So does quilting and cross-stitch and a whole bunch of other things I don't do, but knitting is my stress relief of choice right now. That's two more pairs of socks, each of them half done.
In addition to the knitting, I've been reading....
I'm a sucker for domestic thrillers lately and
The Hand That Feeds You by A. J. Rich is just neat. The author isn't playing games here, hiding things from the reader to keep you turning pages. It's a complex, twisted story that keeps unfolding and we know everything as soon as the protagonist knows it herself. Morgan Prager returns to her apartment one afternoon to find her three dogs, all eager to greet her but soaked in blood. She checks each of them for injuries, fearing that her two recently adopted pit bulls have injured the Great Pyrenees she raised from a pup. As she realizes that her dogs are fine and that the blood came from her fiance, whose body she discovers on the bedroom floor, Morgan shifts from fearing for the safety or her beloved pets to fearing
them.
When Morgan tries to notify Bennett's parents, she discovers that everything she knew about the man was a fabrication, Morgan begins to realize that Bennett, who she met online while researching her projects on victim psychology was someone else entirely. He was using more than one name, engaged to more than one woman. Morgan, who is supposed to be an expert on sociopaths and their victims, can't figure out how she fell for him. The real monster may not have been one of her dogs, it may have been the man she planned to spend her life with.
I've read all of the Dexter books and the last one,
Dexter's Final Cut left me hoping that it wasn't the end of the story.
Dexter Is Dead
is the end and is one of my least favorite books in the series. The story opens immediately after Dexter's Final Cut with Dexter in jail for a gruesome series of murders that he didn't commit. He's on his own except for his brother and I think that's why the book didn't work for me. I wanted to know what was going on with the other characters, but all I got was Dexter, deeply mired in a pity party as he tries to clear his name.
Swerve
by Vicki Pettersson sounded so good, and it started out that way. Kristine's fiance is abducted from an isolated rest stop on the heat baked stretch of highway leading out of Las Vegas. After narrowly escaping the maniac herself, Kristine pursues him, drawn on by threatening text messages sent from her own phone to her fiance's. The book sucked me right in and then, about halfway through, that plot took a twist that spoiled it for me.
For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at
Patchwork Times.
Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.
by Erika Swyler tells the story of a water damaged old book that arrives on a librarian's doorstep. Simon is a swimmer, able to submerge and hold his breath for longer than humanly possible. His mother was a sideshow mermaid, descended from a long line of women with the same talent, and all of them drown on the same day of the year. As July 24 grows closer, Simon becomes more and more concerned about his sister and what might happen to her. The plot unfolds slowly, alternating chapters between Simon in the present day and a mute wild boy who has been taken in by the travelling carnival that the logbook belonged to. It's full of magic and suspense and atmospheric details. I read it in fits and starts over a couple of weeks, picking it up whenever I had time to immerse myself in Simon's world.
by Robert Beatty and I've absolutely got to share this one with my kids. It's wonderfully dark and spooky, interesting enough for adults but not too much for our younger family members. This would have been a perfect audio book for a family road trip. Serafina lives in the basement of the Biltmore with her father, who is in charge of the estate's electrical system. Born with missing bones and only four toes on each foot, she's always been different from everyone else. She roams the vast house freely, unseen by the wealthy family or their guests. When a man in a sinister black cloak appears and children begin disappearing, Serafina must risk her own safety and secrets to stop him.
by Laura McNeill is a domestic thriller told in first person point of view by five different characters. I had a hard time with that. Even though it said at the beginning of each chapter who was talking, I kept losing track and having to skim back to figure out whose head I was in. There's the abused wife at the center of the story, her stepson, her controlling husband....and then her lawyer and the court appointed psychologist get their own chapters. Near the end of the book, it all pulls together and had me holding my breath to see what would happen, but for the first few chapters I didn't care much at all about the characters.
