A Cross-Country Christmas by Courtney Walsh

 

The plot:  From the time she was 12, Lauren Richmond had a big crush on her older brother's best friend, Will Sinclair. Then, when they were in college, Will did something that really hurt her, and she promised herself she'd never fall in love like that again. She's all grown up now, but when she ends up driving home to Illinois for Christmas with Will on a weeklong road trip, her heart is in danger of falling for him all over again. Because Will is attractive, funny, kind, and has no idea he once broke her heart.

My thoughts:  Courtney Walsh is one of my favorite authors and this Christmas romance is entertaining, clean, light-hearted, humorous and sweet. I'm a sucker for roadtrip books, and I totally wanted to be on that roadtrip with Will as he stopped at every quirky diner and vintage gas station along the historic highway from Los Angelos to Chicago. And his cheerfully persistent attempts to reconnect with Lauren and help her feel the Christmas spirit made me smile. If you're looking for a cute and joyful holiday romance, I recommend this one!

Happy Reading!

Other favorite reads:

My Phony Valentine

 

The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley

 

Top Ten Tuesday

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly meme hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's theme is Books Set in X leaving it up to you to decide what X should be. After much consideration--and clicking through lots of other possibilities online--I decided to go with:  Books Set in Lighthouses. (Mostly because I've always wanted to live in one and I think they're a very fun setting to read about.) 

1. Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore

2. The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter by Hazel Gaynor

3. Lighthouse Beach by Shelley Noble

4. The Lighthouse by P.D. James

5. The Lighthouse by Christopher Parker

6. The Last Lighthouse Keeper by John Cook

7. 16 Lighthouse Road by Debbie Macomber

8. The Lighthouse Keeper by James Michael Pratt

9.  A Lighthouse Christmas by Jenny Hale

10.  The Lighthouse Sisters by Gill Thompson

Have you read any of these? They all look good to me.

Happy Reading!

Quick book recommendations...

 

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

Now I get why so many people love this book. It's smart, fast-paced, and humorous. Plus there are some good twists. The whole premise of a romantic suspense writer being mistaken for a hit woman makes me laugh. And I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series. 

Havoc by Ronie Kendig

This book has action, suspense and a little romance. I liked that the female protagonist was an MMA fighter and stunt double; she had some serious fighting skills. And all the military moments with Crew Gatlin, along with his issues with his prosthetic leg and hisdog handling skills felt authentic. And, of course, I loved his Belgian Malinois, Havoc. This is an entertaining read. (A big thanks to Ashley @ The Rustic Reading Gal for recommending this one.)

Happy Reading!

 

Watch Her Disappear by Lisa Regan

 "In all the years she had been on the Denton police force, Josie had never encountered a dead body on prom night."

 

The plot:  Gemma Farmer, a fifteen-year-old girl who went missing in January is found dead on her sixteenth birthday wearing a brand new prom dress. The way she was killed is eerily similar to another missing girl's murder two decades ago. That girl, who was also found on her sixteenth birthday, was Chief Bob Chitwood's younger sister. How are the two girls connected? Who helped lure them away from their homes in the middle of the night? And can Detective Josie Quinn and the other members of Denton's small police force find the murderer before he kills another teenage girl?

My thoughts:  This is the fourteenth book in one of my favorite mystery series. Lisa Regan writes a taut crime thriller. I've come to really like Josie Quinn, Noah Fraley, and her other characters. And the mysteries themselves are sometimes dark, always puzzling and often unexpected. Normally I recommend starting with the first book in this series, Vanishing Girls, but I think you could easily jump into this series with this book because the mystery is not tied to Josie's personal history and past like so many of the other books in this series are. Watch Her Disappear is well-written, fast-paced, suspenseful and compelling. Another solid 4-star read. 

Happy Reading!

November's Bookish Art...

 

Gotthardt Kuehl -- Lubecker Waisenhaus, 1894

"Reading takes us away from home, but more important, 

it finds homes for us everywhere."

--Hazel Rochman

Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar

 

From the blurb:  

"In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously at Dyatlov Pass. Eerie aspects of the incident--unexplained injuries, signs the hikers cut open and fled their tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of them, and radiation readings on some of their clothes--have led to decades of speculation over what really happened. 

"This gripping work of literary nonfiction delves into the mystery through unprecedented access to the hikers' own journals and photographs, rarely seen government records, dozens of interviews, and the author's own retracing of the hikers' fateful journey in the Russian winter...here for the first time is the real story of what happened that night on Dead Mountain." 

My thoughts:  I saw a documentary about Dyatlov Pass and the baffling deaths of those nine young Russian hikers several years ago and have wondered about what really happened to them ever since. So I found this book riveting. I loved how Eichar weaves together the hikers' own words and photos with the ensuing search for their bodies, and investigation into their deaths. His more recent trips to Russia to interview friends and family, as well as his own hike up to Dyatlov Pass, was equally interesting. And in the end he figures out a very plausible reason for why those hikers fled their tent that cold and windy night, finally bringing a resolution to this decades-old mystery. For me, this was a 5-star read. 

Happy Reading!

Top Ten Tuesday

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly meme hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's theme is Mainstream Popular Authors That I Still Have Not Read.

(Don't judge me, but it was embarrassingly easy to put together a list of 10 authors for this post that I haven't yet read. And they're all such popular authors, too. Many have been on my To Read list for years. And yet I still haven't read any of their books. 😔 )

Anne Cleeves

Mary Lawson

Elizabeth Strout

Fredrick Backman 

T. Kingfisher

Martha Wells

John Sandford

Jane Harper

Brandon Sanderson

Blake Crouch

Colleen Hoover

(Oops! I think that's eleven names. And I could go on, but I won't.

Hopefully next year, these same authors won't be on this list any more.)

Happy Reading!