and I cannot remember why. While all my friends who play with us get the chance to squares, I love reaching out to the rest of the Book Community.

What should be on the 2023 board? 

My goal is to get enough ideas to have to write them all down and draw for ideas! One of my friends always has a list going for the next year's idea. So drop me a comment below as to what we should add to the list of possibilities!

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sundays

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes it's the cover that originally catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon!

There are stories about the woods around Salvation Creek, about the people who have gone missing. Now their friend is one of them. A riveting, fast-paced YA mystery told entirely through first-person police interviews of four teens over the course of a few hours.

It was all her idea. They would get away from their parents and spend the weekend camping. Down by Salvation Creek, the five of them would make smores, steal kisses, and share secrets.

But sometime around midnight, she vanished.

Now the four friends who came back are under suspicion―and they each have a very different story to tell about what happened in the woods.

The clock is ticking. What are they hiding? Who is lying? Dark truths must come to light if their friend is to be found...

Told entirely through first-person police interviews, this riveting mystery asks: what really happened that night?

HAPPY READING!!

December Spotlight

 

Andrew Shaffer is one of my Top Ten favorite authors! I found him thanks to Quirk Books with his Hope Never Dies series. Which I loved, it's one of those books I have fond memories of reading. Mostly of the weird looks I got on the bus from the actual laugh out loud to the book I'm reading. But those just book nerd problems. And, one of the many reasons I'm excited to curl up next to the fire and read this bad boy in the near future!

Fall is bursting out all over Vermont, and while the rest of the Congress enjoys its recess, Senator Bernie Sanders has returned to his beloved home state for a weekend of events in Eagle Creek, “America’s #1 Leaf Peeping Destination.” It’s up to intern and Eagle Creek native Crash Robertson to keep the senator on schedule—and out of trouble.

Crash’s hopes for a quiet homecoming are dashed, however, when the lifeless body of a community banker with ties to “Big Maple” is found in Lake Champlain. While the sheriff’s department closes the case as an accident, a leaked autopsy indicates foul play…with a trail of syrup leading directly to one of the senator’s oldest friends. Bernie, taking a page from the cozy mysteries he’s addicted to, enlists Crash in a quest to uncover the killer’s true identity.

If Crash allows the senator to go too far off-script, it will be the end of her yet-to-begin political career. But as the suspect list grows to include a tech bro set on “disrupting” the maple syrup industry, struggling small-business owners, and even Crash’s own family, she realizes there’s more on the line than her own future. If the unlikely duo can’t solve the mystery of the Maple Murderer before they strike again, Bernie’s life-long fight for justice may come to an unplanned end.

HAPPY READING!!

November Wrap Up

Personally, this has been a weird month. The first flew by because I was set to go home and see the family one more time this year, but the last couple of weeks have been really long and super stressful. My energy level has been on the ground most days. At this current stage, I'm very much not in the holiday mood. I'm hoping starting Christmas shopping for my people will help with that. My reading was also all over this place this month, and everything was really in the middle of the road. So I gave up and finally deep-dove into some of the cookbooks I bought. That helped, and my current read is weird but I'm liking. Which probably says a lot about the state of my mind. But, that is neither here nor there. 

My Sister-in-law deserves a wonderful shout though because she brought me a surprise book gift from my wishlist. Which was so very sweet of her. They look amazing on my shelves and I will totally, without, a doubt, make time for them. Again PNW just got hit by snow which means everything is shutting down. Which means more time to read! 

Books Read: 6
BINGO Books: 0

Pages Read: 810

Currently Reading: 

Definitely a weird month for me all around. I don't know what to expect going into December both with the blog and other realms. Work is gearing up for the Holidays which should mean more to do, but I'm honestly not super stressed about it. I'm a little stressed, but mostly excited to see how our community likes the new menu. I do have a lot of winter books geared up for December. I don't have a lot of "holiday" books on my TBR. However, there are a few snowy, wintery books that I've been needing to pick up. Plus, I love shopping for gifts for people. So eventually the Christmas bug will bite and I'll feel more with it. I'm just not ready for winter, despite how much snow is currently outside my window.

HAPPY READING!!