Reading | Week 15 in 2021

Friends! I’m here today to share the reading I’ve done in the last two weeks because I took last week off from blogging. Maybe it’s because I’ve been feeling a bit stressed and overwhelmed, but I didn’t really enjoy anything that I read. I still wanted to post about them to stay consistent and up-to-date and to celebrate the fact that I’ve already read 50 books this year!

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The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths
This is the 10th book in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series and definitely not one of my favorites. Ruth takes a holiday in Italy to help an old colleague uncover the mystery around a recently discovered set of bones and finds herself in a couple of pickles – both in Italy and back at home with DCI Harry Nelson, the father of her child. I was a little irritated with the drama between Ruth and Harry this time and felt the ending was a bit over the top. And of course – I’m going to continue reading the series to find out what happens!!

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
I really enjoyed the other book I read by Racculia, Bellweather Rhapsody. She works 90s nostalgia into her books really well and writes quirky and fun characters. This book started out perfect – an adult version of The Westing Game (one of my very favorite books of all time) set in Boston. Gothic and dark characters. She clearly has intimate knowledge of Boston and Bostonians, which made it really fun. But I have to say – I completely lost interest about halfway through the book and barely made it through to the end, which makes me sad to admit.

Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry
I was interested in this book because her newest novel, The Northern Spy, caught my eye. Under the Harrow is free to download on Audible if you have a membership and it won a few awards, so I decided to give it a try. Once again – this novel started out amazingly. The author basically started with the crime scene and then we were off and running, trying to solve it. But it got super confusing really fast – I found the main character difficult to follow and I had no idea what was going on. I even re-listened to the last hour of the audiobook to see what I had missed, but that didn’t help very much. At first I thought I was just distracted and wasn’t paying enough attention to follow along, but a quick check of Goodreads reviews tells me that I wasn’t alone. I do still want to try Northern Spy, but I’ll make sure to borrow it from the library!

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
This wasn’t at all what I was expecting from this book. I found it to be quite boring and the most racist of all of Dahl’s books that I’ve read so far. I was ready to quietly set it aside and pick up another book to read aloud but my 7 year old kept asking for it specifically, so maybe he’s in the ideal age range for this ridiculousness? Probably.

So yes – it was two weeks of books that weren’t enjoyable to me. This doesn’t even include the two books I abandoned (A Memory of Violets and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of Your Dead). Clearly I’m not in a good headspace to enjoy books right now and am reminding myself that my reading mojo ebbs and flows – so it will return!