{I've Been Reading} Smithy

 

Smithy by Amanda Desiree 

Set in 1974, in a run down mansion, this book immediately caught my interest. Surrounded by the palatial summer homes of the ultra wealthy, a group of college students are conducting a research experiment with a young chimpanzee. He's been raised in a family setting and now they'll be teaching him sign language in an effort to document his intelligence and his ability to communicate. Last used as a private boarding school, most of the large building has been sealed off due to safety concerns. It's dark and creaky and prone to unexplained fires that they blame on the old wiring. Told through letters and research videos and excerpts from books written long after the actual events, the story build slowly. Once the worst happened, it wasn't as nightmarish as I'd expected it to be, but the book itself was interesting enough that I didn't mind that it never got actually scary. 

 

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan 

Sam has lived her entire life in Wakefield, a decaying mansion built by her ancestors at the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. The rotting hallways and rooms shift and change. The building is filled with ghosts. Sam and her mother and her sister, Liz, have always known that. They speak softly so that they won't have to hear their conversations repeated later...because they are surrounded not only by the ghosts of the dead, but by apparitions their own younger selves.   It took me a while to figure out what was going on in the house, but once I did understand how the hauntings and apparitions worked,  I started to enjoy the book a lot more. There's cruelty, which I found hard to read, and a lot of dense, elaborate descriptive prose, but once the plot really picked up, it gave me chills. 

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links. 

{I've Been Reading} You Love Me

You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes 

There's a third book in the You series by Caroline Kepnes and I couldn't wait to start reading it. Joe has left New York and California behind for a small town in the Pacific Northwest where he's fallen for a very nice librarian. They'll be perfect together and he's planning their future as a couple and for a brief moment it's easy to almost forget who and what he is. I felt like the book got off to a slow start, but once things started to get complicated it got very interesting very fast and I couldn't put it down.  

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {April 2021}

 

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules:  Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

{I've Been Reading} Bodies and Bows

 

 

 Bodies and Bows by Elizabeth Penny

Apron Shop owner Iris Buckley is as busy as ever, interviewing potential new employees for the shop and helping her grandmother on a committee to convert a local lighthouse into a museum...and trying to clear her best friend's name after a local hero is run over and killed on his morning run. 

I adore the Apron Shop mysteries and, while I didn't get as emotionally attached to the newly introduced characters as I did to the ones in the second book, the mystery in this one had me coming up with all kinds of theories. (Part of one was even right this time!)

  

The Blessed Bones by Kathryn Casey 

After the discovery of human bones at a construction site, police chief Clara Jeffries realizes that the biggest challenge might be identifying the victim, a young pregnant woman. Several local girls have gone missing over the past few years, but their families refuse to cooperate with law enforcement.  I absolutely love this series. This book gives us a little more information than we've had before about Clara's past. She also spends  more time with her mothers and her siblings. Like the other books in the series, the crimes are disturbing and I found myself really hurting for the characters. The crimes and motives feel more serious and real than in the cozy mystery series I usually read. 

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links.