Can you believe we are on the last day in January already. Only 11 months left of the year. I am of the opinion this one is passing very, very quickly. Certainly each weeks seems to pass in a blur – not necessarily a bad thing – and I’m not sure I’m achieving a fat lot as I go along, but hey. I’m trying. Nothing inspiring to tell you all this week – I worked, I read. I didn’t have time off and it was a very long week, so what little exercise I did happened yesterday. As you can see I really need to work harder on my steps … Excellent news though – Comic relief is on again in March and this year the red noses (?) are animal themed – AND THEY HAVE A FLAMINGO!!! Hence all the random pinkness in this weeks photo. No apologies. It’s a me thing. IYKYK. And the Karachi Crunch? Well it’s one of my favourite ever snacks, hard to find around these parts, so I am eternally grateful to a friend who bought a couple of bags back to Mandie after a recent trip up Merry Hell.
One super special lot of book post this week and I was absolutely stoked. ARCS of River Clyde by Simone Buchholz; Quicksand of Memory by Michael J Malone and The Shot by Sarah Sultoon. Do yourselves a favour and either grab the ebook (first two available now) or pre-order the paperbacks. You won’t be disappointed. All highly recommended.
A few pre-orders in during the week – The Cutting Season by M.W. Craven (A Quick Reads title for 2022); Cat and Mouse by. M.J. Arlidge – A new Helen Grace novel!!!; Mania by L.J. Ross. – the next Alexander Gregory title. One Netgalley title – You Can Stay by Elle Connel.
Books I have read
Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson
FIND A FUTURE. LOSE A PAST.
She’s a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her.
She’s also on the run.
Nashville is where she’s come to claim her destiny.
It’s also where the darkness she’s fled might find her. And destroy her . . .
RUN ROSE RUN: a story glittering with danger and desire.
The Final Round by Bernard O’Keeffe
On the morning after Boat Race Day, a man’s body is found in a nature reserve beside the Thames. He has been viciously stabbed, his tongue cut out, and an Oxford college scarf stuffed in his mouth. The body is identified as that of Nick Bellamy, last seen at the charity quiz organised by his Oxford contemporary, the popular newsreader Melissa Matthews.
Enter DI Garibaldi, whose first task is to look into Bellamy’s contemporaries from Balfour College. In particular, the surprise ‘final round’ of questions at this year’s charity quiz in which guests were invited to guess whether allegations about Melissa Matthews and her Oxford friends are true. These allegations range from plagiarism and shoplifting to sextortion and murder…
Never Seen Again by Paul Finch
A message no one was supposed to hear.
Jodie Martindale‘s disappearance remains a mystery, unsolved to this day.
A message that will change everything.
David Kelman covered the story. But he made a huge mistake, which cost someone their life.
A message from the missing.
Now, he has evidence he shouldn’t have. It’s a message from Jodie – who has been missing for ten years – but sent just two weeks ago…
Samira is an up-and-coming TV journalist, working the nightshift at a major news channel and yearning for greater things. So when she’s offered a trip to the Middle East, with Kris, the station’s brilliant but impetuous star photographer, she leaps at the chance
In the field together, Sami and Kris feel invincible, shining a light into the darkest of corners … except the newsroom, and the rest of the world, doesn’t seem to care as much as they do. Until Kris takes the photograph.
With a single image of young Sudanese mother, injured in a raid on her camp, Sami and the genocide in Darfur are catapulted into the limelight. But everything is not as it seems, and the shots taken by Kris reveal something deeper and much darker … something that puts not only their careers but their lives in mortal danger.
Sarah Sultoon brings all her experience as a CNN news executive to bear on this shocking, searingly authentic thriller, which asks immense questions about the world we live in. You’ll never look at a news report in the same way again…
Not bad. Best part of four books read in a week again. That makes sixteen this month, and 20% of an audiobook completed too so if I can finish that, maybe seventeen books in January. Considering the fact that over the last couple of months I was a really struggling to get close to double digits, I’ll take that. A great start to the year with some absolutely awesome books.
The past week on the blog was full of reviews – recap below.
#Review – The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill – C.S. Robertson
#Review – The Village – Caroline Mitchell
#Review – The Commandant’s Daughter – Catherine Hokin
#Review – Quick Reads Catch Up – A.A.Dhand, Ann Cleeves, Clare Mackintosh, Peter James
#Review – The Man In The Bunker – Rory Clements
Three blog tours this coming week – The Hunting Ground by Will Shindler; One Bad Thing by M.K. Hill and The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan.
Mandie and I are starting our long awaited slow down now though, so with a few, very limited, exceptions, we’ll only be sharing reviews maybe four times a week. Weekends are more or less sacred now – our wind down time – so although we will be reading (probably), we’ll not be doing so much blogging. We all need a break, right? Nearly six years in, 2381 posts shared, 2,406,339 words shared (excluding this post – this also include book blurbs etc – can’t take credit for those!), so it’s no wonder, our brains, my fingers and my laptop keyboard are getting tired …
Have a lovely book filled week all and enjoy February. On the plus side, it’s a short month and it means spring is just around the corner. It is also the month that I get to travel to Edinburgh for the first time in two years. Cannot fluffing wait. It will make a very nice change of scenery and I think recharge the batteries in a way that is long overdue.
Happy reading
Jen xx
Jen Med's Book Reviews 