Month: October 2020

The Winter Teas Are Arriving! And I Voted!

Nothing makes my dark little heart beat quite so hard as when receiving new seasonal teas from Bigelow. Or from anyone to be honest.

This little group could not have come at a better time either. I was trying out a new Rum Cake recipe and invited friends over to taste test with a cup of Eggnog Tea. Seemed appropriate. And oh my goodness it was lovely!

This is all that remains of the small bundt cakes, I did some with nuts and some without. I was also reviewing the silicone bundt pan, so I killed two birds.

Winter has gone back to wherever it stays and once again it’s shorts and tank tops as we chop up tree limbs and haul them to the curb. We actually had to turn on the a/c we were sweating so hard!

But life goes on and crazy weather seems to be the norm now. Good news is we are going to be allowed into Curacao in December! Woo Hoo! Hopefully we can keep the cold at bay until then.

Hope you all have either voted or plan to. I have been so crazy busy and then sick this past month that I ordered a thermos to take to the polls to vote as the lines were down the street, only to be told I had already turned in my absentee vote weeks ago. Oh well, at least I am positive I voted. Thank you Kendra Horn for making sure I received a ballot! I voted for you. And Joe and Kamala and anyone who was against the feeble group we have now.

Happy Friday! (It is Friday, right?)

xx P

So We’re Going Straight to Winter Now?

by Audrey T

If you live close to me you also heard what sounded like gunshots going off all night and all day so far. No, it wasn’t a gang of out of control cowboys, it was limbs cracking off of the trees due to the ice storm we are currently enduring.

Every few minutes you hear the first rumblings and see ice fall and them Boom!, there goes another limb. Now, I am not talking about branches. They are covering the ground and homes alike. These are huge limbs. One of which is sitting on top of the nursing home right now. The park looks like a war zone and a quick tour of the neighborhood shows the same. Cars parked outside last night are now nestled in the boughs of sycamore trees.

At work, it’s worse. As you can see. This used to be a huge oak tree. Now it is just a trunk and this one remaining limb. The squirrels have been running for their lives and power is out everywhere. Best to stay in town this week!

Stay safe out there. My Gulf Coast people, be safe from the hurricane. The rest of us are just frozen. But Amazon is delivering so all is not lost!

xx P

AFTER ALL I’VE DONE by MINA HARDY

After All I've Done

Writing as Mina Hardy, New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart delivers a thrilling new psychological suspense for fans of The Woman in the Window and When the Lights Go Out.

Diana Sparrow was in a car accident five months ago that left her broken and missing quite a bit of her memory. She’s beginning to have nightmares that don’t make sense about that night. Nightmares that are so real they make her doubt everything she is told. 

The official story is she hit a deer and totaled her car. She is lucky to be alive. They say she has anesthesia amnesia. Maybe her memory will return and maybe it won’t. 

She has so many questions. Why is her best friend, Val, ignoring her? Everyone acts like they know something she doesn’t. And they do. Even her husband and his mother.

But Diana is not believing any of it. As fragments of her memory return, she also finds that everyone is lying to her. And she also finds out she isn’t a very nice person.
But then not one of them is. Harriet, the mother in law was terrifying to me. You could see crazy written all over her but I had no idea how this would end.  WHAT????

Well Done!

NetGalley/ November 10th, 2020 by Crooked Lane Books

Cold Conviction (Aspen Adams #3) by Daryl Wood Gerber

Cold Conviction (Aspen Adams, #3)

We’re back with PI Aspen Adams. This time the case she takes on is personal. The case that has never been solved. Her parent’s murder.

Fourteen years ago, her parents were murdered in their own home. Aspen was away at college but her sister Rosie found the bodies and was looked at as a suspect for a while. Rosie is an addict. She’s stolen from them before, but why kill them?

Rosie is not my favorite person. Aspen is also raising Rosie’s daughter. So when Rosie calls and begs her to find out who did this, she does. She goes home and starts asking questions. People begin to act strangely and she has quite a few possible suspects.

But in the end will she live to prove who was really guilty?

I loved this one. It was a twisty, confusing, and action packed all the way to the end. And no, the one person responsible wasn’t even on my radar! So, good job!

NetGalley/ October 27th, 2020 by Beyond the Page

Happy Sunday! I hope you are all healthy and safe.

Oklahoma is having a second surge that is worse than the first one. Also troubling is that this week we added 2 more categories of positive age groups. Under 2 and 6 to 10. Our major positive spreaders are in the 18 to 35 group and next the 35 to 49 group. I’m not in any of those groups so I guess my natural tendency to stay at home is finally paying off. OU Boy and I are perfectly fine at the moment.

His heart is working just fine and for once no one is hurting anywhere. I swear when you hit 40 your entire body just says, ” That’s it. All systems shutting down.” I have found the way to encourage OU Boy is to keep telling him how cute he looks after losing ten pounds. He’s awfully vain and it seems to be working.

We may get Fall today! At least for a day or so. It’s 11 a.m. and still grey outside and nothing is moving. This is suspicious behavior for OKC. The wind is always blowing. For the past couple of days it has been so bad I was not allowed outside due to the eye thingy. So instead I caught up on reviews, and binge watched The Haunting of Bly House which I liked less than the Haunting of Hill Manor. Even with the Stephen King Easter Egg in one of the scenes. I saw that, Stephen!

The election smack talk is heating up on Twitter but now that he is out of Twitmo, he is being careful. As I explained to him, it is possible to read something you disagree with and just move on.

I bought this book for my granddaughter and then read it myself. She loves mysteries. Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, all the old ones. But now Sherlocks daughter and Watson’s son are hooking up solving crimes and it’s one of the best YA series!

The Covid thing is putting holidays in jeopardy. I don’t care for my relatives enough to travel 12 hours to eat turkey and get infected. North Dakota, I’m talking to you! Get your shit together and stop infecting people so we can go to Canada.

As I sit here in my flamingo pajamas looking out the window I am totally grateful that we are here and in good health. And I wish that for all of you. No holiday or gift giving event is a good enough reason to be foolish and infect grandma and grandpa with a deadly virus.

Now I am off to feed my squirrel that I have befriended during isolation. She had triplets 2 weeks ago and is chowing down now. What is the weirdest thing you have done during lockdown?

xx P

THE MIRROR MAN by JANE GILMARTIN

The Mirror Man

Jeremiah Adams is not satisfied with his life. His wife and son have grown distant. He’s pretty sure she is having an affair. But the dog loves him to pieces.

When Jeremiah is offered to be part of an important year long study for his employer, ViGen Pharmaceuticals, Jeremiah jumps at the $10 million dollar pay day. But of course for that amount of money you already know it’s going to end badly. Greed is ugly.

His company’s new drug is called MELD. It can transfer your consciousness along with all of your memories into a clone that looks just like you. Yes, cloning humans is illegal and wrong, but this is Big Pharma at it’s best. Working with the military of course.

Jeremiah will be living in a fairly luxurious apartment twelve stories under the company. He is to be monitored all day every day as he watches remotely his clone take over his life. Everyone buys into the clone being Jeremiah. Almost everyone that is. And Jeremiah doesn’t want anyone to know about that, which causes a chain reaction he did not intend.

First I would like people to stop comparing books. I have read all of Blake Crouch and this isn’t it.

What I didn’t like was the questions that were not answered or just glossed over. Was his wife having an affair? When Jeremiah looks at ‘himself’, living his life he is shocked by what an uninvolved person he is. Disgusted by his own lack of interest in his family.

Not willing to continue, he makes a deal with his boss which neither intends to keep.

I just wish there had been more detail about the characters around him.

NetGalley/ October 20th, 2020 by MIRA 




OU Boy goes to Jail!

Okay, so it’s Twitter Jail. Or as he calls it Twitmo. He is addicted to Twitter. So when he woke up yesterday to discover he was in jail for 7 days, I couldn’t’ believe it. I mean I’ve been told to take a post down before, but never been in lockdown before. Donald Trump blocked me.

I tell you he was like an addict having withdrawals. He can see everything but he can’t comment or retweet. Finally I broke down and explained to him that if you are going to be spouting off about how Rand Paul’s neighbor should have kicked his butt all the way down the street, well you are going to get punished. But the seven day thing had me stumped. Normally it’s about 24 hours. Then I find out it is not his first violation.

So now he knows about shadow accounts and that you need to have one if you can’t control your mouth. Shadow accounts are a different account in a different name. I personally have a few. Two are private. So, now he is happy again and taking the orange thing in the people’s house to task for endangering lives. Once again there is peace in the kingdom.

As for me, I had two stitches removed this week from the eye. Only 10 left! My corneal surgeon says my transplant is beautiful but I’m not producing enough tears. She gave me a prescription for Restasis eye drops. I called my sister who has been through this 5 times and she said, “NO! Doesn’t she know you have Crohn’s? I was on that and all I did was sit in the bathroom in pain!” Then my trusty pharmacist called and said it was $635 after insurance. So they called in a different one. New. Only available at one independent pharmacy that doesn’t take insurance and it is $748. Side effects? Burning, redness and swelling of the eye. Nope.

Did some research and am upping my intake of Omega 3 which helps a lot with tear production and using warm compresses. Spoke to my pharmacist and she said I was doing the right thing. I knew my body better than anyone. So here we are back on a schedule of drops every other hour. Anti-rejection drops, pressure drops and antibiotic drops along with the new Syolane drops that we all agree are great.

Now I’m off to do nothing because for two weeks I can’t bend, lift or rub. Another surgery down and more to go but the great news is after the stitches came out my vision was 20/30! Guess I’ll stop whining about it.

Stay Safe and Vote!

xx P

INVISIBLE GIRL by LISA JEWELL

 

Invisible Girl

Twisty, Suspenseful, with a lot of psychological suspense.

There are three points of view in this exciting book. Saffyre Maddox is one. When she was ten she suffered something horrible. This is a dark part. Abuse, rape, dark themes here. She is on the outside of life. Lonely, odd, and living with a huge secret.

Even after therapy, she may look and sound better, but she is so not okay. And now she is a stalker. Stalking her former therapist and uncovering his secrets.

Owen. Well, Owen was just bad. Odd doesn’t even describe it. And when Saffyre goes missing, he is the first one suspected. But did he do something to her? Was it something else she stuck her nose into that has her missing?

This was a dark and twisty thriller that left me thinking about it for days!

Good Job!

NetGalley/ October 13th, 2020 by Atria Books

 

 

 

 

Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten

Tsarina

This book was originally published many years ago. It is an interesting book about Catherine the first, the second wife of Peter the Great. Set in Russia in the 1700s.

This is not about Catherine the Great. This Tsarina came from the slums and lived with all of the horrible conditions in that time period. Violence, Immorality, and a lot of dirt! And dirty dealings. While this is a fictionalized account, much is true.

I love a historical fiction book that teaches me something. I learned a lot about Moscow, St. Petersburg and the not so likeable people in the court.

I would give this author another try!

NetGalley/ St. Martin’s Press, October 13th. 2020

 

 

A PRETTY DECEIT by ANNA LEE HUBER

A Pretty Deceit (Verity Kent #4)

A Verity Kent Mystery #4

The Great War has ended. Former Secret Service agent Verity Kent has her husband, Sydney back by her side.

They both are suffering the effects of the war. They made some nasty enemies and now those enemies are ready to take them on again.

When her father calls asking them to check in on his sister in Wiltshire, they leave at once. Expecting to find the large country house in shambles at their feet. But once again her aunt is exaggerating. While her cousin lost his sight in the war, he is still sharp as a tack, and no matter how hard his mother tries to keep everything from him, he knows more than he is saying.

When a young maid disappears, they fear the worst. When another man is found dead on the estate, things start to heat up. Odd sightings in the fields next to the RAF runway. Suspicious characters up to no good or ghosts?

And why in the world are there holes dug all over the field? Their friend Max meets up with them as they have word of a secret letter in code from his father that may have something to do with their old adversary Lord Ardmore. Information he doesn’t want out. And just like that they become the hunted.

This is such a good series. Verity is a powerful character and has an attitude I love. Can’t wait to see what she gets in to next!

NetGalley/ October 6, 2020 by Kensington