It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

It's Monday What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, where we share what we are reading and see what others are reading as well.

Read Last Week:

  

Tomorrow Girls: Behind the Gates by Eva Gray: Another book for work. We are trying to find good dystopian books for middle grade students. This one was pretty good! I liked it enough that I want to read the second in the series. Review Thursday.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: I love this book, weird as that may sound. I picked it for book club, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it as well. Book Club Post up Wednesday.

Reading this Week:

Time to read the big guns on my reading list that I have been super excited about. 

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King: Yay!!!!! I wanted to wait until if October to start this. And now the weather is perfect for it, windy and rainy and perfectly autumn.

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater: I already started this one, and I am loving it. I had to put it down to go the symphony this afternoon, and I was reluctant to leave it behind. Lol. 

Deep and Dark and Dangerous: A Ghost Story - Review

Title: Deep and Dark and Dangerous
Author: Mary Downing Hahn
Source: Work

Goodreads Summary:
Just before summer begins, 13-year-old Ali finds an odd photograph in the attic. She knows the two children in it are her mother, Claire, and her aunt Dulcie. But who’s the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture?

Ali figures she’ll find out while she’s vacationing in Maine with Dulcie and her four-year-old daughter, Emma, in the house where Ali’s mother’s family used to spend summers. All hopes for relaxation are quashed shortly after their arrival, though, when the girls meet Sissy, a kid who’s mean and spiteful and a bad influence on Emma.

Strangest of all, Sissy keeps talking about a girl named Teresa who drowned under mysterious circumstances back when Claire and Dulcie were kids, and whose body was never found. At first Ali thinks Sissy’s just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry. . . . Mary Downing Hahn is at her chilling best in this new supernatural tale that’s certain to send shivers down her readers’ spines.

My thoughts:

I read this book to preview it for the students at my school. They love horror books and scary books, especially at this time of the year. They usually troop into the library, asking me for "the scariest book in the library".  This book just looks creepy, doesn't it? This cover kind of freaks me out, that face! Eeek!

Poor Ali's mom has some issues.  She is overly sensitive, cries easily, and can't seem to deal with situations like an adult. This would be so hard for a 13 year old to understand, and when Ali gets the chance to escape the situation, she jumps at it. Her Aunt Dulcie, so different from her mother, fun and spirited, invites Ali to spend the summer with her and her daughter Emma, at their cottage on the lake in Maine.Part of the deal is that Ali would be responsible for watching her little cousin, who is six years younger than her. Ali and Emma get along very well though, so Ali is unconcerned about this - it will actually be fun for her to hang out with Emma during the summer. Ali's mom however fights allowing Ali to go with her Aunt, saying its too dangerous, and that Ali would not enjoy it. Ali eventually is allowed to go, and when she leaves, her mom makes sure to tell her that she can come home at anytime.

Before the trip, Ali found a photo of her mother and aunt, from when they were children at the lake. She could see another arm, and the letter T on the back listed with the names. However, when she asked her mom who the other person was, she denied there was anyone else there. When Ali asked Dulcie, she too, denied the existence of anyone else..

When they get to the cottage, at first, all is well. Emma and Ali play nicely together, while Dulcie works. Then Ali and Emma meet Sissy, and it all goes downhill from here. Ali and Emma begin to argue more, Emma refuses to listen to Ali, is sassy, and basically turns into a brat. Little things start to happen, some small, some dangerous, just like Ali's mom warned the lake was. Dulcie unfairly blames everything on Ali, and I feel so sorry for her! The adults in this book leave something to be desired, but perhaps it is because this book is written for kids, from the point of view of a 13 year old. Ali is on a mission to discover who this girl is. Slowly, slowly, the spooky factor begins, and things fall into place, with Sissy and with the mystery. I read this while I was home alone (except for my animals), and a couple of times I had to look over my shoulder, I was feeling super creeped out. The atmosphere of this book is perfect - rainy, dark, gloomy, the feeling of being isolated and alone, an ominous mystery...if I had read this at a lake house on a foggy morning or a rainy afternoon, I would have definitely been scared. In my house on a hot day, I was just jumpy. I think that this is a perfect read for those kids between 3rd and 6th grade who like scary and spooky books!

 R.I.P. VIII Challenge

Top Ten Tuesday - Book Turn Offs

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Top Ten Book Turn Offs

1. Animal Deaths: First, my number one, the reason I will throw the book across the room and swear to never finish it (most of the time) is gratuitous killing of animals. Bleh. There is no need to always kill the dog, cat, pet, etc. Animal abuse bothers me too. Just leave them alone please. Surprise readers for a change and let them live!

2.  Terrible Cover Art Work: I guess I judge books by their covers, but if it is awful, I am reluctant to believe the book is any good.

3.  Billionaires and Business Men: If I pick up a book and read the blurb on the back, if it mentions So and So is a billionaire - I usually put it back down. Not sure why really, just doesn't appeal to me.

4.  Whiny Needy Helpless Female Characters:  This drives me nuts. I prefer my female characters to be tough or at least independent.

5. Cheating Characters: I don't hate a book because of this, but I will hate that character.

6.  Politics/Spy/Espionage: Same as number 3, just not my cup of tea.

7.  Science Fiction: Again, just doesn't interest me.

8.  Weird/Misspelled Names: I hate this! My friend gave me a book once where all the characters had crazy spellings of normal words and names. So irritating.

9.  War time books: I just feel inundated by them. I will read them occasionally though.

10.  Neat and Tidy or Rushed Endings: There is nothing worse than reading a really well written book that ends crappy, as if the writer rushed into it or did something crazy just to tie things up neatly.

What about you? Anything turn you off from a book?

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

It's Monday What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, where we share what we are reading and see what others are reading as well.

Read Last Week:

I got derailed from my plan last week! Our huge book order for work came in, about 8 of my own library holds came in, and my Amazon pre-orders came in - Doctor Sleep, Dream Thieves, and Winds of Salem. I was overwhelmed by the amount of books at my disposal and couldn't make a choice. I ended up reading:

  

Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn: Our kids at work love scary books and Mary Downing Hahn. We just got this in, and I read it to scope out the creep factor. I will be showing this book to the kids who ask me for "the scariest book in the library".

Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly: I love the Benjamin January series. I have read it many times. So powerful and I learned so much about this horrific time period in New Orleans. This series is a fiction story about a freeman named Benjamin January, who is a doctor and a musician.

Reading This Week:

I narrowed down the choices by what I absolutely had to read first. This was not easy, but I did it. 

  

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: Another favorite book of mine - so much so that I picked it for my book club to read. We meet on Thursday.

The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice: I am reading this via NetGalley. It archives the 15th of October, so I felt I should get to this way before then.

Reviews and Posts:

I was a busy little blogger last week! I posted the following posts:

The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler

Top Ten Tuesday - Best Sequels

Moonrise by Cassandra King

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Fall Flavors Festival

Fall Flavors Fest - Greenfield Village

I love Greenfield Village. I buy a membership every year, and I use it at least once a month, sometimes more. I especially love to visit in the fall, when they have their Fall Flavors Festival and Farm Market.

Today didn't really feel like fall, with the temperature near 80 degrees, but since it was sunny and gorgeous, we definitely wanted to head to the village for the fest.

The farm market has local vendors, from dairy farmers to vegetable farmers to salt and pepper, to actual broom makers. I love to wander around and check everything out, before making any purchases.

The first booth I stopped at was Grassfield Farms, which is a dairy and meat farm, that is all organic with grassfed cows. I don't eat meat, but I did try their cheese, which was amazing. I especially loved their Edam. Next we checked out the local honey makers, Better Bee Honey. They had tons of flavored honey, including peach, lavender, and lemon, but unfortunately they didn't take debit or credit cards, so we were unable to purchase anything.

Fortunately for us, everyone else there did accept credit/debit. We stopped at a table filled with pretty bottles of salt and pepper, which was run by the nicest people. They were dressed in period clothing, and were a pleasure to talk to. We ended up purchasing Hawiian Black Lava Salt, which is naturally lower in sodium, and Long Black Pepper, which has many flavor profiles, from peppery to chocolate, and is earthy and sweet. We plan on using it on a favorite dessert of ours, thanks to our friend Justin, which is good vanilla ice cream, topped with good scotch and pepper. Sounds weird, but it is amazing! If you are interested in checking out the color of your pepper, here is their website.

Next, I wandered over to the Kings Pantry, which had seeds for sale that I have never seen before! I could have perused them all day, but there were a lot of people so I didn't linger so that others could look too. I ended up buying rare Ukranian Beet Seeds and Soapwort Seeds. Both are organic and locally grown.

  

They had a lot more but I couldn't get a picture, just too many people.

I loved this broom! It is called a wedding broom. I sadly don't have a place for it, so I left it behind. 

We walked around the rest of the booths, but nothing called to us. We stepped outside, and saw a crush of people around a tent. We of course had to know what was over there. It turned out to be Maple Syrup! How perfectly fall. I know it is tapped in the spring, but whatever, it seems fall to me. We tried the free sample of maple dip, and then smelled the Maple coffee - which was divine, and I had to buy it. The owner of Doodle's Sugarbush was also very friendly, and when I asked her if they tap their own syrup, she said they did, and told us that in the spring they have tours. We can see them tap the trees, and make the syrup, so of course my Laura Ingalls Wilder soul wants to see this. We are definitely going to remember to go!  Check them out here. 

After shopping the market, we roamed around the village, checking out the cooking demonstrations, but it was so hot in the houses we didn't stay long. I can only imagine what it was like for those early pioneers, who had to just deal with it if they wanted to eat. We also popped into the Wright Bicycle Shop, and saw the 16 foot center of the first plane. Can you believe that only 65 years after the Orville's first flight, Neal Armstrong walked on the moon?

We had a wonderful day, and I can't wait to try out everything we bought, especially the seeds! The village is gearing up for the next event, their Halloween Nights. Whooooo...scary!

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Review

Title: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Author: Holly Black
Source: Kindle E-Book ($4.99 when I bought it)

Goodreads Summary:

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black.



My thoughts:

Imagine going to a party, and waking up the next morning in a bathtub with no recollection of how you got there. When you stumble out to the rest of the house, you discover everyone else at the party was killed during the night. A window was left open during the party, letting in the killer. Who just happens to be vampires. That is just what happens to Tana one morning, changing her whole life.

Through a series of events, Tana, her ex-boyfriend Aidan, Winter and Midnight (two young adults they meet at a rest area), and a vampire named Gavriel flee to their local Coldtown. Not all cities have them, but they do have one close by. There are five major Coldtowns across the country - they are a section of town that was walled off to keep vampires and infected people sequestered, to prevent a further spread of vampirism. Coldtowns are like a glamorous wild party/reality show, with live feeds, live cams, ad streaming video, which those outside the Coldtowns can watch what is happening behind the walls. But Coldtowns are also extremely dangerous, which can't be forgotten.

Tana is the perfect heroine - she was awesome! She is flawed, makes bad choices sometimes just because she wants to, but is brave, loyal, courageous and tough. She is not weak, and does not always wait to be rescued. Gavriel is a perfect Byronic hero and love interest, and Tana does not get her head turned by a handsome face - she does not romanticize the idea of vampires, instead knows them to be the monsters that they are. Although Tana and Gavriel do get a little steamy...

The vampires in this story are not mamby pamby vampires who glitter and forgo drinking blood. They are dangerous, with red eyes, who do drink the blood of people, and will even kill them. Reading this book though, I was more freaked out by the scary wannabes, those people who saw the vampires as eternally young, who never die, no more birthdays. They have no limits to as how far they will go to get what they want, which is eternal life. Isn't this always true though - that zealots can be the craziest people in the room?

I loved this book! I read it all in one sitting, I just didn't want to stop reading it. Black created a world that was different from other vampire books, with an awesome heroine. It was complex, I just grazed the surface of this story. I feel like we didn't quite get enough closure at the end of this book, and I am really hoping that this signifies another book in the series to come!

I loved this book! And it also qualifies as a book in the R.I.P. VIII Reading Challenge!

Moonrise - Review

Title: Moonrise
Author: Cassandra King
Source: LibraryThing

Goodreads Summary:

When Helen Honeycutt falls in love with Emmet Justice, a charismatic television journalist who has recently lost his wife in a tragic accident, their sudden marriage creates a rift between her new husband and his oldest friends, who resent Helen’s intrusion into their tightly knit circle. Hoping to mend fences, the newlyweds join the group for a summer at his late wife’s family home in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Helen soon falls under the spell not only of the little mountain town and its inhabitants, but also of Moonrise, her predecessor’s Victorian mansion, named for its unique but now sadly neglected nocturnal gardens. But the harder Helen tries to fit in, the more obvious it is that she will never measure up to the woman she replaced.
Someone is clearly determined to drive her away, but who wants her gone, and why? As Emmet grows more remote, Helen reaches out to the others in the group, only to find that she can’t trust anyone. When she stumbles on the secret behind her predecessor’s untimely death, Helen must decide if she can ever trust—or love—again.


My thoughts:

John Denver sang of the wonder and beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and a few summers ago I got to experience them for myself.  I fell in love in an instant, and the area remains one of my favorite places ever. This scenery is reflected in Moonrise, pristine and unsullied, with  gorgeous and lush descriptions of the Highlands area. Unfortunately, some of the characters in the story area a direct contrast to this purity and beauty. Not outwardly, but inwardly.

Helen is the new wife of Emmet Justice, which is the coolest last name ever. They met in the year after his wife died, in Florida where he had fled, trying to get his late wife Roslyn out of his mind in a new place. The change of scenery seemed to work, as Emmet met and fell in love with Helen Honeycutt, a dietician with a cooking show. Helen convinced Emmet to take her to his vacation home, Moonrise, in North Carolina. This is where the story begins.

Helen is introduced to Emmet's (and Roslyn's) close circle of friends - Tansy, Noel, Kit, and Linc and his wife Myna, who is absent from the book most of the time. These people loved Roslyn, and are still grieving her death, and do not react kindly to the new bride of Emmet. Tansy and Kit are scandalized by the quick marriage, and do their best (or worst) to shut Helen out, and make her look foolish in front of the others, sabotage her marriage, and set her up to take falls, literally and figuratively. Linc and Noel are much more likeable, as they are friendlier to Helen, which becomes another strike against her as the story unfolds. Willa, the housekeeper, is the only woman that is willing to befriend Helen.

This book is narrated by multiple characters - Helen, Tansy, and Willa. All three women have a different idea of what is going on around them, and it is interesting to read what each knows that the other doesn't.

Roslyn herself is a major player in the book, although she is dead. She is everywhere, a ghostly presence, in the memories of the people of Highlands, in the essence of Moonrise, and in the decaying and dessicated night garden behind the house. To Helen, Roslyn is an ideal that Helen feels she can't live up to. She is perfect in Helen's mind, to the manor born, full of grace and poise, the ultimate hostess and wife, beloved by those who have met her.

But what Helen didn't know is that the Roslyn's perfect life had some cracks, and the more that she tries to emulate her, the wider they get. The suspense keeps building, and it gets to the point that the reader wants to shake Helen, or Emmet, or Tansy, or Kit, or whoever. As Helen gets slowly driven crazy, so does the reader. Just when you think you can't take it anymore, the secrets break and the walls come crumbling down.

I loved the Gothic elements to this book, the suggestion of ghosts, a big old house, the creepy night garden in back that once was beautiful - if the garden were a human character, I would picture it as Miss Havisham.

I found parts of the story a little slow, but they were worth reading through to get to the good stuff. Moonrise however was also complex, suspenseful, and full of doubts. I really did enjoy it, and think it would be even better if read somewhere you could overlook mountains, and read by moonlight.

 I am happy I was able to read this as part of the R.I.P. VIII challenge