Reading and Funks

I've been in such a funk recently.  Not even sure how to describe it really.  Some of it surely is my health, my foot not healing properly and my sugar being out of whack.

One thing that has resulted from this has been my reading jag...I can't read enough!  I finally finished reading The Shadow Rising.  I say 'finally' because I took a break twice when other books stole my attention - I've also read Shadow Rising a few times, so I knew it wasn't going anywhere.  What is also amazing about this, is both books were written in the First Person Perspective.  I tend to avoid those kind of books, they're just not my cup of tea.

BUT  I am so glad I read them.

At the moment, it's FREE on Kindle!

The first one was Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes.  It's the first in the Rose Gardner Mystery series and I love Rose!  She's believably naive, tired of being abused by her mother and starts living her own life at the worst possible time...when her mother is murdered in their home shortly after they argued.

A suspect right off the bat, Rose continues to spread her wings.  From getting her hair cut to trying to wear heals for the first time, this girl is up for anything new.  Including the cute guy living next door.

I won't go into a lot of details.  Some of the plot points are obvious to the reader, but not to naive Rose.  It's alternately amusing and frustrating to watch her discover all the connections to the murder, and the calamity that follows.  And the comedy!  I don't think I've ever had a mystery amuse me so much in my life!

Seriously, I put everything to the side while I tried to get to the end of this book. Because Swank is good at doling out a bread crumb trail to what's really going on!  You can connect this dot and that dot...but there's this gap in the middle that you're just not sure about!

I tried going back to Shadow Rising after this, but made the same mistake and tried doubling up my reading again.

Also available on Kindle

I believe in supporting my fellow Indie Authors. I'll share blog posts, share links, etc.  But sometimes I hop all over the place in my reading and fail to actually read their work.  I have several of C.P. Stringham's books on my Kindle, and this is actually the second one of her books I've read.

Like All The Rest is a tale of a marriage in trouble and at first it seems like the protagonist is the only one aware of it.

There were several times I had to put the book down because of the emotions is triggered.  Like Natalie, I struggle with infertility.  I'm two years older than this fictional character, but it struck hard.

It's also well written in that there were several times I wanted to reach in and smack Natalie because she was being a bonehead!  But it's so very realistic, because we all make assumptions without hearing the other half of the story and since we've already made up our minds about what the 'truth' is we don't even want to hear it.

Another thing I liked, is that this story was similar to the first in that both women were in the process of discovering themselves.  For Rose, it was for the first time.  For Natalie, it was more of a reinvention.  We got to see more than just the romance issues of the women's life, but the other parts as well.  Their jobs, their friends, their families.

I haven't started the second book in either series yet, because as usual I've gotten sidetracked.  I have to get the second Rose Gardner book before I can read it and that won't be this paycheck.  I do have the second Ellis Spring novel, but I wanted to get Shadow Rising done and out of the way first.  I can pick that series up anytime and any spot in it without breaking stride.  But then I found a new In Death book at the library and had to check it out so I'm working on that one now.

All this reading kind of put me off schedule with proofing my own book - and my blogging! - so I'm gonna have to take a break here soon and get back to that.  Reading other's work always makes me more critical of my own.  Can it begin to live up to and match these fine ladies' work?  I don't know, but it doesn't stop me from trying!

Until next time, read a good book and tell us about it!

2014 ~ so many books, so little time...